American Politics Discussion Thread

[Mjmd]

There you go again Charr. The "free US" is a direct comparison to a country committing worst actions. I've explained why they are different. You NEVER refuted my logic.

I'm trying to find both my post defending democracy and the separate one on immigration. Both are pretty good and the democracy vs autocracy conversation went on for a couple pages.

[Charr Babies]

There you go again Charr. The "free US" is a direct comparison to a country committing worst actions. I've explained why they are different. You NEVER refuted my logic.

Whataboutism - Still throwing out strawman because you have no defense, never mind logic.

Like I said I am satisfied with your confessions. So, until next time.

[Mjmd]

I've admitted the US has problems. I WILL NOT admit our current Native American situation is the same as Tiabet or the Uighurs..... which is what you imply every time you use that phrase.. Again, I'm not the one comparing, you are every time you say "free x".

@Bing. I wrote a lovely little defense of democracy here:
https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...4&page=242
Also here you also had some similar thoughts which were heavily discussed
https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...4&page=257

In addition I have no clue why anyone would want to rely on the conscience of 1 man. Let alone that of someone who hungers for power. Historically has not been very dependable..... I'll give you 1% at best.

Still looking for my immigration argument.

[Charr Babies]

I've admitted the US has problems. I WILL NOT admit our current Native American situation is the same as Tiabet or the Uighurs..... which is what you imply every time you use that phrase.. Again, I'm not the one comparing, you are every time you say "free x".

@Bing. I wrote a lovely little defense of democracy here:
https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...4&page=242
Also here you also had some similar thoughts which were heavily discussed
https://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/show...4&page=257

In addition I have no clue why anyone would want to rely on the conscience of 1 man. Let alone that of someone who hungers for power. Historically has not been very dependable..... I'll give you 1% at best.

Still looking for my immigration argument.

Again, your info on Tiabet or the Uighurs is wrong but I won't get distracted into defending it. I have taught you how to fact check it, not what to fact check, keep your head in the sand for all I care.

I really dont care what other countries do, no skin off my ass. Your strawman just show your weakness. Whataboutism, STILL, till your last breath.

And I really dont care what you have to say about democracy if it doesn't do the dead and living Natives and Iraqis (etc) any good. You can't go rape someone and say it's okay because you are democratic. You being a priest does not make it any better for the boys you rape.
Rape is just wrong no matter how horny you are! 

LoL. You don't think your potus are hungry for power. 

And you still pretend to not know what the question is,  and have not answer the simple question, why "not free us?"


Sorry, promise I will let you babble on yourself.

[Mjmd]

So I think democracies have gotten better with better communication. I've stated before I think overall the empathy level of humanity has increased with better communication. The early US was very racist. This may shock some people. It did some horrible things to our native population. However, as those atrocities have been communicated to future generations we can look back and go "THAT WAS NOT GOOD". So we've changed things like letting them practice their culture and religion. They can now vote, protest, and participate in government. You see how things can change for the better? So when you say "free US" I do in fact think you are falsely equating. Tiabet can't do any of the above I listed and they have no way of changing this. Don't falsely equate. I'll freely admit issues, but I refuse to let you falsely equate.

Also, for the record its not a strawman. You are accusing me of tu quo que (ie what about ism / you too do bad things). Although to be fair I've never known what your argument actually is so maybe it looks like I'm participating in strawman. You seem to just want to rag on America. Which is fine, but you don't' seem to have an actual argument yourself.

And 100% politicians are hungry for power. But they aren't just accountable to a few select people to keep themselves in power. They are accountable to a much larger base of people. They have to care somewhat about that. Autocracies don't have this. You can say "x interest group is influencing politicians" and that is probably true, but it isn't like Autocracies are immune and again corruption seems to indicate they are in fact more susceptible.

[Mjmd]

@ Bing Ok. I have to get to bed soon, but in brief on immigration. Lets set some basic conditions.

- Morally its a no brainer.
- From a nation building perspective its also a no brainer. This is mainly what I covered previously that I can't find. But basically human capital = good.

So your main beef is that personally its harmful. IE lower wages.

So its important to remember economies aren't a static size. So how do you account for more jobs in the equation of wages. How do you account for the jobs those jobs support? If several high paying job are tied to a a few low paying ones how do you equate that. US manufacturing tends to be high capital or skill based. So usually minimal amount of lower paid jobs and then everything up is usually an educated higher paid position (my 2nd  job I was an accountant for such a company, that then supported a higher paid / capital intensive industry). But lets assume for argument you are saying someone on the lower end of education and skills thinks it would benefit them. I think this has SOME merit. But there is still the issue of would the job exist? My wife recently got a job in a manufacturing plant that opened up 4 new lines. To operate those 4 lines they needed 16 people (then there are more above). They also have 16 temps while they lines get up and running, but I'll just go with permanent hires. Of those 16, 3 including my wife are white. 7 are immigrants and 6 are the children of immigrants. She is being paid $20/hr and the company needs more people for other expansion they are doing. Now sure maybe the wage would be $25/hr with no immigrants, but the company also may have decided to not expand here. Instead they invested mega dollars into equipment and is paying a pretty descent wage to make sure that equipment is manned. And then obviously plethora of jobs tied to that factory are in this area (I also knew an engineer whos job it was to set up these type of factories). I think her first manufacturing job is even a clearer example. She worked in a company that did sewing.... Yes in America. Descent bit of high quality custom stuff and they also had some capital intensive cutting equipment. She is the daughter of a former seamstress (turned chemist, turned quality control), but in any case she had skills needed (she did embroidery and also operated the cutting machine). Now as you might know not a lot of Americans have sewing skills anymore. She was literally 1 of 2 white naturally born US citizen floor workers on her shift...... The other 30 were all immigrants (eastern Euro, Asian, or latino). That job wouldn't have existed without immigrants. She was able to get a higher wage than her prior jobs and manufacturing experience there.

Lets move off of non personal examples. One of the things you can look at is states / countries with low population and their average wage. Low population does not equal high wages. Increased economic activity leads to higher wages. You can see this in the low cost manufacturing centers of the world. These are usually high population areas. They start out very cheap wages, but as economic activity increases so does their wage. It leads to the middle income trap where countries can't transition their economies, but it does increase the wages of the lowest paid level. So preferable you have high capital / skill manufacturing that supports high wages but also a plethora of industries and jobs. That increased economic activity leads to more jobs but also higher wages for all.

[Boro]

It did not "do some bad things in the early US". The US of A was founded upon the idea that the englishmen should not be held back by agreements with the "savages". It was built by brutal conquest, and when the scalping frenzy became too much domestically, through boarding school systems whose victims are several languages. They also utilized (and in at least neighboring canada still utilize) forced, or coerced, or outright misled sterilizations of the "redskins".

The only reason they stopped is because their assimilation policies have borne fruit. They made many native languages extinct, or set them on the road to extinction. When it became too bad for domestic optics, these people decided to spend a pittance of money on trying to preserve some of the languages they worked so hard to genocide, but for fun they also decided on a system that makes their victims compete for this extremely stringent funding.

And this is what most anglo americans are okay with. As if the attitude ever went away.

[darrelljs]

Oh it was a long time ago, when you happened to have the right co-workers to tell bad stories about i think china? And also cuba.

Hmm, that's fair I did say that.  Most of my co-workers in China live in Hong Kong and my ex is Cuban and her family all fled Castro, so...they have a perspective.  The other cohort in China is from Chengdu and while they realize they have less individual liberty than "Westerners", they also feel they have less chaos AND they are proud of China's ascendance.  To give a complete picture.

Darrell

[Boro]

Aah, that is a little less glamorous, and a lot more nuanced than I imagined. I'll try to remember it in the future.

[Charr Babies]

I am posting this more or less as a Off Topic post, cus

I just remembered a conversation I had with my younger son during the beginning of the Covid 19 when it hit the us soil. With Trump going off with his brain farts spouting junk as his usual self; China this, China that and coined the name Wuhan virus. It really gave Wuhan a bad name.

This is not a debate of where the virus came from. Trump painted a mental picture of Wuhan for my son, (who is not particularly political or well traveled, not even on youtube) a little village in a third world country. A village with huts, dirt roads and barely clothed children with their runny noses playing in the dirt. And the name "wet market" conjures up probably the worse sanitary conditions with pools of dirty water mixed with animal blood on the ground, while huge ass flies hover open carcasses. That's the perception my son had, and I dare say same goes with most people I know. If I didn't know better, I would think that too especially when a virus is mentioned in the same sentence.

A typical Chinese wet market simply means where live or freshly butchered meat is available, mostly means it is not a single store but a collection of vendors in one place that can spread out into multiples streets.

Wuhan is far from being a little village with its 11 million population. But it is only a second tier city by China’s standard. Shanghai being a first tier city with 26.3 million; almost as big as the whole of Canada in population.

Wuhan, as far as modernization goes, puts every first world city (with a couple of exceptions) to shame. You can get a taste of this in the following video. The skyline, the infrastructure and the scale of things™. Note not only how all the buildings are able to put on a light show on their own, but all the buildings can be in sync as a city-wide display. This is only a short vid to fit the purpose of this post. You should see it during a celebration! 

This in not a display of suppressed people to say the least.

I don’t mean this post to start a debate. I only want to show a small example of misconceptions most people can have.