Indeed it is the economic observation. There is also the entirely market based economic observation that for certain kinds of goods, of which the education, the returns from the public subsidy or taking in charge of a long term investment such as the education exceed the cost.
The simple observation “there is no such thing as a free lunch” is not very clever or useful in fact and by the manner of statement suggests this is the not-really literate in economics ideology speaking.
There is the legitimate question of whether a certain level of publicly supported education has good returns - and what kind - but the economic data for the positive returns of the free public education over the cost are very robust over many different levels of the development and different systems.
This would actually threaten centers of power, so it can’t happen. Racial and gender politics don’t threaten the system as a whole, so institutions make sure to focus popular political energy in that direction. Even then there’s a lot of resistance, but you can trace progress over time.
Note that it was the Republicans focused on bathrooms.
I understood very well his wanting to use an econmic argument to dress up his simple personal political preference in a kind of more justified and stronger economic observation, to make it sound less narrow and partisan.
I will later look for something citable. There is much research (it is not to say that this means any and all such spending is good or that extending beyond a certain level of the schooling is effective all the time)
Personally I can see giving up on gun control, even reasonable gun control angers some people.
However barely 22% of Americans are gun owners. Of them, I’d wager a lot of them are not gun nuts (I own a gun and I’m not a gun nut, other owners I know aren’t either). The % of Americans who own guns and are radicalized are probably 10%.
On abortion, I think there is a movement just as strong on the left to support abortion rights since many of the left feel abortion is a proxy for women’s autonomy.
Right. I’d blame that more on people not understanding the issues, blatantly misrepresenting them, and nutpicking a tiny minority of the Tumblr set and pretending that represents the democratic party in any way, shape, or form. I feel the need to point out that your posts here haven’t exactly shown the best understanding of “social justice”.
Without racial justice there can be no economic justice. How do we correct for economic injustices if we fail to account for the fact that there is long-standing and continuing racism against African-Americans in hiring, work retention, policing, and more? How do we adjust for that if we can’t recognize it? These things matter, and they’re interconnected.
Meanwhile, on the subject of transgender bathrooms, what you seem to be implying is that we should just cede the issue, despite it clearly being a case of bad legislature pushed to discriminate against people with no actual basis beyond that. Yeah, that doesn’t sound craven and opportunistic at all.
But then there are the non-gun-owners who feel strongly that gun ownership should be unfettered.
It’s like how some Republican voters vote for people that would enact policies that would hurt them personally economically. They don’t care. In their minds they are voting for the American Way.
I disagree. It needs to be pointed out that “free” college education is not really free. When you buy fries at McDonalds and get “free” ketchup, you understand that it is a package deal. One price gets you fries and ketchup, even if McDonald’s wants to call it full cost fries with the ketchup being no additional charge.
The issue comes with these entitled millennials who want the free college from Bernie while someone else pays the tax bill. It would be as if you bought the fries, but the millennials were taking your packets of ketchup.
In these types of cases, the public needs a reminder that the programs are not offering anything for free, unless you would like public policy debates to be done with all of the accuracy of marketing slogans.
I would disagree. Pretty much all of the Trump voters knew exactly the type of man they were voting for and didn’t care or thought hes was the better option of the two ar even feel the same way he did. I found Clinton supporter to be far more (willfully?) ignorant of their own candidate’s failings.
Well firstly I disagree with that assessment.
Trump many times accused the lying media of making up stories that were demonstrably true; things that are on tape. He hasn’t released his tax returns because…why, again?
He retweets fake news constantly.
But secondly I was making a somewhat different point. I was talking about the prevelence of belief in untrue facts like “Global warming had a hiatus” or “The US is letting in millions of refugees”. That kind of ignorance seems to be mostly occupied by the GOP right now.
The problem with gun control is that the fraction of people who will automatically vote against the “gun control candidate” is pretty substantial, and the fraction of people who will automatically vote for the “gun control candidate” basically doesn’t exist. If Obama and Romney spontaneously, in the first debate, switched places on gun control, there’s a lot of voters who would look at that and say, “Well shit, we’re voting Democrat now.” There are virtually none who would say, “Well shit, guess we have to vote for Romney”. Example chosen because Trump is kind of… different. In a bad way.
That’s the reality that makes gun control a political loser. You could have 80% of the country in favor, and 20% against, and as long as that 20% is fanatical and that 80% doesn’t actually care that much, we go with the 20%.