10 ms·

“It’s important to get a grip on what’s going on today and not what was going on in 1985,” Amen. Some don’t agree though. They say we should favor historical

by onos 3y ago

“It’s important to get a grip on what’s going on today and not what was going on in 1985,” Amen. Some don’t agree though. They say we should favor historically mistreated groups because it’s important context. Yet, in higher ed this often entails favoring the child of doctors who will help diversity numbers over the poor white male. I believe the culture wars would decrease dramatically if we’d drop the identity politics and simply say: let’s help the poor.

kenjackson 3y ago
But then how do you define poor? I ask because you do enter a new identity politics discussion. Blacks tend to have much lower wealth, even when you control for income. So it’s in the interest of whites to push income and blacks to push wealth. I also think there’s an optics issue. As you note the poor white males may be getting passed over now. So many would say that it’s really convenient that NOW we want to help all poor people, whereas in the past we made it difficult to help poor black people. It’s like, why do “all lives matter” now?
- letrowekwel 3y ago
  "So many would say that it’s really convenient NOW we want to help all poor people, whereas in the past we made it difficult to help poor black people. It’s like, why do “all lives matter” now?" Does historical injustice make it right to behave unjust in the present, almost as if it were a revenge? I don't think so. I agree about importance of defining poverty though. Both income and wealth should be taken into account and taxed appropriately. It's not only a class issue, but also generational issue with lots of old people sitting on super-expensive property, while young families can't afford a home.
  - kenjackson 3y ago
    The issue is if the intent to act just now is just a way to institute selective justice to further injustice. For example, the same people who tend to support helping all poor people for certain things (like college admissions) tend to oppose it for other things (like welfare or basic income). The defining line across all of these things tends to be race and which group benefits the most. So when I hear let’s help everyone when it helps their in-group, but they don’t have that same energy elsewhere (or the same energy a decade ago when maybe it wouldn’t have helped their in-group) — I get cynical.
    - kortriephfhe 3y ago
      > For example, the same people who tend to support helping all poor people for certain things (like college admissions) tend to oppose it for other things (like welfare or basic income). The defining line across all of these things tends to be race and which group benefits the most. Not a westerner. Why is this a bad thing at all? Giving college admission is like giving opportunity to improve someone's condition (teaching to fish), whereas welfare schemes are like giving a fish. My country also suffers greatly due to many welfare schemes, all of that money could have gone to infrastructure and public education. Disclosure: I also come from a poor background and have benefitted from both merit-based education and welfare schemes. But I think welfare is overblown. If the same money was put on education, my parents would have been educated one generation ago.
      - kenjackson 3y ago
        College in the US is generally not competitive. That is, learning is available to almost anyone who cares to learn. The community college system is very cheap. Only four years are expensive. The debate about admissions into the top highly selective colleges is purely about who gets into the gates for networking opportunities and signaling (of the 1000+ colleges, affirmitive action impacts probably less than 100). So don’t confuse this with actual opportunity to learn. Further, financial aid generally is race blind. It’s only admission at these top schools where affirmitive action plays a role. So if your parents were in the US they could’ve been educated long ago. The only question is if it is at Harvard or Tennessee State.
        geraldwhen 3y ago
        Financial aid is not race blind. There are no schools near me that have merit scholarships for white people, but plenty have merit scholarships for non whites. I’ve researched this because I have kids, and where I grew up merit scholarships applied to all, but where I live now they will not receive any, at least in state. Unlike my parents, however, I’m not dirt poor and can set my kids up for success. If not for a merit scholarship, I likely would have followed my father and his father into a factory job.
- datatrashfire 3y ago
  You measure wealth and income?
  - kenjackson 3y ago
    You can, but the question is how is this split? What is the formula to measure it? For example, my cousin does financial aid for a set of private high schools. There is a group that fights the use of wealth measures when determining need. It is typically upper middle class people who don’t want things like their real estate or investment portfolio to be a part of the equation. The absolute richest oddly do tend to support these measures. I suspect in part because tuition isn’t a big deal to them anyways.
- 2devnull 3y ago
  This is daft. Treating wealth as a measure of poverty wouldn’t work. Think about why. It pretends families don’t exist. Total non-starter.
  - kenjackson 3y ago
    Doesn’t income have the same issue?
    - 2devnull 3y ago
      Income isn’t perfect but it’s used for a reason. Think about the problems inherent in defining “wealth”. It’s too squishy a concept to use for policy reasons, or else they would. Is somebody who makes seven figures but spends it all on food, entertainment and travel really poor? No.
      - kenjackson 3y ago
        Except wealth is used for lots of policy. For example, financial aid at schools attempts to use wealth. Which is why they take into account equity in your home. And if you have ten million in a trust and no income — are you poor?
        teddyh 3y ago
        Not if payments from that trust is classified as “income”.
        giaour 3y ago
        Let's say that the terms of a trust dictate that interest revenue be immediately paid out to a specific charity, but you are allowed to spend the principal. Are you poor?
        2devnull 3y ago
        I’m saying it’s not useful in policy as measurement of poverty. Poverty is and forever will be defined by income. Wealth is used in policy like everything else, yes of course. Tax policy is a great example. Is there anything that tax policy doesn’t have loopholes and special provisions for? I’d argue that wealthy people benefit from all that. Poor people benefit from clear and effective policies that use simpler, less game-able constructs. Getting into the business of trying to define nebulous hard to define constructs like wealth will benefit those with greater resources, always.
- newswasboring 3y ago
  No political issue can be solved if all people care about is optics.
  - kenjackson 3y ago
    I never said it’s all people care about. But buy-in to policy will be tougher if it looks like you always take on neutral policies only when it helps certain groups.
    - newswasboring 3y ago
      If you aren't saying it, I will. Most political discussions I see, especially in America seem to mostly care about optics.
      - kenjackson 3y ago
        Can you give an example?
letrowekwel 3y ago
I agree. Old school leftists were smart enough to understand that being rich is the ultimate privilege, nothing else comes close. Help the poor, and you will also help minorities which are poor due to historical racism, slavery and so on. Help people based on their skin colour/ethnicity, and you'll unnecessarily make all the poor, unprivileged people not included very bitter, increasing political divisions, racism and people like Donald Trump voted into the office. It's not even that hard. Make taxation more progressive, and give extra funding to neighbourhoods and schools in poorer parts of the country/cities. I don't see any reason why European style model couldn't work well also in the US.
- jandrewrogers 3y ago
  > It's not even that hard. Make taxation more progressive, and give extra funding to neighbourhoods and schools in poorer parts of the country/cities. The US already does this. Taxation is more progressive than Europe and large amounts of money are redistributed to poor and troubled schools, in some cases as much as twice the European average. It is not correlated with any of the outcomes you are imagining. Throwing money at the problem doesn’t work. The US has been doing that for decades with nothing to show for it.
  - NalNezumi 3y ago
    Can you cite a source for the statement in second paragraph? I'm not from the states, but to my limited understanding, funding for school comes primarily from district and state level and in the form of property tax. Meaning rich areas have enormous advantage. Meanwhile the federal proportion of the funding for a school is less than 10% [1] [1] https://youtu.be/VZx-rLoV4do https://youtu.be/VZx-rLoV4do timestamp 3:00
    - hackernewds 3y ago
      Which wealth class do you reckon pays more property taxes?
      - 3y ago
ramraj07 3y ago
The report only concluded that women didn’t have worse outcomes in acadrmia _after_ getting their PhDs. How are you taking this as a vindication of all affirmative action? Given through my decade long academic journey I barely saw any African American PIs in biomedical sciences, I don’t think that it’s a solved problem yet for other cases. Even within gender biases, the moment you include PhD enrollment and graduation rates you’ll likely see a massive difference anyway.
- joemazerino 3y ago
  Sounds like those people aren't interested in the biomedical field. Maybe representation is indicative of desire instead of oppression.
- Levitz 3y ago
  >Even within gender biases, the moment you include PhD enrollment and graduation rates you’ll likely see a massive difference anyway. Might as well go all the way and start caring about college enrollment and graduation rates at that point no? That'd find gender bias. Against men.
- hackernewds 3y ago
  Seems that you are advocating both for equality of outcome, and equality of opportunity. It's hard to argue for both, since in a free choice world the opportunities may not be taken up proportionally
- hajile 3y ago
  That’s confusing causes and effects. This paper is making the case that if a person makes it to college, they won’t be discriminated against while there. The question of whether they make it to college is a far different one. Whether someone makes it to college and the different factors involved there are beyond the scope of this study.
tomrod 3y ago
This comment is not to agree or disagree with your comment, but to informally provide an interesting finding. Economies are more or less urban regions surrounded by rural areas with low population density. So, Nashville, DFW, Denver, etc. are regional economies. I have found it interesting in recent research to find that the level of disparity in health inequity (called Social Determinants of Health, one of which is the 'Area Deprivation Index' managed by UW-Madison) and race/ethnicity is somewhat dependent on which regional economy you review. I can't speak for all regional economies, but the ten I looked into show interesting variation on the strength of economic disparity and the composition of race and ethnic groups.
- snapplebobapple 3y ago
  So are you then arguing that, since the average is no difference in discrimination except small wage discrimination in favor of men and hiring in favor of women , the reality is larger discrimination against men and women that averages out mostly?
  - tomrod 3y ago
    Out of curiosity, what part of my prior comment of findings lead to your conclusion that I made the argument you stated?
    - snapplebobapple 3y ago
      The article concludes there is no difference except the ones outlined, you pointed out that sub economies have differing results. To have no difference in population but significant difference in sub population thw variance needs to be opposite enough to cancel out significance just by how the math works.
- Loquebantur 3y ago
  A correlation between ethnic groups and economic disparity is not indicative of causation, much less of what the cause might be? People having problems with even simple statistics definitely is a cause for racism on the other hand. I find economists often to be surprisingly bad at math.
jgalt212 3y ago
> I believe the culture wars would decrease dramatically if we’d drop the identity politics and simply say: let’s help the poor. That's a wonderful idea, but the elites need sexism and racism as perennial bogeymen as they can always protest, "I'm not racist, I'm not sexist" But the elites cannot reasonably say, "I'm not biased against poor people." Have you listened to any recent Planet Money episodes? It's racism all the things. They hardly blame the rich or the elites--don't want to irritate your customers.
syngrog66 3y ago
bingo, agreed judge people only by the content of their character. (ie. MLK's dream.) Help based only on their economic means, or their health needs. I believe some folks in recent years have "gone overboard" and have devised a way to give them an Official feel-good excuse to self-deal or, to discriminate against a new batch of demographic traits. Which in turn just sows the seeds for yet more grievance "back blast" based on identity groups, yet again. sooner as a society we can all take the higher road, together as one, the better off we'll be
ZeroGravitas 3y ago
The main reason the USA is less "help the poor" than Europe, is because some of the poor in America were non-WASP, and, well I'll let President Lyndon B Johnson say it: > "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
- leereeves 3y ago
  And the politicians are still dividing us by race so we'll ignore wealth and privilege, but now the message is "help the historically disadvantaged minorities" instead of "help the poor". That's certainly an improvement over past behavior but it still leaves millions of poor people shivering in the cold.

by onos 3y ago

kenjackson 3y ago

But then how do you define poor? I ask because you do enter a new identity politics discussion. Blacks tend to have much lower wealth, even when you control for income. So it’s in the interest of whites to push income and blacks to push wealth. I also think there’s an optics issue. As you note the poor white males may be getting passed over now. So many would say that it’s really convenient that NOW we want to help all poor people, whereas in the past we made it difficult to help poor black people. It’s like, why do “all lives matter” now?

letrowekwel 3y ago
"So many would say that it’s really convenient NOW we want to help all poor people, whereas in the past we made it difficult to help poor black people. It’s like, why do “all lives matter” now?" Does historical injustice make it right to behave unjust in the present, almost as if it were a revenge? I don't think so. I agree about importance of defining poverty though. Both income and wealth should be taken into account and taxed appropriately. It's not only a class issue, but also generational issue with lots of old people sitting on super-expensive property, while young families can't afford a home.
- kenjackson 3y ago
  The issue is if the intent to act just now is just a way to institute selective justice to further injustice. For example, the same people who tend to support helping all poor people for certain things (like college admissions) tend to oppose it for other things (like welfare or basic income). The defining line across all of these things tends to be race and which group benefits the most. So when I hear let’s help everyone when it helps their in-group, but they don’t have that same energy elsewhere (or the same energy a decade ago when maybe it wouldn’t have helped their in-group) — I get cynical.
  - kortriephfhe 3y ago
    > For example, the same people who tend to support helping all poor people for certain things (like college admissions) tend to oppose it for other things (like welfare or basic income). The defining line across all of these things tends to be race and which group benefits the most. Not a westerner. Why is this a bad thing at all? Giving college admission is like giving opportunity to improve someone's condition (teaching to fish), whereas welfare schemes are like giving a fish. My country also suffers greatly due to many welfare schemes, all of that money could have gone to infrastructure and public education. Disclosure: I also come from a poor background and have benefitted from both merit-based education and welfare schemes. But I think welfare is overblown. If the same money was put on education, my parents would have been educated one generation ago.
    - kenjackson 3y ago
      College in the US is generally not competitive. That is, learning is available to almost anyone who cares to learn. The community college system is very cheap. Only four years are expensive. The debate about admissions into the top highly selective colleges is purely about who gets into the gates for networking opportunities and signaling (of the 1000+ colleges, affirmitive action impacts probably less than 100). So don’t confuse this with actual opportunity to learn. Further, financial aid generally is race blind. It’s only admission at these top schools where affirmitive action plays a role. So if your parents were in the US they could’ve been educated long ago. The only question is if it is at Harvard or Tennessee State.
      - geraldwhen 3y ago
        Financial aid is not race blind. There are no schools near me that have merit scholarships for white people, but plenty have merit scholarships for non whites. I’ve researched this because I have kids, and where I grew up merit scholarships applied to all, but where I live now they will not receive any, at least in state. Unlike my parents, however, I’m not dirt poor and can set my kids up for success. If not for a merit scholarship, I likely would have followed my father and his father into a factory job.
datatrashfire 3y ago
You measure wealth and income?
- kenjackson 3y ago
  You can, but the question is how is this split? What is the formula to measure it? For example, my cousin does financial aid for a set of private high schools. There is a group that fights the use of wealth measures when determining need. It is typically upper middle class people who don’t want things like their real estate or investment portfolio to be a part of the equation. The absolute richest oddly do tend to support these measures. I suspect in part because tuition isn’t a big deal to them anyways.
2devnull 3y ago
This is daft. Treating wealth as a measure of poverty wouldn’t work. Think about why. It pretends families don’t exist. Total non-starter.
- kenjackson 3y ago
  Doesn’t income have the same issue?
  - 2devnull 3y ago
    Income isn’t perfect but it’s used for a reason. Think about the problems inherent in defining “wealth”. It’s too squishy a concept to use for policy reasons, or else they would. Is somebody who makes seven figures but spends it all on food, entertainment and travel really poor? No.
    - kenjackson 3y ago
      Except wealth is used for lots of policy. For example, financial aid at schools attempts to use wealth. Which is why they take into account equity in your home. And if you have ten million in a trust and no income — are you poor?
      - teddyh 3y ago
        Not if payments from that trust is classified as “income”.
        giaour 3y ago
        Let's say that the terms of a trust dictate that interest revenue be immediately paid out to a specific charity, but you are allowed to spend the principal. Are you poor?
      - 2devnull 3y ago
        I’m saying it’s not useful in policy as measurement of poverty. Poverty is and forever will be defined by income. Wealth is used in policy like everything else, yes of course. Tax policy is a great example. Is there anything that tax policy doesn’t have loopholes and special provisions for? I’d argue that wealthy people benefit from all that. Poor people benefit from clear and effective policies that use simpler, less game-able constructs. Getting into the business of trying to define nebulous hard to define constructs like wealth will benefit those with greater resources, always.
newswasboring 3y ago
No political issue can be solved if all people care about is optics.
- kenjackson 3y ago
  I never said it’s all people care about. But buy-in to policy will be tougher if it looks like you always take on neutral policies only when it helps certain groups.
  - newswasboring 3y ago
    If you aren't saying it, I will. Most political discussions I see, especially in America seem to mostly care about optics.
    - kenjackson 3y ago
      Can you give an example?

letrowekwel 3y ago

I agree. Old school leftists were smart enough to understand that being rich is the ultimate privilege, nothing else comes close. Help the poor, and you will also help minorities which are poor due to historical racism, slavery and so on. Help people based on their skin colour/ethnicity, and you'll unnecessarily make all the poor, unprivileged people not included very bitter, increasing political divisions, racism and people like Donald Trump voted into the office. It's not even that hard. Make taxation more progressive, and give extra funding to neighbourhoods and schools in poorer parts of the country/cities. I don't see any reason why European style model couldn't work well also in the US.

jandrewrogers 3y ago
> It's not even that hard. Make taxation more progressive, and give extra funding to neighbourhoods and schools in poorer parts of the country/cities. The US already does this. Taxation is more progressive than Europe and large amounts of money are redistributed to poor and troubled schools, in some cases as much as twice the European average. It is not correlated with any of the outcomes you are imagining. Throwing money at the problem doesn’t work. The US has been doing that for decades with nothing to show for it.
- NalNezumi 3y ago
  Can you cite a source for the statement in second paragraph? I'm not from the states, but to my limited understanding, funding for school comes primarily from district and state level and in the form of property tax. Meaning rich areas have enormous advantage. Meanwhile the federal proportion of the funding for a school is less than 10% [1] [1] https://youtu.be/VZx-rLoV4do https://youtu.be/VZx-rLoV4do timestamp 3:00
  - hackernewds 3y ago
    Which wealth class do you reckon pays more property taxes?
    - 3y ago

ramraj07 3y ago

The report only concluded that women didn’t have worse outcomes in acadrmia _after_ getting their PhDs. How are you taking this as a vindication of all affirmative action? Given through my decade long academic journey I barely saw any African American PIs in biomedical sciences, I don’t think that it’s a solved problem yet for other cases. Even within gender biases, the moment you include PhD enrollment and graduation rates you’ll likely see a massive difference anyway.

joemazerino 3y ago
Sounds like those people aren't interested in the biomedical field. Maybe representation is indicative of desire instead of oppression.
Levitz 3y ago
>Even within gender biases, the moment you include PhD enrollment and graduation rates you’ll likely see a massive difference anyway. Might as well go all the way and start caring about college enrollment and graduation rates at that point no? That'd find gender bias. Against men.
hackernewds 3y ago
Seems that you are advocating both for equality of outcome, and equality of opportunity. It's hard to argue for both, since in a free choice world the opportunities may not be taken up proportionally
hajile 3y ago
That’s confusing causes and effects. This paper is making the case that if a person makes it to college, they won’t be discriminated against while there. The question of whether they make it to college is a far different one. Whether someone makes it to college and the different factors involved there are beyond the scope of this study.

tomrod 3y ago

This comment is not to agree or disagree with your comment, but to informally provide an interesting finding. Economies are more or less urban regions surrounded by rural areas with low population density. So, Nashville, DFW, Denver, etc. are regional economies. I have found it interesting in recent research to find that the level of disparity in health inequity (called Social Determinants of Health, one of which is the 'Area Deprivation Index' managed by UW-Madison) and race/ethnicity is somewhat dependent on which regional economy you review. I can't speak for all regional economies, but the ten I looked into show interesting variation on the strength of economic disparity and the composition of race and ethnic groups.

snapplebobapple 3y ago
So are you then arguing that, since the average is no difference in discrimination except small wage discrimination in favor of men and hiring in favor of women , the reality is larger discrimination against men and women that averages out mostly?
- tomrod 3y ago
  Out of curiosity, what part of my prior comment of findings lead to your conclusion that I made the argument you stated?
  - snapplebobapple 3y ago
    The article concludes there is no difference except the ones outlined, you pointed out that sub economies have differing results. To have no difference in population but significant difference in sub population thw variance needs to be opposite enough to cancel out significance just by how the math works.
Loquebantur 3y ago
A correlation between ethnic groups and economic disparity is not indicative of causation, much less of what the cause might be? People having problems with even simple statistics definitely is a cause for racism on the other hand. I find economists often to be surprisingly bad at math.

jgalt212 3y ago

> I believe the culture wars would decrease dramatically if we’d drop the identity politics and simply say: let’s help the poor. That's a wonderful idea, but the elites need sexism and racism as perennial bogeymen as they can always protest, "I'm not racist, I'm not sexist" But the elites cannot reasonably say, "I'm not biased against poor people." Have you listened to any recent Planet Money episodes? It's racism all the things. They hardly blame the rich or the elites--don't want to irritate your customers.

syngrog66 3y ago

bingo, agreed judge people only by the content of their character. (ie. MLK's dream.) Help based only on their economic means, or their health needs. I believe some folks in recent years have "gone overboard" and have devised a way to give them an Official feel-good excuse to self-deal or, to discriminate against a new batch of demographic traits. Which in turn just sows the seeds for yet more grievance "back blast" based on identity groups, yet again. sooner as a society we can all take the higher road, together as one, the better off we'll be

ZeroGravitas 3y ago

The main reason the USA is less "help the poor" than Europe, is because some of the poor in America were non-WASP, and, well I'll let President Lyndon B Johnson say it: > "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."

leereeves 3y ago
And the politicians are still dividing us by race so we'll ignore wealth and privilege, but now the message is "help the historically disadvantaged minorities" instead of "help the poor". That's certainly an improvement over past behavior but it still leaves millions of poor people shivering in the cold.