George Will on baseball

Apr 11, 2014 1:32:00 GMT pjohns1873 said:

I just yesterday saw an AP story indicating that gasoline prices in the US are expected to decline slightly over the course of the summer--albeit only about a penny a gallon--as a result of the current glut of oil on the world market.

Yes, we are indeed agreed upon our severe distaste for racial prejudice. 

I have to wonder, however, just who funded the surveys to which you have alluded.  And if these folks had come to a predetermined conclusion, and were merely attempting to reinforce that conclusion. 

I simply cannot imagine, for instance, that a businessperson might hire a lesser applicant for the job--thereby potentially hurting his (or her) own business--regardless of any latent feelings of prejudice on his (or her) part.   

Glut of oil? Hardly. Saudi Arabia could open up the valves on their oil reserves and flood the market driving the price of oil down if they wanted to. It doesn't require new drilling or impose any costs to produce except paying the person to open the valve. Yes, there are the transportation costs but no production costs except to open the valve. Of course it wouldn't be in the "best interests" of the Royal Family of Saud to do this so it won't happen and, in another sense, it wouldn't even be advantagous for the future economies because it would create a greater dependence upon a limited natural resource causing serious problems of rapidly converting to another energy source when the oil runs out.

Prejudice is unconscious and the person is not aware of it. If they made the decisions "consciously" then it would be overt racism but they are unaware of their prejudice and how it affects their decisions. As the 2003 study reflected with all factors were the same except skin color the hiring manager "believed" that the white applicant was more qualified. They didn't intentionally hire the white person over the black person but believed they were hiring the best applicant based upon their knowledge/experience on their resume and the initial interview.

If, for example, a person has a prejudice based upon a stereotype that "blacks are lazy" then when all other factors are the same that person will hire a white person because they don't want to hire a lazy person. They won't consciously realize that their prejudice that "blacks are lazy" influenced their decision but it does. They have a subconscious belief that "blacks are lazy" and will unconsciously avoid hiring blacks because of it.

Of course we all have prejudice. It's human nature for us to have prejudice when we deal with the decisions we make. The issue is whether we consciously recognize that we do have irrational and negative prejudice and then review our decisions by addressing whether we're allowing that prejudice to adversely affect our decisions. Most people don't do that. They don't want to admit that they have "anti-black racial prejudice" so they make their decisions without any thought or consideration to the fact that their prejudice will often lead them to make the wrong decision.

I've seen this with "Republicans" when the results of the 2008, 2009, and 2012 studies are referenced. They simply "deny" the study results because they don't want to admit that there is extensive anti-black racial prejudice within the Republican Party. I've often asked, "If 79% of Republicans don't express explicit anti-black racial prejudice then what percentage do?" That question has never been answered by a single person. In a real sense it doesn't matter what the percentage is so long as it's being addressed but it not being addressed. Remember that over 30% of Democrats also expressed explicit anti-black racial prejudice and they're not doing anything about it either. It's like everyone is living in denial and not doing anything about it.  

To answer the question the studies were funded by the AP with no agenda related to the studies that were independently carried out and which have not been disputed by any other studies. I've even read the study questions but it's hard to make any determinations related to them because they're so well crafted that it's impossible to determine which questions are actually relevant. A quality "study" provides many irrelevant questions so that the person subjected to the study doesn't know what it's attempting to determine. If a person knows what's being "tested" they will change their answers to affect the outcome and that introduces bias into the study. I actually addressed scientific studies in college and creating a quality study is almost an artform because the person subjected to the study cannot know what it's actually testing as that compromises the study.       

The fact that we know this prejudice exists, it is extensive, it's getting worse, and it results in discrimination but we're not actively doing anything to address it is what bothers me the most. If we want to address racial discrimination and reduce it then we have to tackle the problem of racial prejudice but no one seems to want to actually address it. They don't want to admit "I have anti-black racial prejudice that I need to address" but that is where we have to start. Even I have anti-black racial prejudice but I'm aware of it and so I address it to ensure that it doesn't adversely affect my decisions and opinions. Because I recognize my own prejudice it allows me to see that same prejudice in others.

Apr 12, 2014 0:58:55 GMT pjohns1873 said:

I really do not know how to address the assertion that "we all have [racial] prejudice, as that would require me to establish a negative.  I certainly do not believe that I am prejudiced, for instance; nor do I believe that this makes me a moral inferior when compared with someone who declares his own (supposed) prejudice, and claims to be dealing with it.

If there is still anyone in America (outside of the KKK, anyway) who seriously believes that black people, in general, are "lazy," he (or she) should immediately be disabused of that idea.  (I am guessing that this idea was spawned in an earlier era, when black Americans were almost uniformly relegated to dead-end jobs; and many tended to perform these jobs in a minimalist manner--as people of ANY color skin would tend to do, under similar circumstances; which is to say, with no realistic prospects for advancement.) 

For historical reasons, the median income among black Americans is significantly less than it is among white Americans; so many black Americans are required to work two (or even three) jobs, just in order to make ends meet.  And that, it seems to me, is hardly the hallmark of laziness...    

I would refrain from entering into a debate over moral relativity. That's like comparative tyranny.

There are certainly those expressing the belief that blacks are culturally lazy.

"Inner cities" is a euphemism for "inner city blacks" of course and I think we all know that. He believes that there is a whole culture of blacks in our inner cities that don't want to work and that's absolute BS based upon racial stereotyping and ignorant prejudice. The problem isn't that blacks in the inner cities don't want to work. The problem is there are no jobs in the inner cities and when they venture out of the inner cities they are racially stereotyped as being "lazy blacks from the inner city" by many employers. The problem isn't that these men are lazy based upon culture but instead that there are no jobs for them in the inner cities and they are discriminated against related to employment outside of the inner cities.

The person making the statement was Rep Paul Ryan and while there are arguments (from his side) that the statement wasn't "racist" it perhaps missed a greater problem that is addressed in the following.

The "Republican" conclusion that poor people are lazy is an even greater problem than the "racism" problem of "poor black people are lazy" because it encompasses far more people. As you've noted many "poor people" are working full time jobs or more and are certainly working harder than Paul Ryan. The problem isn't that the poor are not hard workers but instead the problem is that they can't get jobs and when they do the jobs don't pay enough to lift them out of poverty.  

The comment is made that (paraphrased) in the past blacks couldn't work their way up from poverty but that hasn't really changed. There has been some economic advancement since the 1960's but it has been basically limited to the upper 1/2 of blacks economically. For the bottom 50% of blacks their prospects are worse today than they were 50 years ago. Per capita there are fewer jobs in the inner cities than there were 50 years ago and the bottom 50% don't have the economic mobility to get out of the inner cities and are discouraged from even trying because of the documented denial of equality of economic opportunity when they do try.

Trust me, in the past I've used my last dime to relocate and find a job in another location but being "white" I had good prospects that my gamble would pay off. That risk is unlikely to pay off for a black person today. They'd just end up somewhere else flat broke with no real prospects in most cases.  

One point you make is very true. Income disparity for blacks does have historical roots and it takes generations to overcome. For a long time part of the American dream was that the child would do a little bit better than the parent economically and it tended to be true. They didn't do "a lot better" but they did do "a little bit better" economically. The problem is that when you're starting at a disadvantage you never really catch up and to even get close can take numerous generations. Sadly we've even lost that today because "the child" today across the board is unlikely to do as well as their parents. More people are headed toward poverty than are moving up economically. The growth in the jobs sector is for low paying poverty level jobs while the ages of those working in the jobs is inceasing. Today the average age of a person working for poverty level wages at McDonalds is 29 when we'd expect them to be married and possibly have children to raise. They're no way they can do this without welfare assistance that Republicans are trying to gut. They can't get a better job because with roughly 18 million unemployed there are no better job openings. We have high school graduates competing with college graduates for jobs at McDonalds and Walmart today.

Perhaps I ramble (which you know I slip into) because the real point is that we've had repeated studies that measure "explicit" racial prejudice. "Explicit" is something the person actually states. It isn't "implied" but instead it "expressed"  prejudice. According to the studies four out of five "Republicans" expressed explicit anti-black racial prejudice. That means that one out of five didn't express explicit anti-black racial prejudice. That doesn't mean they one our of five don't  have anti-black prejudice but they didn't express it in the study. The four did though so we know that they have anti-black racial prejudice.

My concern is that we're not addressing the problem and that doesn't apply to just Republicans but to Democrats, Independents, and even Libertarians because I see a lot of anti-black racial prejudice among Libertarians as well. They also tend to hold the belief that "inner city poor black men" are culturally lazy which is why they live in poverty as opposed to the real reasons behind poverty that causes them to be poor. It sure as hell isn't because they're not willing to work hard to get ahead if they're given the opportunity.

www.nola.com/opinions/index.ssf/2014/03/paul_ryan_says_inner-city_comm.html

www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/13/paul-ryan-inner-city-comment-working-poor

Apr 13, 2014 0:42:13 GMT pjohns1873 said:

I do agree with one point that you (obviously) consider important: At a deep, gut level, I find it utterly repellent that anyone might act in a racist manner! For me, this is not merely the result of the fact that there are no good intellectual arguments that may be advanced in favor of racism; no, it is far more visceral than that.

I just do not believe that racism is as prevalent as you believe it to be.  (Certainly, we are agreed that overt racism is very much on the run--it is just not acceptable anymore, in polite company, to display a Ku Kluxer-like mindset--but we disagree as regarding the extent of covert racism.) 

As regarding Paul Ryan's comment:  It may have been a bit ineloquent, considering the (predictable) interpretation it was given by Rep. Ryan's political and intellectual opponents.  But I believe it is fair to say that the modern welfate state--complete with the sense of entitlement that it has tended to spawn among the underclass (which is emblemized by "the inner city")--has greatly attenuated any sense of personal responsibility (including the need to work hard) that may have once been a core value.  (Notice, please, that I am not speaking of blacks broadly, but of the underclass; which encompasses both some black Americans and some white Americans, as well as others.)        

Most people are opposed to racism but we need to acknowledge some simple facts. We can statistically prove that racial discrimination is widespread. There are literally hundreds of statistical studies that establish that discrimination exists and none that dispute it. Racial discrimination is caused by racial prejudice. The problem is that we can't point our finger at "specific" discrimination or individual racial prejudice. For example we can run a statistical analysis of racial discrimination related to "all employment" but we can't run a statistical analysis of racial discrimination related to a company with only 50 employees. The sample size of only 50 is too small and the margin of error is too high to draw any conclusions. About 70% of all private employment in the United States is by small enterprises with 50 or fewer employees. We can address them as a group but not individual.

We must also understand that a person is virtually never aware of the fact that they have racial prejudice and rebel at the thought they might. They oppose racism so obviously the don't believe they have racial prejudice that results in racial discrimination. The problem once again is that when we take a "group" we can actually test for racial prejudice and so long as the sample size is large enough we can calculate with relative accuracy the extent of racial prejudice. The mathmatics behind statistical analysis are very sound so while we can't claim with absolute certianty that 32% of Democrats would express explicit anti-black prejudice if we tested every Democrat statistical probablility establishes that it would be very close to that percentage.

We know the discrimination exists and we know that for it to exist there must be racial prejudice.

Paul Ryan might not have been expressing anti-black racial prejudice but his statements were still prejudicial.

The argument he presents is false and this is why.

Yes, welfare assistance has provided a means of survival but no one wants to live in poverty and welfare assistance does nothing but mitigate the effect of poverty. A person on "welfare" is still living in relative poverty. Given the opportunity to work their way out of poverty virtually anyone would do that. Of course given the choice of sitting on your ass and being in poverty or working your ass off and being in poverty many would choose sitting on their ass. The actual "jobs" have to promise more than just the same poverty.

Let's put some simple numbers on it. According to HHS the poverty level for a woman with one child is $15,510 and the federal minimum wage is $7.25/hr. It we assume that welfare benefits will equal the $15,510 minimum assistance necessary for the woman to raise her child (it actually "pays" more) and compared that to  if she worked full time (i.e. 2080 hrs) at minimum wage where she would only earn $15,080 she would actually lose money by working. Making it even worse she would have greater expenses by working (e.g. chlld care that can cost thousands of dollars a year) so she can't get ahead by working.

I don't know where the point is reached where it is financial viable for a person to work as opposed to collecting welfare assistance but we know it sure as hell isn't working at a federal minimum wage job. Sadly, when we look at new job creation it's predominately in "close to minimum wage" employment opportunitied today. Virtually all of the wealth creation today is going to the super-rich and not to those that actually create the wealth which are the hourly workers. Since 2008 the top 1% have realized a increase in income of about 34% (as I recall) while poor inner city African-Americans have seen a drop of over 12% in income.

The problem before us is to make work "profitable" for the low income worker but that requires compensation (wages/benefits) adequate to meet the necessary expenditures of the person related to food, shelter, energy, clothing, heath care, etc. because a person working that doesn't have that level of compensation is "operating at a loss" and not "profiting" from their labor. Profit only occurs once expenditures are met and that simply isn't happening for many Americans. Roughly 40 million Americans are collecting SNAP benefits today, most are working Americans, and they employment doesn't provide enougn compensation to put food on the table.

I'm not an advocate of "minimum wage" laws but the problem is that many employers don't give a damn about the fact that their employees can't actually live on the compensation the company provides them for their labor. It is a "failure" of caplitalism that many, such as Paul Ryan, don't want to address.

It is this failure of capitalism that is the problem because if people could actually "profit" from their labor they would jump at the opportunity.    

I've pointed out the fact that the politicans tend to address the symptoms of problems as opposed to the problems themselves and Paul Ryan is guilty of this. Welfare assistance is a symptom of the problem that people don't profit from their labor because the compensation isn't adequate to live on. If we want to reduce the necessity for welfare assistance we need to address the poverty caused by capitalism where compensation is less than what it costs to survive. People need to "profit" from their labor as opposed to "operating at a loss" where they can't afford basic necessities like food, shelter, energy, heath care, etc..

Reducing poverty reduces the necessity for welfare assistance.

BTW The Libertarian Party also fails on this issue. The Libertarian Party merely wants to privatize the welfare assistance and that doesn't change the fact that the welfare assistance is still a necessity that places a huge burden on society. The financial burden doesn't change one dime under the Libertarian policy position so it accomplishes nothing. 

Only reducing the poverty reduces the burden and that is what we need to focus on.

Demonizing people, which is what Paul Ryan was doing, is counter-productive when it comes to addressing the problem.

Apr 14, 2014 0:05:39 GMT pjohns1873 said:

You acknowledge that "[m]ost people are opposed to racism"; then counter that "racial discrimination is widespread." That makes about as much sense as it would to proclaim that most Muslims are opposed to holy war (or "jihad"); but the ferver among Muslims for holy war is "widespread."

I do believe that those who are beyond adolescence, who remain in low-wage jobs, need to improve their respective skillsets.  Significantly.  It is not a failure of capitalism that low-skill workers are not paid a so-called "living wage"; rather, it is a failure of those individuals who cannot realistically demand a higher wage, due to their lack of any important skills.    

You seem to fail to understand how prejudice warps a person's judgment. The "hiring manager" doesn't realize that their prejudice is influencing their hiring decision. They can have two applicants, one black and one white, with virtually identical resumes, knowledge, and experience but will actually believe that the "white" applicant is the better person for the job. They might assume that the "white" person is going to be more motivated or is even more qualified although nothing indicates that to be true.

As the "hiring" study done in 2003 indicated when all factors except skin color were virtually identical a white applicant was 2.4 to 3.4 times more likely to be called back for a second job interview that is a typical indication that they would be hired. In fact a black applicant without a criminal record was less likely to be called back than a white applicant with a criminal record (criminal records are very "negative" related to employment). This fact alone indicated that a "superior" black applicant was passed over for a "less qualified" white applicant.

The "job skills" argument doesn't hold up today. We have about 18 million unemployed and many of them are highly skilled but the jobs being created are low skill low paying jobs today. The average age of a person working at McDonalds today is 28 from what I understand. Roughly 1/3rd of people with college degrees are working at jobs that don't require a college degree with many paying just above minimum wage. Hell, I'm a highly skilled person in aerospace manufactring engineering/planning and today there are over three unemployed people applying for every job opening. Some of my peers that have been laid off haven't been able to find work for well over a year even though they apply for hundreds of positions that have opened up. At the sametime the wages have plummeted to about 1/2 of what they were before the Recession. Skills no longer seem to matter that much because there are far more "skilled" workers than there are jobs for them. Some of those I worked with previously have gone from $100K/yr plus jobs to working for $10/hr because it's the only work they can get.

As for the "unskilled" worker there used to be a way to gain job skills with "on-the-job training" but those days are long gone IMO. We've moved into a "poverty level" economy where there are the very poor, the very rich, with very few in between. The "middle-class" is disappearing from America. That is the "failure" of capitalism and much of it has to do with political agendas that favor the wealthy over the average American.  

Apr 14, 2014 20:09:01 GMT pjohns1873 said:

I simply do not know enough about  the studies you have cited--about their methodology, and any (possible) biases--to be able to comment intelligently upon them. I will say this, though: If racial prejudice continues to exist, it should be uprooted; possibly through social opprobrium. (Which is to say, racists should be made to feel stigmatized by society in general--much as smokers have been stigmatized, thus leading to the deep attenuation of  cigarette smoking in the US.)

As for your assertion that the middle class is "disappearing" in America--that just about everyone is either "very poor" or "very rich," with "very few in between"--I would just note that I consider myself quintessentially middle class; and so are those with whom I am associated. (I am guessing that you are middle class, also; perhaps even upper-middle class, but not among "the rich"--and certainly not among "the poor.")

There would be a concern if a study presented an "exception" related to other studies but when all of the studies re-inforce the conclusions of other studies and there are no exceptions it's rather hard to dispute them by claiming they're all biased.

We agree 100% that the only way to address individual racial (or gender) prejudice is through social pressure. The government is incapable of eliminating or even reducing individual prejudice that results in discrimination in society. It is a problem for "us" the people to address but we're not doing that. That is my concern.

The only way I believe it can be addressed is within the demographics of a political ideology. For example it's up the Democrats to address the invidious prejudice with the Democratic Party. A "progressive-liberal" is not going to listen to a "social-conservative" that tries to address the invidious prejudice where 32% of Democrats express explicit anti-black prejudice. It has to be another "Democrat" that they will listen to. I'm a card carrying Libertarian and my primary focus is exposing racial, ethnic, and gender prejudice expressed by other "libertarians" on a libertarian forum. If I can't convince them then there's no way in hell that a Democrat or Republican is going to convince them.  

I'm not seeing Democratic leadership addressing racial, ethnic, and gender prejudice within the Democratic Party and ideoloty.

I'm not seeing Republican leadership addressing racial, ethnic, and gender prejudice within the Republican Party and ideology.

I'm not seeing Libertarian leadership addressing racial, ethnic, and gender prejudice within the Libertarian Party and ideology.

All of them are living in denial of the prejudice and without the acknowledgement of the prejudice by the political leaders there will be no social pressure to end it within society. As you mentioned "smoking" has become "socially unacceptable" to a large extent today and that was because political leaders lead the campaign against it. We need the same push from the politial leaders in addressing invidious prejudice that results in discrimination and that simply isn't happening.

By analogy we need a "cigarette smoking President Obama that condemns smoking and stops smoking" to set an example and to provide the political push necessary to reduce invidious individual prejudice. That isn't happening today and without that happening the problem is only getting worse.  We need someone like a Paul Ryan condemning invidious racial prejudice that results in poverty in our African-American communities instead of condemning those subjected to the racial discrimination that is the reason why they are living in poverty.  

The best that the government can do, and arguably should do, is to mitigate the effects of the prejudice that results in discrimination. What is ironic is that there are those that oppose the attempts by government to mitigate the effects of discrimination that exists because of invidious individual prejudice.   

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As for the "middle-class" I'm both an example of it and also anecdotally and example of it disappearing. Between 2005 and 2012 I was upper middle-class with an annual income of over $100,000/yr but that dropped to about $35,000 in 2013 as the residual effects of the 2008 Recession finally reached my profession. Of course I can't actually live on $35,000/yr but I do have the financial resources to cover the "loss of income" but remember that financial assets are lost when a person has to resort to using them and for someone that might only have had a $40,000/yr income and it dropped to $30,000/yr they probably didn't have the financial assets to carry them into the future.

Perhaps reading the two following stories provides the most information on why the middle class is disappearing and the causes behind it.

smallbusiness.yahoo.com/advisor/obituary-american-middle-class-155040791.html

news.yahoo.com/charts-rich-won-great-recession-130300311.html

It there is any doubt then all we have to do is look at the change in the number of SNAP recepients. Prior to the Recession there were about 10 million households receiveing SNAP benefits. Since 2008, while the criteria for SNAP benefits hasn't changed, today about four-times as many, an estimated 40 million households, are now receiving SNAP benefits. That's roughly 30 million households that went from above the poverty level for SNAP benefits to below the poverty level for SNAP benefits. The "income" levels for average working Americans is going down as virtually all of the new income from the increased GDP is going to the top 1% of income earners and that does not increase consumption which is necessary for an expanding economy that creates jobs and creates a demand for labor that increases wage compensation.   

Apr 16, 2014 0:40:20 GMT pjohns1873 said:

There was actually an article in Slate magazine that makes very much the same point that you are making, as regarding the prevalence of racial discrimination.  (Although this online magazine leans center-left, I will have to admit that it was a well-researched piece.  I wish I could find the link to it.)    

Like you, I have an annual income in the mid-30s. (It is actually about $35-36K.) However, the cost of living in Tennessee is not what it is in, say, New York or California. And given the fact that I am debt-free, I am able to pay all the bills promptly, purchase pretty much whatever I wish--and still save more than $1,000 per month into my Rainy Day Fund.  I would consider that to be quite middle class--albeit far from wealthy.   

The news media often reveals the scientific studies on issues like racism and AGW but I've typically taken the steps to research the actual studies. Sometimes "opinion" writers do slant their take on the studies but I've yet to find that in the actually studies. To do so in the actual study would be the "kiss of death" to the study because they are peer reviewed by other scientists in the field. There have been some flawed studies historically (e.g. the estimated number of people dying from tobacco smoking study done in 1991) but these are rare and they are disputed and discredited by scientists. On the flip side when it comes to racial, ethnic, and gender discrimination these studies, and there are many, have never been disputed or discredited by the scientific community. What we find are anecdotal arguments used for propaganda purposes that originate with "racist" groups and are spread prejudice thoughout society.

Let me provide an example. Many are opposed to Affirmative Action stating it creates reverse discrimination. First of all there is no such thing as "reverse" discrimination. Either discrimination exists or it doesn't. But saying "reverse discrimination" has a good ring to it so it sounds like "whites" are being discriminated against in the United States.

The "racist" will cite a "case" such as a white person having a higher test score than a black person for college admission and the black person is admitted and the white person denied admission. What they fail to mention is that the admission test(s) are a pass/fail test so anyone that "passes" the test can be admitted by the college and there are numerous other factors that go into who the college admits and who it doesn't. A "racist" on another forum cited that at the University of Washington medical school a black person was 30-times more likely to be admitted than a white person with the identical test score and were "taking away seats" for white people at the UW. The problem was that there were only 19 black students in the UW medical school, all of which had successfully completed their pre-med college education, and they only represented 2.9% of all the students in the UW medical school. Qualified black students are grossly under-represented at the UW medical school. They also claimed that the "black" student was like to fail the "medical certification test" (it has an official name that I forgot) on the first attempt and many also failed it on the second attempt. That is true but like a state bar exam for an attorney most people fail the first attempt and many also fail their second attempt (the linked "racist" story didn't provied the "white" failure rate) but virtually all eventual pass the test and become competent doctors. The fact is that only occupying 2.9% of all the UW medical school seats does not represent blacks "taking seats" from white students and the black students were qualified for these "seats" and they go on to become competent doctors.

It was really "cherry-picking" of anecdotal information that was a half-truth, which is reflective of the best propaganda, to create racial prejudice because most people won't do the research necessary to dispute the claims with the whole truth. The fact is there is no historical evidence establishing that racial discrimination against WASP males has ever existed in the United States. There have been rare "anecdotal" cases but as FactCheck.org states, "The plural of anecdotal is no data" and that is true. An exception can be cited related to virtually anything.  

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As noted above "The plural of anecdotal is no data" so our personal "income" situations have no real bearing but it is interesting that my income dropped so dramatically. My average income over about ten years prior to last year was about $100,000/yr and to have it drop to only $35,000 was a huge drop that most haven't experienced. I could have had substantially more income had I decided to retire but I'm putting that off for now. We're both unique and our cases are anecdotal. Most people haven't earned about a million dollars in ten years and/or most people are not mortgage and debt free that substantially lowers how much income they need. Most Americans are living basically hand-to-mouth from week to week and any reduction in income can be devastating to them and the fact is that "real income" is declining for at least 1/2 of American workers and has been since about 1998. Instead of "moving up the income ladder" the majority of Americans are sliding down the ladder economically today.

The "American Dream" of the children doing better financially than their parents is all but lost except for those already in the top 10% of American financially. That is a serious concern and should be a warning sign for us all.          

Apr 17, 2014 1:56:04 GMT pjohns1873 said:

In a sense, I suppose that you are correct when you note that the word, "reverse" (in the phrase, "reverse discrimination") is tautological. Still, it may be described as "reverse" in this sense: Instead of its being of the typical American variety--i.e. discrimination by whites against blacks--it is the reverse of that.

I believe in a thoroughgoing meritocracy; and this is best achieved, I believe, through the use of test scores as the singular means of determining entrance into any advanced area of learning (whether law, medicine, or whatever).  (If some test questions display a cultural bias, they should be modified.  But I do not believe that racial or ethnic diversity should be viewed as an important value per se, and therefore worthy of being used as a criterion--even one of many criteria--for admittance.)

And you are certainly correct that both of our cases are purely anecdotal; I would not wish to suppose that everyone is the exact same position as either of us.  Still, I tend to think it is best to avoid consumer debt altogether--mortgage debt is of an entirely different nature, both because of its treatment under the Tax Code and because not that many Americans can plunk down cash for a house--with the possible exception of one's first real car (as opposed to the $500 special from Bernie's Bargain Basement Motors).  And by avoiding consumer debt altogether, one is much less likely to have to live from check to check.       

The only problem with the reverse (racial) discrimination (i.e.discrimination against whites) is that the arguments that it exists are anecodtal as there has never been any statistical evidence it has ever existed (except for universal gender discrimination against women). In fact the only group that has never suffered racial, religious, ethnic or gender discrimination in the history of the United States are WASP males.

It is myopic to rely on any singular factor in determining virtually anything. How relevant, for example, is something like a pre-college SAT score four years after it's been taken and the student has completed their BS degree when they're ready to take post graduate studies? How relevant are the different grades between a student that had to work 40 hr/wk while attending school and a student didn't have to work at all because their parents picked up the tab? Even factors like whether the parents of the child were a college graduate affect the schooling of the child. Something as simple as nutrition growing up affects the test scores. Are you aware of that?

I've looked at "tests" such as SAT and IQ tests and what I've found is that they are poor indicators in many respects. Let me share a fact. IQ test are reverse-engineered based upon the success of white males related to education and enterprise. In short take successful white males and then design the test so that it will match up with the attributes of that group. That's how the tests were designed and that is what they measure. "How do you compare to the successful white male?" They try to weed out racially biased questions but the problem is inherent because the test is designed to compare a person to a successful white male as a predictor of future educational and economic success. You raised the question of whether the tests are biased and the bias is inherent in what the tests are attempting to measure.   

I don't know if it's possible to modify the tests to remove the bias. When the goal of the test is to predict if a person will succeed based upon the attributes of a successful white male how can it be changed to remove bias?

As for personal debt I agree with you but our criteria only relates to the "middle class" and not the poor or even the wealthy. The "debt of the poor" is not in a mortgage or car loan but instead is the monthly utility bills, at the grocery market, the never-ending rent payment, and the medical services that they require but can't afford. Because of jobs that don't pay enough for the person to live on the poor are always underwater financially. They just don't have enough income to cover what it costs them to survive.

You know I'm a liassez faire capitalist but when I address capitialism I believe that there has to be a mutually beneficial relationship to any transaction. A person should not get ahead simply because they can screw someone else. When it comes the employer-employee relationship it needs to be a win-win situation where both the employer and the employee profit but when a person is forced to sell their labor for less than it costs them to survive then it's a win-lose situation and for me that's not personally acceptable and it doesn't meet my definition of caplitalism. I don't like government interventionism but what do we do when someone is willing to screw someone else to make a profit just because it's legal?