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Open thread Sept. 11, 2015

Dan Crawford | September 11, 2015 9:02 am

Tags: open thread Comments (32) | Digg Facebook Twitter |
32 Comments
  • Marko says:
    September 11, 2015 at 2:49 pm

    I just caught this tweet from a while back , glad I didn’t miss it :

    ” Vietnam created McCain who created Palin who made Trump possible, which is the end of America. Hats off to Ho Chi Min, playing the long game.”

    Vietnam created McCain who created Palin who made Trump possible, which is the end of America. Hats off to Ho Chi Min, playing tha long game

    — Laurie Kilmartin (@anylaurie16) July 30, 2015

  • little john says:
    September 11, 2015 at 4:35 pm

    “We can endure neither our vices nor the remedy for them”-Livy
    Is liberalism a death pact?

  • Bruce Webb says:
    September 12, 2015 at 12:59 am

    Does non-sequitur-ism not follow?

  • ilsm says:
    September 12, 2015 at 8:38 am

    LJ,

    US is closer to the Rome the Gracchi saw.

    Thanks for the Thuggie sound bite excusing allowing the mess to go on.

  • ilsm says:
    September 12, 2015 at 8:46 am

    National epistemic closure fueled by decades of fear mongering brought on McCain-Palin and Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, ISIS etc.

    Epistemic closure confused Ho (today some ISIS guy or Iran!) with Hitler, Stalin and Mao in one super villain out to oust US empire.

    The only politician not going down the MCC-Palin path is Bernie Sanders.

    It is confusion not Vietnam that persists.

  • Little john says:
    September 12, 2015 at 6:19 pm

    Sorry I didn’t mean it as a sound bite to excuse anything or as a non sequitur. Maybe I should have asked if Western liberal values are a suicide pact? Spain accepts thousands of refugees while a 25% unemployment rate persists? Is that question, in and of itself, a micro aggression? Does the West’s humanitarianism lead to its downfall? I guess I’m feeling a little pessimistic.

  • The Rage says:
    September 13, 2015 at 12:49 am

    Well, you can always fire up the ovens……………….

  • Little john says:
    September 13, 2015 at 8:20 am

    See?

    • run75441 says:
      September 13, 2015 at 8:50 am

      See what?

      That xenophobia is still alive and kicking? That 25% unemployment is the result of austerity put in place by those who believe Labor should pay for the gambling and excesses of the Financial powers to be? That these countries are over populated and have high birthrates similar to the US and the median age of the population is dropping? That there is no land to live on today? etc., etc., etc.

  • Little john says:
    September 13, 2015 at 10:13 am

    Here’s what to see. Raise a question and references to Nazis and xenophobia are the responses. I was looking for an argument that could reassure me that the West’s humanitarianism is a valid response to the refugee crisis. Instead I get fascist allusions and Krugmanisms.

    • run75441 says:
      September 13, 2015 at 11:31 am

      Certainly, you have read Joel Garreau’s “300 Million and Counting” in Smithsonian? Read what a declining birthrate has in store for us and how it is already impacting Europe and especially Russia. What is your proposal, “Soylent Green?” Or have them return to this:

      Syria

      The US has already exhibited enough xenophobia to last a lifetime and there was a time when many of us were the newcomers taking the jobs of others and being a threat to the security of the natives to this country.

  • JimH says:
    September 13, 2015 at 3:58 pm

    Run75441 wrote “The US has already exhibited enough xenophobia to last a lifetime”

    The Merriam Webster definition of xenophobia is:
    “fear or hatred of strangers or foreigners”

    Note that the definition of xenophobia does not say an irrational or excessive fear of strangers or foreigners. You obviously believe that xenophobia is bad but others may not agree with you. That is a value judgement.

    A little fear of strangers might be a good thing.

    I am xenophobic about stray dogs and I am not going to change. Probably something about rabid dogs roaming the neighborhood during the hot summers of my youth.

    Perhaps workers in the US and Europe are justified in their fear of bringing in foreign workers during an economic downturn.

    Why doesn’t anyone call the drug companies xenophobic when they preach so shrilly about the dangers of consumers reimporting drugs made in this country? Are Canadians working in shifts to poison drugs before they are sent back to the US?

  • Bruce Webb says:
    September 13, 2015 at 4:22 pm

    The silliest thing about LJ here is that the biggest promoters of immigration today are the Chamber of Commerce as it relates to some new-Bracero program for low wage agricultural and construction workers even as Silicon Valley VCs are promoting H-1B visas to bring in mostly South Asian engineers. Which means a combination of Main Street Conservatives plus Bro-Libertarians of which neither represents traditional U.S. Liberalism. Now it is true that Progressives support relatively free immigration on Social Justice grounds they would combine that with strong minimum wage and worker safety reguirements that would maintain labor share. Even as older and whiter New Deal liberals join ranks with their similarly older and whiter Tea Partiers to look askance on immigration as being simple wage busting..

    But to suggest that the line on pro vs anti immigration breaks down on liberal vs conservative lines is ridiculous. Conservatives love immigration combined with union busting and wage suppression. Certain progressives support immigration combined with strong social welfare and labor protection measures. While a lot of populists cum nativists on the relative left and the far right are leery. The slicing line is not liberal vs conservative which these days divides mostly on social justice lines but instead on rich vs poor or class lines.

  • Little john says:
    September 13, 2015 at 5:22 pm

    You have totally misunderstood my question. Never mind.

  • Bruce Webb says:
    September 13, 2015 at 6:10 pm

    LJ Cryptic much?

    Look anybody could have gotten your initial “death pact” “question” wrong. Which is why I made a joke. But your followup was as clear as day:

    “Maybe I should have asked if Western liberal values are a suicide pact? Spain accepts thousands of refugees while a 25% unemployment rate persists? Is that question, in and of itself, a micro aggression? Does the West’s humanitarianism lead to its downfall? I guess I’m feeling a little pessimistic.”

    This question explicitly assumes that open borders are a liberal value. That openness to immigration is driven by “The West’s humanitarianism”.

    That I cried “BULLSHIT” doesn’t mean I didn’t understand. I think I understood you all too well. So “never mind” indeed.

  • Bruce Webb says:
    September 13, 2015 at 6:23 pm

    The current open borders movement certainly has a humanitarian crisis surface. But the economic elites are not cracking down because they understand, in a way the nativists do not that a new supply of cheap labor furthers their class interests. Offset to some degree by increased social welfare costs in the short term.

    I find it all too amusing that economic rightists in Europe, Japan and the U.S. simultaneously bemoan the “greying of society” that is driving down worker/retiree ratios and making social insurance programs unaffordable going forward overlap strongly (at least at the base level of their political support) with those that claim that immigration is a threat to national identity and culture. Which really translates to “Why are Japanese, Italian and good Anglo-Saxon American stock not having more babies to preserve Japanese, Italian and American cutlure?” You don’t have to scrape down half a layer to see that the Right’s opposition to immigration has eff all to do with its economic impact on wages and everything to do with xenophobia and jingoism.

    Want to save U.S. Social Security from demographic doom? Open the borders, The numbers are clear as day in the SSA Report Tables.

  • Bruce Webb says:
    September 13, 2015 at 6:25 pm

    Or rather than open the borders we could adopt my plan of MJ.ABW for current residents:

    More Jobs. At Better Wages.

    Naaaah! That might trigger INFLATION!!!!! Cue the Fed!!!!

  • J.Goodwin says:
    September 13, 2015 at 6:48 pm

    What is “epistemic” a typo for?

    I’ve been trying to puzzle it out and frankly at this point I’ve decided it’s not worth it.

  • J.Goodwin says:
    September 13, 2015 at 6:51 pm

    Nevermind, looked it up.

    Now I know it has a common root with epistle. Winning.

  • EMichael says:
    September 13, 2015 at 7:55 pm

    Bruce,

    Agreed. And allowing more people into the country will not mean less jobs and lower wages.

    I have reached the point where I believe the only hope for the future of the US is to throw up trade barriers instead of walls.

    I see no reason to force our workers to compete with workers in other countries in making goods that we can make ourselves.

    It is a no win situation, and it has been going on for over three decades.

  • Bruce Webb says:
    September 13, 2015 at 11:57 pm

    “What is “epistemic” a typo for?

    I’ve been trying to puzzle it out and frankly at this point I’ve decided it’s not worth it.”

    Frankly Goodwin I am surprised to find out that ‘epistemic’ and ‘epistle’ actually share any etymology at all. (And not to spoil this but they don’t.)

    Because as most people with a traditional liberal education know ‘epistle’ rather transparently derives from Latin ‘epistola’ meaning letter whereas ‘epistemic’ is a back formation for the neo-logism made up in 1856 ‘epistemology’ from Greek ‘episteme’.

    https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/epistola
    http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=epistemology

    So I am not sure ‘winning’ is the word you are looking for. Although it is a close match though false cognate for ‘whining’. Like ‘epistemic’ and ‘epistle’.

  • Bruce Webb says:
    September 14, 2015 at 12:14 am

    For others the term ‘epistemic closure’ describes a real thing, and one that to some degree characterizes us all. That is ‘epistemology’ is the theory of knowledge and in the real world what we ‘know’ is controlled by what we learn and that by our sources. That is mostly you can only with great difficulty begin to try to prove that you ‘know’ anything. Hence the struggles of philosophers since Descartes (at least).

    Given that most people are not Aristotle or St. Anselm or Descartes or Bertrand Russel and even capable of trying to work these matters out from first principles mostly we are limited to accepting most of our knowledge, from “authority”. Which leads to one degree or another of “epistemic closure” meaning you only “know” what you “know” and if the source of that knowledge is your local Sunday School or the O’Reiley Report or God Help You some god-less/goddess University like Berkeley then you are in principle trapped in a knowledge loop.

    The trick of course being the consult of the widest variety of ‘knowledge’ providers and the application of stringent thought and logic to try to approximate actual ‘knowledge’.

    Oh who am I kidding here? We are all human and so all fucked when it comes to escaping our own epistemic closure. Some of us just have a better sense of humor about the whole thing.

  • JimH says:
    September 14, 2015 at 8:36 am

    EMichael wrote: “I have reached the point where I believe the only hope for the future of the US is to throw up trade barriers instead of walls.”

    I have been there since the end of 2008 when it was obvious to me that we were looking at something much bigger than the run-of-the-mill recession. Except I would not forego the walls along our southern borders. Our economic situation is that scary to me. If we wait too long there will be a backlash that will affect legal immigration. I believe that would be a mistake.

    We use to consume much more of the product of each other’s labor. Our trade partners have shown that they will not restrain themselves. They have come to expect that we will always accept more and more imports.

    At a G20 meeting in South Korea in 2010, US officials tried to get a cap for each country’s deficit or surplus at 4% of its economic output by 2015 but the other countries refused.
    See: http://articles.latimes.com/2010/oct/24/business/la-fi-g20-summit-20101024

    I don’t know what the current numbers are but that 4% looks like a good target. Use tariffs until we get there. Then adjust that down as necessary to bring more production back to the US.

    I think this is more important than raising minimum wages.

  • JimH says:
    September 14, 2015 at 8:52 am

    Bruce Webb wrote: “For others the term ‘epistemic closure’ describes a real thing …”

    You had me right up until your last paragraph. (Smiling)

    It is not easy to “know”. And learning that the “Truth wears off” is disconcerting.
    See http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/13/the-truth-wears-off

    I reread this article from time to time. If well intentioned scientists, using all their rigor, can be fooled then you realize what a challenge we face.

    The O’Reiley Report scares me. I have met a few of that program’s viewers, they are certain that they “know”.

  • little john says:
    September 14, 2015 at 10:15 am

    So if I understand you Bruce the acceptance of immigrants (excluding the H-1B visa demographic) is driven more by an global elite scheme to suppress wages rather than a humanitarian impulse in Western society?

  • J.Goodwin says:
    September 14, 2015 at 10:37 am

    I’m going back to my prior opinion that epistemic doesn’t actually mean anything.

  • EMichael says:
    September 14, 2015 at 11:37 am

    I just don’t see the purpose or need for walls.

    I was in AZ when Napolitano was governor. She instituted a program that held employers responsible for hiring only legals.

    Whole neighborhoods in Phoenix emptied. Whole towns outside of Phoenix emptied. Fixing illegal immigration is easy, simply by enforcing the law on US employers.

    BTW,

    Besides that fact, a wall does absolutely nothing other than force illegals to get a travel visa.

  • JimH says:
    September 14, 2015 at 2:14 pm

    EMichael wrote: “Fixing illegal immigration is easy, simply by enforcing the law on US employers.”

    I totally agree with that statement, unfortunately the political class will not do it. That has been obvious since the mid 1990s.

    The legal travel visa should require some documentation which will have a legal name, the ability to do some background check, and the name for a warrant. The US government can make that work. Nothing is perfect.

    Build the wall slowly while tariffs are ramping up.

    Donald Trump’s candidacy is a warning to both parties. This man should NOT be leading in the run up to the Republican primaries. The electorate is angry and they have every right to be angry.

  • EMichael says:
    September 14, 2015 at 3:52 pm

    The wall means absolutely nothing is terms of decreasing illegal immigration.

    Somehow, you think a lot of these people, or even most, cannot provide “a legal name: and “pass a background check”.

    That is beyond insanity, that is Donald Trump.

  • JimH says:
    September 14, 2015 at 4:36 pm

    It will mean something. The Israelis brought bus and car bombings under control after their fence was built.

    But nothing is perfect.

  • JimH says:
    September 14, 2015 at 6:14 pm

    I am an Independent. I am accustomed to one major party or the other doing things that make no sense.

    The pitch about NAFTA was that it would be a rising tide that would lift all boats. But I believed at that time, that they were talking nonsense. Both parties participated in that rape of working people.

    Periodically one party or the other advocates more education as the answer to the problems brought on by free trade treaties. It was nonsense in the 1990s and it is nonsense now.

    The current administration wants a trade treaty that would allow the federal government to be dragged before a private judge. Utter and complete nonsense.

    I am accustomed to disappointment.

  • EMichael says:
    September 15, 2015 at 9:42 am

    I got it.

    Bus and truck bombings are the same as people trying to find work.

    geez

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