3 ms·
they mean absolute numbers
by mjburgess 3y ago
they mean absolute numbers
- loeg 3y agoTheir choice of the word “percentage” is incongruent with meaning “absolute.”
- gruez 3y agoAre we reading the same comment? OP said >I tried to compute an estimate of the current percentage of the US population that's forced labor vs. at the peak of the pre-abolition slave trade, and from what I can tell, it's currently higher than it ever was back then. It's explicitly talking about "percentage" at the start. It would be weird if they silently switched to absolute numbers afterwards.
- mjburgess 3y agoi read it as percentage applied to the first half, but not the second -- perhaps only on the grounds that to distribute the word "percentage" would make the claim obviously false. Whether false by percentage or not, I'm not sure relative percentages are of that much importance. Surely the hundreds of thousands of american soliders dying in the US civil war wouldnt be relieved to hear that perhaps more black people were enslaved today, only to feel their sacrifce justified when hearing it was a mere 0.5%
- gruez 3y agoThe 13th amendment explicitly excludes prisoners. This shouldn't come as a surprise to any civil war soldier.
- mjburgess 3y agoi think the post civil war era of America would be horrifying to many who died precisely to avoid it, their deaths rendered effectively pointless for at least a century
- mustacheemperor 3y agoThey are also wrong by absolute numbers.