Love it! What a wonderful news service!
Yeah, it's quite weird to realize that the Dems are actually the most capitalist party right now. And also to realize how far removed the Libertarians (and most Republicans) are from capitalism.
Yeah, me too. You see a considerable uptick on r/politics from T_D contributors roughly when Moscow opens for work.
Lol, nah. It was on a flyer when I was looking for inspiration, and I've always liked the saying "still waters run deep".
Really? What a small world! The part of the creation myth about the cicada was when the first people wanted to reach the final world (our world). There are different versions of why they moved on, with some saying that their present world was becoming flooded. There were reeds that stretched all the way up to the next world, but none were able to reach the next world. Finally the cicada tried, climbed up the reed and managed to dig his way through the soil into the white world. Then the humans (and others) were able to come through as well. That was the short version. You can find the creation myth online. I think the reason they seemed magical to me is that we heard the tales orally, while visiting friends in the reservation. The tale was quite elaborate.
So, the guy that a judge said "has demonstrated a pattern of misleading the court about the facts and record in a voting rights case unfolding in Kansas," is leading the committee on Election Integrity?!?! I can't believe there isn't more outrage about this. Thank goodness we have the ACLU.
I partly grew up in New Mexico, and loved hearing the creation myths of the Hopi. The first people arrived in this world with the help of the cicada. It has given cicadas a special meaning to me.
I read "Wealth of Nations" while at business school many years ago. I find it weird how often people will say something is leftist when in fact it is something Adam Smith would be fully supportive of (for example government intervention to ensure net neutrality). Or they believe capitalism leads to the opposite conclusion of what Smith actually advocated or warned about (e.g. Citizens United). So many today proclaim they are fervent followers of capitalism, yet have an incredibly poor understanding of this philosophy and the founding tract of Adam Smith. Your post made me order the book so I can read it again.
The_Donald are far from regular citizens! I also noticed that devinm666 was a regular contributor on SJWHate. He's certainly an extremist.ideas from regular citizens
These are the signs of democracy reaching the end.
I think he has signed the Russia sanctions bill.
Economics as a study pre-dates many STEM fields as academic study.
Why thank you! That's so kind.
I've seen far more stories of female teachers being accused of rape than men, but maybe that was because I mainly pick up those stories on reddit. I strongly believe that anyone who behaves appropriately and has healthy boundaries will not be at risk. I also think it is dangerous to assume the rape allegations are false. It is well known that pedophiles are particularly drawn to roles where they exercise power over children (priests, coaches, teachers, scouts, etc) so there will be a higher preponderance of such people in schools. That should not discourage non-pedophiles from taking such jobs. Quite the opposite: you can help combat pedophilia.
The passage I liked the most was this: Too often I hear debates like this sound like the aim is to deepen the gender divide. Men are butch and active, etc while women are caring, moral and considerate. So nice to hear the focus instead be on demonstrating the "softer" side like handling emotions and showing respect. I also believe that an important element of the role modeling they do is showing kids that a man caring for kids is manly. In almost all societies being a nurturing father has been a key aspect of being a man, and it is unfortunate that that is among some Americans seen as unmanly/feminine.“Children tend to mimic or ‘act out’ the behaviors they see,” Hough says. “In schools, male children may benefit from male teachers by observing appropriate behaviors, most notably associated with how to handle anger, respect for others and rule following.”
Well, frontier means the end of settled land. Yes, being a pioneer exploring the new land to the west in North America was different, but then that happened long ago in the US, and by a small proportion of the population. My grandfather was among them, and he loved telling tales from that time. Just as he loved telling tales of his experiences of challenges in the wilderness in Scandinavia. The tales didn't seem qualitatively different.
Welcome! My impression so far is that the conversations tend to be a lot more mellow, in part because it is a smaller community and people remember each other. I had the same experience on smaller subs on reddit. I love that approach as it makes people better at listening, and less likely to attack each other. It is quieter, but my experience is that people welcome comments and new posts.
Regarding your final Q: it depends on what you're doctoral degree is in. :-) Also, how ready are you to experience a different culture? There is significant cultural difference between US (I'm assuming you're US based) and Scandinavia, and not everyone thrives on the challenges that entails. Happy to answer any Q's you have.
Yeah, I too get really worried about all the comments seen on-line about WaPo, CNN, MSNBC, NYT being fake news. I reveals how willing too many are to simply march in goose-step behind Trump. Soon after WW2 academics placed a lot of focus on understanding what had just happened. Erich Fromm at that time published (IMO) two important works: His book on the "fear of freedom", and an article where he introduced the concept of "the authoritarian personality". The behavior we see in many of Trump's supporters 9and in Trump himself) is classical "authoritarian personality". And it is dangerous.
Just finished the first podcast. Sounds very good. Thanks for sharing.
It is interesting how people seem focused on changing the term "science" so as to exclude almost anything that isn't related engineering, mathematics and technology. That is a new trend and coincides with the rise of IT. It is, I believe, a development aimed at raising the status of the aforementioned fields by diminishing other fields. Science is not a term linked to mathematics. Science is: Sociology, economics, psychology, medicine are all sciences.1: the state of knowing : knowledge as distinguished from ignorance or misunderstanding
2a : a department of systematized knowledge as an object of study the science of theology; b : something (such as a sport or technique) that may be studied or learned like systematized knowledge have it down to a science
3a : knowledge or a system of knowledge covering general truths or the operation of general laws especially as obtained and tested through scientific method; b : such knowledge or such a system of knowledge concerned with the physical world and its phenomena : natural science
Glad to read your comment because that was my observation too. I particularly dislike the misuse of the quote ‘macroeconomics […] has succeeded: its central problem of depression prevention has been solved’. That is a comment about economic cycles - not avoiding depression due to massive banking fraud. This is like mocking meteorologists who say they have a good control on weather forecasting, but fail to include in their prediction a meteor hitting the earth and causing havoc to the weather. Many economists had warned about the US debt problem, especially the mortgages. My own professor (one of the author's of Wiley's "Macroeconomics: Understanding the Global Economy") would regularly lecture on the topic years before the crash. The worst thing IMO is watching the Republicans now unwind all the regulations aimed at preventing a repetition of the 2007 crisis. And I suspect the next crash too people will be blaming the economists for not doing adequate baby-sitting.
Solange just seems like perfect music for late summer nights.
Much of Scandinavia is frontier land, and that is where Scandinavians go for vacations. The mountains where you ski or hike for miles without seeing anyone. The coastline where people explore and go fishing. I've had friends who were almost killed by a moose. Another who as a kid had many close calls with polar bears. Many of us grew up taking the boat out by ourselves from the age of 6 onwards, to go exploring. And many of us experienced mishaps where we had to rely on ourselves to get home safely. To me frontier is venturing forth alone or in small groups to stake a place to live or explore. My grandfather did just that as a frontiersman in the US about a 100 years ago. The same experience is alive in much of Scandinavia. Many families have cabins in remote areas that were built by the family. This is where we go to recharge our batteries and get back to nature.
Your reference to the PAC's reminded me of the story I read today of long-time GOP donor Mike Fernandez. Apparently he left the Republican Party end 2016 due to Trump, and recently a Republican fund raiser made the mistake of asking for a contribution, at which point he replied: The cracks are starting to show.“All the Republicans who hide behind the flag and hide behind the church, they don’t have the f------ balls to do what it takes. [...] I am out of the political process. Too disgusted, too expensive, too supportive of ego maniacs whose words have the value of quicksand,” he wrote in an email to a Republican fundraiser seeking political contributions.
> Nick Reding argues that it's due to a Protestant work ethic combined with a frontier mentality that creates a uniquely American view that hard work, no matter how unfocused, is not only the key to success, it's also the key to Heaven and that un- or underemployment is a personal, moral failing. The defect in this reasoning is that "Protestant work ethic combined with a frontier mentality" are key traits of Scandinavia. Scandinavians work hard, but they prefer working in a focused manner and return home. To me a culture shock moving back to the US was how much time was wasted in the office or during working time. I also believe Scandinavians are at least as frontier people as Americans. Well said.White working-class people aren't truly poor so long as black working-class people are poorer. We don't choose our anchors, society does... and when those beneath us are no longer beneath us, we have fallen.
A very interesting analysis. The sad thing is that the Democratic platform would have helped them and Trump / the Republicans will only hasten their fall. A root problem here is the income inequality. Ensure more menial jobs are adequately paid and at least some of the economic stress will be removed, and perhaps some pride restored. Certainly one needs to deploy better programs to enable people who live in small towns that lose their cornerstone industries to be retrained and to bring in new investment to such places. I also believe we need to develop a project with Germany to better understand the great success they have in apprenticeship programs - an effort that connects employers, educators and the federal government to enable people to do-learn-do. There were also a couple statements that stood out to me: Do declining salaries make men less attractive as marriage partners? Or is it that lower salaries or less "masculine" jobs make the men insecure, and for that reason they become less attractive? And is this tied to the traditional gender roles of "men work hard so they get good jobs so they can bring home the bacon to their family". Having lived in northern Europe many years I sense there is a very significant difference in how men define their worth. Equality between genders in northern Europe has lead to men also being more free to define where their worth comes from, and increasingly it is separated from the status of position, the masculinity of the position, and the salary they bring home (compared to what I experience in the US). Where I live in the US there are so many ex-pat wives who bring along their husbands and children, that these stay at home men have arranged a club. And they love their lives. They see being a good father as an expression of masculinity. Meanwhile, too many of the men described in this article view almost any work in the tertiary sector (service sector) - let alone a stay-at-home dad! - as being "women's work" that is beneath their dignity. Sometimes I sense that the call for MAGA - harking back to a time when blue collar jobs were readily available and gave a middle-class income, and "blacks knew their place and women stayed at home" - is like some desperate hope that they can avoid needing to change by getting the rest of the world to change. It is like a farmer who hopes fall will come after winter, and refuses to prepare for spring. The ones they hurt the most by refusing to adapt is themselves.Adding insult to injury for those with the grit to survive on an assembly line or in a steel mill, the decades-long shift from manufacturing to services is creating the type of jobs that are distinctly unappealing to many men.
The declining employment and salaries of men without college degrees make them less attractive as marriage partners.
"I don’t want it to sound bad, but I’ve always seen a woman in the position of a nurse or some kind of health care worker. I see it as more of a woman’s touch."
The paradox is that it isn't. With regard to people, economics highlights that people are the main basis for growing your economy - having a healthy age division, good education, good health, good health coverage, etc. With regard to the environment, the cost of not taking care of the environment is considerable because it negatively impacts other aspects. Furthermore, if one looks at Europe many nations have seen an increase in manufacturing and jobs linked to especially renewable energy. These are reasons that OECD and IMF are pushing for universal health care cover and better education. And shareholders in many major corporations (Shell and BP spring to mind) are pushing the businesses to focus even more on the environment and green energy. The problem is that the Republicans are driven by out-of-date thinking and sponsored by individuals more focused on asset stripping the country than building a stronger economy.
Thank you! Seems like a nice community.
A very interesting graph. I would almost say "poor Paul Ryan", but can't quite bring myself to it. Paul Ryan seems to be one of those guys who "Before we used to describe him as young and promising. Now we just describe him as young." The question the Republicans must be asking themselves though is whether breaking with Trump will sink them even further or whether it will enable them to retake some of their lost ground. The fact that Trump is more popular among their voters than the party per se could indicate the former. > It's so much easier being wrong together than right alone. Well said. One of my deepest frustrations with all the elected republicans is that none of them seem to internalize the key role of the offices they have been elected for: to lead the nation. Any leadership role requires the courage to do what is right, even if it hurts you as an individual, giving priority to the nation (or the corporation if in business, or the cause if an NGO, etc).