[COVID-19 (Aka China Virus)]

15 hours ago, ThreeHoler said:

The long-term effects of this thing are quite nasty in many cases. I wouldn’t want to risk my flying career over something stupid like not wearing a mask and maintaining distance. I also wouldn’t want to risk it over purposely getting infected when there is very little data to support effective herd immunity from this virus.
 

To be fair, I don't think we know what the "long term" effects of this are since it's been around < 1 year. What we "know" is speculation.

[SHAW Viper Crash]

First, that seat should have worked. The fact that it didn't while it was an "in" envelope ejection is the primary reason this young man lost his life.

Second, everything everyone else says about the leadership failing this poor kid from AETC (or above) all the way down through the SOF is correct. We do have major, latent problems on the grill that need immediate intervention.

Third, we all need to be able to put a shitty part of a mission behind us and be able to move forward and complete a basic flying task with an otherwise good airplane. If anyone else thinks you're flying a perfect airplane that will work 100% (even a brand new 0.0 hour one), you're high. Step one is to control what is in your power which means #1 maintain aircraft control. Sometimes this means shaking off a up (even one that is not your fault) and focusing on the task at hand and saving your feelings for the debrief. Landing at night is a basic flying task and check rides have meaning. I should be able to clear off a student and trust they can aviate, navigate, and communicate. Some major screw ups all around on this one - which is not confidence-building for our Air Force.

[The Next President is...]

1 hour ago, DosXX said:

What're your thoughts on the monopsony theory of minimum wage for low skill labor? Would you consider a minimum wage increase law that self destructs if employment falls below 3% of what it was before law was passed? I fleshed this argument out in detail earlier if you do a search for "monopsony"

I found your post from August 1st? I have to admit I had never even heard the word monopsony before your post tonight. So with that said, I've spent about 10 minutes thinking about it and I'm not sure who the single buyer for cheap labor is? I feel like there are a great many buyers for cheap labor and only a few buyers for very expensive labor. My gut tells me that it is unavoidable and has been an economic law since before we had a name for it. It just seems to me that as you lower the wage you're willing to work for, the greater the number of potential employers becomes? "Hey I'll work for $10K/hr" vs "I'll work for peanuts."

"While the imposition of a minimum wage on a monopsony employer could increase employment and wages at the same time, the possibility is generally regarded as empirically unimportant, given the rarity of cases of monopsony power in labor markets." (https://courses.lumenlearning.com/suny-microeconomics/chapter/monopsony-and-the-minimum-wage/#:~:text=In a competitive market%2C workers,are less than their MRPs.&text=In a monopsony market%2C however,time as it boosts wages!)

I must not be understanding something. What am I missing?

[The Next President is...]

3 minutes ago, Negatory said:

There are economics both for and against the minimum wage. I mean, really, there are for almost every argument:

https://minimum-wage.procon.org

The unions pay for one study, the companies pay for the other. There is probably some amount of truth to both sides, but I firmly disagree that in America the minimum wage should ever be "$0/hr." If you can't pay your employees a living wage, you should lose your rights to be an employer.

My point wasn't that $0/hr was a just minimum wage for actual work. My point was that the unintended consequence of increasing the minimum wage reduces the employment level, thereby leading to layoffs, which in turn, pays $0/hr. You can't employ someone for $15/hr when the value they produce is only worth $10/hr. No website will ever convince me that math is wrong.

[The Next President is...]

10 hours ago, Negatory said:

4) One of the biggest ones is probably income inequality. Trickle down economics does not work. I don’t care how many times you’ve been spoon fed that line. Productivity over the last 50 years has gone up - wages have stayed the same (inflation). The system is rigged against America’s youth whether you look at college that costs 70k a year (look up the costs), a dwindling job market (it’s been like this pre-Covid) that was propped up by min wage gig economy jobs, or the disastrous housing crisis. I’m glad I’m in the military, as it solved a lot of these problems, but is the American dream still alive as much as everyone says it is? Policies to increase min wage, provide healthcare, reduce student loans, support unions/workers rights - these will benefit the whole of America. It’s hard to vote for a “billionaire” who literally paid less than I did in tax for multiple years. And before you say he was just playing by the rules, if he cared about the system, he would make a concerted effort to fix the glitches.

...

6) The federal reserve has been used for quantitative easing in a dangerous precedent to prop up the stock market. The US government basically propped up $3T of stocks THIS YEAR and then the president took credit for the economy. The economy is a sham and the fed balance sheet should stop being manipulated. We’re using the coffers of our children for republican talking points.

...

It'd be great if everyone could make more money, but honestly, the only thing raising minimum wage does is push current workers (i.e. me) closer to it. It's nice to make a high(er) multiple of the minimum wage - it's dangerous the lower that multiple becomes. Two other things are overlooked with this argument. The first is that the true minimum wage is $0/hr - no matter what anyone says. The second is that the value of someone's hour of labor is not a fixed amount, and in some cases it's actually negative. Minimum wage seems like a "quick fix" because it appears to immediately get you to the desired end-state, but neither of those facts is side-stepped by it, but it sure does play well with a sector of the working class. Not to mention employers simply adapt the number of employees or the number of hours they work. These things always have unavoidable "side-effects."

The other major factor (or multiple factors) in reference to wages is deflation. We're all worried about inflation, but ask yourself why the Fed is struggling so hard to get it up (sts). It's because there are MAJOR deflationary forces in operation right now. One is technology - which is hugely deflationary (https://www.zdnet.com/article/unstoppable-tech-driven-deflation-will-be-the-next-economic-challenge/). The second is the aging demographic make-up of our society and the concordant reality that people achieve peak spending at an approximate age of 46, at which time it begins decreasing. The higher the average age of an American becomes, the further from that magic number (46) we'll get, and the harder deflation will bite.

In reference to student loans, the moral hazard is extreme (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_hazard). Loaning money is a risky proposition, but at the same time, making good loans is a money-making opportunity. So my question is 'why doesn't the university system back the loans themselves' since they stand to profit from it? Could it be because they don't believe in their own product? The question immediately answers itself. Good loans make money and net positive return. It's because all of the risk has been externalized to the US taxpayer courtesy of the US government. With cost and risk externalized, what incentive is there to not admitting literally everyone? The only long-term solution to this problem is to fully remove the government from the student loan business and allow universities to provide loans to their most promising candidates. As a side-benefit, the positive effect on "X-studies" degrees would be almost instant. The current system is unsustainable. What's in a name? That which we call communism, by any other name would smell just as sour.

That said, I do agree that student loan debt is a problem, but if we're going to agree to waive a magic wand and "forgive" debt, then we absolutely do need to address restitution for those guys that are like him: 

To address the Fed, I agree wholeheartedly. I would only add that we've been overspending for a much longer time than Trump has been in office. Conventional wisdom holds that the Obama years were prosperous, but would you call running up massive credit card debt prosperity when you're unable to pay your bills?

[The WOKE Thread (Merged from WTF?)]

I'm gonna try to answer a few responses at once, coherently.

18 hours ago, FLEA said:

I would say one flaw to your above arguments ViperMan is that part of the reason fighter squadrons aren't 50/50 is because the anthrpomorphic standards. I don't mean to imply it's the only reason, but by your accounts, only 3% of fighter squadrons are women. Ok, remove anthropomorphic standards, and now that goes up to 9%, remove something else, and it goes up to 15%. Keep removing enough barriers and over 2 decades maybe you're now at 40% or more which is realistic. We probably don't know all the barriers, we just know anthrpomorphic standards are one. 

...

I do personally know women removed from UPT selection for anthroporphics. One happens to be the most competent officer I've met in my life. She will get out now after 7 years and the AF is going to lose horribly on that.

Maybe, but I disagree because I think there is a much more likely explanation: men and women express different preferences in their lives and their choice of profession reflects those (innate) differences (https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/07/160715114739.htm). This is (by far) the reason for the differential outcomes observed in certain professions.

Take being a teacher, for example. In elementary and middle school, women make up 80% of the teaching force (https://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/07/sunday-review/why-dont-more-men-go-into-teaching.html). In kindergarten they make up 98% (https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/10/a-male-preschool-teacher-reflects-on-the-stigma-keeping-men-out-of-pre-k-classrooms.html). Surely you will agree that there are no barriers preventing men from getting into either of these professions, no? What causes this immense disparity, then? I contend that it is social and biological factors at work. There are numerous other disparate cases as well: nursing, engineering, oil-rig working, construction worker, dental hygienists, and yes, pilots.

Taking that, there is a much higher likelihood that that a man wants to become a fighter pilot (or other pilot) than a woman. Maybe it's on the order of 10 times as much. Hence, if you took a random sample of the population (men and women), asking each whether or not they would want to be a fighter pilot, you'd probably wind up with something like 9:1 male:female.

Now the interesting part is that about 25% of women (in the general population) are shorter than 5'2". In the military (this is completely anecdotal) they are taller on average. The same is true of my male colleagues. I'm of 100% average male height - yet I'm on the shorter end of the spectrum among F-16 pilots - so we skew taller as a group. Don't ask me for actual data - I don't have it. Look around though and I'm sure you will fairly conclude the same thing. It is likely that people in the military skew taller than average because you generally have to be of better health and athletic ability. So you made a point about women being excluded, but don't forget, there are large numbers of men who are precluded from flying since they are shorter than 5'2", as well. Lessening the height requirement opens the door to all of them, too. Thus, if 10% of those 25%, of say 100 women are now interested in the career, that's a grand total of 2.5 (call it 3) women. And if there are 9x as many guys in that last 1% of short males (those less than 5'2") interested there are going to be 1% X 900 = 9 extra guys eligible as well.

So even if you eliminate height requirements completely you are still going to wind up with more men in that last outlier group than you do women. And if you're being fair to both groups, you'll likely wind up with about 4 more males and 1 female pilot if you choose 50%. So this doesn't "solve" the "problem."

Finally, please note that absolutely none of this is to say that I think women should be excluded from flying if they want to. I honestly welcome it; I just don't think we should break our backs trying to fix nature.

16 hours ago, Guardian said:

Where us the evidence that whites proportionally cause as much crime as blacks and don’t get prosecuted for it

Thank you. This is predictably rolled out as evidence of systemic discrimination against minority groups. The problem is there are groups of whites who are prosecuted at disproportionately higher rates than blacks for different (but equivalent) crimes. See crack vs meth (https://medium.com/@JSlate__/the-myth-of-racist-crack-laws-63d7a7554cae😞

"Moreover, the press almost never mentions the federal methamphetamine-trafficking penalties, which are identical to those for crack. In 2006, the 5,391 sentenced federal meth defendants were 54% white, 39% Hispanic and 2% black. No one calls the federal meth laws anti-Hispanic or anti-white.The press has also served up a massive dose of crack revisionism aimed at proving the racist origins of the war on crack."

16 hours ago, slackline said:

That is absolutely the point trying to be made here. It wasn’t done because of/by sexist/racist people. The thought process at the time excluded those people. We haven’t corrected for it yet. The cockpit sizing issue is a very difficult one to tackle because it requires significant chuncks of dollars to fix. Other issues (before you ask, they’ve already been highlighted in here multiple times) are not as difficult to tackle.

No one is accusing anyone of being racist/sexist.

I agree with you in the sense that it wasn't done as part of a conscientious act to disallow women into certain career fields, but I don't agree that there was any "thought process" that excluded them either. Rather it is the results of the sum total of choices groups of men and women make - which are different.

15 hours ago, jazzdude said:

Absolutely disagree with you on this point.

...

On the note of not recognizing personal biases and assumptions over data on the issue... But I'll give you the benefit of doubt. Here's a quote from the stars and stripes article that highlights an important second part to this discussion:

Minorities were more likely to be accused than white members, but we're convicted at the same rate as white members.

In other words, innocent minorites were more likely to be accused of wrongdoing than their white counterparts. And even when they are cleared of wrongdoing, going through court martial has negative effects on your career. That's the problem. So what do we do about it? And again, doing nothing is a conscious choice, as is ignoring the problem.

Minorities were more "likely" to be accused because they come from groups that have a higher (background) levels of crime - so that is not a surprise. Since they are not convicted at a higher rate than whites, this means that justice system is fair.

To your second point, that is not a problem, though it is framed as such. Innocent men are more likely to be accused than women. Problem? The problem was identified by Slackline (and maybe others, including you), and that is that there are after-effects on one's career even after charges are dropped or the accused comes out clean. That is a problem that can be solved.

Here is the study in question: https://www.gao.gov/assets/700/699380.pdf. It says this:

"GAO’s analysis of available data found that Black, Hispanic, and male servicemembers were more likely than White or female members to be the subjects of investigations recorded in databases used by the military criminal investigative organizations, and to be tried in general and special courts-martial in all of the military services when controlling for attributes such as rank and education. GAO also found that race and gender were not statistically significant factors in the likelihood of conviction in general and special courts-martial for most services, and minority servicemembers were either less likely to receive a more severe punishment than White servicemembers or there was no difference among racial groups; thus, disparities may be limited to particular stages of the process."

What this means is that within the microcosm of the military, different racial groups reflect the same level of background noise (crime) that is present in society. This is completely unsurprising. What would be indicative of systemic bias is if one group, say blacks, was convicted at a much lower rate than whites. This would indicate some sort of command-level animus towards blacks serving in the ranks, with commanders at all levels proffering charges against black members - using the UCMJ as a bludgeon - only to have the military justice system be the final backstop that provides some sort of relief/justice - since they're not convicted at higher rates. But that's not what's happening. In actuality, Blacks, Hispanics, and males commit crimes inside the Air Force at similar rates as those outside the Air Force, and this data shows it.

[The WOKE Thread (Merged from WTF?)]

7 minutes ago, Prozac said:

So here’s an alternate take on the subject: Blacks, along with other minorities are routinely prosecuted for crimes that whites are not. It’s kind of a chicken/egg argument, like your argument that fighters are designed for men because men have been the ones to step up to the task. It’s not that women weren’t up to the task, it’s that they were prohibited from it for a multitude of reasons, one of them being they don’t fit into cockpits. I honestly do not mean to insinuate that you or anyone else is being sexist or racist. I just think some of us need a little light shed on the fact that these issues are far more complex and nuanced than they often appear on the surface, and will require real study to overcome. 

Completely agree that they're complex issues that require study, and I know everyone here is actually concerned about solving these problems, it's more just a disagreement about what the core problem is, and what the solution should be.

I think that when there is such vehement disagreement on what the problem is and what the solutions are, doing something contentious is very risky. Any solution we implement will absolutely require broad (bipartisan) buy in. And actual, no shit, buy in. Not "pretty darn good," high-level hand-waiving buy in.

[The WOKE Thread (Merged from WTF?)]

1 minute ago, Prozac said:

Please do tell us why you think black Americans are more likely to commit criminal acts than their white counterparts. This is absolutely pertinent to the current conversation. 

I didn't say I think blacks are more likely to commit crime than whites - I said the data says they do. Blacks DO commit more crime than whites. My thoughts have NOTHING to do with that, and shouldn't have anything to do with it. It's not about your or my thoughts.

The "why" of all this is not up to the Air Force, which is my more pertinent point. We're an organization of about 300,000 people, which is about 1/1000th of the American populace, we're not going to solve the social ills that are part of the larger context we find ourselves in.

[The Next President is...]

18 minutes ago, di1630 said:

The same people who were miserable behind their keyboards for 4 years with TDS - Trump derangement Syndrome will soon be the same miserable victims with BDS - Biden Disappointment Syndrome.

If the GOP keeps the senate, the dem infighting will be fun to watch. Very few campaign promises met, sets up the right for gains in 2024.

The beta males and 2/10 feminists who were calling us all (on the right) racists and sexists will be miserable....still.

And now we don’t have to hear about BLM or other statistically retarded causes for a while.

The blue wave never happened. Not a bad election.

Cheer up, it could be Hillary’s second term.

My sentiments exactly.

[The WOKE Thread (Merged from WTF?)]

2 hours ago, jazzdude said:

Education was used as an analogy to get away from preconceived arguments about race/sex and how that might affect career outcomes, and to use an example that most of us here have direct experience with to have a relatable discussion about a standard that was considered unfair by many in ops.

Want specific areas for race/sex? Here's some for starters.

- Just posted about anthro standards and how it effects women.

- Posted earlier about how requiring photos in hiring applications (for jobs that accelerate a career) can lead to biased selection, based on the army's experiment examining what happens if you remove photos in a selection process and how that affects minorites (it improves outcomes for minorities when there was no photo-arguably more focused on abilities and performance when photos were excluded).

- Mentorship. How many times have people here complained about "like promoting like?" If senior leaders have a personal bias for/against a particular group that shouldn't be considered (like race or sex), it tilts the outcomes for that group. It doesn't have to be anything sinister either, just a small, maybe unconscious, bias towards spending time with one demographic vs another. (They aren't necessarily bad people for having unintentional biases, we're all human and have them. But recognizing it's a thing can help you guard against it for the health/fairness of the overall system) And making O-6+, you typically will need a senior sponsor to watch your career and pull you up.

- Military justice.
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2020/06/10/air-force-launches-review-racial-disparities-punishments-opportunities.html
https://www.stripes.com/news/air-force/air-force-fails-to-deal-with-racial-disparities-in-military-justice-report-says-1.631314
Those articles show that minority males tend to investigated more than white members of either sex. It does point out convictions are roughly equal, so the end outcome would appear to be fair (minorities no convicted at a higher rate than average). But on the other hand, when someone is accused, generally their career comes to a halt- they lose training spots, removed from primary duty, potential isolated from the unit/friends. Even if they are cleared if wrongdoing in court martial, that's still several months missing from their performance report, and their commander could still write a weak report (that's not referral) on them if they don't agree with the court martial outcome (absence of a strat, leaving out a push, weak language, etc) or delay/remove other future opportunities such as training or upgrades. More minority men have to deal with that than the overall average.

Many of these issue are hard to see as individuals, which makes it easy to say there are no issues because we don't see them. And I don't fault anyone for saying that they haven't seen anything on their day to day. That's great. But as information is aggregated up for our organization as a whole, there's a trend that shows that it's worth investigating and getting after a root cause fix (posted a link from DoD earlier showing minorities in the AF promote at a lower rate as rank increases as compared to the majority).

These are all issues that DoD is investigating/addressing in its recent diversity campaign.

 

Anthropological standards appears to be fair game, and would be if there was a 50/50 split in who serves in the military, but there isn't. Once we have 50 women fighter pilots for 50 male fighter pilots, then we can talk. That said, I've been in about 5 fighter squadrons over my career and there have been 3 women in them and about 200 men. It ain't some intentional conspiracy as to why ejection seats, etc, were developed for men. All through history, men have been the ones to go to war. Men have been the ones flying fighter aircraft. It was male test subjects volunteering to strap themselves to rocket sleds and test those first ejection seats. Women fulfilling combat roles is brand new. Hence, standards that were implemented reflected the underlying reality that it was men who were going to be the ones flying these airplanes - not that women were being systematically excluded from this opportunity. That said, I agree with you in principle that this is an area that can be adjusted, at present, to make things more "fair" but it doesn't meet the definition of systemic discrimination against a group (women). Discrimination is a conscious determination by an individual that they are going to produce favor for one person to the detriment of another based on the characteristic(s) at hand.

On the topic of photos, I agree with you 100%. There is no reason why a photo (or any racial/sex data) should be included as part of a promotion package. In fact, names should probably also be masked so that there is nothing that can be read into when decisions are being made as to who should be promoted. As far as promotion boards are concerned, it is only performance data that is relevant. And more importantly when we implement this little "social" betterment, there is no cost imposed on anyone else - which is not the case with many other social justice initiatives, but should be a necessary condition for any of them to be implemented.

As far as mentorship goes, I'm not sure how identifying a generic problem that affects all people somehow disproportionately affects a minority. It's a general problem and sure, one we should be aware of, but it's also taken for granted that it is having a measurable effect on the development and selection of "under" represented people, else, it'd be easy to provide actual examples. But such is the problem with "unconscious" biases; we have to rely on professionals who have received knowledge, and they're the perfect scapegoat for those who want to implement social programs, provide no hard evidence, and then implement whatever program they want. It's an example of the false premise fallacy - you have a valid argument, but one that is demonstrably false. It's precisely why arguments like this are so hard for people to see through. And the danger is that once you give people who have special received wisdom power, you now have a religion.

On to military justice, there is one major problem with those articles - they are missing the broader, underlying context. From the stripes article:

Quote

In 2017, the group published a report that found racial inequalities across the military justice system, with the Air Force cited as having some of the most extreme discrepancies. In the Air Force, black airmen on average were 71% more likely to face court-martial or nonjudicial punishment than their white counterparts, according to the group’s investigation at the time.

The unstated assumption in this article is that there should be no inequalities between blacks and whites. That's great, and is an ideal that reflects the desired society which we all hope is someday realized, but it is just not the present reality we live in. I'm sorry. No, the proper framing of the disparity needs to be couched in terms of the broader societal context that we find ourselves a smaller part of. In that reality, blacks commit a grossly disproportionate share of crime (https://www.ojjdp.gov/ojstatbb/crime/ucr.asp?table_in=2 and https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-u.s/2016/crime-in-the-u.s.-2016/topic-pages/tables/table-21 and https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-black-americans-commit-crime). The reasons for this we can get to in another thread, but within the context of the articles you provided, the proper question to ask is this: is it surprising that given blacks commit a higher proportion of crime in the broader society, that they also commit a higher proportion of crime within the Air Force? I don't think it is. So good job stars and stripes, you figured out something we already knew. It would be strange had they not found blacks are investigated 71% more than whites.

I agree that it's hard to see many of these issues as individuals, but it is also very easy to take an interested party's shallow analysis and take their conclusions as gospel without asking harder questions, or doing your own homework. Let's not lose sight of the forest for the trees.

[The WOKE Thread (Merged from WTF?)]

6 hours ago, jazzdude said:

A lot of the actual effort isn't pushing one group over another, but rather removing barriers/drag placed on particular groups that may have been put there unintentionally or have unintended effects. Whether it's outdated policies or standards, or reassessing requirements-things change, and the system we all live and work with has to change to stay current.

How about an analogy that contains what some would consider some heresy on this board?

Maybe advanced degrees should be unmasked from all promotion boards, at it helps paint a picture of how well rounded a person is.

...

The downside is this came with several unintended consequences. People saw the correlation that having a master's improved your promotion chances, and started getting a check the box masters using TA, that didn't actually improve them in any appreciable manner. This meant the AF didn't really get someone who really learned anything in the addition education, and had to several thousands of dollars for pretty much every officer to check a box that became diluted.

Lots of pilots in this board complained that while they were hacking the mish on 12+ hour days, our FSS counterparts were getting plenty of time to do there master's coursework. We (pilots) complained that this de facto requirement was unfair, and that our skills and job specific training brought value to the AF when considering promotions.

...

That kind of examination on requirements/standards is what a lot of the recent diversity push have been about: re-examining what we do, how we do it, and went we do it, and the effects of the rules we put in place, to try and create a fair environment for everyone in the service (fair as in race/gender do not influence outcomes, just your abilities).

Your line of argument, applied to this situation, would've doubled down on the keeping degrees unmasked for promotions. Unmasked degrees were the standard and advanced education is valued, and this is fair since everyone knew it was considered in promotions, has access to TA to pay for it, and since the big AF values it, your supervisor should give you time to work on it on duty; you just need to manage your time better and suck less, and quit complaining about how the system is unfair.

Dude, instead of using master's degrees as a proxy for some standard that was fair or unfair and how changing it either led to the betterment or detriment of the said groups, why don't we just get specific on the topic at hand? What, exactly, are the systemic barriers that are in place that prevent X-type of person from joining the AF and achieving a successful career? Personally, I don't think there are any. I think arguing by analogy in cases like these leads us literally nowhere. Get specific.

On the topic of master's degrees, however, using them in order to determine whether or not someone should be chosen for advancement really only came to pass because it was a way for the promotion board to hit the easy button when they're examining a stack of (basically) equivalent OPRs. Let's be completely honest: we have developed and placed a lot of faith in metrics that we convince ourselves (i.e. promotion boards convince themselves) accurately measure whether or not someone should be promoted. In actuality, however, these ridiculous processes exist merely as ritual to legitimize a purely subjective process. This bullet means X, this bullet means Y. It would be better (more objective) - it really would be - if your OPR was merely a rank ordered 1, 2, 3, ..., n,  out of N, and what got sent up to the promotion board was a list of the rankings you achieved over your career along with a recommendation of whether or not you should promote. The promotion board would literally be purely objective, and we'd be able to side-step the little temporary, subjective universe that gets created during the promotion board card game.

And finally, I will proceed to flog myself for the overuse of the word 'master' in this post - it has recently been decreed that this word is decidedly 'unwoke' and its use is somehow discriminatory, triggering, inflammatory, and/or otherwise offensive to certain groups of people. My bad, tonight I'll go to sleep in my primary bedroom.

[The WOKE Thread (Merged from WTF?)]

Is it just me, or does choosing people based on race, sex, national origin, or any other immutable characteristic quite literally tokenize them?

[The WOKE Thread (Merged from WTF?)]

12 hours ago, Guardian said:

Great point. We need more representation from minorities and majorities in the NBA. They don’t represent the community they play in.

I also agree. And would like to pile on with we need more women in prison. Men are systematically discriminated against by the justice system, and the prison population doesn't represent the broader society. Therefore, we need more women in prison.

[The Next President is...]

9 hours ago, VMFA187 said:

Biden wins. Trump has/will win GA, NC, and PA. He must then win either MI or WI and will win neither. 

The plus side is I think this buys more for Conservatives in the long term like the article someone posted here (I think.) Fortunately Conservatives maintain control of the Senate which means Biden/Kamala can't really accomplish much of their leftist agenda. But in two and four years there will be a big swing back right from what is arguably already center, which shows how biased the MSM is. 

I saw something similar today and it rang true with me, as well (https://www.foxnews.com/opinion/trump-biden-democrats-reckoning-generation-matt-gorman).

Edit (another good one): https://theweek.com/articles/947824/left-just-got-crushed

From the article:

Quote

"While the final numbers may still be in flux, Democrats on Capitol Hill are no longer going to get their liberal Christmas list passed through Congress and, even worse, are about to face a reckoning unlike any they’ve had in a generation—no matter who wins the White House.

Let’s get a status update on the top priorities for Schumer and Pelosi:

Packing the Supreme Court? Dead on arrival.

Eliminating the filibuster? Nope.

Tax hikes. Not going to happen."

And I tend to agree. Having Trump in office for another four years would be delicious if only for the unending YouTube stream of leftist children reeeeeeeeeing, but honestly, Trump may have served his purpose, which was killing the Clinton machine, upending the Obama years, and shining a black light on what is our politics. The next four years spent with a fully ineffectual democratic president who can't mumble his way through a teleprompter and a vice president who is in way over her head will serve the conservative cause much more in the long run.

[The Next President is...]

I hope all you guys saying Trump has got it locked up are right - for two reasons. I can't imagine what handing the country over to people who don't know the difference between a boy and a girl will be like, and secondly, the YouTube videos of the liberal tears are going to be even sweeter this time around...that said, I have my doubts. We'll have to wait and see.

[The WOKE Thread (Merged from WTF?)]

2 hours ago, Lord Ratner said:

1-4) Yup. Though I'll add, we can't legalize all drugs. And we can't ignore the use of certain drugs, like meth. America's "homelessness" problem is actual a drug abuse problem, and we are seeing the effects of a laissez faire approach to drug use and addiction. For the best summation of the problem I recommend watching "Seattle is Dying" by KOMO on YouTube. Should be required viewing.

5) Agreed but with a caveat: the private interests, if they are permitted (most cities don't run their cameras) must have absolutely no compensation based on the volume of infractions. Secondly, cities must establish a formula for yellow-light duration that is applied to all intersections that matches or exceeds pre-camera duration. 

You commentary on police partners is pretty much inline with my point. More cops = less need for fatal force in a given interaction. One on one, the point-of-no-return for a fatal interaction is much sooner. 

Absolutely agree. Watched it a while ago and two things that stuck out to me were the fact that so many (almost all) of the homeless have either some sort of "debilitating" mental condition or are hopelessly addicted. One officer's quote stood out to me in particular: "Drug dealers selling crack, meth and heroin are evil people preying on the weakest part of society and belong in prison. We arrest them and nothing happens to them. They are back out on the street immediately. We need to acknowledge the disregard for human life inherent in selling life ending drugs and lock the dealers up for serious time."

There are elements in society that literally profit from people's death. I'm open (but skeptical) to the "legalization" argument. Weed has been legal in a lot of states now, and there is still a very strong illicit market for it, so I don't buy the argument that we can just tax it and it'll just all be ok.

[The WOKE Thread (Merged from WTF?)]

14 hours ago, slackline said:

Agree mostly, but the risk most definitely is part of the job. If your own life is 100% your focus, I think “serving and protecting” is the wrong job for you. Should be very high on the list of priorities, but you do know what you are potentially signing up for. Maybe just arguing semantics here...

Gotta disagree with you completely on that one. Just because we have formalized/outsourced violence to an entity called the police does not make it their job (in any part) to get hurt while "serving and protecting" the rest of us. This is a "job" that has to be done by someone and is ultimately an extension of all of our most basic rights to not be harmed by other individuals - if we didn't have police is it my job to get a "little bit harmed" while defending my home because the robber has "rights" too? I don't think so. So the police who fulfill this role in society have zero duty to take even the smallest harm from those who are breaking laws - especially doing so violently.

The people who break the law and willfully conduct violence against others (including police officers) are 100% responsible because it is 100% their choice to take the actions that led to those outcomes.

[The Next President is...]

4 hours ago, slackline said:

Explain to me, outside of religious terms, how gay marriage infringes on the safety, or rights of others, or unfairly taxes straight people.

To be clear, I support the rights of any individual to marry, using whatever definition they want, whoever they want. I quite literally could not care. My problem with it (at core) is the same I have with many other laws which cause unintended "side effects" in our society. This happens when we have laws codified for one purpose but which are then expanded or applied to a group they were never intended or foreseen to cover at a future date.

In the case of marriage, it was notionally brought into legal formality (rather continued) in order to provide protections to the spouse who gave up their productive years to raise children. And there are plenty of tax breaks associated with this institution whose purpose was making raising kids easier. So it's an imperfect legal construct because it presupposes certain things (i.e. kids). We're now at the point where these suppositions no longer make sense and have real fiscal impact. It would make more sense to associate marriage tax breaks with the number of kids you have which would open them up (fairly) for gay couples. To be clearer, childless straight couples shouldn't receive tax breaks either.

I'll try and give a couple of examples.

California (and other high-tax states) is currently in arms about their full (state) taxes no longer being federally deductible. Using very simplified math, a Californian making $100K paying 13.3% income tax  ($13,300) would be taxed 20% (federal) on $86,700 (about $17,340) under the "old" system. Under the new system, they effectively pay the federal government first meaning they would pay $20,000 to the federal government and $10,640 to California. So the federal government gets a much larger piece of the pie and CA is left with lower tax revenue (no effect on the taxpayer here). But that's not really even the problem. The problem (philosophically) is that different states have different state income tax rates so they (those with lower state income taxes) wind up federally subsidizing the "rich" ones under the old system.

Take Alabama's top tax rate (for easy math) of 5%. Under the old system, a $100K earner would pay Alabama $5,000 and then pay the feds $19,000 (20% of 95K). So equal earners in CA and AL wind up paying the federal government $17,340 and $19,000, respectively? That's the problem that Trump's tax cut fixed: it eliminates the differential federal tax rate that income tax payers fork over to the federal government. It's no wonder high-tax blue states are all about federal programs - they (used to) cost less for them!

One last example (also CA).

Proposition 13 makes is such that your neighbors might be paying a wildly different property tax rate than you. While well-intended, it creates is another instance of law that creates major differentials between neighbors. California's budget is California's budget. If they can't get the taxes from your neighbor, they're gonna get them from you.

Wrapping this all together, because I don't want to lose the thread. I view it as a problem not because of a moral reason, but because it was a set of laws enacted with a different set of assumptions and is one instance of the larger problem of applying laws to groups or circumstances the were not written for. Hence when circumstances change, we need to re-write and re-think them so they are applied fairly and don't result in unintended consequences - not just blanket approve parking in handicapped spaces.

[The Next President is...]

On 10/22/2020 at 2:13 PM, Lord Ratner said:

I always found this argument amazing. My wife and I make restaurant-quality food 5/7 nights a week, and it's usually between $5-10 in ingredients per person. And we only buy meat from whole foods. What are people buying at grocery stores that's more expensive than restaurants? Filet mignon?

Yeah I know, I can buy like 3-4 chicken breasts for less than $5. If I make rice with it, that's full sustenance for a few days. It's not "great" eating, but that's not what we're talking about.

People just like to dress up excuses nowadays.

[The Next President is...]

32 minutes ago, Negatory said:

I never came close to saying that. My point is literally in line with what you’re saying: you can have meaningful regulation and limit the free market and have it be our version of “capitalism.” 
 

But this point does require many people to concede that government intervention and limitations on the free market do not automatically equal socialism, and I feel like that’s the more common trope on this forum.

Well you did reference "pure unbridled economic libertarianism" and the failings of the "free market system in America" so label me confused then.

[The Next President is...]

21 hours ago, slackline said:

I get it, you don’t want to subsidize the healthcare of fat people. It pisses me off as well. The military has destroyed my body, back and neck are 10 kinds of jacked, but I take care of myself. I believe a lot more people should and could do a lot of the same thing. I eat right, and I exercise a ton. That takes care of a lot of my issues and keeps my QoL higher than it would be. If I can do that, they can do that... to an extent. Food that is healthy is waaay harder to get for low income families. Not just the prices (healthy food is more expensive than garbage food) are messed up, but there’s the time aspect. People working multiple min wage jobs often times have very little free time, so popping in the microwave dinner is faster than preparing healthy food.

That doesn’t excuse a gross neglect of your own health on the part of many fat people. I’m simply making the point that it isn’t as simple as “fat people should all die of diabetes because they’re lazy” which seems like what you’re advocating (heavy on the sarcasm there in case you were unsure). Oh, and guess what, there’s tons of fat people in the military driving up our healthcare costs. Fix that problem for us while you’re on your high horse (again, sarcasm meter should be in the ON position).

BL: we can do better, and if fat people get to go along for the ride, so be it... Again, people other than fat people need healthcare.

Maybe it is more difficult to get healthy food. But there are a lot of things that are more difficult when you don't have money. One solution I advocate for is that EBT cards should not work in convenience stores or should be able to purchase "processed" items. They should be allowed to purchase raw produce only. Buying a chicken and some salad and rice is not more expensive than eating out for a whole family. It just isn't.

On the other note, I don't mind the sarcasm and I appreciate how direct we can be in this forum. I appreciate the fray. It's hard to have these conversations in person with large parts of the populace at this point.

17 hours ago, FLEA said:

Regarding the point to the government subsidizing rights. This is not entirely true. We do force attorneys to represent clients who can't afford one. This is done differently in different states but often times if you are fostered to practice certain types of law in a whatever district you go into a lottery, or the state just retains a defense team. Either way, I think you can see the point. 

That is true, but it's also a "right" you are given in response to the government attempting to take something from you - so in the case of the court/justice system, they are going to deprive you of one of your rights, it's only reasonable that they provide you with a "defense." So in that light, it is categorically different and the original point is still that the government doesn't subsidize your other rights, so why is healthcare elevated to a privileged status? Maybe I could see it if the government was causing your ill health, but in the majority of cases it is due to lifestyle choices.

1 hour ago, Negatory said:

Pure unbridled economic libertarianism has been demonstrated a failure dozens of times as far back as steel or railroads. If you think the free market always works in America - just because that’s how it “was founded” - I’ve got news for you.

I think one of the most persistent tropes that operates in our discourse is that we actually have a truly "free" market. Nothing could be further from the truth. So when I hear about all the failings of capitalism I just laugh. We have a very mixed economy. We have actual monopolies. Regulatory capture (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture) is rampant. And there are all sorts of other factors in our economic system that work against free market principles. All that is to say that I dismiss arguments that point at what we currently have to say "look, capitalism doesn't work."

[The Next President is...]

On 10/19/2020 at 4:30 PM, Breckey said:

We as a country have determined that we want certain segments of the population to have government supported health care and have for more than 50 years. Why is expanding this out to include others a bad thing if the voting populous determines that is what they want? 

Put simply, because of the cost. Healthcare is inordinately expensive.

On 10/19/2020 at 4:31 PM, Prozac said:

How do you separate the insurance aspect from healthcare? I’m not sure there’s a conversation to be had about the”best healthcare system in the world” without considering insurance in the equation. As far as “healthcare is not a right”, it’s abundantly clear that the majority of Americans would like it to be. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/10/03/most-continue-to-say-ensuring-health-care-coverage-is-governments-responsibility/ 

The majority doesn't determine what is and is not a "right." Rights pre-exist government - they're not things that we all agree we should collectively pay for.

23 hours ago, drewpey said:

Are we as a culture ok with people falling into unrecoverable lifelong poverty and never returning to be productive taxpaying citizens for what amounts to losing a medical lottery?

I think the large majority of people would agree something should be done.  If so, what?

Not necessarily, but I am ok with it when people don't take care of themselves and become a burden on society. What is the balance? Take a look at many other modern cultures in the world - or non-modern for that matter. They do not look like us. From google (1st hit via the CDC: https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db360.htm#:~:text=Among men%2C the prevalence of,those aged 60 and over.😞

"Among men, the prevalence of obesity was 40.3% among those aged 20–39, 46.4% among those aged 40–59, and 42.2% among those aged 60 and over. Among women, the prevalence of obesity was 39.7% among those aged 20–39, 43.3% among those aged 40–59, and 43.3% among those aged 60 and over. None of the differences by age were significant."

Well over 1/3 (approaching 1/2) of Americans are medically obese. Let that sink in. Walk around Japan or Poland and you'll notice we do not look like them. They are thin. They are healthy. There is no way in hell I'm interested in paying for end of life care for approximately 1/2 of America, when it's visibly provable that they do not care about themselves. I'm not even interested in hearing arguments about it. I'm a hard "no." Now, we un-screw our food system and the way we eat and feed ourselves in this country and shape up our act, cool, let's start the conversation again.

22 hours ago, lloyd christmas said:

It doesn't.  Even if health care is believed to be a "right", the gov doesn't subsidize any of our other rights provided by the constitution.  Why should health care be any different?  Especially when so many of us do not take care of ourselves.  

Shack. You're 100% correct. Should the government pay for me to open a newspaper or buy me a bull horn? Freedom of speech is a right!! What about a gun. Right to bear arms!

21 hours ago, jazzdude said:

Why should the government provide healthcare coverage for military families/dependants at extremely low cost to the member? Should service members pay insurance premiums comparable to the national average for premiums?

At least for the service member, you could argue they should have healthcare coverage to protect the investment made in the service member if they have a critical skill. Should service members be covered for a pre-existing condition, or for medical accidents that happen not in the direct line of duty (say, breaking your arm while skiing on leave)? Or pay for coverage to cover non-line of duty accidents?

The government subsidizes lots of things. Food stamps, social security, medical research, basic science research, education, arts, conservation of wilderness areas, roads, housing, etc. It also (heavily) subsidizes defense. Basically, it's all an investment in our society to hopefully make us all better, even if it's not a "right."

What about combat zone tax exemption? Why not eliminate that? What purpose does it serve, besides essentially being a pay raise for doing the job we signed up to do? (Especially since HFP/IDP also exists)

 

"Should" they is a fine question - they don't have to. The argument is that they do because it makes a career in the service of your country more attractive. Take away that "right" (benefit) and you'll likely see recruiting and retention decline. Military healthcare is not a right - it's part of the compensation you're being given as part of the contract of your service. Same goes for your family.

11 hours ago, slackline said:

That’s all most of us are getting after in here, not advocating for a specific way to do it, but we maintain that the richest country in the world ought to be able to do a better job at taking care of its people than we do.

Stop blaming it on unhealthy fatties as well! There’s hundreds of thousands in this country that lost the lottery, and just have crappy health. No amount of eating right or exercise will change their health issues. Shouldn’t we help them without bankrupting them?

Half of America is OBESE!!! This kid is 10!!!! (Edit - he's 4). Let's fix this first. No it's not all the problem of obesity, but this is only one (1) problem that contributes to the health crisis in our country - there are many others.

10 hours ago, slackline said:

That's quite a stretch to say I'm looking for universal healthcare based off me saying it should be accessible. Nott looking for free, but we shouldn't be bankrupting anyone because they got cancer. Why is that so ridiculous a request?

I also said I don't have the answer. But certain people are unwilling to start the conversation because you can't get passed, "no, it's expensive". I've always told my guys, tell your boss "yes, but" and I've always told my bosses "yes, but". That should be the starting point. "No!" seems to be the only starting point some of you are willing to consider...
 

It is no until we fix some other underlying issues first. I'm not interested in forsaking people who truly lose the health lottery in life. But we MUST differentiate between those, and just blanket providing hundreds of thousands of dollars of care at the end of life for every American.

[The Next President is...]

8 minutes ago, drewpey said:

"the democratic party has been taken over by it's radical wing"

lol...ok.  The "radicals" were so successful in their "takeover" they voted in the most milquetoast old white dude they had available to them.  I get you guys are terrified of the Democrats winning, but you are going a little overboard with the hyperbole.  If Sanders was up there...sure you could start howling, but neither of these two candidates are far from mainstream politics.  In fact any "radical" ideas they have are likely just to motivate younger voters and are less likely to be fulfilled.

Republicans have continually said over the last 4 years that "the president has no effect on 99% of peoples' daily lives" I'm inclined to parrot that back to you.

The scary old man might tax the rich, alleviate student debt, and give people healthcare, but hardly anything "radical".

I won't nitpick, but I will disagree with you on something substantive - "alleviating" student debt is absolutely, and wildly radical.

[Eglin F-35 crash]

9 hours ago, HuggyU2 said:

This could end up being an excellent case-study on the negatives of over-reliance on cockpit automation when task saturated.  

I honestly cannot tell if the HUD comment is tongue-in-cheek.  I hope it is.  

...

Maybe some emphasis on proficiency with backup instruments would be a good thing for all communities?  

Only partly tongue-in-cheek - yes in the sense that the lack of a HUD didn't actually cause the accident. Not in the sense that design decisions and other factors substantially contribute to accidents like this.

The comment was originally made in the vein of a bit of mud-slinging against an airplane that has had multiple design decisions that cause operators to go "huh???" Lacking a HUD, a gun that breaks the air frame, having a canopy bow, all the design trade-offs required to allow certain models to take-off/land vertically, and so on. "Hundreds of design flaws the pentagon has no intent of ever fixing." Wow. It's part and parcel of a program that if we're being totally honest, should have been scrapped and started anew. We built an airplane to please everyone, so it's no wonder that no one is happy with it. Obviously, considerations like this are well beyond the scope of the AIB/SIB process, though I would love for an O-6 to go there.

Back to the accident, the cause was determined to be the fact that the MP landed at 202 KCAS. Duh. Fly the airplane past it's design limit or do something with it that is going to break it and all bets are off. The secondary cause (re: flight control logic/PIO) I can't really comment on because I'm completely out of my element, but it certainly seems reasonable that had it been landed at a normal speed and the control inputs had been made appropriately the "weirdness" would have been avoided. So on that note, I (personally) can chalk that up to a "substantially contributing factor" which resulted from trying to land it too fast - at least that's what I would call it in the debrief. I say this with no intent to Fox 3 the AIB, because I think it's basically spot on.

That said, I can't take much from "don't land at 200 knots" as an aviator because if I said it during a brief, my 4-ship would look at me sideways, as they should if I was going to say something so obvious (standard motherhood briefs notwithstanding). What I can take from this, and what I think others can take from this, is that our bro got distracted by something during a critical phase of flight. The AIB says this exactly, and it's what I take away from it as one more example of how much the basic shit matters.

So in summary, I agree with your assessment that it was basically over-reliance on automation resulting from task saturation. But, I will add that I think it could have been more easily avoided had he not had conflicting information being presented to him during a critical phase of flight - which IMO is caused by over-design. Simple works very well. The T-38, F-15, F-16, F-22, C-17 (even), etc, etc, all have HUDs. We are used to flying on HUDs. The F-35 should have a HUD.

[Eglin F-35 crash]

"The pilot noticed something was wrong with his helmet-mounted display, suggesting it was misaligned in relation to the horizon. The pilot cross-checked his virtual heads-up display and instrument landing system data, and visually adjusted his aim point and glide slope toward the runway’s threshold."

Root cause: F-35 doesn't have a HUD.

"