Why $15?

Why not $25? How about $40? How about $80

I mean. . . at $80/ hour a family has a decent change to buy a home and even pay it off some day, at least in a rural town.

The answer is obvious: at $80, nobody makes coffee. How about $79? $78? Where, exactly is that cut line.

You can sniff farts all you want, but as expenses increase, the chances of a small business to fail increase-- there IS no cut line. Every penny has a small effect, every dollar a large one. If you think running a small business is easy, or that every penny doesn't matter, then you've never done it. You can form it in the language of moral outrage if you want: "Oh, the poor impoverished working man! Oh mean whitie." But money doesn't care about race-- if it ain't there, it ain't there.

The caveat to this is that the increase in wages isn't paralleled by an increase in overall prosperity. But that depends on money from outside-- investment, or payment for goods and services, or charity, or government economic stimulus.

But if you inject money into the region directly, or in wages for municipal projects and so on, then you don't really NEED an enforced minimum wage. Nor does race or any other demographic category other than income have anything do to with it.

We do inject money and make infrastructure investments.  That money predictably ends up in the hands it's already in.  Yay, more handouts for the owners of men! That might have something to do with a fundamental disparity in the societal architecture of georgia, lol. You know, those root causes you'd like to see addressed?

Did you happen to go and inform yourself?  What have you learned? Is there not enough pie to go around..or is a certain someone eating all the fuckin pie?

LOL..because I'm a glutton for disappointment-

Georgia...a state with a GDP "pie" bigger than the country of Sweden, and about the same amount of people munching on it.  Georgia, 60% white, 30% black..evenly split male female overall.

Georgia....with an income inequality rating of 16.6..where 16% of the population is under poverty level.  16.7% of working age women under poverty level.  12.1% of working age men. (poverty in georgia being 24k usd for a family of four)

Georgia, where 22.5% of those in poverty are black, 11.9% white  (the rest are all the other minority demographics,  that make up the other 10% of it's total pop)

Georgia, where 60% of the prison pop is black, 30% white.

Georgia, which receives 14 billion usd in federal funding, and 6billion in "other" investment.

Georgia...which is in the news..right now, for ratfucking the black vote (incidental, I'm sure, they're aiming at dems..lol).

Georgia, where the republican upper crust sets the rest of the filthy white poors against the blacks™ along time honored racist lines..in order to keep -them- under the thumb and voting against their own interests.

......................Georgia...................a uniquely bad example of a place where minimum wage increases and increased racial awareness wouldn't help. A place with a hell of alot of pecan pie, that's overwhelmingly -not- for the pecan pickers...and never has been. People think that Georgia is a poor state..not because it's actually poor..but because we see how poor it's forgotten and oppressed peoples are. The wealth of Georgia is overwhelmingly concentrated into people who do not share the burdens of the state, who do not contribute to the labor of the state..and who are positively not interested in sharing the product of that labor with those who do it...but who are, incidentally, protected -by- the state.

Fucking..Georgia...a textbook example of class disparity, a textbook example of how identity politics and systematic disenfranchisement is used, by the wealthy right..to divide and conquer the working class to their communal detriment.

Yeah, I caught this last night when I googled the demographics, but I was too tired to go edit.

Georgia wasn't my best bet. I should have said Mississippi, and then Idaho because it's so predominantly white. That's just me being Canadian and not knowing the states that well. You should be able to see that, I hope. In a way, I'm glad I didn't edit it, because I've assumed for a while that there were things eating at you, something really compelling to make you hold the position you do, and now it's crystal clear-- a real interest in justice, and a real offense at the total lack of it. You've done a lot of shit-slinging, but I'd much prefer it when you take an actual position.

So, egg on my face for ignorantly picking a poor example, but clarity in the debate, and a pretty nice chance for you to vent and be all kinds of right. There's no point in the above that I'd want to stand against.



Racism is clearly a problem, and solving is clearly desirable. That's partly because black kids, if they grow up in a more privileged environment, can grow up to be teachers, doctors and others who contribute. Taking away baby daddies on trumped-up charges is so obviously going to re-create the cycle, that one wonders if that isn't completely deliberate-- making sure children don't have parents is a good way to make sure they are never educated enough to be an effective political force.

That being said (you knew it was coming!), my suggestion is that work programs provide jobs selectively based on income, and in areas or districts worst off. If this does not end up greatly benefiting black people on average, then it's because the metric for selecting the workers is unfair: that's a problem with the design of the program.

I'd also suggest that prisoners be released based on anything BUT their racial profile, despite so many black people being detained. That's because if you release them based on any other metric, those injustices unravel-- the asymmetry in putting them into prison should make them the first out. For example, the first thing you do is release everyone ever imprisoned on simple marijuana possession charges, in particular when those charges represented a third-strike scenario. A lot of those guys would be white, but a huge proportion of them would be black. You don't have to make it ABOUT their blackness, or call this the Release Unfairly Imprisoned Black Men Initiative, for good policies to have that effect anyway.

But the PC warrior, while it's fun to be the hero, isn't going to work-- or at least, I don't think it will work soon enough for America. After all the clearly correct things you just ranted about, divisive demographics are STILL divisive. Unless you intend to forcibly wrest power from those have-alls in Georgia (another option I've already mentioned in this thread, btw), then the question is-- what's the best way to achieve your goal?

Do you even have an answer to that question? Here we have a scenario in which you are clearly right, and in which identity demographics are clearly used in order to selectively target black people. This is your moment-- what PC Left policies would you make, based explicitly on demographic minorities (as opposed to just income, severity of crimes committed, etc.)? What laws do you make?

The kneejerk reaction is something like, "Make it a federal crime to discriminate in criminal proceedings based on race, and throw those white motherfuckers in jail. Let them see how long they survive when the guys they put in jail get their fucking hands on them!" But how, actually, does one go about doing this? By tribunal? How do you establish who gets to make these calls?

(August 22, 2018 at 6:49 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Yeah, I caught this last night when I googled the demographics, but I was too tired to go edit.

Georgia wasn't my best bet.  I should have said Mississippi, and then Idaho because it's so predominantly white.  That's just me being Canadian and not knowing the states that well.  You should be able to see that, I hope.

I can.  I absolutely can see that.  I can see how your being unfamiliar with the factual reality of these subjects has made you a positively juicy target for charlatans of every description.....and I keep telling you that....but you keep telling me that I'm wrong about that.

Wait...wait...wait...Mississippi..............? : bangs head repeatedly against desk : Potatoho...? Are you deliberately trying to fuck with me?

Quote:In a way, I'm glad I didn't edit it, because I've assumed for a while that there were things eating at you, something really compelling to make you hold the position you do, and now it's crystal clear-- a real interest in justice, and a real offense at the total lack of it.  You've done a lot of shit-slinging, but I'd much prefer it when you take an actual position.

I am from the deep south.  These aren't vague academic positions to me that I learned in a liberal university or from some lobster salesman on youtube.  I have lived the thing you feel compelled to deny.

Quote:But the PC warrior, while it's fun to be the hero, isn't going to work-- or at least, I don't think it will work soon enough for America.  After all the clearly correct things you just ranted about, divisive demographics are STILL divisive.  Unless you intend to forcibly wrest power from those have-alls in Georgia (another option I've already mentioned in this thread, btw), then the question is-- what's the best way to achieve your goal?

There's the rub.  PC warriors aren't heros.  They're people screaming, at the top of their lungs, what everyone should already know..what no one should have the basely ignorant chutzpah..in this world..to argue against.

Quote:Do you even have an answer to that question?  Here we have a scenario in which you are clearly right, and in which identity demographics are clearly used in order to selectively target black people.  This is your moment-- what PC Left policies would you make, based explicitly on demographic minorities (as opposed to just income, severity of crimes committed, etc.)?  What laws do you make?

You mean..-other- than things like....oh, idk..increasing the minimum wage, or ensuring accountability in police departments through aggressive oversight based on..literally....centuries- of state malfeasance?  

Quote:The kneejerk reaction is something like, "Make it a federal crime to discriminate in criminal proceedings based on race, and throw those white motherfuckers in jail.  Let them see how long they survive when the guys they put in jail get their fucking hands on them!"  But how, actually, does one go about doing this?  By tribunal?  How do you establish who gets to make these calls?

Or how about I suggest that you stop saying things that can be shown to be demonstrably false while pretending that the pc left is doing what the right is demonstrably doing...all the while intimating your support for liberal positions, and covering for a bunch of fucking racists in Georgia whether you realized you were doing it or not.....?

One deluded asshole at a time, Benny. I know better than to imagine that there's a true legislative solution...I'm from the deep south......member. Our system is not in place to effect positive change, but to maintain the status quo.

Here's a fun fact..all that shit I rattled off about georgia...only gets it 39th rank in poverty and inequality metrics overall in the us. Mississippi....dead last. Mississippi is the state shitty states point to and say "Well, at least we're not Mississippi!". Idaho, a few places above Georgia.

---

Imma save you a whole lotta time trying to figure out the picture of the field here in the states, which forms and dominates the narrative that you..as a man in korea, are commenting on.  Take a look at the trump train.  His candidacy and presidency are the product of the white grievance industry. How did they pull that off? Oh, you know, bitching about the pc left and sjws.

(August 22, 2018 at 7:21 pm)Khemikal Wrote: I am from the deep south.  These aren't vague academic positions to me that I learned in a liberal university or from some lobster salesman on youtube.  I have lived the thing you feel compelled to deny.  

And yet you are so ready do wholesale discard my experiences, my disappointments with politics, and to do so in a particularly undiplomatic and intolerant manner. Here's you: "La la la. La la la. Your words don't matter. Soooooo hard being a white man!"

Quote:Or how about I suggest that you stop saying things that can be shown to be demonstrably false while pretending that the pc left is doing what the right is demonstrably doing...all the while intimating your support for liberal positions, and covering for a bunch of fucking racists in Georgia whether you realized you were doing it or not.....?

One deluded asshole at a time, Benny.  I know better than to imagine that there's a true legislative solution...I'm from the deep south......member.  Our system is not in place to effect positive change, but to maintain the status quo.

Here's a fun fact..all that shit I rattled off about georgia...only gets it 39th rank in poverty and inequality metrics overall in the us.  Mississippi....dead last.  Mississippi is the state shitty states point to and say "Well, at least we're not Mississippi!".  Idaho, a few places above Georgia.

That's right, Mississippi is dead last, and Idaho is 2nd last (despite being almost totally white, amazingly!), at least in terms of the GDP per capita as of 2018: about $32,000 vs. $35,000 respectively measured in 2009 dollars, and slightly more by today's (less valuable) dollars. I chose Georgia because I thought it was one of the poorest, but it turned out to be a relatively poor example.

So let's look at that $15 figure. $15/hr * 8 hours/day * 260 working days/year = $31,200 a year for a full-time position in Mississippi. So, that means that any person willing to work full time gets $800 per YEAR less than his share of the state's GDP. What about a guy who works harder, or is smarter, or has greater skill? What about the infrastructure costs of sustaining even that minimal level of production?

You can rage, or virtue signal, or shout out what "everyone should already know at the top of your lungs" all you want. But until you invent a method of getting blood out of stone, you might want to consider brushing up on your grade 3 math.


So cut the memes, stop the lip service, and consider the actual issue here. You can fuck around with a dollar here or a dollar there-- and I don't really have anything against that-- or you can realize that the way to prosperity is increased productivity, and only that. And here's how I would do it. Rather than a fucking meme, I'd give prisoners an offer-- a contract with bonuses and incentives laid out strong enough to matter. Put them in a position where hard work and innovation, rather than demographic identity, determine the outcome of their efforts, and I'd bet that motivated prisoners, finally given a chance, would put the GDP of failed states like Mississippi through the goddamned roof. Notice how I didn't need to say "poor black victim" in any of that?


But as I said before, I think America is too fucktarded, both on the left and the right, ever to solve any of these problems, unless some external force can bring everyone together. My bet is China, and a great sense of brotherhood before you all get wiped off the face of the map. But that's for a different thread.

You still think it has anything to do with you being white, lol.  Benny, you picked up the rhetoric and deeply misinformed positions of the same disinformation machine that brought us the alt right and a dumpster fire of a presidency, somewhere along the way of your life experiences. It's unmistakable, and immediately familiar. You expose your white grievance complex while getting things hilarious wrong at every turn..I'm just about guaranteed to poke fun...I'm just an asshole like that, lol. I suppose asking how you managed to have life experiences that don't accord with reality but do accord with right wing propaganda is out of bounds?

But, you know.... for consistency, tell me more about your very white problems of feeling very demeaned for saying 40 pages of very silly shit..with no end in sight.

Quote:That's right, Mississippi is dead last, and Idaho is 2nd last, at least in terms of the GDP per capita as of 2018: about $32,000 vs. $35,000 respectively.  I chose Georgia because I thought it was one of the poorest, but it turned out to be a relatively poor example.

So let's look at that $15 figure.  $15/hr * 8 hours/day * 260 working days/year = $31,200 a year for a full-time position in Mississippi.  So, that means that any person willing to work full time gets $800 per YEAR less than his share of the state's GDP.  What about a guy who works harder, or is smarter, or has greater skill?

You can rage, or virtue signal, or shout out what "everyone should already know at the top of your lungs" all you want.  But until you invent a method of getting blood out of stone, you might want to consider brushing up on your grade 3 math.

Even in poorer states...poorer being relative..all us states are fairly well off by some metric (strange how poorer countries manage to provide a better qol than richer states in a vastly richer country, while simultaneously displaying a better human rights record)..you'll still find obvious income inequality, and racial discrepencies -within- that income inequality.  It's endemic to the US, not to a particular state.  

Quote:So cut the memes, stop the lip service, and consider the actual issue here.  You can fuck around with a dollar here or a dollar there-- and I don't really have anything against that-- or you can realize that the way to prosperity is increased productivity, and only that.  And here's how I would do it.  Rather than a fucking meme, I'd give prisoners an offer-- a contract with bonuses and incentives laid out strong enough to matter.  Put them in a position where hard work and innovation, rather than demographic identity, determine the outcome of their efforts, and I'd bet that motivated prisoners, finally given a chance, would put the GDP of failed states like Mississippi through the goddamned roof.

Funny you should mention prisoners...they're in the news..today, too.  Calling for a national strike...protesting their treatment as unpersons and slave labor.  My favorite, is their threat to burn our crops. It's almost like america has a theme or something.... the failed states are -already- using their labor to add to the gdp...hell, their very incarceration adds to the gdp..because it's for profit. Yet another sjw cause.

But tell me more about how you'd solve those states problems by telling those incarcerated persons to work harder. It's their productivity that's the problem..ayup...must be it..if only Those People™ weren't lazy fucks.

You know who else told their incarcerated population to work harder even as they were killing them on the streets.....don't you...

From the sjw perspective (and the perspective of a grounded being living in reality) the problem with prisoners is their incarceration rate and sentencing disparities..once -in- prison, they work and live like fucking dogs for the privilege of being imprisoned. Unless they're at a white collar prison, ofc.

(August 22, 2018 at 11:41 pm)Khemikal Wrote: You still think it has anything to do with you being white, lol.  Benny, you picked up the rhetoric and deeply misinformed positions of the same disinformation machine that brought us the alt right and a dumpster fire of a presidency, somewhere along the way of your life experiences.  It's unmistakable, and immediately familiar.  

But, you know.... for consistency, tell me more about your very white problems of feeling very demeaned for saying 40 pages of silly shit..with no end in sight.

Yeah, that Canadian disinformation machine of the 1970s and 1980s that led me to unreasonable prejudices. Seems legit. CTV's ongoing distrust in and hatred of American black people is legendary, no?

Or MAYBE Canada was about 30 years ahead of the curve, and I saw what lip-service and entitlements REALLY do-- they don't enable people to live better. They keep them just comfortable enough to choose TV shows over picket signs and serious protest.

Tiz might even back me up on this particular issue-- see if he doesn't agree that many of the so-called "benefits" presented to natives in Canada, with all the patronizing platitudes they came with, were actually just an attempt to buy their complicity in a system that was still fucking them from birth?

Quote:Funny you should mention prisoners...they're in the news..today, too.  Calling for a national strike...protesting their treatment as unpersons and slave labor.  It's almost like america has a theme or something.... the failed states are -already- using their labor to add to the gdp...hell, their very incarceration adds to the gdp..because it's for profit.

Nono, I'm not talking about chain gangs and license plates. That's slavery. I'm talking about a real spike in productivity that comes from a structure that rewards individual merit-- true opportunity.

(August 22, 2018 at 11:55 pm)bennyboy Wrote: Yeah, that Canadian disinformation machine of the 1970s and 1980s that led me to unreasonable prejudices.  Seems legit.  CTV's ongoing distrust in and hatred of American black people is legendary, no?

You've presented examples of how you came to think the way you do in this very thread.  Sure, you swear up and down that they had nothing to do with you thinking exactly what you're supposed to take from them..but hey...it's not as if there hasn't always been a subcult of white grievance in N. America.  

If you want, you can try to convince me that your distrust and hatred of black people (or the pc left, or sjws) derives from thin air..though. That's remarkably close to what I've been telling you all along.

Quote:Nono, I'm not talking about chain gangs and license plates.  That's slavery.  I'm talking about a real spike in productivity that comes from a structure that rewards individual merit-- true opportunity.

You mean..gasp..you'd do away with the current working model of american prisons?  You SJW you!  What makes you think the prisoners would be more profitable than the prison complex? See, that's what they're competing against. A profit motive to mass incarceration fueling lobbyists who work to increase minimum sentences and criminalize as much as they possibly can..and boy howdy is it worth alot of money. Still ignoring that inconvenient bit about how they got in there, I guess..but hey..baby steps.

---

While I'm on the subject...maybe you should take a look at the timing you referenced above?  You might realize the the whole pc/culture war thing started in the 70's and 80's, finally calcifying by 1990..with the rhetoric of the right wing opposition being..then, essentially what it is today, and literally everything you've deigned to mention in this thread.  

Strange how none of those dire predictions ended up coming true...while the mass disenfranchisement, oppression, and wedge propaganda continued unabated to it's terminus today.

(August 23, 2018 at 12:10 am)Khemikal Wrote: You've presented examples of how you came to think the way you do in this very thread.  Sure, you swear up and down that they had nothing to do with you thinking exactly what you're supposed to take from them..but hey...it's not as if there hasn't always been a subcult of white grievance in N. America.  

I've never said that society is fair or equal, or that things shouldn't be done about it. That you take my arguments about one thing, and generalize and put up straw men to rage about, is becoming more and more understandable, but not much more interesting.

Quote:You mean..gasp..you'd do away with the current working model of american prisons?  You SJW you!  What makes you think the prisoners would be more profitable than the prison complex?  See, that's what they're competing against.  A profit motive to mass incarceration fueling lobbyists who work to increase minimum sentences and criminalize as much as they possibly can..and boy howdy is it worth alot of money.  Still ignoring that inconvenient bit about how they got in there, I guess..but hey..baby steps.

It's only SJW if you are using it as an excuse to virtue signal rather than as a recognition of a real problem with pragmatic solutions that need to be found.

I'm not ignoring any of what you're saying about prisons. And I believe (unless I deleted it for a simplification and forgot to put it back in) that I mentioned the methods of incarceration already, and my solution.

I think the jobs program I outlined should be offered as a condition of release, based on the crime-- specifically, marijuana possession especially when it constituted a 3rd strike, resisting arrest when the person wasn't originally under warrant, and so on. But I would very specifically NOT make it about them being black, because you don't need to.

For example, I'd release all those who were given a 3rd strike based on a marijuana possession charge, or who were charged with resisting arrest when they never had a warrant against them in the first place. You couldn't catch all the unfair arrests, or maybe even most of them, but you could get a heck of a lot of them. And since most of the bad arrests were against black people, most of the restorations back into public life would be black people, too.

That would just be a start, but my point is that it should satisfy the need of the left to see preferential improvements in favor of the black demographic, but without having to make some kind of Black Restititution Freedom Act or something like that.

False arrests are different. That's very tricky, because police individually have to have the capacity to make judgment calls in the field, but cops in some regions are very clearly making arrest decisions based on racial prejudice.

Quote:While I'm on the subject...maybe you should take a look at the timing you referenced above?  You might realize the the whole pc/culture war thing started in the 70's and 80's, finally calcifying by 1990..with the rhetoric of the right wing opposition being..then, essentially what it is today, and literally everything you've deigned to mention in this thread.  

Strange how none of those dire predictions ended up coming true...while the mass disenfranchisement, oppression, and wedge propaganda continued unabated to it's terminus today.

I can only speak to my own experience. I saw lots of prejudice, including anti-black racism which was strange because my town of 10,000 had maybe 10 black people living in it. I saw a huge amount of homophobia, bullying and so on. Hell, I was a headbanger, and I got pushed around for having long hair, or called "faggit" because I liked classical music, and sometimes wore pink shirts (I mean. . . fuck. . . it WAS the 80s).

I had friends from all demographics, and I not infrequently added my voice against assholes. Probably at least a couple of my many black eyes would probably earn me the PC stamp of approval today, though at that time I was mainly just trying to stand up for my buds.

I sound pretty indoctrinated, right? What an alt-right nut job I grew to be, poor little impressionable me.