241–250 of 369 posts
I am sure the Afghan Taliban and the Iranian Mullahs agree: You can't put a price on female virtue/modesty/chastity. So while keeping our women locked away at home depresses the GDP, it is a misleading measure of national success anyway.
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Wrong turn? Rat race? Compared to what? Your ancestors 200 years ago were malnourished, working the fields all day to eke out a miserable existence, never enjoying a single luxury in life. They didn't know how to read or write, and in any case wouldn't have had time for such luxurious activities. Human progress has brought us to the point where we have the free time to complain about how disadvantaged we are and how…
The "once decent living standards were assured" part covers this.
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No, that math isn’t correct. If you are in the minority, there is no compromise in democracy. The level of care you receive is exactly 0 if the majority voted against you. 20 years ago you couldn’t have 40% of a gay marriage, it was just no gay marriage.
People typically live for more than just a single issue. Averaged over many thousands of issues, some of which you end up enjoying benefits from and some of which you end up suffering penalties from, and after many years of residence, it does work out that way.
It might, if we didn't split votes by district, then by county, then by state, and bundle them.
It might if our representation weren't purposefully skewed to favor states with let populations.
It might if there were runoff voting.
It might if there weren't an electoral college, circumventing all that already miserable voting procedure.
It might if voting we're a national holiday.
It might if we had a choice that wasn't "this pile of shit over here" versus "that mass of excrementt over there". Really, they're different!
It might if, after the elections were over, there wasn't a whole industry, made up of politician's former colleagues, making truckloads of money to peddle influence on behalf of big business and billionaires.
To believe that our democratic process does anything to connect the political zeitgeist of the people to actual policy is to believe in the tooth fairy.
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While RFK sometimes got help from Edwin Guthman and Peter Edelman, he also spoke extemporaneously sometimes, most famously when he had to announce the death of Martin Luther King to a crowd that hadn't yet heard the news: https://kennedykingindy.org/full-rfk-speech
Where are the politicians today who can quote Aeschylus at will? What happened to our national discourse that we’ve filled it with dimwits?
> In a serious miscalculation that may prove devastating to his bid for a second term, President Barack Obama neglected Tuesday to simplify a statement to the point where it could readily be grasped by anyone with the vocabulary of an 8-year-old. "Instead of saying, 'There are many global variables at work here, and unless they all fall into place, we could find ourselves back in a recession,' he should have just said, 'Times are hard. We gotta be strong,'"
https://www.theonion.com/in-major-gaffe-obama-forgets-to-dum...
Of course, they also joked about how absurd it would be for George W Bush to show literary depth:
https://www.theonion.com/bush-regales-dinner-guests-with-imp...
The gig economy boosts GDP. If I work as an employee, I am just an expense to a company. If I setup an S corporation and contract my services to that same company, I am now growing the services sector and increasing GDP. I am still doing the same amount of work but just increasing transactions. I seem to be incentivized by pay and taxes to work as contractor, and this may be because the government is trying to pump G…
No, if you contract your services to that company, your contribution to GDP gets cancelled out by the intermediate consumption of that company purchasing your services. The GDP is the same either way.
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That’s a terrible analogy. GDP is like measuring how useful the car is.
Measuring how useful the car is would be perfect. GDP is like measuring how useful the car is by its market value.
So market price tends to be a pretty good proxy for usefulness.
People who complain about GDP as a measure are usually just complaining about things they don’t like that go into GDP like pointless (to them) consumer goods.
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Hrm, I went to public school in the 1980s and received a fair facsimile of a classical education.
It seems like it coincided with differences in attitude about education. I’ve forgotten the exact stats, but in decades past college students overwhelming said the purpose of college was to develop a philosophy of life whereas now the predominant answer is to find a good job.
Robert Kennedy, on the campaign trail in 1968: "Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising…
This is a BS political speech and it is very politically motivated. When you can't fix the economy (get GDP up), just claim the GDP doesn't matter. My country's president just claimed we should focus on National Happiness Product. Of course, when all your economical policies fail, economy is just numbers. And no, having an accident doesn't increase GDP. If the passengers dies, that will remove their GDP from society.…
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This is a BS political speech and it is very politically motivated. When you can't fix the economy (get GDP up), just claim the GDP doesn't matter. My country's president just claimed we should focus on National Happiness Product. Of course, when all your economical policies fail, economy is just numbers. And no, having an accident doesn't increase GDP. If the passengers dies, that will remove their GDP from society.…
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But GDP's role was never to measure income inequality, environmental impacts, diversity, affirmative actions. It was always an economic tool, not a SJW tool.
As an economic tool it just measures how well a country is able to produce and sell goods and services. And for that purpose I know no other better tool than it and it's derivative, GDP per capita adjusted for PPP.