The News Thread

[viewerfromnihil]

This has nothing to do with racial superiority or that Europeans are inherently better, you are assuming this stance onto me. I do not claim that Europeans(whites) are more superior than any other race, but its' clear that one race (ie skin color) dominates the global power structure. And there is a reason behind this (colonization).

What's this reason behind colonization that you hint at? Yes, colonization is why the West still dominates the world. But you have to start with something before colonization that sparked it, and you're not touching on it. If you're not pointing towards the European individual as inherently better, then the only thing I can infer is that you're saying European culture is inherently better. If you point towards culture, you're missing the larger picture. There's a number of factors that came into play with why Europeans colonized Africans and not the opposite. Most of those reasons have nothing to do with the people themselves, such as potentially domesticable plants and animals, which is influenced by the axis of continents (East-West, crops are easily transplantable, North-South, not so much).

This has nothing to do with my point. I did not classify which generation of immigrants need more federal aid than the others, I am simply arguing that one race (skin color) will have an easier time assimilating in Western countries (including USA and Canada). I know well the problems with European immigration and why all those countries are having strong internal debate and backlash towards brown people. To what levels Europe emmigrates or immigrates is irrelevant, the focal point is : Assuming that all countries are alike (Denmark and USA) in their implementation of social programs is folly and, I argue, incorrect. To this day, Denmark's experience is social programs/welfare is entirely different than that of the United States.

Of course you don't care, you've moved this discussion to think I am arguing that whites are historically superior to all other races and some other crap. This is not what I am arguing nor the discussion. Race, biologically, does not have anything to do with it. It is impossible to deny that white people come from, on average (apparently this needs to be stated), better financial backgrounds and countries than brown people. And even if this is disputed, just being white makes their assimilation much, much easier than those of other skin colors. People of all ethnicities/races are xenophobes.

Sure, being white would make it easier to assimilate, but this isn't the fault of the emigrants. Of course Denmark's social program experience is totally different: they have cradle-to-grave government care.

No, you said it and I repeated what you said. If that's not your argument, then don't include it in your argument (or at least be more clear about what you're getting at). The notion of thorough cultural assimilation is absurd. It never works entirely with any group, European or otherwise. The important form of assimilation is economic assimilation.

There is federal spending inherent in a western country to ease transition and create equality, and on average(again!), more of that money will be spent on assimilating brown people than whites.

In what way is more money being spent on brown people to assimilate them than white people? First-generation immigrants usually have lots of children, but this is a different issue (not to mention the fact that, without immigrants, many European countries would decrease in population, which would spell disaster for their welfare programs).

 

[Dak]

There's nothing thought-crime-ish about think that opinion.......It's a reactionary opinion that usually is fed, in part, by xenophobia and/or racism, whether the individual arguing this realizes it or not.

So it is crime think. I wasn't talking about race specifically, or even generally. Culture varies significantly even within "races". The point is that if you take someone with a lifetime of experience within an environment of X, and then they move into environment Y, even if they want to assimilate, and the environment is open, it may be difficult to the point of near impossibility due to ingrained patterns of behavior and expectations. Then if we dial back the liberal optimism to more realistic perspectives to where 1st and sometimes 2nd generation immigrants have no desire to really assimilate (and this is stronger in someone coming from certain cultures - which happens to overlap with skin color), then the hollering looks much less "racist"; even if some native knuckledraggers can't see it in terms of statistics and data, they know suddenly the local market looks more like a turkish bazaar and they can't understand the tongues or behaviors of the people around them.

The important form of assimilation is economic assimilation.

Without significant cultural assimilation, economic assimilation is limited and temporary.

 

[arg]

illegal immigrants should not be given any financial aid and should be deported. spending money to assimilate them is a massive waste. the european union, led by its idiotic left wing leaders, has allocated billions of euros to the refugee crisis and i guarantee you nothing good will come out of it.

it does not matter that "native europeans are aging" nor that "immigrants are willing to work" because the current economy has no need for them. there is no empty niche in the market for them to fill; this is obvious because there was already widespread unemployment across all levels of education before they even showed up. europe couldn't find jobs for all its existing citizens, how much less for a shitload of refugees? nope, these leeches are gonna bleed the welfare system and taxpayers' pockets dry and the whole continent will become a shithole.

AND OBAMA WANTS TO BRING TENS OF THOUSANDS TO THE US! we already have illegal mexicans to deal with, keep these parasites out!

 

[rms]

What's this reason behind colonization that you hint at? Yes, colonization is why the West still dominates the world. But you have to start with something before colonization that sparked it, and you're not touching on it. If you're not pointing towards the European individual as inherently better, then the only thing I can infer is that you're saying European culture is inherently better. If you point towards culture, you're missing the larger picture. There's a number of factors that came into play with why Europeans colonized Africans and not the opposite. Most of those reasons have nothing to do with the people themselves, such as potentially domesticable plants and animals, which is influenced by the axis of continents (East-West, crops are easily transplantable, North-South, not so much).

What reason do I need to hint at? I am not arguing "Why were brown people colonized and not colonizers?" That is not this debate, but yet you keep trying to bring it to this.

Sure, being white would make it easier to assimilate, but this isn't the fault of the emigrants. Of course Denmark's social program experience is totally different: they have cradle-to-grave government care.

No, you said it and I repeated what you said. If that's not your argument, then don't include it in your argument (or at least be more clear about what you're getting at). The notion of thorough cultural assimilation is absurd. It never works entirely with any group, European or otherwise. The important form of assimilation is economic assimilation.

Literally just answered my point that white immigrants would have an easier assimilation process (which is why denmark is able to do certain things that America could not). So how am I not being clear? You finally chose to answer it. But then you act like economic assimilation is possible without cultural, or that most immigrants do not have an interest in assimilating.

In what way is more money being spent on brown people to assimilate them than white people? First-generation immigrants usually have lots of children, but this is a different issue (not to mention the fact that, without immigrants, many European countries would decrease in population, which would spell disaster for their welfare programs).

If you agree that white people are easier to assimilate, then it's logical that non-whites would have a harder time assimilating which would then lead the government to ensure (financially) that non-whites can assimilate/attain equality. Do you not agree?

 

[Dak]

On Bernie's tax funding ideas:

http://fee.org/anythingpeaceful/the-economics-of-a-toddler-and-the-ethics-of-a-thug/

Reflecting on the recent Democratic debate, Dan Henninger reports that Bernie Sanders said that he would fund his plan to make college free for students “through a tax on Wall Street speculation” (“Bernie Loves Hillary,” Oct. 15).

This statement reveals the frivolousness of Mr. Sanders’s economics. If such speculation is as economically destructive as Mr. Sanders regularly proclaims it to be, the tax on speculation should be set high enough to drastically reduce it.

But if — as Mr. Sanders presumably wishes — speculation is drastically reduced, very little will remain of it to be taxed and, thus, such a tax will not generate enough revenue to pay for Mr. Sanders’s scheme of making all public colleges and universities “tuition-free.”

That Mr. Sanders sees no conflict between using taxation to discourage (allegedly) harmful activities and using taxation as a source of revenue proves that he ponders with insufficient sobriety the economic matters on which he pontificates so sternly.

 

[rms]

How is this idea different than "don't tax corporations or they are going to go to X country" ?

 

[HamburgerBoy]

How is this idea different than "don't tax corporations or they are going to go to X country" ?

It isn't particularly, but are you suggesting that businesses don't seek areas with lower taxes?

 

[Dak]

Ya'll missed the point:

Sanders wants to tax something because it's bad, to reduce the practice. So as the practice would reduce, so would tax income from the practice. That's the point of that tax policy. At the same time, he wants to fund something "good" with those tax proceeds - something that he wants increased. So you have something you want increased funded by something you want reduced. This is the exact polar opposite of sustainable or balanced.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Can you show where he specifically said that he wants to eliminate Wall Street speculation?

 

[rms]

It isn't particularly, but are you suggesting that businesses don't seek areas with lower taxes?

I think it's quite a myth (and would require an extreme scenario) that a company would leave America and go somewhere else.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I think it's quite a myth (and would require an extreme scenario) that a company would leave America and go somewhere else.

If you mean full companies moving all operations to another country, fine, but outsourcing, building factories overseas, tax havens, etc are all real and well-documented things.

 

[rms]

If a company can consider outsourcing production, I imagine they already do it.

I'm trying to think if protection of the labor force is more of a driver than the tax rate applied, how intertwined those two aspects are and whatnot. I should probably get some evidence one way or the other.

Some may argue that America is a tax haven for some hah

 

[Einherjar86]

Can you show where he specifically said that he wants to eliminate Wall Street speculation?

He didn't say it explicitly. That's why the author presumes Sanders would want speculation to decrease.

It's a good point. I think there's an argument to be made that Sanders doesn't think Wall Street speculation is going away. I think, rather, he's looking for a way to take something that benefits a few and make it more profitable for a larger group of people.

There's a dual conception of taxation at work here: taxation as penalty, and taxation as distribution. I think you could argue they're one in the same, but I don't think Sanders sees it that way. I think he falls less on the penalty side and more on the distribution side; if there's a way to game the market and make loads of money doing it, then part of that money should go to people who need it (in Sanders's view).

He may very well be overlooking the fact that, by taxing speculation, fewer people will do it and there will be less money for college education.

 

[Dak]

There's a dual conception of taxation at work here: taxation as penalty, and taxation as distribution. I think you could argue they're one in the same

I would do so.

On the gun control stuff, a different sort of article from this source:

https://mises.org/blog/mistake-only-comparing-us-murder-rates-developed-countries

Few people who repeat this mantra have any standard in their heads of what exactly is the "developed" world. They just repeat the phrase because they have learned to do so. They never acknowledge that when factors beyond per capita GDP are considered, it makes little sense to claim Sweden should be compared to the US, but not Argentina. Such assertions ignore immense differences in culture, size, politics, history, demographics, or ethnic diversity. Comparisons with mono-ethnic Asian countries like Japan and Korea make even less sense.

But for an illustration of where this sort of thinking leads, let's look at this Washington Post article titled “The U.S. has far more gun-related killings than any other developed country.” After mistakenly using the "gun related" killings rate instead of the murder rate (see below) the author, Max Fisher, carefully construct his comparisons so as to emphasize the gun deaths rate (which is implied to be as good as the murder rate) in the US.

As usual, no reason is given as to why the US should only be compared to “developed” countries, but then Fisher proceeds to add a few non-traditional comparisons to drive home the point as to how violent the US truly is, in his view. Fisher adds Bulgaria, Turkey, and Chile, which are middle-income countries. And that lets him make this graph:

-graph-

Why Turkey and Chile and Bulgaria? Well, those countries are OECD members, and many who use the "developed country" moniker often use the OECD members countries as a de facto list of the "true" developed countries. Of course, membership in the OECD is highly political and hardly based on any objective economic or cultural criteria.

But if you're familiar with the OECD, you'll immediately notice a problem with the list Fisher uses. Mexico is an OECD country. So why is Mexico not in this graph? Well, it's pretty apparent that Mexico was left off the list because to do so would interfere with the point Fisher is trying to make. After all, Mexico — in spite of much more restrictive gun laws — has a murder rate many times larger than the US. But Fisher has what he thinks is a good excuse for his manipulation here. According to Fisher, the omission is because Mexico “has about triple the U.S. rate due in large part to the ongoing drug war.”

Oh, so every country that has drug war deaths is exempt? Well, then I guess we have to remove the US from the list. But, of course, the US for some mysterious reason must remain on the list, so, by “developed” country, Fisher really means “ a country that’s on the OECD list minus any country with a higher murder rate than the US.” At this point, we're reminded that Fisher (and no one else I’ve ever seen) has made a case for what special magic it is that makes the OECD list the one list of countries to which the US shall be compared.

Why not use the UN’s human development index instead? That would seem to make at least as much sense if we’re devoted to looking at “developed countries.”

......

Wow, that US sure has a pretty low murder rate compared to all those countries that are comparable to some OECD members. In fact, Russia, Costa Rica and Lithuania have all been invited to begin the process of joining the OECD (Russia is on hold for obvious political reasons). But all those countries have higher murder rates than the US. (I wonder what excuse Fisher will manufacture for leaving off those countries after they join the OECD.)

Whole article includes a lot of charts/scatterplots to drive home the point.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

To be fair, I think it's established that Mexico gets most of their guns from north of the border. The thing people don't point out is that the Czech Republic has gun laws roughly on par with more strict American states (and probably less strict than ones like Connecticut). Although I think holding ammunition for government-given rifles in Switzerland has been out of practice for a decade now, it certainly didn't cause any problems prior to then. People also ignore that gun violence is highly localized to specific regions in the USA; in homogeneous and rural states, you will see homicide rates comparable to Western European countries.

EDIT: But yeah, I agree with the overall point, especially regarding the war on drugs.

 

[Dak]

re: rural/homogeneous states, he provides scatter plots with some of those alone for comparison.Also, it is not established that Mexico gets most of their guns from "north of the border". That belief is due to a gross misrepresentation of a particular study:

http://www.factcheck.org/2009/04/counting-mexicos-guns/

At our request, an ATF spokesman gave us more detailed figures for how many guns had been submitted and traced during those two years. Of the guns seized in Mexico and given to ATF for tracing, the agency actually found 95 percent came from U.S. sources in fiscal 2007 and 93 percent in fiscal 2008. That comes to a total of 10,347 guns from U.S. sources for those two years, or 36 percent of what Mexican authorities say they recovered.
The mistake the Fox News reporters made was to focus on some numbers given by Newell and Hoover in separate testimony, regarding numbers of guns traced to specific states. But not all guns traced to the U.S. can be traced to specific states. The Fox numbers are "a subset" of the actual total traced to U.S. sources, one official said.
An Elusive Number
Given the lack of hard data from Mexico, we can’t calculate a precise figure for what portion of crime guns have been traced to the U.S. Based on the best evidence we can find so far, we conclude that the 90 percent claim made by the president and others in his administration lacks a basis in solid fact. But we also conclude that the number is at least double what Fox News has reported, based on its reporters’ mistaken interpretation of ATF testimony.
Whether the number is 90 percent, or 36 percent, or something else, there’s no dispute that thousands of guns are being illegalIy transported into Mexico by way of the United States each year.

"90+% of guns submitted to the US by Mexico found to originate in the US" got twisted to "90% of Mexican guns from US". Mexico only submitted what it believed to come from the US - not the other 64% of seized weapons.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

7,500 guns out of 29,000 sounds pretty statistically significant to me. Your point seems to have been corrected in that same article.

Correction, April 22: We originally concluded that Obama’s 90 percent figure was “not true” and based on a “badly biased” sample of recovered guns. We are retracting both those characterizations, and we apologize to our readers for this error. We have rewritten the article throughout to correct this.

Our error was to think we had confirmed that Mexican officials submit for tracing only those guns they believe likely to have come from the U.S. Law enforcement officials say they don’t know if that’s the case.

I mean, is it easy to look at a gun and say "Oh yeah, that's one of ours, let's not submit that one"? I don't think there are many significant weapon manufacturers in Latin America, and weapon dealers (at least in the USA) usually carry a broad range of weapons, so I don't think it would be easy for Mexican authorities to pick and choose with prejudice.

 

[Dak]

7,500 guns out of 29,000 sounds pretty statistically significant to me.

When you share a border and are also a leading exporter of both professional and private weaponry, you would be within reason to think it would be more.

Your point seems to have been corrected in that same article.

"Don't know if that's the case". Doesn't look like a correction. Why didn't they ask, you know, Mexico instead of the ATF?

I mean, is it easy to look at a gun and say "Oh yeah, that's one of ours, let's not submit that one"?

Is this a serious question? Sure, if a European/Russian/Chinese AK made its way to the US first and then to Mexico, that might cause a problem in sorting. But it's easier for Mexico to err on the side of "Hey, the US is right there, let's guess it came from them".

I don't think there are many significant weapon manufacturers in Latin America, and weapon dealers (at least in the USA) usually carry a broad range of weapons, so I don't think it would be easy for Mexican authorities to pick and choose with prejudice.

And yet they seem to be doing so with excellent precision. with a 95~% accuracy rate in what is submitted, you're guessing that they are sitting on the other 2/3 guns and going "We could toss these probably US guns to the US also but naaaah".

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I'm pretty sure the main purpose of tracing a gun would to be find out how the criminals are getting supplied, and potentially find middlemen complicit. Not just as part of some anti-American propaganda machine.

To make an analogy, imagine you have 29,000 patients with lung cancer. You decide to investigate 7,500 of the patients, and find that 90% of the 7,500 were heavy smokers. You don't know how the remaining 21,500 got lung cancer. Would you assume that the statistics gathered from the 7,500 are worthless until someone traces the remaining 21,500 as well?

I don't understand your point about a European/Russian/Chinese AK and etc. My point is that with the USA being the hotbed of gun-loving pride that it is, you can find a wide variety of guns here manufactured all over the world. Unless there are a lot of Latin American-made guns floating around in Mexico, it would be difficult for Mexican authorities to tell a gun of American origin from one of non-American origin. If you can't tell the difference, you can't apply a bias prior to tracing. Unless your point is that this is all some kind of conspiracy to discredit America or something, which is silly. We have a shitload of guns and can trade them more freely than anywhere else on the planet. Of course people in Mexico that want guns are going to get in on that, just as Americans in gun-hating states can often go across the border and find one easily.

EDIT: Incidentally, today I learned that Taurus is a Brazilian company. Cool.

 

[Dak]

So why wouldn't Mexico just hand them all over? Mexico's southern border is as porous as its northern border. Drugs flow north, why not guns?