I know you are, but what am I…
[quote]Ryan P. McCarter wrote:
That’s just it: you didn’t make a point. Just like usual. You head straight to insults. If you want a less juvenile response, make a less juvenuile post.[/quote]
Really? I made no points about your snarkiness, contrarianism, and snarky contrarianism? You can’t find a point?
I think your head is rather empty, actually. You seem to have no core political beliefs or (really) any beliefs of any type. You’re one of those guys whom Daddy sent to school on his dime and who ends up assenting to everything the professors tell him because it’s the opposite of what rich Daddy (whom you resent) believes. But you’ll continue to take his money, despite your resentment and hatred.
You’ll also take out on all of us here through a massive case of projection.
You accuse conservatives on this thread of parroting Glenn Beck, the GOP, etc. The reality is that few of us here are even members of the GOP and fewer of us watch Glenn Beck or the Fox cabal.
But this is where the projection comes in on your part. Really, because of your psychological deficits, it’s YOU that uncritically passes along the conventional wisdom (gathered from both newspapers and professors), to wit, “The economy is getting better!” “The stimulus worked!” “Obama is great!” “The USSR is kewl!” “I’m a f-g!”
Hey, Ryan, this is you:
http://iowahawk.typepad.com/iowahawk/2008/10/as-a-conservative-i-must-say-i-do-quite-like-the-cut-of-this-obama-fellows-jib.html
[quote]Valor wrote:
jj-dude:
A liberal is someone who believes in limited, representational government and equality of all before the law.
What? WHAT? Thats the DUMBEST thing I’ve read in at least a year. You’ve GOT to be kidding me? Who supports affirmative action? Liberals…is that equality? No fucking way. Who supports UHC… liberals… is that limited government? WTF…dude, what color are thye skys in your world?[/quote]
Ya know, when you squat you should really make sure the plates always touch the ground between reps. Yep. That’s just the way it’s done.
Or did I mean to say deadlift? Not to worry, definitions don’t matter, do they? :o)
As I have said before, definitions make it so we can sensibly engage in discourse. However, mostly the use any more is the exact opposite, viz., to label so as to dismiss out of hand. About half the time, once everyone agrees on the definitions, it turns out that the differences between viewpoints are pretty minor or at least tractable. Mostly though it is the rancorous environment that the uses of labels such as liberal or conservative causes that is to be lamented. It is darned near impossible to even have a discussion any more with anyone.
Whenever I have such a discussion I have to wonder if, perhaps, the Muslims have it right after all and that there is no difference between Politics and Religion. Not meaning that Politics should be in the service of Religion, but that people treat them exactly the same – as unimpeachable articles of faith whose only viable reasons for dissent are stupidity or sheer evil.
And as always, I might just be full of shit…
– jj
That’s right, you’ve made no points. I know all you have to do around your right-wing friends is repeat a talking point and then you high-five each other, but some people have slightly higher standards.
Now I know it’s awfully convenient to be able to dump on the schools as being “centers of indoctrination” and whatnot when they don’t agree with your crackpot theories, but sometimes you’re just wrong. I see you ignored the fact that I have taken no economics or political classes, as that doesn’t mesh well with your conspiracy theory.
Oh, that’s very interesting, because you sound exactly the same.
Hmmm…I’ll ask you, which professors, exactly, have I been parroting here? My physics professor? My other physics professor? My OTHER physics professor? Or my math professor? You don’t get a pass. Exactly where is all this indoctrination coming from? Believe it or not, we generally spend more time discussing things like the Boltzmann distribution than we do politics.
The economy IS getting better. The stimulus DID work. Fiscal policy is a blunt instrument, and the fact that we are not back to 4% unemployment does not mean that the stimulus failed. I’m sorry your ideology restricts the set of facts that you’re able to acknowledge, but that’s not my fault. Instead, it seems to me that you’re the one with some psychological issues, who feels the need to excuse himself after the real world fails to behave in a manner which he finds agreeable.
[quote]John S. wrote:
[quote]molnes wrote:
More people have a decent education in Europe due to better public schools. That being said there are obviously private schools in the US that are equally good as the private ones in Europe. If you have a family with money it’s really not such a bad deal in the US, but if you don’t it is. It’s a great way to keep poor people poor and to lower the social mobility in a country. Most European countries have a lot better social mobility than the US, partly due to this.
[/quote]
I don’t believe that for a second. In America you can move into any “class” that you want. My Grandpa was a factory worker, my dad was a Doctor. As long as you work hard you can achieve anything.
[/quote]
It’s not something to believe or not believe in. It is a well documented fact that USA has a low level of social mobility compared to most european countries, espescially Scandinavian countries. The American dream of starting with nothing and ending up as a “big shot” is in fact much more a Scandinavian dream.
The London School of Economics (LSE), has studied the social mobility of 8 industrialized countries the countries were rated from highest social mobility to lowest:
- Norway
- Denmark
- Sweden
- Finland
- Germany
- Canada
- Great Britain
- USA
[quote]molnes wrote:
[quote]John S. wrote:
[quote]molnes wrote:
More people have a decent education in Europe due to better public schools. That being said there are obviously private schools in the US that are equally good as the private ones in Europe. If you have a family with money it’s really not such a bad deal in the US, but if you don’t it is. It’s a great way to keep poor people poor and to lower the social mobility in a country. Most European countries have a lot better social mobility than the US, partly due to this.
[/quote]
I don’t believe that for a second. In America you can move into any “class” that you want. My Grandpa was a factory worker, my dad was a Doctor. As long as you work hard you can achieve anything.
[/quote]
It’s not something to believe or not believe in. It is a well documented fact that USA has a low level of social mobility compared to most european countries, espescially Scandinavian countries. The American dream of starting with nothing and ending up as a “big shot” is in fact much more a Scandinavian dream.
The London School of Economics (LSE), has studied the social mobility of 8 industrialized countries the countries were rated from highest social mobility to lowest:
- Norway
- Denmark
- Sweden
- Finland
- Germany
- Canada
- Great Britain
- USA
How racially homogenous is each country?
I haven’t looked into the statistics about how racially homogenous each of the countries are. But I’m pretty sure Finland is the most homogenous and USA is the country with the most diversity of races. It’s not really the issue though as the leading scientists who are studying this points at the education system as the main reason for the difference between the different western countries.
If you look at Britain, they have more privatized schools and universities like in the US, and that is probably the reason for why they are the lowest of the six European countries in this study.
[quote]molnes wrote:
It’s not really the issue though as the leading scientists who are studying this points at the education system as the main reason for the difference between the different western countries.
[/quote]
Wait, why? What if in fact it is one of, if not the most, important factors? You dismissed this as if our diversity doesn’t have a HUGE impact on our educational system and social mobility.
[quote]molnes wrote:
I haven’t looked into the statistics about how racially homogenous each of the countries are. But I’m pretty sure Finland is the most homogenous and USA is the country with the most diversity of races. It’s not really the issue though as the leading scientists who are studying this points at the education system as the main reason for the difference between the different western countries.
If you look at Britain, they have more privatized schools and universities like in the US, and that is probably the reason for why they are the lowest of the six European countries in this study.[/quote]
Being an educator, I call foul. Your source is the World Socialist Website which does not explain who did the study and draws the conclusion that they have indicted Capitalism as a failure. Surprise!
As for social mobility, there is the fact of where people end up vs. the attitude towards them. Americans are completely unimpressed with your origins and are apt to think ill of you if you happen to tell how rich your parents are, or that you are descended from nobility. All in all, I think this is a better attitude than I found in Germany or England (never been to Norway). In the US you are upper class if you are rich, lower class if you are not. Simple-minded? Yes. But it does not have any of the actual European class baggage that Socialists are upset about. The USSR claimed to have better social mobility precisely because they would take people and arbitrarily assign them to study subjects. I would argue that that is the polar opposite of real social mobility.
As for performance in education I’ll let you in on a little secret people. The US has a strongly anti-intellectual bias which it inherited from England, hence the similar performances in that study are believable (since I’ve seen them elsewhere). It is the cultural attitude towards learning that dictates how seriously students pursue their work and ultimately where they end up.
Finally – and this is one of my professional peeves – is the fact that the US has only very, very recently gotten an educational system that is self-sustaining. Most of the first Nobel prize winners form the US were foreign trained immigrants. The numbers of these who went wholly through the US system was dismal (as of several years ago, but I haven’t looked at figure since then). Through the 1940’s the US was among the least technologically advanced countries in the world. Literacy, was very low historically and even at something like 80% it is probably at an historic high (compare with a probably literacy rate of less than 10% here in Illinois at one point in the early 1800’s). In many universities the Americans are getting degrees in management and are a minority in Math, Physics, etc. Largely, scientific education in the US is run as an export industry.
And as always, I could be full of shit…
– jj
Good points JJ. Fixing the education system in this country in my opinion should be the number one priority as it prevents poverty, crime, bad political descisions everything. Education is the great equalizer. I agree to an extent on the european class baggage as I lived in London for a time. However, that is not completley absent in the USA either. Many powerful people today are in their very position because of the nefarious or fortunate actions of their forefathers. Those who where here first to either claim resources honestly or take them from others. Bill Clinton…family stretches back to revolutionary times, George Bush Sr and Jr their predecessors were huge bankers in the Rockefeller era. So their is alot of old money that is not necessarily transperant to society.
The low literarcy and education rates from the 1940s are directly attributable to a large agrarian base and immigrant population. My region is all 3rd generation immigrants. Pittsburgh is a melting pot of Italians, Slovak, croats and poles. These people came here to work in the industrial complex that made Pittsburgh a target for the Nazis. Hell, up until the 1970’s NOBODY went to college in THIS Town unless their family was OLD MONEY. My dad was the first in his family, and only to go to college. People laughed at him because high school grads were making the equivelant of 70k+ a year in the mills. Not just steel, but all the associated industries. This is a similar situation to developing commodity based economies today such as Brazil and China. Though the chinese and asian cultures value education highly due to their cultural agricultural practices ( I can elaborate if you wish, its the Why Asians are good at Math theory).
European countries lost their industrial might much sooner than the US and higher education was thus needed. This is the path we are going, and hopefully we can fix this issue. I do concur on the lack of scientific and mathmatical PHD’s in this country. We need more time in school.
[quote]molnes wrote:
[quote]John S. wrote:
[quote]molnes wrote:
More people have a decent education in Europe due to better public schools. That being said there are obviously private schools in the US that are equally good as the private ones in Europe. If you have a family with money it’s really not such a bad deal in the US, but if you don’t it is. It’s a great way to keep poor people poor and to lower the social mobility in a country. Most European countries have a lot better social mobility than the US, partly due to this.
[/quote]
I don’t believe that for a second. In America you can move into any “class” that you want. My Grandpa was a factory worker, my dad was a Doctor. As long as you work hard you can achieve anything.
[/quote]
It’s not something to believe or not believe in. It is a well documented fact that USA has a low level of social mobility compared to most european countries, espescially Scandinavian countries. The American dream of starting with nothing and ending up as a “big shot” is in fact much more a Scandinavian dream.
The London School of Economics (LSE), has studied the social mobility of 8 industrialized countries the countries were rated from highest social mobility to lowest:
- Norway
- Denmark
- Sweden
- Finland
- Germany
- Canada
- Great Britain
- USA
It isn’t because we can’t do it, its because people here have an entitlement problem. For those of us who realize that the only way we can get something is if we do it ourselves, then the sky is the limit.
Again I don’t buy into that nonsense that other countries are better then the US.
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]molnes wrote:
[quote]John S. wrote:
[quote]molnes wrote:
More people have a decent education in Europe due to better public schools. That being said there are obviously private schools in the US that are equally good as the private ones in Europe. If you have a family with money it’s really not such a bad deal in the US, but if you don’t it is. It’s a great way to keep poor people poor and to lower the social mobility in a country. Most European countries have a lot better social mobility than the US, partly due to this.
[/quote]
I don’t believe that for a second. In America you can move into any “class” that you want. My Grandpa was a factory worker, my dad was a Doctor. As long as you work hard you can achieve anything.
[/quote]
It’s not something to believe or not believe in. It is a well documented fact that USA has a low level of social mobility compared to most european countries, espescially Scandinavian countries. The American dream of starting with nothing and ending up as a “big shot” is in fact much more a Scandinavian dream.
The London School of Economics (LSE), has studied the social mobility of 8 industrialized countries the countries were rated from highest social mobility to lowest:
- Norway
- Denmark
- Sweden
- Finland
- Germany
- Canada
- Great Britain
- USA
How racially homogenous is each country?[/quote]
You beat me to it. Norway is awfully norwegian.
[quote]John S. wrote:
[quote]molnes wrote:
More people have a decent education in Europe due to better public schools. That being said there are obviously private schools in the US that are equally good as the private ones in Europe. If you have a family with money it’s really not such a bad deal in the US, but if you don’t it is. It’s a great way to keep poor people poor and to lower the social mobility in a country. Most European countries have a lot better social mobility than the US, partly due to this.
[/quote]
I don’t believe that for a second. In America you can move into any “class” that you want. My Grandpa was a factory worker, my dad was a Doctor. As long as you work hard you can achieve anything.
[/quote]
It is my belief as each generation passes it is harder to step outside of you social class
[quote]PRCalDude wrote:
The London School of Economics (LSE), has studied the social mobility of 8 industrialized countries the countries were rated from highest social mobility to lowest:
- Norway
- Denmark
- Sweden
- Finland
- Germany
- Canada
- Great Britain
- USA
How racially homogenous is each country?
You beat me to it. Norway is awfully norwegian. [/quote]
All of the Scandinavian countries have been flooded with brown Muslim shitskins for decades.
Germany is flooded with Turks.
Britain has imported trash from the 4 corners of its former empire.
Except for, perhaps, Finland and Iceland, racial homogeneity is a thing of the past in these nations.
[quote]John S. wrote:
First off I would like to say I do not believe the people in Europe have better education. Having had a few discussions on WW2 with people over in that area I can tell you that I am shocked at just how wrong they where.[/quote]
What do you mean by “wrong”? History doesn’t reduce to fundamental axioms, unlike mathematics. If they voiced historical opinions which you perceived to be “wrong” it is simply because they were taught differently from you.
[quote]John S. wrote:
We are going to watch all these entitlements fall apart. When social security really begins to die in 2015 or so, you really think this Generation of ME is going to just sit back and watch all that money taken out. Once they get affected by this trust me they will turn around. You talk about eliminating taxes and they will listen. And with the currency crisis that’s about to happen, there is no way to blame that on anyone but the Government.
Give us some time, we are coming around.[/quote]
There will be plenty of anger and frustration, without a doubt. It exists already. But what of it?
Mass enlightenment is not going to follow. Maybe there will be some temporary talk about lowering taxes and reducing spending. If so, it will be just another example of the masses voting in their own, most-expedient interest. We are raising the dumbest generation ever. There’s just no stopping the collapse at this point.
There will be a small minority of individuals who are far more intelligent, knowledgeable and sceptical of government than their parents’ generation. This is mostly due to the influence of the web and alternative media. But these people are not and will not become the majority. As I wrote in my last post, most people in this country are still glued to the idiot box and getting their news and opinions from MSM.
[quote]pittbulll wrote:
[quote]John S. wrote:
[quote]molnes wrote:
More people have a decent education in Europe due to better public schools. That being said there are obviously private schools in the US that are equally good as the private ones in Europe.
If you have a family with money it’s really not such a bad deal in the US, but if you don’t it is. It’s a great way to keep poor people poor and to lower the social mobility in a country. Most European countries have a lot better social mobility than the US, partly due to this.
[/quote]
I don’t believe that for a second. In America you can move into any “class” that you want. My Grandpa was a factory worker, my dad was a Doctor. As long as you work hard you can achieve anything.
[/quote]
It is my belief as each generation passes it is harder to step outside of you social class[/quote]
I disagree entirely. Social mobility is a generational thing. People look at poor people who live and die poor, and rant and rave about mobility. But they never bother to examine how many CHILDREN of poor people go on to become lower-middle class. And how many of THEIR children go on to become middle class. And how many of THEIR children go on to be upper-middle.
People drop and rise in the US all the time. Please, go ahead and find a Mr. Rockefeller or Mr. Carnegie on the Forbes 500…
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]molnes wrote:
It’s not really the issue though as the leading scientists who are studying this points at the education system as the main reason for the difference between the different western countries.
[/quote]
Wait, why? What if in fact it is one of, if not the most, important factors? You dismissed this as if our diversity doesn’t have a HUGE impact on our educational system and social mobility. [/quote]
I’m not saying it’s not a factor. I’m merely saying that the people who actually study this, and who actually has an educated opinion on the subject all point to education as the most important factor.
@jj dude:
The study is conducted by the London School of Economics. Which is pretty much as capitalist as it gets. Just because some socialist website reported on this doesn’t mean anything. It’s the study that matters.
[quote]molnes wrote:
I’m not saying it’s not a factor. I’m merely saying that the people who actually study this, and who actually has an educated opinion on the subject all point to education as the most important factor.
[/quote]
See the education gap.
[quote]molnes wrote:
[quote]Sloth wrote:
[quote]molnes wrote:
It’s not really the issue though as the leading scientists who are studying this points at the education system as the main reason for the difference between the different western countries.
[/quote]
Wait, why? What if in fact it is one of, if not the most, important factors? You dismissed this as if our diversity doesn’t have a HUGE impact on our educational system and social mobility. [/quote]
I’m not saying it’s not a factor. I’m merely saying that the people who actually study this, and who actually has an educated opinion on the subject all point to education as the most important factor.
[/quote]
Why the education gap, though? It’s PC to blame low SES in black/Mexican communities. Neocons pin it all on bad parenting. What if there are racial differences in IQ that cause strata to appear in America’s class structure along racial lines?
The high illegitimacy rate amongst black/Mexican families no doubt has a huge effect, but what if it’s not the only effect? As near as I can tell, blacks place a lot of value on education just like whites/asians.