U. S Politics: I know why the caged babe screams.

[The Anti-Targ]

29 minutes ago, Altherion said:

As a general rule, random people calling the police, the police arriving, determining that there is nothing of consequence at the scene and departing without incident is not even reported in the local news, let along national-scale media. In fact, it is quite common (PDF):

Simply from the fact that there were 20 million such calls, I guarantee you that you can find all combinations of races (the PDF provides a breakdown of the callers among various demographic parameters, including race) and it is also practically guaranteed that some of the calls are downright silly. Whoever put together the campaign you see in the media cherry-picked a few incidents of white people calling the police to report on black people for the most absurd reasons found in the entire data set and made a narrative out of them. I suppose it works well when applied to the naive, the gullible and those already convinced that the criminal justice system is racist, but given the sheer number of calls, one can cherry-pick almost anything out of the data (but of course, getting it in the national media is another story...).

Are you cherry-picking my post? It seems like you are.

 

[karaddin]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

"Giving away" is not quite the right terminology here; the unpaid labor is an unwritten condition of employment and people who refuse to play along most likely won't keep the job for long.

This is the problem, not the justification. If the company gets this labour without having to pay for it, then that is labour they require to be performed but don't count in their finances, don't count in their man hours etc. If a company requires 840 hours of labour per week, but only employs 20 people for 700 hours per week and exploits the additional 140 hours by getting their 20 employees to put in extra time, then that is 4 FTE (Full Time Equivalent) positions that they no longer have to employ. That is 140 hours of labour they get for free. You don't get to just pronounce it as "well they expect their employees to do it and will fire anyone that doesn't" like it's the natural order of things, its the result of the extreme power imbalance between employers and employees and precisely why unions and regulation are important.

The company is stealing that time from their employees if its not written into their contract, and its robbing the community of employment opportunities resulting in inflated unemployment figures.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

As a general rule, random people calling the police, the police arriving, determining that there is nothing of consequence at the scene and departing without incident is not even reported in the local news, let along national-scale media. In fact, it is quite common (PDF):

Way to add a completely irrelevant citation to pose as if your argument has merit.  The PDF is full of numbers, sure, but not a one of them involves the race of the individual those who "request police assistance" and "reported noncrime emergency" are calling the cops on.  So, you get a 50%, or fail.  

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

Whoever put together the campaign you see in the media cherry-picked a few incidents of white people calling the police to report on black people for the most absurd reasons found in the entire data set and made a narrative out of them. I suppose it works well when applied to the naive, the gullible and those already convinced that the criminal justice system is racist

It's far beyond naive and gullible to deny that the criminal justice system's racism has been empirically demonstrated.  There's no data analysis that can work around this statistical regularity, in spite of your clear Freudian slip that you'd like to cherry-pick such data.  But by all means be the charlatan intellectual you most profess to loathe.

As an aside, when I was a teenager my step-grandpa was visiting and got the cops called on him by our reclusive neighbor.  He was trimming the hedges in our side yard in a suburban neighborhood that had a crime rate of basically zero if you didn't count the shenanigans us teenagers did ourselves or that one story about the guy who killed his family with an axe down the street in the 80s (which I always thought was apocryphal but looked it up and it was true).  If you think my reclusive neighbor would have called the cops on someone she didn't recognize trimming our hedges that was white instead of Mexican, then you're a sad case.

ETA:  That reclusive neighbor, btw, given her sight-lines and apparent interest in our side yard, must have saw me take thousands of bong hits over an eight year period.  Maybe tens of thousands.

[OldGimletEye]

13 hours ago, Simon Steele said:

So, how do we get it down to 30 hours a week and make the argument that wages should remain constant? An interesting development, for me, is that now I am not chained to work, I find myself probably working more than I ever did. Because I like it.

 

8 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

I see two major issues with the 20-30 hour work week as 'standard.'

1 - Paying a living wage for so little working time is likely to be genuinely rough on employers.

 

Supposing we live in a very simple economy. And just for the sake of exposition, this very simple economy is always in equilibrium. And I’ll forget about any issues concerning bargaining power or monopsony.

You have two goods. You have Maga Caps and Leisure. Both these goods have a price. If people want to take more leisure the price and the quantity of leisure will rise. The price of quantity of Maga caps will, however, fall.

Make a very simple chart. On the X-axis you have the quantity of Maga Caps. On the Y-axis you have the quantity of leisure. Draw a curve to the right of the Y-axis and above the X-axis. This is called an indifference curve. Then draw a line tangent to it. This would be a budget constraint. You can pivot the line around the indifference curve getting different combinations of leisure and Maga Caps, but if you want to have more leisure with the same amount of Maga Caps, you have to shift the line out. That basically means, you increase labor productivity or you increase your technology or both.

Or maybe you could argue that the increase in leisure at the expense of fewer Maga caps would make people better off as they would be happier to have more leisure and fewer Maga Caps.

Also, supposing people decide they would like more leisure. Does this mean some Maga cap producers would go out of business? Well, yes it does, as people want more leisure and fewer Maga Caps. But not all Maga Cap producers will go out of business as people still want them. And if people decide they want more leisure, it not a bad thing that some Maga Cap producers go out of business.

Of course in the real world, some folks could drop to 30 hours a week and make a livable wage. Others would need help with a possible combination of job training, better bargaining power, and some transfers.

But, honestly, at this time, with regard to US labor getting to a 30 hour work week wouldn’t be my priority. First I’d like to change institutional arrangements to boost the bargaining power of labor, such as:

1. Strengthening unions

2. Getting labor representation on the board of the FED. I post stuff about monetary policy quite a bit. There is a reason. That is because monetary policy has a big effect on the state of labor or employment. The board, in my view, should have people that represent the views of labor when monetary policy is set and not just the interest of bankers and finance people.

3. If we are going to have Business CEO round table, we should have a labor round table.

4. I think we should have a co determination system, like say Germany does.

Also, I’d like to explore ways of getting young people trained or even older people looking to make career changes at a lower cost. The debt from a post high school education can get quite burdensome. Also, I’d like to explore ways to get young people or even career changers actual real world experience as they are getting their training. As some may know or maybe don’t know, the “entry level job” is rapidly disappearing. Often when employers say they have an “entry level job” they mean “3 years experience.” The point here is that employers are getting less reluctant to invest much in training new employees. Now the usual advice to young people or even career changers is to do an internship, perhaps even an unpaid internship. And the unpaid internship is a real problem. It’s fine if you come from a family with means to support you. But, if you don’t, then it’s a big barrier to entry to getting a decent job.

So overall while a 30 hour work week might be a good goal to get goal, I think US labor has bigger fish to fry right about now.

[felice]

12 hours ago, ThinkerX said:

1 - Paying a living wage for so little working time is likely to be genuinely rough on employers.

So the employers have to increase prices a bit to make up the difference; labour is only part of the costs of most businesses, so price increases don't cancel out the wage increases. Ignoring the complicated economics, it boils down to "waste less effort and resources on luxury goods and services for the rich, in order to improve quality of life for ordinary people".

[felice]

6 hours ago, Martell Spy said:

Woman Scales the Statue of Liberty’s Base to Protest U.S. Immigration Policies

https://www.thedailybeast.com/at-least-seven-arrested-for-unfurling-abolish-ice-banner-at-statue-of-liberty?ref=home

Forcing the evacuation of the island??? Isn't that just a teeny weeny bit of an overreaction?

[Which Tyler]

I'm getting worried.
Trump hasn't made a new headline in over a week; he's surely bottling up something incredibly stupid just to get us all talking about him again.
It's also Friday, which means that if he does something stupid today, the media will have the whole weekend to talk about nothing else (well, other than football).

 

Maybe... if we all talk about Trump for the rest of the day he'll be satisfied and NOT do anything stupid?

Gotta be worth a try.

[A True Kaniggit]

1 hour ago, Which Tyler said:

I'm getting worried.
Trump hasn't made a new headline in over a week; he's surely bottling up something incredibly stupid just to get us all talking about him again.
It's also Friday, which means that if he does something stupid today, the media will have the whole weekend to talk about nothing else (well, other than football).

 

Maybe... if we all talk about Trump for the rest of the day he'll be satisfied and NOT do anything stupid?

Gotta be worth a try.

It's 5:49 am Thursday here. where the hell are you?

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Which Tyler said:

I'm getting worried.
Trump hasn't made a new headline in over a week; he's surely bottling up something incredibly stupid just to get us all talking about him again.
It's also Friday, which means that if he does something stupid today, the media will have the whole weekend to talk about nothing else (well, other than football).

 

Maybe... if we all talk about Trump for the rest of the day he'll be satisfied and NOT do anything stupid?

Gotta be worth a try.

You’ve already normalized his behavior so much that you haven’t even noticed the outrageous stuff he’s tweeted all week.

 

[Which Tyler]

26 minutes ago, A True Kaniggit said:

It's 5:49 am Thursday here. where the hell are you?

In a land of my own - oops.

Jebus this has been a long week!

[Fragile Bird]

7 hours ago, Altherion said:

"Giving away" is not quite the right terminology here; the unpaid labor is an unwritten condition of employment and people who refuse to play along most likely won't keep the job for long.

As a general rule, random people calling the police, the police arriving, determining that there is nothing of consequence at the scene and departing without incident is not even reported in the local news, let along national-scale media. In fact, it is quite common (PDF):

Simply from the fact that there were 20 million such calls, I guarantee you that you can find all combinations of races (the PDF provides a breakdown of the callers among various demographic parameters, including race) and it is also practically guaranteed that some of the calls are downright silly. Whoever put together the campaign you see in the media cherry-picked a few incidents of white people calling the police to report on black people for the most absurd reasons found in the entire data set and made a narrative out of them. I suppose it works well when applied to the naive, the gullible and those already convinced that the criminal justice system is racist, but given the sheer number of calls, one can cherry-pick almost anything out of the data (but of course, getting it in the national media is another story...).

I’m on my phone scrolling down reading responses and I started reading how working for free is an unwritten condition of employment and I immediately asked myself who would write this as if taking unpaid labor was the natural order of things in the employer/employee relationship, so much so that you should expect to lose your job if you don’t ‘play along’? Who would write this? Must be Altherion.

Yup, as surely as the sun rises in the east.

[LongRider]

8 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

So, many workers are donating time to their employer, which should not be happening.

Quote

edt; CASABLANCA BIRDIE:  I immediately asked myself who would write this as if taking unpaid labor was the natural order of things in the employer/employee relationship, so much so that you should expect to lose your job if you don’t ‘play along’?

Sorry Birdie, can't blame Altherion.   SCOTUS ruling from 2014;

Quote

The Supreme Court ruled unanimously Tuesday that workers who fill orders in Amazon.com warehouses need not be paid for the time they spend going through security checks to ensure they have not stolen any products.

The court reversed a lower-court ruling for the workers, who alleged they spent up to 25 minutes waiting to go through security clearance at warehouses in Nevada.

But Justice Clarence Thomas said federal law requires that workers be paid for activities before and after their shifts only when the activities are “integral and indispensable” to the job they are hired to perform.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-rules-amazon-doesnt-have-to-pay-for-after-hours-time-in-security-lines/2014/12/09/05c67c0c-7fb9-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9905f0a86af1

[LongRider]

Good grief.

 

[Which Tyler]

46 minutes ago, LongRider said:

Sorry Birdie, can't blame Altherion.   SCOTUS ruling from 2014;

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/courts_law/supreme-court-rules-amazon-doesnt-have-to-pay-for-after-hours-time-in-security-lines/2014/12/09/05c67c0c-7fb9-11e4-81fd-8c4814dfa9d7_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9905f0a86af1

That... Doesn't make it a good thing, or anything that is expected, or even a thing that is acceptable behaviour for employers

[LongRider]

5 minutes ago, Which Tyler said:

That... Doesn't make it a good thing, or anything that is expected, or even a thing that is acceptable behaviour for employers

Couldn't agree more, it's not good at all, but expected? Well, the precedent has been set.

[IheartIheartTesla]

I think there is a path for Democrats in terms of strategy to make significant gains with young women and Latinos for the upcoming elections. For young women, a new Supreme Court pick would mean an unprecedented attack on their rights (more so than what has happened till now), and for many Latinos, I presume the "abolish ICE" approach is gaining traction (although I cant be sure of this).

I am interested in the latter, and what middle road the Democrats will take to screw themselves out of the maximum number of voters. They haven't proved to be very good at threading the needle to keep the different wings of their party happy. I think some sort of approach to break ICE down into more an enforcement agency rather than a (extra)-judicial one as well may help.

Speaking of, apparently ICE (or one of those agencies) has jurisdiction about 100 miles from an international border. They have tried to claim the Great Lakes as a border, so nearly the entirety of Michigan is supposed to be in their purview. This is entirely a debatable point, so if it does happen to you, dont let them search your car (for instance).

[Maithanet]

6 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

Speaking of, apparently ICE (or one of those agencies) has jurisdiction about 100 miles from an international border. They have tried to claim the Great Lakes as a border, so nearly the entirety of Michigan is supposed to be in their purview. This is entirely a debatable point, so if it does happen to you, dont let them search your car (for instance).

Like 80% of the US population lives within 100 miles of some border, including virtually all of the biggest cities in the country. 

[IheartIheartTesla]

Yes, so its important to know your rights when you get a visit from the border patrol. Especially when the agents themselves may not.  For instance, no searching of your premises or your car without a warrant or reasonable suspicion.

[A True Kaniggit]

49 minutes ago, IheartIheartTesla said:

I think there is a path for Democrats in terms of strategy to make significant gains with young women and Latinos for the upcoming elections. For young women, a new Supreme Court pick would mean an unprecedented attack on their rights (more so than what has happened till now).

I hope your right. But the problem is, people usually don't care about things until after they have already happened and are affecting their lives.

For example my younger sister. She is 19 with a 2 y/o daughter. I try to get her involved in politics, try to make her care about the changes happening in the U.S. government. But she doesn't. As long as she and her kid are able to live reasonably well off lives, she doesn't care.

Will her daughter be able to have an abortion or be paid the same as a male 16 years for now? That's too far away for her to worry about. Because "of course" things will turn out all right in the end.

And I'm afraid she is the typical American citizen. As long as what is happening doesn't involve them directly, they just don't give a shit. It's just not real to them.

[Centrist Simon Steele]

8 hours ago, DMC said:

Way to add a completely irrelevant citation to pose as if your argument has merit.  The PDF is full of numbers, sure, but not a one of them involves the race of the individual those who "request police assistance" and "reported noncrime emergency" are calling the cops on.  So, you get a 50%, or fail.  

It's far beyond naive and gullible to deny that the criminal justice system's racism has been empirically demonstrated.  There's no data analysis that can work around this statistical regularity, in spite of your clear Freudian slip that you'd like to cherry-pick such data.  But by all means be the charlatan intellectual you most profess to loathe.

As an aside, when I was a teenager my step-grandpa was visiting and got the cops called on him by our reclusive neighbor.  He was trimming the hedges in our side yard in a suburban neighborhood that had a crime rate of basically zero if you didn't count the shenanigans us teenagers did ourselves or that one story about the guy who killed his family with an axe down the street in the 80s (which I always thought was apocryphal but looked it up and it was true).  If you think my reclusive neighbor would have called the cops on someone she didn't recognize trimming our hedges that was white instead of Mexican, then you're a sad case.

ETA:  That reclusive neighbor, btw, given her sight-lines and apparent interest in our side yard, must have saw me take thousands of bong hits over an eight year period.  Maybe tens of thousands.

The citation wasn't irrelevant at all. You play this role of argument instructor, but you break the fundamental rule of "grading" with your values as opposed to the argument laid out before you. The reason "race" wouldn't be involved in a report like this is written in the report's methodology. This is a report that is trying to get a pulse on the general population of the United States. The issue may lie with the sample (did the sample effectively represent the U.S. population?), and I have my questions about that. The report did not list limitations, which could be the difficulty of acquiring a representative sample. But the views people have of police is an important aspect of this argument. The more important question is why do people have such high perceptions of law enforcement despite significant issues stemming from how LO's engagement with the public?

Issues could also lie in the well-known problem of participant self-reporting in the social sciences any time a survey is used to collect data. 

But the report itself is not problematic. It is a good baseline, and has the fundamental pieces of a well designed piece of research. Your job, instead of critiquing everyone, should be to find an equally or better designed piece of evidence and use that to look at intersections in the argument. As it stands, you've not discredited the original argument. I may do this for you later. But you've demonstrated ad hominen as a fallacy that you like to rely on even when you could probably find sources to support your arguments.