The Political & Philosophy Thread

[CiG]

 

[Serjeant Grumbles]

They aren't. But his concerns are related to the LFPR and that's the number he was thinking of that was so bad. It's not interchangeable and both numbers provide different yet valuable information. The problem is when people cite the unemployment number as evidence that everything is ok. The LFPR wouldn't be a problem in itself (obviously we don't necessarily expect 16-18 year olds to "carry their own weight"), but given the current "econopolitical" situation, such a low LFPR figure with projections of decline are troubling.

Start sending off the elderly to die on ice floes, then.

 

[Einherjar86]

The problem is when people cite the unemployment number as evidence that everything is ok.

Sure, but you effectively just did the opposite. Your exact words were "close enough" - you cited labor participation data as evidence that everything is ultra-fucked.

You basically just did the same thing Trump did when he claimed that we have 93 million people out of work that are looking for jobs.

 

[Dak]

Sure, but you effectively just did the opposite. Your exact words were "close enough" - you cited labor participation data as evidence that everything is ultra-fucked.

You basically just did the same thing Trump did when he claimed that we have 93 million people out of work that are looking for jobs.

No, the point is that they aren't looking for jobs (and not working, so how exploited?), and that those jobs don't exist and the kind Trump is promising aren't the answer. Manufacturing has been trickling back to America but it's heavily automated, and only becoming more so.

Automation is likely to expand to meet the needs of growing automation. This still won't fix the debt/obligations problem.

 

[Einherjar86]

No, the point is that they aren't looking for jobs (and not working, so how exploited?), and that those jobs don't exist and the kind Trump is promising aren't the answer.

I know they're not looking for jobs, Dak. I said that Trump said that 93 million people were out of work and actively looking for work, which translates into unemployment - i.e. Trump said that our unemployment rate is over 40%. Then you cited that statistic in reference to CIG's question about unemployment, saying it's "close enough."

Look, I'm really not trying to get into a big thing with you here. I think that you just got a little excited and fell into a sensationalist trap. It happens to all of us.

 

[Dak]

Pretty sure elsewhere (like shortly after that claim came out) I went round and round with cf about it. Trump is wrong that 93 million need work. The problem is that we have too much debt and entitlement for even 100% LFPR, much less 63%.

 

[EternalMetal]

Even with my GI Bill I was working practically the entire time I was in school, even up to 30 hours a week at one point. I would say subsisting on parental money or student loans is "actively avoiding work" and definitely unemployed (as in not employed and able bodied, not the BLS definition of "unemployment").

I dont mean to discredit the possible enormity of your workload while in school, but as an undergrad working toward my degree in molecular biology, I literally had no spare time to put towards a job. All of my spare time spent away from studying was spent at the lab working on research for part of my thesis. Ok, maybe some of my time was spent smoking pot, but we had a 9PM rule and were in bed by midnight for classes/studying the following day (in other words less downtime than almost any part time job would require). Also, the physicians assistant graduate program in which I have been applying to for the past couple of years has 20+ credit semesters, and they warn you beforehand that between classes, studying, and clinical hours, you will not be able to hold any sort of outside employment. Under certain circumstances I imagine that some students could perceptibly have enough free time for a part time job, but this would also be dependent upon workload, major/program specifics, family obligations, etc. There are far too many factors to group students who do not seek employment into an "actively avoiding work" category.

By all means continue your debate, but I hate people who go to school for business (or other less demanding majors) and suggest that it is a lack of work ethic that results in unemployed college students.

 

[Dak]

I dont mean to discredit the possible enormity of your workload while in school, but as an undergrad working toward my degree in molecular biology, I literally had no spare time to put towards a job. All of my spare time spent away from studying was spent at the lab working on research for part of my thesis. Ok, maybe some of my time was spent smoking pot, but we had a 9PM rule and were in bed by midnight for classes/studying the following day (in other words less downtime than almost any part time job would require). Also, the physicians assistant graduate program in which I have been applying to for the past couple of years has 20+ credit semesters, and they warn you beforehand that between classes, studying, and clinical hours, you will not be able to hold any sort of outside employment. Under certain circumstances I imagine that some students could perceptibly have enough free time for a part time job, but this would also be dependent upon workload, major/program specifics, family obligations, etc. There are far too many factors to group students who do not seek employment into an "actively avoiding work" category.

I'm not arguing that every single college person that isn't working can, but how many people are majoring in molecular biology? Most majors do not require that level of work.

 

[J.]

So everyone is currently talking about a gov't agency enforcing our laws by removing illegal peoples from US soil. Watching the left's and right's reactions is fascinating.

 

[rms]

Huh

 

[rms]

http://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article132091644.html

 

[Einherjar86]

I'm not arguing that every single college person that isn't working can, but how many people are majoring in molecular biology? Most majors do not require that level of work.

Actually, that's how it is for a lot of students in the hard sciences and engineering.

 

[no country for old wainds]

i did philosophy and got a huge loan + maintenance grant + bursary grant and was unemployed the whole time and it was great, highly recommended

 

[Baroque]

The philosopher... you know so much about nothing at all!

but yeah financial aid is great. I still work though because I have some expensive tastes and a child

 

[Dak]

Actually, that's how it is for a lot of students in the hard sciences and engineering.

Just students in hard sciences aren't creating the student loan bubble in the trillions. The following numbers are only bachelors awarded, so don't capture all the dropouts that still took out loans etc

https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_322.10.asp?current=yes

Total Bachelor degrees in 2015: 1,894,934
Biological &biomedical+
Computer/info science+
Engineering+
Engineering tech+
Math/Stats+
Phys science/scitech: 336,464

So by casting as wide a net as possible, that still only accounts for ~17% of bachelors degrees, and I doubt they are all placing 80-100 hour a week demands. Obviously there are a handful of students taking on debt for really strenuous degrees, but I suspect that number is relatively minuscule.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

Public college debt in general is minuscule compared to that accrued at private colleges.

 

[Dak]

Public college debt in general is minuscule compared to that accrued at private colleges.

https://studentloanhero.com/student-loan-debt-statistics/

I'm not sure about total debt amount but on a per person level it appears to be true:

• 66 percent of graduates from public colleges had loans (average debt of $25,550)
• 88 percent of graduates from for-profit colleges had loans (average debt of $39,950)

Of course that doesn't capture those who failed to graduate. Here's the really problematic statistic:

Graduates who received Pell Grants were likely to borrow, and borrow more:

• 88 percent of graduates who received Pell Grants had student loans in 2012, with an average balance of $31,200
• 53 percent of those who didn’t receive a Pell Grant had student loan debt and borrowed $4,750 less ($26,450)

This is where I think you're seeing people not working or not working much/spending too much. That also doesn't include all the other aid out there like topup grants and scholarships.

 

[Dak]

http://www.scottaaronson.com/blog/?p=3167

Yarvin appears to be engaging in microblogging via comments again, and it's excellent. This portion was salient to me:

Let’s be real: which is stronger, the universities or the proles? West Virginia can take it in the tail for decades; if Berkeley (or worse, one of Berkeley’s pets) stubs a toe, it’s a monstrous violation of the Constitution and George Washington is spinning in his grave.

Where are you absolutely positioned on a line segment whose length is 1? To answer this question is to ask: how much room would you have to move left? How much room would you have to move right?

Berkeley can teach the Marines all about how to fight wars (which, the latest research tells us, can only be won with a sensitive grasp of intersectionality). Imagine if the Marines instead taught Berkeley how to socialize 18-year-olds.

So not only are you listening to only one side of this power dynamic. You’re listening to by far the most powerful side.

 

[Einherjar86]

At this point I feel like it's not even worth pointing out that, from my point of view, it's not excellent. It reads like presumptuous, reactionary tripe.

I don't know that I believe that "stronger" means "taking it in the tail." Stronger could actually mean not taking it in the tail. I don't understand why anyone is absolutely positioned on any spectrum, or what the point of that comment is. I think that Berkeley teaching the military about warfare is precisely why the military doesn't socialize eighteen-year-olds (and that's a good thing). After all, the intel agents that got Bin Laden were college-educated smartypants...

But Yarvin can microblog all he wants. I won't read it.

 

[Dak]

I don't know that I believe that "stronger" means "taking it in the tail." Stronger could actually mean not taking it in the tail. I don't understand why anyone is absolutely positioned on any spectrum, or what the point of that comment is. I think that Berkeley teaching the military about warfare is precisely why the military doesn't socialize eighteen-year-olds (and that's a good thing). After all, the intel agents that got Bin Laden were college-educated smartypants.

Yes, stronger means not taking it in the tail, that's what he was saying, and the point is that all this posturing about "speaking truth to power" by ensconced, elite, liberal academia and their downstream puppets is self-delusion. Berkeley doesn't actually teach the military about war as far as I know, the reference to intersectionality should have shown that was sarcasm. War is taught to the military by the military.

Tangential but relatedly: CIA agents didn't *get* bin Laden. They found him. Physically and cognitively advanced, highly trained, and militarily socialized military personnel *got* him. You couldn't take just any schlub from a college campus and make him/her a member of DEVGRU. Those schlubs can, however, skip a bunch of classes and get high every day and get a piece of paper that says they paid a lot of money for 4-6 years to some fancy place with a sports team or and maybe some underpaid smart people toiling away in sterile white rooms.