Florida State Seminoles

[Professor Tiger]

In a debate over the crime rate of Wilcox County AL, I cite FBI crime statistics.

AA, you respond with your scintillating memoirs as the Klamidia King of Kamden.

You just can't make this stuff up.

[AlabamAlum]

Reading is hard, huh, prof? Stick with it. You'll get it. Eventually.

If you don't, you can stick with prison work.

[Professor Tiger]

Ahhhh, the Klamydia King of Kamden returns....

When you were down in Wilcox County sniffing mattresses, did you also have time to do your own local crime statistics analysis? Who should we believe? The FBI or your anecdotal reminiscences?

I think I'll go with the former.

[AlabamAlum]

Ahh, the racist pastor returns. Where ya been? Getting the robe with the pointy hat cleaned? Lynch anyone lately? No doubt I regret mentioning the chlamydia studies. I labeled it as an "aside", but I don't think you know what that means.

Anywho. The website I listed uses the same statistics that your inside prisons site used, the FBI's UCR. ALEA uses them too, but augments it because of UCR being a voluntary program.

Anyway, learn to read and work on comprehension. Get back to me then with the Indian Rez data.

[Bklyn]

I've seen a lot of large words used in the past ten or so posts, not sure what they mean, but I am gonna take'em as disrespect.

Ha! Well done. One of my favorite scenes from that movie.

[Professor Tiger]

Ricky Bobby?

[Bklyn]

40 Y.O. Virgin

[Jungle Rat]

This the one forum I hate

[Bklyn]

This administration is Bush League. I just hope their ineptitude doesn't morph into carnage.

That is all.

[Professor Tiger]

The ineptitude was being hoodwinked by the Norks into letting them have nukes in the first place, and then letting a future President deal with the inevitably dangerous results.

Ditto for Iran.

[bluetick]

The ineptitude was being hoodwinked by the Norks into letting them have nukes in the first place, and then letting a future President deal with the inevitably dangerous results.

Ditto for Iran.

For a sec I thought you said 'ditto for Iraq.'

Speaking of kicking the can down the road...all that hoopla about that big-ass bomb we dropped in Afghanistan, somewhere in that story there was a reminder that we've been fighting there going on 16 years.

[eCat]

If I were Trump, I'd arrange with South Korea a show of force...

by evacuating Seoul

That would get some people to negotiating table.

of course you can't bluff in that situation.

I don't know how you live in a city where there are thousands of rounds of mortars and other explosive projectiles aimed at you owned by a crazy, insecure dictator.

[crashcourse]

the only thing about him firing artillery at seoul is there would be no excuses for the us not to annihilate every command and control structure he has

as long as china didn't get involved militarily

I doubt if the shooting started his people/command and support would support kim dong stupid for very long

[hedge]

The ineptitude was being hoodwinked by the Norks into letting them have nukes in the first place, and then letting a future President deal with the inevitably dangerous results.

Ditto for Iran.

So you're saying it's Bush's fault...

[hedge]

"I don't know how you live in a city where there are thousands of rounds of mortars and other explosive projectiles aimed at you owned by a crazy, insecure dictator."

It's the Asian version of the Hatfields and McCoys...

[eCat]

"I don't know how you live in a city where there are thousands of rounds of mortars and other explosive projectiles aimed at you owned by a crazy, insecure dictator."

It's the Asian version of the Hatfields and McCoys...

the Hatfield son getting the McCoy daughter pregnant ain't gonna solve this

[Professor Tiger]

The ineptitude was being hoodwinked by the Norks into letting them have nukes in the first place, and then letting a future President deal with the inevitably dangerous results.

Ditto for Iran.

So you're saying it's Bush's fault...

I'm saying the Norks having nukes is both Clinton's and Bush's fault. Iran getting nukes, and the nightmare that follows, will be Obama's fault.

I also agree that W's misadventure in Iraq was probably the single greatest foreign policy disaster of my lifetime. That MAY be exceeded by the Iran nuke deal someday. We'll see.

[hedge]

I didn't realize that you counted an expertise in foreign policy amongst your long list of achievements...

[eCat]

A new book by economist Peter Temin finds that the U.S. is no longer one country, but dividing into two separate economic and political worlds

In one of these countries live members of what Temin calls the “FTE sector” (named for finance, technology, and electronics, the industries which largely support its growth). These are the 20 percent of Americans who enjoy college educations, have good jobs, and sleep soundly knowing that they have not only enough money to meet life’s challenges, but also social networks to bolster their success. They grow up with parents who read books to them, tutors to help with homework, and plenty of stimulating things to do and places to go. They travel in planes and drive new cars. The citizens of this country see economic growth all around them and exciting possibilities for the future. They make plans, influence policies, and count themselves as lucky to be Americans.

The FTE citizens rarely visit the country where the other 80 percent of Americans live: the low-wage sector. Here, the world of possibility is shrinking, often dramatically. People are burdened with debt and anxious about their insecure jobs if they have a job at all. Many of them are getting sicker and dying younger than they used to. They get around by crumbling public transport and cars they have trouble paying for. Family life is uncertain here; people often don’t partner for the long-term even when they have children. If they go to college, they finance it by going heavily into debt. They are not thinking about the future; they are focused on surviving the present. The world in which they reside is very different from the one they were taught to believe in. While members of the first country act, these people are acted upon.

The two sectors, notes Temin, have entirely distinct financial systems, residential situations, and educational opportunities. Quite different things happen when they get sick, or when they interact with the law. They move independently of each other. Only one path exists by which the citizens of the low-wage country can enter the affluent one, and that path is fraught with obstacles. Most have no way out.

The richest large economy in the world, says Temin, is coming to have an economic and political structure more like a developing nation. We have entered a phase of regression, and one of the easiest ways to see it is in our infrastructure: our roads and bridges look more like those in Thailand or Venezuela than the Netherlands or Japan. But it goes far deeper than that, which is why Temin uses a famous economic model created to understand developing nations to describe how far inequality has progressed in the United States. The model is the work of West Indian economist W. Arthur Lewis, the only person of African descent to win a Nobel Prize in economics. For the first time, this model is applied with systematic precision to the U.S.

The result is profoundly disturbing.

In the Lewis model of a dual economy, much of the low-wage sector has little influence over public policy. Check. The high-income sector will keep wages down in the other sector to provide cheap labor for its businesses. Check. Social control is used to keep the low-wage sector from challenging the policies favored by the high-income sector. Mass incarceration - check. The primary goal of the richest members of the high-income sector is to lower taxes. Check. Social and economic mobility is low. Check.

In the developing countries Lewis studied, people try to move from the low-wage sector to the affluent sector by transplanting from rural areas to the city to get a job. Occasionally it works; often it doesn’t. Temin says that today in the U.S., the ticket out is education, which is difficult for two reasons: you have to spend money over a long period of time, and the FTE sector is making those expenditures more and more costly by defunding public schools and making policies that increase student debt burdens.

Getting a good education, Temin observes, isn’t just about a college degree. It has to begin in early childhood, and you need parents who can afford to spend time and resources all along the long journey. If you aspire to college and your family can’t make transfers of money to you on the way, well, good luck to you. Even with a diploma, you will likely find that high-paying jobs come from networks of peers and relatives. Social capital, as well as economic capital, is critical, but because of America’s long history of racism and the obstacles it has created for accumulating both kinds of capital, black graduates often can only find jobs in education, social work, and government instead of higher-paying professional jobs like technology or finance— something most white people are not really aware of. Women are also held back by a long history of sexism and the burdens — made increasingly heavy — of making greater contributions to the unpaid care economy and lack of access to crucial healthcare.

if interested you can read the rest of it here

https://www.ineteconomics.org/perspecti ... ost-people

to me this is perhaps the best argument to severely restrict immigration - or at least get back to a merit based immigration system.

dumping uneducated people into this system is holding everyone back while keeping wages low. The only way unskilled workers will see wage increases to help them rise up out of poverty is to have a worker shortage for necessary jobs. As workers wages increases, so will all workers who have limited skillsets - so its safe to assume that necessary workers who make up to some median range will see their wages increase as well.

But of course we can just open our borders up to those who want to come here, uneducated, can't speak the language and expect them to flourish in a system where someone with 12 years of education can't get a job better than the entry level service sector. Or not expect them to flourish and just add to the plural economy the author talks about where they'll continue to look to politicians unwilling to enact taxes or social reform to support them.

It won't be the 20% who are affected by this - yet its a good portion of the 80% who think that locking down immigration is a form of hate or racism.

California has already turned democratic due to the influx of immigration, Texas will be in the next decade. Yet there is no fiscally responsible solution a political party can enact to support this disparity between the have and have nots. At best - the solution is generational, and even then - it is , again at best, 20%. That's will never change until we focus on viable solutions to growing the middle class.

[hedge]

"and one of the easiest ways to see it is in our infrastructure: our roads and bridges look more like those in Thailand or Venezuela than the Netherlands or Japan."

You know, I hear this all the time, but I never see it. I suppose there are plenty of bridges out there that are technically not up to current standards, but I can't remember the last time I heard of one collapsing or people being injured because of it. Also, I live in eastern NC, certainly one of the poorer regions of the country, and the roads look fine to me, and I drive around a lot in rural areas. Certainly all of roads in towns (of whatever size) are up to par. But to hear some folks tell it, the roads all over the country are worse today than before the introduction of asphalt. They act like everybody is riding around on pothole ridden dirt roads that turn into mud swamps when it rains. I just don't see it, anywhere...