ViperMan

Do you acknowledge that police officers are much more likely to be involved in a violent confrontations with minorities as opposed to whites?

Yep. It's misdirected fire. Invalid at pickle. And this is coming from someone who thinks Ted Cruz is basically a schmuck.

In the abstract? It's not, and is always a good idea to go to talk with people. In the context of the conversation at hand, it's an attempt to avoid dealing with the very real issue of disproportionate levels of violent crime being committed by the black community in the USA. And further, I'm not sure what would be gleaned from a conversation with one individual that would explain why blacks commit a greater number of murders than whites, whilst being outnumbered by whites ~ 7x. Maybe it would be illuminating, but even still, would at best be anecdotal. And I will say this, I am generally not convinced of "truths" about groups of people by emotion or personal stories - I'd say that makes me an anti-racist - in the true sense of the word, not this new-speak we're all being subjected to. Either way, the FBI is convinced that there is a problem. I'm not sure why that is so difficult to fit in to certain belief sets, but I have my ideas. And notice, none of you guys has/can/will acknowledge the data put forth. Why? Why is it hard to look at a data set and say, "yeah, that is a problem"? Is it a conspiracy? Do you literally not believe those numbers? Are there massive numbers of white murders that are going unreported and unsolved? Or are there massive numbers of blacks being convicted and incarcerated for murders they didn't commit? You see why people like me have a hard time even seeing where you guys are coming from on this subject.

How many 5000+ page bills did the founding fathers have < 24 hrs to read, evaluate, consider, and sign? Oh. Right. If it was me, I'd just bring a book I wanted to read anyway. Shit, I'd stop by the library on my way. Probably grab a few magazines, maybe some penthouse letters, definitely one of those astronaut piddle-packs that lets you drive maniacally across the country without stopping once... Don't miss the point of the filibuster because it seems ridiculous to you. It's point is to protect the minority in this country - and increasingly, all of us from a supposed majority.

So the responses proffered were "go re-read this forum," a tangential "his lot in life depends on this belief so he won't understand," "go talk to a black person," and most recently, changing the subject to "black people were historically discriminated against in this country." Hmmm? And I'm the person not wanting to have a conversation about this? Pfffffft. Scoff. Each of those responses is a prototype for avoiding something that challenges a closely held belief. Note, I don't deny that blacks were historically discriminated against in this country and that those policies have effects to this day (today). But that wasn't what we were talking about. We were talking about rioting and policing being unfair in this country. I provided data that (to me) fully explains why policing appears disproportionate. That doesn't square with some dogma, but it can't be addressed directly because it doesn't fit into an acceptable narrative, so we get the four side-steps outlined above. Let me offer this: there is middle ground out there, but if you're going to find it, you have to accept what's real. We can agree that blacks have been treated horribly historically in this country and that something needs to be done to wrench this community (and others) out of the death spiral it seems to be in. You won't find middle ground with people "on the other side" whilst denying obvious realities and pinning the tail on whatever donkey you've been told is responsible. The cops aren't your scapegoat. The greatest irony in all this "BLM" nonsense from the summer was that the police are the greatest actual BLM organization out there - but of course they're the ones painted as the villains.

IMO it's because he tells the truth. And people fucking hate the truth.

Can you show us a representative sample?

I like to think about how dumb the average American is, and then I immediately think about how half of the rest are dumber than that...

Jezus, what kind of beer and what kind of hookers?

Well, there definitely is something wrong here. We just disagree about what it is. You think that black people are being systematically mistreated and/or over-policed. Trouble is, policing in ~ 80% of cases is in response to a call - not because some cop goes out of his way to interact with a minority. https://lawliberty.org/the-facts-on-race-crime-and-policing-in-america/

Oh...sorry...help me with the difference? Normal Adjective REGULAR, NORMAL, TYPICAL, NATURAL mean being of the sort or kind that is expected as usual, ordinary, or average.

Oh, we're back to normal?!? Sweet, I hadn't heard!

I'm curious. What exactly is "social equality"? What does it look like? I like equality. I grew up as a white kid in the American southwest. Middle class parents taught me how to interact with the police. Be polite. Don't argue. Don't resist arrest. Don't grab cops' tazer/gun/other weapons. Don't make a cop fear for his life. Just the basics, you know? In regards to high-profile deaths of black people, in almost all cases (with the exception of Freddie Gray), they have been misrepresented, misconstrued, or otherwise shaped/framed in order to produce talking points and support the narrative that says blacks are systematically mistreated in the US. That is a fiction. What data? Data showing that different racial groups produce crime at different rates? The riots this summer were because of COVID. They would not have happened without a global pandemic that gave people nothing but time to think of something to be angry about. Cue the media and some sweet, sweet, narrative to push an agenda. Black crime affects the USA disproportionately. I agree that default police interaction and policing methods could broadly be made better in this country, but the notion that there is a disproportionate amount of policing affecting blacks in this country is unattached to reality. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2017/crime-in-the-u.s.-2017/tables/table-43 https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/ucr.asp?table_in=2 Looking at pure data, in 2017 blacks committed more absolute murders than whites (5,660 > 5,070). If the proportion of the two races was about equal, that would make sense. So, if we're going for "equity", which of those black murders should we let go in order to bring it into balance with the white murder rate? Or, which white people should be charged with murders they didn't commit in order to bring it into balance? I don't see an alternative outcome given the left's current position. The fact that a much smaller minority is able to account for a disproportionate amount of violent crime in this country does say something - trouble is, it doesn't say there is systematic police discrimination. What it says, in actuality, is that blacks are committing murder at about 7x the rate of whites. Now, given that, what is the solution to the appearance of over-policing? I don't know, but I'm open to novel solutions.

Remember guys, getting the vaccine does protect others. Cutting people in line who need it more is not great, but there is still benefit. It's not a zero sum game.

Fair enough. I would ask you, though, if he did it by neglect, where else should we currently be at war? I would go a lot further, however. Modern-day politics has been completely F'd starting in '03 because of our ill-conceived venture into Iraq. I'm glad the rest of the world is waking up to how screwed up our politics is across the board. If it was Trump that woke people up, great, but Trump ain't the root cause. My main concern is that there are people who are only seeking to take advantage of the current situation who don't give one F about the actual future of this country. IMO those people are now in charge and that worries me.

Neil Gorsuch. Brett Kavanaugh. Amy Barrett. Kicking Iran's dick in. Not engaging in any new wars - something no President since Regan? Carter? has been able to do. Attempting to normalize relations with NK. Overseeing numerous ME peace deals. No president is morally perfect. Trump and Biden included. I don't think most conservatives are worried about Biden per se, though...most know that Biden is a place-holder; an empty vessel who is merely the wedge the woke machine needed to use in order to regain the executive branch. Look at the rest of people who were in the race - Kamala, Bernie, Warren, Buttigieg, Beto, etc. There are not moderate people. Biden is the lightly salted mashed potatoes who they had to put foward in order to get moderate democrats motivated to think they had a shot and get out to the polls en masse - that wouldn't have happened with a Bernie. Personally I think Joe Biden is basically a good man - would probably have been an ok president at some point. That said, this guy is just getting started with probably one of the most stressful jobs in the world, and he's already (waaaaay) past his expiration date. Look at what 8 years did to Bush Jr. and Obama - they came out different men. Does anyone honestly expect this is a guy who's about to be a two-term president?

The only reason any of us know Bret Weinstein's name is because he had the temerity to call a spade a spade when he stood up to the extreme, racist, left wing mob that attempted to enact a "day without white people" on his campus. He (rightfully) took a stand against that effort and has been in the limelight ever since. Probably because he's not woke enough. So most of his exposure on the internet is derivative of that one-off event, hence why 95% of it is complaining about democrats...since it was a reaction to democrats. It's the same fundamental story behind Jordan Petersen. These are "normal" guys (professors, scientists, etc.) who wake up one morning and go "WTF is going on around here?" and they call it out. Call me crazy, but we need more of that. For goodness sakes, he's an evolutionary biologist at Evergreen State College...none of that suggests secret conservative mastermind. And the only reason we hear about him via Joe Rogan (left, right, centerish) and Sam Harris (leftish) is because no one on the true "left" wants to engage in an honest way with what he's saying. That says way more about the left than it does about Bret Weinstein and it certainly doesn't implicate him as a (gasp) conservative.

I think that's a mistake - it would destroy the internet as we know it. This message board, and others like it would likely be collateral damage, as now the owners, administrators would be liable for whatever gets posted up here - legal or illegal. A much cleaner kill, and IMO the right move, would be to regulate portions of Amazon's business (i.e. AWS, etc)...ala AT&T and their phone business.

It's because it's their turn now. That's all it is. Next time, it'll be someone else's turn.

Ok, I hear you. I just don't consider their social security as being "reduced." I agree it's less than it would have been had they continued working (and paid more into it), but to consider it reduced, it arguably needs to have had been higher at some point, and then re-gonkulated to a lesser amount. It's not insurance. I know it's considered insurance, because it's literally titled "FICA tax" (Federal Insurance Contributions Act tax), but you and I both know that just because something is named something doesn't mean it is that thing. I could have car insurance my entire life and never file a single claim - or I could be hopping from claim to claim. Insurance kicks in when you need it to cover unforeseeable, rare, and catastrophic events. Getting older is literally the most predictable thing there is, and SS kicks in for everyone. None of that seems to me unforeseeable, rare, or catastrophic. It would better be title "welfare for old people" because that's what it actually is, but we can't call things what they are, so we slap an "insurance" moniker on it. If it were to actually function like insurance, there would be some sort of need-based means testing - which we will probably have to go to at some point. Yeah I hadn't indicated they get divorced in the example. I agree that circumstances matter and will change things for every couple/person. I'm sure we're both capable of constructing examples that will demonstrate different points. My point was simply to say that lower-earning spouses are paying a 100% marginal tax rate on some portion of their earnings. Having worked or not worked, getting divorced at 9 years and 11 months is an awful financial decision for a low earner. Akin to quitting active duty at 19 years and 10 months. Who does that? No one informed, that's for sure.

Agree wholeheartedly that our laws are woefully under-prepared to deal with much in the modern era. Too bad we don't have a legislature that seems very interested in ensuring they keep up.

If I were to refer to that as a penalty, I would use the adjective just. In actuality (IMO), it's simply a reasonable feature of the system. If you want the lesser time share, fine! Pay the lesser amount! Don't work. No skin off my back. I wouldn't call it a penalty to not have income if I didn't work, I'd call it a consequence. Social security does actually penalize you, though, for a lot more than that, including: Beginning work early in your life - since you pay that tax early and get no interest credit for the time your payment has funded the system. Not to mention the fact that if you begin work earlier, it's notionally at a lower wage, granting you less credit than someone who paid into the system later, but at a higher wage rate. Having a lower life expectancy - since different groups (men) live shorter lives, they wind up getting less benefit - especially since this group (as a whole) pays a lot more into the system. The affects minority groups, as well. In terms of the "spouse that stays home to raise the kids" being penalized, it's exactly the opposite. Lesser-earning working spouses wind up paying a 100% marginal tax rate in some cases due to the earning differences between spouses. Here's the math: Al and Alice make $70K and $20K a year, respectively. Because of dependent and survivor provisions, Alice is entitled to social security at the income level that Al paid out. Karl and Karen make $70K and $0K a year, respectively. Karen stays home raising the kids. Karen is entitled to Karl's level of social security based on the same provisions. Alice and Karen are entitled to the same amount of social security benefits. Who's making out and who's losing in the above scenario? Karen is winning like a big dog, while poor Alice, slaving away during the night shift emptying bed pans is reducing her earned benefit by one dollar for every dollar she would receive based on Al's contributions to social security. Not to mention the added detriment that she's going to need to hire a baby sitter. Here, not working truly does pay off. There are a lot of dynamics to taxation that aren't apparent on the surface, but which are absolutely real. Want to maximize your social security income? The best way to do it is to not work and be married to a high-earner. If you can't do that, the best way is to delay your payment into the system as long as humanly possible. Want to maximize your social security "penalty"? Get married to a high-earning spouse and work your ass off at a low paying job.

What we probably need to do is implement some sort of "capital control" on people who make less than a certain amount of money. No shit. I get people need checking accounts, but if you're literally that thin, and can't ever get a leg up, you may need some "forced supervision" where X% of your paycheck is held in some form of escrow until you demonstrate proficiency at bill paying and checkbook balancing. Sorry, I intended to draw a parallel (not a distinction) between decentralization and the elimination of middlemen - those things are synonymous in my vernacular. What happens when we get rid of middlemen? Good things in the long term. Entire new industries crop up. New shit gets invented. Economic "rent" disappears. Things people never even imagined get built and created and delivered to you. Short term? Pain. It's difficult to re-invent yourself in the midst of radical upheaval or later in life. I get the gravity of the challenge, but we're not going to side-step it. One truth about all this technology: the level of control we (in the US) think we can place on the course of technology doesn't matter one bit. Not one little bit. If we "hold back" and think we're going to "slow roll" the transition to "whatever" in the name of preserving some other industry or group of workers because "justice," we are going to be kicked square between the legs when some other group of people (China) goes and does it anyway because they DGAF about our internal problems and have no problem leaving us in the dirt while they colonize the solar system.

While I think I see your theme, and it wasn't my intent to paint all recipients of relief as people who don't deserve or need it, there are plenty of people who fall into the category I identified. And that category is growing. In any case, my original point was why does a pandemic justify paying someone who didn't have income in the first place? Operable phrase: "Why does the pandemic..." Not: "I wonder if this person who didn't have a job needs or would like government cheese." So, why does the pandemic justify paying someone unemployment who didn't have income in the first place. If they qualified for unemployment, they should already be getting it. IMO, it's nothing more than a bribe. The idea underlying this thought I could get behind. One idea would be to punt their social security collection X months/years into the future. "Oh, I see right here, Mr. Jones, that you needed 8 years of unemployment assistance to get by?" "Yes..." "Cool, well your social security check will start when you're 73...thanks." Or, you want your social security to start on time? Sweet, then we'll enroll you in a "catch-up" plan to "re-fund" your "early withdrawal" and get you back in good standing. We cannot continue to act as if there is infinite money. The rest of the world is only gonna let us get away with that for so long.

Check out the Pareto principle (not saying you're unfamiliar) - the idea behind the 80/20 rule. 80% (Crush 'em) of work is done by 20% of the employees; 80% of your productivity boils down to 20% of the "things" you have to do; etc, etc. It shows up in a very wide range of places...wealth distribution is one of them. I'm not against safety nets or providing honest help in situations with bonafide needs. I just think corollary to that is time-limited, strict, and conservative upper bounds on $$$ handed out. Personally I opposed direct payments partly because I don't think a pandemic is reason to start paying people income who didn't have it in the first place. Homeboy wasn't working before there was a pandemic, he was cool with not having money? Cool. Why, now, does he need a check? The second reason I opposed them was because it keeps people tied to their jobs. Now, we have instances of people quitting because it's more lucrative to be unemployed. Translation: it's more lucrative for them to have other people work to pay their taxes and for them to sit home and collect that "extra" EOY money. Agree on all of us getting checks. Ridiculous.