The Stupid Thread 2 (Part 1)

Why do we discuss taxes in the United States. There are no laws prohibiting anyone from leaving, so it isn’t an issue.

Edit: Why do we discuss literally anything in the United States. Same logic as above.

I agree, if the ability to leave determines the justness of anything.

Bad attempt at trolling there. You usually do much better.

Also there are plenty of laws against renouncing your US citizenship. You have to apply and pay a 30% wealth tax if you get approved, most applicants aren’t approved. You can go work somewhere else, but the US government still owns you and your production (you owe US taxes on income earned overseas).

Conversations being murdered by a thousand pedantic cuts.

That being said, as you note, it isn’t a problem of “absolutes” - no one is saying we should zero out education budgets because outcomes aren’t improving or all that good. What’s happening is a problem of diminishing returns - past a certain level of dollars creating a certain outcome, the marginal utility of the additional dollars isn’t high because they aren’t getting the same outcomes last a certain point.

So, look at variables other than spending that are impacting outcomes.

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First I’d heard of any such obstacles. Black and facing racism in the United States? Move to Somalia, if you don’t like it.

AmIDoingThisCorrectly?

Negatory good buddy. All it means is people don’t want to throw more money at something for which they’ve seen no evidence of a reasonable ROI to date.

Actually, that’s been my point throughout this recent discussion–that to say ‘white taxpayers do not want to waste money’ is not tantamount to saying ‘white taxpayers who refuse to accede to increased spending are racists.’ It is others, not me, who have drawn this inference.

This sentence is self-contradictory. If, as you say, the flowchart depicts a cycle (which it does), there is no one step that can be called ‘the cause.’ And as I was at pains to demonstrate (by quoting the source), the purpose of the flowchart was to explicate the self-fulfilling prophecy among the many variables depicted, not to single out evil white people as ‘the cause’ of SGI underperformance.

Again, you are making inferences that are not supported by the evidence. Look back at the quote I provided from the source, and see if you can find where the author argues that the solution is to ‘spend more.’

That a self-fulfilling prophesy–a vicious circle–exists regarding SGI education and socioeconomic success.

Has vocation employment gone up for this group on average?

Has gang membership gone down for this group on average?

I’m trying to understand how average outcomes can remain flat while individuals are successful because of increased education spending, but the decline elsewhere that has to have occurred to offset a net gain is related to something else.

Basically and feel free to clarify, but it seems like you’re coming at this from the perspective that increases spending has to have a net positive impact. As in, that is your starting point/assumption. To you, your anecdotes prove that, but you just dismiss the negative outcomes, that mitigate any overall gains, assuming there’s some other driver. I think that’s a flawed way of analyzing the issue.

Agreed. Some of this useless back and forth may be my fault. When I see people use absolutes that none of these people’s lives are getting better, the only route that logic takes is to invalidate the works of people whom have spent the large majority of their lives making their communities better (at very large personal cost/sacrifice) using said funding.

As I’ve said before, my issue with our edu spending is the cost efficiency of the matter.

In my city? To an absurd level, yes.

Also yes, but not at an absurd level. The anti gang programs aren’t nearly as effective as the vocational ones.

The logic I use for that statement is thus. Increased spending doesn’t, in and of itself, create the negative aspects of society (gangs, low test scores, etc). In a vacuum, we could up the spending from 1bil to 2bil and I wouldn’t expect to see the negative outcomes increase by 100%, or even 10% for that matter. With that in mind, I feel many/most of these negative outcomes (the ones that ultimately happen regardless) from society are going to happen whether or not funding is in place.

This then leads to the positives. As TB noted above, SOME (deciding on where to draw the line aside) good comes out of the spending. We then see that the spending = some good, and minimal, if any, extra bad.

The counter to this would be the thought that increased spending directly correlates with increased negative outcomes THAT ALSO create more negatives than the spending does positives.

Good to know. Perhaps we should shift dollars away from other programs and put more into vocation programs.

I think your first statement probably holds true in a bubble. However, education $'s/budgets aren’t allocated in a bubble. There are only so many resources to go around. I think it’s entirely possible that there are greater net negatives in areas that don’t receive enough funding because of education, in particularly SGI, taking those dollars.

It’s also certainly a possibility that spending less overall, and specifically on education, but shifting spend could achieve the desired outcome (gang reduction, higher vocab employment, better test scores, etc…).

Ignoring the fact that you took the skin color comment out, are you saying that is a bad thing? I think that is a very reasonable position to take.

That wasn’t what I was talking about. At all. You keep missing my point. I’m saying that the original comment about wasting money is meaningless. No reasonable person wants to waste money, otherwise we would hear about the opposite stance of people wanting to waste money and all the toilets getting clogged because of the $100s being flushed.

One thing can cause a cycle. I took the starting point as the initiation of the cycle, and then it self-fulfills from there.

Well ya, but I took it a step further (I didn’t think it was an unreasonable step, but it may have been with the confusion we now have). Specifically on education, the diagram says that the reason they are not educated is due to funding (top middle), which is caused by the white tax payer not spending/wasting money (top left). In the diagram, if the white tax payer funded the schools, the cycle would be broken. The school would be financed, the SGI would have a good education, good job, earn more money…etc. To do that result, according to the diagram, the white tax payer needs to spend more.

100% agreed. But in the context of “We spent X dollars, was it beneficial?” I see a RESOUNDING yes.

In the context of “We spent X dollars, would/could we have been more efficient some elsewhere?” I also see a resounding yes. I have zero doubts in my mind that at least a portion of all spending the govt handles is completely and utterly wasted.

All of that being said, I’m probably never going to be fully comfortable with cutting any funding by a nickel when our defense spending is so retardlevel. That’s a completely separate issue though.

I don’t even know what you all are talking about, anymore, but hopefully the stuff to the right helps clarify things.

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We must rely upon the goodness of the proper DGIs to engineer society in a manner that creates equality(of opportunity-which will necessarily generate equality of outcome, of course.) for SGIs. The solution can be tested like a math problem’s: if equality of outcome is not produced, we will know that more engineering is required.

E(quality of opportunity) + SGI=DGI
SGI and DGI are fixed and equal. Our variable is E, which is what must be manipulated.

Those God damn white taxpayers! Is this book assuming black, Hispanic, etc… American’s don’t pay taxes, how racist is that?

I have given zero inclination to indicate I thought it was a bad thing.

I’m not sure what you mean by “the original comment.”

There’s no logical, a priori reason to select that as the cause of “the initiation of the cycle.” It’s an ideological decision on your part.

It says no such thing. You cannot cherry-pick one aspect of a cycle and say ‘this part is the problem.’ Again, you are making an ideological selection.

So? We could contemplate a change at literally every causal linkage in the diagram and say, ‘if the nature of this linkage were to change, the cycle would be broken.’

Yet again, I have to point out the context of the Figure, which made literally no mention the likes of “the white tax payer needs to spend more.”

Yup. Which is why I quoted the source at length above–to little apparent effect. Despite the author’s own words to the contrary, many posters here are convinced the point of the Figure is to call out white taxpayers as racists.

Oh, cool, we’re not racists we’re just part of the problem. That’s good to hear…

Let’s assume you’re right, that the author didn’t intend that the lack of white people adequately funding public education had anything to do with racial animus - do you believe that?

Do you personally believe that the white people who aren’t paying as much as they should for public education for SGIs are doing so strictly on ROI grounds?

Nothing else is causing “white taxpayers” to behave in this way. So it is an external cause. Fairly logical to focus on that factor as the impact for the cycle.

I literally just followed the arrow lol, that damn ideology of mine!

Now that I’ve seen the image again and with additional context, it irritates me even more.

“White taxpayers do not want to waste money”. Waste money on what? SGI education. What’s the result of that? Oh, you know, fewer job opportunities, less income, judgment by society, inferiority by cultural measures, self-doubt, poor health, etc…

but hey, the author doesn’t mean anything by that…

Either “White taxpayers do not want to waste money” is the cause of the cycle or it’s a perpetuating factor. Either way, it implies white taxpayers are at fault either partially or completely. There’s nothing to be offended by, though…

The mental gymnastics in here never ceases to amaze.

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Does anyone have an equation relating SJWs, LGBTQs, SGIs, and DGIs?