"A Nation Divided, Sports United" ~ The Equality & Other Issues Thread

[Captain_Caveman]

1 isn’t contentious, it’s an extreme idea, you don’t need a PhD to understand it. It’s like saying we should get rid of child labor laws. Or that the government should take over every single industry.

It was all pretty libertarian. Abolish 80% of government agencies? States rights?

What is this, 1860?

[Ed Pinkney]

Free universal healthcare and a well funded and secular public education system, including university education. It is no great mystery that if you make your population smarter and healthier, negative health and social issues will decrease. It's not going to make a nation some sort of crime free utopia, but it would help.

[Andrew McCeltic]

Everything is just so short-sighted and irrationally “principled.”

If Trump said, “We need to abolish the Supreme Court, it stops the will of the people from being executed!”, I don’t think his supporters would be aghast, or even upset. But if Obama said it, they’d call him a tyrant.

[Big Baby]

I smell Stockholm Syndrome...


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[VeryMuchWoke]

Look, man. I am a left-leaning moderate who has never spent a day registered to either party. I would vote Romney over Sanders without even blinking, but I have a low tolerance for bull **** falsehoods and you are spewing a lot of them right now. No idea how this Shapiro fool became the flavor of the week for conservatives, but I'm just gonna say that a guy who went to a $30k a year private school doesn't need to be lecturing the black community about how racism doesn't exist and that it's all just a problem of their culture's unwillingness to pull themselves up by their bootstraps.

Just the takes you have mentioned in this thread are deeply and unequivocally racist to the core, even if I suspect you aren't educated enough to grasp that.

Which brings me to my second point. A good friend is a campaign consultant for the GOP at the highest level. As in, one of the top Trump rivals in the GOP Presidential campaign in 2016. He brags openly about how easy it to manipulate the GOP voting base of uneducated white males. Just zero respect for his own constituents, and even he is in complete shock at how easily Trump can get his supporters to believe incredibly ignorant, easily disprovable falsehoods.

He says nothing loudly, and it speaks to the id of white males who know that they are falling into the ether of a global economy that they are neither educated nor skilled enough to compete in. They are fearful of their loss of status, and they should be. They are increasingly obsolete and believe in an outdated, discredited ideology that is on the wrong side of every major issue of our time. Rather than look within and try to take advantage of the unprecedented opportunity that exists for white American males, they need to blame other people. The government, blacks, immigrants, liberals... pretty much anyone and everyone but the people who are actually screwing them. They live in a zero sum game in their minds where others must lose for them to win.

Their bluster is not strength. It is fear and weakness, and again, easily manipulated. Again, I have no horse in the race and don't care for the nuts and bolts (aka fairly tales) of what hacks like Bernie are out there promoting, but let's be perfectly real about who the snowflakes are right now. For all the tough guy talk about "libtards getting triggered", there's no one in the history of Earth who gets triggered more easily than modern conservatives do.

Kneeling for anthems, protestors, emails, Benghazi, Black Lives Matter, who Obama's pastor is. They live in a constant state of fake outrage at manufactured scandals, false equivalence and non-issues. People like my friend can literally get conservatives to whine and cry about ANYTHING at the drop of a hat. And they do. They really do.

They are, without question, the softest people who have ever lived.

Psychology backs up much of what you're saying here.

[fallguy]

Free universal healthcare and a well funded and secular public education system, including university education. It is no great mystery that if you make your population smarter and healthier, negative health and social issues will decrease. It's not going to make a nation some sort of crime free utopia, but it would help.

Hello Australia. Canada here.

We agree.

I'd also eliminate as much money as is humanly possible from politics.

[fallguy]

I do wish Canadians were friendlier. They're too reserved. I think Americans are way friendlier people.

[Captain_Caveman]

Free universal healthcare and a well funded and secular public education system, including university education. It is no great mystery that if you make your population smarter and healthier, negative health and social issues will decrease. It's not going to make a nation some sort of crime free utopia, but it would help.

We could do more of all that with more equitable taxation levels, and should.

But simply put, the money doesn't exist for that. A lot of times, people's ideological perspective looks past the reality IMO. Things that worked in other times or places won't work in America in 2017. I mean, Norway does all that stuff, and it's great. They are also an oil-rich nation of 5m homogeneous, affluent and educated people.

It's my biggest issue with Bernie Sanders, quite frankly. He is stuck in a moment in time where we were in the midst of a baby boom and unprecedented manufacturing power. In the 1960s, there were something like 4 working aged people (aka taxpayers) for every retired person. If people had a pension, great. They'd retire and then drop dead in 5 years. Now, we keep an aging population alive for an extra 5-10 years, with crazy high end-of-life costs. Free education used to mean subsidizing a few thousand dollars a year for each student. Now, it would mean an average of $30k or so.

Free basic/preventative health care and community college or trade school? Cool. Cancer treatments or top 100 university tuition? Subsidized to an extent, but not free. Even with tax increases on the rich and corporations.

That's just the reality of globalization (which I nevertheless support on balance). Heard a very interesting quote from Jeffrey Sachs once. He said that throughout human history, at any given moment, 5/6ths of people lives in abject poverty. With globalization, that ratio is down to 2/3rds and falling. This is inherently a good thing for the most part, but there are winners and losers in everything, and it's not lost on the Brexit and Trump or Sanders voters that they are on the wrong side of that line.

They are being displaced from low-skilled jobs, and they have tremendous fear and anger over that. These are the first generations who didn't automatically have everything better and easier than their parents, and they want to turn back the clock to a brief moment in time where their parents and grandparents could graduate high school and support a family off one income pulling a **** lever at a car factory 8 hours a day.

In their own way, Trump and Sanders and the Brexit folks both promise them that this can happen. That it should happen. It's a call for hegemony and empire, both in the UK and the US. At least the Trump people are up front about that, lol.

Truth is, there is no success to be found, in this generation or any other, in using 50 year old ideas and looking backwards. Always forward, never back. We are in a period of massive change. More change in the last 50 years than in all of human history to that point, in fact. Adapt or perish. We need to accept reality and plan for 2060, not 1960 (or 1860, as these libertarian types would have us do). Workforces need to be retrained, entitlement programs need to be streamlined, and we need to suck it up a bit.

Still the best time ever to be alive... if you are white and from the Western world.

[Captain_Caveman]

I do wish Canadians were friendlier. They're too reserved. I think Americans are way friendlier people.

Some truth there. Loved San Diego for that reason. Everyone is cool and chill and friendly enough. No static.

[Parliament10]

So what are the top solutions? If we needed to pick 3 changes that would turn these social issues around, what would those 3 things be so that collectively we can push for them?

I wrote this earlier in the this Thread.:

It is said, that a safe and civilized society, needs 1 Police Officer for every 200 citizens.
That being true: Shouldn't there be 1 Meta-Police for every 200 Police Officers?

Police organizations should not Police themselves. Just like Citizens shouldn't Police themselves.
We need a complete separate and Independent Federal Agency, to Police, the Police.

Minority Policing presence, should match the Minority percentage of the Criminal Population.
This would include, Judges and other Court personnel, and Corrections Facilities employees.

I think that if these changes were made, that we would see a significant decrease in the current injustices.

The Fact that Athletes have to Stand Up, and Minority-related Groups are Protesting.
Means that the proper people are not doing, what they should.

Watch on YouTube

[Parliament10]

Free universal healthcare and a well funded and secular public education system, including university education. It is no great mystery that if you make your population smarter and healthier, negative health and social issues will decrease. It's not going to make a nation some sort of crime free utopia, but it would help.

I'm with you on the Free Universal Healthcare.
And the University Education.

I'm also for a High Minimum Wage. Say $15/hr, at the present time.
I also think that we need to include a much cheaper Daycare System.
Perhaps, tying the Daycare to the Education Reform.

My feeling is that, with a High Min. Wage, you'd eliminate 90-95% of the Crime.

Back (eons ago) when I was in college, we reached out to the inner-city.
A Drug-gang member (that sells that junk on the street) said to me,
"If you give me a job, paying half the money I make now, at twice the hours. I'll take it."

That stuck with me.

[Andrew McCeltic]

I smell Stockholm Syndrome...


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You think you might have it?

We definitely accept a lot in terms of state and police powers (because terrorism) and growing inequality, plus the belief that asking the government to spend anything on public goods is something to feel guilty about.

[threrf23]

Single-payer healthcare is, at least for the foreseeable future, a false idealist notion for a number of reasons. It's the democrat's version of Trump's wall.

But there are a lot of common sense things that can be done to improve our health care system and to make affordable health care much more accessible. Random example: mandatory licensing of patented drugs at government-determined rates. In other industries, a patent holder has an exclusive right to sell a patented item - but they can't set their own price because consumers won't pay more than a certain amount. Health care is a different animal because the end consumer is not the payer and is being told they need the item. The cost of the drug becomes hidden.

(Yes drug companies should have incentive to invent new and useful drugs, but they shouldn't have so much incentive so that a new drug does not have to be useful at all for it to be very profitable.)

The challenge with minimum wage is that different areas have different costs of living and different objectives. In a place like NYC where there is little shortage of jobs and the cost of living is tremendous and there are lots of benefits to be seen by providing real opportunity to the financially disadvantaged - minimum wage should probably be something like $18 (at least $15). But in other areas, a $12 minimum wage is not necessary and could have negative economic implications.

I would personally like to see a lot more government money spent towards schools and programs serving inner city / low income children. Ideally this should be done because it is the right thing to do, practically this should be done because it is the smart thing to do, and can improve our economy while lowering crime over the long run. Realistically, this rarely gets done because people are concerned with themselves and politicians see more benefit catering to the middle and upper classes. Even the democrats...

Social issues? On a societal level, I would love to see a greater emphasis on self empowerment versus shaming. As far as public officials are concerned, I think accountability is important (and too often non-existant). I understand that these guys are human and shouldn't have to live under a high-powered microscope, but there is lots of serious misconduct that goes unpunished.

[Fencer reregistered]

I hope the whole kneeling thing doesn't make its way to the nba. It's really a bummer politics is mixing with sports. Also it's bad business.

You must hate the Olympics.

[Fencer reregistered]

If you've never (or barely) left your own country, it's probably better not to make such proclamations. That's basically my point. And it only applies to those it applies to. Reflexive nationalism is toxic and almost always ignorant.

Also it's so subjective as to be meaningless in the way it's usually presented.

I lived in Germany for years and I've traveled extensively. I don't think visiting other countries does much of anything to qualify a person to assess the relative value of different cultures. Visiting Santa Domingo, for instance, was nothing like spending a month living with a family in a more rural part of the DR. Two totally different experiences. And neither of those visits put me close to understanding the DR like my host family.

Point being, people build their opinions off of whatever. None of us really have the perspective that allows us to make educated comparisons cross culturally (even within our own countries), but we do it anyway.

It's not a big deal.

I feel like I'm learning about a country when I have a relaxed conversation with a native over dinner, or something like that. I.e., business or academic relationships are more instructive than tourism.

Tourism can give you a genuine feel for a country's history, but it's rare that that translates into much understanding of present-day life. There are several countries whose histories I think I understand pretty well -- England/Scotland, Germany, Japan, Turkey, perhaps the Cayman Islands. But in each case my view of the country based on other engagement goes well beyond what history+tourism alone might suggest.

[Fencer reregistered]

The NFL is boycott proof, those people that say they will stop watching will be back tuning in soon enough.

Doubt that - there are a lot of entertainment options.

I was a diehard NFL, NBA and MLB fan growing up. I completely lost interest in the MLB after the strike and I lost interest in the NFL after I discovered the nose candy that is RealGM.

And even my NBA affection has been dulled by the Warriors/Cavs monopoly on contention.

NFL has the best product of all sports (Probably ever). Reasonable game times, relative parity, shorter season and it's become a social occasion to loaf around on Sundays and watch multiple games. They'll be people who lose interest but the masses will still flock to their couches to catch games. Too big to fail. It's easy to be a bandwagon NFL fan

The NFL combines the two worst features of American life -- violence and committee meetings.

-- George Will (paraphrased)

[Fencer reregistered]

Doubt that - there are a lot of entertainment options.

I was a diehard NFL, NBA and MLB fan growing up. I completely lost interest in the MLB after the strike and I lost interest in the NFL after I discovered the nose candy that is RealGM.

And even my NBA affection has been dulled by the Warriors/Cavs monopoly on contention.

NFL has the best product of all sports (Probably ever). Reasonable game times, relative parity, shorter season and it's become a social occasion to loaf around on Sundays and watch multiple games. They'll be people who lose interest but the masses will still flock to their couches to catch games. Too big to fail. It's easy to be a bandwagon NFL fan

I used to love it - just not as hard to shake as you might think.

I stopped caring about the NFL after Bill Belichick endorsed Donald Trump's lying attacks on the media. I regard that as an act of treason. (By way of contrast, I view Brady's or Kraft's support for Trump as merely misguided.)

[Fencer reregistered]

Americans, though, are especially sentimental about our origins. I understand people wanting to feel national pride, but that creates a counter-reaction from the groups who have been disadvantaged through our history, which makes the counter-narrative more bitter, and the sentimental narrative more entrenched.

America was grown by people fleeing religious persecution or seeking economic opportunity, early conditions were brutal, and sometimes the people were, Europeans saw the existing inhabitants as primitives who could be easily dispossessed of any claim to "virgin" land. Our democracy was founded by political geniuses and revolutionary heroes who imagined a system that would resist the historic forms of tyranny that had oppressed other nations, but they also happily confined the vote to property-owning men, and considered slavery to be legal, and slaves to be counted as partial people, and it took almost two centuries for women and black people to have full rights and protections. Our Founding Fathers also sh*t in buckets. And we helped save the world from Nazi tyranny, but we're also the only country to use an atomic weapon, and we caused a horrible amount of collateral damage during the Cold War, which we're re-enacting now with the "war on terror." And we pride ourselves on our freedom and individualism but we're prone to paranoia, conformity, and panic.

All that is true but it's not "integrated", and some people shout naive bullsh*t about "the flag", others call it out for being naive bullsh*t. True national "pride", patriotism, and love of country would have to love in a genuine way, acknowledging fault, ugliness, the need for repair, and the recurring potential for falls and failures. Instead, we have "patriots" who love in a fatuous way, and use patriotism as a mask for injustice and a defense against legitimate and deserved criticism.

Man, I gotta be honest, you are being way too negative here. Human beings have always been **** heads, dating back to the dawn of time. It's honestly likely a genetic trait, as our closest relatives as a species has been known to be tribal and engage in warfare.

But, to be perfectly honest, there has never been a better time to be alive as a species than where we are today. We're not perfect, but in a span of even 20 years we've made remarkable progress. We also have the gift of being able to have any future offspring be able to say the same thing 20 years from now. Rather than focus on what was wrong historically, focus on how you can positively nudge the world to a better place.

Lastly, I'm gunna paraphrase the King in the North here, but you are not responsible for the sins of your forefathers.

I don’t know, just as likely you’re refusing to admit the truth because you don’t want to harsh your mellow.

It’s true that we’re not the only country to have participated in slavery or to have delayed giving women the right to vote. We’re also not the only country to have waged destructive wars.

And I think it’s unfair to feel like people born after LBJ are responsible for slavery or the oppression of women, or meaningfully guilty by association.

But the kind of rhetoric you’re using is often used to minimize protest or dissent, like, “You’re upset about sexism at work? Count yourself lucky no one’s stoning you, and you’re allowed to drive!” Or “Remember, in North Korea, not standing for the anthem would mean a bullet to the head.”

No, America isn’t the greatest evil in the history of mankind. But we’re very flawed and getting a lot of things wrong, and behind by various objective global metrics. So the first step in nudging the country in a better direction is to coax it out of its defensiveness and denial.

The United States is one of the most powerful forces in the history of humankind. So, in particular, it has been both one of the most powerful forces for good and one of the most powerful forces or evil. (Much the same is true of the Catholic Church.)

A lot of the good has been power-of-example. I think that's finally run out. Other countries have learned from our example and can be examples themselves.

A lot of the United States' strength has stemmed from accidents of geography and history -- great natural resources, open country that naturally welcomed immigrants, protection by oceans from most of the destruction of war. Many of those advantages are now attenuated; even the natural resources are now double-edged, in that low population density isn't so great in an era of broadband and fuel-cost problems.

The United States still has overwhelming leadership in "knowledge industries" -- technology, entertainment, media, financial services and so on -- but those parts of our country are now under fierce political attack. Whoops ...

[Fencer reregistered]

I mean, while I can criticize America's faults all day, and it is less applicable to Canada or Australia than Western Europe, I am just nationalist enough to point out that the US is the #1 reason why the Western World has enjoyed the most peaceful and prosperous lifestyle in human history since WW2. We drive the overwhelming bulk of the innovations in technology and health care, and our economic and military might is a massively stabilizing force for the global economy. Other Western countries participate in all that, but do not pay their fair share of the costs and derive far more benefits than what they put in. Only thing I agree with Trump on, quite frankly. So the criticisms of the US should only go so far, IMO.

Had an intern from France last summer, who would give me the standard lectures about how we suck lol. Almost got to a point where I had to tell her that (a) my grandfather was at Normandy on D-Day to liberate her people, and that (b) a major reason they had universal health care and we didn't was that we were paying for their national security with our massive military expenditures.

Fair points, except our military stabilizes the “western” economy primarily, and we’ve actually worked to destabilize and actively sabotage other countries for geopolitical reasons.

And I actually sympathize with Trump about “NATO”, too, even though it’s not a contract and shouldn’t be put on the table for negotiation - other liberals/progressives love to point out how high our defense budget is, and it is too high, but part of the reason it dwarves our allies’ budgets is that we provide them defense - and have bases on their soil. Demanding payment would make us a more explicit empire, and weaken our alliances by making them transactional - but it wouldn’t hurt to see that spending burden more widely distributed.

Please correct me if I'm wrong, but our health care expenditures are around 15% of GDP when they "should" be around 10%. Meanwhile, defense is listed as being 3.5% of GDP or less -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_expenditures -- although I bet that somewhat understates pension/lifelong health care obligations.

I.e., no matter how excessive our defense spending may be, it's not the top source of any economic woes.

[Fencer reregistered]

So many interesting ideas here... just to respond to a few, but possibly not coherently:

-The immigration thing really bothers me. Canada should accept far more lesser skilled immigrants than we have in previous years. And far more refugees (this is a topic I can get worked up about fairly readily). My favorite place in NYC (also my fave city in the world; in part because of its great history of incorporating immigrants) is Ellis Island. That journey in pursuit of a better life is remarkably resonant to me and they do such a great job telling the story of it in that museum.

-I vaguely remember reading a piece about public institutions driving a disproportionate number of medical innovations (adjusted for size) vs. private industry. It's interesting to me: it seems intuitive the profit motive would lead to more innovation in this area - and yet the application of universal health care leads to better societies IMO (It's hardly without its faults of course but on balance, I think it's the best platform on which to build a society). Globally, it makes sense to have both.

-Relevant anecdote: I was down in Boston playing ball around the Sloan conference a few years back and dumb enough to show up with two bad knees and no travel insurance. I cut a deal with my friend in Boston. If I blew a knee out, he'd drive me across the border to get treated so I didn't run up some ludicrous hospital bill. I don't think I went near a contested rebound that day.

-You made a good point about Canadian cities being sanitized versions of U.S. cities. This is by design. Our economic floor (on average) is higher and our ceiling lower (on average). This is for better and worse. I tend to like U.S. cities better overall.

-The FP and military stuff would be well served by a conversation over drinks some night. I'll buy. I'll also ask many, many stupid questions. But I suspect we mostly disagree in interesting ways.

As to California... I really should move to L.A. for career reasons. But while I'm coming around on the city as not horrible, it's unappealing for a whole host of reasons. I'm a wine nut so Santa Barbara appeals. I could just drive down south when I needed to. If I had a choice, I'd probably live in SF. But that's out of the question.

Thanks, and likewise. No question that TO is an amazingly diverse place. To some extent, Montreal and Vancouver as well. They lack the grime of NYC and LA, which is good and bad, I guess.

Definitely glad I didn't get hurt while in Canada. I'm sure the health care is fine, but just didn't want to navigate another country's system. Seemed to be hard to get appointments too.

As to CA, Have lived in SF (3 years), Orange County (2 years, suburban LA), San Diego (8 years) and now the Sierra Foothills (3 years). Favorite place by far was San Diego, but then, I lived right on the beach. Don't see the point of being there if you are not. I feel like everyone should live in SF at some point in their lives, but like everyone else for the past 50 years, I feel like people already missed the glory days.

LA is cool, but maaaaaan, the traffic is just something else. I know many people who have carved out awesome lives there, living and working in places like Silver Lake or Santa Monica/Venice, but it's just not for me. Santa Barbara also a no, but San Luis Obispo is sweet if you don't mind college kids. The Sierra Nevada are pretty awesome, and I am glad that I'm getting a chance to experience them. Currently own a truck and do wilderness ****. When I look back at living in Boston, and miserably riding the Red Line to work in an office with other miserable people in the middle of a miserable winter, I just laugh. Why would anyone live that way? Why did I, for so long?

All in all, despite the flaws and costs of living, I can't really imagine NOT living in California. And if you are within walking distance of a beach, well... you don't really need much else. For my money, the best places to live are not actually the cities, but places near them or smaller cities (Marin/Sonoma counties, Chico, SLO, Tahoe). Anyhow, hit me up if you pull the trigger on it or if you have any questions.

My wife and I want to move to Santa Rosa. It seems like a nice and somewhat affordable place, and the closest place with such distinctions to SF.