This is on the Huffington Post, so take it with a grain of salt. They are about on par with The Blaze, and one step up from Natural News and Info Wars. Finding an article from them that is factual and non-partisan is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
One thing I learned in small-business, is that "success" often is determined by your ability to absorb losses and still get cash. No one else can continue to absorb losses like the kids of the 1%.
Da Boss wrote: Who knew getting a massive inheritance for doing nothing was a huge advantage? I, personally, am shocked by this.
The point of the article is more about how the rich are getting better at insulating their offspring from failure than they were in previous decades. So yes, this sort of thing has been going on forever, but they're setting up the system to self-perpetuate better (according to the article, anyhow).
This article makes the common error of speaking broadly of "the rich," not only without defining the term, but using examples and arguments that stretch the word to it's breaking point. Yes, both the sons of tycoons, and the sons of Georgia families making six figures, both enjoy advantages, but they're radically different.
The article also doesn't really get into the policies behind this shift, such as tying education to property tax, and how they reinforce generational class status.
And while nepotism has long been an aspect of life, there really are signs that it's getting worse. top notch public universities used to be of low enough cost for the truly middle and working classes to afford, while now all post graduate education is incredibly expensive.
The main problem with that is people still conceive of "the shareholders" as being a group of people investing their money, who could reasonably be expected to take an active interest in how a company is run, when the reality is most of "the shareholders" are big funds invested into dozens or hundreds of companies who don't give the tiniest little wet fart about the health or activities of each individual one so long as they keep churning out dividends on time, because they'll almost certainly have gotten their money's worth before any given one goes belly up from poor management and the loss of a single company here or there doesn't matter a jot to their giant portfolios.
Like a lot of things in the modern economy, people's perception of a thing has been formed(often quite deliberately) around a version of that thing that no longer really exists, having been replaced instead with some atrocious mutant shaped by intense lobbying into yet another vehicle for generating and retaining wealth for the elite.
Yeah, in most corporations there is even a level between the management of a company and the shareholders: the board of directors. So, the shareholders elect the board, who approve of major decisions (dividends, taking on debt, executive pay, etc).
In practice... most shareholders don't vote, or vote by proxy. Boards tend to be made up of leaders in the field, so the Board of one manufacturing company may include an executive of another (non competing) company. This is why executive pay is so high - the people approving the CEO's pay are all past, present, or future CEOs of other companies!
Polonius wrote: Yeah, in most corporations there is even a level between the management of a company and the shareholders: the board of directors. So, the shareholders elect the board, who approve of major decisions (dividends, taking on debt, executive pay, etc).
In practice... most shareholders don't vote, or vote by proxy. Boards tend to be made up of leaders in the field, so the Board of one manufacturing company may include an executive of another (non competing) company. This is why executive pay is so high - the people approving the CEO's pay are all past, present, or future CEOs of other companies!
That's more than a bit misleading. The number of good CEO's out there are less than the number needed. Just like any other employee, if someone else will pay them more for what they are all ready doing they will work for the highest paying employer. One company that bucked that ideal was Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. They tried a social-justice pay scale that stated that their top-paid employee would only make 5 times the wage of the lowest. This damned near killed the company. They agreed to up this to 10 times the pay, then 20, then 30. They went through about 5 batches of managerial staff before finding people competent enough not to trash the business, and that required decent pay.
I do wonder then - how did companies manage to succeed before executive pay ran rampant beginning in the 80's? Because roughly 10 times what a worker earned was pretty typical in the postwar era and yet companies managed to not totally implode.
I'd be interested in seeing some impartial reportage on that Ben & Jerry's thing if you have some links to hand - I have a sneaky suspicion there's a bit more to the tale than you're making out.
I bet you do. A quick Google reveals they stuck to it for 16 years, expanded it a bit in order to attract new talent when they couldn't get anyone to replace an outgoing director, and then got taken over by Unilever, which is what ended it.
Polonius wrote: Yeah, in most corporations there is even a level between the management of a company and the shareholders: the board of directors. So, the shareholders elect the board, who approve of major decisions (dividends, taking on debt, executive pay, etc).
In practice... most shareholders don't vote, or vote by proxy. Boards tend to be made up of leaders in the field, so the Board of one manufacturing company may include an executive of another (non competing) company. This is why executive pay is so high - the people approving the CEO's pay are all past, present, or future CEOs of other companies!
That's more than a bit misleading. The number of good CEO's out there are less than the number needed. Just like any other employee, if someone else will pay them more for what they are all ready doing they will work for the highest paying employer. One company that bucked that ideal was Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. They tried a social-justice pay scale that stated that their top-paid employee would only make 5 times the wage of the lowest. This damned near killed the company. They agreed to up this to 10 times the pay, then 20, then 30. They went through about 5 batches of managerial staff before finding people competent enough not to trash the business, and that required decent pay.
I couldn't find any directly on point information on your example, but Ben and Jerry's did hire an outside CEO in 1995, with a base salary of $250k, which would be roughly 30 times what a minimum wage employee would have made back then. He stepped down after two years, recommending somebody with more marketing experience, and they hired a guy from Winchester rifles (!) at $300k a year So, yes, you need to find a candidate at market price for jobs with very specialized skills, which growing an ice cream brand to national/international distribution certainly is.
Sobekta wrote: One thing you always hear companies say in their own defense when accused of acting in bad ways is that they're only accountable to the share holders.
In that case responsibility to the share holders should mandate they remove incomoetents even from the higher ranks.
But I guess responsibility to the shareholders only covers certain issues.
It's worth remembering a hefty majority of shares are held by a VERY small percentage of the population... and that percentage are the very ones who are often running the companies in question.
cuda1179 wrote: This is on the Huffington Post, so take it with a grain of salt. They are about on par with The Blaze, and one step up from Natural News and Info Wars. Finding an article from them that is factual and non-partisan is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Cuda I really do want to know what factual errors you found in the article.
Polonius wrote: Yeah, in most corporations there is even a level between the management of a company and the shareholders: the board of directors. So, the shareholders elect the board, who approve of major decisions (dividends, taking on debt, executive pay, etc).
In practice... most shareholders don't vote, or vote by proxy. Boards tend to be made up of leaders in the field, so the Board of one manufacturing company may include an executive of another (non competing) company. This is why executive pay is so high - the people approving the CEO's pay are all past, present, or future CEOs of other companies!
That's more than a bit misleading. The number of good CEO's out there are less than the number needed. Just like any other employee, if someone else will pay them more for what they are all ready doing they will work for the highest paying employer.
Yeah, although executive compensation can seem disgusting at times, market forces are a big driver. There just aren’t that many people who can do the job at a high level. And even if you find one, the trick becomes retaining them. So the multipliers may get ugly, but what’s the solution? Other than some socialist fantasy.
cuda1179 wrote: This is on the Huffington Post, so take it with a grain of salt. They are about on par with The Blaze, and one step up from Natural News and Info Wars. Finding an article from them that is factual and non-partisan is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Cuda I really do want to know what factual errors you found in the article.
That was more a problem with Huffington Post than the article itself. They have a history of "accidental" errors, editorials disguised as news, and other nonsense. While some of their stuff is okay, anything they put out makes me fairly critical of it until I dig in.
Polonius wrote: Yeah, in most corporations there is even a level between the management of a company and the shareholders: the board of directors. So, the shareholders elect the board, who approve of major decisions (dividends, taking on debt, executive pay, etc).
In practice... most shareholders don't vote, or vote by proxy. Boards tend to be made up of leaders in the field, so the Board of one manufacturing company may include an executive of another (non competing) company. This is why executive pay is so high - the people approving the CEO's pay are all past, present, or future CEOs of other companies!
That's more than a bit misleading. The number of good CEO's out there are less than the number needed. Just like any other employee, if someone else will pay them more for what they are all ready doing they will work for the highest paying employer.
Yeah, although executive compensation can seem disgusting at times, market forces are a big driver. There just aren’t that many people who can do the job at a high level. And even if you find one, the trick becomes retaining them. So the multipliers may get ugly, but what’s the solution? Other than some socialist fantasy.
The solution is to focus on the real problem. The problem isn't that CEOs get paid "too much". "Too much" is entirely subjective, and even if you took away all the money of the rich CEOs and divided it up to all of their employees it wouldn't help. Walmart's CEO earned almost $23 million last year. Walmart has 2.1 million employees. If he gave up his entire income, he could give each of his employees around $11. And Walmart is one of the better examples of income inequality between it's employees and CEO.
No, the real problem is that the cost of living is too high. Every basic necessity, with the exception of food, has become more expensive over the years. Plus more items that in the past would have been considered luxury goods have become necessities. Housing is insanely expensive where people actually congregate. People don't just need to pay for housing, food, and clothing either. You need some device that can connect to the internet because without that you often can't find a job as everything is online now, and the cheapest option there would be a smart phone. So you can add a phone bill to the basic necessity list. Transportation is another one. Its almost impossible to find a job that you could walk to. You need transportation, and at least in the US public transportation just isn't an option in many areas, or isn't a good option even if it exists. Maybe you might be lucky enough to be in range to bike, but otherwise you're needing a car.
cuda1179 wrote: This is on the Huffington Post, so take it with a grain of salt. They are about on par with The Blaze, and one step up from Natural News and Info Wars. Finding an article from them that is factual and non-partisan is like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Cuda I really do want to know what factual errors you found in the article.
That was more a problem with Huffington Post than the article itself. They have a history of "accidental" errors, editorials disguised as news, and other nonsense. While some of their stuff is okay, anything they put out makes me fairly critical of it until I dig in.
So is it the proverbial 'needle in a haystack' you referenced?
Polonius wrote: Yeah, in most corporations there is even a level between the management of a company and the shareholders: the board of directors. So, the shareholders elect the board, who approve of major decisions (dividends, taking on debt, executive pay, etc).
In practice... most shareholders don't vote, or vote by proxy. Boards tend to be made up of leaders in the field, so the Board of one manufacturing company may include an executive of another (non competing) company. This is why executive pay is so high - the people approving the CEO's pay are all past, present, or future CEOs of other companies!
That's more than a bit misleading. The number of good CEO's out there are less than the number needed. Just like any other employee, if someone else will pay them more for what they are all ready doing they will work for the highest paying employer.
Yeah, although executive compensation can seem disgusting at times, market forces are a big driver. There just aren’t that many people who can do the job at a high level. And even if you find one, the trick becomes retaining them. So the multipliers may get ugly, but what’s the solution? Other than some socialist fantasy.
The solution is to focus on the real problem. The problem isn't that CEOs get paid "too much". "Too much" is entirely subjective, and even if you took away all the money of the rich CEOs and divided it up to all of their employees it wouldn't help. Walmart's CEO earned almost $23 million last year. Walmart has 2.1 million employees. If he gave up his entire income, he could give each of his employees around $11. And Walmart is one of the better examples of income inequality between it's employees and CEO.
No, the real problem is that the cost of living is too high. Every basic necessity, with the exception of food, has become more expensive over the years. Plus more items that in the past would have been considered luxury goods have become necessities. Housing is insanely expensive where people actually congregate. People don't just need to pay for housing, food, and clothing either. You need some device that can connect to the internet because without that you often can't find a job as everything is online now, and the cheapest option there would be a smart phone. So you can add a phone bill to the basic necessity list. Transportation is another one. Its almost impossible to find a job that you could walk to. You need transportation, and at least in the US public transportation just isn't an option in many areas, or isn't a good option even if it exists. Maybe you might be lucky enough to be in range to bike, but otherwise you're needing a car.
The problem with trying to say that wage stagnation is the "real problem" rather than executive compensation is that the two things are really just facets of the same issue.
Yes, wages have been stagnating, because the wealthy have been hoovering up all the growth, and ludicrously excessive executive compensation is one of the ways they've done that. You can't solve the former without addressing - among many other things - the latter as well.
Not... quite that bad. The top 10% are breaking even, and I believe relative growth begins at 6%. So... some 18 million or so, which is quite a few more than just the corporate executive class.
well, this actually loops back into the point made in the OP, which is that there is a different cleavage point for economic security than for being rich. The professional class is doing all right, but outside of high skilled workers, it's rough and getting rougher.
Yodhrin wrote: The problem with trying to say that wage stagnation is the "real problem" rather than executive compensation is that the two things are really just facets of the same issue.
Yes, wages have been stagnating, because the wealthy have been hoovering up all the growth, and ludicrously excessive executive compensation is one of the ways they've done that. You can't solve the former without addressing - among many other things - the latter as well.
The problem is everyone keeps focusing with laser precision on CEO wages, as if that is the one and only thing that is making the poor miserable. So its actually unhelpful to talk about CEO wages at all. Don't say "They're part of the problem and need to be addressed". Focus on the greatest contributor to the problem if you can only talk about 1 thing. Don't talk about the least significant part of the problem.
Its like a doctor treating a patient who has been stabbed in the gut, receiver a broken bone, and several minor lacerations on his hands, and only treating the cuts on the hands. The patient will die if you only focus on the small cuts, which in and of themselves are not an issue and will heal on their own. Treat the stab wound first, ignore the small cuts until they are the only issue.
Thats a big problem with everything these days. The focus is only on issues that are glamorous or fit a particular agenda, not on actually fixing problems.
Looking at it as Wage Stagnation is also missing the point largely. You're looking at it from the point of view of worker pay, and not from the standpoint of the cost of consumer goods and services. We really should focus on the angle of cost of living expense, not wages or salaries. Focusing on keeping the cost of housing to a reasonable level alone would probably fix most of the issue.
lord_blackfang wrote: I thought the glass floor was the systemic sexism that keeps women out of the worst jobs.
Well, yeah, that is also a thing.
I get that it's a good thing to want women to get equal pay, and to introduce young women into STEM fields and other higher-paying areas. However, there is absolutely no push to get them into being garbage men, dangerous occupations, craptastic over-night jobs, ect. On the same token, there is no push to incentivize young men to go into nursing or elementary education.
lord_blackfang wrote: I thought the glass floor was the systemic sexism that keeps women out of the worst jobs.
Well, yeah, that is also a thing.
I get that it's a good thing to want women to get equal pay, and to introduce young women into STEM fields and other higher-paying areas. However, there is absolutely no push to get them into being garbage men, dangerous occupations, craptastic over-night jobs, ect. On the same token, there is no push to incentivize young men to go into nursing or elementary education.
You know that virtually every dangerous field had their own fight to keep women out? At some point, why fight an industry over crappy jobs? And high profile movements tend to be dominated by white collar professionals, so they tend to focus on the areas they know. Enough books have been written about the tension between second wave, white collar, "Lean in" feminism which mostly advanced the agenda of upper middle class white women, and third wave intersectional feminism to fill a decent sized library.
A look at the lowest paying jobs is full of jobs is full of jobs that are tedious and low paying, and often mostly female.
Yodhrin wrote: The problem with trying to say that wage stagnation is the "real problem" rather than executive compensation is that the two things are really just facets of the same issue.
Yes, wages have been stagnating, because the wealthy have been hoovering up all the growth, and ludicrously excessive executive compensation is one of the ways they've done that. You can't solve the former without addressing - among many other things - the latter as well.
The problem is everyone keeps focusing with laser precision on CEO wages, as if that is the one and only thing that is making the poor miserable. So its actually unhelpful to talk about CEO wages at all. Don't say "They're part of the problem and need to be addressed". Focus on the greatest contributor to the problem if you can only talk about 1 thing. Don't talk about the least significant part of the problem.
Its like a doctor treating a patient who has been stabbed in the gut, receiver a broken bone, and several minor lacerations on his hands, and only treating the cuts on the hands. The patient will die if you only focus on the small cuts, which in and of themselves are not an issue and will heal on their own. Treat the stab wound first, ignore the small cuts until they are the only issue.
Thats a big problem with everything these days. The focus is only on issues that are glamorous or fit a particular agenda, not on actually fixing problems.
Looking at it as Wage Stagnation is also missing the point largely. You're looking at it from the point of view of worker pay, and not from the standpoint of the cost of consumer goods and services. We really should focus on the angle of cost of living expense, not wages or salaries. Focusing on keeping the cost of housing to a reasonable level alone would probably fix most of the issue.
But Grey, many people will simply point to the Cost of Living Index, and say that food, clothing, and electronics are cheaper than they have ever been? How can your argument be true?
However, they ignore the cost of health care, insurance, housing, education, daycare, etc. Actual cost of goods has been relatively stable or getting cheaper, while the cost of services is skyrocketing. The big exception of course is real estate.
Health Care, Education, and Day care costs definitely have sky rocketing costs. A lot of the reason for this is that Government touched them. Subsidizing something just boosts demand for that product, whatever it is. Higher demand without higher supply just means higher prices.
cuda1179 wrote: Health Care, Education, and Day care costs definitely have sky rocketing costs. A lot of the reason for this is that Government touched them. Subsidizing something just boosts demand for that product, whatever it is. Higher demand without higher supply just means higher prices.
Sweden says.... no......
Edit: Spoiler tagged graph as it is large, but simple to read!
cuda1179 wrote: Health Care, Education, and Day care costs definitely have sky rocketing costs. A lot of the reason for this is that Government touched them. Subsidizing something just boosts demand for that product, whatever it is. Higher demand without higher supply just means higher prices.
Well you could allways implement mandatory healthcare insurance.
This leads to basic insurance mass beeing overall healthy and still maintains the market, because effective manageing insureres get more earnings can lower prices and attract more basis insured.
Of course that would mean that the state would need to enforce that.
cuda1179 wrote: Health Care, Education, and Day care costs definitely have sky rocketing costs. A lot of the reason for this is that Government touched them. Subsidizing something just boosts demand for that product, whatever it is. Higher demand without higher supply just means higher prices.
Is that as poor manners as stating that all articles from a source are full of factual errors, and then ignoring requests to point out what specifically the factual errors were?
If someone says "the sky is green" or "2+2=5" how do you respond? There's a certain point where it is simply not how things work; it becomes nearly impossible to engage with the argument since it is nonsensical to begin with.
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Ouze wrote: Is that as poor manners as stating that all articles from a source are full of factual errors, and then ignoring requests to point out what specifically the factual errors were?
I will admit this colored my response as well; he made a bold claim previously and provided no backing for it even when asked multiple times, which led me to believe he was not engaging in good-faith discussion.
Well, we'll have to see this the Dakka way. If there is one poster who does not discuss a topic in good faith, ban that topic. We must ban all discussion of economics, salaries, money, prices, or things that cost money.
BobtheInquisitor wrote: Well, we'll have to see this the Dakka way. We must ban all discussion of economics, salaries, money, prices, or things that cost money.
That would pretty much kill every discussion, maybe even the site, wouldn't it? I mean some people use this site to talk about a specific game that costs money to play.
Ouze wrote: Is that as poor manners as stating that all articles from a source are full of factual errors, and then ignoring requests to point out what specifically the factual errors were?
I didn't say that, at all. I said their articles have a higher likelihood of errors, omissions, and bias. Not everything from Huffington Post is bad, it's just significantly worse than other news outlets.
On the "women don't do crap jobs" point, I see a lot of women doing pretty unpleasant cleaning jobs after hours, and I see a lot of women doing incredibly difficult and demanding work like taking care of elderly people with dementia and other complex needs.
Da Boss wrote: On the "women don't do crap jobs" point, I see a lot of women doing pretty unpleasant cleaning jobs after hours, and I see a lot of women doing incredibly difficult and demanding work like taking care of elderly people with dementia and other complex needs.
Guess difference between crap and dangerous was meant.
Which probably has to do with risk Aversion.
Personally I'd go with "some languages like Chinese do not differentiate between green and blue so in that context...".
That doesn't change that just shouting "bias!" in a poop'n'scoot and then pretending that wasn't what one was doing when called on it is plain dumb. Everyone can see what you did, you're not fooling anyone. Stop it.
Likewise the claim that rising living costs in the US is somehow the government's fault is so mind-boggling obviously a silly argument, as has already been pointed out.
I guess whatever it takes to distract us all from the elites hoovering up all the assets and make their off-spring fail proof, Amirite!
It is amazing to me how many people will carry the water and do the heavy llifting politically for the folks who would not piss on them if they were on fire.
Da Boss wrote: On the "women don't do crap jobs" point, I see a lot of women doing pretty unpleasant cleaning jobs after hours, and I see a lot of women doing incredibly difficult and demanding work like taking care of elderly people with dementia and other complex needs.
Guess difference between crap and dangerous was meant.
Which probably has to do with risk Aversion.
Good point. Although (in the west at least) a lot of women have turned that type of work to their advantage. Girls can get paid for doing nothing more than posting photos of themselves in skimpy cosplay outfits, never mind getting naked. Although this has been touched on in previous threads.. Coul
Da Boss wrote: On the "women don't do crap jobs" point, I see a lot of women doing pretty unpleasant cleaning jobs after hours, and I see a lot of women doing incredibly difficult and demanding work like taking care of elderly people with dementia and other complex needs.
Guess difference between crap and dangerous was meant.
Which probably has to do with risk Aversion.
However i am no psychologist
Why has no one brought up prostitution?
Because prostitution is not legal in all countries?
It's also not one sided either.
Wait wait wait... people are allowed to use their wealth to make their children's lives better and easier? We've got to put a stop to that!
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AlmightyWalrus wrote: Personally I'd go with "some languages like Chinese do not differentiate between green and blue so in that context...".
That doesn't change that just shouting "bias!" in a poop'n'scoot and then pretending that wasn't what one was doing when called on it is plain dumb. Everyone can see what you did, you're not fooling anyone. Stop it.
Likewise the claim that rising living costs in the US is somehow the government's fault is so mind-boggling obviously a silly argument, as has already been pointed out.
But that's not a silly argument at all, just because you don't understand it or choose to ignore it.
Albino Squirrel wrote: Wait wait wait... people are allowed to use their wealth to make their children's lives better and easier? We've got to put a stop to that!
Wait, people want a fair system where people succeed on their own merits? We've got to put a stop to that! /s
Albino Squirrel wrote: Wait wait wait... people are allowed to use their wealth to make their children's lives better and easier? We've got to put a stop to that!
Wait, people want a fair system where people succeed on their own merits? We've got to put a stop to that! /s
"People want a fair system" is a funny way of saying people want to punish those they are envious of, and want to take from those that have more. That's not fair at all.
Albino Squirrel wrote: Wait wait wait... people are allowed to use their wealth to make their children's lives better and easier? We've got to put a stop to that!
Wait, people want a fair system where people succeed on their own merits? We've got to put a stop to that! /s
"People want a fair system" is a funny way of saying people want to punish those they are envious of, and want to take from those that have more. That's not fair at all.
Both points of view are valid. The issues come when people think they are mutually exclusive.
People who say "We just want a fair and equitable system!" tend to misunderstand how wealth works. They think wealth is a finite resource and that because X person has Y wealth that that means there is less wealth to go around. And thus they think the solution is to steal wealth from the people who have it and give it to those who don't.
This is the main fallacy in this situation, since wealth is not a finite resource. This notion was debunked with the philosophy of mercantilism. That isn't to say wealth is an infinite resource either. Wealth is an elastic concept. It is created by the perception of value that people ascribe to particular objects. Because this is the case, a particular person having a bunch of wealth does not actually prevent other people in any way from acquiring other kinds of wealth. And indeed, that is the core concept behind being an entrepreneur. An Entrepreneur is a person who creates wealth that did not exist before. They develop a new product or service that the market finds desirable and thus ascribes wealth to.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: That doesn't change that just shouting "bias!" in a poop'n'scoot and then pretending that wasn't what one was doing when called on it is plain dumb. .
I'm sorry, I should know better. HuffPo is a perfectly reasonable news outlet that simply states the facts with no political leanings and doesn't at all, never has disguised editorials, and never has misleading or omitted info, and never publishes stories bordering on conspiracy theory. They are above reproach and anyone that says they are is a bigot.
Meanwhile in other dakka threads...… FAUX News!!!! Propaganda!!!! Bias!!!
Albino Squirrel wrote: Wait wait wait... people are allowed to use their wealth to make their children's lives better and easier? We've got to put a stop to that!
Wait, people want a fair system where people succeed on their own merits? We've got to put a stop to that! /s
"People want a fair system" is a funny way of saying people want to punish those they are envious of, and want to take from those that have more. That's not fair at all.
Both points of view are valid. The issues come when people think they are mutually exclusive.
People who say "We just want a fair and equitable system!" tend to misunderstand how wealth works. They think wealth is a finite resource and that because X person has Y wealth that that means there is less wealth to go around. And thus they think the solution is to steal wealth from the people who have it and give it to those who don't.
This is the main fallacy in this situation, since wealth is not a finite resource. This notion was debunked with the philosophy of mercantilism. That isn't to say wealth is an infinite resource either. Wealth is an elastic concept. It is created by the perception of value that people ascribe to particular objects. Because this is the case, a particular person having a bunch of wealth does not actually prevent other people in any way from acquiring other kinds of wealth. And indeed, that is the core concept behind being an entrepreneur. An Entrepreneur is a person who creates wealth that did not exist before. They develop a new product or service that the market finds desirable and thus ascribes wealth to.
Which sounds very nice, but does nothing to help those who are struggling. It also ignores the reality; the expansion of wealth is also hoarded by the wealthy. The solution of 'adding new slices to the pie' doesn't work when all the new slices go to the very wealthy.
Albino Squirrel wrote: Wait wait wait... people are allowed to use their wealth to make their children's lives better and easier? We've got to put a stop to that!
Wait, people want a fair system where people succeed on their own merits? We've got to put a stop to that! /s
"People want a fair system" is a funny way of saying people want to punish those they are envious of, and want to take from those that have more. That's not fair at all.
No, that is not what he's saying nor is that the circumstance at hand. You are demonizing the opposing viewpoint on moral grounds rather than engaging it on rational terms.
Albino Squirrel wrote: Wait wait wait... people are allowed to use their wealth to make their children's lives better and easier? We've got to put a stop to that!
Wait, people want a fair system where people succeed on their own merits? We've got to put a stop to that! /s
"People want a fair system" is a funny way of saying people want to punish those they are envious of, and want to take from those that have more. That's not fair at all.
Neither is a system where people bust their backsides for fifty years and still have nothing.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: That doesn't change that just shouting "bias!" in a poop'n'scoot and then pretending that wasn't what one was doing when called on it is plain dumb. .
I'm sorry, I should know better. HuffPo is a perfectly reasonable news outlet that simply states the facts with no political leanings and doesn't at all, never has disguised editorials, and never has misleading or omitted info, and never publishes stories bordering on conspiracy theory. They are above reproach and anyone that says they are is a bigot.
Meanwhile in other dakka threads...… FAUX News!!!! Propaganda!!!! Bias!!!
No one claimed they weren't biased or had no political leanings, that is a thing you're inventing, along with the other random gak you threw in at the end there. You made some pretty specific, unambiguous claims about how they're typically full of falsehoods. This specific article is heavily cited, so it was a fair question to see what falsehoods you spotted, in case you were interested in actually having a meaningful discussion about the article, and it wasn't just a particularly clumsy poop 'n scoop.
The fact that rather then standing by your assertion (or withdrawing it when unable to) you instead posted this word salad makes it pretty unambiguous what the original intent was. Sorry you got called out on the lame thing you did!
So far as the glass floor, I'm not sure having wealthy parents is a prerequisite. It seems once you hit a certain net wealth and level of success, it becomes almost impossible to go broke again. I'm not saying no one ever has, but the natural flow of our institutions seem to facilitate just continuously failing upwards, whether it's wall street or hollywood (Colin Treverrow comes to mind).
Albino Squirrel wrote: Wait wait wait... people are allowed to use their wealth to make their children's lives better and easier? We've got to put a stop to that!
Wait, people want a fair system where people succeed on their own merits? We've got to put a stop to that! /s
"People want a fair system" is a funny way of saying people want to punish those they are envious of, and want to take from those that have more. That's not fair at all.
Both points of view are valid. The issues come when people think they are mutually exclusive.
People who say "We just want a fair and equitable system!" tend to misunderstand how wealth works. They think wealth is a finite resource and that because X person has Y wealth that that means there is less wealth to go around. And thus they think the solution is to steal wealth from the people who have it and give it to those who don't.
This is the main fallacy in this situation, since wealth is not a finite resource. This notion was debunked with the philosophy of mercantilism. That isn't to say wealth is an infinite resource either. Wealth is an elastic concept. It is created by the perception of value that people ascribe to particular objects. Because this is the case, a particular person having a bunch of wealth does not actually prevent other people in any way from acquiring other kinds of wealth. And indeed, that is the core concept behind being an entrepreneur. An Entrepreneur is a person who creates wealth that did not exist before. They develop a new product or service that the market finds desirable and thus ascribes wealth to.
Which sounds very nice, but does nothing to help those who are struggling. It also ignores the reality; the expansion of wealth is also hoarded by the wealthy. The solution of 'adding new slices to the pie' doesn't work when all the new slices go to the very wealthy.
Albino Squirrel wrote: Wait wait wait... people are allowed to use their wealth to make their children's lives better and easier? We've got to put a stop to that!
Wait, people want a fair system where people succeed on their own merits? We've got to put a stop to that! /s
"People want a fair system" is a funny way of saying people want to punish those they are envious of, and want to take from those that have more. That's not fair at all.
No, that is not what he's saying nor is that the circumstance at hand. You are demonizing the opposing viewpoint on moral grounds rather than engaging it on rational terms.
Well, it's a completely irrational viewpoint, so how would one engage with it on rational terms? What could possibly be unfair about parents using their money to try and give their children better lives? Isn't that what we are all trying to do?
That isn't what he said. Once again you are creating a false argument, claiming it's his position, and responding to that. It makes it look like you are unable to form a rational counterpoint to his.
Albino Squirrel wrote: Wait wait wait... people are allowed to use their wealth to make their children's lives better and easier? We've got to put a stop to that!
Wait, people want a fair system where people succeed on their own merits? We've got to put a stop to that! /s
"People want a fair system" is a funny way of saying people want to punish those they are envious of, and want to take from those that have more. That's not fair at all.
Both points of view are valid. The issues come when people think they are mutually exclusive.
People who say "We just want a fair and equitable system!" tend to misunderstand how wealth works. They think wealth is a finite resource and that because X person has Y wealth that that means there is less wealth to go around. And thus they think the solution is to steal wealth from the people who have it and give it to those who don't.
This is the main fallacy in this situation, since wealth is not a finite resource. This notion was debunked with the philosophy of mercantilism. That isn't to say wealth is an infinite resource either. Wealth is an elastic concept. It is created by the perception of value that people ascribe to particular objects. Because this is the case, a particular person having a bunch of wealth does not actually prevent other people in any way from acquiring other kinds of wealth. And indeed, that is the core concept behind being an entrepreneur. An Entrepreneur is a person who creates wealth that did not exist before. They develop a new product or service that the market finds desirable and thus ascribes wealth to.
Which sounds very nice, but does nothing to help those who are struggling. It also ignores the reality; the expansion of wealth is also hoarded by the wealthy. The solution of 'adding new slices to the pie' doesn't work when all the new slices go to the very wealthy.
Albino Squirrel wrote: Wait wait wait... people are allowed to use their wealth to make their children's lives better and easier? We've got to put a stop to that!
Wait, people want a fair system where people succeed on their own merits? We've got to put a stop to that! /s
"People want a fair system" is a funny way of saying people want to punish those they are envious of, and want to take from those that have more. That's not fair at all.
No, that is not what he's saying nor is that the circumstance at hand. You are demonizing the opposing viewpoint on moral grounds rather than engaging it on rational terms.
Well, it's a completely irrational viewpoint, so how would one engage with it on rational terms? What could possibly be unfair about parents using their money to try and give their children better lives? Isn't that what we are all trying to do?
What could be unfair about parents using their money to try and give their children better lives? Where do I begin?
1.it's unfair to a capable person who was born to poor parents and worked to get an education and better himself to be lorded over by a lazy incompetent oaf whose sole qualification was being born to advantaged parents.
2.it's unfair to the workers at a company who can have their jobs, salaries, insurance and pensions that they've earned taken away from them because an idiotic scion of corporate exec parents caused the company they worked for to fail because he was placed in a position he did not earn and was not competent for.
3. It's unfair to the shareholders in the company that they don't get the dividends a competent leader could hve given them because an incomplete offspring of privelidged parents was running things.
Well, it's a completely irrational viewpoint, so how would one engage with it on rational terms? What could possibly be unfair about parents using their money to try and give their children better lives? Isn't that what we are all trying to do?
Good lord, I responded to an obviously sarcastic comment with more obvious sarcasm. I even added a /s.
@ Sobekta: Your point #1 is exactly why, for the most part, we no longer have absolute monarchies. Hereditary succession is a *bad* idea. Please note that this is a different concept from inheritance.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: That doesn't change that just shouting "bias!" in a poop'n'scoot and then pretending that wasn't what one was doing when called on it is plain dumb. .
I'm sorry, I should know better. HuffPo is a perfectly reasonable news outlet that simply states the facts with no political leanings and doesn't at all, never has disguised editorials, and never has misleading or omitted info, and never publishes stories bordering on conspiracy theory. They are above reproach and anyone that says they are is a bigot.
Meanwhile in other dakka threads...… FAUX News!!!! Propaganda!!!! Bias!!!
You could have just engaged in good faith. Instead you chose to respond with a strawman. QED.
Likewise the claim that rising living costs in the US is somehow the government's fault is so mind-boggling obviously a silly argument, as has already been pointed out.
But that's not a silly argument at all, just because you don't understand it or choose to ignore it.
You're right, it's silly because it's patently not true. If more government intervention is what has caused increased living costs, why does the US, with comparatively less government intervention in healthcare than every other Western country, spend such a disproportionate amount on healthcare?
The rest of the industrialized world doesn't have your problem with insane tuition fees and student debt either. You're an anomaly, and the difference is that you have LESS government intervention, not more.
Feel free to strawman this response just like you have everything else you've responded to.
The rest of the industrialized world doesn't have your problem with insane tuition fees and student debt either. You're an anomaly, and the difference is that you have LESS government intervention, not more.
Meanwhile in switzerland you have even Less interventions and non such issues aswell.
So que?
The rest of the industrialized world doesn't have your problem with insane tuition fees and student debt either. You're an anomaly, and the difference is that you have LESS government intervention, not more.
Meanwhile in switzerland you have even Less interventions and non such issues aswell.
So que?
True. At best you have an argument that government intervention is unrelated entirely, at worst an argument that more of it is better than less, but at no point does looking at any other industrialized country than the US lend credence to the idea that government intervention is the cause.
The rest of the industrialized world doesn't have your problem with insane tuition fees and student debt either. You're an anomaly, and the difference is that you have LESS government intervention, not more.
Meanwhile in switzerland you have even Less interventions and non such issues aswell. So que?
True. At best you have an argument that government intervention is unrelated entirely, at worst an argument that more of it is better than less, but at no point does looking at any other industrialized country than the US lend credence to the idea that government intervention is the cause.
Well, you could also point out the questionable interaction of poltical governmental system on the general culture of a country: E.g. Gunlaw, conscription, mandatory healthcare and psychological healthcare.
Switzerland has an estimated ammount of guns per capita as Texas, one of the highest. Personally i estimate way more but i am biased cause rural swiss + in region where the reduit is = seen many guns. Switzerland has comparatively non gun violence. And even less accidents comparatively.
Switzerland however also conscripts the male population and screens mandatory the psychological state, and has an actual insurance system covering issues like psychological healthcare. Ergo most of the population that is likely to own a gun (he i mean you get it for free, might aswell get it because payment and fun if you like to shoot) is propperly trained to use one and have one at home.
Government intervention can be an issue if it intenciveces wrong behaviour, see actibliz and the videogames industry not paying any taxes and infact getting tax money back. Or the market get negatively impacted most likely if the state intervens stupidly into the market of real estate and rent room. Non government intervention is also an issue.
Switzerland though has 1 significant advantage, solutions are generally compromised out of many groups makeing them take time but also more acceptable ergo easier to implement and due to the time it takes to reach one often more factors get regarded.
If anything the US has issues with questionable intervention, e.g. the Hemp thread which was lobbied for, an interesting topic indeed. Or the denial of digital databases on gun owners/ownership due to legal law lobbied for. If anything it's a wierd mixture of issues and interest parties atleast from my limited outside view.
I'm going to continue the trend of tangent and seize the branch of conversation that mentioned the glass floor relating to feminism.
It reminded me that the 'gender pay gap' is a privelege issue mire than a broader social issue: when you're being payed minimum wage there is no gender pay gap. We should prioritise offering a step up to all those on the bottom rung of the ladder, not to those few high flying females that are stuck on the penultimate step (as much as they may deserve the help).
AlmightyWalrus wrote: That doesn't change that just shouting "bias!" in a poop'n'scoot and then pretending that wasn't what one was doing when called on it is plain dumb. .
I'm sorry, I should know better. HuffPo is a perfectly reasonable news outlet that simply states the facts with no political leanings and doesn't at all, never has disguised editorials, and never has misleading or omitted info, and never publishes stories bordering on conspiracy theory. They are above reproach and anyone that says they are is a bigot.
Meanwhile in other dakka threads...… FAUX News!!!! Propaganda!!!! Bias!!!
You could have just engaged in good faith. Instead you chose to respond with a strawman. QED.
Likewise the claim that rising living costs in the US is somehow the government's fault is so mind-boggling obviously a silly argument, as has already been pointed out.
But that's not a silly argument at all, just because you don't understand it or choose to ignore it.
You're right, it's silly because it's patently not true. If more government intervention is what has caused increased living costs, why does the US, with comparatively less government intervention in healthcare than every other Western country, spend such a disproportionate amount on healthcare?
The rest of the industrialized world doesn't have your problem with insane tuition fees and student debt either. You're an anomaly, and the difference is that you have LESS government intervention, not more.
Feel free to strawman this response just like you have everything else you've responded to.
It's not patently untrue, you just don't know very much about basic economics.
Lets try and see if we can get the thread back on track with out violating any rules instead. If you read a post that breaks the rules then please hit the yellow triangle and tell a mod about it rather than engaging.
nareik wrote: I'm going to continue the trend of tangent and seize the branch of conversation that mentioned the glass floor relating to feminism.
It reminded me that the 'gender pay gap' is a privelege issue mire than a broader social issue: when you're being payed minimum wage there is no gender pay gap. We should prioritise offering a step up to all those on the bottom rung of the ladder, not to those few high flying females that are stuck on the penultimate step (as much as they may deserve the help).
The Gender Pay Gap is mostly a myth. If women want more pay, they can start by working more hours. Working more hours per week would put them on par with their male counterparts and up their pay by 17% or so.
Likewise the claim that rising living costs in the US is somehow the government's fault is so mind-boggling obviously a silly argument, as has already been pointed out.
But that's not a silly argument at all, just because you don't understand it or choose to ignore it.
You're right, it's silly because it's patently not true. If more government intervention is what has caused increased living costs, why does the US, with comparatively less government intervention in healthcare than every other Western country, spend such a disproportionate amount on healthcare?
The rest of the industrialized world doesn't have your problem with insane tuition fees and student debt either. You're an anomaly, and the difference is that you have LESS government intervention, not more.
.
For starters, my initial response to this thread was that I have skepticism about HuffPo articles because of their history. Others then incorrectly claimed that I said EVERYTHING HuffPo puts out is wrong, or that the article itself was in error. I was trying to say (and yes I did this poorly) that the article shouldn't just be taken at face value. I then got called out for knocking an entire news outlet, to which I pointed out the blatant hypocrisy from those that have done literally the same thing in the past.
Also, don't you think that it's more than a mere coincidence that college education costs started skyrocketing in the US about the time of government intervention?
Probably because of *how* the US government intervened.
Here in the Netherlands costs for healthcare, public transport, education etc have been skyrocketing since the government decided to privatise more or most of these.
Bran Dawri wrote: Probably because of *how* the US government intervened.
Here in the Netherlands costs for healthcare, public transport, education etc have been skyrocketing since the government decided to privatise more or most of these.
Privatizing is 'supposed' to lower cost because there's pressure to be efficient, because efficient means more profit. But that requires healthy competition, which is generally absent in the healthcare, public transport and education industries (due to huge start up costs and regulation). And businesses that fail aren't easily replaced with new competition, so it leans towards monopoly (on a local level) and high prices pretty quickly.
Bran Dawri wrote: Probably because of *how* the US government intervened.
Here in the Netherlands costs for healthcare, public transport, education etc have been skyrocketing since the government decided to privatise more or most of these.
Privatizing is 'supposed' to lower cost because there's pressure to be efficient, because efficient means more profit. But that requires healthy competition, which is generally absent in the healthcare, public transport and education industries (due to huge start up costs and regulation). And businesses that fail aren't easily replaced with new competition, so it leans towards monopoly (on a local level) and high prices pretty quickly.
And because when your leg just got broken you aren't in a position to shop around for the best healthcare option.
Well, that and here in the US what company can provide you health insurance is limited by law. It's not like a guy living in Huston can decide to get health insurance from a provider in New York.
cuda1179 wrote: Well, that and here in the US what company can provide you health insurance is limited by law. It's not like a guy living in Huston can decide to get health insurance from a provider in New York.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: So the issue isn't government intervention, it's inept government intervention or government intervention hamstrung by political reasons?
In a nutshell.... Yes. The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.
The Gender Pay Gap is mostly a myth. If women want more pay, they can start by working more hours. Working more hours per week would put them on par with their male counterparts and up their pay by 17% or so.
It's obviously not a myth if it exists. You can, I supposed, argue that it's a myth that women are paid less for the exact same work, although even the most carefully controlled study shows, yup, women are still usually paid less even if you control for as many variables as possible. But yes, a lot of the difference in men and women's pay is hours and years of work. Of course, women lose out on both due to family obligations on an overwhelming ratio. Childcare, care of the elderly and disabled, housework, cleaning, cooking... even in double income families these tasks are heavily tilted towards women. The other chunk of the earnings gap is explained by the fields men and women go into, in which mostly male fields typically out earn mostly female fields.
So yes, it's technically true that all women need to do is "work more hours," that ignores the enormous social, familial, and cultural barriers that get in the way.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: So the issue isn't government intervention, it's inept government intervention or government intervention hamstrung by political reasons?
In a nutshell.... Yes. The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.
Average healthcare premiums were rising rapidly before 2010 as well. There was nothing special about 2010 that increased the rate of average premium raise, so why did you call that year out specifically?
The Gender Pay Gap is mostly a myth. If women want more pay, they can start by working more hours. Working more hours per week would put them on par with their male counterparts and up their pay by 17% or so.
It's obviously not a myth if it exists. You can, I supposed, argue that it's a myth that women are paid less for the exact same work, although even the most carefully controlled study shows, yup, women are still usually paid less even if you control for as many variables as possible. But yes, a lot of the difference in men and women's pay is hours and years of work. Of course, women lose out on both due to family obligations on an overwhelming ratio. Childcare, care of the elderly and disabled, housework, cleaning, cooking... even in double income families these tasks are heavily tilted towards women. The other chunk of the earnings gap is explained by the fields men and women go into, in which mostly male fields typically out earn mostly female fields.
So yes, it's technically true that all women need to do is "work more hours," that ignores the enormous social, familial, and cultural barriers that get in the way.
This. A huge part is that women do a bunch of housework that pays nothing, while men reap the benefit of said housework.
The Gender Pay Gap is mostly a myth. If women want more pay, they can start by working more hours. Working more hours per week would put them on par with their male counterparts and up their pay by 17% or so.
It's obviously not a myth if it exists. You can, I supposed, argue that it's a myth that women are paid less for the exact same work, although even the most carefully controlled study shows, yup, women are still usually paid less even if you control for as many variables as possible. But yes, a lot of the difference in men and women's pay is hours and years of work. Of course, women lose out on both due to family obligations on an overwhelming ratio. Childcare, care of the elderly and disabled, housework, cleaning, cooking... even in double income families these tasks are heavily tilted towards women. The other chunk of the earnings gap is explained by the fields men and women go into, in which mostly male fields typically out earn mostly female fields.
So yes, it's technically true that all women need to do is "work more hours," that ignores the enormous social, familial, and cultural barriers that get in the way.
This. A huge part is that women do a bunch of housework that pays nothing, while men reap the benefit of said housework.
That vastly depends on the individual household though and has massive statistical error margin depending on the specific Arrangements.
Show me, then, your proof, propperly statistically described.
Edit: don't get me wrong, but it is ilusional to state it considering the vast majority of society in the western hemisphere lives only because dual income happens.
Additionally in such circumstances housework get's shared, else society would not even work.
Further you don't take into equation often rural societal structures in which granparents and other related persons step in and do another bunch of duties.
That is the issue i take with most studies showing the "Pay gap".
AlmightyWalrus wrote: So the issue isn't government intervention, it's inept government intervention or government intervention hamstrung by political reasons?
In a nutshell.... Yes. The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.
Average healthcare premiums were rising rapidly before 2010 as well. There was nothing special about 2010 that increased the rate of average premium raise, so why did you call that year out specifically?
I can't speak for him. but I know my parents always call out obamacare for making insurance expensive because the year it went into effect was also the year that they began paying their own insurance rather than having it covered by my dad's job. So now they see how much it increases every year and blame it on "stupid obamacare". You could explain to them that it increased before that too, but they wouldn't believe you because my dad's company went through a lot of effort to keep insurance costs down.
The Gender Pay Gap is mostly a myth. If women want more pay, they can start by working more hours. Working more hours per week would put them on par with their male counterparts and up their pay by 17% or so.
It's obviously not a myth if it exists. You can, I supposed, argue that it's a myth that women are paid less for the exact same work, although even the most carefully controlled study shows, yup, women are still usually paid less even if you control for as many variables as possible. But yes, a lot of the difference in men and women's pay is hours and years of work. Of course, women lose out on both due to family obligations on an overwhelming ratio. Childcare, care of the elderly and disabled, housework, cleaning, cooking... even in double income families these tasks are heavily tilted towards women. The other chunk of the earnings gap is explained by the fields men and women go into, in which mostly male fields typically out earn mostly female fields.
So yes, it's technically true that all women need to do is "work more hours," that ignores the enormous social, familial, and cultural barriers that get in the way.
This. A huge part is that women do a bunch of housework that pays nothing, while men reap the benefit of said housework.
That vastly depends on the individual household though and has massive statistical error margin depending on the specific Arrangements.
The sociological (and indeed ethnographic and anthropological) literature on second shift and its being heavily weighted towards women since it was originally foregrounded by Hochschild (1989) is vast and pretty much beyond dispute. It is a near-universal cross-cultural phenomenon.
Sub-heading E. Will spam more sources once I'm not on my phone.
So you give me an UN resolution, that refers me to a ton of studies.
Great.
So some have a clear agenda: like these study here: International Trade Union Confederation, “Investing in the care economy: a gender analysis of employment stimulus in seven OECD countries”. Beyond that extrapulatiing from 8 OECD nations only one of which is not in the "western World" is contemprary historically to be considerable in the "Westernized " structure and extrapulating from that to general makro sphere is questionable at best and outright moronical at worst.
(b)Strengthen the capacityand funding for national gender equality mechanisms to effectively support and monitor the mainstreaming of gender perspectives across labour and sustainable development policies, and work with labour institutions in their implementation
Sounds nice, means quota solution, do you know what happened with the quota solution in norway?
Additionally: Political empowerment has also no real argument because helloe hello, Conservative switzerland just voted in 40%+ in the national assembly.
Without quotas.
The Gender Pay Gap is mostly a myth. If women want more pay, they can start by working more hours. Working more hours per week would put them on par with their male counterparts and up their pay by 17% or so.
It's obviously not a myth if it exists. You can, I supposed, argue that it's a myth that women are paid less for the exact same work, although even the most carefully controlled study shows, yup, women are still usually paid less even if you control for as many variables as possible. But yes, a lot of the difference in men and women's pay is hours and years of work. Of course, women lose out on both due to family obligations on an overwhelming ratio. Childcare, care of the elderly and disabled, housework, cleaning, cooking... even in double income families these tasks are heavily tilted towards women. The other chunk of the earnings gap is explained by the fields men and women go into, in which mostly male fields typically out earn mostly female fields.
So yes, it's technically true that all women need to do is "work more hours," that ignores the enormous social, familial, and cultural barriers that get in the way.
This. A huge part is that women do a bunch of housework that pays nothing, while men reap the benefit of said housework.
That vastly depends on the individual household though and has massive statistical error margin depending on the specific Arrangements.
The sociological (and indeed ethnographic and anthropological) literature on second shift and its being heavily weighted towards women since it was originally foregrounded by Hochschild (1989) is vast and pretty much beyond dispute. It is a near-universal cross-cultural phenomenon.
Which is fascinating but it is still statistical absurditiy to claim makro without beeing actually makro. And still does not eliminate Statistical problems based upon the base stipulations of said statistics.
Are we playing the "give me evidence, but I'll reject all evidence game?"
Here's a major study (28,000 people) from the UK, with extensive cross tabs based on race, income, education, level, etc. It showed that women do roughly 69% of housework across all groups.
The Gender Pay Gap is mostly a myth. If women want more pay, they can start by working more hours. Working more hours per week would put them on par with their male counterparts and up their pay by 17% or so.
It's obviously not a myth if it exists. You can, I supposed, argue that it's a myth that women are paid less for the exact same work, although even the most carefully controlled study shows, yup, women are still usually paid less even if you control for as many variables as possible. But yes, a lot of the difference in men and women's pay is hours and years of work. Of course, women lose out on both due to family obligations on an overwhelming ratio. Childcare, care of the elderly and disabled, housework, cleaning, cooking... even in double income families these tasks are heavily tilted towards women. The other chunk of the earnings gap is explained by the fields men and women go into, in which mostly male fields typically out earn mostly female fields.
So yes, it's technically true that all women need to do is "work more hours," that ignores the enormous social, familial, and cultural barriers that get in the way.
This. A huge part is that women do a bunch of housework that pays nothing, while men reap the benefit of said housework.
That vastly depends on the individual household though and has massive statistical error margin depending on the specific Arrangements.
The sociological (and indeed ethnographic and anthropological) literature on second shift and its being heavily weighted towards women since it was originally foregrounded by Hochschild (1989) is vast and pretty much beyond dispute. It is a near-universal cross-cultural phenomenon.
Which is fascinating but it is still statistical absurditiy to claim makro without beeing actually makro. And still does not eliminate Statistical problems based upon the base stipulations of said statistics.
That it is a well-documented, near-universal cross-cultural motif precisely demonstrates its validity as a macro-scale generalisation (though I think 'macro' is being used somewhat inappropriately). I'd strongly suggest reading some of this material before making confident a priori statements about the statistical robustness of research.
These aren't articles from Slate or NPR, they're all from business friendly sources which seem to support the idea of cronyism.
This was covered fairly extensively during my MBA program, and it is quite the issue. . . Without getting into the dreaded P word, you can point the shift in thinking to lobbying and tax rates. Then, the board will elect a CEO with an incredibly high salary, because they know when it comes time for the salary of the rest of the board to come up, they'll get looked after. It really is a case of "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch your back"
Prior to the rise in skyrocketing executive pay, when companies were actively reinvesting in their workforce and facilities, the executives still made a ton of money (relative to the need required), and still had lavish lifestyles comparable to that of today, the biggest difference is that the rest of the company's assets were "healthy" and taken care of.
Polonius wrote: Are we playing the "give me evidence, but I'll reject all evidence game?"
Here's a major study (28,000 people) from the UK, with extensive cross tabs based on race, income, education, level, etc. It showed that women do roughly 69% of housework across all groups.
So you give me an UN resolution, that refers me to a ton of studies.
Great.
So some have a clear agenda: like these study here: International Trade Union Confederation, “Investing in the care economy: a gender analysis of employment stimulus in seven OECD countries”. Beyond that extrapulatiing from 8 OECD nations only one of which is not in the "western World" is contemprary historically to be considerable in the "Westernized " structure and extrapulating from that to general makro sphere is questionable at best and outright moronical at worst.
i don't quite think you understood my point but alas if you think i play said game i can 't change that.
BTW , i like the first one, because it goes after 3 specific questions.
I also like the questions themselves
(i)A pre-school child is likely to suffer if his or her mother works (ii)All in all, family life suffers when the woman has a full-time job (iii)Both the husband and wife should contribute to the household income (iv)A husband’s job is to earn money; a wife’s job is to look after the home and family
Altough the conclusion would be interesting, in regards to the persistence of the behaviour in the countries these ethnicities stem from.
that the definition of what constitutes domestic labour may vary across groups making direct comparisons across ethnic groups difficult. In addition there may be real differences in cultural habits that directly affect hours of domestic work, for example cooking meals from fresh produce vs using convenience foods.
Mostly because that would render extrapulation quite difficult.
I mean, I get having a healthy skepticism of claims, but the idea that women perform a larger share of domestic work is both common sense and well documented.
Polonius wrote: I mean, I get having a healthy skepticism of claims, but the idea that women perform a larger share of domestic work is both common sense and well documented.
My main argument is against the extrapulation from one position torwards an effect that you can state as general.
This is why i prefer the study the first one of you above the one i quoted out of the UN resolution.
that the definition of what constitutes domestic labour may vary across groups making direct comparisons across ethnic groups difficult. In addition there may be real differences in cultural habits that directly affect hours of domestic work, for example cooking meals from fresh produce vs using convenience foods.
Because it shows that the alone through the definition alone alot can change. And that said definitions are associated with the cultural backgorund and therefore the answers .
Of course i'd also like to see the effect of other social structures on the population e.g. Conscription.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: So the issue isn't government intervention, it's inept government intervention or government intervention hamstrung by political reasons?
In a nutshell.... Yes. The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.
Average healthcare premiums were rising rapidly before 2010 as well. There was nothing special about 2010 that increased the rate of average premium raise, so why did you call that year out specifically?
AlmightyWalrus wrote: So the issue isn't government intervention, it's inept government intervention or government intervention hamstrung by political reasons?
In a nutshell.... Yes. The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.
Average healthcare premiums were rising rapidly before 2010 as well. There was nothing special about 2010 that increased the rate of average premium raise, so why did you call that year out specifically?
AlmightyWalrus wrote: So the issue isn't government intervention, it's inept government intervention or government intervention hamstrung by political reasons?
In a nutshell.... Yes. The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.
Average healthcare premiums were rising rapidly before 2010 as well. There was nothing special about 2010 that increased the rate of average premium raise, so why did you call that year out specifically?
*while it's technically true that premiums have been rising since 2010, it's a lie of omission to pretend it started there - a lazy, easily debunked lie. Definitely a trend but what do I know.
This thread really highlights the sort of epistemological problem we are in. Not only is there legitimate confusion as to what is "true" but there is confusion about what "true" even means. Let alone the question of who is or is not "qualified" or "trustworthy" enough to discover or deliver that "truth."
Ensis Ferrae wrote: This was covered fairly extensively during my MBA program, and it is quite the issue. . . Without getting into the dreaded P word, you can point the shift in thinking to lobbying and tax rates. Then, the board will elect a CEO with an incredibly high salary, because they know when it comes time for the salary of the rest of the board to come up, they'll get looked after. It really is a case of "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch your back"
Prior to the rise in skyrocketing executive pay, when companies were actively reinvesting in their workforce and facilities, the executives still made a ton of money (relative to the need required), and still had lavish lifestyles comparable to that of today, the biggest difference is that the rest of the company's assets were "healthy" and taken care of.
This segues back to the OP pretty nicely, and not only are the problems you pointed out huge, but it also causes an impossible balance. Either you have a conflict of interest if you're honest, or you're colluding in a non-competitive way if you aren't.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: So the issue isn't government intervention, it's inept government intervention or government intervention hamstrung by political reasons?
In a nutshell.... Yes. The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.
Average healthcare premiums were rising rapidly before 2010 as well. There was nothing special about 2010 that increased the rate of average premium raise, so why did you call that year out specifically?
Oh, I think you know perfectly well why
I do, but I prefer to call it out so that I can respond "so this IS politics, let's drop it" rather than leaving it as a thinly-veiled 'not-politics' line of discussion.
Polonius wrote: I think a link to a podcast with Cory Doctorow is the most internet thing ever.
Well, you'll have to forgive me, since I have no idea who he is outside having heard the postcast this morning.
But actually on second thought, you just sort of proved my point...
He was one of the first "internet intellectuals." Blogged a lot about intellectual property and creative commons, and kind of became shorthand for "person trying to make the internet live up to it's potential."
And forgive my snark, but podcasts replaced blogs as the sort of easy entry creative endeavor.
As for truth, I think all cultures have grappled with it, we just mostly have the records from the philosophers, not the Joe Six-packs of enlightenment France or Ancient Greece.
I'll check out the podcast to see the actually point you're making (it's currently workblocked), but I will say that I think one thing that many people get wrong, either accidentally or perhaps even intentionally, is to assume that flawed evidence loses all probative value. Meaning, I'm not talking about a single, small sample sized study, those can be quickly shown to be variance. But if you have multiple, large studies, which all come to similar findings, even if there are some possible flaws in the study, it does not fully eliminate all the value of those studies. (by far the biggest roadblock to truth seeking is motivated reasoning, and putting some sort of tribalism ahead of reality, but that's so well known as to be obvious.)
Polonius wrote: I mean, I get having a healthy skepticism of claims, but the idea that women perform a larger share of domestic work is both common sense and well documented.
Polonius wrote: I'll check out the podcast to see the actually point you're making (it's currently workblocked), but I will say that I think one thing that many people get wrong, either accidentally or perhaps even intentionally, is to assume that flawed evidence loses all probative value. Meaning, I'm not talking about a single, small sample sized study, those can be quickly shown to be variance. But if you have multiple, large studies, which all come to similar findings, even if there are some possible flaws in the study, it does not fully eliminate all the value of those studies. (by far the biggest roadblock to truth seeking is motivated reasoning, and putting some sort of tribalism ahead of reality, but that's so well known as to be obvious.)
Well, my point, very broadly, is the there is a problem of epistemology. We want to know what is "true" but we, as a society, sometimes fail to live up to our own standards of determining what that would be.
Let me share a few quotes from the show's transcript to give you an idea:
Yeah, and I think that the fragmentation of our beliefs is important but overrated compared to the fragmentation of our epistemology, of how we know what to believe in. That in a complicated technical society, we long ago had to put away the idea that you would just ask a trusted person what was true, and instead we have trusted processes. That there are reasons that people of good will might disagree about the technical answer to hard questions like what what food preparation techniques will allow you to eat your dinner without dropping dead before breakfast, or which pharmaceutical products are safe to use and under what circumstances, or is the reinforced steel joist that’s holding up the roof over our head of sufficient strength and flexibility to keep us all from dying from the roof falling on our head?
All of those things are questions that we can’t hope to navigate individually, you… Even if you had the media literacy to know which scientific journals are trustworthy and which ones aren’t, and the statistical literacy to evaluate studies to see whether they were performed well, you wouldn’t have the domain expertise to then actually look at the technical particulars of all of those studies to evaluate them. But we have a process, we have truth-seeking exercises where independent adjudicators hear from multiple experts, they listen to the competing claims, they explain their reasoning when they come to a conclusion, they are bound by strict ethical guidelines about how they can be related to the parties whose claims they’re hearing, and there is a process for appeal if new facts come to light or if the process was revealed to have had flaws.
But that process has become increasingly fraught. The ability of truth-seeking to actually look for the truth is now cabined by the extent to which the truth gores a billionaires ox. And so truth-seeking has become something of an auction, and that is really problematic. You alluded to Boeing and the 737 MAX. The 737 MAX was a decision by an expert body that Boeing could self-regulate certain elements of its safety features. That was wrong on its face; it should have been obvious that that was wrong.
Now, is he 100% iron-clad right and that truth is always now an auction? Probably not, but it is something to consider. For example, he goes on:
People who don’t believe in vaccinations, I think, are wrong, but the story they tell of why they shouldn’t trust vaccines is right. They say the pharmaceutical industry is super concentrated, it’s run by financialized management elites who don’t care if they kill the people who take their products, and the regulators who are supposed to regulate them actually let them get away with murder. And as Exhibit A, I would cite the opioid epidemic. And understanding why claims that the conclusions that our truth-seeking exercises have come to about vaccines are true, and the conclusions that they came to about opioids were false because the reason we have the opioid epidemic is not just because of the Sacklers and Purdue Pharma, it’s because the NIH and the FDA allowed tainted evidence to produce guidance about the safety of opioids that was wrong and should have been understood to be wrong.
So, we would be right to be skeptical, but the catch is, our skeptical conclusions wouldn't always be right. He goes on:
Increasingly there are conspiracies. So there’s a widespread belief among some African-Americans that in Katrina, the reason that the black parishes were flooded was that the levees were dynamited to spare the white neighborhoods. I don’t think that happened; it seems that that didn’t happen. However, in the ’50s, in Tupelo, Mississippi, they dynamited the levees to flood the black neighborhoods and spare the white neighborhoods. And so in the absence of confirming or disconfirming evidence, the hypothesis that maybe this happened… Once is accident, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action. If it’s happened a bunch of times, it’s not unreasonable to think maybe it happened again. You scratch a Ufologist, you find someone who knows chapter and verse about real military and aerospace cover-ups. Now, I don’t think that Area 51 is stuffed full of aliens, but I do think that there are military cover-ups.
And so what we end up falling back on rather than does the truth-seeking exercise think it’s true or not, is this heuristic of does someone who says things that have turned out to be correct tell me that there is a conspiracy afoot. And if so, I guess I’ll just trust them based on whatever they say.
So, we have a problem here, because the process isn't working as it likely should. We are just picking and choosing who to believe and they are just picking and choosing what they want to believe. That isn't likely to be a good recipe for "truth." Even if we disagree with what we should consider truth, it hard to imagine that this process would get us anywhere, but maintaining the position of what I'd call "vested interests."
So, I am not really citing him as some "authority" and if it seemed so, I apologize, he just seems to articulate something I had already thought about in a way that is probably better than I could, generally. That doesn't mean I, or he, is 100% correct, but I think the perspective has merit to be considered, at least.
My main argument is against the extrapulation from one position torwards an effect that you can state as general.
This is why i prefer the study the first one of you above the one i quoted out of the UN resolution.
I find this confusing. The literature consistently demonstrates this to be the case in most families in most contexts in most cultures? What stronger evidence so you want in order to make the general observation that women tend to be tasked with the majority of this work?
that the definition of what constitutes domestic labour may vary across groups making direct comparisons across ethnic groups difficult. In addition there may be real differences in cultural habits that directly affect hours of domestic work, for example cooking meals from fresh produce vs using convenience foods.
Because it shows that the alone through the definition alone alot can change. And that said definitions are associated with the cultural backgorund and therefore the answers .
Of course i'd also like to see the effect of other social structures on the population e.g. Conscription.
That definitions of domestic labour are not cross-culturally consistent is obviously well understood by sociologists, ethnographers, and anthropologists. Considerable work has gone into controlling for such variables (heck, since post- and anti-structuralism, I'd argue that social theory's primary collective goal has been to develop frameworks suited to cross-cultural, contextual applications) Again, it would be worth reading some of the (vast, and therefore sporting many summary texts and comprehensive edited volumes) material before dismissing a decades of peer-reviewed research.
Again you are not reading propperly what i stated like in the rent situation, so why should i bother.
But again just for you.
The study in the Un Resolution is about 8 states which are all western except Japan which you can consider westernized, all of them are developped.
Contrary to poloniuses study which propperly managed scope.
Infact the study in the Un Resolution i picked out at random regardless if it is good or bad is used to extrapulate, without care. Which is statistically nonsense.
Especially because A eurozentristic and B the population within is only considering " developped "countries.
I don't think you're citing him as an authority, any more than I think he's wrong. He's not wrong, just like a lot of public intellectuals, he's taking a few simple concepts and combining them to try to make a really interesting point.
I agree that due to specialization, nobody can personally test every claim out there. We have to, and most of us do, follow experts.
I don't think that the corruption of experts is an epistemological issue though. Who watches the watchers is an ancient issue. I don't think all of our consensus is tainted by money, and I don't think money is successful all of the time. But when an agent is corrupted, and intentionally makes a wrong call, that's not a problem with truth, that's a problem with process. It's exacerbated by our societies obsession with deregulation, to be sure.
the opioid crisis is a really interesting case study, because those drugs were insanely profitable, for a long time, and there was enormous incentive to keep doctor's prescribing them in huge numbers. But... and this is where it gets interesting... money isn't the only reason. the medical community began to see pain as something they had undervalued or overlooked, and the safer opioids were seen as a great entry. As a medical provider, when you hear people telling you that Percocet let's them function like a person instead of staying in their recliner all day, you see it as a good drug.
My point is, I think everybody had motivated reasoning. Pharma had a profit center, doctors could actually ease pain, and patients got pain relief. I think everybody wanted to keep the drugs flowing until it became obvious how harmful they were. I have friends that are still on chronic opioid doses.
So, traditionally, conspiracies grew in communities that felt powerless, and had little trust of the authorities. It's now grown beyond that, but as Doctorow pointed out, when you have an authority saying "I may have lied then, but I'm telling the truth now" it's easy to understand.
I don't think people decide who to trust, and then believe everything they say, or at least not directly. A lot of political belief can stem from fairly hard wired personality traits, especially a few of the "Big Five." So, a person who is highly conscientious is more likely to lean conservative, while a person who is very open to new experience will lean liberal. I think it's safe to say that this affects a lot of motivated reasoning or expert shopping. Now, once they trust somebody, they're likely to base more and more of their views on that source.
Critical thinking is the key here, and that involves a certain amount of insight. To give a tiny personal example, I had a very positive experience in Greek Life in college. For a long time, I was very prone to defending Greek Life based on that. As time moved on, I became less emotionally attached, and I saw more and more evidence of the harm it does, and now I'm much more neutral.
In much the same way, a person who is very conscientious and hard working may be very judgmental of the poor, since he can very easily connect the dots between his own hard work and success. That's very natural, but it makes it hard for that person to be rational when discussing welfare.
Not Online!!! wrote: Again you are not reading propperly what i stated like in the rent situation, so why should i bother.
But again just for you.
The study in the Un Resolution is about 8 states which are all western except Japan which you can consider westernized, all of them are developped.
Contrary to poloniuses study which propperly managed scope.
Infact the study in the Un Resolution i picked out at random regardless if it is good or bad is used to extrapulate, without care. Which is statistically nonsense.
Especially because A eurozentristic and B the population within is only considering " developped "countries.
I'm not talking about the UN report. I'm saying there's a vast corpus of academic literature over at least two decades tackling this in detail across the globe. Why do you not think such work is relevant? The classic text is Second Shift, but the material rethinking it is enormous and required reading before trying dismiss its validity.
Not Online!!! wrote: Again you are not reading propperly what i stated like in the rent situation, so why should i bother.
But again just for you.
The study in the Un Resolution is about 8 states which are all western except Japan which you can consider westernized, all of them are developped.
Contrary to poloniuses study which propperly managed scope.
Infact the study in the Un Resolution i picked out at random regardless if it is good or bad is used to extrapulate, without care. Which is statistically nonsense.
Especially because A eurozentristic and B the population within is only considering " developped "countries.
I'm not talking about the UN report. I'm saying there's a vast corpus of academic literature over at least two decades tackling this in detail across the globe. Why do you not think such work is relevant?
Where have i stated it is irrelevant?
Have i explicitly stated that it is irrelevant?
No i didnt
So again what is your issue?
I guess a more interesting question is: is there any evidence, anywhere, in any culture, under any definition of "domestic work," in which men do more than women?
Have i explicitly stated that it is irrelevant?
No i didnt
So again what is your issue?
I think some of this might be a language barrier, but it's not always clear what you are saying. Your posts come up as dismissive of the evidence and showing a general antipathy towards the idea that women face structural challenges in their home lives which affect their career. I don't know if I'm the only one, but that's how they read to me.
Not Online!!! wrote: Again you are not reading propperly what i stated like in the rent situation, so why should i bother.
But again just for you.
The study in the Un Resolution is about 8 states which are all western except Japan which you can consider westernized, all of them are developped.
Contrary to poloniuses study which propperly managed scope.
Infact the study in the Un Resolution i picked out at random regardless if it is good or bad is used to extrapulate, without care. Which is statistically nonsense.
Especially because A eurozentristic and B the population within is only considering " developped "countries.
I'm not talking about the UN report. I'm saying there's a vast corpus of academic literature over at least two decades tackling this in detail across the globe. Why do you not think such work is relevant?
Where have i stated it is irrelevant?
Have i explicitly stated that it is irrelevant?
No i didnt
So again what is your issue?
I have inferred that you think it irrelevant.
What you have done is rejected that any valid generalised observations can be made about the propensity for women to perform the bulk of unpaid and familial labour in society. My question, consistently, if decades of material demonstrates that women do this most of the time in most contexts in most societies, why do you believe that no such generalisations can be made?
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Polonius wrote: I guess a more interesting question is: is there any evidence, anywhere, in any culture, under any definition of "domestic work," in which men do more than women?
Right. Before continuing, please note that I used "macro" in the sense of "on a societal level" as opposed to "on a per household level" and not in some other way. Substitute "on average" or "in general" if you feel that's a better choice of words.
Here's another OECD report that concludes that women work to a greater extent than men in the informal economy while men work more than women in the formal economy, and that this holds across 26 developed and 3 developing economies but to differing degrees:
http://www.oecd.org/dev/development-gender/unpaid_care_work.pdf
Kamp Dush, Yavorsky and Schoppe-Sullivan (2017) demonstrate that in highly educated white US families the time spent at leisure by the man in a couple while the woman works increases after they become parents, whereas the woman's time spent at leisure while the man works remains more or less constant.
Sayer (2005) supports the notion that women did more informal work than men but also noted that the difference had been significantly reduced between 1965 and 2005, largely as a result of the introduction of the microwave and changing societal expectations about housekeeping, but also notes that men's share of the housekeeping work has increased since 1965.
Hochschild (1989) has already been mentioned.
I could keep going, but there's a limit to my patience and the value to the thread.
Hochshild, A. R., and Machung, A. (1989) "The Second Shift" Viking Penguin
Kamp Dush, Yavorsky and Schoppe-Sullivan (2018) "What Are Men Doing while Women Perform Extra Unpaid Labor? Leisure and Specialization at the Transitions to Parenthood" Sex Roles 78: 715
Sayer, L. (2005). "Gender, Time and Inequality: Trends in Women's and Men's Paid Work, Unpaid Work and Free Time." Social Forces, 84(1), 285-303
Polonius wrote: I guess a more interesting question is: is there any evidence, anywhere, in any culture, under any definition of "domestic work," in which men do more than women?
If not, we're just arguing about degrees.
Degrees are still somthing diffrent then general.
Atleast imo.
I think this is likely the case. A bit of crossed wires via communications issues.
Like the rent debatte?
You know inferring someones position is considered impolite here.
Maybee do it less.
Polonius wrote: I don't think you're citing him as an authority, any more than I think he's wrong. He's not wrong, just like a lot of public intellectuals, he's taking a few simple concepts and combining them to try to make a really interesting point.
I agree that due to specialization, nobody can personally test every claim out there. We have to, and most of us do, follow experts.
Well, my apologies, but I thought you were just dismissing it based on his name.
Polonius wrote: I don't think that the corruption of experts is an epistemological issue though. Who watches the watchers is an ancient issue. I don't think all of our consensus is tainted by money, and I don't think money is successful all of the time. But when an agent is corrupted, and intentionally makes a wrong call, that's not a problem with truth, that's a problem with process. It's exacerbated by our societies obsession with deregulation, to be sure.
the opioid crisis is a really interesting case study, because those drugs were insanely profitable, for a long time, and there was enormous incentive to keep doctor's prescribing them in huge numbers. But... and this is where it gets interesting... money isn't the only reason. the medical community began to see pain as something they had undervalued or overlooked, and the safer opioids were seen as a great entry. As a medical provider, when you hear people telling you that Percocet let's them function like a person instead of staying in their recliner all day, you see it as a good drug.
My point is, I think everybody had motivated reasoning. Pharma had a profit center, doctors could actually ease pain, and patients got pain relief. I think everybody wanted to keep the drugs flowing until it became obvious how harmful they were. I have friends that are still on chronic opioid doses.
Well, that's what I mean though, in the sense of an epistemological process. That process starts, lets say, at the scientist and runs all the way down to John Q. Public. The thing is, there is "vested interest," as you point out, at every level. And they don't really have to be nefarious vested interests. Doctors wanting to give people the "best care" is a vested interest, that then could be subverted and misused by someone else's vested interest of selling a drug. That's what I mean about a failure of epistemological process. Because the process, should, in my opinion, protect us from "flattering (un)truths" and much as from blatant lies. in fact, in a way, the former is more dangerous, since it becomes harder to "disprove" that which we so want to hear.
Polonius wrote: So, traditionally, conspiracies grew in communities that felt powerless, and had little trust of the authorities. It's now grown beyond that, but as Doctorow pointed out, when you have an authority saying "I may have lied then, but I'm telling the truth now" it's easy to understand.
I don't think people decide who to trust, and then believe everything they say, or at least not directly. A lot of political belief can stem from fairly hard wired personality traits, especially a few of the "Big Five." So, a person who is highly conscientious is more likely to lean conservative, while a person who is very open to new experience will lean liberal. I think it's safe to say that this affects a lot of motivated reasoning or expert shopping. Now, once they trust somebody, they're likely to base more and more of their views on that source.
Critical thinking is the key here, and that involves a certain amount of insight. To give a tiny personal example, I had a very positive experience in Greek Life in college. For a long time, I was very prone to defending Greek Life based on that. As time moved on, I became less emotionally attached, and I saw more and more evidence of the harm it does, and now I'm much more neutral.
In much the same way, a person who is very conscientious and hard working may be very judgmental of the poor, since he can very easily connect the dots between his own hard work and success. That's very natural, but it makes it hard for that person to be rational when discussing welfare.
Well, this is why, not that I think it, like anything else, is 100% the Truth, but I do see a very keen utility in a sort of Kantian deontology. Because the moment you do lie, for example, you are well and open to the very real doubt that, well, you might just be lying again. There is a sort of duty to Truth they is beyond the matter at hand, to the very notion of truth.
Now, I have no way to know how generalizable this is, but people have directly told me, with no irony, to "only trust what comes from [this particular] new source, everything else is a lie, they tell the truth though." So, I do believe that some people do, in fact, have a source they consider "infallible." And even when that source is demonstrated to be in the wrong, in order to be self-consistent, they would demand the whole rest of the world be wrong.
Is that everyone? No. But these people do exist, I find. So, there is, seemingly, a lack of "critical thinking." There is use in being skeptical, but it has to be bounded, of course. Unfortunately, there are people out there who only "creatively" use their skepticism, to protect vested interests. Now, it's of course a hard-sell to get people out of that sort of mind-set. But, I think most things are not the sort of binary issues, or zero-sum games we are apt to think they are when we don't think really critically.
I think this is likely the case. A bit of crossed wires via communications issues.
Like the rent debatte?
You know inferring someones position is considered impolite here.
Maybee do it less.
Firstly, yes, I think you were sometimes quite unclear in that thread, too.
Secondly, for my part, I think that when someone's prose is opaque, and you've sought to ask them to clarify without success, inference is necessary. However, if I've inferred incorrectly, please correct me. Why do you believe the vast data describing the consistent gendered weighting of household tasks across cultures to be insufficient to make generalised observations?
Lastly (I see you've edited your post, but I'll reply to the remark anyway), I'm not arguing from authority, supposed or otherwise, I'm just familiar with the literature because I occasionally mark university essays tackling gender roles in cross-cultural contexts.
I think this is likely the case. A bit of crossed wires via communications issues.
Like the rent debatte?
You know inferring someones position is considered impolite here.
Maybee do it less.
Firstly, yes, I think you were sometimes quite unclear in that thread, too.
Secondly, if I've inferred incorrectly, please correct me. Why do you believe the vast data describing the consistent gendered weighting of household tasks across cultures to be insufficient to make generalised observations?
Lastly (I see you've edited your post, but I'll reply to the remark anyway), I'm not arguing from authority, supposed or otherwise, I'm just familiar with the literature because I occasionally mark university essays tackling gender roles in cross-cultural contexts.
A: Yes incorrect. I asked for proof, someone gave me proof, i looked at it and realized with my education that statistically that is not what you should get out of the cited study, which btw came from a clearly agenda pushing source. I never did dismiss any sources or ALL sources outright , so you are again Inferring.
Like that time before.
B: Instead of inferring maybee write a PM then if i am unclear. Or don't and further inferr.
C: Yes you did. And also just a friendly reminder, sociology falls under humanites.
Do you know what is said about humanites? even more so then natural science? Paradigmas, Kuhn?
I personally don't mind the literature infact i find it one of the more interesting fields, i just don't believe in quantitative studies applying to the whole of the world (especially when the countries and studies used to gain that are not considerable as representative) and developping an political demand out of it, even tough you have allready MASSIVE statistical errors and error margines within the expected result due to the massive cultural differences to the countries you apply that. That is my issue with the whole UN schtick. And just personally a issue i have with many studies going far above and beyond in scope in my opinion.
TLDR: You can state all you want that it is perfectly fine to do so, i will have my doubts about that. Just like it was said that democracy is for all societies a good system. Regardless of culture. So yes Methodology is my issue with the field more often then not.
So, it isn't even just as "simple" as people wanting to "believe" their selected expert. People are also just rationalizing their own behavior to try to appear consistent at times.
So, it isn't even just as "simple" as people wanting to "believe" their selected expert. People are also just rationalizing their own behavior to try to appear consistent at times.
A: Yes incorrect. I asked for proof, someone gave me proof, i looked at it and realized with my education that statistically that is not what you should get out of the cited study, which btw came from a clearly agenda pushing source. I never did dismiss any sources or ALL sources, so you are again Inferring.
Like that time before.
Obviously no study is going to be statistically sufficient to extrapolate to massive groups. However, that almost all studies across decades asking the question largely support identical conclusion does.
What new inference am I making here? Have you investigated any of the vast literature to which I am referring?
B: Instead of inferring maybee write a PM then if i am unclear. Or don't and further inferr.
I'm not going to write you PMs to seek clarifications that might be relevant to other readers. That defeats the whole point of a forum! For what it's worth, the second sentence implies that if I don't want to PM you then I SHOULD infer. Is that actually what you mean?
C: Yes you did. And also just a friendly reminder, sociology falls under humanites.
Do you know what is said about humanites? even more so then natural science? Paradigmas, Kuhn?
Yes, sociology (and anthropology and ethnography, and indeed archaeology, which may all be more important if the issue you're keen to use to reject the cross-cultural applicability of gender balance in household work) is a humanities subject. Yes, research paradigms exist. I'm unsure of the point being made here?
I personally don't mind the literature infact i find it one of the more interesting fields, i just don't believe in quantitative studies applying to the whole of the world and developping an political demand out of it, even tough you have allready MASSIVE statistical errors and error margines within the expected result due to the massive cultural differences to the countries you apply that. That is my issue with the whole UN schtick. And just personally a issue i have with many studies going far above and beyond in scope in my opinion.
Uncritical extrapolations across contexts are of course a significant problem. The humanities as a metadiscipline has been heavily involved in internal critique to try and avoid this problem for several decades. As I said, I think addressing this has been social theory's main occupation since post-structuralism. If you familiarise yourself with the material, I think you might be less worried that it is remains a common motif - though in some sub-disciplines it is. Certainly, I don't think it is a problem where we are specifically discussing a phenomenon that does reveal itself consistently across demographics and cultures and, insofar as we can tell, across considerable chronological scales.
TLDR: You can state all you want that it is perfectly fine to do so, i will have my doubts about that. Just like it was said that democracy is for all societies a good system. Regardless of culture.
You claiming i have just dismissed all literature is inferring.
B: context matters.
I am not a native speaker of english.
I also stated that i consider it impolite, if you don't understand a point ask instead of inferring.
As for this
main occupation since post-structuralism. If you familiarise yourself with the material, I think you might be less worried that it is remains a common motif - though in some sub-disciplines it is. Certainly, I don't think it is a problem where we are specifically discussing a phenomenon that does reveal itself consistently across demographics and cultures and, insofar as we can tell, across considerable chronological scales.
First you admit that uncritical extrapolation is an issue.
Yeah yet it took me literally 5 Minutes to pick out a study used for such an extrapolation in the Un Resolution from AlmightyWalrus even though the study was only across western societies to be used in a demand for political Action. The issue is or was not the study itself no the issue was the result in the Un Resolution used as proof.
And to this Moment you still infer that i just throw out all evidence and literature. Which I repeatedly stated i do not.
As I see it one can never be enough cautious in regards of the methods and extrapolation used.
Especially if it is used in a political context to change laws etc.
Neuroscience will likely reveal to us that we are not the things we think we are.
Thinking probably helps. But sometimes, it might not. Because rationality isn't, most probably, the thing we think it is either, or experience it as. Maybe it's all just normative claims, all the way down.
Then we have the problem of just what is normative and how do we get to that? Science, is, in part, prying open the can of worms that is consciousness, which seems to me, an epistemological can of worms (in addition to other things) and we probably won't like what we collectively find inside. It's probably not what we would imagine, experientially, there is. Not to mention what dataism and big data is doing as well. We are going to find that things are likely different than we'd like to reason they are.
Not Online!!! wrote: You claiming i have just dismissed all literature is inferring.
Oh, ok. I thought you meant I was making a new inference.
B: context matters.
Obviously. Funnily enough, my entire PhD can largely be boiled down to that phrase.
I am not a native speaker of english.
I also stated that i consider impolite, if you don't understand a point ask instead of inferring.
I ask you to clarify quite often. You usually don't.
As for this
main occupation since post-structuralism. If you familiarise yourself with the material, I think you might be less worried that it is remains a common motif - though in some sub-disciplines it is. Certainly, I don't think it is a problem where we are specifically discussing a phenomenon that does reveal itself consistently across demographics and cultures and, insofar as we can tell, across considerable chronological scales.
First you admit that uncritical extrapolation is an issue.
Admit is an odd choice of language. 'Agree' is more appropriate.
Yeah yet it took me literally 5 Minutes to pick out a study used for such an extrapolation in the Un Resolution from AlmightyWalrus even though the study was only across western societies to be used in a demand for political Action. The issue is or was not the study itself no the issue was the result in the Un Resolution used as proof.
And? I didn't write the UN study nor cite it. The fact I say such extrapolation is a problem does not mean it does not exist. Indeed, I state flatly that it does.
And to this Moment you still infer that i just throw out all evidence and literature. Which I repeatedly stated i do not.
Have you familiarised yourself with any of the vast literature to which I have refered repeatedly? The decades of work drawing upon Second Shift, for example? The ethnographic and anthropological work tackling domestic work gender balance? If so, why do you believe that it insufficient evidence of a general tendency towards domestic labour being overwhelmingly weighted towards women?
As I see it one can never be enough cautious in regards of the methods and extrapolation used.
Completely agree. That's why I keep asking the above question. If the overwhelming majority of studies across cultures, demographics, and chronologies bear the same result, why can we not say that that result is the dominant apparent tendency?
Anyway, there's a lot of fluff here so I'm out until that specific question gets answered. It's all I've been trying to ascertain all along, anyway!
Have you familiarised yourself with any of the vast literature to which I have refered repeatedly? The decades of work drawing upon Second Shift, for example? The ethnographic and anthropological work tackling domestic work gender balance? If so, why do you believe that it insufficient evidence of a general tendency towards domestic labour being overwhelmingly weighted towards women?
Ahhhh here the classic academic authority position.
And no i have probably comparatively not as much insight in the Materie then you, however i still have not in any way shape of form said it is not the case.
However: true nie enere Statistik wod ned sälber gefälscht hesch also applies.
Or since you probably don't speak that thing above, i am generally doubtfull about extrapolation. Period. My Metier is normaly Philosophy and history aswell as political systems.
It's my Personal Bias.
And tendencially extrapolation is bad at explaining systems.
Like nationalism. Or democratic development/institutional development.
There is such a thing as drawing doubt well beyond the level of reasonableness. Doubt for the sake of doubt is meaningless. How much proof do you require of something before you consider extrapolation valid?
Further, that women do a greater degree of unpaid domestic labour is not a system.
Neuroscience will likely reveal to us that we are not the things we think we are.
Thinking probably helps. But sometimes, it might not. Because rationality isn't, most probably, the thing we think it is either, or experience it as. Maybe it's all just normative claims, all the way down.
Then we have the problem of just what is normative and how do we get to that? Science, is, in part, prying open the can of worms that is consciousness, which seems to me, an epistemological can of worms (in addition to other things) and we probably won't like what we collectively find inside. It's probably not what we would imagine, experientially, there is. Not to mention what dataism and big data is doing as well. We are going to find that things are likely different than we'd like to reason they are.
There are matters of deep philosophical thinking... Then there's researchers taking the opinion people wrote, changing it to the opposite opinion, asking them to confirm that yes, this is indeed the opinion they have always had, then half the people say yes and go on to defend the opposite opinion to what they had coming in.
There are thought puzzles, mysteries of the universe, matters of perception and perspective... then there's just dam stupid. I have low expectations for people. I was not surprised in the slightest to hear of those results in a study. But the amount shocked me.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: There is such a thing as drawing doubt well beyond the level of reasonableness. Doubt for the sake of doubt is meaningless. How much proof do you require of something before you consider extrapolation valid?
Further, that women do a greater degree of unpaid domestic labour is not a system.
So society is not a system? Then what is it?
Secondly i again will reiterate since i am not against the academic consensus.
I am against the extrapolation for political sake f.e.in your exemple.
I further generally am vary about it.
And I never stated you can't extrapulate it, infact mostlikely you can, however that does not mean that you shouldn't be carfeull or atleast more carefull then the UN was in your exemple no?
Which is why we have more than one study showing the same thing. Taken in isolation you may be right, but when all the studies point in the same direction we should probably sit up and take notice, no?
Have you familiarised yourself with any of the vast literature to which I have refered repeatedly? The decades of work drawing upon Second Shift, for example? The ethnographic and anthropological work tackling domestic work gender balance? If so, why do you believe that it insufficient evidence of a general tendency towards domestic labour being overwhelmingly weighted towards women?
Ahhhh here the classic academic authority position.
And no i have probably comparatively not as much insight in the Materie then you, however i still have not in any way shape of form said it is not the case.
It's not an argument from authority. It's a genuine question because I'm trying to ascertain why you believe it to be insufficient. Are you aware of the volumes of data we're talking about? It's not making a generalisation on the back of a few dozen small-sample studies. It's multiple decades of what has become almost a sub-discipline of its own that consistently repeats the same findings. I'm legitimately interested in why you think that is insufficient to make a generalisation?
However: true nie enere Statistik wod ned sälber gefälscht hesch also applies.
Or since you probably don't speak that thing above, i am generally doubtfull about extrapolation. Period. My Metier is normaly Philosophy and history aswell as political systems.
It's my Personal Bias.
And tendencially extrapolation is bad at explaining systems.
Like nationalism. Or democratic development/institutional development.
I agree about extrapolation. I work on emergent meaning in relational experiences. Hyper-individualised contextual stuff. All rooted in Deleuze, Guattari, Delanda, Latour and so on. I have no time for systems or structures and I think assumptions of homogeneity in social praxis are the great enemy of useful interpretative methodologies. However, I struggle to see, even as an anti-structuralist, why it is inappropriate to say 'if almost every single study in a vast number of contexts produces the same result, then we can say that generally women do the bulk of domestic labour'. How that is manifested, experienced, and understood will always be massively variable, but we can largely predict that it will be a phenomenon that is present more often than not in a given modern population.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: There is such a thing as drawing doubt well beyond the level of reasonableness. Doubt for the sake of doubt is meaningless. How much proof do you require of something before you consider extrapolation valid?
Further, that women do a greater degree of unpaid domestic labour is not a system.
So society is not a system? Then what is it?
A rhizome. A lattice. A network of constantly interacting nodes. I'd suggest arguing that society IS a system, or even comprised of systems, is incompatible with a belief that we cannot confidently extrapolate society-wide phenomena from samples.
The last point entirely depends on how many systems we are talking about.
And my opinion is that if you want a solution that works solve it as locally as possible. For that i don't need extrapolation and a catalogue of political actions which may or may not be anathema to local culture and therefore work or not work.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_207380
Regarding the wage gap. And that's from huff post, who notoriously lean a certain way..
.... i don't... I don't think you included the right url.
nareik wrote: Well at least doctors still do visits in the US!
Wait, what?
No they don't. You go to them, period. Then you sit in a waiting room for half an hour past your appointment, get called into the exam room where you wait another half-hour during which a nurse takes your blood pressure, pulse, and temperature, then you get to see the doctor five minutes - ten MAX - and go pay your copay and/or deductible on the way out.
queen_annes_revenge wrote: https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_207380
Regarding the wage gap. And that's from huff post, who notoriously lean a certain way..
.... i don't... I don't think you included the right url.
Hmm. No, that's definitely not the page I wanted. Strange
AlmightyWalrus wrote: So the issue isn't government intervention, it's inept government intervention or government intervention hamstrung by political reasons?
In a nutshell.... Yes. The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.
Average healthcare premiums were rising rapidly before 2010 as well. There was nothing special about 2010 that increased the rate of average premium raise, so why did you call that year out specifically?
Oh, I think you know perfectly well why
Is obamacare still such a hot iron topic?
Yes. Oh, yes indeed... but explaining why takes us back to the forbidden 'P' word.
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Polonius wrote: In much the same way, a person who is very conscientious and hard working may be very judgmental of the poor, since he can very easily connect the dots between his own hard work and success.
On the flip side, someone who is very conscientious and hard working, but saw all the promotions go to the brown-noser who did the bare minimum to get by so he remained fairly poor tends to be very judgmental of the rich, since he can very easily connect the dots between their lack of hard work and subsequent success....
Which I admit is every bit as unfair a judgement, but there it is.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: So the issue isn't government intervention, it's inept government intervention or government intervention hamstrung by political reasons?
In a nutshell.... Yes. The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.
Average healthcare premiums were rising rapidly before 2010 as well. There was nothing special about 2010 that increased the rate of average premium raise, so why did you call that year out specifically?
This was the last time a major change to my health care plan happened, the birth of my son. Since he is on my plan it really wouldn't be an apples to apples comparison if I went before that.
The Gender Pay Gap is mostly a myth. If women want more pay, they can start by working more hours. Working more hours per week would put them on par with their male counterparts and up their pay by 17% or so.
It's obviously not a myth if it exists. You can, I supposed, argue that it's a myth that women are paid less for the exact same work, although even the most carefully controlled study shows, yup, women are still usually paid less even if you control for as many variables as possible. But yes, a lot of the difference in men and women's pay is hours and years of work. Of course, women lose out on both due to family obligations on an overwhelming ratio. Childcare, care of the elderly and disabled, housework, cleaning, cooking... even in double income families these tasks are heavily tilted towards women. The other chunk of the earnings gap is explained by the fields men and women go into, in which mostly male fields typically out earn mostly female fields.
So yes, it's technically true that all women need to do is "work more hours," that ignores the enormous social, familial, and cultural barriers that get in the way.
This. A huge part is that women do a bunch of housework that pays nothing, while men reap the benefit of said housework.
While this is true, men also do work in and around the home that women reap the benefits of. Heavy lifting, furniture moving, home repairs, yardwork, car repair, extermination, and other jobs are all mostly
"men's work". Now, when they say women do 68% of housework, that's all based on time right? ( I couldn't read the study as I am currently work blocked). It could reasonably be argued that the more technical work men tend to do, and the more strenuous physical nature of it, could be counted as more than simply hours worked. Personally I know I'd rather watch a child for 2 hours than haul furniture up stairs for 2 hours.
Also, when men and women do the same jobs they tend to tackle the tasks in different ways. Shopping for example, is a job that could be considered equal work no matter how long it actually takes. Women do tend to take longer shopping than men do.
The Gender Pay Gap is mostly a myth. If women want more pay, they can start by working more hours. Working more hours per week would put them on par with their male counterparts and up their pay by 17% or so.
It's obviously not a myth if it exists. You can, I supposed, argue that it's a myth that women are paid less for the exact same work, although even the most carefully controlled study shows, yup, women are still usually paid less even if you control for as many variables as possible. But yes, a lot of the difference in men and women's pay is hours and years of work. Of course, women lose out on both due to family obligations on an overwhelming ratio. Childcare, care of the elderly and disabled, housework, cleaning, cooking... even in double income families these tasks are heavily tilted towards women. The other chunk of the earnings gap is explained by the fields men and women go into, in which mostly male fields typically out earn mostly female fields.
So yes, it's technically true that all women need to do is "work more hours," that ignores the enormous social, familial, and cultural barriers that get in the way.
This. A huge part is that women do a bunch of housework that pays nothing, while men reap the benefit of said housework.
While this is true, men also do work in and around the home that women reap the benefits of. Heavy lifting, furniture moving, home repairs, yardwork, car repair, extermination, and other jobs are all mostly
"men's work". Now, when they say women do 68% of housework, that's all based on time right?
No. The several decades worth of research on the topic generally dismisses this. However you weight efficiency, however you split tasks, women almost always come out with the bum deal.
Also worth remembering that women are also well-demonstrated to perform the bulk of emotional and unpaid labour in the workplace, too: baking cakes, organising parties, being reaponsible for 'morale', and general 'housework' (if no employed cleaners etc).
The key thing is we have a tendency not to recognise many 'women's tasks' as any kind of work at all, if we even notice they're tasks that exist (enotional support of children and so forth), whereas 'men's' tasks have more frequently been seen to be work because they map onto 'real jobs' like labouring or whatever.
'Yeah but picking up heavy things' is kinda the equivalent of responding to a claim that throughout history, in almost all contexts everywhere, women have been responsible for almost all food processing with 'yeah but bbqs'.
nareik wrote: Well at least doctors still do visits in the US!
Wait, what?
No they don't. You go to them, period. Then you sit in a waiting room for half an hour past your appointment, get called into the exam room where you wait another half-hour during which a nurse takes your blood pressure, pulse, and temperature, then you get to see the doctor five minutes - ten MAX - and go pay your copay and/or deductible on the way out.
Clearly you need kids with Flu as this was the post i was replying to:
cuda1179 wrote: The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.
So what? I can't speak for all households, but if like mine, I provide the sole financial income for our house, so my wife is happy to do the housework. She sees it as more than a fair deal. That's not to say that I never do any of it, but the cleaning, cooking etc is normally done when I'm at work. I'd suggest that this is generally the case in the majority of households too, so what's the issue? Are guys supposed to work all day then come back and do all he housework too?
queen_annes_revenge wrote: So what? I can't speak for all households, but if like mine, I provide the sole financial income for our house, so my wife is happy to do the housework. She sees it as more than a fair deal. That's not to say that I never do any of it, but the cleaning, cooking etc is normally done when I'm at work. I'd suggest that this is generally the case in the majority of households too, so what's the issue? Are guys supposed to work all day then come back and do all he housework too?
Anecdotes are not data and your suggestion is incorrect (as written, at least - if you mean that in the majority of single income households it is the man earning then sure, but it seems like you're saying either that those represent the majority of households, or that this is the situation in the majority of households where women do the bulk of domestic labour, both of which are false).
The point is that women do the overwhelming majority of domestic and unpaid labour in almost all circumstances. It is a consistent cross-cultural phenomenon irrespective of other variables. In the west, it has remained largely* unchanged over the last half-century as women entered the workplace in significantly increased numbers (hence, Second Shift), though women have started doing nost of the unpaid labour at their work, too.
*meaning that the ratio of women to mens domestic labour imbalance has moved slightly towards the centre, but that remains heavily weighted towards women, even in households where both work full time.
My wife gets very annoyed when I do laundry like its an attack on her identity ... I just like to make sure I am responsible for having the right clothes prepared for work and let her do the rest.
Work is very important for the esteem and psychological balance.
and yet clearly you are supposed to tell here due to findings that she has no right to complain about that in any way shape or form because you should do more work at home,, because clearly you and your wife seem to lack individual free will or the capacity to communicate with each other.
Father state will bring you to the true form and way of living in combination with an ideal that may or may not be adaptable or healthy for you.
Vulcan wrote:On the flip side, someone who is very conscientious and hard working, but saw all the promotions go to the brown-noser who did the bare minimum to get by so he remained fairly poor tends to be very judgmental of the rich, since he can very easily connect the dots between their lack of hard work and subsequent success....
Which I admit is every bit as unfair a judgement, but there it is.
That's certainly possible, but conscientiousness maps to conservativism for a lot of reasons. It's not just "hard working," it's also about valuing hard work, order, hierarchy.
queen_annes_revenge wrote:So what? I can't speak for all households, but if like mine, I provide the sole financial income for our house, so my wife is happy to do the housework. She sees it as more than a fair deal. That's not to say that I never do any of it, but the cleaning, cooking etc is normally done when I'm at work. I'd suggest that this is generally the case in the majority of households too, so what's the issue? Are guys supposed to work all day then come back and do all he housework too?
The tangent about division of domestic duties was in response to the argument that women earn less because they don't work as many hours for pay. which is true, but ignores the reality of so called "second shift" labor.
Hell, I've seen studies showing that female physicians do more domestic works than their husbands!
Not Online!!! wrote: and yet clearly you are supposed to tell here due to findings that she has no right to complain about that in any way shape or form because you should do more work at home,, because clearly you and your wife seem to lack individual free will or the capacity to communicate with each other.
Father state will bring you to the true form and way of living in combination with an ideal that may or may not be adaptable or healthy for you.
* this is to be understood as sarcasm.
I can understand that you personally do not have this issue in your household, what with all that straw you had to get for that post...
Not Online!!! wrote: and yet clearly you are supposed to tell here due to findings that she has no right to complain about that in any way shape or form because you should do more work at home,, because clearly you and your wife seem to lack individual free will or the capacity to communicate with each other.
Father state will bring you to the true form and way of living in combination with an ideal that may or may not be adaptable or healthy for you.
* this is to be understood as sarcasm.
I can understand that you personally do not have this issue in your household, what with all that straw you had to get for that post...
Where's the straw?
The only straw i see is the assumption that an ideal must be followed through to the bitter end. Preferentially enforeced by the state as if the average Joe and Jane suffer from lack of selfawareness and agency.
If you cannot see that what you posted is a caricature of what we are arguing then I can't help you. No one is arguing that people are lacking free individual will, we're not arguing that the state should somehow solve everything, and no one in this thread has said anything normative about how domestic work should be distributed.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: If you cannot see that what you posted is a caricature of what we are arguing then I can't help you. No one is arguing that people are lacking free individual will, we're not arguing that the state should somehow solve everything, and no one in this thread has said anything normative about how domestic work should be distributed.
No but implied, E.g. The Un Resolution.
See there's the issue, is such a demand legitimate on the actual ground level.
Ultimately that is an answer that at most the people directly hit by it can answer.
Basically it's the problem that is on another sphere entirely.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: So the issue isn't government intervention, it's inept government intervention or government intervention hamstrung by political reasons?
In a nutshell.... Yes. The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.
At least we can all agree at this starting point, but from there everyone has radically different solutions.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: So the issue isn't government intervention, it's inept government intervention or government intervention hamstrung by political reasons?
In a nutshell.... Yes. The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.
At least we can all agree at this starting point, but from there everyone has radically different solutions.
maybee one could try to NOT use radical solutions and instead make a packet with multiple solutions?
It's relative coommon praxis here, however to state that the political landscape is vastly different is also a fact.
nareik wrote: Well at least doctors still do visits in the US!
Wait, what?
No they don't. You go to them, period. Then you sit in a waiting room for half an hour past your appointment, get called into the exam room where you wait another half-hour during which a nurse takes your blood pressure, pulse, and temperature, then you get to see the doctor five minutes - ten MAX - and go pay your copay and/or deductible on the way out.
Clearly you need kids with Flu as this was the post i was replying to:
cuda1179 wrote: The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.
A “doctor’s visit” is when you, the patient, visit the doctor at his (not-a-hospital) office. It is not a house call.
AlmightyWalrus wrote: So the issue isn't government intervention, it's inept government intervention or government intervention hamstrung by political reasons?
In a nutshell.... Yes. The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.
At least we can all agree at this starting point, but from there everyone has radically different solutions.
maybee one could try to NOT use radical solutions and instead make a packet with multiple solutions?
It's relative coommon praxis here, however to state that the political landscape is vastly different is also a fact.
The solutions themselves are not radical, only the differences between them is radical.
When one group thinks you need to go up, and the other thinks to go down, that leaves some pretty big differences between the two solutions. Hence, radical differences.
These differences in solution lead to gridlock and no action being taken since the solutions are so diametrically opposed to each other. You can not both go down and up at the same time.
nareik wrote: Well at least doctors still do visits in the US!
Wait, what?
No they don't. You go to them, period. Then you sit in a waiting room for half an hour past your appointment, get called into the exam room where you wait another half-hour during which a nurse takes your blood pressure, pulse, and temperature, then you get to see the doctor five minutes - ten MAX - and go pay your copay and/or deductible on the way out.
Clearly you need kids with Flu as this was the post i was replying to:
cuda1179 wrote: The US has somehow strung together the worst possible combination of the private and public sectors into the monstrosity we have now. Personally, my insurance premiums from 2010 to today have gone up 108%. During this time I have never had a hospital visit, gotten the flu vaccine a few times, and had a couple doctor's visits for my kids when they were sick. This is well below average.
Then you have EXCEPTIONAL coverage, because everyone I know or have ever talked to have to bundle the kids up and take them to the doctor for the process I described when said kids need treatment.
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queen_annes_revenge wrote: So what? I can't speak for all households, but if like mine, I provide the sole financial income for our house, so my wife is happy to do the housework. She sees it as more than a fair deal. That's not to say that I never do any of it, but the cleaning, cooking etc is normally done when I'm at work. I'd suggest that this is generally the case in the majority of households too, so what's the issue? Are guys supposed to work all day then come back and do all he housework too?
While that is the traditional division of labor - and even then is not necessarily fair, as many stay-at-home mothers start working before the father goes to work rousting the kids and fixing breakfast, work all day long cleaning and watching the kids and other such, and then work long past the father's work hours cooking dinner, doing dishes, getting the kids bathed and to bed and so-forth - I hope you are aware that the single-income household such as yours is VERY MUCH the minority anymore. MOST families can't afford to get by on one income, not if the kids expect to go to college and the parents expect to retire.
So the normal situation is BOTH people work their eight hours... and the woman does 2/3 of the housework on average, while the man does 1/3.
Vulcan wrote:On the flip side, someone who is very conscientious and hard working, but saw all the promotions go to the brown-noser who did the bare minimum to get by so he remained fairly poor tends to be very judgmental of the rich, since he can very easily connect the dots between their lack of hard work and subsequent success....
Which I admit is every bit as unfair a judgement, but there it is.
That's certainly possible, but conscientiousness maps to conservativism for a lot of reasons.
Oh, it's not just possible, in much of the American business world it's LIKELY. The person the boss likes gets promoted. The person the boss depends on to get work done, gets more work to do. Or as many of us put it, "The reward for working hard is the requirement to work harder in the future."
Sobekta wrote: When my parents were kids a guy in america working a 40hr a week job could afford a house, car and some savings.
When our parents were kids, "a guy in America working 40 hours" implied "white guy".
Yeah, I know. I mean, I'm far from the IdPol type... but back then, there was also a huge boom in jobs and it was considered 'trashy' to have both parents working. Also, a college education didn't put you in debt until you were a senior citizen.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Most would be pretty happy with looking around, seeing that our neighbors get better results, and seeking to replicate that.
America is really resistant to learning anything from anybody else. Look at our failure to endorse the metric system, or degrees Celsius, or simple voter reform like giving everyone election day off to increase the representation in our government. If someone else does it first, it's a good bet Americans won't until we can claim it's ours.
And we certainly can't do universal healthcare! That would make us just like the communist hellscapes of the UK, Canada, and Australia.
I wish we were able to analyze policies and reforms with more logic and less ego.
Contrary to popular belief, well-paid manufacturing jobs wasn't an exclusively white people thing.
You say this, mean while I grew up with people who would detail how the need for more people in manufacturing jobs helped drive Italians to be considered white and thus be hire-able rather than the considerably sized black community in the area. It worked out well for the people I knew, and even they knew it was a damned shame what was going on. Or at least they thought of it that way 20 years later while talking about it with me.
Otherwise the demographics of where they worked would have been rather wildly different based on it's location.
Sobekta wrote: When my parents were kids a guy in america working a 40hr a week job could afford a house, car and some savings.
Now I know peolle who have a job, a side hustle, another side hustle who can't afford a house, period.
I bear peolle pretty much working over full time at a couple jobs and uber saying the can't afford a 40k army.
That didn't just happen.
When your parents were kids the average home size was about 45% of what it is now, the house had a single land line, and if they were lucky a single 16-inch black and white TV with an antenna that got 4 channels. They also likely had one car to split amongst the family.
cuda1179 wrote: When your parents were kids the average home size was about 45% of what it is now, the house had a single land line, and if they were lucky a single 16-inch black and white TV with an antenna that got 4 channels. They also likely had one car to split amongst the family.
And aside from the house and the car the rest of this has plummeted in real cost. Mean while boomers built massive houses no one else wants to buy and are wondering why fifty year old ranches disappear from the market in the time it takes them to list the McMansion, and cars have stayed remarkably on par for inflation compared to most other house hold goods.
Take it from someone with a smaller and cheaper house than the one his parents sold when they divorced, you're full of it on this one. Even living frugally these days can be pretty rough. I'm doing damn well and have been reasonably restrained with my expenses so I have savings, but paying attention to all that makes it so I can tell you exactly how screwed anyone who isn't as well off as I am is.
Vulcan wrote: Oh, it's not just possible, in much of the American business world it's LIKELY. The person the boss likes gets promoted. The person the boss depends on to get work done, gets more work to do. Or as many of us put it, "The reward for working hard is the requirement to work harder in the future."
I mean it would be possible for a person with such a personality trait to not turn to conservatism, but I also kind of reject this narrative. I'm sure it looks like it happens, but everytime I talk with a specific person who complains about not getting promoted... I can usually tell within about five minutes why they haven't been.
Very few jobs have simple ladders to higher paying, more senior positions without any increase in duties. Pure technical jobs might, but for most office work, pretty much any increase in responsibility is going to involve dealing with more people. For promotability, what a lot of managers look for is both the raw talent to take on additional responsibility, but also the demonstrated ability to learn and do different tasks. A person that just does more of their assigned work is a really valuable asset, but that alone is rarely enough to be promoted. Soft skills become a bigger factors in upward mobility, and so while it may look like the boss just promotes people he or she likes, that could also be a person with the strongest interpersonal skills.
I'm sure it's frustrating to people that are grinders, because they see the people dicking around and hanging out with the boss getting promoted, but often there is good reason!
AlmightyWalrus wrote: Not to mention the fact that relative poverty matters too, not just absolute numbers.
Indeed.
According to statistics i am supposed to have 250'000 CHF.
Because we are the richest ever. For whatever reason my Konto never really got close to that number.
However relative poverty is also a term i dislike. The correct term imo would be "Wohlstandsschere" which would literally translate into the prsoperity scissors but probably be better translated with Rich-poor-Scissors.
Vulcan wrote: Oh, it's not just possible, in much of the American business world it's LIKELY. The person the boss likes gets promoted. The person the boss depends on to get work done, gets more work to do. Or as many of us put it, "The reward for working hard is the requirement to work harder in the future."
It's more like, "If your boss doesn't like you, you're not getting promoted".
Sometimes a boss can just be a jerk and hate people for absurd reasons. I can tell you I've worked for a guy that was younger than me and he thought it was fun to be condescending when he spoke to me, and flaunt his superiority in his daddy's business. Fortunately, I discretely secured myself another job and then decided to walk off the site at the perfect moment so that everyone saw him talk down to me, heard me say "Get f**ked, boy" and walk off the site. I hear his father took him off construction sites and put him at the office.
A lot of times, a successful boss that wants a successful company will dislike people for a very good reason.
I've seen quite a few people that think their boss is an absolute a-hole because he's... expecting his employees to be clocked in at a certain time every day. And, all kinds of absurd stuff like... performing routine duties and ensuring the area is clean at the end of the day. I mean, that monster actually... expected his employees to greet customers and help them find what they are looking for. Wow, that kind of guy's a real slavedriver, I tell you. Practically a Nazi.
I have two jobs. I won't get into my primary job, but let's just say this- it's medical, in a sense and I'm not a doctor (not that smart) and I'm not a nurse (the skirt showed my balls). In both, I've got a position of leadership- and honestly, it's because both of my employers have seen my military background and watched me perform, identify and resolve problems, and placed me in this position with the pay.
I have people show up that wear a dirty uniform.. in our line of work, you MUST be clean. People with sludge under their fingernails, in a line of work where cleanliness is a VERY important factor. People who show up actually high and smelling like weed. People who will show up nearly an hour late and then expect their excuse to be suitable, when they never bothered to call and let someone know- then get pissed when they find out you gave someone else their shift. Or people who call in sick 5 minutes before they were supposed to be on shift. People who huff when you need them to deal with a patient, because you interrupted their phone playtime.
This isn't counting the FLGS where I do weekend work for extra fun money.
I had an employee that would come in, clock in, and keep the store closed until noon and nap all morning. One who spent her entire shift chatting with her boyfriend- not on the phone, at the register, behind the counter (and had him in the store past closing time). One guy that didn't know where we kept the mop and floor cleaning supplies, because in 6 months, he'd never done it. And the worst offender was an employee that was selling his own M:tG cards at the store instead of those we had. Employees that were letting stinky, gross people into the gaming room and refusing to ask them to leave.
You're damned right I didn't like them, and neither did my supervisors/employers. But if you ask any of those people why they got ran out- they'll tell you it's because I'm a jerk of some sort and I just didn't like them.
Remember: Anyone who is always a totally innocent victim that was done wrong for absolutely no reason at all, just because some meanie wanted to be a meanie... is probably a liar and deserves all the butt-hurt they're feeling.
Well, let me preface this with a highly clear note that I am not a economist, I don't really know much about the economy and I am not trying to make it seem like I do.
With that said, I think it's a mistake to equate the economic situations of our parents were in, to the one we are in now, to the one our children will be in.
To an idiot like me, this video from Mark Blyth made sense. I don't know that he is 100% correct, or even at all, but the notion that things were in "labor's" favor when our parents were getting into the workforce and the notion that this is not the case now, at least makes some sense to a strict layman like myself.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Most would be pretty happy with looking around, seeing that our neighbors get better results, and seeking to replicate that.
America is really resistant to learning anything from anybody else. Look at our failure to endorse the metric system, or degrees Celsius, or simple voter reform like giving everyone election day off to increase the representation in our government. If someone else does it first, it's a good bet Americans won't until we can claim it's ours.
And we certainly can't do universal healthcare! That would make us just like the communist hellscapes of the UK, Canada, and Australia.
I wish we were able to analyze policies and reforms with more logic and less ego.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Most would be pretty happy with looking around, seeing that our neighbors get better results, and seeking to replicate that.
America is really resistant to learning anything from anybody else. Look at our failure to endorse the metric system, or degrees Celsius, or simple voter reform like giving everyone election day off to increase the representation in our government. If someone else does it first, it's a good bet Americans won't until we can claim it's ours.
And we certainly can't do universal healthcare! That would make us just like the communist hellscapes of the UK, Canada, and Australia.
I wish we were able to analyze policies and reforms with more logic and less ego.
cuda1179 wrote: When your parents were kids the average home size was about 45% of what it is now
Take it from someone with a smaller and cheaper house than the one his parents sold when they divorced, you're full of it on this one. Even living frugally these days can be pretty rough. I'm doing damn well and have been reasonably restrained with my expenses so I have savings, but paying attention to all that makes it so I can tell you exactly how screwed anyone who isn't as well off as I am is.
It's not a recent thing either. Basically from day one of America, we've actually had an unspoken legal clause of "all (proper) men are created equal." Exactly what proper means varies in that context, but even the Founding Fathers couched a lot of their democratic ideals under a caveat that entailed only some people having the ability or right to participate in government.
Ever since, political parties have gone out of their way to keep groups they don't like from being able to vote, and when that fails they fall back on looking for ways to make voting more arduous and difficult in the first place.
Hence, why we'll make Columbus Day a federal holiday, but not election day.
Vulcan wrote: Oh, it's not just possible, in much of the American business world it's LIKELY. The person the boss likes gets promoted. The person the boss depends on to get work done, gets more work to do. Or as many of us put it, "The reward for working hard is the requirement to work harder in the future."
I mean it would be possible for a person with such a personality trait to not turn to conservatism, but I also kind of reject this narrative. I'm sure it looks like it happens, but everytime I talk with a specific person who complains about not getting promoted... I can usually tell within about five minutes why they haven't been.
Very few jobs have simple ladders to higher paying, more senior positions without any increase in duties. Pure technical jobs might, but for most office work, pretty much any increase in responsibility is going to involve dealing with more people. For promotability, what a lot of managers look for is both the raw talent to take on additional responsibility, but also the demonstrated ability to learn and do different tasks. A person that just does more of their assigned work is a really valuable asset, but that alone is rarely enough to be promoted. Soft skills become a bigger factors in upward mobility, and so while it may look like the boss just promotes people he or she likes, that could also be a person with the strongest interpersonal skills.
I'm sure it's frustrating to people that are grinders, because they see the people dicking around and hanging out with the boss getting promoted, but often there is good reason!
I see your point, but when you're doing most of that guy's work so you can get your OWN work done on schedule (because he refuses to do his work until the last possible moment, putting YOU impossibly far behind), seeing him get promoted is just a double-sized slap in the face. It's easy to be cheerful and perky when someone else does your job for you, and really hard to be cheerful and perky when you have to do someone else's work just so you can START doing your own.
Gitzbitah wrote: America is really resistant to learning anything from anybody else. Look at our failure to endorse the metric system
This is the most galling since metric is so self-evidently better than what we use instead.
Objection.
We do use metric. For applications where it’s efficiencies matter. IE: in scientific fields. Not using it in mundane every day uses like cooking or for car odometers is not an issue.
Gitzbitah wrote: America is really resistant to learning anything from anybody else. Look at our failure to endorse the metric system
This is the most galling since metric is so self-evidently better than what we use instead.
Objection.
We do use metric. For applications where it’s efficiencies matter. IE: in scientific fields. Not using it in mundane every day uses like cooking or for car odometers is not an issue.
It's a complete pain in the ass, so I would say it is a practical issue in the very least. Not to mention we need to teach people two systems of measurement.
Gitzbitah wrote: America is really resistant to learning anything from anybody else. Look at our failure to endorse the metric system
This is the most galling since metric is so self-evidently better than what we use instead.
Objection.
We do use metric. For applications where it’s efficiencies matter. IE: in scientific fields. Not using it in mundane every day uses like cooking or for car odometers is not an issue.
It's a complete pain in the ass, so I would say it is a practical issue in the very least. Not to mention we need to teach people two systems of measurement.
Its not that hard to learn two systems. Plus I don't think anybody learns any of the more obscure Imperial measurements. We learn inches, feet, and miles, thats all you need for day to day use, and you've probably learned those before you were even in school just from day to day life. In school you also learn metric for doing your science experiments and stuff. And for cooking we have the various measuring utensils, which are really just arbitrary amounts anyway. What is important in cooking is ratios and not the exact amounts anyway, and its as much art as it is a science.
Anybody who is under the impression that we regularly use furlongs or paces is mistaken.
Easy E wrote: The more I think about the term Glass Floor it really makes no sense for the situation the OP is trying to describe.
Think in terms of Cash Cushion and it'll work. No matter how hard some people fall, there's a pile of money to catch them. For some folks landing on that pile still leaves them well above most people in terms of financial security and general means.
Or we can just go back to calling it privilege like we used to. That sheer financial inertia that can propel even the stupidest human being into highly important positions in society.
Easy E wrote: The more I think about the term Glass Floor it really makes no sense for the situation the OP is trying to describe.
Think in terms of Cash Cushion and it'll work. No matter how hard some people fall, there's a pile of money to catch them. For some folks landing on that pile still leaves them well above most people in terms of financial security and general means.
Or we can just go back to calling it privilege like we used to. That sheer financial inertia that can propel even the stupidest human being into highly important positions in society.
This. . . I think there are plenty of terms for it, whether we use silver spoon, cash cushion, glass floor, or anything else, I think we're all kind of swirling around the same premise: that some people are simply too rich to truly worry about their decisions.
When your parents were kids the average home size was about 45% of what it is now, the house had a single land line, and if they were lucky a single 16-inch black and white TV with an antenna that got 4 channels. They also likely had one car to split amongst the family.
I thought houses were getting smaller over time (after some point at least, since we went from miners cottages to townhouses). My 40 year old 2-bed is bigger than newly build 3/4 beds, especially if you factor in the garden and garage. This is the UK though, maybe houses are still getting bigger in the US but I can't see it being the case.
This. . . I think there are plenty of terms for it, whether we use silver spoon, cash cushion, glass floor, or anything else, I think we're all kind of swirling around the same premise: that some people are simply too rich to truly worry about their decisions.
Take Trump for a (non-political example). He complained he was only given $1m to get an apartment, and has a string of failed business ventures around the globe but started with so much inherited money he's completely insulated from being an incompetent businessman.
Gitzbitah wrote: America is really resistant to learning anything from anybody else. Look at our failure to endorse the metric system
This is the most galling since metric is so self-evidently better than what we use instead.
Objection.
We do use metric. For applications where it’s efficiencies matter. IE: in scientific fields. Not using it in mundane every day uses like cooking or for car odometers is not an issue.
Except for the times that a company is making a scientific instrument/software and isn't using the correct system, resulting in total mission failure.
For example, NASA lost the Mars Climate Orbiter because Lockheed-Martin used imperial measurements in the software they designed rather than SI units.
When your parents were kids the average home size was about 45% of what it is now, the house had a single land line, and if they were lucky a single 16-inch black and white TV with an antenna that got 4 channels. They also likely had one car to split amongst the family.
I thought houses were getting smaller over time (after some point at least, since we went from miners cottages to townhouses). My 40 year old 2-bed is bigger than newly build 3/4 beds, especially if you factor in the garden and garage. This is the UK though, maybe houses are still getting bigger in the US but I can't see it being the case.
This. . . I think there are plenty of terms for it, whether we use silver spoon, cash cushion, glass floor, or anything else, I think we're all kind of swirling around the same premise: that some people are simply too rich to truly worry about their decisions.
Take Trump for a (non-political example). He complained he was only given $1m to get an apartment, and has a string of failed business ventures around the globe but started with so much inherited money he's completely insulated from being an incompetent businessman.
There was actually a tipping point in the US, at least for now. A few years after the economic recession started the average home size did shrink a bit, but has increased again. I think the high was somewhere in the 2009 era. With American families getting smaller there really is a factor of diminishing returns with home sizes. Families used to pack 7 people into a 3-bedroom one bath house. Now it's 4 people in a 3-bedroom, 2 bath house. We may have just hit the top of the bell curve when it comes to home sizes.
As for Trumps failed businesses, I think that it's vastly overstated. Most new businesses fail in the first 2 years. Even big-wigs aren't immune from failing business ventures, and they happen quite regularly. Add into that that Trump sold his name to be slapped onto several businesses and had little to do with them, he just wanted the royalty check. Do we really count these failed businesses as "his"?
For example, NASA lost the Mars Climate Orbiter because Lockheed-Martin used imperial measurements in the software they designed rather than SI units.
To be clear, one component of the Orbiter used imperial and another used SI. No one coordinated between this components apparently, so when the imperial unit sent imperial measurements to the SI unit, the whole thing went south fast. It could easily have been solved with a piece of software somewhere to convert between measurements, or some kind of protocol so that every unit on the rig could measure in the same system. Nasa changed a lot about how they procure components after this incident to do just that.
Do we really count these failed businesses as "his"?
So long as he decides the ones that didn't fail are "his" successes.
Can't have it both ways, but what else is new with the rich and successful? They might as well slap a bumber sticking saying "I have cake and ate it to" on their motorcades
I thought houses were getting smaller over time (after some point at least, since we went from miners cottages to townhouses). My 40 year old 2-bed is bigger than newly build 3/4 beds, especially if you factor in the garden and garage. This is the UK though, maybe houses are still getting bigger in the US but I can't see it being the case.
The average square foot size of new construction in the US has continually risen. . . . Even the 2008 recession bubble didn't bring home sizes down that much. In my area, mine was the 2nd development in, the 1st and 2nd developments are all houses that range from 1700-2500 sq. ft. floor plans. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th developments going in (the 5th is actively being built and is less than 20% built) the smallest floor plans, which are all single story houses, start at 2000 sq ft. Going up to around 3300 sq. ft. . . . The ridiculous thing is though, and I've looked into it a little bit, is that these houses are objectively bigger than even my house, but they are on the same size plot of land as I am, so they are actively giving up exterior personal space (in the UK this would be the back garden).
Re: the failed Trump businesses, there is a whole lot going on there. . . Yes, he's slapped his name on all kinds of gak to make royalties. But what is often not discussed is that while yes, the steak business, casino business, and airline business were all high profile situations, there is a much, much larger wake of "failure". Essentially, it is part of his "being rich" strategy, and what is getting him into hot water financially. Basically, he'd do something like, say, buy a yacht. . . He'd make payments on this yacht until he decided it wasn't gold enough, or big enough or whatever. So, he'd then let it go into default and get repo'd. . . In order to "protect" himself, he basically would have a business be the sole owner of this yacht, and he'd fold the business using bankruptcy law to pad his personal bank accounts while also being rid of an unwanted thing. . . This tactic developed to a point where no major US or Western European bank would loan him money. But the Russians would (and this is where/why we see some of his political ties, which I will leave at that and not discuss further).
Part of the housing issue is about simple practicality; as the price of land & materials has risen (dramatically) construction companies need to make nicer, more expensive homes to turn a profit. A plot of land costs the same whether the company intends to build a tiny house or a huge house, a plank of wood costs the same whether it is used in a luxury home or a cheap one, and larger homes will need less material per square foot.
Ensis Ferrae wrote: The average square foot size of new construction in the US has continually risen. . . . Even the 2008 recession bubble didn't bring home sizes down that much. In my area, mine was the 2nd development in, the 1st and 2nd developments are all houses that range from 1700-2500 sq. ft. floor plans. The 3rd, 4th, and 5th developments going in (the 5th is actively being built and is less than 20% built) the smallest floor plans, which are all single story houses, start at 2000 sq ft. Going up to around 3300 sq. ft. . . . The ridiculous thing is though, and I've looked into it a little bit, is that these houses are objectively bigger than even my house, but they are on the same size plot of land as I am, so they are actively giving up exterior personal space (in the UK this would be the back garden).
This is definitely the case in my region. Right up the street from me is a development that has 3,000-4,000 sq ft. homes on lots as small as .15 acres.
NinthMusketeer wrote: Part of the housing issue is about simple practicality; as the price of land & materials has risen (dramatically) construction companies need to make nicer, more expensive homes to turn a profit. A plot of land costs the same whether the company intends to build a tiny house or a huge house, a plank of wood costs the same whether it is used in a luxury home or a cheap one, and larger homes will need less material per square foot.
Not entirely true. . . due to weirdness with the RE industry, the most recent development going in, the family owning that parcel of land originally (ie, the ones who sold the plot to developers), were able to get more per acre precisely because the land was "more valuable" due to proximity to "land improvements". . . Without derailing too much, this is why HOA's exist: because like it or not, the value of MY home is affected by the state of my neighbor's property, and the general state of property in the immediate vicinity. The HOA, at its core, is about protecting the "investment" of the home owner, to prevent value slipping and all that.
That is the price of buying the land. Once they have done so that bill is paid; they can then build a small home on the land or a big one, which would affect its value, but not change the amount already paid
