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PaperclipPerfector  8mo ago (text post)   31014 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of March 17, 2025

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Is the economy good?

This takes the cake for the biggest load of nonsense I have ever read. It blusters a lot with only a few actual points made in defence of the notion that government economic statistics failed to capture true economic conditions post-Covid, all of which are very silly indeed.

My colleagues and I have modeled an alternative indicator, one that excludes many of the items that only the well-off tend to purchase — and tend to have more stable prices over time — and focuses on the measurements of prices charged for basic necessities, the goods and services that lower- and middle-income families typically can’t avoid. Here again, the results reveal how the challenges facing those with more modest incomes are obscured by the numbers. Our alternative indicator reveals that, since 2001, the cost of living for Americans with modest incomes has risen 35 percent faster than the CPI. Put another way: The resources required simply to maintain the same working-class lifestyle over the last two decades have risen much more dramatically than we’ve been led to believe.

In the first place I am disinclined to give this any credence because their calculations are very opaque. Even if you got to their website the 'data' section and 'white paper' for their 'True Living Cost' don't seem to give their actual weights or the changes in weightings (other that impressionistic statements like saying that 'luxuries' have been deweighted). However, even if I could trust their numbers it doesn't at all resolve the 'vibecession' question because based on TLC the Trump years were ones of economic decline too. However, the economic discourse in those years was uniformly positive. So what gives?

If you filter the statistic to include as unemployed people who can’t find anything but part-time work or who make a poverty wage (roughly $25,000), the percentage is actually 23.7 percent. In other words, nearly one of every four workers is functionally unemployed in America today — hardly something to celebrate.

Aside from the fairly preposterous gambit of saying that we can count some people in full-time employment as unemployed if their wage is too low (words have meanings, if you want to talk about wages then just do, don't crowbar it in to unemployment figures). More importantly though, what you will see again is that his 'true' unemployment figure tracks exactly the common U-3 figure over the years. So again it's totally worthless in explaining post-Covid dissatisfaction because the post-Covid 'true' rate was actually the lowest it has ever been since his data series starts in the 90s.

Here, the aggregate measure of GDP has hidden the reality that a more modest societal split has grown into an economic chasm. Since 2013, Americans with bachelor’s or more advanced degrees have, in the aggregate, seen their material well-being improve — by the Federal Reserve’s estimate, an additional tenth of adults have risen to comfort. Those without high school degrees, by contrast, have seen no real improvement. And geographic disparities have widened along similar lines, with places ranging from San Francisco to Boston seeing big jumps in income and prosperity, but places ranging from Youngstown, Ohio, to Port Arthur, Texas, falling further behind. The crucial point, even before digging into the nuances, is clear: America’s GDP has grown, and yet we remain largely blind to these disparities.

This is insultingly dishonest. Why does he say 'since 2013' in an article about the post-Covid economy? Because the trend doesn't hold true - after over a decade of sharply rising inequality, the 2021-23 period was actually saw bottom quintile income rise as a proportion of top quintile income.

This article is utterly irrelevant to post-Covid economic perceptions. What is might prove, if one believes the statistics, is that Americans ought to have been pessimistic about the economy throughout the 90s, 2000s and 2010s as well as post-Covid. But they frequently weren't. It still doesn't answer the question of why Americans get specifically upset in the post-Covid period.

What is a woman?

Couldn't resist just dwelling on this for a second too. Now, obviously no-one has to buy into avant-garde views of gender/sex, but to be simply unable to entertain the plausibility of a scheme of gender which includes trans women among women betrays a quite remarkable lack of intellectual imagination, and, frankly, intelligence.

This is talk radio 'why are my enemies all so thick' slop. Take it elsewhere.

Couldn't resist just dwelling on this for a second too. Now, obviously no-one has to buy into avant-garde views of gender/sex, but to be simply unable to entertain the plausibility of a scheme of gender which includes trans women among women betrays a quite remarkable lack of intellectual imagination, and, frankly, intelligence.

Then why don't you provide such a scheme? Why so few on the left have given precise definition of a woman that got traction. The left keeps extremely vague on the topic what is a woman, the only concrete thing that they say is that trans women are women.

Our view is that whoever says they are a woman is a woman. You can argue all you like that this is overly permissive, socially corrosive, whatever, but you can't say it isn't simple.

  • -13

Simple? I still don't know what they are saying they are.

"A woman is someone who calls herself a woman" is as simple as "a William is someone who calls himself William". "Yes, but what is a William" is a nonsense-question and has no other answer than "someone called William".

  • -10

As I pointed out to you elsewhere, this is true if and only if "a woman is anyone who calls herself a woman" is the only statement about "woman" that you will ever use, with no connection to any other statement or issue allowed, ever.

This sort of hermetic formulation is not what people generally expect from a definition, and pretending otherwise makes it difficult to take you seriously. And this is why people with more at stake than you hem and haw and rely on squid ink when asked in the real world: they can't just retreat to forum anonymity when asked to apply or extend their definition in even the simplest ways.

This mysteriously isn't a problem when we need to convey that people are called William. (Also, I realize that by definition I cannot prove it, but I have made this point before IRL.)

A teacher lines students up to use the water fountain:

"Line up by reverse alphabetical order this time. ...Aaron, it's reverse alphabetical order, you should be at the back." "I've decided that I'm called William, actually."

What should the teacher do?

Again, "people are called William if they want to be called William" is likewise not a problem if and only if no action or statement ever depends on or is connected to this definition in any way. When we try to actually do things with this information, allowing the data to be completely arbitrary breaks whatever we try to use it for. We do not, in fact, generally allow people to arbitrarily change their own names; to the extent that we allow name changes, we do so through legible processes, because names are important in a lot of ways.

What should the teacher do?

Allow it this once, but observe whether William actually lastingly goes by William in other social contexts, and/or if he switches back to Aaron when drinking order switches back again. Take appropriate disciplinary action if you get conclusive evidence he's doing it frivolously.

  • -12
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