sliders1234
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User ID: 685
Is it even good to remove Iranian nuclear capabilities? Part of the geopolitics for Iran is if shit ever hits the fan they can get nukes fairly quickly to prevent an attack on the homeland. You change a lot of security arrangements if that is not true.
Russia having nukes is a big reason why the US could enter the Ukraine war and it wouldn’t existential to Russia because they guarantee the war would never come to Moscow.
sliders1234
1d ago
I had to look up Ray Kroc because there was something I was guessing that has a good culture war angle not discussed. Foundations and donations over the long term seem to always end up in the left camp.
Ray Kroc my intuition was telling me he would not be a leftist. To no one’s surprise a small business owners political philosophy is described in Wikipedia as
“A lifelong Republican, Kroc believed firmly in self-reliance and staunchly opposed government welfare and the New Deal. Kroc donated $255,000 to Richard Nixon's reelection campaign in 1972”
I guess it was actually his widowed wife’s estate that donated $200 million to NPR, but still seems there is a conservative can create a foundation and 30 years after their death the money ends up supporting everything they were opposed to.
People saying the west told Ukraine not to take peace are doing a giant motte-and-Bailey. Personally think it is bad argumentative form to do that without including a lot of asterisks. To use a known motte-bailey without adding disclaimers. No doubt Putin did offer peace but I see no evidence it was anything less than the end of Ukranian nation/ethnicity (heavy Russian culturalization).
I feel like this should be a proper way to cite a motte-and-Bailey when using one to indicate you are only meaning the motte.
This quote came to mind when you asked what is white Nationalism.
A lady asked Dr. Franklin Well Doctor what have we got a republic or a monarchy – A republic replied the Doctor if you can keep it.”
White People - are those who can keep it. Propagate self-governance. Live as free people in a functional complex society
Non-white - are the people who can not self-govern or contribute to its existence.
In the American context which uses an expanding term of whiteness it’s basically anyone who can replicate and reproduce the ideals expressed in the founding of the nation.
sliders1234
1d ago
A good econ piece for a good researcher would be to figure out why the costs of construction increased so much between 2019 to 2024. It seems like Texas could atleast print 3k sq ft at 500-600k new back then. With then older 3k sq ft homes going for 400k.
WFH killing construction costs doesn’t vibe right to me. Construction workers and lumberjacks aren’t the people afraid of COVID or the people who ever could do WFH. We have had general inflation probably totaling 20-25% but it still feels harder to build now.
sliders1234
2d ago
“do you believe elite colleges spend more or less time teaching people things than they did in the 1950s? And do you think that should actually change?“
I did read an article I believe from the Crimson by a student who said no one puts much time into class anymore and it’s all extra-curriculars. I can’t find it right now. But the average GPA at Harvard has risen to 3.8. If you are going to get an A or A- anyway then you do not have the same pressure to put in the work.
https://www.chartr.co/stories/2023-12-08-2-grade-inflation-at-harvard
So yes I think a strong argument can be made that elite colleges spend less time teaching people things and more time building up extracurricular resumes.
sliders1234
1d ago
You are partially committing a fallacy where you expect the other side to all agree on an argument instead of having internal competing groups.
That being said the White Nationalist and the CRT/Woke probably roughly agree on who is white. While I agree it can be vague; you definitely can create your pyramids. The wokes usually have an oppression pyramid with black females at the top and someone like Elon Musks at the bottom. You just flip their pyramid. The people you want to allow to immigrate are the oppressors in the oppressor/oppressed pyramid.
The right has an easy answer to this. The differences are entirely genetic. Low IQ, high criminality, highly prone to violence. There are no such things as “historical roots”. The problem with CRT is it then inflames racial differences and also proposes solutions that only makes things worse. For example it tries to solve genetic differences with social programs like affirmative action. Which eliminates the meritocracy but doesn’t solve the underlying differences.
Hanania also is a hardcore HBD but has stated fairly directly that you really can’t make those arguments in public. Instead he uses dog whistles now. Like arguing for the meritocracy because he views that as a winning political strategy while using his more direct logic for those positions is a failing political strategy. Arguing against affirmative action is a failure of a policy because IQ gaps can’t be fixed by going to Harvard is a losing strategy. Arguing for a meritocracy because Asians are on the wrong end of the affirmative action stick is a winning a political strategy.
Definitely possible. I would say maybe 33% from this hypothesis. And the rest is liberals just take more of these positions and slowly move the foundation into their taste.
People seem to be indicating that NPR was closer to the middle back when she died and left them money. And the change in NPR occurred 10-15 years later.
Probably a good job hunting search for clearly right people to look into these sort of jobs. If an old dude is like 80 and you are mid-career 40 there are likely a lot of opportunities in being the head of the foundation with clear right side traits.
I also want to point out Bezos seems to be going the opposite way with his wife. Old wife spending on leftist causes. I don’t know Lauren Sanchez current politics but they just bought a huge house in Palm Beach. Rich Latin women in Southern Florida screams conservative. Her friends will be. I feel confident predicting the Bezos will be solid GOP donors within about 10 years.
sliders1234
1d ago
It’s an idealized thought experiment. But I would say it’s largely true for Buffett, Musks, and a few others. You wouldn’t be taxing them directly. Carnegie is an interesting example. You wouldn’t for the most part be taxing him, but what you would have taxed is what he did with the money. The government would get more money and it would be real but what your taxing is what he did with his money which is buy a lot of libraries, science, and cultural centers in the US. Maybe that is a net gain. But you are not taxing the rich guy.
I do not believe Musks owns a home anymore. He probably does own a private jet or two. But his consumption would be way below his means. Any taxes on him isn’t going to change his jet ownership so no consumption change. You would be taxing something else besides Elon Musks. Not sure what it is.
sliders1234
1d ago
The traditional economics is that taxing capital doesn’t raise any net tax revenue.
A short summary is all this stuff goes thru the capital markets. A country with high saved wealth has more money sitting in financial assets. A huge amount of financial assets causes money to bid up the price of financial assets. The reverse of a securities price is its yield. Hence a lot of saved assets ends up leading to things like lower real interest rates (or negative real rates). So cheap mortgages and cheap government borrowing. What the government gains in tax revenue is offset by increases in their interest expense. All sums up to 0 net government revenue.
sliders1234
1d ago
It’s not a laffer curve element. That’s for raising tax revenue alone. It includes other indirect costs like government interest costs.
https://www.thebigquestions.com/2011/04/18/the-man-who-cant-be-taxed/
This thought experiment was popular on econ blogosphere back then. It seems roughly right to me.
Now someone above mentioned they consume capital gains and quit working. The story gets a bit different then since higher cap gains taxes or full consumption would lead to him entering the labor market producing more goods and services for others to consume.
But in general without causing a change in behavior (rich consuming less, getting people to work more) there would be no net gain in government fiscal position.
Elon Musks for example can’t be taxed. If you took $100 billion from him it’s not changing his lifestyle. Just numbers on a bank account. He would still work and he consumes so little compared to his net worth consumption changes would be meaningless.
Trumps not going to lose this war. He will escalate to deescalate. It’s either going to end up frozen on current lines or American AirPower shreds the Russians.
Bidens been doing his typical Biden shit and screwing things up. He has had approval to send more weapons and has not. His people are afraid of escalation when the only thing Russians know is power.
Russian apologists will say Trump can’t do this. He’s not going to start his next administration losing a war. Winning a war gets all the neocons back on team Trump and kills all the lefts mythology of Trump being a Russian agent. Ukranians can fight the Russians to a standstill which is nothing compared to modern American military hardware and training. Send in some Polish ground forces backed by US air and the wars over in a month.
sliders1234
8d ago
I don’t see any shitty parenting unless there is a lot more going on. A few text messages that look bad. If a prosecutor went thru my phone they will find plenty of shitty stuff I’ve done and a lot of stuff out of context.
I had some rough times in school sometime. Kids get depressed. Bullying happens. Most just grow up. Kids need to work thru there issues and grow up. I’m fairly certain Elon Musks had shittier parents than this. Very few kids grow up a member of the Brady Bunch and my guess is the vast majority of kids have some family dysfunction.
This actually scares me this definition of “shitty parents” because it sounds a lot like helicopter parenting instead of what I think is much better of just letting kids do what they want to do. I think the latter leads to children being much better adults and key to them developing their own self-esteem. I don’t want a legal standard where a parent needs to micromanage every bad thought their kids have.
I agree with guns should be locked up and secure. Though I feel like there is a ton of hypocrisy here as I’ve never seen a black father convicted of this.
sliders1234
1d ago
What do you mean by “not well understood”. Do you mean economists do not understand why or the average guy doesn’t understand why.
I think economists would easily cite things like land restrictions, failure to build infrastructure, zone restrictions etc as the cause of high home prices.
sliders1234
2d ago
Without proof. I am going to guess you don’t have intercepted directives from Putin to the negotiators telling them the terms to accept?
Which means you don’t have evidence that any of the negotiations were anything more than a charade to make the Kremlin look better (we asked for peace) before invading. And my side which is basically side the saying you are a wrong thinking it was real has hundreds of thousands of troops ready for invasion at great costs, executed battle plans, Putin speech’s, 2+ years of war saying your are wrong.
sliders1234
2d ago
He also indicated he would strong arm Russia into peace.
sliders1234
2d ago
When has Putin said he’s going to nuke over Ukraine? Official doctrine is an attack on proper Russia. Tanks rolling to Moscow.
Putin isn’t ending Russian history by starting a nuclear war over some shithole border town in Ukraine.
sliders1234
2d ago
Can someone speak plainly on what I’m getting wrong?
I generally translate CRT to disparate outcomes is proof of racism and we even had a long post in Racism academically being about the same.
I have no problem with black nationalism/identitarism so long as it isn’t code for special access/anti-meritocracy/criminals don’t go to jail.
Being that he specifically cited no-solutions and quoted Hannania I feel like I correctly identified where Hannania’s position is coming from.
sliders1234
5d ago
Supposedly Bidens already told Israel not to do anything. This looks like a fake attack.
Taxpayers spend $2 billion.
sliders1234
1d ago
Are you referring to lower class whites like Appalachians left behind from their upper class? I guess the peasants of people still get to be what their upper class can you do.
Or are we talking Arabs/Syrians/Palestinians? I guess they would be non-white though by skin white since their societies have never been able to function as a Democracy. And outside of oil money never achieved much.
sliders1234
4d ago
I think it’s mostly a myth that most of the ME is against them. It feels to me like they are now just a chip in geopolitical games. The Saudis supposedly helped with air defense yesterday. Long-term MBS seems to understand that oil will not always be the economic tool for Saudi Arabia and he does not want his country to go back to being goat herders. Israel and tech transfer seems to be a part of his long-term game. If Israel wasn’t friends with the Arabians I would guess that Iran would be openly interested in deal-making.
sliders1234
10d ago
Problem with our COVID response is it was dumb and weaponized for politics and self-satisfaction. I would say it was just politics but I also think a lot of people thought they were the “good” people for being safe. It wasn’t just a rural/urban divide.
Things like 6 boosters for 20 something’s was dumb regardless of side. And over 50 being completely anti-vaxx regardless of side was dumb. Or students masking at Stanford while riding a bike was just dumb.
There were probably some policies that made more sense in urban areas like less in-person during waves to protect hospitals but the vast majority of the issues seem to me like one side was just being dumb regardless of density of their community.
sliders1234
2d ago
He didn’t say he was going full send in the Air Force. But he did promise more arms than they’ve gotten.
Looks performative for now.
I’ve seen reports Iran gave the US flight paths for prior attacks to make sure everything was shot down.
The funny thing to me is there is some Air Force pilot somewhere whose highlight of his career is shooting down missiles the enemy gave him intel on just begging for someone to fuck up and give him a real mission like engaging some Iranian pilots and bombing a nuclear base.
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