Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

The people who believe those lies are not people who are inclined to even consider a response, factual or not. You can resurrect the corpse of every single one of her ancestors, and the haters are still going to hate.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

2. Even if the proof is sketchy, Warren has to get behind it and say, “Its true. I didn’t lie. Criticisms to the contrary are right wing fake news.”

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Except the facts have so far proven me right and you wrong.

You realize you’re the Luddite here. Econ 101 is the buggy whip.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

We skipped the part where I talk about how I've paid the bills since 2000 or so, and then you tell me that I'm the exception that proves the rule. Let's just pretend we did it so we don't have to do it again.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

There are two ways for the Dems to overcome these haters and get a few votes out of this crowd:

(1) Nominate a white male, preferably in his 70s or 80s and from the south.
(2) Have the Republicans nominate someone other than a white male.

Otherwise, it's a matter of ridiculing and marginalizing these poor excuses for human beings. Get the racist fuckers to crawl back under a rock instead of populating the cabinet.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You think that the world today is poorer and has fewer jobs on offer than it did in the early 19th century? Okay.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You ignore the Interim, in which automation and globalization continue to remove living wage jobs in developed economies at a rate far in excess of the rate at which they replace them. You also ignore that the jobs replacing the living wage jobs lost are of inferior quality and for less pay. (And no, the current inflationary trends will not offset this.)

The Interim is bleak. The Interim is what we will get to view during our life span.

A hundred years from now is irrelevant.

In the long run, you may be right. Jobs will be created that we cannot even imagine today. Or jobs will become fewer and far less necessary, as Keynes believed. Or we will continue to split into a tiered society where 30% of us will have excellent jobs, and the other 70% will be on a continuum between treading water and desperation.

I don't know the answer. But I know we're in the Interim, and you're ignoring it because it confounds the silly argument, "Innovation always replaces lost jobs with more jobs!" Notice no economist touting that alleged law ever comments on the timeline in which it does so?

It's the Interim, stupid. The here and now is all that matters to the people in the here and now.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You and me, having this conversation. Hell, this entire board... If you think we're the rule, and not exceptions - in several essential regards - I want what you're smoking.

I say this not to kiss anyone's ass, but the conversations here - even the sillier commentaries - are exceptional in comparison to General Main Street America to an extent I'm not sure we can even fathom.

I'll go out on a limb here and suggest I see more Kardashians Watchers and 'Muricans than you do on a regular basis. The slice of people into which you fall is many multiples thinner than you think. That you are paying the bills isn't proof the Luddites had it wrong. It's proof you fall into the upper 30% of society that has a marketable skill set.

You're about as "typical American" are you are female.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

You don't want to talk about what policies are helpful during the Interim, and would rather blow they real problems we face during it out of proportion.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

He said how he pays the bills not that he pays his bills. Like, his actual job is proof the Luddites had it wrong.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Last night, I happened across Oprah doing a piece on 60 Minutes about political polarization. It was a lot like the Frank Luntz piece on Vice, in which he interviews a room full of Trump supporters. In fact, Oprah interviewed Luntz in her piece.

Anyway, Oprah offered one interesting tidbit about the bipartisan group she had been interviewing. People wanted to talk taxes, immigration, and they fought over #metoo, but Russia? It was not high on the list.

It's just not getting much interest. http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/21/cn...t-care-russia/

None of this means Trump will skate. If there's illegal money laundering, it's a major problem for him. But right now, Americans don't care.

And if you think there's "something" there that will involve Putin having colluded directly with Trump, you're nuts. Whatever Mueller finds, Trump will have plausible deniability. There's no way in hell a plan as sophisticated as the Kremlin's would directly involve someone as reckless and dumb as Trump. And... Russia wanted Trump in office. Putin loves nationalism. He wants a fractured world. You think they'd do all this work to plant a nationalist nut atop our Republic, just to have him torpedoed with solid evidence of direct communication with Russians?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I wasn't making that distinction. Put away the blue pencil.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

For the last century and a half, upstate NY has been a rural backwater dotted with innovation centers. They've changed over time, but your cameras and copiers came out of Rochester, your fancy glassworks and then your fiber cables came out of Corning, Ithaca was one of the centers of the Green Revolution of the 70s, and Fishkill gave us the big computers before the Route 128 and Silicon Valley settlements took hold. It is possible to get back to more dispersed innovation - the heavy concentrations of SV and Boston really all developed only in our lifetime.

We also know what it takes, because there are a lot of smaller innovation hubs that have developed in the last twenty years. It takes more focus on having a well-educated workforce (the presence of which will create jobs up and down the educational ladder), it takes academic research facilities, especially specialty areas of science and tech research, and it takes more open immigration and a greater welcoming of immigrants. Put these together and the rest flows. But a rural area that's not open to having some immigrants move in, whether from other places in the country or other places in the world, will just isolate that big state university plopped down in a field somewhere, rather than build an economy off of it.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Retraining low skilled workers is fantasy because they simply aren't smart enough to handle new economy jobs. They've no choice but to fall into the service sector.

Retraining older workers rarely works because, even if they're smart enough to handle a new gig, they have a devil of a time landing one. Hiring for entry level skilled work is biased toward youth, for reasons I needn't explain.

The Interim is just getting started. You're downplaying what doesn't fit your narrative.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Yup. Allow immigrants to innovate in the depressed areas of the country and you'll see growth. Real growth.

I'd start a program to grant not only entry to skilled immigrants, but to also give them incentives (tax abatements, tax incentives, financing for businesses... hell, free property!) to move into depressed regions.

But we both know, a lot of smart immigrants are going to look at depressed areas and, even with all sorts of incentives, they're going to instead opt to live in developed areas with already thriving markets for their skills. And I don't know how anyone could force them to live in depressed areas as a condition of entry. That's both unconstitutional and generally repugnant.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

This is a nice tactic, where you minimize your denials down to the bare minimum each time. Fun.

We already know there was a significant Russian effort to influence the election. We already know that the campaign chair, Trump's eldest son and son-in-law had direct contact with it. If you think Tump wasn't told, you're nuts.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I still do not think you understand the point he was making.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

The Interim's been happening since the 18th century.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Don't make too many assumptions here. Chobani started in the Otsego, NY area and then expanded into Idaho, and has attracted a lot of immigrants who are coming from rural places and comfortable in rural places. I've worked with people doing tech businesses in places like Northern Florida, Northern Ontario, Alabama, Utah, and Eastern Washington, and know tech immigrants who have moved to all parts of the US and enjoyed it. The largest trade group that targets immigrant entrepreneurs, The IndUS Entrepreneurs, has chapters in places like Ohio and Tampa and Pittsburgh, all off the beaten tech path. And if you look at the MIT student population, the immigrants among the students are probably a significantly more rural group than the Americans in terms of origin. But if you look at why North Florida gets a big immigrant entrepreneurial community, in Gainesville and Jacksonville and Orlando, while Morgantown gets next to none, the difference is UFlorida v. WVU and the welcomingness of the Floridians versus the West Virginians.

Yes, there are people who will gravitate towards SV and Boston regardless of what you do. But a lot of getting immigrant entrepreneurs to move elsewhere is the difference between whether the welcoming committee wants to try their food or burn down their temple.

But the rural parts of the country, like the urban parts, were originally settled by immigrants, and can just as easily be a home for them.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Some reading for Sebby.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I didn't say I was a typical American. It seems pretty obvious to me that at any point in time, there are both people who are enjoying the benefits of living and working in areas that are benefiting from economic change, and people who aren't. I get that not everyone is the former. I don't get why you like to pretend that the former doesn't exist.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

The former is 30% of the country. I've acknowledged that endlessly.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

No analogue of Moore's law applied in the 18th century.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

But I don't think I want to live to be 90 - http://www.chicagotribune.com/lifest...220-story.html

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

What if one works out hard in the day, then drinks heavily? Live to be 100?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I don't get how I can drink all day in Mexico, for three or four days straight, and not feel hungover the next day...yet if I have two martinis after 8 pm at the local I feel like crap the next day.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Because they are watering your booze?

For TM
 

So I used "He can suck all the dicks" during a meeting last week.

I know it's not yours. But thank you. Yes, it's obvious. But still, so effective.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

When home do you drink every night? I think the trick is to do so, so a bit ragged becomes baseline.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

And the voice gets more sexy over time.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

God exists.

And fucking hates me.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Thank you. Rambling, but there's no other way to offer a comprehensive view of the subject.

On the final points...

Yup. Cloudy. And there's no way to tease truly conclusive analysis out of what's available.

I'd go with 80% here. If you've dealt with consumer debt, you've seen a category of human emerge who is simply not equipped to deal with even low level complexity (loan terms, credit management strategy, etc.). And then there are loads of people who simply don't care to do so. They might be able to understand their health insurance, home insurance, or adjustable rate mortgage... but they've got different priorities.

I'd split the country into people Who Really Dig Disney and Go There on Credit, and everybody else. Robots own some blame. Education some, too. But a lot of this is self-inflicted.

I want Option C: Keynes' Leisure Society.

Universal Basic Income has to happen. The rest of the fixes are too incremental for the breadth and speed of the problem. After the GOP implodes, it'll be possible. It'll spend us into insolvency with COLAS and add-ons by 2200, but... IBGYBG.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

If I may veer away from sebby's economics-metaphyics:

The Florida School shooting might just be a tipping point. Scalia's preposterous notion that assault weapons are something the Second Amendment allows everyone to own looks rockier than it has in years.
The NRA is looking a tad vulnerable. Having Trump, with all his baggage, as the defender of essentially unlimited gun ownership doesn't help the NRA position. So, in no particular order:

1. No private gun sales to people who haven't passed a background check. Criminal penalties and civil liability to the seller when the gun is used in a crime.

2. Civil liability for gun owners if a weapon they own is used in a crime. Try getting insurance for that one.

3. A broad based assault weapon ban, a 10 round maximum clip for bullets. Listen up: That includes currently owned assault weapons. If you can ban M-60 machine guns, you can ban M-16s. If we have to pry 'em from their cold dead hands, do it. Alternatively, allow these weapons only on private property, and require transport of those weapons to be in a disassembled state. Criminal penalties for violation. Defend your castle, but don't bring that weapon out in public. To the assertion that this would require the ban on thousands of different types of weapons, I respond: So what?

4. What happened to Rubio has to happen to every spineless political gasbag. People have to point at Rubio, in public, and tell him and others like him that half measures won't work because they are doomed to failure. Tell them that if they don't commit to a broad solution, every high school student who thinks they are wrong will make them pay politically, and drive them out of office.

5. Target politicians who are the worst NRA flag waivers. Use their own words against them. Run the mothers and siblings of victims against them. Expose them for the accomplices of murder that they are. Pick a Congressman who supports some of the idiotic positions recently taken by the NRA and force them to run on that record.

6. I'll be the old fart at the March 24 march on Washington carrying a "Combat vets against combat weapons" sign

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Maybe. But I had a decent amount of wine and beer that was either opened in front of me or opened by me.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Glass of wine usually during the week. More on Friday/Saturdays.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

When you're in Mexico, do you sleep until noon before heading down for some heuvos rancheros, espresso, and a bloody Mary?

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Yes on the first part, no on the second. If a seller legally sells a weapon, after background checks have been completed, his reasonable duties are concluded. You're making him warrant it won't be used in a crime. Nobody's going to get behind that.

Non-starter. You basically make it impossible to manufacture and sell guns. That would violate the most narrow reading of the Second Amendment.

Agreed. I see it as I do drug prohibition. Alcohol and now marijuana are legal. But heroin will never be legal. Nor should it be. Lines can be drawn by reasonable people. An automatic weapon with no use than mass casualty creation is way over that line.

ETA: Dynamite also works. You can buy all sorts of fireworks. But do we let you buy dynamite? No. That's a pretty reasonable line. Some legislator thought to himself, long ago, "I'm not sure letting laymen buy something that could kill their entire family and perhaps many of their neighbors is a good idea. I think maybe I'll pass a bill to ban the sale of things like that." And that was kind of smart. So now, today, we don't read about kids dynamiting schools. And there's no National Association of Dynamite Enthusiasts arguing for the right to keep cases of dynamite in their basement. Which is a pretty good thing.

I'd go for the easy win against these people. Make the argument you make in Point 3. Everybody but the serious nuts (5% of society, maybe?) agrees that people shouldn't be running around with assault weapons. That argument is a dead lock winner. Instead of a vague shame campaign the NRA can twist into an argument of absolutes (which it will win), the argument needs to be one about automatic weapons. Leave Lapierre to argue against that narrow point and he's got a problem.

There are endless defenses for people owning handguns and hunting rifles. None exist for assault weapons. For too long, the NRA has been able to make this a Big Debate, where it should be a set of smaller ones. Nobody's going to effect meaningful gun control if the gun control crowd keeps trying to eat the elephant in one bite. You have to chip away:

"Look. Nobody needs a fucking AR-15. Nobody shoots targets or clay pigeons with fifty rounds a minute. Nobody makes any venison or elk burgers from an animal that's been riddled with 100 rounds. Nobody needs these fucking things except serious weirdos. Frankly, that you want an automatic rifle capable of spraying bullets is the best argument for why you shouldn't have one! Let these freaks play Call of Duty, or watch the Deer Hunter for the 40th time. But for fuck's sake... Let's get the fucking combat weapons out of their hands."

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

Nah. The vast majority of guns aren't anywhere near a crime, because they're locked in safe and only taken out when it's time to hunt or shoot.

Anyway, I don't want to debate specific proposals, because whatever, but we need vastly stronger incentives for more guns to live that kind of life, or otherwise not be (1) purchased for black market resale or (2) stored carelessly where they can be stolen for future criminal use. Holding owners responsible for their guns is part of that. If you lose track of your gun and don't report it, that's definitely fair grounds for some sort of liability when it turns up in the crime. Sure, you say you didn't resell it at a gun show or on the street, but the fact that you didn't tell anyone how left your possession, so I'm okay with presuming you did. It should be uncommon enough - at least where not intentional - that it shouldn't implicate the 2nd at all.

This is a bad analogy. You're both right about guns. But you, Sebby, are wrong about heroin, as Portugal has already demonstrated. Prohibition simply does not "work" under any reasonable definition of desired outcomes. Yes, even for heroin. The right approach for all drugs of abuse is decriminalization and treatment.

ETA: I should probably acknowledge that you said alcohol and weed are legal, not just decriminalized, as that's an important distinction.

There really are not for handguns, which like assault rifles are used only to kill other human and all of the cases for owning one are built on fallacious self-defense fantasies, but now isn't the time for the handgun fight.

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

I absolutely agree that all drug use should be decriminalized. But as you note, I don't think heroin can be made legal. It's too addictive, and the opioid mess proves that easy access to it is a recipe for disaster.

I'd provide needles, methadone, education, and treatment for users. But I'd stiffen penalties for dealers.

Coke, acid, ecstacy, mushrooms, etc. are party drugs. There's a really good argument they should be legalized and regulated for adult use. Heroin is just a straight up narcotic, basically morphine. It's physically highly addictive, and can easily kill a person. I hate to say I favor jailing anyone for selling any substance to a consenting adult, but heroin dealers? There might be value in sending a strong deterrent message there.

ETA: Ever been at a party and had someone offer you heroin? You'd be a bit freaked out. "Hey, Adder! Want to tie off and hit your main line? The fentanyl cut on this shit is divine." They say it's a glorious high, but what kind of mind wants to party like it's 1899, in China, in an opium den? If you need a needle to get where You Need to Be, you need to seriously rethink whether you want to keep going at all.

People do use those for legitimate target shooting, and because it makes them feel safe. The biggest clips hold less than a dozen bullets. I can live with that risk. It seems very unlike an assault rifle to me. But yes, I do agree - the belief a gun will save your life is 99.9 percent fantasy. Hence, I don't own one and never will (unless this country goes full Thunderdome... and even then, I'll probably move to another country rather than arm myself).

Re: Mother, mother, mother - there's too many of you crying.
 

If people want to shoot targets with handguns, they should use target shooting guns, which my, perhaps incorrect, understanding are not the semi-auto 9mms and the like people are buying for "self defense."

It may make them feel safe, but it actually puts them in greater danger. A case we could make more strongly were it not illegal for the CDC to study it.