2016 USA Presidential election thread II: And. Here. We. Go!

[Thunder]

...What? Wealth is not something you buy school supplies with. Wealth is the sum total of all assets owned by a person or family. Differences in wealth result in differences in effective opportunity and purchasing power. The single largest contributor to lower and middle class wealth is property ownership. Renters do not accumulate and pass on wealth in the same way that property owners do. When a renter dies, they don't pass on a house to be lived in or traded up for a bigger house by their children. Families who start off unable to own property and, subsequently, unable to afford to own property are given very little opportunity to accumulate wealth which can be traded on in subsequent generations. The poor stay poor, even when they generate levels of income equivalent to peers whose ancestors could own property.

Oh, I see. I totally missed your point in your basically-one-liner "that's not how it works, dumbass" and ended up responding to something that you weren't saying at all lol. Thanks for elaborating.


Yeah, I see your point that owning property allows you to leverage that property and have 'start up' capital that the other family doesn't, giving you more opportunity to accumulate more wealth, plus you have an appreciating asset throughout all those generations, in theory. Which, in theory, means that in an infinite amount of generations we will still see a racial divide between blacks and whites

Which totally debunks the point I tried making that "if we made law/opportunity equal now we wouldn't see racial divides in the far future"

Did I get that right?
I'll have to amend thinking

You can't give missed opportunities back, best you can do is make sure it's fair moving forward and just move it forward enough the disparities disappear

to

You can't give missed opportunities back, best you can do is make sure it's fair moving forward and just move it forward enough the disparities get minimized

Not necessarily. There was a time where the media was a respected and integral component of political life. Journalists still served to delve into the nitty gritty details that average persons cannot devote their time to, but because they were respected they could hold politicians accountable to the public. They had power. Newspaper endorsements could change elections.

The whole "bias in the media" has served to rob journalists of the clout and gravitas they once had, which in turn has reduced journalism to partisan clickbait chase in an attempt to stay afloat. It's a vicious cycle where no one wins save the people who can now avoid scrutiny by discrediting the media.

The problem is exacerbated with rise of new media, most especially social media, where the quality of the journalism matters less than giving viewers/readers what they want -- an echo chamber. The market for analytical "Here eat your broccoli" journalism are the people who least need the assistance in forming their opinion leading real political and analytical journalism to be a thing of increasingly niche print outlets (The Atlantic, The Times, The Economist, etc.)

Yeah, I agree. So who's pushing to eliminate the critical thinking though? I think everything you described can fairly be said to be a natural result of media just changing to suit the times. I get that it was different a while ago and that it's changed. But is the change a natural change because the mediums have changed, accessibility has increased, [some other reasons that I can't think of] OR that someone has an agenda to eliminate critical thinking?

[Greatguardian]

Oh, I see. I totally missed your point in your basically-one-liner "that's not how it works, dumbass" and ended up responding to something that you weren't saying at all lol. Thanks for elaborating.

Yeah, I see your point that owning property allows you to leverage that property and have 'start up' capital that the other family doesn't, giving you more opportunity to accumulate more wealth, plus you have an appreciating asset throughout all those generations, in theory. Which, in theory, means that in an infinite amount of generations we will still see a racial divide between blacks and whites

Which totally debunks the point I tried making that "if we made law/opportunity equal now we wouldn't see racial divides in the far future"

Did I get that right?

Wealth isn't really an ambiguous term. You seem to vastly underestimate how large a proportion of non-upper class wealth is tied up in property ownership. Your home is about the only thing of any significant value you own. Even if you put that aside, wealth propagation is only one piece of the puzzle. Starting from a "clean legal slate" when existing conditions are anything but equitable will not result in some magical "everyone has the same odds of success and therefore will succeed equally" equilibrium no matter how far into the future you increment your system.

If anything, in a perfectly fair system, people born with an excess of means will compound that excess and people born with a deficiency of means will compound that deficiency. Status quo is reinforced and exacerbated, not eliminated.

[Thunder]

Ok, that makes sense too, but it's even further in

It's maybe a thing you can rationalize thinking might happen in your head. But it's not a thing that happens in reality.

territory because we've seen exactly that not happen in our unfair system, right? How can you say it will work like you're describing more in a hypothetical fair system than it has, in the last two centuries in our unfair system?

Back then I think(?) it's fair to say that all blacks were on the very bottom relative to even the poorest whites, and it definitely isn't anywhere near that kind of ratio today. And that's under an unfair system. I think that the gap naturally will close as the system gets more fair, just like it has, hasn't it?

If anything, in a perfectly fair system, people born with an excess of means will compound that excess and people born with a deficiency of means will compound that deficiency. Status quo is reinforced and exacerbated, not eliminated.

In a perfectly fair system that's what would happen, if anything? I think you're pushing efficient market hypothesis levels of "perfect math that doesn't check out in the real world because human decision-making is a part of the system"

Edit: unless of course I'm off base with just how much more equalized the disparities between wealth have gotten among blacks, whites, immigrants, etc over the last couple hundred years in an unfair system

[Greatguardian]

I'm sorry, why are we making comparisons to a system that favored one already privileged ethnic group for 2 centuries at the expense of all others? The crux of your argument is that proactive social programs that favor historically vulnerable populations such as Affirmative Action are unnecessary because wealth will somehow magically redistribute itself more evenly over time once explicit legal barriers to upward mobility are removed.

I'm telling you that's fantasy, and considering we had to start by defining the word "wealth" I'm not particularly inclined to spend all day detailing why.

[kuronosan]

Thunder, are you seriously ignorant to that extent?

What, you think people like NDT represent 60% of the black populace or something?

Come on dude.

[BerenTebogo]

Who's pushing to eliminate critical thinking? Isn't that just a natural result of how media works?

Even on here, I'm always very weary of typing too much (like I did above, didn't even notice while writing) because trolly one-liners get a lot of traction. Sometimes it's really difficult to discuss anything because it's easier (and more fun) to just post some "you fucking retard" or meme.jpg and then everyone joins in on the flogging lol

there's also a bunch of people (even on here, albeit less fervent - sort of) who have openly made anti-capitalism comments.. not realizing that probably the best reason america is where it is, is because of the kind of capitalism we've got

Like this "that's racism" thing, I worry that a lot of us are jumping to conclusions without getting a proper perspective on things. Could just be me though, which is why I'm in the discussion in the first place

To be fair, when you post little or post lots "shut the fuck up you retard" is generally still a good answer.

Doesn't have anything to do with critical thinking, your posts never go beyond surface level bruh. Sorry about your "muh opinions".

[Day]

Good post I too hate any kind of rational debate or discussion.

[BerenTebogo]

Good post I too hate any kind of rational debate or discussion.

I must've missed the rational posts coming from him my bad friend

[Fiye]

http://redalertpolitics.com/2017/01/...X0Bm3Co8x3J.99

Jill Stein making it out big guys.

[Talint]

^---wtf website is this.

"California Democrats legalize child prostitution."

[Zealot]

Specifically they made it so child prostitutes will be treated as victims instead of criminals. "California moves to protect victims of sex trafficking" doesn't have that same flavor of outrage though.

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

[archibaldcrane]

We should start giving out temp bans for posting stuff from sites like "redalertpolitics"

[Mertron]

as long as newsninja is ok. that's where I get my best info from

[Talint]

Specifically they made it so child prostitutes will be treated as victims instead of criminals. "California moves to protect victims of sex trafficking" doesn't have that same flavor of outrage though.

Sent from my SM-G935V using Tapatalk

Jesus fucking christ, what kind of monster twists a story that way.

[Rooney]

Jesus fucking christ, what kind of monster twists a story that way.

The right kind?

[kuronosan]

Jesus fucking christ, what kind of monster twists a story that way.

Um. Really?

[DrClout]

The right kind?

Lmfao!

Sent from my SM-G925T using Tapatalk

[Niiro]

I came across this a while ago and I'm not sure if I saw anyone post about it here:

http://www.nationalpopularvote.com/

The National Popular Vote bill would guarantee the Presidency to the candidate who receives the most popular votes in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. Explanation It has been enacted into law in 11 states with 165 electoral votes (CA, DC, HI, IL, MA, MD, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA). It will take effect when enacted by states with 105 more electoral votes. Most recently, the bill was passed by a bipartisan 40–16 vote in the Republican-controlled Arizona House, 28–18 in Republican-controlled Oklahoma Senate, 57–4 in Republican-controlled New York Senate, and 37–21 in Democratic-controlled Oregon House. It has passed one house in 12 additional states with 96 electoral votes (AR, AZ, CO, CT, DE, ME, MI, NC, NM, NV, OK, OR).

Essentially the way to achieve a popular vote for president via the EC rather than requiring a constitutional amendment to abolish it.

Since states choose how they award their electors in the EC, they can simply choose to award them to the candidate that wins the national popular vote. It doesn't even require every state to join in, just enough to clear the required 270 to win.

I recommend watching some of the video explanations they made to discuss the various issues and concerns if only because the speaker is so awkward and standing in front of a silly green-screen library and it's kind of funny (the actual arguments made are on point tho).

[kuronosan]

So basically it would allow electors to pick the popular candidate if they choose.

So not really different at all.

[Restrat]

No, states would assign their electors based on the national vote instead of the vote in that state.