Just Sad, "Chicago sees deadliest Memorial Day weekend in four years"

[HINrichPolice]

Agree 100%.

The only problem is if UBI is implemented incorrectly (as I'm sure you know, there isn't a consensus on which model to use), it would just turn into an ever-expanding bureaucracy.

The beauty of it being Universal is that it would cut down on bureaucracy. The U part of UBI is really important as it, to your point, really simplifies the execution of it and ensures people that need it don't fall through the cracks.

Yeah - I'm with it. How many administrative/desk jobs with early retirements and pensions are needed to weave through the applications and appeals to determine whether you're eligible? That's a government bloat I'd gladly reduce.

Obviously don't send income to dead people like we had with this $1200 stimulus, but that can be easily remedied with having an active SSN connected to your account. You receive UBI, you still pay 10-20% taxes.

The universal part makes it simple. You don't need the 1k? Fine, then you spend it on a luxury; a guitar, a bike, put it towards a new car. That stimulates the economy greatly. You need it? Pay your rent with it, and you have enough surplus to pay your loans, afford health care, build a savings account.

It makes a lot of sense. It will give people freedom to move to smaller, cheaper towns as well, because you can afford to live even if there are zero job opportunities. You can create new small businesses with a meager savings and not fall under. It would be a mecca for small towns with obsolete mining and manufacturing industries, because there is literally no money circulating in those towns besides for Walmart, McDonalds, gas stations and opioids.

Frankly I think it would start a boom of new self-sufficient towns. Right now, there is NO reason for me to move to the middle of nowhere. My job prospects would be absolutely awful. I'd strongly consider a rural move with my savings if I had 1K coming in and the time to work on creating an online-platform for my business. And I'd support local cafes, bars and shops if they came up. Just my 2c.

Anybody else getting puke-sick of shopping at Amazon, Walmart and Target? What choice do we have? They undercut the competition with prices and options, and I'm not made of money. They receive a big natural subsidy with the massive tax loopholes that small businesses don't get. Why not subsidize citizens and circulate/stimulate the money we earn and pay to begin with?

Yes. This is a trickle UP economy. We all know that trickle down does NOT work.

Additionally, you just illustrated why landlords can't jack up prices. People have the FREEDOM to move with UBI going with them no matter where they are. That's a sense of security that would have huge benefits for people for so many reasons.

[dice]

the audacity of him saying this when the nation is engulfed in protests and riots because a cop indiscriminately killed a black man. not the first video we have of this kind of thing either. yet he won't produce a video of a white person being indiscriminately killed by a cop. him calling others ignorant is rich

the vast majority of police shootings involve civilians attempting to attack somebody. these tend to be the situations where white people are killed by police. and white people are more likely to be armed when killed

it is almost exclusively white men who commit mass shootings, yet they are often apprehended alive. does anybody think that would be the case with black men, who have been videotaped being killed by white cops for anything from walking in the street to being suspected of having counterfeit money? does anybody really think that a group of black men with huge firearms would be tolerated at a civic building?

The amount of unadulterated ignorance in one post here is staggering.

I know Dice won't listen. But if someone's interested, let me know I can point out how damn near everything in this post is absolutely false.

blatant trolling

[DuckIII]

I decided to read the studies GetBullish linked. I don’t think they can be summarily dismissed, though they do contain a wide variety of limitations, caveats and findings that GetBullish is ignoring (and in doing so drawing sweeping conclusions).

For example, “adjusted for crime” means they don’t treat blacks and whites as statistically equal because the average non-white fictional “person” commits more crime than an average fictional white “person.” Which is one of those “if your race committed less crime you wouldn’t get shot as much” arguments that I have huge issues with.

Additionally, the Harvard study is limited to shooting (rather the only part GetBullish mentioned), but also finds police intimidation and violence falling short of actually shooting someone - such as crushing their neck for 8 minutes until dead - is significantly disproportionate as to non-whites. Also, the study was limited to something like 8 metropolitan areas and was not a true national data study. That said, the shooting numbers are much different than what I would have thought and are a worthy part of the discussion and I’m glad GetBullish linked it.

[dougthonus]

Which he has every right. He’s looking out for his people. But if he’s going to do that then he needs to stay quiet when others have issues with other social injustices like Hong Kong. If anyone should understand it’s Lebron, right? But no. It doesn’t fit his agenda.

As a black man do you not think its reasonable that social justice for blacks would be important to LeBron and the plight of the chinese and hong kong, which he likely knows very little about, may not be?

There is an infinite amount of problems to be upset about in the world. No one, including LeBron, should be expected to take them all on. We all take on things that are more personal to us.

It doesn't make you fake or a bad person to not take on all problems.

[dice]

the vast majority of police shootings involve civilians attempting to attack somebody. these tend to be the situations where white people are killed by police. and white people are more likely to be armed when killed

I'll take the bait and respond to Dice's post, hopefully for the benefit of other readers.

Where to start. First of all, black people are not more likely to be killed by cops. In fact, black people are 23.5% less likely to be shot by police in interactions than white people. See https://www.nber.org/papers/w22399.pdf (for what it’s worth, that’s a study by a black professor from Harvard)

Second, as for unarmed killings, more unarmed white people were killed last year than unarmed black people. One might ask about the difference in rate of killing for unarmed black people versus unarmed white people. Well the studies consistently show that there is no evidence that unarmed black people are killed at higher rates than unarmed white people. Example:



https://docs.wixstatic.com/ugd/b44013_a5fc6189326849fab031bc3fedae7c3d.pdf

In fact, the data shows that to the extent there’s racial discrimination in unarmed killings, the discrimination is against whites:


https://www.nber.org/papers/w22399.pdf

appreciate all the information, but none of it contradicts the quote you were responding to

Third, for some context, cop killings of unarmed black people has been on a downward trend. Last year a total of 9 unarmed black people were killed. That’s compared to 38 in 2015. In fact, it seems like we were at 50 year lows in terms of black people being killed by cops (armed or unarmed).

For more context, for every black person killed in 2019, roughly 99.9% were NOT killed by cops and unarmed.

why, it's as if all the media coverage of blacks being killed by cops is having an effect!

Not only is it false to say that white men exclusively commit mass shootings, white men commit mass shootings at a rate proportional to their share of the male population or less than their share of the male population. See https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-08-07/mass-shootings-arent-growing-more-common-and-evidence-contradicts-common

first of all, i said ALMOST exclusively. don't intentionally distort what i say please. it's intellectually dishonest

also, i guess it depends on the definition of mass shooting. apparently the official definition is 4 or more people killed or wounded, which is not what i had in mind

-the guy who killed 58 and wounded over 800 in vegas was white
-the guy in orlando who killed 49 and wounded 53 was white
-the guy in texas who shot up a church, killing 26 and wounding 20, was white
-the kid in florida who killed 17 at the high school was white

all of these incidents occurred just within the past few years.

meanwhile, the largest number killed by a black shooter in the last 70 years is 12

but yes, according to official definitions of mass shootings, my statement was incorrect

Of all the completely ignorant and baseless statements made in Dice’s post, this one takes the cake.

ignorant and baseless? until now you hadn't produced a video to support your claims. seems to me you'd have one or two at the ready when you initially made your comments. did you have to get called out to even dig for them?

It also proves my point that much of this racial divisiveness is stoked by the media. You see, the media never focuses on whites being unjustifiably murdered by cops. So for people like Dice (millions of people), that can only mean it’s because no such incidents exist!
Well that is flagrantly untrue. Here are a couple heinous examples:

Watch on YouTube

Here’s the story on that murder: https://www.dallasnews.com/news/investigations/2019/07/31/you-re-gonna-kill-me-dallas-police-body-cam-footage-reveals-the-final-minutes-of-tony-timpa-s-life/?

How many people have heard of Tony Timpa? Not many. Since the media barely covered his murder, it simply never happened to most people.

Another video:

Watch on YouTube

fair points! thank you for finally following through. it does not, however, nullify the absolute reasonableness of the outrage over the death in minneapolis. should the tony timpa case have gotten nationwide coverage? possibly so. even though it does not involve the extra layer of race relations in this country and the very obvious reality that black people get treated more unfairly throughout the legal process (including by police) than whites do

it should be noted as well that there were not massive rallies to cover in the case of tony timpa. and that second one you posted was indeed big national news

also, i did not say that NO white people are indiscriminantly killed by cops. i said that if it was happening, and someone in the vicinity had a cell phone, the incidents would surely be filmed. and we're simply not seeing many of those. surely that's in part a function of the public response to the incident

For all the nonstop consternation about how cops are indiscriminately hunting down black people

nobody said that. another example of getbulls**t

you would think that black people would benefit drastically if cops simply stopped patrolling black neighborhoods. That would be a logical conclusion if the premise were true. In fact, I’ve seen a number of people online advocate for the abolishment of police departments.

anyone who suggests that is a moron. i'm sure those people are out there, but i've never heard anyone suggest it. so you're blatantly taking a very tiny percentage of the population to try and distract from legitimate conversation

it is astonishing to me that people take such great pains to diminish the validity of nationwide outrage over a black man being killed by a cop...on video...for no reason...with bystanders pleading for him to stop. while the coverage is certainly greater because it is a black man being killed by a white cop (and with good reason), the positive reforms that such coverage can produce is beneficial to ALL citizens. "why aren't white people getting killed getting this kind of coverage" is frankly a completely petty, unnecessary and reflexively defensive thought process

it is also COMPLETELY inappropriate for any white person to suggest to a black person how they should feel or react in such a situation, so long as it is done legally

[dice]

Ignoring the fact that we print a **** of money now to pay for all the stuff we can't afford, inflation would IMO still be very significant because you'd have a bunch of new dollars bidding on the same goods and services. You give everyone money and the next opportunity, landlords will jack up rent. Buyers will bid up the prices of homes, etc.

That's the most common misconception. I do think there will be some inflation, but inflation is normal to a point.

Regarding worries of inflation: https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7

Then there is the issue that a VAT tax is regressive.

Another common misconception.

VAT by itself can be regressive.

VAT + UBI = Progressive

Additionally, VAT an be changed depending on the good. For example, Andrew Yang's VAT plan would be to make it 0% on essential goods and to ratchet it up on luxury goods.

If you're not viewing VAT + UBI as a combo deal, then you're misunderstanding how they work together.

additionally, nobody is suggesting that we just print more money to give to people! any responsible implementation of UBI would of course require it to be paid for with new revenue

[League Circles]

Ignoring the fact that we print a **** of money now to pay for all the stuff we can't afford, inflation would IMO still be very significant because you'd have a bunch of new dollars bidding on the same goods and services. You give everyone money and the next opportunity, landlords will jack up rent. Buyers will bid up the prices of homes, etc.

That's the most common misconception. I do think there will be some inflation, but inflation is normal to a point.

Regarding worries of inflation: https://medium.com/basic-income/wouldnt-unconditional-basic-income-just-cause-massive-inflation-fe71d69f15e7

Then there is the issue that a VAT tax is regressive.

Another common misconception.

VAT by itself can be regressive.

VAT + UBI = Progressive

Additionally, VAT an be changed depending on the good. For example, Andrew Yang's VAT plan would be to make it 0% on essential goods and to ratchet it up on luxury goods.

If you're not viewing VAT + UBI as a combo deal, then you're misunderstanding how they work together.

additionally, nobody is suggesting that we just print more money to give to people! any responsible implementation of UBI would of course require it to be paid for with new revenue

Revenue can be hard to come by. That can't just raise tax rates and count on it happening. We already constantly inflate the money supply which discourages savings in a cancerous way IMO, and we already senselessly borrow 1/3 of the federal budget.

[dice]

I'm tired of LeBron and his virtue signaling. He cares about social issues except when it will cost him (China vs HK). Why doesn't America love us? First, America doesn't love any one group of people. They love individuals though. Like you, and other black athletes who have made fortunes and won the hearts of millions. A few bad cops doesn't change that.

this has been discussed already on this board. you're not only blatantly wrong, but in the process insulting a person who, yes, has sacrificed of himself in an attempt to bring about change. LEBRON ADVOCATING FOR THE BLACK COMMUNITY CAN ONLY HURT HIM FINANCIALLY

for christ's sake, we all just watched a documentary about michael jordan and discussed his reticence to even publicly support a black candidate in his home state who was running against a blatant racist. because he thought it would hurt his business prospects. he didn't want to appear divisive in any way

and there's a big difference between putting one's own financial interests on the line as opposed to those of your teammates and everybody else who profits off the nba. THAT's the reason that people in the league were so hesitant to speak out

lebron's not perfect, but he's surely not all about self-interest either

[League Circles]

Which he has every right. He’s looking out for his people. But if he’s going to do that then he needs to stay quiet when others have issues with other social injustices like Hong Kong. If anyone should understand it’s Lebron, right? But no. It doesn’t fit his agenda.

As a black man do you not think its reasonable that social justice for blacks would be important to LeBron and the plight of the chinese and hong kong, which he likely knows very little about, may not be?

There is an infinite amount of problems to be upset about in the world. No one, including LeBron, should be expected to take them all on. We all take on things that are more personal to us.

It doesn't make you fake or a bad person to not take on all problems.

Nobody was asking him to take on the battle of Chinese oppression in HK, just to let Morey do it without trying to quiet him.

[dice]

Which he has every right. He’s looking out for his people. But if he’s going to do that then he needs to stay quiet when others have issues with other social injustices like Hong Kong. If anyone should understand it’s Lebron, right? But no. It doesn’t fit his agenda.

You are expecting a level of sacrifice by LeBron/other NBA stars that is unbelievable.

He chose hundreds of millions of dollars over taking a public stand for HK. Seems pretty normal.

He could have stayed quite and still made his millions. Didn’t have to publicly shame someone for it.

this is very true. throwing morey under the bus was unnecessary and wrong. at worst he should have kept his mouth shut. i personally think he could have said at least said something like "as an american, i value freedom everywhere" and left it at that

[dice]

You are expecting a level of sacrifice by LeBron/other NBA stars that is unbelievable.

He chose hundreds of millions of dollars over taking a public stand for HK. Seems pretty normal.

He could have stayed quite and still made his millions. Didn’t have to publicly shame someone for it.

And remember when he was so proud of Nike's Kaepernick add that said "stand for something even if it costs you everything"? Practice what you preach Lebron.

lebron has not preached losing everything. and him appreciating the sacrifices of someone who has gone further than he has doesn't change that

[DuckIII]

As an aside, I don’t think it’s at all fair to “expect” celebrities to take up a specific social issue or, more, if they do then judging them for not taking up more of them.

[dougthonus]

LEBRON ADVOCATING FOR THE BLACK COMMUNITY CAN ONLY HURT HIM FINANCIALLY

I don't think that's true. Arguing support for the black community is generally viewed as a good thing by major corporations right now and in particular the types of sponsors LeBron would hold. I think his social justice work has been a huge part of his image rehabilitation and helped him tremendously with his sponsorships.

I'm not saying the above because I think he's fake or doesn't mean it or is doing it for self-serving purposes. I don't think that at all. I do think that overall it has been beneficial to him though and not a negative.

for christ's sake, we all just watched a documentary about michael jordan and discussed his reticence to even publicly support a black candidate in his home state who was running against a blatant racist. because he thought it would hurt his business prospects. he didn't want to appear divisive in any way

And a lot has changed in the 25 years since that time (which is great!). I don't think supporting black lives matter or social justice is a sticky issue for an NBA athlete in this day and age.

[AshyLarrysDiaper]

Count me among the camp who thinks LeBron should’ve
stayed quiet about China instead of undermining someone willing to take a stand. As I understand it, part of his concern was that Morey made the comments from the safety of Houston while LeBron and others took the heat in China. Still, he handled that very badly imo, and I think he knows it.

There’s no way any of that disqualifies him from weighing in on police brutality, though.

[League Circles]

you would think that black people would benefit drastically if cops simply stopped patrolling black neighborhoods. That would be a logical conclusion if the premise were true. In fact, I’ve seen a number of people online advocate for the abolishment of police departments.

anyone who suggests that is a moron. i'm sure those people are out there, but i've never heard anyone suggest it. so you're blatantly taking a very tiny percentage of the population to try and distract from legitimate conversation

Essentially the sole specific policy change advocated for by BLM is exactly that in effect - de-funding the police. I literally went to their website hoping and expecting to find something basically 180 from that (I support many specific, costly reforms). Was disappointed. Couldn't co-sign. Now I'm looking for a similar org I can co-sign with.

For what it's worth on your other points about media coverage, from myself I want there to be a little more coverage (instead of virtually zero) nationally of police brutality against whites. Not at all because whites need to feel like they are included and victimized too, but so that black people don't have to feel quite as terrorized and traumatized than the balanced reporting (the truth) would lead them to believe. The truth should make all of us feel ****. The sensationally selected truth (heavily promoted stories on every possible example of injustice by police against blacks, zero on whites) makes us all feel even worse than the somewhat more balanced truth should make us feel. Let's not forget in this that the primary harm done by the racial disparities, whatever they are, of police injustices, is the PSYCHOLOGICAL effect on other normal black people. If it weren't for that, a racist cop killing of a black person wouldn't be any more egregious than the (insert terrible unjustified reason) killing of a white. The extra harm by any racist element is on the psychological health of the normal black population, which is very important. No reason to maximize that harm. Doesn't mean these injustices should be covered any less, just that similar injustices against whites should be sprinkled into the news cycle.

To the individual, be it George Floyd or Tony Timba or whoever, unjust premature death probably hurts equally bad whatever the (unjustified) reason. Fwiw I know zero of Timba was just using his name for scope.

[bullsnewdynasty]

People looting and rioting aren't creating any sympathy. They're actually going to turn more people against them. The country doesn't want lawlessness. 3 pm curfews are not sustainable.

[GetBuLLish]

I decided to read the studies GetBullish linked. I don’t think they can be summarily dismissed, though they do contain a wide variety of limitations, caveats and findings that GetBullish is ignoring (and in doing so drawing sweeping conclusions).

For example, “adjusted for crime” means they don’t treat blacks and whites as statistically equal because the average non-white fictional “person” commits more crime than an average fictional white “person.” Which is one of those “if your race committed less crime you wouldn’t get shot as much” arguments that I have huge issues with.

First, thanks for addressing my post in substance.

Second, as to your point about adjusting for crime, I don't see how there's any other rational way to analyze the issue. If there was racial disparity in police killings, that disparity would still exist once you control for violence rate. But in reality, any disparity vanishes once you add that control, indicating that violence rate drives police killings of citizens. Not race.

I mean, if you simply go by the 'per capita' analysis (which is what is usually presented in media), you get facially absurd results. For example, roughly 2% of the population lives in nursing homes. The 'per capita' approach would predict that nursing home patients would (or should) make up 2% of the citizens killed by police. Of course, that is not remotely true and no reasonable person would expect it to be true since people in nursing homes aren't acting violently.

Or let's look at it this way: if you want to use the 'per capita' approach, then you have to concede that white males are significantly over represented in police killings. Ergo, police officers are racists against white males.

Or let's go broader than that: over 95% of citizens killed by cops are males. Does that mean cops are sexist? Should a 'fair' distribution be 50/50 male and female? Of course not.

That is why everyone who studies this issue controls for violence rates.

Additionally, the Harvard study is limited to shooting (rather the only part GetBullish mentioned), but also finds police intimidation and violence falling short of actually shooting someone - such as crushing their neck for 8 minutes until dead - is significantly disproportionate as to non-whites. Also, the study was limited to something like 8 metropolitan areas and was not a true national data study. That said, the shooting numbers are much different than what I would have thought and are a worthy part of the discussion and I’m glad GetBullish linked it.

There are probably 10 or more studies on the racial disparities in deadly force used by police, and they all come to the same conclusion. As for your point about the study I linked only including shootings, that's a fair point but almost certainly wouldn't change the study's conclusion since the vast, vast majority of citizens killed by cops are shot.

[AshyLarrysDiaper]

People looting and rioting aren't creating any sympathy. They're actually going to turn more people against them. The country doesn't want lawlessness. 3 pm curfews are not sustainable.

Does it really work that way, though? Someone is against police brutality and willing take action to stop it -- but they see people looting at rioting and decide, oh, nevermind?

[bullsnewdynasty]

People looting and rioting aren't creating any sympathy. They're actually going to turn more people against them. The country doesn't want lawlessness. 3 pm curfews are not sustainable.

Does it really work that way, though? Someone is against police brutality and willing take action to stop it -- but they see people looting at rioting and decide, oh, nevermind?

Yes, because breaking in and looting small businesses has nothing to do with police brutality.

[League Circles]

People looting and rioting aren't creating any sympathy. They're actually going to turn more people against them. The country doesn't want lawlessness. 3 pm curfews are not sustainable.

Does it really work that way, though? Someone is against police brutality and willing take action to stop it -- but they see people looting at rioting and decide, oh, nevermind?

Not exactly, but racist cops who don't beat up people (cause they want to keep their jobs etc) can quickly become racist cops who do beat people. Not that that would excuse them of course. Like the BLM police defunding advocacy, how would that play out in reality? Do they think cutting paychecks and jobs of police that of course include some racist cops is going to make those people more or less brutal? A racist cop who hasn't yet brutalized someone, could, after losing their job due to defunding efforts, easily organize the next klan rally and lynching. I don't say to imply that we can't stand up to those individual cops, but just to point out that we simply can't identify all the bad apples among police. We have to have systematic policy changes that will, cumulatively, reduce their frequency in the ranks through recruiting changes, AND counsel/rehabilitate potential bad apples currently in uniform through training education etc. That's why we have to increase, not decrease funding.

EDIT: but all the improved training and psych evals in the world won't root out all of the current racist cops, as, despite most of them probably being good (some? Many?), Racist ones will remain in some numbers. For those able to slip through the cracks of any training and recruitment reforms, our only defense remaining is prosecution, which requires evidence, which is where all my positions on cameras, FOIA access to internal affairs investigations, etc, come in.