6 ms·

The statistics seem to be confirming exactly what Krugman said 5 years ago[1]. We're now living in an economy where a minority of highly skilled specialists (pr

by whack 10y ago

The statistics seem to be confirming exactly what Krugman said 5 years ago[1]. We're now living in an economy where a minority of highly skilled specialists (programmers, doctors, bankers, lawyers) are in high demand and are doing extremely well, and everyone else is finding out that their labor has become commoditized. That their skills/talents can be easily replaced by the lowest bidder, and given our technological progress, there isn't as much need for "warm bodies" as there was 50 years ago. We are, as scary as it seems, heading towards a two-tier society. One where the upper middle class and rich are doing extremely well, and an underclass that is living paycheck to paycheck. From this perspective, the rise of extreme candidates like Trump is almost understandable. The shrinking middle class, and the rising lower-middle-class, are finding themselves under assault, and are reaching out for anyone who is will to fight for them, against any scapegoat that can be blamed for this assault. Mexicans, Muslims, China, Free Trade - all perfect targets. Their complaints are real, but it's unfortunate that their anger is being directed towards fictitious threats. Let's face the truth and start addressing the underlying problem. We need to tax those who're benefiting tremendously from the current economy, and use this money to strengthen the middle class and help those who are falling behind. Raising the tax rates on the top 30%, and introducing a universal basic income, is a much needed first step. [1]: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/opinion/07krugman.html?_r=0 http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/opinion/07krugman.html?_r=...

794CD01 10y ago
What exactly are you trying to achieve by calling a candidate as popular as Trump "extreme"?
- ForHackernews 10y ago
  > as popular as Trump You mean hated by 70% of the electorate? http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/15/politics/washington-post-abc-news-poll-unfavorable-ratings/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/15/politics/washington-post-a...
  - 794CD01 10y ago
    There it is again. Unfavorable opinion is very different from hate. Why pretend they are the same thing?
    - Aelinsaar 10y ago
      Why are you pretending that "Popular" and "Extreme" are mutually exclusive?
      - 794CD01 10y ago
        They are not completely exclusive, but more extreme politicians are certainly unlikely to become very popular, and more importantly, the more popular they are, the more dangerous it is to think of them as extreme. Especially if you turn out to be wrong.
        dragonwriter 10y ago
        > the more popular they are, the more dangerous it is to think of them as extreme. Especially if you turn out to be wrong. I don't think this is true at all. The closest thing I can thing of to this that would be true is "The more popular they are, the more dangerous it is for you to call them extreme. Especially if you are right." There's is generally little danger in thinking of a moderate politician with moderate followers as extreme, or even of overtly calling them that, no matter how popular they are. OTOH, there's plenty of danger in calling an extreme politician with a demonstrated history of encouraging violent reprisals against dissenters extreme, especially if they are popular (and, especially if the people with whom they are popular are also extreme.)
        794CD01 10y ago
        The danger I was referring to is in shaping your own worldview to be too widely divergent from reality. If you don't care about that, I suppose that's your choice.
    - 10y ago
- dragonwriter 10y ago
  > What exactly are you trying to achieve by calling a candidate as popular as Trump "extreme"? Trump is the single most unpopular major party nominee for President in the history of opinion polling, and was able to win largely because of the structure of the Republican nomination process being designed (and refined over several cycles) to lock-in the early advantage of a candidate able to most effectively appeal to particular extreme activist constituencies early in the process by creating large delegate majorities from small electoral pluralities, a design which has particularly extreme effects when the field of candidates early in the process is crowded as it was this year.
  - 794CD01 10y ago
    Yes, but he IS still a major party nominee. It's like being the least skilled basketball player in the NBA. If you call him extreme, what does that make, say, the Independent American Party?
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
  - jazzyk 10y ago
    Racist? Yes. But in other aspects, he is actually not that extreme: - much less of a war-monger than Hillary, - has been gay-friendly forever, before it became politically expedient (see his press interviews from 2000). - he actually employed a lot of women in high-up positions I am far from a Trump enthusiast, but calling him extreme is not entirely accurate.
    - enraged_camel 10y ago
      >>he actually employed a lot of women in high-up positions Yeah, about that... if you ever get the chance, you should look into how he treated those women.
- collyw 10y ago
  Hitler was popular wasn't he? Did that make him moderate?
  - Aelinsaar 10y ago
    I was thinking Genghis Khan, but yeah that works too.
- Spooky23 10y ago
  There are actual experienced political people who believe that Trump is a trojan horse who is running to implode the Republicans this cycle. Go to Youtube, listen to a rally speech. It's pretty content free, even in the context of a presidential candidate rally.
- smilingtom 10y ago
  Back to /r/the_donald with you!
rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
You are correct on taxes, right in heart on UBI (I don't think technology has sufficiently advanced to produce a cheap enough high standard of living to be a universal guarantee - maybe when trucks and ships can drive themselves and 3D printers can make most things at a push of a button), but I have a rather controversial opinion about automation and humanity's future that I know I'll get yelled at for: Birth control must be a right or we will outbreed our planet's resources. Chemical contraception should be provided free of charge to anybody that wants it. The cost will be a pittance compared to the lifetime societal costs of unwanted children mostly born into and stuck in poverty, and doomed to repeat the cycle with their own unwanted pregnancies.
- treehau5 10y ago
  > Birth control must be a right or we will outbreed our planet's resources. I would argue Education / stable society reduces rate of birth more than birth control. What do most all 1st world modern economic countries on this list have in common? https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2127.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... The birthrate per woman is under 2.
  - rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
    Yes! You are quite right: education is the best birth control. Unfortunately, accidents happen. We should promote both.
    - deleted 10y ago
      [deleted]
- MollyR 10y ago
  Why not mandate a child/baby license as well to confirm a parent has the resources to take care of a child as well? EDIT: I think china did control population control, and if population control is a world shattering issue maybe we should look at it.
rplst8 10y ago
It's interesting how you want to take those who worked hard, got a degree, bettered themselves, and who are using their skills to better society (programmers, doctors, lawyers), and reward them with higher taxes.
- mindcrime 10y ago
  Apparently you missed the memo... nobody who is successful got there through hard work, sacrifice, initiative, or diligent application of their own will. It's all a result of luck and/or leaching off of the backs of the exploited masses.
  - back_beyond 10y ago
    Apparently I did miss the memo. All successful people are a result of luck and leaching. TIL. Actually that is, in my opinion, a perverted world view. Surely you don't believe it.
    - pwnna 10y ago
      I think the parent is trying to say that successful people all have luck, while not all hard working people are successful. I feel this is a correct, one way relation, as being born in the right country is luck in itself.
      - back_beyond 10y ago
        Sure, this is something that I can support. The parent post seemed too simplistic a characterization.
    - mindcrime 10y ago
      That (my post above) was sarcasm, for anybody who missed it.
  - cesarbs 10y ago
    > It's all a result of luck and/or leaching off of the backs of the exploited masses. I can't accept someone truly believes that. You are polarizing this discussion. While it is known that people born with an advantage have a higher chance of succeeding in life, those people have to do their part in order to succeed. That means seizing opportunities offered to them, studying hard, working hard. They might have had an easier time having access to things, but that doesn't mean they could just slack off and yet succeed.
bradleyjg 10y ago
We are, as scary as it seems, heading towards a two-tier society. One where the upper middle class and rich are doing extremely well, and an underclass that is living paycheck to paycheck. That's not what the linked data seems to show. The report indicates that the share of the population in the "rich" and "upper middle class" buckets increased while the share in the "middle class", "lower middle class", and "poor and near poor" shrunk, with the LMC shrinking by the highest percentage. In the type of two tier scenario you describe we would expect either the P/NP or LMC or both to grow rather than shrink.
- whack 10y ago
  Check out the following: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-wor... Real wages for the average worker has been flat/down, over the past decades. However, real wages for the rich has grown tremendously during this same time period. It's heartening that the average worker's wages haven't fallen significantly. But one would hope that given the amount of economic growth we've achieved in the past decades, the middle/lower-middle classes would also get some of the benefits, instead of simply running in place.
Aelinsaar 10y ago
I doubt that such a society will last very long, given how democratic access to weapons is becoming, with the ability to simply print them.
- clock_tower 10y ago
  I wouldn't bet on 3D-printed small arms destabilizing society. 3D-printed tanks and attack helicopters, maybe, but I'm not holding my breath on that...
  - zghst 10y ago
    Also if that 3D printer doesn't help magic pills for experience, deep knowledge of logistics and anti-psyops manipulation, it won't help much against any large modern military, no matter how much gear people have
    - throwanem 10y ago
      It's absolutely possible to win a war even though only the other side has a military worth the name. Look at Iraq, or Afghanistan, or even Vietnam.
    - Aelinsaar 10y ago
      "Quantity has a quality all of its own."
  - Aelinsaar 10y ago
    If society becomes a matter of a tiny minority and everyone else, "everyone else" just needs to be armed, not well armed. There is also the simple reality that our military and police are not formed of "Elites" who can expect wealth and privilege in society at large. It's hard to imagine a truly divided society in which the military is on the side of the ultra-rich, without vast changes being made over decades.
sudoscript 10y ago
Well before Krugman, it was Kurt Vonnegut. In 1952, he published his first novel Player Piano, which describes a society where most jobs are automated. There's a sharp class divide between the few "managers and engineers" who work and most people who live in an unemployed underclass. It's very prescient and very very good. Highly recommend.
- epistasis 10y ago
  Yeah, I was just going to recommend that too. Great novel. It was punch cards vs. transistors, but the future was foreseen.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
cesarbs 10y ago
> We need to tax those who're benefiting tremendously from the current economy While I agree in part with the sentiment, I think this needs to be done carefully so as not to end up in a situation where everyone is at a disadvantage. Take for example that a higher earner is able to afford a high deductible for his yearly health expenses. If you start taxing that person heavily to the point where they can't afford that deductible anymore, all you did was to increase the bucket of people who can't afford proper healthcare. It's not just about taxing the richer, it's about adjusting the system as a whole. Another example, this one personal: my wife and I earn a high combined income. Because of that, we're able to afford a more expensive apartment in our city's Downtown (not luxurious by any standard, just a little above the average in our area). That frees us from having to use a car most of the time (we have one that we use sparingly and incurs minimal yearly costs), which 1) drives down car costs 2) is friendly to the environment 3) makes us happier thanks to not having a long commute and 4) somewhat (although minimally) helps local government revenue because we're paying for bus fares. If we were taxed to a point where we couldn't afford our rent anymore and were forced to move to the suburbs, we'd see a dramatic increase in car costs (more gas, more frequent maintenance), we'd be joining the ridiculous lines in traffic during our commute, which would likely lead to more stress and more health issues, and we wouldn't be part of the group of people providing revenue to the local transit authority. So it's not like high earners can be indiscriminately taxed and that would only help other people but not impact those being taxed. This discussion also comes down to the question, "who is a high earner?" I don't think people earning $100K+ (or couples earning $200K+) should be the target here, but executives earning millions upon millions every year, as well as the corporations they run.
stevenkovar 10y ago
I think the crux of the matter is that human labor is losing its value, but the world is structured such that labor earns your place in society. Many are losing their position in society as a result, resulting in varying degrees of dissonance and varying degrees of reactionary behaviors. I find it difficult to blame any one group of people for their actions when they are losing at a game they never opted into and were never told the rules of. I also observe a lot of bigotry and lack of empathy coming from those who have a better grasp on this "game." It's toxic. How do we re-adjust how we think about ourselves? What obvious truth are we missing regarding what humanity should be?
- Annatar 10y ago
  > What obvious truth are we missing regarding what humanity should be? Highly educated / experts in their field of interest, in a society where money is no longer relevant, since all the logistics are fully automated? Wait. That sounds familiar, from somewhere... Wait... UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS I truly hope humanity reaches that state someday, and it would be so good if it did so while I'm still alive.
hiram112 10y ago
> ... against any scapegoat that can be blamed for this assault. Mexicans, Muslims, China, Free Trade - all perfect targets. The definition of scapegoat implies that the reasoning or blame isn't valid. If you're an out of work construction or retail worker, replaced because a foreigner not paying taxes and using currency arbitrage can out-compete you, then the foreign worker is not a scapegoat. If your city's main factory was moved to a low cost country while enjoying tarif-free imports, then free trade agreements are not scapegoats. They ARE the reason you are unemployed. If you just finished up training a foreign guest worker to do your job, and are now unemployed, the H1B system IS to blame. Forget about the morals or fairness of it all - it's not the point I'm arguing. And it's likely Trump would be unable or unwilling to enact his promises if elected. But trying to frame legitimate reasons for the economic problems of 80% of the population as some sort of 'boogyman' sold to the rubes is disingenuous and just flat out incorrect.

by whack 10y ago

794CD01 10y ago

What exactly are you trying to achieve by calling a candidate as popular as Trump "extreme"?

ForHackernews 10y ago
> as popular as Trump You mean hated by 70% of the electorate? http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/15/politics/washington-post-abc-news-poll-unfavorable-ratings/index.html http://edition.cnn.com/2016/06/15/politics/washington-post-a...
- 794CD01 10y ago
  There it is again. Unfavorable opinion is very different from hate. Why pretend they are the same thing?
  - Aelinsaar 10y ago
    Why are you pretending that "Popular" and "Extreme" are mutually exclusive?
    - 794CD01 10y ago
      They are not completely exclusive, but more extreme politicians are certainly unlikely to become very popular, and more importantly, the more popular they are, the more dangerous it is to think of them as extreme. Especially if you turn out to be wrong.
      - dragonwriter 10y ago
        > the more popular they are, the more dangerous it is to think of them as extreme. Especially if you turn out to be wrong. I don't think this is true at all. The closest thing I can thing of to this that would be true is "The more popular they are, the more dangerous it is for you to call them extreme. Especially if you are right." There's is generally little danger in thinking of a moderate politician with moderate followers as extreme, or even of overtly calling them that, no matter how popular they are. OTOH, there's plenty of danger in calling an extreme politician with a demonstrated history of encouraging violent reprisals against dissenters extreme, especially if they are popular (and, especially if the people with whom they are popular are also extreme.)
        794CD01 10y ago
        The danger I was referring to is in shaping your own worldview to be too widely divergent from reality. If you don't care about that, I suppose that's your choice.
  - 10y ago
dragonwriter 10y ago
> What exactly are you trying to achieve by calling a candidate as popular as Trump "extreme"? Trump is the single most unpopular major party nominee for President in the history of opinion polling, and was able to win largely because of the structure of the Republican nomination process being designed (and refined over several cycles) to lock-in the early advantage of a candidate able to most effectively appeal to particular extreme activist constituencies early in the process by creating large delegate majorities from small electoral pluralities, a design which has particularly extreme effects when the field of candidates early in the process is crowded as it was this year.
- 794CD01 10y ago
  Yes, but he IS still a major party nominee. It's like being the least skilled basketball player in the NBA. If you call him extreme, what does that make, say, the Independent American Party?
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- jazzyk 10y ago
  Racist? Yes. But in other aspects, he is actually not that extreme: - much less of a war-monger than Hillary, - has been gay-friendly forever, before it became politically expedient (see his press interviews from 2000). - he actually employed a lot of women in high-up positions I am far from a Trump enthusiast, but calling him extreme is not entirely accurate.
  - enraged_camel 10y ago
    >>he actually employed a lot of women in high-up positions Yeah, about that... if you ever get the chance, you should look into how he treated those women.
collyw 10y ago
Hitler was popular wasn't he? Did that make him moderate?
- Aelinsaar 10y ago
  I was thinking Genghis Khan, but yeah that works too.
Spooky23 10y ago
There are actual experienced political people who believe that Trump is a trojan horse who is running to implode the Republicans this cycle. Go to Youtube, listen to a rally speech. It's pretty content free, even in the context of a presidential candidate rally.
smilingtom 10y ago
Back to /r/the_donald with you!

rm_-rf_slash 10y ago

You are correct on taxes, right in heart on UBI (I don't think technology has sufficiently advanced to produce a cheap enough high standard of living to be a universal guarantee - maybe when trucks and ships can drive themselves and 3D printers can make most things at a push of a button), but I have a rather controversial opinion about automation and humanity's future that I know I'll get yelled at for: Birth control must be a right or we will outbreed our planet's resources. Chemical contraception should be provided free of charge to anybody that wants it. The cost will be a pittance compared to the lifetime societal costs of unwanted children mostly born into and stuck in poverty, and doomed to repeat the cycle with their own unwanted pregnancies.

treehau5 10y ago
> Birth control must be a right or we will outbreed our planet's resources. I would argue Education / stable society reduces rate of birth more than birth control. What do most all 1st world modern economic countries on this list have in common? https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2127.html https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/... The birthrate per woman is under 2.
- rm_-rf_slash 10y ago
  Yes! You are quite right: education is the best birth control. Unfortunately, accidents happen. We should promote both.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
MollyR 10y ago
Why not mandate a child/baby license as well to confirm a parent has the resources to take care of a child as well? EDIT: I think china did control population control, and if population control is a world shattering issue maybe we should look at it.

rplst8 10y ago

It's interesting how you want to take those who worked hard, got a degree, bettered themselves, and who are using their skills to better society (programmers, doctors, lawyers), and reward them with higher taxes.

mindcrime 10y ago
Apparently you missed the memo... nobody who is successful got there through hard work, sacrifice, initiative, or diligent application of their own will. It's all a result of luck and/or leaching off of the backs of the exploited masses.
- back_beyond 10y ago
  Apparently I did miss the memo. All successful people are a result of luck and leaching. TIL. Actually that is, in my opinion, a perverted world view. Surely you don't believe it.
  - pwnna 10y ago
    I think the parent is trying to say that successful people all have luck, while not all hard working people are successful. I feel this is a correct, one way relation, as being born in the right country is luck in itself.
    - back_beyond 10y ago
      Sure, this is something that I can support. The parent post seemed too simplistic a characterization.
  - mindcrime 10y ago
    That (my post above) was sarcasm, for anybody who missed it.
- cesarbs 10y ago
  > It's all a result of luck and/or leaching off of the backs of the exploited masses. I can't accept someone truly believes that. You are polarizing this discussion. While it is known that people born with an advantage have a higher chance of succeeding in life, those people have to do their part in order to succeed. That means seizing opportunities offered to them, studying hard, working hard. They might have had an easier time having access to things, but that doesn't mean they could just slack off and yet succeed.

bradleyjg 10y ago

We are, as scary as it seems, heading towards a two-tier society. One where the upper middle class and rich are doing extremely well, and an underclass that is living paycheck to paycheck. That's not what the linked data seems to show. The report indicates that the share of the population in the "rich" and "upper middle class" buckets increased while the share in the "middle class", "lower middle class", and "poor and near poor" shrunk, with the LMC shrinking by the highest percentage. In the type of two tier scenario you describe we would expect either the P/NP or LMC or both to grow rather than shrink.

whack 10y ago
Check out the following: http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/ http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-wor... Real wages for the average worker has been flat/down, over the past decades. However, real wages for the rich has grown tremendously during this same time period. It's heartening that the average worker's wages haven't fallen significantly. But one would hope that given the amount of economic growth we've achieved in the past decades, the middle/lower-middle classes would also get some of the benefits, instead of simply running in place.

Aelinsaar 10y ago

I doubt that such a society will last very long, given how democratic access to weapons is becoming, with the ability to simply print them.

clock_tower 10y ago
I wouldn't bet on 3D-printed small arms destabilizing society. 3D-printed tanks and attack helicopters, maybe, but I'm not holding my breath on that...
- zghst 10y ago
  Also if that 3D printer doesn't help magic pills for experience, deep knowledge of logistics and anti-psyops manipulation, it won't help much against any large modern military, no matter how much gear people have
  - throwanem 10y ago
    It's absolutely possible to win a war even though only the other side has a military worth the name. Look at Iraq, or Afghanistan, or even Vietnam.
  - Aelinsaar 10y ago
    "Quantity has a quality all of its own."
- Aelinsaar 10y ago
  If society becomes a matter of a tiny minority and everyone else, "everyone else" just needs to be armed, not well armed. There is also the simple reality that our military and police are not formed of "Elites" who can expect wealth and privilege in society at large. It's hard to imagine a truly divided society in which the military is on the side of the ultra-rich, without vast changes being made over decades.

sudoscript 10y ago

Well before Krugman, it was Kurt Vonnegut. In 1952, he published his first novel Player Piano, which describes a society where most jobs are automated. There's a sharp class divide between the few "managers and engineers" who work and most people who live in an unemployed underclass. It's very prescient and very very good. Highly recommend.

epistasis 10y ago
Yeah, I was just going to recommend that too. Great novel. It was punch cards vs. transistors, but the future was foreseen.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

cesarbs 10y ago

> We need to tax those who're benefiting tremendously from the current economy While I agree in part with the sentiment, I think this needs to be done carefully so as not to end up in a situation where everyone is at a disadvantage. Take for example that a higher earner is able to afford a high deductible for his yearly health expenses. If you start taxing that person heavily to the point where they can't afford that deductible anymore, all you did was to increase the bucket of people who can't afford proper healthcare. It's not just about taxing the richer, it's about adjusting the system as a whole. Another example, this one personal: my wife and I earn a high combined income. Because of that, we're able to afford a more expensive apartment in our city's Downtown (not luxurious by any standard, just a little above the average in our area). That frees us from having to use a car most of the time (we have one that we use sparingly and incurs minimal yearly costs), which 1) drives down car costs 2) is friendly to the environment 3) makes us happier thanks to not having a long commute and 4) somewhat (although minimally) helps local government revenue because we're paying for bus fares. If we were taxed to a point where we couldn't afford our rent anymore and were forced to move to the suburbs, we'd see a dramatic increase in car costs (more gas, more frequent maintenance), we'd be joining the ridiculous lines in traffic during our commute, which would likely lead to more stress and more health issues, and we wouldn't be part of the group of people providing revenue to the local transit authority. So it's not like high earners can be indiscriminately taxed and that would only help other people but not impact those being taxed. This discussion also comes down to the question, "who is a high earner?" I don't think people earning $100K+ (or couples earning $200K+) should be the target here, but executives earning millions upon millions every year, as well as the corporations they run.

stevenkovar 10y ago

I think the crux of the matter is that human labor is losing its value, but the world is structured such that labor earns your place in society. Many are losing their position in society as a result, resulting in varying degrees of dissonance and varying degrees of reactionary behaviors. I find it difficult to blame any one group of people for their actions when they are losing at a game they never opted into and were never told the rules of. I also observe a lot of bigotry and lack of empathy coming from those who have a better grasp on this "game." It's toxic. How do we re-adjust how we think about ourselves? What obvious truth are we missing regarding what humanity should be?

Annatar 10y ago
> What obvious truth are we missing regarding what humanity should be? Highly educated / experts in their field of interest, in a society where money is no longer relevant, since all the logistics are fully automated? Wait. That sounds familiar, from somewhere... Wait... UNITED FEDERATION OF PLANETS I truly hope humanity reaches that state someday, and it would be so good if it did so while I'm still alive.

hiram112 10y ago

> ... against any scapegoat that can be blamed for this assault. Mexicans, Muslims, China, Free Trade - all perfect targets. The definition of scapegoat implies that the reasoning or blame isn't valid. If you're an out of work construction or retail worker, replaced because a foreigner not paying taxes and using currency arbitrage can out-compete you, then the foreign worker is not a scapegoat. If your city's main factory was moved to a low cost country while enjoying tarif-free imports, then free trade agreements are not scapegoats. They ARE the reason you are unemployed. If you just finished up training a foreign guest worker to do your job, and are now unemployed, the H1B system IS to blame. Forget about the morals or fairness of it all - it's not the point I'm arguing. And it's likely Trump would be unable or unwilling to enact his promises if elected. But trying to frame legitimate reasons for the economic problems of 80% of the population as some sort of 'boogyman' sold to the rubes is disingenuous and just flat out incorrect.