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  1. #7201
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    What you're saying is that it's greedy to want to keep to yourself what you worked for, while it's not greedy to be so unproductive that you get to the point of starvation, which then forces you to beg for money off those who are productive.

    This is why spoon thinks the left are insane, and he's not a million miles away. I prefer the term "deluded" to "insane", but we're splitting hairs.

    And I'm someone who believes unemployment benefits should exist. Through all my years of claiming benefits, I've never felt I was acting morally. I think benefits are essential because without them we'd have slums with horrible crime. That doesn't mean to say that I think benefits are moral. They're not. They punish hard working people to reward the incapable and unwilling. It's just that if these people were left ot fend for themselves, the punsihment for hard working people would be worse than simple tax... it would be an unsafe environment.

    Just because person A is rich and person B is starving, doesn't mean person A is the greedy cunt. He's just better at life. Fine, give some money to the sucker who failed, but don't pretend that the starving person is sitting on top of Mount Morality.

    Why do you automatically assume the starving person deserves their fate and brought it on themselves? You're making a moral judgment about a (hypothetical) person you know nothing about besides that they're starving.

    Similarly, why do you automatically assume the billionaire deserves their riches and earned it through hard work?

    Moreover, if we're talking about how to define greedy (which I was), then the person who already has more than they need and not just wants to keep it, but have even more of it while others suffer, is by definition greedy.

    Conversely, the person who doesn't have enough to survive, and wants enough to survive, by definition cannot be called greedy. They may be immoral for other reasons if e.g., they fit your stereotype of the poor lazy person who wants to give nothing to society and be looked after by others, but that doesn't equate to being 'greedy'.

    None of which is relevant to the larger question of income redistribution apart from highlighting that Sowell butchered the language to make the hypothetical poor person the bad guy for wanting what he needs, and the hypothetical rich person the good guy for wanting more than he needs. Unless you base your morality solely on what a person has at the moment (i.e., poor people wanting more are bad, rich people having more are good), you can't make this argument work.
    Last edited by Poopadoop; 01-12-2018 at 10:20 AM.
  2. #7202
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    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    Why do you automatically assume the starving person deserves their fate and brought it on themselves? You're making a moral judgment about a (hypothetical) person you know nothing about besides that they're starving.

    Similarly, why do you automatically assume the billionaire deserves their riches and earned it through hard work?

    Moreover, if we're talking about how to define greedy (which I was), then the person who already has more than they need and not just wants to keep it, but have even more of it while others suffer, is by definition greedy.

    Conversely, the person who doesn't have enough to survive, and wants enough to survive, by definition cannot be called greedy. They may be immoral for other reasons if e.g., they fit your stereotype of the poor lazy person who wants to give nothing to society and be looked after by others, but that doesn't equate to being 'greedy'.

    None of which is relevant to the larger question of income redistribution apart from highlighting that Sowell butchered the language to make the hypothetical poor person the bad guy for wanting what he needs, and the hypothetical rich person the good guy for wanting more than he needs. Unless you base your morality solely on what a person has at the moment (i.e., poor people wanting more are bad, rich people having more are good), you can't make this argument work.
    Typical commie cuck talk. Go redistribute some little kid's toys while you're at it, comrade.
  3. #7203
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    Sure, with poverty comes crime.
    Does it. There have been many millions of people (billions?) who have lived in more impoverished conditions than in the poor crime-ridden ghettos in the states who do not commit crime.

    I'd say both crime and poverty probably emerge from something else.
  4. #7204
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    Sowell butchered the language to make the hypothetical poor person the bad guy for wanting what he needs, and the hypothetical rich person the good guy for wanting more than he needs.
    Sowell didn't mention a poor or a rich person.
  5. #7205
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    That doesn't mean to say that I think benefits are moral. They're not. They punish hard working people to reward the incapable and unwilling. It's just that if these people were left ot fend for themselves, the punsihment for hard working people would be worse than simple tax... it would be an unsafe environment.
    A person commits a crime when he feels like he has greater marginal benefit from that than another activity and a lower opportunity cost compared to the next other thing he would do. This means that for a normal person to commit a crime, he has to believe that he is better off by doing so than he is by doing some form legitimate work instead. This means that if we want to impact that person, we can do so by changing the costs and benefits of legitimate activity such that he prefers that over crime.

    Under current conditions, bad government policy impacts people towards crime and/or away from work. You have experienced this personally (as have I). You experience it with the government criminalizing marijuana. That is a field you would like to do legitimately, but the government does not allow you to. If you were a less scrupulous person, you might choose crime instead. In a way, the welfare benefits you receive from the government are effectively the government saying "we've made it so you dont want to work but here's some money to keep you from turning to crime." I think we should go to the source of the problem instead.

    This issue is rampant in the states. A person wants to cut hair for a living but can't without shelling out $20k in "education" and for a license. This impacts the lowest skilled and least intelligent people away from that trade, and a fraction of them are impacted away from any trade, and a fraction of them turn to crime. Let's say you live in a poverty zone in the Deep South and you have a knack for making great bbq from home. You wanna sell it out of your house. Well, you can't, breaks the law. Okay so then the way for you to use your comparative advantage would be to work in a kitchen at a restaurant, but you want to do that a lot less than selling out of your house. But okay you would still do that. But wait you don't have a car. And your brother's a drug dealer. Maybe you opt to be a drug dealer too now.

    Believe me when I tell you that the government is causing millions of people to either not work or not work in what they would most prefer to work in due to bad restrictions. Would everybody not resort to crime if the government did the right thing and stayed out of private transactions? No, but it would impact a tremendous amount of people away from crime.
  6. #7206
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Does it. There have been many millions of people (billions?) who have lived in more impoverished conditions than in the poor crime-ridden ghettos in the states who do not commit crime.

    I'd say both crime and poverty probably emerge from something else.
    If you're telling me that you spend significant time in Economics classrooms and you're also telling me that you don't think poverty and crime are linked, then I'm just gonna walk away shaking my head man. Does not compute.
  7. #7207
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Let's say you live in a poverty zone in the Deep South and you have a knack for making great bbq from home. You wanna sell it out of your house. Well, you can't, breaks the law. Okay so then the way for you to use your comparative advantage would be to work in a kitchen at a restaurant, but you want to do that a lot less than selling out of your house. But okay you would still do that. But wait you don't have a car. And your brother's a drug dealer. Maybe you opt to be a drug dealer too now.
    I know someone personally who was in a slightly different but virtually the same situation.
  8. #7208
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    If you're telling me that you spend significant time in Economics classrooms and you're also telling me that you don't think poverty and crime are linked, then I'm just gonna walk away shaking my head man. Does not compute.
    They are associated for sure. I had to adjust for that association in an econometric analysis I did.

    I'm discussing in terms of causality instead. It is true that in the states where you find poverty you find crime, though that doesn't mean the poverty is causing the crime.
  9. #7209
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    It is true that in the states where you find poverty you find crime, though that doesn't mean the poverty is causing the crime.
    Actually that seems to be true only in certain areas. Some poor places aren't that crimey, roughly speaking.
  10. #7210
    Quote Originally Posted by spoonitnow View Post
    I know someone personally who was in a slightly different but virtually the same situation.
    Shit dawg I think we all know somebody in a similar situation.

    My BIL was telling me about a Mexican immigrant he knows who got busted for selling amazing burritos out of his house, so the way he skirts that law now is he holds a "party" once a week where he serves the burritos and his friends/neighbors/associates just give him money for party expenses. Unfortunately for him (all of us), he bears a big cost for this with not being able to expand and other stuff.
  11. #7211
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Actually that seems to be true only in certain areas. Some poor places aren't that crimey, roughly speaking.
    The two counties I've lived in primarily for the past decade are pretty poor, and both of them had low crime until the past 10 years, which is tied directly to opioid use.

    "I'll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years."
    Hmm, which Democratic president from just 50 years ago said this?
  12. #7212
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    They are associated for sure. I had to adjust for that association in an econometric analysis I did.

    I'm discussing in terms of causality instead. It is true that in the states where you find poverty you find crime, though that doesn't mean the poverty is causing the crime.
    It has to do with something you talk about frequently....skin in the game.

    If you have a job, possessions, health, access, and savings....then you have ALOT to lose by committing a crime.

    If you have no job, no possessions, worse health, less access, and no savings, then the risk/reward ratio of committing a crime changes drastically.

    It's really not that hard to figure out. Proximity to crime lessens your sensitivity to it. Living in poverty, generally, increases your proximity to crime.
  13. #7213
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    It has to do with something you talk about frequently....skin in the game.

    If you have a job, possessions, health, access, and savings....then you have ALOT to lose by committing a crime.

    If you have no job, no possessions, worse health, less access, and no savings, then the risk/reward ratio of committing a crime changes drastically.

    It's really not that hard to figure out. Proximity to crime lessens your sensitivity to it. Living in poverty, generally, increases your proximity to crime.
    I like where you're going with this.

    I pushback on two main things: (1) this is something we would want to see data on if possible. (2) If x is the cost of crime and y is the benefit of crime, if x>y then the person doesn't commit crime. Due to normal human preferences, x can be greater than y for both rich and poor people. While you are right about how people being poorer could lower x, it might not lower it enough to be greater than y.
  14. #7214
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    I pushback on two main things: (1) this is something we would want to see data on if possible.
    Use your google machine man. Find a map showing poverty in the US. Then find a map showing crime in the US. Superimpose one on top of the other and see what happens.

    (2) If x is the cost of crime and y is the benefit of crime, if x>y then the person doesn't commit crime. Due to normal human preferences, x can be greater than y for both rich and poor people. While you are right about how people poor could lower x, it might not lower it enough to be greater than y.
    It's not a straight mathematical equation as the perception of X (the cost of crime) can change based on environmental factors. For example, have you ever driven a busy highway where it seems like everyone is doing 15+ mph over the speed limit? This happens because everyone sees everyone else speeding, and they just keep up. The cost of crime (potential of getting pulled over) is low. However, if you were driving on that same road late at night with no one else on the road, you are far more likely to observe the speed limit.

    This is actually contrary to safety concerns as you'd prefer to drive slower in congested traffic. The change in speed seems directly correlated to the likelihood of getting caught.
  15. #7215
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    Use your google machine man. Find a map showing poverty in the US. Then find a map showing crime in the US. Superimpose one on top of the other and see what happens.
    That shows association. I'm looking for something that shows that the poorer somebody becomes the more likely they are to commit crime due to having less skin in the game. My point that it probably is true that they have less skin in the game, but it may be by a small enough amount that it doesn't change their desire to commit crime.


    It's not a straight mathematical equation as the perception of X (the cost of crime) can change based on environmental factors. For example, have you ever driven a busy highway where it seems like everyone is doing 15+ mph over the speed limit? This happens because everyone sees everyone else speeding, and they just keep up. The cost of crime (potential of getting pulled over) is low. However, if you were driving on that same road late at night with no one else on the road, you are far more likely to observe the speed limit.

    This is actually contrary to safety concerns as you'd prefer to drive slower in congested traffic. The change in speed seems directly correlated to the likelihood of getting caught.
    The variables integrate perception. In the situation you detail where drivers change behavior at time of day, their perception is that x<y.
  16. #7216
    What happens to your body or your moral code is typically a much bigger skin-in-the-game thing than what happens to your material wealth. That's why I'm making the point that a change in wealth might not typically (but could sometimes) dip somebody below the threshold where they would start committing crime. A poor person in this context still has loads of skin-in-the-game regarding their body and morals and stuff.
  17. #7217
    Wuf, you're talking about people who undergo some kind of lifestyle change from prosperity, to poverty. Yes, in that instance it's going to be a little tougher to make wholesale changes to a person's moral compass.

    I'm talking about people who were born, raised, and currently live in poverty. Those people are concentrated in certain areas, and those areas also happen to be the most crime-ridden. What's hard to understand?
  18. #7218
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    I'm talking about people who were born, raised, and currently live in poverty. Those people are concentrated in certain areas, and those areas also happen to be the most crime-ridden. What's hard to understand?
    Given points I've seen you make recently, I would think you would think that the ethic of the home and community would be the most important factor here. Do you think that adding wealth to a crimey situation would make it less crimey?
  19. #7219
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Given points I've seen you make recently, I would think you would think that the ethic of the home and community would be the most important factor here.
    They are. Those are factors driving poverty. And poverty is a factor that drives crime. Why do you insist on separating all of these things?

    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Do you think that adding wealth to a crimey situation would make it less crimey?
    Yes. If a school has enough money for a basketball team, that's 20 kids who won't be slinging drugs after school. Now imagine if that school has enough money for a football team too. And a baseball team. And a chess team. And a debate club. See where this is going??

    If a community has enough money to fund a community college or career training center......that will reduce poverty, and therefore crime.

    Also money buys things like alarm systems, gates, and more cops. Security measures that reduce crime.

    If people have more money, in general they are happier. That means less dysfunction and depression... both major indicators of drug prevalence. And using drugs, is a crime.

    Do I have to keep going?
  20. #7220
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    They are. Those are factors driving poverty. And poverty is a factor that drives crime. Why do you insist on separating all of these things?
    As we just discussed, that is not known. They may both be epiphenomena of something else that is causing crime and poverty. There are plenty of wealthy criminals and poor law-abiding citizens.

    Yes. If a school has enough money for a basketball team, that's 20 kids who won't be slinging drugs after school. Now imagine if that school has enough money for a football team too. And a baseball team. And a chess team. And a debate club. See where this is going??

    If a community has enough money to fund a community college or career training center......that will reduce poverty, and therefore crime.

    Also money buys things like alarm systems, gates, and more cops. Security measures that reduce crime.

    If people have more money, in general they are happier. That means less dysfunction and depression... both major indicators of drug prevalence. And using drugs, is a crime.

    Do I have to keep going?
    This assumes that's how the money will get used and that the communities value that use. Many (all?) of these places that are currently destitute once had more wealth and more productive institutions. And then that went away.

    Do you think the data show that throwing more money at problems fixes them.

    If it is that poor function of a community reflects that community's values, then adding wealth will just contribute to the value system.
  21. #7221
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    If it is that poor function of a community reflects that community's values, then adding wealth will just contribute to the value system.
    It also adds the incentive of not wanting to lose wealth.

    The way you're talking, there would be no way to reduce crime. You would just have to apprehend, incarcerate, and hopefully rehabilitate criminals (different thread) until there weren't anymore. We know that doesn't happen.

    Many (all?) of these places that are currently destitute once had more wealth and more productive institutions. And then that went away.
    Maybe there was a factory in town that employed a lot of people that moved overseas. Is that a reflection of the community? Is a dysfunctional system of community values that's making that town poor?

    Could introducing wealth to the town reverse that process? Probably. Build a better highway, or a more accessible exit and suddenly your location is more attractive because of convenient shipping routes. there are lots of other ways to attract new businesses, but most all of them cost money.
  22. #7222
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    As we just discussed, that is not known. They may both be epiphenomena of something else that is causing crime and poverty. There are plenty of wealthy criminals and poor law-abiding citizens.
    Use your google machine man, the data is out there.

    I did a google search for "does poverty cause crime" and just scanning the results it seems like 5 out of 6 links will bring you to some document that ultimately concludes "yes".

    On the other side, the 1 out of 6 seem to be flimsy at best. One in particular is an opinion piece in the National Review where a guy pretty much just says "I know that if I were poor, I wouldn't commit a crime", and that's his evidence.
  23. #7223
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    I did a google search for "does poverty cause crime" and just scanning the results it seems like 5 out of 6 links will bring you to some document that ultimately concludes "yes".
    And they're wrong, at least according to the evidence they use. Those data show associations between poverty and crime, not causality. Believe me when I tell you that even the most stringent of econometric regression analyses leave a bunch out.
  24. #7224
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    The way you're talking, there would be no way to reduce crime. You would just have to apprehend, incarcerate, and hopefully rehabilitate criminals (different thread) until there weren't anymore. We know that doesn't happen.
    I provide ample way to reduce crime. We do it with incentives. You agree with that too, as you are saying that giving poor people money incentivizes them to commit less crime. I'm here to say that is very unlikely, since the primary incentive in that case is to continue to commit crime. According to your premise, being poor causes crime, so if you receive a benefit because you are poor, the benefit incentivizes you to stay poor which results in crime.

    The way we want to incentivize non-criminal behavior is by making crime more costly than law-abiding. The preferred way outside of a good justice system is by reducing government restrictions on economic behavior that increase the cost of law-abiding, also by not paying people to continue bad behavior like is current policy.

    Could introducing wealth to the town reverse that process? Probably. Build a better highway, or a more accessible exit and suddenly your location is more attractive because of convenient shipping routes. there are lots of other ways to attract new businesses, but most all of them cost money.
    Again this assumes what the money will be used for. Among those who commit a lot of crime, how many of them do you think will decide to put money they are handed into something not related to what they are currently doing?
  25. #7225
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    They may be immoral for other reasons if e.g., they fit your stereotype of the poor lazy person who wants to give nothing to society and be looked after by others, but that doesn't equate to being 'greedy'.
    Let's not forget I'm qualified to make this judgment. This has been me for ten years. And yes, deep down, it can be called greed. I want something for nothing that others are working hard for... a reasonably healthy and happy existence.

    Had my benefits been taken away from me, if I then allow myself to get to the point of starving, and begging for money from grafters, then I have to question the morality of my decisions leading up to this point.

    When I talk of starving people, I'm not talking about Africans. We're talking here about benefits, aren't we? I'm talking about UK, and by extension USA, and any other civilised nation for that matter. People shouldn't be starving in this country, and if they are, well chances are they fucked up big somewhere along the way. I am a lazy fuck and not once have I ever found myself having to beg for food or money beyond asking friend or family for a loan. That instinct that drives me to survive means I don't allow it to get to that point.

    It's different if we're talking about thrid world countries where people are born in slums. That's why I think benefits need to exist, even for the unwilling. Without them, we get slums. That's what happens when stupid and umotivated people are left to fend for themselves.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  26. #7226
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Let's not forget I'm qualified to make this judgment. This has been me for ten years. And yes, deep down, it can be called greed. I want something for nothing that others are working hard for... a reasonably healthy and happy existence.
    This just means the word 'greed' has been bastardized to mean something other than what it means in the dictionary. By definition, it's not about wanting more than you've earned, or wanting more than you deserve, it's about wanting more than you need.

    Really it's doesn't matter now cause the original point I was making has been lost.

    p.s. get a job you greedy cunt.
  27. #7227
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    It's different if we're talking about thrid world countries where people are born in slums. That's why I think benefits need to exist, even for the unwilling. Without them, we get slums. That's what happens when stupid and umotivated people are left to fend for themselves.
    What if the welfare deters the efforts and progress made towards the slum not being a slum anymore?
  28. #7228
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    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    it's about wanting more than you need.
    More specifically, it's about an excessive and insatiable craving for more than you need, not just wanting more than you need or wanting to keep more than you need that you already have.
  29. #7229
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    What if the welfare deters the efforts and progress made towards the slum not being a slum anymore?
    what if lol
  30. #7230
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  31. #7231
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    She don't want none.
  32. #7232
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    What if the welfare deters the efforts and progress made towards the slum not being a slum anymore?
    wut?

    Slums happen BECAUSE there is no welfare. We don't have slums in the UK, and as best I know they don't exist in USA, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal... the list of countries with slums will be very similar to the list of countries that have no basic welfare, places like Mexico, Brazil, Kenya, Bangladesh, India... do you suppose this is a coincidence?

    The only way to make a slum no longer a slum is to demolish it, and you can only do that when there's no people living there.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  33. #7233
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    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    wut?

    Slums happen BECAUSE there is no welfare. We don't have slums in the UK, and as best I know they don't exist in USA, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal... the list of countries with slums will be very similar to the list of countries that have no basic welfare, places like Mexico, Brazil, Kenya, Bangladesh, India... do you suppose this is a coincidence?

    The only way to make a slum no longer a slum is to demolish it, and you can only do that when there's no people living there.
    They're so cute at that stage.
  34. #7234
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    Quote Originally Posted by spoonitnow View Post
    I was hitting the points of the court cases over the decision, which was the scope of the discussion, not specific recount- or voting-driven issues of that particular elections, of which there are plenty in every election.

    Moreover, I'm sliding over to the elections thread to continue this discussion to keep it on-topic.
    So we were talking Bush vs. Gore and the whole Florida recount thing. You guys brought up the issue of black votes being disproportionately thrown out for various reasons. One of the main reasons for this was poor instructions on some of the ballots themselves that spanned multiple pages leading people to vote for more than one person for president (because the list itself spanned multiple pages, which was confusing for some). This happened disproportionately in black-heavy districts purely because of the method of voting that happened to be used in those districts.

    This is yet another reason why we need voter ID and a uniform standard for the ballot so that rightful voters (including people who can't figure out that they can only vote for one person for president) can be protected.
    Last edited by spoonitnow; 01-14-2018 at 02:00 PM.
  35. #7235
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    wut?

    Slums happen BECAUSE there is no welfare. We don't have slums in the UK, and as best I know they don't exist in USA, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal... the list of countries with slums will be very similar to the list of countries that have no basic welfare, places like Mexico, Brazil, Kenya, Bangladesh, India... do you suppose this is a coincidence?

    The only way to make a slum no longer a slum is to demolish it, and you can only do that when there's no people living there.
    I don't know if that correlation would be meaningful in a regression (it probably wouldn't be), but I do know that economic theory describes why welfare is very unlikely to cause increasing prosperity.
  36. #7236
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    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    wut?

    Slums happen BECAUSE there is no welfare. We don't have slums in the UK, and as best I know they don't exist in USA, Australia, New Zealand, France, Germany, Spain, Portugal... the list of countries with slums will be very similar to the list of countries that have no basic welfare, places like Mexico, Brazil, Kenya, Bangladesh, India... do you suppose this is a coincidence?

    The only way to make a slum no longer a slum is to demolish it, and you can only do that when there's no people living there.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    I don't know if that correlation would be meaningful in a regression (it probably wouldn't be), but I do know that economic theory describes why welfare is very unlikely to cause increasing prosperity.
    I want to interject with the following:

    There are are lot of different types of welfare, and there are lots of different types of incentives that can come along with those different types. A safety net for people who are in a shitty situation that's not necessarily (or completely) their own fault is one thing. Providing incentives for people to continue depending on welfare that are larger than the incentives to become a productive member of society is something different.

    While I think that the former should be provided by charity instead of forced taxation, it's important to note the differences. Most people are much more okay with the former than the latter.
  37. #7237
    Quote Originally Posted by spoonitnow View Post
    I want to interject with the following:

    There are are lot of different types of welfare, and there are lots of different types of incentives that can come along with those different types. A safety net for people who are in a shitty situation that's not necessarily (or completely) their own fault is one thing. Providing incentives for people to continue depending on welfare that are larger than the incentives to become a productive member of society is something different.

    While I think that the former should be provided by charity instead of forced taxation, it's important to note the differences. Most people are much more okay with the former than the latter.
    We all say we want welfare for those who need it; what we get is welfare for those who don't need it.

    As far as I can tell, charity has the same incentive problems as welfare except in that charities are freely chosen which makes them much more responsive to needed change. Even so, there are a lot of charity programs for people who use those programs to maintain the lifestyle that makes people want to help them in the first place.

    Charity is probably good for children and the disabled. This can still create incentive problems, but it *might* be better than otherwise. I'm not sure. In my estimation, the problem faced by people like children neglected by their parents can't be solved with just good charity (or welfare, for those who like that idea). It would need a sufficiently decentralized government and sufficiently moral community where the neglectful parents could be deterred from their neglect without that causing systemic harm. Doing that type of thing with a powerful central government is a terrible idea because the people of a community then have very little say in what happens in that community, but it can be a good idea if the people of the community have enough say in what happens.
  38. #7238
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    We all say we want welfare for those who need it; what we get is welfare for those who don't need it.

    As far as I can tell, charity has the same incentive problems as welfare except in that charities are freely chosen which makes them much more responsive to needed change. Even so, there are a lot of charity programs for people who use those programs to maintain the lifestyle that makes people want to help them in the first place.

    Charity is probably good for children and the disabled. This can still create incentive problems, but it *might* be better than otherwise. I'm not sure. In my estimation, the problem faced by people like children neglected by their parents can't be solved with just good charity (or welfare, for those who like that idea). It would need a sufficiently decentralized government and sufficiently moral community where the neglectful parents could be deterred from their neglect without that causing systemic harm. Doing that type of thing with a powerful central government is a terrible idea because the people of a community then have very little say in what happens in that community, but it can be a good idea if the people of the community have enough say in what happens.
    I'll note that this flat out might not be possible given our level of technology. Centralization, totalitarianism, and a perpetual class of the fucked may be an inevitable consequence of enough technology.
  39. #7239
    spoonitnow's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    I'll note that this flat out might not be possible given our level of technology. Centralization, totalitarianism, and a perpetual class of the fucked may be an inevitable consequence of enough technology.
    Along the lines of what you mentioned here, any ideal solution is largely outside of our grasp.

    On a somewhat simpler point, I prefer the use of the charity model over taxation mainly because it isn't theft at gunpoint, but also because it creates something closer to a free market of charities where there is competition, etc., leading to an upward pressure of performance. This generally leads to less waste than government-managed funds, etc.
  40. #7240
    Yes that's true.
  41. #7241
    Quote Originally Posted by Jack Sawyer View Post


    LOL Democrats
    Do you believe that he is not saying something false when he says that the whole position of the Republican Party is to take away peoples' healthcare?
  42. #7242
    spoonitnow's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Do you believe that he is not saying something false when he says that the whole position of the Republican Party is to take away peoples' healthcare?
    I'd like to point out that insurance is not healthcare, which seems to be trivially obvious to some while completely escaping the understanding of others.
  43. #7243
    True. Obamacare gave some people insurance while taking away healthcare from so many of those same people and others.

    Government promises are nominal.
  44. #7244
    spoonitnow's Avatar
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    I'm not going to lie. Even at whatever huge ass age she's at, I'd fuck skinny Oprah like how she is right now.
  45. #7245
    Eh I never thought she was ugly. But as we know I've always liked black chicks though I'm not particular like I once was. Hell even Michelle Obama is bangable.
  46. #7246
    spoonitnow's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    Eh I never thought she was ugly. But as we know I've always liked black chicks though I'm not particular like I once was. Hell even Michelle Obama is bangable.
    I'd rather jerk off with a wet newspaper.
  47. #7247
    she's not great
  48. #7248
    Yeah, I'm not seeing the attraction to Michelle.

    I'd show Omarosa one hell of a time though
  49. #7249
    if we're going hardass crazy bitches then hurricane katrina
  50. #7250
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    if we're going hardass crazy bitches then hurricane katrina
    I thought we were talking about exotic amazonian black women.

    But if we're gonna go down the cable-news pundit bang-list, Kim Guilfoyle is at the extreme top of mine. Holy fucking shit I would suck her farts.

    EDIT: Actually the whole FoxNews line up is drop dead sexy. I dare you to watch 'Outnumbered' without a boner.
  51. #7251
    Quote Originally Posted by spoonitnow View Post
    I'd rather jerk off with a wet newspaper.
    This rather aptly sums up my feelings towards both Oprah and Michael Obama.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  52. #7252
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    if we're going hardass crazy bitches then hurricane katrina
    If we're going natural disasters then I'd fuck the Japanese tsunami.
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  53. #7253
    spoonitnow's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    I thought we were talking about exotic amazonian black women.

    But if we're gonna go down the cable-news pundit bang-list, Kim Guilfoyle is at the extreme top of mine. Holy fucking shit I would suck her farts.

    EDIT: Actually the whole FoxNews line up is drop dead sexy. I dare you to watch 'Outnumbered' without a boner.
    Conservatives are more attractive, on average, than their liberal counterparts.

    Conservatives really are better looking, research says

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.e95c61fb2d95
  54. #7254
    Quote Originally Posted by spoonitnow View Post
    Conservatives are more attractive, on average, than their liberal counterparts.

    Conservatives really are better looking, research says

    https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...=.e95c61fb2d95
    I'm getting pretty fucking tired of you linking pay-walled content.
  55. #7255
    spoonitnow's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    I'm getting pretty fucking tired of you linking pay-walled content.
    It doesn't show up like that for me. It might be my ad blocker or something.

    Research has found that being attractive influences many things in a person’s life — their salary, their popularity and grades in school, even the prison sentences they receive. So why not their politics?

    A recently published study in the Journal of Public Economics concludes that the attractiveness of a candidate does correlate with their politics. They find that politicians on the right are more good looking in Europe, the United States and Australia.

    The study shows correlation, not causation, but the researchers float a simple economic explanation for why this might happen. Numerous studies have shown that good-looking people are likely to earn more, and that people who earn more are typically more opposed to redistributive policies, like the progressive taxes and welfare programs favored by the left.

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    The researchers also offer a more general psychological explanation for the trend: That good-looking people are often treated better than others, and thus see the world as a more just place. Past studies have found that the more attractive people believe themselves to be, the lower their preference for egalitarianism, a value typically associated with the political left.

    In their first experiment, the researchers showed respondents photographs of political candidates in Finnish municipal and parliamentary elections, members of the European Parliament, U.S. candidates for Senate and governor, and candidates for Australia’s House of Representatives. They asked participants to rate the photographs on a five-point scale. The results suggested that politicians on the right are more beautiful on all three continents.

    In a separate experiment, the researchers analyzed elections in Finland. They say these elections are easier to study because most races feature multiple candidates competing for office — in contrast to races in the United States, which typically have just two major candidates.

    The researchers found that Republican voters care more about appearance than Democratic voters do, but only if the voters don't have much information about the candidates and have to rely largely on appearance — in city-level elections, for example.

    But in elections that give voters a lot of information – like parliamentary elections when candidates are well covered by TV news and in the newspaper – politicians' appearance matters equally to voters regardless of party or ideology.

    In low-information city elections, a beauty increase of one standard deviation attracts about 20 percent more votes for the average candidate on the right and about 8 percent more votes for the average candidate on the left, the study finds. In high-information parliamentary elections, the figure is roughly 14 percent for candidates on both the left and right.

    The researchers also suggest that voters correctly see candidates who are more good looking as more likely to be conservative. When voters don’t know much about candidates, they tend to use beauty as a cue for ideology.
  56. #7256
    tfw when you're ugly
  57. #7257
    Quote Originally Posted by Savy View Post
    tfw when you're ugly
    Yeah, but I'm a man. And apparently that means that young naive women have to do whatever I say.
  58. #7258
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    Yeah, but I'm a man. And apparently that means that young naive women have to do whatever I say.
    It was probably the threat of not getting home alive that did that.
  59. #7259
    Quote Originally Posted by Savy View Post
    It was probably the threat of not getting home alive that did that.
    A dick is worth a 1000 words
  60. #7260
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    I'm getting pretty fucking tired of you linking pay-walled content.
    I didn't have a problem. Although I didn't read the article because I couldn't be fucked.

    Of course Cons are more attractive that Libtards. People become libs because they have discovered that being a victim is a career. Of course, attractive people aren't victims because they tend to be popular, they don't get bullied at school and don't resent everyone else for being happy. So they just get on with their lives while allowing others to do the same. Libs wish to make everyone else feel as miserable and victimised as they feel..
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  61. #7261
    Jack Sawyer's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by Savy View Post
    tfw when you're ugly
    Isn't tfw that feel when?

    Kids and their chat lingos nowadays
    My dream... is to fly... over the rainbow... so high...


    Cogito ergo sum

    VHS is like a book? and a book is like a stack of kindles.
    Hey, I'm in a movie!
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYdwe3ArFWA
  62. #7262
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    I didn't have a problem. Although I didn't read the article because I couldn't be fucked.

    Of course Cons are more attractive that Libtards. People become libs because they have discovered that being a victim is a career. Of course, attractive people aren't victims because they tend to be popular, they don't get bullied at school and don't resent everyone else for being happy. So they just get on with their lives while allowing others to do the same. Libs wish to make everyone else feel as miserable and victimised as they feel..
    A consideration of the validity and size of the effect, and how it was obtained, would be a good first step before theorizing on the whys and hows of what it means. Building a theoretical house of cards based on weak foundations is a scientifically bankrupt approach to model construction. I'm not saying this is or isn't a valid result, just that accepting it at face value is unwise.

    I'm sure this will provoke a stream of google-searched "facts" from the resident expert on psychology, but just because this study has been published and reported in the media, that shouldn't be interpreted as evidence that their conclusion is well founded. There's a lot of questions that one should ask about a study before accepting its conclusions, not least of which relate to the sample size tested (larger samples are more likely to give 'significant' results; the size of the effect (is it large enough to have any real predictive power?); and the methods used (is it correlational or experimental - presumably the former which implies no cause-and-effect relationship among the variables).
  63. #7263
    Libs are uglier than cons because people like these "ladies" bring the average crashing down.

    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  64. #7264
    It's like a fucking Aphex Twin video.

    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  65. #7265
    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Libs are uglier than cons because people like these "ladies" bring the average crashing down.


    It's nice that all your exes get along at least.
  66. #7266
    spoonitnow's Avatar
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    Quote Originally Posted by OngBonga View Post
    Libs are uglier than cons because people like these "ladies" bring the average crashing down.
    Did you just assume my gender?
  67. #7267
    Quote Originally Posted by spoonitnow View Post
    Did you just assume my gender?
    RACIST ALERT
    Quote Originally Posted by wufwugy View Post
    ongies gonna ong
  68. #7268
    http://www.sciencedirect.com/science...47272716302201

    First, WP deserves a fail for running a headline implying that the effect is true of libs or cons in general, as opposed to the actual subset of the population tested, political candidates.

    Second, the study itself reports the "% beauty advantage" across different regions (Table 1), but calculate it in terms of the difference/standard deviation (see description below table) rather than difference/mean (which is how most people would think of a % advantage - i.e., a US conservative candidate is xx% more attractive than a liberal candidate, not xx% of a standard deviation). Adjusting for this, the actual "beauty advantage" of US candidates was (5.66-5.47)/5.47 = 0.034, or about 3%. The same calc for MEPs makes the cons' mean advantage around 6%.

    So, your average republican candidate for senate or congress in the US is 3% more attractive than your average dem candidate, and the average con MEP candidate is about 6% more attractive than the average lib MEP candidate.

    Another way to conceptualize the effect is to consult a z-table and evaluate the % of lib candidates the average con is more attractive than. You can do this by cross-indexing the effect in standard deviations (0.14 for US candidates, 0.25 for MEPs) with the value in the second table, expressed as a proportion out of 1.

    http://www.dummies.com/education/mat...e-the-z-table/

    Finding the intersect of z = 0.14 tells us that the average rep candidate is more attractive than .5557/1 or about 56% of all the dem candidates. (for EU candidates, the corresponding value of z = 0.25 says that the average con candidate is more attractive than about 60% of all the lib candidates).

    Next question is whether these fairly small differences are important enough to care about? That's for people to decide for themselves. Makes a good headline though.
  69. #7269
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    First, WP deserves a fail
    No, you deserve a fail for putting this much effort into analyzing nonsense.

    The only test that matters is the eyeball test.

    Fox News sluts >>> CNN broads

    End of discussion
  70. #7270
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    I don't understand a thing you said, but I'm going to take the opportunity to be a knob anyways
    fyp
  71. #7271
    I understood everything you said. I still think it's an exercise in stupidity
  72. #7272
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    I understood everything you said. I still think it's an exercise in stupidity
    Just guessing here, but I kinda doubt that given your understanding of how to read poll numbers.


    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    I still think it's an exercise in stupidity
    It is when you read it I'm sure.
  73. #7273
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    Just guessing here, but I kinda doubt that given your understanding of how to read poll numbers.
    If you think reading poll numbers involves more than scoffing and throwing them in the garbage, then it doesn't surprise me that you erroneously believe that there is meaning in your analysis above.
  74. #7274
    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    If you think reading poll numbers involves more than scoffing and throwing them in the garbage
    For you that would be wiser than trying to interpret them, I agree.


    Quote Originally Posted by BananaStand View Post
    it doesn't surprise me that you erroneously believe that there is meaning in your analysis above.
    If you don't understand something in the first place, how do you evaluate it's meaning?
  75. #7275
    Quote Originally Posted by Poopadoop View Post
    For you that would be wiser than trying to interpret them, I agree.
    For anyone. Trying to interpret figures that ignore a silent majority is bad science. You know this.

    If you don't understand something in the first place, how do you evaluate it's meaning?
    As I said, I understand it fully. Certainly more than enough to know it's meaningless.

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