Justice Kagan: Affirmative Action Suggests that Beneficiaries Could Not be Accepted Based on Merit Alone

OK, she said it in 2006 as a dean, not a Justice, and about women and law review membership at Harvard, not SFFA and minority admissions, but I would be interested in knowing why she has expressed this concern about women, but not URMs.

Relatedly, my former colleague (now DC Circuit judge) Neomi Rao once presented a talk noting a perceived anomaly in Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg's jurisprudence. Ginsburg insisted on strict, formal legal equality for men and women, even when favoritism would benefit women. She did not apply the same reasoning when it came to race. Ginsburg, when asked about how she reconciles the two positions, acknowledged that she had never thought about it. I wonder if Kagan has.

Comments

[santamonica811]

I would not think to answer for RBG. But, to my mind, one immediate difference is that women have definitely achieved parity in college and law school admissions. I'm sure there are fields where they are grossly under-represented. (I'm guessing STEM, but maybe I'm wrong.) And where they are over-represented. (eg, Nursing, Education). But you can look at the numbers, and see that if women are making up more than half the class, then there's probably not some huge pressing and immediately concerns.

But we can look at the numbers for racial minorities, and see where those groups are either over- or under-represented. Now, people of good faith can have disagreements about if higher education should take steps to even things out, and/or what steps should be taken. But it's fairly easy to see where things are out of balance. (And, of course, that's a separate, but related, conversation re how to deal with the morass about there being a million types of "Asian" or "Hispanic" or "Black.")

[David Bernstein]

But consider VMI. Ginsburg could have ordered the school to reconsider its educational process so that it would be more welcoming/attractive to women. Instead, she was entirely content with letting VMI be VMI, so long as it would take qualified women who applied, ie giving women formal legal equality. The result was that it took decades for VMI to break the 10% mark for women.

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

Nancy Mace was the first female graduate of the Citadel…she vandalized her own house to get sympathy from MAGA supporters after trashing Trump in the days after 1/6.

[Gandydancer]

Wikipedia: "On June 1, 2021, the Charleston Police Department opened an investigation after Mace's home was vandalized with profanity, three anarchy symbols, and graffiti in support of the PRO Act.[78]"

So, are you as I would expect just making shit up?

[Sam Bankman-Fried]

She pulled a Jussie Smollet—she was coming home in a walk of shame and saw graffiti on the school and vandalized her own home. The graffiti is in her hand writing and it was on parts of her home in which it could easily be washed off.

[Gandydancer]

Without a link it's just you saying something.

[Brett Bellmore]

She must have been very busy, then. You know, vandalizing two parks nearby, besides, just to make it look plausible.

[Gandydancer]

And the graffiti at your link is anyway visible from the street and maybe neighbors’ security cameras. Then there’s this:https://www.postandcourier.com/news/sc-congressional-candidate-nancy-maces-car-vandalized-in-mount-pleasant/article_836f257a-08be-11eb-929d-5febc5159be7.html The nearest security camera was dead, but how could she know that? The upside in SBF’s scenario doesn’t match up to the downside from her being caught doing it. So, no, SBF is just talking out of his ass again.

"The graffiti is in her hand writing..." he says. LOL!

[Sarcastr0]

Ginsburg could have ordered the school to reconsider its educational process so that it would be more welcoming/attractive to women.

That seems a more radical remedy for the court to choose. The required method is much less clear.

[Dilan Esper]

The issue was literally before the Court in US v. Virginia. Mary Baldwin College had created the Virginia Women's Leadership Institute.

[Gandydancer]

For clarification: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/us-supreme-court/518/515.html/

That's from 1996. So presumably there's a newer case.

[Dr. Ed 2]

The interesting thing about education is that it has gotten MORE female over the past 50 years, even as women have had other options. Arguably nursing has too, as nurses have expanded into much of what doctors once did.

[Brett Bellmore]

“But you can look at the numbers, and see that if women are making up more than half the class, then there’s probably not some huge pressing and immediately concerns.”

The funny thing is that if you’d just replaced “women” with “men” in that statement, a lot of people would claim that there actually were some huge pressing and immediate concerns. It’s the usual dynamic: Any issue where women are worse off than men is a big deal, any issue where men are worse off than women, stop whining you big sissy.

In fact, there’s a pretty simple explanation for why women are getting the majority of BA’s, but are a distinct minority in stem fields: Success in STEM requires substantially higher than average mathematical aptitude, and while men and women average about the same on that measure, men have a substantially wider spread; More male geniuses, AND more male idiots.

So the further out you go from the center of the curve, the more of a disparity in numbers you see between men and women. And men end up dominating pretty much every field where a substantially higher than average IQ is needed for success. (They also dominate the fields where idiots end up, but nobody talks about that.)

So, why are women getting most of the BA degrees, then? Dare I suggest it’s because of the field women almost totally dominate? K-12 education… Maybe the schools are just being run in a manner that’s better suited to girls than boys, now that they’re run by women? It wouldn’t be considered implausible if you flipped the numbers!

https://randalolson.com/2014/06/25/average-iq-of-students-by-college-major-and-gender-ratio/

[bernard11]

That's a rather glib explanation, Brett.

First, you don't need to be a genius to major in STEM, though of course you do need above-average mathematical ability.

Second, look at the graph. Math majors have the second-highest IQ, a little below physics and astronomy, and about 40% of math majors are female.

Computer science and engineering majors average lower IQ than math, yet fewer than 25% are female.

Are you claiming that the math majors couldn't hack it as engineers?

Further, without having the actual distributions, just general statements, we really can't know how much difference that might make.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, I’m claiming that it’s perfectly predictable from population statistics that STEM majors will, all things being equal, have a higher percentage of men than other majors. You don’t need to appeal to any sort of bias or discrimination to explain it.

As the essay I linked to demonstrates, there’s actually a fairly strong correlation between the average IQ of particular college majors, and the percentage of females. But a closer look at the data says that the correlation is actually to aptitude for math. R squared of 0.6 for IQ, 0.74 for Math SAT.

So, why do women go into math more than engineering, when this relationship predicts the opposite? Well, obviously not all else is equal, and besides, breaking up intelligence into just math and verbal is pretty crude. “Math” aptitude has many components.

The Math SAT measures a lot of things such as the ability to do 3D visualization in your head, that aren’t strictly “math”. And, in fact, there are neurological differences between men and women directly related to spacial skills.

So, maybe actual math majors are women heavy compared to engineering majors because of the need for spacial skills in engineering.

The bottom line, though, is that fundamental biology is enough to explain a lot of these differences, without any appeal to discrimination at all.

[Sarcastr0]

This is warmed over Bell Curve but for gender. You talk about culture all the time when it comes to race, now it's Biotruths time.

We have all sorts of structural ways we discourage women in STEM. Both explicit (in my physics grad class just about every women I talked to had some STEM teacher try to gently divert them elsewhere), and implicit as to family responsibilities versus time commitment.
When I do site visits to schools, this particular structural challenge is something we ask about. And it is reported just about everywhere, from elite schools to community colleges.

“Math” aptitude has many components. This I absolutely agree with. Many things that aren't tested for, in fact!

maybe actual math majors are women heavy compared to engineering majors because of the need for spatial skills in engineering.
Maybe! But that's not established.

fundamental biology is enough to explain a lot of these differences,
As I said, Bell Curve rewarmed. It is hard to disentangle nature from nature. That doesn't mean you don't need to do the work.

[Brett Bellmore]

"This is warmed over Bell Curve but for gender."

Yeah, so? It's not like hating on the Bell Curve actually refuted it, much as you wish it had.

[Gandydancer]

Bingo.

[Macy's Window]

Sarcastro: ” (in my physics grad class just about every women I talked to had some STEM teacher try to gently divert them elsewhere)”

LMAO. Sure.

Back in the real world — and away from your MSNBC dystopia — we have “bring your daughter to work day,” special programs for young minority and female STEM students, professors harangue talented young women to enter STEM fields and corporations and corporations, university and govt double down on affirmative action for women in STEM.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, if you dismiss everything you don't like as a lie, it sure does make things easy.

It's the culture, not the programs. If you don't like my anecdotes, you can read up on it plenty all over the place. If it's lies, it's a whole shitload of them.

I actually think too many programs are just shallow money shovels when more robust support is required, so I don't disagree that more programs is not the answer. But that does not mean that the STEM ecosystem is super duper gender neutral.

[Gandydancer]

Shitloads of lies is the basic tool of your arguments.

You've got anecdotes about "some STEM teacher tr[ied] to gently divert them elsewhere" and MW has observable biases in favor of getting women into math employment.

The " family responsibilities" bit is certainly largely a function of different interests, not a "problem". Yes, it makes women less suitable for all sorts of things. Also men for different things.
"

[bernard11]

So, why do women go into math more than engineering, when this relationship predicts the opposite? Well, obviously not all else is equal, and besides, breaking up intelligence into just math and verbal is pretty crude. “Math” aptitude has many components.

Now you are going way beyond what the data says, and making up excuses for a case where it suggests things you don't want to hear. You are so sold on a biological explanation that you can't even consider other causes.

Besides, consider the data again. You are claiming that there is a point on the curve such that 80% of the people to the right are male, while only 60%, at most, are to the right of a point in a closely related distribution.

That's patent nonsense.

Is it possible that the culture of engineering is unwelcoming to women? As sarcastro points out, you are big on cultural explanations when they suit your opinions, but suddenly it's all biologically determined.

[ducksalad]

Is it possible that the culture of engineering is unwelcoming to women?

If by culture you mean old boy network, sexist jokes in the workplace, etc, you'd have to argue that women become aware of this culture somewhere before middle school. Because the disparity in expressed preferences is seen that early.

If by culture you mean thing-oriented rather than people-oriented, more emphasis on competitive performance and quantitative measures rather than compassion and human values, well yes, that's going to be there.

I'd argue it's somewhat inherent to the discipline and to some extent just has to be accepted rather than changed. I mean, turn it around: suppose someone proposed to get more men into nursing. How? "Let's de-emphasize the wussy compassion thing since that turns away the men! The recruitment materials should show pictures of winning and accomplishing and equipment, instead of caring and serving and talking!"

I hope we can all agree that would be the wrong thing to do.

[Don Nico]

Ducksalad,
I agree with you that engineering must be very thing oriented and result oriented rather than person and process oriented. At least in the US, those features are not as appealing to women as to men.
Some may argue that the difference in appeal are purely culture oriented, but that flies in the face of an obvious biological necessity.
In 200 years it may be different; who knows?

[Brett Bellmore]

"Besides, consider the data again. You are claiming that there is a point on the curve such that 80% of the people to the right are male, while only 60%, at most, are to the right of a point in a closely related distribution."

Sure, what's so shocking about that?

I'm saying that for a SAT math score high enough to do well in STEM, the ratio of males to females is high enough to explain a lot of the disparity. Anything above about 580 on the math section of the SAT, men outnumber women, and by a substantial margin above 650, 1.5/1 or better. Factor in that men are biologically better at spacial reasoning, which is critical to many STEM majors, and it's not surprising that men predominate.

Men also predominate at being idiots, but nobody obsesses about that. We've just got greater variance, which results in a substantial difference out on the tails of the curve.

[bernard11]

I think you missed my point.

A couple of others.

It's "spatial," not "spacial." Maybe a nit, but the repetition wears.

Math does require spatial reasoning.

You have gone from "It's not too surprising that men choose STEM majors more often than women do," to "The numbers that we see are what we would expect from SAT scores and there can't be any other factors at work."

The first is plausible, depending. The second is nonsense.

[Gandydancer]

The second is nonsense of your own making.

BB never said that there CAN'T be other factors at work. He just won't join you in assuming that they are likely to be significant without proof, or even a plausible suggestion as to what they might be.

Men are not women and women are not men, despite your preference/dogma to the contrary. This must have consequences,

[Brett Bellmore]

That's exactly it: Men and women aren't just cosmetically different, we're genetically different. Neurologically, biochemically, behaviorally, we're actually different.

And the left demand that any difference in what we end up doing has to be due to discrimination, rather than different capabilities and inclinations.

[Sarcastr0]

Yes, we know there are differences.

You take that and spin out a whole set of what these differences are, that they are all inborn, etc. etc.

There is no science on this; you are in a realm of pure gut feelz. And, shockingly, you discard any sense of individualism and dive into some generations old sexism.

[ducksalad]

Brett, Bernard - You've got the statistics correct, but I would argue that outside of a few hyper-elite programs the statistics are irrelevant.

Why? It doesn't take an outlier-high math score to get admission into your typical STEM program, and to be successful once you're in it. You merely need to be somewhat above average, and roughly equal numbers of women and men meet that criterion. At many schools there aren't even STEM admission criteria: any person admitted to the university can choose a STEM major simply by checking a box, and significantly more women are admitted than men.

The bottom line is that, at the time of entering college, women don't go into engineering because they don't want to. The number of 18-year old women who want to study engineering but are denied the opportunity is negligible.

That doesn't prove there isn't bias. But it does indicate that if the cause is bias, it's something that happens much earlier in life and by the time women have reached high school age they've internalized it.

Specialists and advocates who work on increasing women-in-STEM numbers realized this a few decades ago. Their focus is almost entirely on changing attitudes at an early age.

[bernard11]

Ducksalad,

It doesn’t take an outlier-high math score to get admission into your typical STEM program, and to be successful once you’re in it. You merely need to be somewhat above average, and roughly equal numbers of women and men meet that criterion.

I largely agree, and said so above.

If by culture you mean old boy network, sexist jokes in the workplace, etc, you’d have to argue that women become aware of this culture somewhere before middle school. Because the disparity in expressed preferences is seen that early.

Yes, but it seems plausible that those things are discouraging to women who would like to be engineers and start down that path. There can be more than one explanation.

And of course cultural effects can act early. I have a grand-niece who is as brilliant as only grand-nieces can be, and interested in science, etc. A few years ago, when she was maybe 10 or 11, I took her to a science museum and of course visited the shop, where they sold all kinds of kits and so on. She spotted a shelf that had “Science Experiments for Girls,” and “Science Experiments for Boys.”

She was outraged, and complained that the ones for boys were sure to be more fun than those for girls. Take it for what it’s worth.

[Gandydancer]

Then shoe could have bought the one for boys, so her outrage seems misplaced.

[Kazinski]

Well , there is another difference between men and women, men who test very well in math don't always do well in other subjects like the English and humanities.

Women who test very well in math also tend to test very well in all the other areas of the SAT, and so because they have a lot of other choices, they choose.

[Social Justice is neither]

There is also women being more innately interested in people over things while for men that is reversed that will drive the STEM disparity more than IQ. Also, at least for a BS STEM is more rigorous than the social sciences and humanities where women tend to cluster and allowing those disciplines to support more degrees.

[Sarcastr0]

women being more innately interested in people over things

Women are just more emotional and nurturing, and thus innately suited to the home sphere, not the political sphere.

[Dr. Ed 2]

No Brett, look at the naep scores. There is a girl gap in stem and a bigger boy gap in language arts.

[Brett Bellmore]

How does this contradict what I'm saying?

[bernard11]

It doesn't.

Another point on which we agree.

[Randal]

The difference between the sexes and the races is that women have male and female children in roughly equal number, as do men.

But if you haven’t noticed, Black people tend to have Black kids.

That means there’s a cross-generational racial lock-in with respect to wealth and opportunity that doesn’t exist for men vs women.

Conservatives appear hell-bent on preserving the racial advantages of white people. Even colorblind policies like the estate tax would at least help, but no.

[arch1]

Thanks. I’ve long been aware of the asymmetry that modern English is much more sexist than racist, but the asymmetry that you mention (that the lock-in of discriminatory impacts which can be applicable to racial groups does not apply to women) never occurred to me.

[Gandydancer]

"Black people tend to have Black kids."

And when they revert to the mean in IQ they revert to the black mean and not the white or Asian mean. So if you want to keep their overrepresentation relative to ability in, say, admissions you can never take your foot off the gas.

[David Nieporent]

Careful, your hood is showing.

[Theendoftheleft]

Ignore Nieporent; he's just compensating for his own Sinophobic views -- and ignorance of science...

[Ed Grinberg]

I’m curious: do you condemn the school officials at Harvard and University of North Carolina as racists? Isn’t Gandydancer accurately describing their approach to student admissions? Or is talking about it somehow more racist than doing it?

[Gandydancer]

NoPoint thinks that "Asians" having a higher IQ than Blacks is KuKluxKlan Science, because his religion tells him that this can't be true.

[ConservativeProfessor]

No conservativeI know actually thinks this way. In fact, every one I know wishes the black community well, that all its members flourish. For if they did, there would be less crime, more wealth for everyone, and my insurance rates would go done (since I live on the edge of black neighborhood that has a very high crime rate.)

Having poor, fatherless, drug addicted, crime committing, homicide engaging blacks benefits no one--except Democratic politicians who maintain power by making them dependent on government largesse.

[Randal]

Uh, sorry but... well-wishes aren't a solution. That's not going to change anything. That's like solving murders with nothing but thoughts and prayers.

[Gandydancer]

Prompt execution is what solves the problem of too many murderers.

[damikesc]

White progressive solutions have made problems worse. Perhaps letting that community fix its problems might be wiser than waiting for their self-anointed white saviors to do it.

[Sarcastr0]

It's a Democratic plantation until it's the black community.
Then suddenly all of it's problems are internal and fixable internally.

Pogressive solutions have made problems worse.
Neither you nor I know the counterfactual. It's an article of faith among some on the right that welfare makes not everyone on it, but specifically blacks, lazy and immoral.

Not really demonstrated, but not coming from a place of clinical study anyhow.

[Theendoftheleft]

How about neo-liberalism, the outsourcing of industrial jobs, and the mass influx of illegal south and central American labour? Surely THOSE things only helped the African American community to preserve itself material well-being, let alone thrive, yeah?

Sorry Tankie, but your hard push towards comprehensive social re-engineering, a drive in which the New Left stands shoulder to shoulder in solidarity with Clinton and the Bushes, helped fucked over your country's African Americans and poor.

[Krychek_2]

It's a trade off, and no policy (including a policy of doing nothing at all) won't have some negative unintended consequences. But overall, I still think we're better off for most of those liberal social policies. More people have access to education; I would have been able to get neither of my degrees without federal student loans and grants. People have better access to health care than they did 50 years ago, there are fewer hungry children, and social security has done a lot for ending elder poverty. More minorities have good jobs than used to be the case and have begun accumulating wealth; I'm old enough to remember when help wanted ads specified whether the job was for blacks or whites, and none of the good jobs were in the black column.

It's child's play to point out that these policies have created new problems of their own, but on balance, I think overall we're better off.

[Sarcastr0]

I think it's important to note that we cannot know the counterfactual if these programs were not in place.

I and you think it'd be worse, others think it'd be better. We can make logical arguments why, but anyone on either side of the issue who claims it's a baseline truth has sold themselves a bill of goods.

I note that Krychek_2 was pretty careful to couch is opinion as such, not fact.

[Krychek_2]

SarcastrO, you are of course absolutely right that we can't know how the country would look if there had been no New Deal or Great Society. I do think we can look at what the country was like before the New Deal or Great Society and make comparisons, but then who knows what other variables would have come into play.

But that kind of nuanced, careful analysis seems unpopular in some quarters, as you know from routinely being called a liar and other names whenever you bring nuance into a discussion. It's far easier to sweep with a broad brush, especially if you can vent bile against your disfavored minorities in the process.

[Theendoftheleft]

Sorry, I ought to have replied to your comment here rather than to your earlier one. (I’ll copy and paste it here too.)

As implied in my response, both the New Deal and the New Society pre-date the advent of neo-liberalism, let alone the rise of the specific policies I mentioned (mass exporting of jobs, mass illegal immigration). You can worry about counter-factuals regarding the neo-liberal era too. Suffice it to say that there's a consensus amongst the left and right now, even if the won't admit it, that the policies were abysmal. Hence the continual rise of Bernie and Trump; their politics will win on both sides of your aisle for the foreseeable future for good reasons.

My previous comment: All of the things you mention were possible with liberal policies, and not necessarily neo-liberal ones, ie, a large-scale outsourcing of jobs and a mass influx of cheap, unskilled, illiterate labour.

Want to know how I know? I live in exactly such a country, one that American so-called ‘liberals’ and ‘progressives’ regularly laud as one worth emulating.

All of that is to say that your response misses the mark.

[Theendoftheleft]

All of the things you mention were possible with liberal policies, and not necessarily neo-liberal ones, ie, a large-scale outsourcing of jobs and a mass influx of cheap, unskilled, illiterate labour.

Want to know how I know? I live in exactly such a country, one that American so-called 'liberals' and 'progressives' regularly laud as one worth emulating.

All of that is to say that your response misses the mark.

[Krychek_2]

Perhaps this is a branding issue, but I completely disagree that outsourcing jobs is a neo-liberal policy; that's just plain old capitalism. If you can get the work done more cheaply somewhere else, the free market strongly suggests that you do. Same with importing cheap labor; from a free market standpoint, that's good for business. So it ultimately depends on which group you care more about, business or labor, and the right has traditionally favored business. So your complaints about cheap labor and outsourcing of jobs should really be directed to the right, not the left.

Respectfully, I think, based in part on your name, that you have come to despise the left for whatever reason, so you simply sloppily categorize as "the left" or "neo-liberal" any policy you disapprove of, without respect to whether the policy really fits within that traditional definition.

And, as a general comment, I think the great difference between right and left is that liberals say, "We are better than this and we can do better than this." Conservatives say, "No we aren't, no we can't, and I don't want to pay taxes for it." I would never make the argument that all liberal (or neo-liberal if you prefer) policies have worked out well, but liberals are at least trying to make a better world. If you think that's a fool's errand, fine, but that really is what separates you.

[Theendoftheleft]

Nope, it happened under WJ Clinton (who was the head of a Democrat neo-liberal committee prior to 1992, which is why he secured the Dem nomination). Same with Blair in Blighty.

Opposition to such developments was, irrefutably, the real reason why Perot ran in 1992 (and so why Clinton won and Bush Sr lost), it’s why Pat Buchanan continued the Reform party thereafter, and it’s why Donald J Trump left the Democrats to get involved (howsoever tenuously) with the Reform party thereafter. (Donald J Trump won in 2016, in part, because he moved economically to the left of Clinton; the GOP voters were sick of the status quo, turning against neo-liberalism, and were finally open to the Reform party’s views — even if most GOP politicians and bureaucrats were not.)

And, apologies, but no one in the rest of the world believes the American blue team when it demands minimum wage laws, max hour laws, health and safety laws, sexual protection laws, YET SYSTEMATICALLY bypasses all of them for the employment of illegals in ALL your major blue cities and states. Why hire the poor black, white, or hispanic American when you can hire the illegal for cheaper wages? America has been doing this, in blue states and red, for decades now.

That is NOT a free market; it is the illusion of labour being in competition when the LAWS are structured to incentivize and protect the hiring of one subset of that labour (the ‘illegal’ variety). The American whites, browns, etc, all lose, cannot legally compete, because they would have to be paid the legal floor, and meet the other legally required conditions of labour.

As I said, literally NO OTHER Western democracy copies America on this, and consciously rejects the blue team’s approach accordingly.

You’re also mistaken about my handle. In my country, and several others in which I have lived, we have FAR more nuanced and informed understandings of liberals (right-of-centre parties), social democrats, democratic socialists, so-called libertarian socialists vs statist ones, etc. (My country also has more than one left-wing party too.) It is America’s dubious usage of the terms ‘liberal’ and ‘progressive’ that leads Americans to have far less understanding of the various lefts (and how they’ve been manipulated via such labels when elites want to move the politics further left).

I despise the Western left because, despite their claims about themselves, they are — all of them — in fact anti-democratic totalitarians engaged in a global imperialist project to socially re-engineer the world. Based on what? Largely just their intuitions, political ideologies, and normative aspirations. That includes American ‘liberals’. People are not lying or mistaken when they see Orwell’s 1984 playing out today’s political institutions, media, and academic institutions.

Not only is this an abysmal grandiose project, one that regularly leads to abuses of democracy, the rule of law, and social power, but it is also the PRIMARY basis for the Global South’s resentment against the West today.

Respectfully in turn, you are going to lose this new cold war, and most Americans haven’t even half an understanding of WHY it is really being fought, let alone why almost all of South America, Africa, the ME, and much of Asia will side against the USA.

My handle thus refers to the impending implosion of American liberal-progressive values and ideology. You are shrinking demographically, you are losing global power and will undoubtedly continue to do so, whilst your international efforts are almost globally resented as racist, cultural imperialism.

Hence, at home, all the American left can PUBLICLY bemoan are the neo-liberal economic and militaristic aspects of that imperialism; they dare not publicly discuss the true nature of their legal, political, cultural, and social imperialist projects. This, let alone their domestic schemes to re-engineer America; the streets would run red with blood tomorrow if the masses knew what was really going on, why so many poor Americans died as soldiers overseas, and why America has really meddled with so many countries of the Global South.

That ties in nicely with your last paragraph. You ‘liberals’ not just aspire to make the world a better place, you PRETEND that you have empirically-grounded knowledge and skills by which to do so. (As I noted above, you predominantly rely upon your intuitions, and normative aspirations, NOT tried-and-test empirically proven techniques for doing so.) This, let alone assume the right to tell anyone else in the world how to live. You furthermore accuse people on the opposite side of the aisle not just of complacency, or of deluding themselves into thinking that the current state of affairs is immutable and irreparable, but that they are IGNORANT for disbelieving your values, or for rejecting your projects. It’s a con — on your part. You misrepresent yourself as having credible, proven knowledge and skills to implement your goals.

That is why I periodically tell the ‘Rev Arthur Kirkland’ on this blog (whom I call AIDS), that y’all are the Elizabeth Holmes of social engineering.

And it why I keep telling Sarcastr0 (here too) that it isn’t merely a piecemeal engineering project to which you aspire; it’s rather a comprehensive one: you aim to rejig ALL American social and moral norms, and so too that of the world’s. It’s totalitarian, hubristic, and undemocratic, and evil. You have no idea what you’re really doing, and you have no right to police what people say and think, let alone abuse power to implement it when it’s not democratically chosen and mandated.

Methinks this leftist con has something to do, in part, with legal education in America particularly, whereby law students are taught that they are ‘social engineers’ — even though they’ve merely spent three years learning cases and how to parse statutes. They have, and gain in law school, NO social scientific, empirical training in how to go about comparing or crafting legal or social norms, let alone credible, empirical grounds by which to determine which ones are superior ones.

AND NOR do social scientists themselves — though I’ve yet to ever come across one who ever even dreamed of claimed to be one.

You don’t have to believe anything I’ve said here, of course. The only thing I would request that you do is read stuff on the Global South and why THEY believe exactly what I, coming from the European conservative (anti-fascist) right, believe. If you’ve not heard of TWAIL, then perhaps you could start with that movement’s work.

[David Nieporent]

Perhaps this is a branding issue, but I completely disagree that outsourcing jobs is a neo-liberal policy;

"Neo-liberal" doesn't actually mean anything. It's just an epithet originally coined by economically-illiterate European leftists (but I repeat myself) and then later adopted by the econimically-illiterate illiberal far right (but I again repeat myself) to apply to any policy they dislike, by which I mean any policy that actually makes sense.

[Theendoftheleft]

Nieporent, you repeatedly demonstrate your parochialism and ignorance. If only all your clients could read the stupid things you write on this blog.

Remember when this stuff was called ‘third way’ instead? Who chaired the Democratic Leadership Council till 1992? Why did such a council even exist?

Now, are you going to finally man up and call me a racial epithet as a person of Chinese heritage yet or what? Going to stick with your safe-Russian slanders/codes, you coward?

[Krychek_2]

Nope, the fact that it happened under WJ Clinton is completely irrelevant. A policy is, itself, either liberal or conservative, regardless of who enacts it. Had Mussolini implemented single payer health care, single payer health care would still be a liberal policy despite Mussolini being a fascist. Had Stalin privatized industry, privatization would have still been a conservative policy despite Stalin being a communist. And outsourcing jobs is a conservative policy, on its own merits, no matter which side (and IIRC in this case it was both sides) push it through.

And much of what you say strongly suggests that you, yourself, have leftist tendencies, at least on some issues. Maybe you need a new moniker.

[Theendoftheleft]

‘ A policy is, itself, either liberal or conservative, regardless of who enacts it’.

You can assert as much, but no one, in the rest of the West, from the far left to right, agrees with you. Nor does anyone else in the world. Your American labels are generic and vague — for a reason.

Single-payer public healthcare policies were either social democratic or national socialist. (I live in a country with such a policy, and I know damn well who implemented it and when.)

The liberal parties of almost EVERY other western country today are right-of-centre parties, and with good reason. America didn’t invent liberalism. Trade LIBERALIZATION was favoured by liberals. The old, defunct Liberal party of England was free trade and genuinely liberal (regardless of whether you call them ‘classically’ liberal or libertarian in today’s nomenclatures). The anti-Corn law league was liberal. Manchestrian liberalism was pro-free trade. Gladstone was a liberal. So was von Mises. So was Hayek.

Hence, outsourcing jobs is, and always was, liberal. Trade protection, tariffs, etc, was often conservative. Disraeli’s ‘one nation’ TORY policy was that. Anti-free trade policies in the rest of the Anglosphere were due a conservative preference to deal with the metropole Britain, and not free trade with others such as the USA. They butted heads with liberals over this.

American ignorance is no excuse here.

Political parties, ideologies, and values in Western countries do not track identically American red and blue teams.

By your same reckoning, you should read about America’s Reform party, about Ross Perot and why Donald J Trump would be attracted to those same ‘leftist’ ideas. As I tell my American colleagues, most blue team cheerleaders until Michael Dukakis would have agreed with their economic policies too. THEN you’ll see why the GOP and Dem establishment considered The Don to be such a threat to their agenda and power, and what drove them to sabotage his presidency and drag the world through four years of lies (not just his) and legal chicanery.

[Randal]

I’m totally fine defining neoliberalism as some sort of globalist capitalist human-rights project centered in America (and which is adjacent to ye olde ’90s neoconservatives).

But if that’s what you mean by “the left” then you’re in for a big surprise. Not much of “the left” in America remains committed to that project. MAGA has been successful in at least distracting us from it, mainly by keeping us tied up in lame domestic culture wars.

And much of "the left" has given up on it entirely, having been convinced by the "socialists" that capitalism is zero-sum and therefore a font of grievances.

[Theendoftheleft]

Au contraire, the left most certainly does persist with that long-standing project, especially when it comes to international law, unto this day. It’s extremely important for them to impose upon the rest of the world, not just their gender and sexual ideologies, but also social democratic and democratic socialist policy preferences through the back door.

Regarding the culture wars, the charge of who is keeping whom tied up is best, and entirely, explained as projection on your part. For, In the USA, it’s not MAGA:

that’s trying to regularly police word and concept usage in the name of determining what’s ‘politically correct’, mystifying one’s efforts to win political struggles as being merely about setting floors of decency, polite discourse, respective forms of address, and good manners;

who catalyzed cancel culture and rendered it pervasive;

who has converted EVERY SINGLE FUCKING piece of American corporate media (film, television, etc) into a blatant identity politics propaganda vehicle [this is recognized, and mocked, globally, by people across the political spectrum];

who are getting TERF academics fired;

who scream that ‘no one is illegal’ whilst systematically ignoring immigration laws and systematically exploiting the illegals as neo-serfs;

who scream about Islamophobia whilst in the same breadth demonstrating why they actually look down upon that faith;

who want to de-legitimize nation-states and REQUIRE multiculturalism and multi-ethnic states abroad. (I posted recently on this blog about that psycho Jake Sullivan stating in the White House in April 2023 that America must ‘ensure’ that it’s partners are ‘inclusive’ — as if it’s any of the USA’s business, let alone right to dictate to us about, how we, your partners, must associate, structure our societies, or otherwise live).

The American left, which includes its ‘liberals’, has gone on open jihad to try to dictate to the rest of America, and the world, how to live, speak, and think. They try to impose and police their preferences, discipline speech and thought, and punish non-conformity. Claiming that MAGA is itself the cause of the 'domestic' culture war is nothing short of Orwellian.

[Krychek_2]

You’re trying to win the argument by re-defining terms and changing definitions. You don’t get to define words in ways that no one else defines them and then say “I win.”

I once heard a religious nutter say that he defined anti- semitism as rejecting Jesus Christ as lord and savior. You’re doing the same thing he did: offering a ludicrous definition of a term and then trying to win an argument with it.

[Theendoftheleft]

‘You’re trying to win the argument by re-defining terms and changing definitions. You don’t get to define words in ways that no one else defines them and then say “I win.”’.

I haven’t re-defined anything. This is how the term ‘liberal’ was ALWAYS used in the rest of the West. This is easily verified. Again, America didn’t invent liberalism or the word ‘liberal’. You’re either just trolling or betraying your parochialism (or both).

Look up Manchestrian liberalism. Look up Gladstone. Find the book ‘The Strange Death of Liberal England’. (Look up Disraeli’s election win and One Nation conservatism.) Look up all the liberal parties in European Continent today and where they sit on the political aisle.

[Randal]

I feel like you're confusing neoliberalism (even by your definition of it) with American cultural imperialism. The two are very different things (although for sure, the now-mostly-dead neoliberal project certainly appreciated the cultural imperialists softening up the international ground for them).

You don't have to watch American movies if you find the identity politics so triggering. You can toss your Xbox and buy a Switch. (Although I hear that Japanese media is really only more focused on identity politics than even American media is, so you might have a problem there actually.)

Did you ever even figure out which American cultural pablum you (I still assert, subconsciously) quoted the other day? You've already been sufficiently brainwashed for the upcoming American-led globalist takeover, I can tell.

[David Nieporent]

I feel like you’re confusing neoliberalism (even by your definition of it) with American cultural imperialism. The two are very different things (although for sure, the now-mostly-dead neoliberal project certainly appreciated the cultural imperialists softening up the international ground for them).

Exactly.

Me: "Neoliberalism" is just an epithet of no well-defined meaning used by the illiberal left and right for "things they don't like."
Putin troll: No, that's not true. Look, everything I don't like is neoliberalism!

[Theendoftheleft]

Randal & Nieporent:

These are the best efforts you two idiots can muster, offering mere strawmen and mischaracterizations, because you can’t actually address the merits.

Randal baldly asserts, without evidence, that neo-liberal economic and immigration policies aren’t subsumable under a larger American cultural imperialist project. (You can stamp your feet and insist upon it, but that won’t make it true. It’s why, for example, America wants to ‘ensure’ that Europe becomes more ‘inclusive’.) Further, I never even gave a definition of neo-liberalism — ‘real’, stipulative, ostensive, or otherwise; but feel free to continue to lie about even that.) Hell, even regarding the American domestic culture war, Randal needs to lie about who’s really behind it. He CANNOT respond on the merits to the points raised about what the liberal-progressive axis is doing, and so doesn’t even try.

Nieporent evidences his complete lack of familiarity with any academic literature, in any discipline, on neo-liberalism. He offers his uninformed take, attempts a de-legitimization strategy (you’re a Putin worshiper!), and, in his ignorance and stupidity, probably believes that he’s said something worthwhile, true, and convincing. The stupidity and shallowness of his efforts are lost only on himself.

You two bozos have demonstrated, beyond a shadow of doubt, that you’re only interested in low-grade trolling. Instead of talking to me about video games and other such nonsense, why don’t you two losers try to actually go learn something about the world for a change? For one thing, it will help you to understand why 'liberals', 'progressives', and others in the West (let alone the rest of the world), with very good reason, look down upon American culture, don’t want to be like you, and are alienated by your increased liberal-progressive authoritarianism.

[Randal]

So I take it you still haven’t figured out your inadvertent American cultural reference?

I just think you’re funny. You’ve worked out this whole, intricate, mostly nonsense theory of everything, which you claim is shared by all. And your venue for touting it is… the VC? And despite your manifesto centering on anti-Americanism, you obviously happily consume a lot of American media and hang out on American political and legal blogs.

Looks to me like we’re winning!

[Theendoftheleft]

You can't Randal me, man. Your say-so means nothing and you don't have substantive replies for a reason.

But keep up the good work cloaking yourself in your ideology and parochial beliefs. It can only serve you well.

[defaultdotxbe]

I agree we are better off for having had most of these programs, but I also feel many of them have run their course and no longer providing the same level of cost/benefit they used to. And many of the unintended consequences are now outweighing the benefits.

A great example is the housing voucher program. It served a good purpose in reducing/preventing homelessness, but now we see how by discouraging home ownership in favor of renting (the vouchers are only available to cover rent, not a mortgage payment) those on the program have been denied the ability to grow equity, and in turn denied one of the biggest factors of generational wealth growth and transfer enjoyed by the middle class: inheriting a fully paid off home.

A simple solution would be to allow the vouchers to be used for mortgage payments as well as rent, yet this seems to escape politicians on both sides. I suspect this is due to conservatives not wanting to fund "welfare queens" and progressives being concerned that once a home is paid off the occupants may no longer be as eager to vote Democrat.

[Kazinski]

Yet somehow women make at least 70% of discretionary purchases.

Now as for generational inequities, both my grandmother's were widowed during the depression with young children, and my mother was widowed with 3 toddlers in the late 50's and never remarried.

Shouldn't I have gotten preferences from being raised by 2 successive generations of all female breadwinners during a time of rampant sexism?

Or would the pampered daughter of two parent households have more of a claim to preferences?

I didn't need any preferences neither did Hilary Rodham, although she took them where she could find them.

[bernard11]

Preferences based on socio-economic status might have helped you.

[David Jay]

I’ve missed the part about racial opportunity disparities by race. At the schools I went to, mediocre, unfit blacks, Hispanics, and Native Americans were praised as doing a great job when they were doing an embarrassingly bad job. There were some exceptions, especially Nigerians, for some reason. I’ve never understood the broad claims to societal discrimination or the like. It seemed, and seems, like an unfalsifiable regress, — there’s always an ever-more secret discrimination or unspoken bias. It reminds me of Pravda or Baghdad Bob: the observables are misleading, they are actually proof of the opposite. I fear that this leads to a sense of grievance that is really just disappointment and disbelief that there is not equality of aptitude among racial groups as a statistical matter.

[Randal]

It's not exactly a mystery that kids born into poverty have worse outcomes than affluent kids. It happens to white kids too.

[Gandydancer]

You're missing the point. How did David Jay's poverty rank against his diverse fellows and is any difference in results due to "opportunity disparities by race"? He doesn't seem to think so.

[tkamenick]

It's also not exactly a mystery that a kid born into poverty can have a better outcome than a kid born into affluence. Treat people as individuals instead of indistinguishable masses.

[Sarcastr0]

This is a pretty unrealistic take on class mobility in this country. That 'can' is a rare event.

You can treat people as individuals and recognize being poor is a huge detrement.

[Rossami]

And here, I think, is the fundamental breakdown. You are wrong on a key fact. That 'can' is not rare at all. Class mobility is in fact quite high in the US (and certainly higher than any of the "enlightened" countries that US progressives keep telling us we should emulate).

[Sarcastr0]

Wiki summary: "of nine developed countries, the United States and United Kingdom had the lowest intergenerational vertical social mobility with about half of the advantages of having a parent with a high income passed on to the next generation."
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2006/04/b1579981.html

Wealth inequality is correlated to lack of class mobility as well.

We have a problem in this area; stating we're great doesn't mean we are.
I do think we are exceptional, and I do think if we put our effort into it we can do great things in the area. But we are not at all great at the moment.

[Toranth]

Well, first, you're citing the Center for American Progress - a hard-left Progressive think tank. Second, you're misrepresenting the statistic mentioned: The measure mentioned there is not intergenerational mobility, but the level of "Father-Son Earnings Elasticity" (females play no role in this study) in a small selected set of Western European countries, as one of the factors in a custom measure of "social mobility" - as explicitly differentiated from economic mobility. Also, they consider parental education to be "wealth transferred".

[Toranth]

Individual economic mobility shows a different picture. An individual in the middle three quintiles at age 30 is only 20-ish% likely to be in the same quintile at age 50. Even the two extremes (top and bottom quintiles) are only 50%.
The CAP dismisses this by declaring that changing income is bad, calling it "income insecurity", and therefore only takes a single measure for the entire life of the person. This distorts the history entirely, as young people move up economic classes while old people move down. For example, almost one-quarter of people in the top quintile in their 30s is in the middle quintile be their late 50s.

In truth, CAP favorites like Denmark and Norway look similar to US in individual movement (despite the major difference in income quintile size - only 30% between 2nd and 4th!), due primarily to tax policies and the government transfers of the Nordic states.

In other words

While our understanding of intergenerational mobility has long been defined by regressions of the log of children’s income on the log of parents’ income (or more recently ranks of income) measured in their 30s, lifetime measures that better reflect long-term intergenerational mobility in society are higher than the narrow snapshot measures.

You're going to have to work to show that being in the middle of the pack of 'most equal' states is "a problem in this area". You can start by showing what the "problem" is, and then work on identifying causes before going advocating solutions.

[Sarcastr0]

Remember the original post about more general socioeconomic mobility in this thread: "It’s also not exactly a mystery that a kid born into poverty can have a better outcome than a kid born into affluence."
That is not about just getting richer as you age. Actual social mobility is the correct metric.

"almost one-quarter of people in the top quintile in their 30s is in the middle quintile be their late 50s" seems a dire metric to me. Dunno why you're so chill about it.

I'm not a Scandinavia has it figured person, but you're making a lot of overdetermined choices here. So, I'm sure, is CAP. But look it up

[defaultdotxbe]

How is it a dire metric? If there is upward mobility into the top quintile there must also be downward mobility out of it. The only alternative is no mobility at all.

[Toranth]

Oh, I'm not defending the "one case disproves everything" version of 'can', nor am I saying that Rossami's better than any other country is correct. 'Social Mobility' leaves the US in the middle of the pack of OECD countries, while economic mobility leaves the US around 4th or 5th.
But you're going to need to pick a definition and stick to it here - what do you mean by "actual social mobility" and why do you think it is the "correct metric" over income or wealth mobility?

In the US, someone born in the bottom quintile has almost a 10% chance of ending up in the top quintile. Someone in the top quintile has about the same chance of ending up in the bottom.
In fact, someone in the top quintile at age 30 has about a 40% chance of ending up at the same or lower quintile than someone in the bottom quintile at age 30. Why do you consider it bad that a quarter of the richest people at age thirty end up in the middle class? Is that too much mobility? Are only certain types of mobility good? Do you think it is bad that old people have lower incomes? But if they don't move down, how are young people supposed to move up?
I really do not understand why you consider that fact to be a negative at all, much less "dire".

A also do not know what you are calling an "overdetermined choice here". What is it you want me to "look up"? What argument do you intend to present?

[Toranth]

Very strange posting difficulties. Reason would not let me include links to “National Bureau of Economic Research” (source of my data) in those posts.

[Sarcastr0]

Sometime reason hates a link for unknown reasons; it is annoying.

[TwelveInchPianist]

And of course the fact that having wealth allows people to provide advantages to their kids is a good thing. It's not a zero sum game after all.

As long as everybody's getting better off, things are good, even if the children of the rich get better off faster than the children of the less rich.

[damikesc]

Except poor white kids do not GET the beneficial treatment.

[Sarcastr0]

This is a pretty narrow view. There are plenty of dedicated opportunities for poor people, first-time college attendees, etc.

To be sure, AA means there are other opportunities they don't have, but don't pretend poor whites are utterly unaddressed.

[Theendoftheleft]

This is entirely unrealistic. The preponderance of American whites are poor. They don't have the class mobility and opportunities you speak of.

And not only do you want AA policies for more than just rectificatory purposes for African Americans (a perfectly legitimate policy), you also want it for 'hispanics' -- even though you have now import millions of them (one who are poor, unskilled, and illiterate).

This is why BOTH the Old Left and MAGA can credibly say to Bernie, to all the Democrats, and to America generally that multiculturalism is a tool for engageing in class warfare.

[Krychek_2]

Why is it only class warfare when the poor fight back? The rich have always engaged in class warfare; they just don't get called out on it.

[Theendoftheleft]

True enough, but they don’t call for EXPLICIT government policies and quotas that benefit their members. Their means, particularly when it comes to tax, are far more subtle.

On the other hand, I suppose one could assert that, given that a sizeable portion of AA’s beneficiaries in the USA are elite foreign minorities and kids from wealthier African American families, that AA is itself a tool for class warfare to help benefit the rich.

[Krychek_2]

Maybe poor whites should stop voting Republican. Poor whites have been sold a bill of goods that tax cuts for the wealthy and cutting back on social programs are a good thing.

I have a sister with multiple disabilities who is on SSI. She votes Republican because she's a racist who hates immigrants and because she thinks abortion should be illegal (even though she herself has had two of them). Then she calls me and cries because her benefits are being cut and she doesn't know how she's going to make it. Or at least she did until I told her very bluntly that she's getting what she votes for. (And before anyone asks, yes, I help her.)

[Theendoftheleft]

Not if America’s policy is to keep importing millions of unskilled illegals, to prioritise equity and inclusion (at the poor white’s expense), and/or to continue outsourcing jobs.

And please don’t dare to claim that any pushback against those policies came from your blue team. They came from Trump (via the Reform party). Two-time Obama-voting union guys voted Trump in 2016 because they understood, all too well, that Clinton was a neo-liberal stooge selling the unions a bill of goods.

The blue team is going to face a reckoning: the fundamental contradiction in its policies, between increasing social-welfare provisions, mass immigration of the poor, and the outsourcing of jobs, is unsustainable.

[Krychek_2]

Trump sold the "poor whites" a bunch of Florida swampland that what's good for the rich is good for them. The GOP is the party cutting all the programs that benefit poor whites.

[Theendoftheleft]

Nope, and that’s why more and more working and middle class Americans will go either Team Trump or Team Bernie.

The Dems certainly do want the programs (though not at affordable rates, as required/attempted in other countries), they don’t have kids, and they want mass immigration of unskilled labour to be neo-serfs who will have babies. Hence, they want an America that neither meets replacement rate (by domestics) nor has a critical mass of kids born who will be able to secure high paying jobs that will be taxable under a progressive income tax system.

It is for these reasons that literally no other Western country’s liberals, social democrats, or democratic socialists want to emulate your blue team. Indeed, they consciously reject what the blue team does. Ask me how I KNOW.

[DaveM]

“That means there’s a cross-generational racial lock-in with respect to wealth and opportunity that doesn’t exist for men vs women.

And this is why we utterly reject racialist thinking, because while it claims to explain things, in reality it merely reduces the root causes of complex problems to simple-minded, divisive stereotypes.

There are no other explanations for the differences in “wealth and opportunity” other than race? Really? You can’t think of even one? It’s all 100% racial?

And those differences are locked-in? There’s absolutely nothing that can be done about it? We just have to live with it, forever?

Look, conservatives aren’t “hell-bent on preserving the racial advantages of white people” — that’s racist trash talk and incredibly offensive. There is no “racial advantage” that applies to all white people. That's utter nonsense.

I hate the reductionist way that racists think. I hate the divisiveness of stereotyping. It's lazy and hopeless. As a conservative, I want to help lift people up, to get ahead. What I have found in my short time here is that people are individuals, every life is unique, and if things are bad and you want to make them better, you have to deal with people as individuals to make a change.

There are no shortcuts to improving a person’s life. Stop stereotyping people! It’s not helping them.

[ReaderY]

A llot of Ukraine’s cities are currently depopulated or destroyed. Why?

I can certainly think of a natural-phenomenon explanation. Perhaps there was a big lightning storm, a lot of fires, and a huge earthquake, all at once.

But the the fact that I can think of another explanation doesn’t disprove the theory that Russia invaded Ukraine and the destruction is caused by its invasion and the resulting war. The fact that I can think of a more innocent theory doesn’t prove that Russia didn’t do anything, and it certainly doesn’t make the theory that Russia invaded Ukraine rediculous and dispicable.

Same here. Just because you want to believe that racism, never happened in the United States, you very very badly want to believe it, doesn’t make any grasped-for straw theory more plausible than the obvious one.

[Rossami]

For someone complaining about straw men, you just made a whopper of the same logical fallacy. Your rant (that Dave "want[s] to believe that racism, never happened") is a pretty ridiculous take on what he actually said.

Nobody says it didn't happen. Very few people even say that it still doesn't happen. What they are saying is that the "fixes" you keep imposing are actively making the problem worse by committing the very evil that you claim to be fighting.

[ReaderY]

Also, it seems a bit like Holocaust deni. The most strident deniers seem to be the people most likely to repeat it.

[Theendoftheleft]

You’d think so, but then subsequent genocides came from leftist totalitarians who wanted to transform their own societies, and others', and their forms of consciousness. It’s amazing how hypocritical people are, and how easy it is for them to rationalize things.

It’s also easy to see how EXACTLY like the Jacobins and Soviets the American left has become. Totalitarian measures are rationalized in the name of ‘equity’, ‘inclusivity’, and ‘progress’. In addition to locking out rival ideas and panopticon techniques to silence the masses/keep them in fear of speaking out, the next steps will be far more sinister.

Fortunately, real Americans have a shit ton of guns, and some of them will use them. (It ain't genocide if you're defending your republic from a totalitarian putsch.)

[Social Justice is neither]

Except in this analogy racists like you are demanding that the holocaust is STILL ONGOING and making sure that is the general perception through hoaxes while any sane person recognizes the horror of it but recognizes it as the past and working to keep it there.

[Theendoftheleft]

Where did he, or anyone else, say that the Holocaust is ongoing? Just curious.

[Randal]

There are no shortcuts to improving a person’s life. Stop stereotyping people! It’s not helping them.

The problem is, people get stereotyped... and it's your side of the aisle that's doing it. Just take a glance through these comments!

When you have a society like America where the class heirarchy roughly aligns with the racial heirarchy, people notice that most of the poor people are Black, therefore most of the crime is Black... therefore Black neighborhoods have lower property values... and Black people get racially profiled... and over-policed... and have their assets seized... and generally get treated as inherently suspicious by society.

Just saying "hey, let's treat everyone as individuals" doesn't solve that problem. It doesn't make property values go up in Black neighborhoods, for example.

Conservatives seem basically fine with this status quo, is my overall point here. The fact that the race-class link is inherently self-perpetuating -- even in an officially colorblind society! -- is A-OK with conservatives... who generally hail from the upper-class race.

I think America would benefit greatly by breaking the race-class link, but since it's self-perpetuating, just passively waiting around for it to take care of itself isn't going to work. It'll require some sort of... affirmative action.

[David Bernstein]

"Just saying “hey, let’s treat everyone as individuals” doesn’t solve that problem."

But actually *treating* people as individuals would solve the problem, because after a few generations of interracial coupling, there would be no firm division between "black" and "non-black" Americans, just like we have no firm Irish, German, Polish etc identities any more thanks to mixing. One way of understanding opposition to color-blindness even as a long-term goal is that many want African American to continue to be a separate identity. The reasons are understandable, but it's hard to see why that goal should be entrenched in public policy, or even why preserving African American identity, as such, is a legally valid goal.

[Randal]

after a few generations of interracial coupling

This is a great argument! For me.

One area of life that will never be colorblind is finding a mate. There’s probably a lot of reasons for that, but there’s one that matters: people can’t control who they’re attracted to and they tend to be attracted to people of the same race as themselves. It matters most because I don’t think it can or even should be solved. We won’t get anywhere by telling people their sexual attractions are racist.

So it’s just more wishful thinking to pretend like ignoring race will make it go away.

[Sarcastr0]

Recognizing that individuals who share a demographic also face a similar set of challenges is good policy is good policy.

The idea that assimilation is good went by the wayside in the early 1990s.
Shared culture has value.
Recognizing that is not illegal when it comes to race any more than when it comes to faith.

[Brett Bellmore]

"That means there’s a cross-generational racial lock-in with respect to wealth and opportunity that doesn’t exist for men vs women."

If you said wealth and opportunity were somewhat sticky across generations, you might have a point. But there's not remotely a "lock in", there's actually quite a bit of churn going on; People rising from poverty to middle class, from middle class to wealthy. And in the other direction, too.

If a group durably remains poor, there's more going on than just their having started out poor. Either somebody is keeping them down, OR they're doing something to keep themselves down.

Don't neglect the latter possibility.

The time tested 3 rules for staying out of poverty, or rising out of it if you start there:

1: Graduate from High School.
2: Wait until you're at least 21 to marry, and do NOT have any children before you're married.
3: Work full time, and be relentless about showing up for work.

People who follow these rules almost never (Only 2% of the time!) end up poor.

But, the out of wedlock birth rate among blacks is about 3 times that of whites, 75% vs 25%. That alone, without considering anything else, is enough to explain the difference in financial outcomes!

[tkamenick]

"But there’s not remotely a “lock in”, there’s actually quite a bit of churn going on"

Exactly. When people say things like "The top 10% got richer and the bottom 10% got poorer", they are completely ignoring that those are not static groups of people. That INDIVIDUALS do in fact move from the bottom 10% to the top 10%. It's the same thing with race. All white people aren't in positions of privilege over all black people.

[Sarcastr0]

INDIVIDUALS do in fact move from the bottom 10% to the top 10%.

The best way to become rich is to be born that way.

"just 8 percent of American men at the bottom rose to the top fifth"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socioeconomic_mobility_in_the_United_States

I'm not one of the angry leftists who post that the American dream is dead; we're still a great and exceptional nation.
But do not advocate we rest on our class mobility laurels; they're not great to begin with, and there are all sorts of reasons to believe they'll get worse. Power concentrates across generations and the correlation between family wealth and future individual income has strong upward pressure.

[Brett Bellmore]

Sure, while it's possible to move from the lowest quintile to the highest in one generation, it's not terribly likely. OTOH, moving from the lowest quintile to the 2nd lowest or middle in a generation? People do that all the time, because doing THAT doesn't require being some kind of genius or having incredible luck, it just requires hard work and not making some well known mistakes, like blowing off HS or having children out of wedlock.

So in the space of several generations, it's quite possible to go from abject poverty to wealth, and very possible to go from poverty to the middle class in one generation.

We do have an income inequality problem in the US. Income inequality has grown greatly during my life.

I think that's because it's in the interest of the people making government policy that income inequality be high, for multiple reasons, so they naturally make all sorts of decisions that exacerbate it.

[Randal]

So then why all the resistance to making class mobility even better?

Conservatives argue that white kids deserve their family's inheritance, so we can't have estate taxes! But at the same time, there's just no way to compensate the descendents of Black families who were unfairly and officially discriminated against, because they weren't discriminated against personally, so they don't deserve it. It's a transparently self-serving joke.

At one point not too long ago, conservatives were saying, let's not have affirmative action and instead just have need-based assistance. But now that affirmative action is dead, they're in the process of moving the goalposts! Just look at Ilya's two posts already, decrying need-based assistance as a malicious "subterfuge" since it would have the effect of favoring minorities by virtue minorities being disproportionately needy.

It's reverse-disparate-impact for conservatives! Race-neutral policies that would improve class mobility must be rejected since they would mostly help poor minorities! We simply can't have that!

It's shameful and disgusting.

[Brett Bellmore]

Because most of what is described as "making class mobility even better" is nothing of the sort.

"Conservatives argue that white kids deserve their family’s inheritance, so we can’t have estate taxes! "

Nothing of the sort. Kids aren't entitled to their inheritances because they deserve them, they're entitled to them because that's where their parents wanted them to go, and their parents owned them, and were thus entitled to direct their disposition.

"Just look at Ilya’s two posts already, decrying need-based assistance as a malicious “subterfuge” since it would have the effect of favoring minorities by virtue minorities being disproportionately needy."

You need better reading comprehension, that's not at all what he's saying.

[Sarcastr0]

The lack of class mobility is another secret government agenda.

But the methods by which class mobility is inhibited, well, those are good policy.

[Randal]

Oh, so you're saying the white kids' parents deserved to give their undeserving kids a bunch of $$$.

How do you think that makes it better? Why didn't Black parents deserve to pass their claims for restitution on to their kids?

[Brett Bellmore]

Desert has nothing to do with it. They OWNED the stuff. That makes what gets done with it their choice. Deciding what gets done with stuff is what owning it MEANS.

Learning the distinction between "my stuff" and "other people's stuff" is an early developmental step which I sometimes suspect liberals just never achieved, they keep treating other people's stuff like it's theirs to do with as they like.

[Sarcastr0]

Seems like there isn't a conspiracy, it's just your purely economic, middle-class-and-up idea of liberty requires the maintenance of the structures that shut down class mobility.

[Brett Bellmore]

No, you're confusing helping people up the ladder, and cutting off rungs.

I mean, what's one of the biggest drivers of people moving up the income ladder? It's parents using their accumulated resources to give their children a boost, so that they don't have to start from zero each generation.

And what are you doing here? Talking about preventing wealth from being transmitted from parents to children! In the name of promoting class mobility, yet.

[Sarcastr0]

what’s one of the biggest drivers of people moving up the income ladder? It’s parents using their accumulated resources to give their children a boost, so that they don’t have to start from zero each generation.

The children of rich parents inheriting their wealth is not class mobility!!

Children are not all born in the same socioeconomic class until they inherit money. That's not how anyone analyzes socioeconomics. Except you, I guess.

[Randal]

Wow Brett, you couldn't have made my point any better!

[Randal]

Besides making my moral point for me, your whole theory is wrong anyway. Inheritance is part of the law. It's not even always a choice by parents.

You don't own anything when you're dead.

It wouldn't infringe property rights at all to have a 100% estate tax and just say, all property rights expire upon death.

The only reason we don't do that is because people want to perpetuate wealth within their families, which implies perpetuating wealth within their races.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Learning the distinction between “my stuff” and “other people’s stuff” is an early developmental step which I sometimes suspect liberals just never achieved,

With the disaffected, autistic, antisocial, bigoted, and delusional right-wing perspective, straight from the can't-keep-up backwaters . . . Mr. Brett "Birther" Bellmore!

[hoppy025]

Rev Kirkland, stick to shooting off into other men. That's your specialty.

[Brett Bellmore]

"The only reason we don’t do that is because people want to perpetuate wealth within their families, which implies perpetuating wealth within their races."

The reason we don't do that is because anybody who tried it would be torn to pieces, and maybe not metaphorically. Get over the idea that, just because the government passes laws to secure peoples' rights, it has utter liberty to define those rights.

[Randal]

Do you not realize that you’re making my point with every word?

I say “desereve” and you say “rights,” but it’s the same thing. You think white people deserve — or have the right to — keep their weath within their race.

So let’s agree to agree. You’re into preserving your racial advantage.

[Brett Bellmore]

"You think white people deserve — or have the right to — keep their weath within their race."

You keep inserting race into something that has nothing to do with it. That's the 'drop gun' of racial accusations.

[Randal]

You keep inserting race into something that has nothing to do with it.

Classic Brett, out of arguments but still feeling the need to post something...

You do realize this is an affirmative action thread, right? Race is the topic.

My original point about how racism is different than sexism is that race is passed down through families whereas gender is not. Remember that part? Scroll up if you need to.

So by saying you deserve^H^H^H^H^H^H^H have the right to keep your wealth within your family, you're also claiming the right to keep it within your race.

It's really pretty simple.

[Toranth]

Considering that as of 2019, 20% of marriages reported to the government in the US were mixed race, it's kind of hard to claim that inheritance is for the purpose of keeping wealth "within the race".

[Sarcastr0]

I think that’s because it’s in the interest of the people making government policy that income inequality be high, for multiple reasons, so they naturally make all sorts of decisions that exacerbate it.

This is an issue of partisan asymmetry. Cutting it as government generally seems a lot like you're covering for your party of choice's 'still supply-side curious' priors.

[Brett Bellmore]

It is government generally, because the incentives are the same regardless of party once you're in government. Your partisan conviction that Democrats are somehow immune to those incentives is unpersuasive.

For instance, given 'progressive' taxation, for the same total income the government's cut automatically goes up if income inequality gets worse.

And while you can buy the votes of the poor cheaply, and the wealthy are a great source of kickbacks and no work jobs for relatives, the middle class are both too well off to want handouts, and too poor to hire your useless son for a fake job. What use are they, then, to a politician?

[Sarcastr0]

You regularly talk about how woke CEOs are ignoring incentives to follow their leftist ideals. Suddenly humans are incentive optimizing devices?
Be consistent.

given ‘progressive’ taxation, for the same total income the government’s cut automatically goes up if income inequality gets worse.
The government is not incentivized to maximize revenue. This is hogwash.

And while you can buy the votes of the poor cheaply, and the wealthy are a great source of kickbacks and no work jobs for relatives, the middle class are both too well off to want handouts, and too poor to hire your useless son for a fake job. What use are they, then, to a politician?
I've seen better analyses of class conflict from undergrad Marxists.

For one, the middle class make up most of the government. For two, the poor don't fucking vote!!

[Randal]

For instance, given ‘progressive’ taxation, for the same total income the government’s cut automatically goes up if income inequality gets worse.

You've spewn this bullshit before. It's absolutely false. You must've gotten it from some right-wing media con artist. You were conned... the math does not work.

[Brett Bellmore]

Of course the math works. I think you must be innumerate if you don't understand that shifting a fixed pool of income from a bunch of people paying a low tax rate, to a smaller group of people paying a higher tax rate, increases tax revenues.

[Sarcastr0]

As I noted above, you are being 180-degree inconsistent in your take on how humans work in order to get to your latest discovery of secret agendas.

[Toranth]

The best way to become rich is to be born that way.

Sarcastro's Shop of Political Arguments: Home of any Tautology your Progressive Internet Poster could ever want!

Your argument - that large concentrations of wealth in individual hands might be bad - is a reasonable one. But your supporting arguments, especially that US economic mobility is "not great", doesn't hold up. The original claim that there was "lock-in" is 100% wrong, and any suggestion that race is the primary factor in economic mobility is trivially refuted by even a superficial look at actual data.

[Randal]

I don't think anyone claimed that race is the primary factor in economic mobility. The claim is that economic mobility isn't all that high for anyone, so racial disparities are carried over from generation to generation. I mean, that much is pretty obvious.

Then when you factor in the even modest impact that race has on economic mobility, you see how without doing something about it, racial disparities will remain permanent into the future.

The question is, do you care?

[Michael Ejercito]

Can anyone explain why Hispanics would be more disadvantaged as compared to Vietnamese or Slavs?

[branford]

Or Asians or Jews

[Chumby]

The new Barbie movie is banned in Vietnam and Slavs wouldn’t watch that crap.

[Bored Lawyer]

So that is an advantage or disadvantage? I mean, not having the Barbie movie.

[Michael P]

Given the question, presumably exposure to the movie is a disadvantage.

[Kazinski]

More votes are up for grabs would seem to be a salient factor.

[Brett Bellmore]

Because you can walk here from Mexico, but not from Viet Nam?

I mean, seriously, the harder it is for a group to get here, the more that group's population is tilted in favor of people with a lot of smarts and initiative.

[Frank Drackman]

Most Vietnamese Immigrants came here on Airliners. Now SGN to LAX is a long flight, but not really as hard as hoofing it across the Mojave...

Frank

[Brett Bellmore]

Sure, flying is physically easier. But managing to have flown here is mentally more challenging than just walking.

[bernard11]

managing to have flown here is mentally more challenging than just walking.

WTF?

[Social Justice is neither]

Try walking here from Vietnam to make it a valid comparison.

[ConservativeProfessor]

Here's a joke. What do every single of one Ginsburg's clerks and the entire membership of the Ku Klux Klan have in common? They're all white.

[Dr. Ed 2]

Actually no, there have been Black members of the Klan.
It makes sense when you remember they were anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant in the 1920s.

[The Margrave of Azilia]

Well, there's a book by a black cop who infiltrated the Klan:

https://us.macmillan.com/author/ronstallworth

Apart from that, there's Blazing Saddles, which I don't think is a documentary.

Any other examples?

[Michael P]

Does Hugo Black (senator and associate justice of SCOTUS) count?

[Frank Drackman]

No, but Leon Black does.

[Frank Drackman]

Black members of the Klan anti Catholic/Immigrant??, pretty sure they hate everyone.

[Ed Grinberg]

The logical implication seems to be: both Kagan and Ginsburg think less of URMs than they do of women. And, being good "liberals," they consequently want the government to "give them a helping hand." ("To each according to his needs" and all that...)

[ducksalad]

Here's a stat to screw up everyone's arguments here:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/amyguttman/2015/12/09/set-to-take-over-tech-70-of-irans-science-and-engineering-students-are-women/?sh=3466b03444de

[jdgalt1]

I’m not sure what URM stands for, but Kagan was right about part of the problem.

The other problem with affirmative action at universities is that, unless the university dumbs down its curriculum (or equivalently, gives its AA admitted students special advantages such as extra time on exams), those students are almost certain to flunk out rather than graduate.

And either kind of handicapping is certain to diminish the career-advancing value of the institution’s degrees. All of them, since the school would probably not label its diplomas to show which students received affirmative action help and which did not.

If certain eithnic groups on average do poorly in college, and they do, that is almost certainly the result of K-12 schools failing to do their job. The only place it can really be fixed is in K-12, whether within that system or by encouraging parents to bail out of it by homeschooling. Fix it there and the students will be prepared for college before they get to college. Otherwise forget about it.

Of course, schools that have gone woke have given their degrees negative value anyway. Any company that hires their students risks becoming infected with wokism itself.