U.S. Politics: And a Happy "Shithole" Year

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

4 hours ago, Mexal said:

Fair. It's more the latter. 

There's another aspect of what's going on that needs to be discussed too: dominance. That's one of the major motivations for what we saw on the Sunday morning shows. Sen. Cotton and Sen. Perdue and the DHS Secretary weren't out there to convince viewers that Trump didn't make those remarks. They were out there to knowingly lie. And I'm willing to bet that they were told to do it. Once you can exert that type of power over someone, you own them. 

[GAROVORKIN]

Given how much money has been sent to places in need. Why does poverty persist  in this world ?   

[lokisnow]

14 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Given how much money has been sent to places in need. Why does poverty persist  in this world ?   

If the Hoover dam is 750 feet high, why isn’t 75 feet high sufficient? Isn’t the rest just overkill?

poverty in the world has massively improved over the last hundred years, even over the last twenty years.

But when you are filling a tremendously large hole, it takes a commensurate amount of dirt. 

And humans are exceptionally bad at estimating volumes via the eyeball test.

”yeah that football stadium, probably take two, mebee three dump truck load of dirt to raise the field an inch, amiright? course I am!

[Altherion]

23 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Given how much money has been sent to places in need. Why does poverty persist  in this world ?   

Mainly because the inequality in poor countries is typically even worse than it is in the US and therefore the people at the top have even more means of making sure that resources within their countries are diverted to themselves rather than going to wherever they were meant to go. With the technology we have right now, the entire population of the world can almost certainly be supported at a comfortable level... but this requires an optimal distribution of labor and capital where the optimization condition is to maximize the welfare of all humanity whereas our current system mainly maximizes the welfare of the people at the top -- and this is more pronounced in poorer countries.

[Martell Spy]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

There's another aspect of what's going on that needs to be discussed too: dominance. That's one of the major motivations for what we saw on the Sunday morning shows. Sen. Cotton and Sen. Perdue and the DHS Secretary weren't out there to convince viewers that Trump didn't make those remarks. They were out there to knowingly lie. And I'm willing to bet that they were told to do it. Once you can exert that type of power over someone, you own them. 

Like Spicer, they were sent out to ritually humiliate themselves, wrecking their own stature in order to buttress Trump's.

[GAROVORKIN]

18 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Mainly because the inequality in poor countries is typically even worse than it is in the US and therefore the people at the top have even more means of making sure that resources within their countries are diverted to themselves rather than going to wherever they were meant to go. With the technology we have right now, the entire population of the world can almost certainly be supported at a comfortable level... but this requires an optimal distribution of labor and capital where the optimization condition is to maximize the welfare of all humanity whereas our current system mainly maximizes the welfare of the people at the top -- and this is more pronounced in poorer countries.

So basically the people running these governments steal the money meant to help its citizens. They spread it around to their cronies or put it on offshore accounts. Or the put it into boondoggle projects that benefit no one but a few on top . Would it be accurate ?

 

[Altherion]

21 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

So basically the people running these governments steal the money meant to help its citizens. They spread it around to their cronies or put it on offshore accounts. Or the put it into boondoggle projects that benefit no one but a few on top . Would it be accurate ?

Yes. The same thing happens here too (for an example, see the article about New York City subway construction costs), but there are places which take this to a whole other level.

[LongRider]

Has the sea lion returned?  Looks like it.

[GAROVORKIN]

24 minutes ago, Altherion said:

Yes. The same thing happens here too (for an example, see the article about New York City subway construction costs), but there are places which take this to a whole other level.

Jean Claude Duvalier of Haiti stole about 300 million and President Mobutu of Zaire took even more more then that. And there is  Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe  whose polices , corruption and cronyism   wrecked that country economically and politically. 

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

There's another aspect of what's going on that needs to be discussed too: dominance. That's one of the major motivations for what we saw on the Sunday morning shows. Sen. Cotton and Sen. Perdue and the DHS Secretary weren't out there to convince viewers that Trump didn't make those remarks. They were out there to knowingly lie. And I'm willing to bet that they were told to do it. Once you can exert that type of power over someone, you own them. 

Nah man.  Tired of this bullshit.  Trump is dominating Congress?  It's a ridiculous notion.  The GOP Congress is enabling Trump to juice as much as they can out of him.  Let's be clear on who is leading whom.  Trump may not even understand the term legislative agenda.  He certainly can't be bothered with the intricacies of parliamentary procedure inherent in the House.  His naked deference is on display every time he has those bipartisan "meetings" wherein leadership is obligated to clarify the president's position.  It's pathetic - and explains the direction of causality:  GOP members prop up a president for their own means, not the other way around.

Also, there's a lot of talk about Orwell in the past few pages.  Orwell sucks.  Give me Brave New World, Wanting Seed, or any Vonnegut novel over Animal Farm and 1984, both of which are rather intellectually bereft.  This is a rather esoteric complaint, but it comes from one of my favorite professors, that's since deceased, I used to drink good scotch with.  He taught an entire undergrad class on dystopian literature, and he wholly avoided Orwell - because Orwell's observations were quaint and simplistic.  

[Jace, Extat]

22 minutes ago, Nasty LongRider said:

Has the sea lion returned?  Looks like it.

What do you call plural sea lions? A blubber of Sea Lions?

We need to address this, as it appears they've multiplied. Although I have wondered if the one with the stupid name is just an alt of the one with the idiotic name.

[GAROVORKIN]

11 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Nah man.  Tired of this bullshit.  Trump is dominating Congress?  It's a ridiculous notion.  The GOP Congress is enabling Trump to juice as much as they can out of him.  Let's be clear on who is leading whom.  Trump may not even understand the term legislative agenda.  He certainly can't be bothered with the intricacies of parliamentary procedure inherent in the House.  His naked deference is on display every time he has those bipartisan "meetings" wherein leadership is obligated to clarify the president's position.  It's pathetic - and explains the direction of causality:  GOP members prop up a president for their own means, not the other way around.

Also, there's a lot of talk about Orwell in the past few pages.  Orwell sucks.  Give me Brave New World, Wanting Seed, or any Vonnegut novel over Animal Farm and 1984, both of which are rather intellectually bereft.  This is a rather esoteric complaint, but it comes from one of my favorite professors, that's since deceased, I used to drink good scotch with.  He taught an entire undergrad class on dystopian literature, and he wholly avoided Orwell - because Orwell's observations were quaint and simplistic.  

I thought the two way television sets that you cannot turn of( unless you were a party leader )was an interesting concept.  The scene where Winston Smith was participating in the Dailey mandatory calisthenics. Perhaps a precursor to social media?

[DMC]

9 minutes ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

We need to address this, as it appears they've multiplied. Although I have wondered if the one with the stupid name is just an alt of the one with the idiotic name.

I'm of the hope if we stop feeding them, they'll go away.

1 minute ago, Triskele said:

So Lindsay Graham is not backing down and is sticking with the story about what Trump said.  Will Lindsay Graham actually call Purdue and Cotton liars?  That would really be something.  

Nah.  Such confrontation of contradictory facts would lead to system failure, and that only happens in Lost where it doesn't matter.

[GAROVORKIN]

4 minutes ago, Triskele said:

So Lindsay Graham is not backing down and is sticking with the story about what Trump said.  Will Lindsay Graham actually call Purdue and Cotton liars?  That would really be something.  

So there no other stories in the world of more important then this ?

 

[Inigima]

This is sort of emblematic of a lot of problems with this administration. The bald-faced lying and the complicity of Congressional Republicans. It's the same problem, over and over.

[GAROVORKIN]

1 minute ago, Inigima said:

This is sort of emblematic of a lot of problems with this administration. The bald-faced lying and the complicity of Congressional Republicans. It's the same problem, over and over.

Do only Republican tell lies then?  

[DanteGabriel]

1 minute ago, GAROVORKIN said:

Do only Republican tell lies then? 

Do you only ask stupid questions?

[Fragile Bird]

8 minutes ago, Triskele said:

So Lindsay Graham is not backing down and is sticking with the story about what Trump said.  Will Lindsay Graham actually call Purdue and Cotton liars?  That would really be something.  

No, no, Graham is just mistaken, the prez said shithouse, not shithole.

Makes all the difference in the world!

[OldGimletEye]

On 1/15/2018 at 2:42 PM, Ormond said:

Thanks for the above explanations.

There really is a big difference in consequences for someone in my friend's position in being 55 vs. 63 when this happens to you. 

A few follow on  thoughts.

1. Yes getting hit in your 40s or 50s  is really devastating.

2. When we talk about Social Security in the future, I think it’s important to keep in mind the folks that caught in that situation who were financially devastated, though no fault of their own and were not able to recover (well nobody exactly recovers. Fact is that young people that came on the job market are likely to have lower lifetime earnings than someone that was lucky to come on it when times were good. But, it’s of course much more devastating for somebody like the people we are talking about).

3. I believe age discrimination is a real problem that doesn’t get talked about enough. And if you’re female and older, you really get whacked good.

4. The standard economist model says that people work until the ratio of their marginal disutility of working and marginal utility of consumption equals the real wage. But, in reality, I think that it is flawed ( or maybe it can be very misleading), as the work itself often brings utility in econ speak. More exactly it is mentally and emotionally damaging when unemployment hits. As FDR historian Wiliam Leuchtenburg put it, To be unemployed in an industrial society is the equivalent of banishment and excommunication.A job established a man's identity—not only what other men thought of him but how he viewed himself; the loss of his job shattered his self-esteem.”

[LongRider]

23 minutes ago, dmc515 said:

Nah man.  Tired of this bullshit.  Trump is dominating Congress?  It's a ridiculous notion.  The GOP Congress is enabling Trump to juice as much as they can out of him.  Let's be clear on who is leading whom.  Trump may not even understand the term legislative agenda.  He certainly can't be bothered with the intricacies of parliamentary procedure inherent in the House.  His naked deference is on display every time he has those bipartisan "meetings" wherein leadership is obligated to clarify the president's position.  It's pathetic - and explains the direction of causality:  GOP members prop up a president for their own means, not the other way around.

  Trump doesn't give a shit about governing, he's being governed by the smarmy GOP because they have figured out that what Trump wants is money, fame and approval.  So they pat him on his big stupid head saying 'good boy', 'you such a genius' and 'he said whaa?  No he ditnt!'   sickening.