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@AleutianTexan
The age of unlimited, easily verifiable information is coming to an end but it’s a historical anomaly in any case. If you can only only trust that something actually happened because someone trustworthy with a strong track record investigated it and said that it did…that type of information access is little different than most of history
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2020 precinct map: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2021/upshot/2020-election-map.html
Household income map by neighborhood (it starts at county level and racial data but change it to income and just keep zooming in): http://www.justicemap.org
There are wealthy and poor places that are bastions for each party. In the south in particular you have poor rural areas that vote GOP, poor urban areas that vote Dem, and rich suburbs that decide the issue and vote GOP. And relative to cost of living many rural areas aren’t necessarily poor although a lot are by any reasonable standard
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@IwantRooseveltagain
There are no “rich” areas in red states. These are the welfare states that rely on blue states like New York, California, and Massachusetts to pay all the bills for the losers who can’t earn in red states like Kentucky, Florida, and Mississippi.
Well, they wouldn’t be able to afford generous welfare policies for their poor citizens without the help of blue states. But dem voters are the ones who want those things in the first place so I don’t see what the complaint is about. Places like Texas and Florida have a lot of human capital and would absolutely have powerhouse economies on their own, but given the density of poor citizens who go to places like that in the hopes of getting ahead they probably couldn’t afford a generous welfare state. Even a place like Mississippi would always be economically relevant due to its location on the Mississippi River. Do you resent welfare policies that help people in other states? Are you a big advocate for federalism?
there are lots of rich places in red states lol…in many cases they’re the areas keeping it red
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@AleutianTexan
Man, deepfake AI technology will move us to a post-truth era where voting on policy is surely less of an ideal than party affiliation, assuming that party affiliation can at least maintain constant.
Ironically it might push us back to physical newspapers and the nightly news from verified journalists being the only reliable sources of information unless you’re willing to dig a lot. The era where everyone had cameras and online access but faking things was still difficult and expensive lasted like 15 years…will be interesting to see what’s ahead
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Drag shows ARE explicitly sexual but it’s in a cartoonish way that probably isn’t harmful enough to children to justify the state overruling the parents decision. It’s not really pedophilic…however that being said, a pedophile would absolutely 100% support children going to drag shows and would stick their neck out to defend the practice
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Just donated to President Biden for 2024. Four more years!
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@TheUnderdog
It’s not pedophilia, it’s just fucking weird. I think the root of what’s causing people to clash over this isn’t the issue itself but what it represents. Someone taking their kid to a drag show almost certainly doesn’t hurt them in the long run. What people are really butting heads over is differences in child rearing norms, of which any specific decision (like taking a kid to a drag show or putting weird books in the library) is minor but thousands of these decisions add up to a lot.
It’s underreported Red America and Blue America are increasingly becoming culturally separated on issues of childrearing above almost anything else. I’m not too fussed about this sort of thing because it’s not my business but there’s no way in a million years I would take my kid to a drag show, teach him about/teach him to believe in transgenderism at an early age, encourage him to read some of the weird semi pornographic books that have been found in some school libraries…the differences in culture between a family that does stuff like that and someone like me is so vast that we can’t in any reasonable terms be considered the same people or culture, but we have to inhabit the same physical space and use many of the same resources. It’s not a great situation and it comes out in inane arguments about this sort of thing. Hopefully we can all learn to be a little more live and let live
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Wow, this is the Biden I voted for. Thank you, Joe, for saying what’s on all of our minds!
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@badger
I’m not spooked I’m just answering the OP!
Any woman I ever fucked was clingy as shit, and that's not a small sample size.
you really do have a way with words my friend, I cracked up at this
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Educated and wealthy families almost universally raise their kids in stable two parent households. It’s possible that they’re unenlightened and backwards but I think it’s more likely that it’s just a social model that works
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@badger
It's a bit silly to go blaming this on high IQ liberals, dude. It was always coming. Birth control and the internet and cars and planes and education and greater freedom in general, the whole lot, it all plays into it. Wasn't some dangerous idea, it was a dam burst. And it won't be dammed again. And we'll be fine. What's to be so unhappy about? Church raping kids wasn't much good for children's wellbeing either. That's the Holy All of it. Welcome to humanity.
There are multiple ways to respond to technological changes, though. Technology was the cause of the sexual revolution (birth control most of all) but it's not like I'm saying we need to ban premarital sex or something like that, but stuff like polygamy should be discouraged. Technology has enabled a minority of people with a unique combo of high intellect and high openness to enjoy that sort of lifestyle risk free (similar to fucking around in college then settling down) but those people are very much a minority. It just doesn't mesh with our monkey brains. And two parent families are best for the vast majority of kids.
I grew up and went to school in a super unequal area where there were lots of rich kids and lots of poor kids but few middle class ones. The poor kids (other than recent immigrants) almost all had dysfunctional family situations and it caused them a lot of trauma. A lot more than being poor did, at least as far as I could tell. It certainly didn't help. I remember well how sad it made people when they talked about not having a dad or having to uproot themselves every weekend etc. Without even getting into the abuse that becomes a lot more common when an unrelated male starts living in a household. My dads family lived in a barn/shed for close to a year after their uninsured house burned down, but all three children told me multiple times that the most traumatic experience in their life by far was their parents getting divorced, not the periods where they were poor. Stable families are so important, anything that goes against that = bad in my book
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@amandragon01
Nothing is "perfect" but the point of social mores/taboos is to shepherd us away from elements of our nature that are now maladaptive into something better. In my mind it's quite obvious that what happens in the state of nature is that a small minority of the most high status men monopolize all the women. This is what happens in modern day polygamous societies, it's what the DNA evidence suggests happened in the past where women were around twice as likely to reproduce as men were, and it's what often happens in the modern sexual marketplace where girls can get Chad to have sex with them but not to commit, because he's capable of just moving onto the next one. If you want the worst aspects of millennial "hook up culture" to be inescapable keep advocating for polygamous relationships.
The impact of the decline in marriage/the family has already been felt in poor communities, in America at least, and it's been a total disaster. That happened for the same reason that people are pushing polygamy today, high IQ liberals who were perfectly capable of having safe sex with a few partners before settling down didn't realize that the whole world wasn't like them. A lot of people in less educated communities got married only because of the taboo against premarital sex and the extremely strong taboo against illegitimate births. Marriage has a lot of positive follow on effects that stabilize communities and families that got totally wiped out. In some places births to married parents have all but vanished, which causes a lot of harm to the children. Stability is one of the most important things for childrens wellbeing
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@amandragon01
How is this shown exactly? What evidence do you have that proves this claim?
“Results of the 2009 study showed that families living with a man who was not the biological father of all the children in the home, and families living without a man in the home, were significantly more likely to be contacted by CPS compared to families in which the biological father of all the children lived with the mother…Children living with their married biological parents had the lowest rate of abuse and neglect, whereas those living with a single parent who had a partner living in the household had the highest rate. Compared to children living with married biological parents, those whose single parent had a live-in partner were at least 8 times more likely to be maltreated in one way or another. They were 10 mores more likely to experience abuse and 8 times more likely to experience neglect.”
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@K_Michael
Personally, I don't want to see or be seen naked by anyone in a public facility. I've been checked out by older (30-50s) gay men before, and it makes me feel just as uncomfortable and unsafe as it would if it was someone of the opposite gender.
It’s different actually. Being a young man you could probably either beat them in a physical confrontation or at least be able to get away. A man is ogling a woman in a dressing room is totally different because in the back of her mind she knows that if he wanted to take her, he could. Especially if they were alone that would be chilling. The video below I think is a fun illustration of how men and women are different in strength
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@RationalMadman
Even feminists often feel kinda bad saying this since it comes across as demonizing half the population but men often are a threat to women and a lot of the things we do come from hard experience on how to minimize that threat. Gender segregated locker rooms and bathrooms are the easiest example. A public bathroom is basically a safe space for women as no man can follow them there and they can safely call for help if it’s needed or quietly stage an exit if lots of red flags are going up. Biological men who want to fulfill their sex fetish should rightfully be barred from that space.
Letting biological males into female only spaces erases a lot of important boundaries that protect women from violence and just make their lives better in general. Sports are another example, everyone knows that women can’t compete with men in most sports but a lot of women enjoy playing and competing with women anyway. A man claiming to be a woman and just blowing up all the records is no fun. It makes life actively less pleasant for a lot of people so that one person can validate their sexual fetish. It’s not a surprise that people who truly care deeply about women have an issue with the trans stuff.
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This may come off as a bit offensive but this kind of thing along with a lot of consent based morality is just high IQ liberals showing a lack of introspection and projecting their own mindset onto others. High openness, high IQ liberals are capable of treating others in some weird sex polycule with respect, of carefully divorcing their monkey brains sense of jealousy with their actions, maybe even getting off a little bit on the tabooness of the whole thing. If it’s not for them they’re capable of stepping away from the whole thing gracefully and not judging their partner because hey they did it too.
That’s not how it works with Joe Sixpack. It ends with violence, heartbreak, a sense of betrayal, failure to bond, unstable relationships and living situations, lifelong loneliness for those cast out etc. Nobody is willing to say it to her but absolutely no one is going to want a woman who was one of Chad’s many live in fuck toys. The amount red flags there is just incredible. There was a famous article about this rather ugly woman who had four boyfriends living with her. She got pregnant and one of them ended up almost killing the baby. That’s how this sort of thing actually ends for normal people
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@RationalMadman
I'm not well versed in philosophy or arguing what morality is instead of the outcomes of things. But who was it that said you can judge the morality of an action based on what would happen if everyone did it? I think it's something like that. It's hard to justify casting aspersions on a certain individual circumstance between adults...but if everyone did it the consequences would be disastrous. Young men already do stupid, violent, ill advised stuff that harms themselves and others all the time, both to impress young women and just out of general foolishness. If everyone practiced polygamy most men would end up with nobody which would not only make them miserable but would create a large incentive to go ahead with foolish, nihilistic, and violent behavior. And I doubt such an arrangement of constantly having to compete with other women is fulfilling for the "wives." Without the partnership and obligation of a monogamous marriage I don't see why a powerful man capable of having three or four wives doesn't just throw her out once she's no longer attractive for a newer model. If you know anything about older, lonely women you know they're some of the most miserable people out there.
Take a look at societies where polygamy is common, not only are they much different from ours in other ways that may make it more workable but it doesn't seem to really work there either. This looks to me more or less like a map of where you can expect to see constant low level warfare: https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/12/07/polygamy-is-rare-around-the-world-and-mostly-confined-to-a-few-regions/
Spouses in good marriages have the deepest bonds imaginable. It truly is a ride or die partnership that creates the foundation for a family, which itself is the bedrock of any civilization. You just can't create that that type of bond between a man and the favorite of his four sex toys.
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@Double_R
In response to "Whites were 45% of violent crime arrests in 2018. Excluding assault, 39%. Black people were 33% and 36%" you wrote:
Yet black people are only 13% of the population. I’m not sure how this proves your point.
My point is that the police and "the system" have basically no discretion for arresting and prosecuting people who commit violent crimes or serious property crimes. If someone is brutally assaulted, raped, murdered...it doesn't matter if the perpetrator good ole boy, the system must press charges. Murder is the ultimate litmus test for violent crime because there's a body on the ground that has to be reckoned with and black people have long been 50% of known offenders of murders, which has increased to 60% in the post-Floyd years. If whites committed the same numbers of crimes per capita but the police were somehow just allowing white men to victimize people (who would mostly be white) with aggravated assaults, rapes, muggings etc. the millions of unprosecuted crimes per year would create widespread disorder in white areas that's readily apparent. It's obvious that there aren't constant shootings and assaults happening in Karen's neighborhood where people pay $500,000 to live.
The point is that the percentage of arrestees by race is more or less a mirror image of the percentage of perpetrators by race. This circles back to the broader point that "white supremacy" or "systemic racism" are not likely explanations for what causes the disparity in incarceration rates, but instead the difference in incarceration rates is caused by who commits crime and who doesn't, and this differential is large enough that even a very high top 1% income doesn't erase it. A system of white supremacy that excludes people like African immigrants, asian people, etc is a less credible explanation than a cultural problem.
The raw data shows 1.234 million arrests for whites and 871k for blacks. I don’t see how that adds up to a 70/27 split.
No, the table is not super user friendly on mobile so that's probably what happened. There were 1.2m arrests total 817k for whites/white hispanics. 333k for blacks. Recall that simple drug possession is the most serious offense for only 4% of incarcerated people. It isn't the explanation for the disparity even your claims about drug use are true. The cause of the disparity in incarceration rates is that one group is overrepresented in terms of who commits violent crime or serious property crime and one is underrepresented
And what exactly does that mean, black people are not stupid enough to answer the question honestly? So white people are stupid?
Yes lol. Very. Most naive people on Earth by far. If you find me a study that doesn't rely on self reported data and instead is something like a randomized sample of urine or hair that is drug tested and shows that whites were more likely to be habitual drug users I would accept it
I don’t know exactly what your point is here when it comes to the violent crime aspect of this. The example I gave was simple, your addition seems cherry picked just to obfuscate. We can do this all day. I could speculate that the reason white people get arrested more for violent crimes is because the majority of those are domestic violence disputes, which isn’t surprising because we all know white people are far more likely to call the cops in that situation.
White people probably are more likely to call the cops in a violent situation, but you have it backwards. Black people represent FEWER arrests for drug crimes than they do for violent crimes. I'm doing the exact opposite of obfuscating, my argument is simply that the statistics for arrests are the way that they are because the people arrested are the ones doing those crimes and that there is not a conspiracy that lets whites off the hook
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@Greyparrot
Educated white libs are so out of touch with reality that it makes me question the utility of IQ to be honest. My only explanation is that blank statism is their religion and that they cling to their religion much more strongly than most Christians do. The world around us constantly contradicts it but they just keep doubling down year after year
I don’t know who’s more disrespectful to the police but white libs are so divorced from the actual actual violence that they think most people are incarcerated for possessing weed or something where the police have discretion. In reality there’s an undercurrent of violence in the ghetto that’s frankly unimaginable to someone used to comfortable suburban existence. I said it in another post that the per capita homicide victimization for black people is so high it’s like constantly having a 9/11 tier event over whites. If black lives mattered maybe we could talk about fixing that instead of pushing narratives that divide the country
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@Double_R
The statistics alone do not prove this, but we do know the most prominent reason people in general and particularly people of color are arrested is for drug use, especially marijuana. Yet we also know that white people use drugs just as often as people of color, yet it’s the people of color who are being arrested for it.
If it were true that this is caused by differential arrest rates and not who actually committing crimes we would see white people be a larger portion of arrests for crimes that can’t be denied (aka violent crimes) vs drug crimes. Whites were 45% of violent crime arrests in 2018. Excluding assault, 39%. Black people were 33% and 36%.
For drug abuse crimes whites were 70% of arrests and blacks were 27%. This set of stats doesn’t differentiate between non Hispanic whites and Hispanic whites so the “white” share isn’t super accurate but note that the black percentage went down compared to violent crimes. The exact opposite of what you’d expect if police were just letting white people off the hook while throwing the book at black people. Unless you wanna make make the case that there are tons of white violent criminals just running roughshod
The “whites use more drugs than blacks” thing doesn’t pass the smell test to me. I’ve seen those studies and they’re all reliant on self reported data, and black people are usually not stupid enough to answer that question honestly. But if it’s true it seems to be reflected in the statistics where the white percentage of violent crimes was lower than drug crimes. What exactly is the complaint here?
Your statement here a perfect example of the problem. If we know both groups are using drugs at the same rate yet one is far more likely to be arrested for it then there is a serious problem with biased law enforcement. Yet that biased law enforcement is itself creating a perception that one group commits more crimes, and that perception then feeds into law enforcement.
No the problem is that the rate of homicide in this community is so high that per capita it’s like two 9/11 tier events happening every single month. Drug crimes alone seem to be a tiny % of the incarcerated population anyway, and drug possession far less, so it probably doesn’t make that much of a difference statistically. Drug possession is less 4% of the total for incarcerated people (I would agree that it should basically be 0%) so it can’t possibly explain the disparity in incarceration rates
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What are your early predictions for the American elections in 2024?
Unfortunately as of right now I predict Donald Trump will win the republican nomination and he will lose by a much bigger margin than he did in 2020. The Republicans will probably retake the senate anyway because the map is just so good for them but they’ll likely leave several seats on the table as usual. Hope I’m wrong but that’s the vibe I’m getting. What about all of you?
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@PREZ-HILTON
There’s an interesting theory that someone on the conservative side actually leaked it. The reason for this would be to pressure the squishes on the court not to back down and soften the decision. If they were leaning towards doing that, doing so after there’s a public uproar and severe pressure would make them less likely to do so. Changing the opinion after it had been leaked would prove that the court is not independent but answers to political pressure. I don’t know if I believe it but it’s an interesting theory
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The places the above article cites as areas where white boys and black boys have equal outcomes as men are places where there was an early and large population of African immigrants. If racism in the US is so powerful that it pulls even the children of the top 1% down it’s odd that black immigrants who are much more foreign, have accents, dress differently, often have limited English proficiency or are Muslim are exempt from it
This whole narrative is a lie. There’s a cultural problem here. If you want to blame long dead white people for it I guess you can, there’s probably at least some truth to that. But not only does that fail to fix the problem it seems to actively make things worse. Black homicide deaths rose and remained elevated after Ferguson in 2014 and they exploded and haven’t come down yet post George Floyd protests. Interestingly black motor vehicle deaths increased significantly as well. There are probably thousands of excess black bodies six feet under thanks to Wokism
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@K_Michael
You could likely cite similar statistics against rednecks vs city people, there is both a culture of low wealth mobility, but they are also discriminated against by how they dress and speak. There is both a culture in the black/redneck community to avoid higher education and a culture in rich urban whites to discriminate against those same groups.
You could not cite similar statistics for white rednecks. Raj Chetty did an amazing longitudinal study on outcomes of adults based on their childhood circumstances using data from the US census bureau. You have to go all the way down to a household income of $36,000 before a white man is as likely to be incarcerated as a black man who was raised in the top 1% of income. They haven’t studied it that I’ve seen but I would put serious money on a bet that there literally doesn’t exist an income level where an Asian man is more likely to commit a crime than a Black man raised in…the top 1%
The NYT frames this as evidence of systemic racism but to me it’s incredibly strong, all but overwhelming evidence of the exact opposite. There really is a unique cultural pathology going on here. If people from your group raised in the top 1% with every advantage in the world are still committing more crimes than poor people from my group I can’t help you. You’re going to have to figure this one out on your own, and you’re going to have to stop blaming me if you want to get anywhere
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@Best.Korea
8) PumpkinsWell, I personally dont like pumpkins. But they produce pumpkins and seeds. Pumpkin and its seeds are edible. So it’s plenty of food.
Man I wish. Where I live we get two generations of squash vine borer during the growing season so squashed that take forever for mature like pumpkins are goners unless you soak them in pesticides which I’m not willing to do. Speaking from painful experience here
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My big takeaway is that the protocols around handling classified documents are probably very unclear and poorly enforced considering that each presidential nominee from both parties the past few cycles have had some kind of issue with this
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@Greyparrot
Something like the troubles in Ireland could happen but I think being Online tends to exaggerate how extreme the divide is. Most of the time in real life when people with opposing politics are together they just don’t talk about it or if they do they manage to be mostly civil about it. Most people have at least someone on the other side of the aisle in their own family even if they’re the black sheep
I’ll start believing widespread low level civil war type violence is probable when people start trying to assassinate Supreme Court justices and senators since something like that could actually move the needle much more than killing some random innocent person. It happened once in 2017 when that insane lib came within inches of murdering a large number of republican congressmen but fortunately nobody has tried anything since.
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@Double_R
I think part of what's stopping much of the country from being more sympathetic to gun control arguments is ultimately rooted in racism for the reasons I've laid out in detail. I'm just curious what people have to say to it.
The conclusion of your OP is:
To be clear, one can find plenty of other reasons to oppose gun control so I’m not arguing that all 2A enthusiasts are racist, but when you step back and look at the national conversation, you look at who benefits and who loses from our unwillingness to do anything about gun safety in America, and you put them together, it becomes very obvious that racism plays a big part of it. If white neighborhoods were plagued by gun violence the way black neighborhoods have been I sincerely doubt the “bad guy with a gun” narrative would resonate anywhere nearly as strong as it does.
I think this is obviously correct although you are probably mixing up "Republicans" with "white"--white liberals tend to have the biggest kneejerk reaction against guns of all from my experience due to their disposition towards safetyism. If gun violence became a bigger problem in areas where people who support gun rights live, they would become more concerned with gun violence as an issue and maybe they would rethink their position, or perhaps double down. That just seems like a truism. If opioid addiction became as prominent an issue among East Asians as it once was and now is for rural white people, I expect that East Asians would start to become more concerned with opioid addiction but that's not due to racism against rural white people, just the natural updating of how people see the world due to what is going on around them.
Your OP seems to imply the existence of a large group of people who 1) Are aware of how serious the problem of gun violence in the black community is and 2) believe that gun control would fix the issue/don't have serious concerns about the tradeoffs associated with gun control but, 3) do not support gun control despite believing it would save lives in these areas without any serious costs because they don't care enough due to the race of most victims. I'm sure there are people like that but probably not very many. Republicans are more likely to a) not even be aware of how serious the issue is and b) come up with rationalizations ("only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun") for how guns are actually the solution because their disposition is pro-gun. Of course white people (or anyone) would care more about an issue if it was happening to them and their communities instead of somewhere that they only hear about on the nightly news or the internet but that just seems natural, not malevolent.
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We’ve talked about this before but the idea that there’s going to be a civil war in the United States any time soon is absurd, and no amount of mean words is going to change that. Democrats and Republicans don’t even have street fights at a large scale in the United States, now they’re going to go to war?
Look at the 1860 election which led to the first attempt at secession. Of the 11 confederate states in ten of them Lincoln, the winner, was not even allowed on the ballot and got ZERO votes. In the one state he was on the ballot, Virginia, he got 1% of the vote. And he WON the election. The reason the split happened was because opposition to Lincoln in the southern states was universal (well…among those who were allowed to participate in the decision making process.) Notably Lincoln got virtually no votes in the slave states that ended up sticking with the union but even a small minority of Lincoln supporters seemed to prevent a state from leaving the union over him. In Virginia where he got 1% of the vote, enough counties who hated the guys guts nonetheless wanted to stick with the union so badly that they ended up creating an entirely new state.
Compare this to 2020. In Trumps worst state, Vermont, he got just under 31% of the vote. In Biden’s worst state, Wyoming, he got 26% of the vote. So flip a coin twice, if it lands on the same face both times that’s LESS likely than a randomly selected voter in Vermont or Wyoming going against their state.
On top of that the US of the 1860s was a much different place with much much more poverty, food insecurity, and chronic, uncured disease. Birth and death rates were much higher—the median age of the population was decades younger and the culture matched that. Life was cheap and people had little to lose. Nowadays the people who would only go outside wearing a mask aren’t going to be starting a war any time soon, and the people who don’t even pull their kids out of schools they think are brainwashing them and just angrily post online aren’t going to start killing them. It’s a fantasy
That said the ideal solution for the US is more local/state government. Things seem to be evolving this way naturally as the federal government becomes more incompetent and more hamstrung with ever increasing red tape every year
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@PREZ-HILTON
That's fair. I believe that limousine liberals prefer to work on these problems behind the scenes because their bigoted assumptions about rural whites is they will get a racist interpretation from the facts. (A projection)
I think there’s a LOT of cognitive dissonance going on too. A part of their brain knows that certain areas are “dangerous” or that certain schools are “bad” but if you point out what is actually being said by those statements they’ll freak out. Their ideology really isn’t capable of dealing with such a grim reality…not that the right wing is really any better, at least in the US
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@Greyparrot
It is impressive when a secluded white person can't make a distinction between urban black communities and rural ones. That kind of diversity is forever out of reach.
It actually is crazy how concentrated the problem of violence in the black community is. Like I feel bad saying the 12% commit 60% of the murders thing because usually it’s almost always done by people with mile long rap sheets who are just released again and again and again until they finally kill. It’s more like “around 200-250,000 people nationwide commit the majority of violent crime.” Yes this super criminal group is very disproportionately black which is a problem that shouldn’t be ignored but I feel bad associating them with the black people who aren’t criminals which is the vast majority
As a tangent this is how I know the “woke” type people who are constantly attacking whites for having ancestors who did the things all humans did in those times, or for having difficulty pronouncing someones name actually hate white people. I feel bad making a factual statement about black crime rates for fear it might be misconstrued in a way that could hurt or upset innocent people while they feel absolutely no guilt about throwing out constant agitprop and blood libel.
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@PREZ-HILTON
None of that changes what the op is saying, which is essentially that gun violence disproportionately affects African Americans and that is why a lot of people find it easy to ignore the problem when discussing the 2nd amendment.
Normal people are dimly aware that crime is higher in the “inner city” but they have no idea about how incredibly bad things actually are unless they’re a statistics nerd.
The media sure as hell doesn’t report on it and I’ve seen people banned from social media for staging factual information such as black people committing 60% of the murders in 2021 while 12% of the population—this information gap isn’t due to racism it’s due to anti-racism/wokeness. I don’t think it’s fair to call conservatives racist for “ignoring” a problem that they aren’t really told about in detail and don’t see at all in their personal lives.
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There’s a simpler explanation:
Republican voters (country people, suburbanites, middle class) are more likely to use guns for recreation or hunting/pest control and are very rarely the victims of gun violence, will live and die surrounded by people who own guns without experiencing or hearing about any gun violence in their personal lives
Democratic voters (black people, urbanites, the poor) are more likely to be the victims of gun violence or cross paths with people who are its victims, and because of where they tend to be concentrated are also far less likely to have any recreational/positive experience with guns
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@SirAnonymous
Trump has got to go. His loss to Biden permanently broke him. I couldn't vote for him again and if he has lost me of all people I don't see how he could win again. Ron DeSantis may not be perfect but right now I think he's the only person who can beat Trump 1 on 1--the field must be cleared for him immediately.
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@whiteflame
I agree. I'm not posing this question to make an argument against the pro-life stance, only to question why it's assumed by many that personhood biologically starts at conception. I also agree that it's arbitrary to select other points along the development scale. It's not my aim to defend any specific biological perception of when personhood begins.For the purposes of this discussion at least, I'm not really interested in discussing the philosophical or moral application of personhood, though I appreciate your point, even if I disagree with elements of it.
Got it, I understand now. Your post at least inspired some food for thought from me
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But by any definition of “personhood” that involves development (and not something we have at conception such as a unique DNA sequence) a 26 week old who has been born is less of a person than say a 39 week old that hasn’t been born yet because they are significantly less developed.
Person = a living human DNA sequence. No other definition is coherent. One could argue something silly that personhood comes from consciousness or qualia or something like that but people don't stop being people because they're unconscious or on anesthesia, they stop being people when they die. What part of "me" exists independently from my DNA/the physical expression of my DNA? My definition of personhood is the best because thought experiments that align with it make sense, and ones that don't are not coherent. Versions of me who shared my DNA but were raised in another country, or given up for adoption, or crippled in an accident, these would be different versions of the same person. There is no version of "me" who is say, genetically Chinese. I could never have been born to anyone other than the parents I was born to. Since I cannot reasonably divorce my unique personhood from my DNA but I can reasonably divorce it from my specific experiences, person = living human DNA is the right definition.
What is absolutely inseparable from "me" beyond 1) being alive, and 2) my DNA? The only thing I can think of is a soul. I believe in souls as a metaphysical thing but I don't think pro abortion people generally do. If humans do have a soul that seems to make the pro-abortion position a lot weaker.
Personhood begins at conception. Full stop. Abortion is killing a person. Own up to that. There are plenty of circumstances like self defense, the death penalty, or euthanasia where almost everyone thinks killing a person is justifiable or morally ambiguous, so make the case. But don't for even a second lost sight of what it is you're advocating for, which is killing a person before they are born.
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@whiteflame
So, I ask: where is that research that demonstrates what is biologically defined as the beginning of personhood? Or, to be more precise, what traits have been proven by researchers to impart personhood?
“Research” isn’t able to answer that question since it’s fundamentally a philosophical question. I could just as easily turn the question around and asks what makes a baby a person? The idea that it becomes a person upon exiting the womb and remains not a person while still in the womb is not coherent. Here’s why: the viability threshold for a premature baby these days is around 26 weeks. But by any definition of “personhood” that involves development (and not something we have at conception such as a unique DNA sequence) a 26 week old who has been born is less of a person than say a 39 week old that hasn’t been born yet because they are significantly less developed. Would it be ethical to deny care to these newborns because they’re less than 36 weeks old? Should parents be allowed to kill them if they don’t want them or if they are annoyed by them? Why shouldn’t they be able to, since there’s no reasonable definition where they are people but all fetuses are not. If all fetuses are not people, at least some newborns aren't either because some fetuses are more developed than some newborns.
The pro abortion side needs to just own up to the fact that the fetus is a person by any reasonable definition and they support the mother having the freedom to kill that person at will. The anti abortion side needs to own up to the fact that their position isn’t moral if they don’t agree to provide strong support for mothers and universal education and access to contraceptives. The ideal outcome is that the children that would’ve been aborted just aren’t conceived to begin with
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PS nominating Trump in 2024 counts as screwing up royally. He's a significantly weaker candidate now than in 2020, since all he wants to do is complain about the last election and is taking meetings with people like Nick Fuentes. It would be like nominating Doug Mastriano across the entire country
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Trend: Conservatives have more kids than liberals do. Exactly to what extent this is true is unknown and obscured by factors like immigration (which tends to increase fertility for the first generation) and race. The white liberal total fertility rate seems to be around an abysmally low ~1.2ish. The correlation between the white total fertility rate by state and Trump's 2020 margin was a strong .79 (source: own research.) However, liberals convert more kids from conservative families than vice versa.
Trend: Immigrants tend to vote Democratic but as they and their children assimilate they start to behave more like the American public. For every new immigrant that's naturalized, there's a second or third generation immigrant who gives the GOP another look, or a second or third generation immigrant who no longer thinks of themselves as distinct from the majority of the population in any way and no longer behaves differently from a generic American.
Trend: Whites tend to vote Republican and minorities tend to vote Democrat, and the number of minority voters is gradually increasing. However: even though America is becoming extremely polarized around *ideas* regarding race, actual voting behavior by race is becoming much less polarized. Minority voters have moved right faster than white voters have moved left, but there are many more white voters so the trends more or less cancel out. Generally Republicans either retained or increased their share of the minority vote in 2022.
Trend: Young voters vote Democratic by huge margins. But: apolitical youngsters in recent cohorts have become conservative leaning voters later on. In 2008, 18-29 year old's voted 66-31% Democratic, 28 points to the left of the country. In 2020 those voters were now mostly in the 30-39 category which voted 51-46% Democratic, about in line with the country. Obviously exit polls are very flawed and imperfect but the trend is clear--the Dem margin was probably a lot higher than 5 points in this group, but it definitely wasn't anywhere near 35 points as in 2008.
Conclusion: Politics in the US will probably remain at a stalemate for a long time, anybody saying that one side has definitely won or lost, can never win again, etc. is most likely just wrong. American politics seems to have reached the point where "every action has an equal and opposite reaction" and one side has to screw up royally to be at a distinct disadvantage
Search "exit poll" below to see voting behavior by demographic
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@Yassine
The statement may be true 10 years ago. It's fantasy today. What cutting edge tech exactly is Silicon Valley dominating? Literally all the new tech is dominated by China today, by an increasingly wider margin. Silicon Valley recently had an edge on Quantum Computing, but that has long disappeared since last year. Much of the research & the best research today in S&E happens in China, while the US is lagging far behind. China caught up to the US in scientific output back in 2018. Since, the gap between China & the US in S&E has widen so much that it's almost as great as the gap between the US & Germany. China today outpaces the States by a factor of 2 to 4 in most S&E fields, it's not even a competition anymore. In fact, the US's contribution to S&E today is more comparable to that of the war torn Middle East. According to SCImago ranking, here are some stats on the global contribution of China – USA – the Middle East respectively in various S&E fields:Chemistry 29.7% – 9.8% – 7.9%Computer Science 24.7% – 10.4% – 10.3%Energy 30% – 7.9% – 10%Engineering 29.9% – 9.5% – 9.9%Material Science 31.5% – 9.9% – 9.4%Mathematics 22.6% – 9.6% – 13%Physics 25.4% – 11.7% – 8.3%- Before long, the US will lag behind the Middle East as well. On that note, the US obliterate China when it comes to Social Science & Humanities, by a factor of 3. Gotta get those gender studies degrees...
This seems to just be counting the amount of papers that come out of universities? Maybe I'm wrong--I've never heard of this website. If that's the case that doesn't prove anything because quantity =/= quality. The sheer amount of "research" says nothing about if that research is any good.
The claim that "Literally all the new tech is dominated by China today" as if it's not even a competition (even though America is still very very dominant here) is ludicrous. I'm sorry, but it just is. Almost all of the best companies in the world are in the United States, and they keep vacuuming up the worlds talent in addition to the considerable talents of the US native born. I would never say that China is not an impressive civilization, because it of course is. But I view their coming demographic crisis and the potential instability with their system of government as much bigger risks than what the US system which I find to be incredibly stable.
You’ve said both that China is actually the tech giant and the US is lagging far behind and also that the US entices highly skilled workers from all over the world here and that system can’t last. What exactly is it that you think those Silicon Valley engineers brought over from the rest of the world making like $400k are doing exactly, if no cutting edge work is being performed that justifies the cost? Is it just a front to make us look impressive? Why does China feel the need to do large scale industrial espionage on the US, but not the other way around? Your narrative doesn’t square with the actions of people on the ground.
This also isn't really relevant to my point, anyway, although I can't blame you for that. While I'm extremely bearish on China I could be wrong about that and still be right that the US system is not going anywhere and isn't about to collapse even though people think it's going to. My point wasn't to be bragging about how great America is, but just to say it's nowhere near collapsing and will be with us for quite some time. Nothing you've said has given me a reason to change my mind on that.
- I can't see how this is helping your case. We both understand what minimum wage means. Of course not all workers must earn minimum wage... in fact, most generally don't. The average salary of waiters, for instance, in Qatar is higher ($30k). It's still a fact that workers in the US do not enjoy the same benefits they do in Gulf states, including healthcare, accommodation, education, paid flights & world class amenities & infrastructure. We are not even talking about citizen here, they are migrant workers. – I am also not sure why you're bringing up household income. In case you didn't know, Gulf states are filthy rich. The average household income of immigrants in Qatar, for instance, was $144k back in 2013 (in PPP terms). Native Qataris earned on average 3x that. In fact, remittance per capita in Gulf states is by far the highest in the world. If the workers aren't earning good wages, how come they are sending all that money out.
Yes, the gulf states are filthy rich due to having a lot of oil, living standards for the natives are extremely high. But immigrants are almost 90% of the population of Qatar and living standards for the migrant majority is often much lower. The idea that migrant laborers from the poorest, least educated parts of the world have it better than the US working class is unhinged. I assure you they would be clamoring the trade places. You can just read about what life is like for migrant laborers. https://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2021/jun/01/migrant-guards-in-qatar-still-paid-under-1-an-hour-ahead-of-world-cup
But really the comparison just makes no sense in any case. No other countries can be like the gulf states, the good and the bad, because other economies aren't sitting on more oil than they know what to do with. It's also not a sustainable system since we'll eventually move away from oil.
- On the contrary. Your rosy view of the US is clouding your judgement about reality to the point of denial. It's not too late to save your country, start by recognizing reality.
I hate what the United States has become so much that I'm seriously considering leaving even though my family has been here since the 1600s. Believe me, there's no rose colored glasses here. But it doesn't stop me from seeing what's right in front of me which is that the US is quite clearly pulling away from the rest of the Western world and is in a position to continue dominating for at least the next several decades. It's certainly nowhere near collapse.
- You missed the part where a quarter of researchers in technical S&E fields in the US are themselves Chinese. "no slowing down"?? The US peaked back in 2012... Poaching the best talents is not a bad thing per se, but relying on foreign talent is. It's a huge handicap if the overwhelming majority of your highly skilled professionals are foreigners, especially without a solid incentive to keep them or make them loyal except by sheer currency advantages. It's a circular cycle: dominate technologically, to dominate militarily, to impose global institutions (like SWIFT, IMF, Petrodollar, Reserve Currency...etc), to persuade best talents, to dominate technologically. This can not be sustained if any element of the cycle is undermined. If the USD, for instance, ceases to be the global reserve currency (which is already happening), then almost all the incentive of foreign scientists to stay let alone come will also cease. Why bother going elsewhere when you can stay in your home country & get paid the same while doing the same for your nation.
No, you're missing the point. An immigrant is not a foreigner, at least not according to the US system. That's part of what makes it so sustainable--the people running it couldn't care a whit whether the top companies are staffed and run by natives or by immigrants. The status quo which is a mix of both based on ability is pretty stable. Also the majority of US skilled professionals aren't immigrants--not even close. But the system vacuuming up the worlds galaxy brains is a sign of STRENGTH not weakness. COULD it stop in the future, sure...but go ahead and find me Silicon Valley tier salaries somewhere else. People, including many of the worlds top scientists are voting with their feet.
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@Yassine
- This is fantasy. No truth to it whatsoever. China produces 7 times the research in AI & 4 times the research in Aerospace than the US, & the gap widens drastically every year. It's not even a competition. China also boasts 3 times the industrial production of the US. The US innovation in AI & Aerospace today is more in the realm of countries like Turkey. In fact, Turkey surpasses the US in many key aspects of Drone Tech (which is a merge of AI & Aerospace technologies), such as long range drones, unmanned military integration, drone carriers, unmanned fighters...etc. This might come as a surprise to you, but the size of the industrial sector in the US today is about the same that in the Middle East (despite all the conflicts going on there), except the latter is growing at a greater rate. You people still live in post-WWII era mindset, back when the US was actually king.
It seems odd to me to be a China maximalist right now of all times. The Chinese people are intelligent and industrious but the system they've chosen to run their society is leading them to ruin. Even beyond the self inflicted demographic disaster caused by the one child policy the CCP has demonstrated time and time again that it is beyond incompetent--see their current zero-covid policy that's driving their economy into ruin with endless arbitrary lockdowns. Silicon Valley in the USA is where most cutting edge tech work is taking place. You don't have to like that fact, but that's simply how it is.
In a post to another user you wrote: "On top of all this, China does not have all the problems which cripple the US despite all the undeserved advantages that the latter has. More than half the workers in tech sectors in the US & more than half the graduates & researchers are foreigners (the figure exceeds 3/4th in high tech sectors, like IT, in which a quarter are themselves Chinese)." This is actually a sign of strength for the US system, which is my entire point. It may or may not be good for the US people but a system that poaches the best minds from around the world and shows no signs of slowing down isn't a weak one that's about to die. Some of those workers spy for the old country which is a problem but that's about it.
- More BS. Allow me to illustrate how horrible living standards are in the US with the relevant example of Gulf countries being vilified as of late for supposedly horrible working standards. In Gulf countries, on average, the minimum wage of workers is close to twice as much as it is in the US (in PPP terms), plus free healthcare, free education for their children, free habitation, & one paid flight to home country every two years, by law. None of this granted to working class people in the US. – Sure, the living standards of the upper class or upper-middle class in the US are still very high compared to much of the rest of the world, for reasons unrelated to American "exceptionalism"; but the living standards of the lower class are extremely poor comparatively. In Turkey for instance, the minimum wage is designed to be sufficient for a family of 3: a quarter into social security & taxes (which gets you universal healthcare, universal education, retirement, & other social benefits), a quarter into an average family home rent, & the rest half into expenses. Minimum wage in the US doesn't even get you a fraction of this, not even HALF the rent of an average family home. What you're talking about is a thing of the past, post WWII era. That is no longer the case.
I think you're letting your moral outrage at the US color your views here. I mean this respectfully because I enjoy seeing your perspective around here, but to compare the working conditions for people in the US to migrant laborers in Qatar is just ludicrous. The minimum wage in the US is not an accurate metric at all, although I can understand how it creates a false impression for people who don't live here. It hasn't been updated in so long that it's an anachronism, virtually nobody makes the minimum wage and about half of those who do are kids working their first jobs. Only 1.5% of people make minimum wage: https://www.bls.gov/opub/reports/minimum-wage/2020/home.htm although even this is an overestimate because it includes people making below that as their hourly rate--but these people work jobs like bartending or waiting tables where the hourly rate is allowed to be extremely low because they make far far more than that in tips. Less than a million workers actually made minimum wage in 2020.
A more realistic metric is median household income which is $71,000 as of 2021 https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-276.html#:~:text=Real%20median%20household%20income%20was,and%20Table%20A%2D1) Being poor anywhere sucks but I see no evidence that life for the US lower class is notably bad, certainly not worse than a place like the Gulf States...that just seems absurd. There's a reason people are clamoring to get here even if the jobs available to them are doing things like washing dishes or cleaning office buildings
There are ways in which American working standards could be improved. We work longer hours relative to Europe (although not to the rest of the world, especially Asia), some basic protections that should be no-brainers like paid maternity leave aren't guaranteed by law, but pay is not one of the complaints American's get to have compared to anywhere else.
The comparison to Turkey is just bizarre given the complete economic meltdown going on there right now. Not a system to emulate.
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@sadolite
Yes, I see two scenarios:
If economic growth stagnates because the post-WWII era was an anomaly based on really positive demographics and a lot of low hanging fruit with computers, the internet, etc than the US slowly morphs into a larger Great Britain. A rapidly aging country with a really high tax burden to sustain unrealistic welfare promises made decades ago, sluggish economic growth, gradually declining standard of living…but still very, very livable. A place where millions of poor immigrants would be clamoring to live where and where nobody goes hungry or unclothed or anything like that
In the second more likely scenario imo technological growth doesn’t slow down due to things like AI and other leaps, and the US continues to pull ahead for the foreseeable future because we have by far the greatest companies and talent in these sectors. Developing countries keep developing and sleepy aging developed countries like Germany or the UK manage to keep limping along because a rising tide lifts all boats, but some more than others
In the first scenario, countries like the UK or France most likely would have already collapsed and had to drastically change their economic system in a way that causes a lot of pain. Whereas in the US we would have the option to stay the course have things just suck more than they do now.
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@sadolite
What is your opinion of the never ending trillion dollar additions to the nations debt?
I think that between that and social security the future tax burden in the US will sadly increase significantly. It’s an issue that’s going to impact every developed country but probably the US least since US demographics are much better than other developed countries, way better industries/economy, we have the world reserve currency, and the tax burden isn’t already insanely high
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There’s a lot riding on the idea that the US is utterly dysfunctional, about to collapse, a hellhole, on the verge of a civil war, etc. It’s convenient for ideologues of all kinds to think this, both people who want to push future change or people who don’t like the direction society is going. But none of it is true. The US system shows no sign of slowing down. We have the greatest companies in the world and we are leaping ahead of competitors in important fields like aerospace and AI. The fundamentals of the American economy are extremely strong. Almost nobody ever wants to admit this but…the standard of living the average American has blows pretty much everywhere else out of the water even factoring in the horrible healthcare system.
The consolidation of elite opinion, as depressing as that is to those who don’t agree with it, is also a strong sign that the US ain’t going anywhere anytime soon. I don’t know if there’s ever been a time when the goals of big business, the entrenched bureaucracy, academia, and most politicians have been so closely aligned. There’s some disagreement and they will sometimes change course on a few issues where they’re just objectively wrong and reality reasserts itself but in general these important groups have the same vision for America
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@Greyparrot
Almost every county in California, New York, and Florida shifted 10+ points to the right compared to 2020. Those are massive states that have a huge impact on the popular vote but it doesn’t translate to that many seats. The rest of the country saw much more modest swings and a few states (PA, Michigan) swung to the left because the GOP candidates at the top of the ticket were just that bad. The GOP messed this one up very badly
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@IwantRooseveltagain
You’re dreaming. There are millions of democratic votes left to count in California
Now that California is 95% in, the GOP lead in the popular vote stands at 3.3%
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I don’t actually know if poor people would have more than average debt or not. There are federal subsidies for low income students, and lots of colleges offer scholarships/grants. Some can be pretty generous:
Here's a program from a college near where I live, the University of Texas at Arlington. No disrespect (I had friends who went there) but it's about as unglamorous a school as you can get. The majority of students live at home and commute to the school, there's not a lot going on on the sports side, the acceptance rate is almost 90% etc. Nonetheless, getting a degree in something like engineering, business, economics, or nursing from a school like this is well worth the cost, lots of degrees have ROIs that are positive by close to half a million or more. Again no disrespect intended but getting a degree in something like business from a school like this isn't exactly hard and your projected income midcareer is something in the $85-90k range, that isn't too bad. Certainly a lot better than could be expected not going to college
You can search by the ROI and projected income by college and major here: https://freopp.org/is-college-worth-it-a-comprehensive-return-on-investment-analysis-1b2ad17f84c8
How expensive is a school like this for poor people? Free, as it turns out.
"The Blaze Forward program makes it even easier for you to get a world class education at UTA!
This program will cover 100% of tuition and fees for undergraduate students who meet all eligibility requirements and are from families with financial incomes up to $85,000."
Eligibility requirements:
"Be a Texas resident paying the in-state tuition rate
- Be eligible to receive awards through the Federal Pell Grant and the TEXAS Grant* programs
- Have a yearly family income of $85,000 or less
- Enroll as a full-time student at UTA (minimum of 12 undergraduate hours each long semester)"
What are the "TEXAS Grant" requirements?
"Demonstrate financial need, priority to students with a FAFSA/TASFA Expected Family Contributions (EFC) of 6,454 or less.
- Register with Selective Service or be exempt.
- Be a Texas resident for tuition and fee purposes.
- Have not been convicted of a felony or offense under chapter 481, Health & Safety Code.
- The full TEXAS Grant amount disburses at 12 or more credit hours (full-time enrollment) and is prorated down at 9 credit hours (three-quarter enrollment). Less than 9 credit hours is not eligible.
- Have no previous baccalaureate degree."
The "expected family contribution" comes from your families income, assets, debt, household size, etc. For anyone who is actually poor the expected family contribution will be almost nothing. I Googled around and a lot of non-glamorous schools around the state have similar programs. So if you're a poor student who is willing and able to get a marketable degree at a non glamorous state school you are able to do so, at least in my state.
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@badger
There's no fairness where a 0 in your bank account means no healthcare and no education and no chance.
I think you may be letting your opinions be driven by stereotypes of what America is like. It can be a brutal place but not as much as people seem to think. The US does have universal health insurance for poor people (and for old people), there are something like 70 million people on Medicaid. It may or may not be good insurance (I genuinely don’t know) but people aren’t just left to die or something like that.
College is expensive but again it’s not as bad as the stereotypes say. The median graduate of a state college in the US walks out with around 30k in debt which is a lot of money but unless you pick a really bad major that isn’t very hard to pay off in ten years. The median starting salary for a college graduate in the US is somewhere in the $50,000 range. College is a pretty cheap ticket out of poverty all things considered. I don’t actually know if poor people would have more than average debt or not. There are federal subsidies for low income students, and lots of colleges offer scholarships/grants. Some can be pretty generous:
“Pell Grant – A grant of up to $6,195 (as of the 2019–2020 Award Year) for students with a low expected family contribution.” The “expected family contribution” Is calculated using your parents income and assets so poor people would be eligible for these grants. And again I’m not an expert so I don’t know what the exact thresholds are but apparently theyre generous enough that $3 billion goes unclaimed every year because students think their families are too high income to get this grant. That’s not free college but a $6k grant per year to low income students isn’t exactly pocket change either.
The people the US system is hardest on by far aren’t poor people but lower middle to middle class people who aren’t poor enough to qualify for things like Medicaid but aren’t rich enough that something like an unexpected medical bill won’t wipe them out, or who make just enough that their kids won’t get any financial aid for college but can’t actually afford it without massive debt either. In any system there’s room for reform but the US really isnt this dystopian shithole where the poor suffer and die while the rich escape to Elysium like people seem to think
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