Well, Pink Flamingoes is definitely not the greatest movie in history (since at least the reign of Nebuchadnezzar). Casablanca would be in the running for the honor of best film of all time. No, Pink Flamingoes is merely one of the top ten most tasteless movies on record. It is funny in its tastelessness (I like an atrociously tasteless comedy sometimes), and the final fecal focused scene at the end of the flick is one among many tasteless scenes. Well, actually all the senes are tasteless.

Mother's Day - Andy Samberg and Justin Timberlake — T Clark

I couldn't quite rate it as "greatest SNL sketch ever. Greatest television broadcast event ever. High point of all Western culture. No, really, seriously." But that's just me.

It's always a huge and dangerous risk to reveal what one thinks is really, really funny or really, really outrageous. Did you see Pink Flamingoes, by any chance?

Who, other than Bitter Crank, can tell me where that pop culture reference comes from. — T Clark

So as it happens, I had not a clue to where it came from. I have huge gaps in my database of popular culture (just for one example). Somebody at work asked me "Are you sure you are gay?" when I couldn't place Donna Summers. I suppose I heard her at the queer bars a thousand times, but I wasn't there for pop-music appreciation. I was busy pursuing carnal goals.

In my dotage I've been going back (with the help of YouTube) to fill in some holes I don't have enough years left to fill them all in, so a lot of the holes will just stay empty.

Black Americans are now citizens of the country that used to practice slavery, they should view it that way instead of seeing themselves as former slaves. What are your thoughts on this? — Judaka

The side truth of the species is that we are not very nice. We engage in all sorts of bad behaviors: ruthless conquest, mass murder, slavery, exploitation... the list goes on and on. We can, we should, we must accept our species' history as it is, since we can't change it. We can only change things in the present,

I see no benefit in dwelling on one's ancestor's status as slaves. Slavery is now 160 years, or about 8 generations distant. Later, more recent history matters more. Dropping out of high school will cause an individual far more problems than being the descendent of slaves. In fact, if one drops out of school, it won't matter all that much whether one's ancestors were black or white; it is a very stupid move. It's also a stupid move to learn nothing in high school.

Getting involved in drug dealing, drug use, and petty crime is a very bad idea for young people, black white, yellow or red. Don't do it. The measly short-term gains of petty cash and fun aren't worth the longer term downsides, like an addled brain, a criminal record, or getting shot by a rival dealer.

If you want to be a success, dress the part, speak the part, and get some skills to actually play the part. This is just universal good advice for anybody. Employers expect performance and production, and if you fail to deliver, you will get fired, whether you are a privileged white or a disadvantage black or asian.

If you tend to business in school, shape up, and work hard, you too can be successful. Not rich, probably, but even small success is a lot better than getting a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.

HOUSING FIRST is an excellent strategy employed sometimes, but too seldom in the United States. It just rubs some people the wrong way to hand somebody a key to a room and tell them, "this is yours". It takes a significant up-front appropriation to provide funds for rent, and it needs to be followed up with social service. And, of course, there need to be units available which the state can afford to rent. In San Francisco, which has a big homeless population, housing is absurdly expensive.

Your city ignoring the fact that it has hundreds on up to thousands of people living without shelter in the streets is a measure of how dehumanized a place one is living in.

One of the programs I like is an American Indian housing program for "public inebriates". These are people whose alcoholism will be terminal if they are not protected. The residents receive a small unit in a purpose built apartment building with very few strings attached. They can't drink in the hallways, and they can't cause problems in the building (like fighting). There is no expectation that they will stop drinking. It gives protection and a measure of dignity. (Its housing with services.)

A lot of people who are social service recipients need two things: they need some money and they need their own shelter. Give them at least their own shelter and some cash and they can start dealing with their other problems--mental illness, drug addiction, criminal history, history of abuse, maladaptive behavior, etc.

We can at least agree that screwy looniness is evenly distributed across the population.

Dream on.

Good example of a sensible policy.

A number of housing programs in the United States have started to distribute public housing across urban territory in relatively small units. Chicago, for instance, has demolished several of its giant high-rise concrete ghettos in the sky (Robert Taylor and Cabrini Green). Residents were then relocated in distributed smaller units. At least, that's officially what happened. There is some question about how well that actually worked out there.

Distribution in small public housing units that are well managed and maintained is a desirable strategy.

You seem to be having a cognition problem here. The source you cited says the average United States Wealth per Adult is $403,974. You apparently do not understand that this $403,974 is a statistical fiction produced by dividing the total wealth of the country by the adult population. The average adult IN FACT has either no net assets or net assets under $10,000.

If you had not been visiting Mars for the last several years, you would probably have heard about a severely disproportionate concentration of wealth in the United States (and in many other countries). A few people have most of the wealth; most people have very little of the wealth. It fucking does not matter what the average fictional wealth is.

What wasn't an accident? I accept the historical grounding for the imbalance in wealth between whites vs blacks as groups. — Judaka

What was not an accident is the racial distribution of populations and home ownership in metropolitan areas (where most Americans live). As Richard Rothstein shows in The Color of Law, the FHA (Federal Housing Administration) pursued a strict policy of racial segregation from its inception in the 1930s going forward. The FHA didn't invent racial segregation, of course. What they did was effectively restrict the suddenly created and rapidly expanding suburbs to whites. Jews, blacks, asians, Mexicans, et al were barred. How did they do this? They would underwrite mortgages only to white people, and it was up to the local banking and real estate industries to make sure that only white people applied for and received mortgages.

Access to the new and growing suburbs post WWII is the basis for much of the wealth disparity among middle class people. The houses which were built in the 40s, 50s, and 60s and which white people occupied appreciated very nicely. The appreciated value was the foundation of future wealth accumulation. In addition to the FHA, the Veterans Administration followed racialized policies in handing out money for college after WWII. The VA gave an economic boost to millions of white men who served in WWII and later. Lots of non-veteran whites also attending college in the post war boom because they were able to afford what was then MUCH lower tuition than people have to pay now.

So, one might ask, how did it happen that the FHA and VA served mainly whites?

Well, at the time (late 1800s, early 1900s up until the late 60s) southern Democrats had control of enough Senate and House seats and committees to enforce segregation policy on New Deal and post WWII programs. This grip was tight enough that many black workers were initially excluded from Social Security!

All that is what was not accidental.

You've laid out the problem but you haven't told me what you want to do. — Judaka

I want a reduction in the large structured economic disparities with which most Americans live. This can be addressed without reference to race, up to a point.

My answer is to reduce the interpretative relevance of race, stop focusing on whether those struggling in poverty are white and black and aim to tackle problems without racialising them. So let's lay things out: — Judaka

I'll drink to that; BUT, we have to acknowledge that economics have been racialized for quite some time. It isn't the whole story by any means, but it is part of the problem. If our goal is to be 'race blind' then we would definitely stop talking about race so much.

1. We're both trying to reduce poverty
2. We both recognise that a variety of problems within society that impact people and need to be fixed
You want to add:
3. Prioritise poor black communities over poor white communities?
4. Make special rules and exceptions that only apply to people based on race? — Judaka

Yes to Nos. 1 and 2. No on #3: we should definitely not "prioritize poor blacks over poor whites". No on #4: Special rules like Affirmative Action, quotas, and so forth generally backfire and create more intense resentment.

As for culture, I don't know, if they weren't poorer than the majority, they'd try to make better lives for themselves, I know that. — Judaka

So, race-blind, class-based redistribution of wealth is the key step (there are various mechanisms to do this -- it's been done before).

@Judaka et al: Here are 5 books that do a good job at explaining how a critical portion of our racial and economic problems were engineered. It wasn't an accident.

The Color of Law: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America, Richard Rothstein, 2018 (This is a history of the Federal Housing Administration)
Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, Matthew Desmond, 2016 (Desmond 'embedded' himself among Milwaukee black slum, white trash trailer park dwellers, and two respective slum lords, one black, one white.)
Not in My Neighborhood: How Bigotry Shaped a Great American City [Baltimore]Antero Pietila, 2010 -- @ssu Pietila is a Finn by birth --
Family properties, Beryl Satter, 2009 - a history of racial succession in the Lawndale section of Chicago
White Trash: The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America, Nancy Isenberg, 2016

The game is to feed the four trillion dollar annual expenditure of the government. — fishfry

One of the reasons we have a deficit is that a few years ago (and 3 decades ago) we lowered the tax on the wealthiest Americans. Lower taxes on the wealthiest people is one of the reasons income distribution is so disproportionate.

The largest area of the Federal Budget is Mandated Spending--entitlement programs: Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and the like. that's $2.841 trillion in FY 2020. Is this money wasted?

Hardly. Every dollar of mandated spending is injected back into the economy in the form of social security checks, and payments to care providers at various levels. Social security checks are mostly spent at the neighborhood or county level. People use it to buy what they need. Medicare and medicaid dollars are spent at local medical facilities. (Pharmaceutical companies are ripping the government off, because of Republic sponsored legislation which prevents medicare from negotiating the price of drugs!)

A secondary benefit of Medicaid, especially, is that it maintains the health of the poorest population. From a public health standpoint, this is highly desirable. Better to nip communicable disease in the bud.

Another area of "mandatory spending", not quite mandated, is payments on the debt. This year the payment on the national debt is 389 billion in fiscal year 2019. In 2028 the interest on the debt will be $914 billion.

The national debt has been risen and fallen for our entire history, but it is at a historical high. However, I don't know whether the chart represents constant dollars. It's worth noting that we eventually paid off WWII debt around the middle of the 1960s, thanks to the post WWII boom. Our present high debt is a result of the class war, not a hot war. It's the tax laws passed to please the rich at the expense of the poor that causes the current high level of debt.

Bitter Crank has your last disposible nickel in his sights. He (and others sharing his opinion) claim he'll only soak the rich. But there aren't enough rich to soak. If someone lays out some numbers that refute my point I'll stand corrected. — fishfry

A technical issue: If you want to put a participant in blue, you have to do it this way: @ " bitter Crank " (but with no spaces around the @ or the ")

I commend you for your financial prudence. Keep it up.

I do not have your last nickel in my expropriating sights. It is not necessary for you to glue it to the gun you keep under your pillow to protect it from socialists. What I have been trying to get through Fishfry's highly resistant and pre-cast concrete skull is that there are enough rich to soak, and that the rich I plan on soaking have more than enough money to solve our problems.

The reason why economists are disturbed about highly uneven distributions of wealth is that the rich have under their control such a large share of resources that funds for productive investment and public and social infrastructure is not available. The rich don't build schools with their wealth. They don't build bridges, subways, hospitals, and the like. (They might make a donation here and there to a school or a hospital, if they can get their name on the building.)

It's not just in the United States. The same disproportion of wealth distribution exists in many countries and globally as well. Oxfam International estimates that the richest people in the world (most of whom are not American) have more wealth than half of the world's population of 3 billion.

It didn't happen over night, and by and large the rich are not "criminals" in the ordinary sense of the word. They just followed the money, and the rich tend to get richer. That's because they started with a lot of money to invest, and they could hire experts to help them. People like you and me tend to get poorer as time goes on. We are lucky to have a pot to piss in; we don't have much money at all to invest, and if we wanted to invest $2,000, we wouldn't be able to afford professional advice on how to turn that $2,000 into $6,000 in a day or two of clever manipulation.

Show me some numbers. — fishfry

I did, but here are some more:

The financial position of the United States includes assets of at least $269.6 trillion (1576% of GDP) and debts of $145.8 trillion (852% of GDP) to produce a net worth of at least $123.8 trillion (723% of GDP) as of Q1 2014. Wikipedia

"Wealth" is not the same as income. A man who outright owns a house worth $100,000, has no debts, no savings, and has an income of $30,000 per year is "worth" $100,000. If he had debts of $10,000, he would be worth $90,000. If he had paid off his debts and had $10,000 in savings, he'd be worth $110,000. His yearly income doesn't count as "wealth" unless part of it is saved.

That's how worth is calculated.

When we talk about the "wealth" of the USA or any country, we are taking about assets, not income. So, the net worth of the USA is $124 Trillion. No income is figured into that number.

What is all that debt? It's mortgages, credit card debt, student loans, business debt, and government debt (bonds--federal, state, county, city) and so on.

What are all those assets? It's houses, farms, urban land (often worth a very very great deal of $$$), its cars, boats, jewels, factories, stock in businesses, airplanes (one 747 is worth around 380,000,000), ships, railroads, warehouses, stores, cash, port facilities, airports, buses, subways, food in warehouses, your stash of weed, forests--just about everything that can be bought and sold.

As I mentioned, "income" is not counted as an asset. The personal income received in the United states per year is currently about $16 Trillion. The median income (half of the people make more, half of the people make less) is 31,100 (2016) per year. 10% of earners had incomes exceeding $100,000 a year. 10% is about 20,755,000 wage earners. This 10% earns about $2 Trillion a year. wikipedia

But this is where it gets complicated. A "wage" is earned, based on hours worked at a certain rate. There are other forms of income that are not wages. If Jack has $1,000,000 in investments that yield 5%, he receives $50,000 in unearned income. Jack's $50k isn't counted in the $2 Trillion of wage income. This is where the major income disparity comes in. The wealthiest 1% of the population may be employed, and may collect a paycheck. It is probably a big paycheck. But the 1%'s real source of income is "unearned" -- that is, it derives from the wealth they have accumulated.

It is from unearned income that the rich get richer, not by getting raises from the boss. They, after all, usually ARE the boss.

When we say that the richest .1%, 1%, 5%, or 10% own more wealth than everybody else, we are saying that they own most of the fixed assets--not that they receive 80% or 90% of the earned income. What they receive is UNEARNED income, which is derived from assets, not from work performed.

Why isn't income counted as wealth? One reason is that it is, for most people, in their possession for a very short period of time. Most people do, and must, spend most of their income to support whatever lifestyle they maintain. It just doesn't stay around long enough to be counted as an asset.

So, Brother Fishfry, you are as capable as I am of Googling income and wealth stats. Have at it.

but fail to recognize and treat a hormone deficiency (thyroid) known to cloud the thoughts and cause low mood and unshakable fatigue. — Chisholm

Thyroid dysfunction can be pretty serious, I agree, but how common is undiagnosed thyroid deficiency?

It does seem to be the case that "depression" has become a sink into which all sorts of conditions are tossed. Lots of people are lonely, angry, frustrated, tired, resentful, broke, terrified, alcoholic, addicted, unhappy, shat upon, spat upon, anxious, bi-polar, catatonic, psychotic, and just plain bitches and sons of bitches. Me, for instance.

All these various miserable people end up on psychiatry's doorstep. They might all be diagnosed as "depressed" and treated with the same medication. What's a good doctor to do? Give them a pill that might help them feel better.

I believe there are actually D-E-P-R-E-S-S-E-D people. People who are bi-polar, for instance, really do swing back and forth between mania and depression. There are people whose whole affect, mental functioning, appetite, libido, etc. are suppressed. They are properly "depressed". These people are part of the 1 in 10 people who will experience mental illness at some point in their lives. One in Ten seems about right. Most of these people will get better and do fine in the long run. Even the bi-polar, schizophrenic, and psychotic people will feel fine and will function normally at least some of the time. They need drugs. Sometimes they need a padded cell in an hospital; sometimes they just need a protective institution / mental hospital in which to live.

It's all the other wretched refuse of a crazy society that I worry about. They aren't mentally ill, per se, they are just very unhappy, and they don't seem to know what to do about it. Hey, I didn't either.

I have been depressed, properly defined. But, I also have ended up in that depression sink, when what I really needed was not an antidepressant, but a clearer vision of reality, an attitude readjustment, or a major change of scenery, or something. Looking back over the last 72 years of my life, it's hard to sort it all out.

So I've taken antidepressants of several kinds and benzodiazepines over the last 30 years. The period of actual depression was fairly short (and followed a bad injury while jogging in the winter). The rest of the time I was just part of that wretched refuse blowing around in the streets. I was employed, properly housed, in relationships, had friends, was never alcoholic or addicted, etc. I was just chronically dissatisfied and unhappy.

Was there an intervention that professional could have delivered? I really don't know. What really improved things was a major change in scenery brought about by unemployment and early social security, and the death of my mate, now 10 years ago. Leaving the workforce certainly helped, and the end of my partner's suffering from cancer was, inadvertently, the shock treatment that made the difference.

The upshot? I've regained full mental functioning. I'm not chronically unhappy and dissatisfied. My mind is again firing on all 8 cylinders again, (yeah, yeah, I know; most cars don't have 8 cylinders any more). Life is not perfect of course. I'm not living in la la land. Like millions of other 72 year olds, there are challenges today and more ahead. But I feel balanced, centered, focussed, and all that.

"You will see more before you see less!" @Bitter Crank said, obscurely. Or did he mean "you will see less and then you will see more!"? I don't know. It's all too mystically cloudy with heavy rain expected during the rush hour.

... bone idle.... ... redundant people...

Watch out ( Poor ) people, your days are numbered. — Nort Fragrant

I assume you live in the UK? Based on "bone idle" and "redundant". True? False.

When the lion and the lamb lay down together, we can be assured that the lion will sleep a lot better than the lamb. I was planning on the many poor people ganging up on the few uber rich people and financially skinning them alive--leaving them with the same share of wealth that everybody else gets. Back to lambs and lions. The few lions will be supervised by sharp horned ungulates with bad attitudes. The lambs will sleep well. The lions will sleep OK if they do what they are told. Otherwise, they will get gored by the sharp horned cud chewers.

If you take a billion dollars from every billionaire — fishfry

If you take a million dollars from every millionaire — fishfry

Ah, well... I was going to take a good deal more than 1 billion and 1 million from the B and M aires. I was going to take the lion's share -- that is, all of it. The B and M aires would get the same share that everybody else has. Secondly, I wouldn't just hand it to the government to cover their expenses. Giving the gov 94 trillion dollars would be a bad idea. The gov should earn their money the old fashioned way, by reasoned tax systems and even more reasoned spending systems. Giving 94 trillion to a bunch of corrupt politicians to allocate... well, you might as well burn it.

After paying off the national debt (20+ trillion) and setting aside a slug of money for climate change spending (14 trillion), 60 trillion would remain to be divided up among the 300 million people in the country. Each individual would have, in one form or another, a couple hundred thousand dollars to help take care of themselves.

Presumably people would keep on working (200,000 would be great in a bank or invested; as spending money, it wouldn't last all that long. I know people who could chew through a couple hundred thousand in quite short order. The GDP would be taxed progressively to prevent social-warping by extreme maldistribution of assets.

horses that purr — S

It is a well known fact that motors purr, yet motors are not cats.

Women have cat fights, yet yet are not cats. But that is readily explainable: All women are cats, all men are dogs. Positive and negative connotations apply to both.

I don't know where you live. Part of my take on race relations derives from living in Minneapolis, MN. This state has one of the most extreme inequality gaps. Blacks in MN do much worse in health, wealth, and education than whites. There are demographic reasons for this. 40 or 50 years ago, Minnesota had much smaller minority populations than it does now. MN has been a destination state for people fleeing disaster, either in Gary, Indiana, south Chicago, Somalia, or Central America.

It's visible on public transit. Most of the black people on MN public transit look and act poor. When I go to Chicago, there are definitely more blacks on public transit who share a solid economic status with whites. It is visible in clothing, speech, deportment, and so forth. The total number of poor blacks in Chicago is far greater than in Minneapolis, but the poverty gap seems to be smaller.

Milwaukee, however, is more like Minneapolis. The number of poor blacks is greater, and the wealth gap seems to be about as wide.

Why does this disparity exist? Well part of it is that as parts of the industrial Midwest turned into de-industrialized shit holes, those blacks who could get out moved to other cities (Milwaukee, Minneapolis...) which weren't quite as bad. They still lived in the slums, but they were slightly safer slums with slightly better social services and city maintenance.

There is a distinct difference between blacks and other minorities. SE Asians, Central Americans, NE Africans, and so on may come from relatively disrupted places (i.e., Mogadishu) but they do not come from "cultures of poverty". That makes a huge difference. They may be poor (many of them are), but they have a distinctly positive mindset which enables them to get on here fairly well.

As far as I know, no one has any idea of how to impart positive, success oriented values into people who have been immersed in a culture of poverty, disadvantage, and discrimination for many generations. It's a tough nut to crack.

You can't just extrapolate me disagreeing with racial/ethnic pride and histories to... — Judaka

Well, don't take it personally. You know, the problem with e-mail, texts, forums such as this, and similar kinds of communication is that misinterpretation is endemic. In a face-to-face conversation, body language, tone of voice, and real-time interaction eliminates a lot of the text-based problem. In conversation, what would be a clarifying quibble, comes off as a body slam in print.

Like honestly, what do you want to do? Nobody here is denying the past, blacks as a group are disadvantaged by their history but once you strip the racial focus and start caring about individuals and towns/cities, what is the advantage in continuing the same racialised thinking that created the very problems you're talking about? — Judaka

What do I want to do?

I worked in social services and education for 40+ years. The stated goals of most social service and education institutions are to ameliorate disadvantage and build individual and community capacity. There are all sorts of strategies employed to achieve these goals. Some strategies work well, some work poorly. Some, furthermore, backfire and make things worse.

Our country was built on a foundation of crude exploitation of black slaves and the white working class, and then a black and white working class (which composes most people in the country). The social conditions and status of poor blacks and poor whites is baked into The American Way. How do we undo the black and white marble cake of disadvantage and prejudice?

I very much want to see the black and white marble cake unmade. Unfortunately, I don't know how to do it, and from what I can tell, nobody else does either.

Various groups have had some pretty good ideas about it over the years. The earlier 20th century socialists and progressive labor organizers had a solid foundation of "material factors". The civil rights groups of the 50s and 60s had worthwhile and doable goals. The various liberation movements of the 60s and 70s had some good ideas.

Unfortunately, none of these good ideas were in place long enough, and/or were not implemented with conviction for long enough to achieve the stated goals.

Moreover, it has never been in the interests of the ruling class (in any country, not just in the United States) to have the mass of the population cohesively united with clear goals and sound strategies to achieve their aims. So, at every step along the way, the powers that be have intervened from above to sabotage the works of bottom-up social change.

Take the issue of justice to counteract racial discrimination: After Brown Vs. the Board of Education in the 1950s, which declared segregated public schools unconstitutional, there was a wave (which continues into the present) of all white private schools created in the south. This contributed to the decline of the public schools, which became heavily black. Being black doesn't make a school bad, of course, but being a school of poor blacks without the resources to deliver an acceptable education does make a black school bad (and poor white children and minimal financing makes a white school bad too). Various forced integration schemes have not accomplished much.

Needless to say, most of the children of the ruling class have always gone to private schools. They always get a good education, and most of the working class get the current estimated minimum education.

Reasonably stable, financially healthy suburban counties are usually white. Their schools are generally quite a bit better. Poor people (whatever color they are) can't afford to live in these suburbs, so they can't benefit from the schools. The existence of the white suburbs was, in many cases, deliberately engineered by the government through the FHA programs starting in the 1930s.

Over time, at least somewhat well off whites have been concentrated in suburbs with lots of amenities (like reasonably good schools) and blacks have been concentrated in cities with no amenities--slums, in other words. This has been going on for at least 3 generations.

Sorry for the long post, but the point is: how do we now undo 80 years and 3 or 4 generations of very divergent cultural development?

This divergence (which goes back to pre-civil war days) is what puts black people and white people in "two different countries" and its damned hard to devise ways of undoing this even slightly.

Your analysis misses a major point: Were we to claw back many trillions of dollars from the richest 1% (whose total wealth, as I cited above, is very huge) and distribute it among the remaining 99% of the population, the government would have plenty of money to maintain its operations, and certain operations which take up the largest portion of the budget -- entitlement programs like interest on the debt, medicare, medicaid, social security, and so on would be fully funded and would also be less needed, because the population would no longer be in much need.

So, the government's requirements would be quite significantly reduced. The other major factor is that the trillions of dollars transferred to the 99% of the population would be in circulation and, and from the resulting massive stimulus, the government would have more than enough revenue from reduced taxes to operate.

But NEVER MIND. It isn't going to happen anyway.

What the mental exercise of redistribution of the top 1%'s wealth shows is that the poor get poorer BECAUSE the rich get richer. Extreme concentration of wealth impoverishes the nation.

All I want is that everyone has enough money to live a decent life. Worthwhile work with decent pay. Affordable, safe, clean housing. Affordable medical care. Affordable education. Protection from emergencies. A decent life in old age. — T Clark

Those are admirable and attractive goals. I've always assumed that they are possible. Your goals are so desirable and presumably achievable, why have they not come to pass?

Concentration of wealth is clearly one reason. Maintaining the system of concentration deprives the many for the benefit of the few.

A question for which I do not have an answer: Is it possible for a few billion people to live well (per your aspirations) without a substantial number (a few billion, give or take) being forced to provide cheap goods and services? Like, I have numerous pieces of clothing, utensils, and so forth that are affordable because somebody else lives a meager existence.

For example, blueberries have been available all winter from near and far south of the border--all the way to Chile. The quality has been excellent, and the prices have been the same as they are when the berries come from the USA. How much are the farmworkers who produce blueberries getting per hour? Same with apples. The apples from Chile or New Zealand (bullet holes and all) are sometimes the same price as apples sold at the local farmers market or Washington state. They can't be making much in Chile or New Zealand.

Just fix the tax system so everyones paying the same percentage — DingoJones

Reforming the tax code would be highly appropriate, since earlier changes that contributed to the concentration of wealth.

Another thing that has helped the uber wealthy is that much of their income comes from manipulation of abstract assets, like currency and highly derivative instruments (like credit default swaps...). In the last 20 years, at least -- maybe longer -- this area of financial skullduggery has been unusually profitable, while serving no useful purpose, really.

If governments controlled disposable income of the .1 %, would poverty end? — Gnostic Christian Bishop

There isn't much chance that the government as it is now constituted would be able to seize the piles of the rich folk's wealth. Inconveniently, it isn't piled up in swimming pools full of gold coins. It's in the form of various equities, land, buildings, and so forth, so one could give shares of real assets, but one would have to convert the shares to cash, and in order to do that there would have to be buyers with cash to give, and so on and on. It gets very complicated.

But supposing it could be just cashed in and distributed? All households in the United States own a combined wealth of $94 Trillion. The top 1% control 90% of the 94 trillion. The bottom half of all households each own about $11,000 worth of wealth. If we divided all the wealth evenly, each household would get about $760,000. So, there you go.

Now, we don't know what would happen if this were actually carried out. How would 124 million households behave financially if their wealth was increased by many hundred percent? Would massive spending send us into an inflationary tizzy? It's likely that many of those households would opt to spend at least some of their $760,000. Some people would decide to buy cars, build houses, purchase education, drink much better liquor in better glasses, eat better food, wear better clothing and shoes, and so on.

A few hundred thousand uber rich people spend a lot on luxury goods, but there is only so much stuff even the richest pigs can buy. 124 million households holding a sudden large surplus of cash could, and probably would, buy much, much more stuff than a few hundred thousand overfed pigs. This sudden wave of consumption would quickly outstrip supplies, and market disruptions would occur around the world.

Giving a lot of money to the poor isn't a problem, per se. It's 124,000,000 householders' quite understandable desire to benefit from the cash right away that is the problem. Inflation could reduce the value of all that cash pretty fast.

So, some other method is needed.

One way of doing it is to nationalize equity, commercial land, and the assets that rich people hold. The wealth of the rich would become the collective property of the people, and the economy represented by all the equity, properties, buildings, factories, and so forth would go on as before, except that the profits would devolve to the people. The rich just wouldn't be rich any more.

$94 Trillion Dollars worth of assets would pay off the national de debt which is about $22 Trillion. Various entitlement funds could/should/would be fully funded. It would be a whole new ballgame.

Will this happen?

It has a snowball's chance on an unusually hot day in hell.

Why not?

Because it would take a revolution to accomplish this, and the government as now constituted would feel steeply inclined to protect the interests of the rich, and they would shoot you and me before they would shoot the rich folk. We would be dead and the rich would live on in plush comfort.

For this reason, the Absolute always implies a voyage, an abandonment of the originary place, an alienation and a being-outside. If the Absolute is the supreme idea of philosophy, then philosophy is truly, in the words of Novalis, nostalgia (Heimweh): that is, the ''desire to be at home everywhere" (Trieb uberall zu Hause zu sein), to recognize oneself in being-other. Philosophy is not initially at home, it is not originally in possession of itself, and thus it must return to itself" (Agamben, Language and Death). — StreetlightX

Scrieu vendium maximus.

The place is littered with these double barrelled obscurities, objective reality, absolute truth, sometimes you even find double headed monsters - truly absolute objectivity. — unenlightened

The People are recklessly employing all these allegedly useless modifiers and intensifiers because, in these times, there is no Grammar King and every man does as he pleases (to paraphrase Judges 21:25). Let us not elect the Supremely Infallable Grammarian, for then there would arise an even greater lamentation.

Still, what you say is totally true: truth is truth; it doesn't, it can't, get more true. It is what it is, what is not is not, and that's that.

…are nothing more than blind guesses.

Any thoughts on this from the group? — Frank Apisa

Our assertions about the gods are more than blind guesses. They are culturally engineered facts. In other words, we know that gods exist because we invented them. Bringing gods into existence is a highly significant and distinguished human activity, performed at a time when there were no other means of accounting for the damnable facts of existence: "How and why the hell did we get here?"

Inventing the gods also provided us with a dramatis personae for narratives informing us about why bad things happen to good, or famous, or noble, deserving or undeserving people? Or even more problematic, why do good things happen to disgustingly bad people?

Most people in the world (what, maybe 80%?) believe in some system of divinity. Obviously, belief in the divine (however conceived) is useful and compelling. Religion is compelling because the stories (narratives) are pretty good fiction, and a lot of behavior codes are comfortable vested in religious doctrine--like, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you."

Believers daily reinvest in the gods, but are careful not think of it as "creating gods". Religion works best when the instrumentality of human invention is kept off the stage.

Do the gods really exist or are they mere invention? It just doesn't matter, as long as they are treated as real. The dollars or pounds or euros in your pocket are based on flimsy fictions, but it doesn't matter as long as we believe in them. If we stop believing in them, then we are in deep shit rather quickly.

"How the world began, from YOUR perspective"

Alas, I wasn't around at the time to have a personal perspective on the world's beginning. Nobody else was either, as far as I know.

My guess is that #3 is the most likely. Life might have begun in seemingly life-hostile deep ocean vents, and perhaps had little semblance to later life forms. When I was in college (the 60s) the theory was that life began in warm mud on the surface. Scalding hot water, warm mud... maybe something entirely different. At any rate, # 3 seems to be most on the right track.

#1, divine creation, is hands down the best literary version of creation. There are others, but I think the Jewish authors and editors produced the most satisfying text. Christians commentators put too much emphasis on original sin, which they wanted to counterpose to Christ. That makes literary sense, but it leaves way too much unnecessary guilt in its wake.

On the other hand, a tour of any century will reveal enough atrocious behavior on our part to justify the theory of original sin. That humans are prone to error is the single most believable doctrine to come out of the Bible.

Whites have nothing to be proud of except what that individual achieved for themselves or was a part of themselves. — Judaka

Perhaps you are asserting that society does not exist, and are throwing out culture as well. "it's all individual activity. Nothing else."

It amazes me how someone can take responsibility for or take pride in individuals who lived ages before them as their own based on such a superficial similarity. — Judaka

Well, the connection to the past is a two-way street. We look back and the people of the past looked forward. People of past centuries, or past decades, or the past 15 minutes, thought, spoke, acted, and wrote and their thoughts, words, and actions are carried forward by their witnesses. Going back a ways, Hammurabi (ancient king in Babylonia, 1792 BC to 1750 BC) had an audience. When Hammurabi spoke, people listened. King David and Isaiah also spoke, and people listened. Jesus and Paul spoke and people listened. Julius Caesar, Charlemagne, Joan of Arc, William Shakespeare, and John Donne spoke, and the people listened. Donald Trump speaks not very well but the people nevertheless listen. (MEMO TO THE PEOPLE: Pay no attention to the fat man with bad hair standing behind the podium. He is an artless clod.)

We are still reading words from the past--at least if we aren't completely uncultured slobs and dolts, we are.

The modern white American has more in common with a modern black American than he does with the white Americans who killed the native Americans or owned slaves but all the same, people want to take responsibility for that. — Judaka

That assertion could be challenged. Some quite careful observers (white and black) think that black and white Americans practically live in two separate countries. Again linking up with the past, there are quite specific historical reasons WHY most white Americans are better off than most black Americans, and why even middle-income whites are much, much better off than poor blacks. Slavery, the Civil War, Reconstruction, the severe backlash by whites tagged "Jim Crow laws" which have largely been eliminated, and contemporary housing discrimination (and more besides) account for the differences between black and white fortunes in the United States. There is an unbroken chain between the present and the past. If there wasn't, there would never be any material or intellectual development or progress. Each individual would have to start all over.

If we want to understand where we are now we have to understand the past, and to understand the past we have to be familiar with the who, what, when, how, why, and where of the past.

Whites have nothing to be proud of except what that individual achieved for themselves or was a part of themselves. — Judaka

So what is it that you have accomplished and are proud of, that DID NOT DEPEND on the efforts of people who lived and died before you?

Always remember: Homo sapiens are primates, animals. Talk about metaphysics and ethics all you want; just remember it is an ape with a bad attitude that is doing the talking. — Bitter Crank

Just saying... don't get too uppity about being a human.

I have debated whether to get into an argument about whether Jews are Caucasian or not but I decided it wasn't worth it because I am not Jewish and I don't really care. I have always been under the impression that there was a Jewish race and culture which was separate from the religion and after doing a bit of research because I was challenged on it, realised that I could easily find sources that confirmed and denied it and I guess I'd have to dig deeper to determine the truth. You're even talking about Indians and Iranians being causation and while you're welcome to give me an argument for whatever it is you believe, I wouldn't have said what I said if I realised people were going to dispute it so strongly and I got no real stake in what the truth is. — Judaka

I am not Jewish either, at least as far as I know. I'd be fine with it if I was. I do care about race: I like the fact that there are distinct racial groups, with their various features. What we need to remember is that we are all one species, pretty much, even if some of us are mixes of archaic and modern humans, and mixes of races and ethnicities.

Apply the American motto: e pluribus unum, out of many, one. The PC Left seems to think it we are e unus unum--out of one, one. No, we are several races, many ethnicities, all human, and the variety is good.

Multiculturalism means nothing (and is indeed pernicious) if it fails to honor the cultures of the world, one of which happens to be the white, European, North American, Australian culture, with its additional established territories. Third world cultures are good, and so is the now dominant first world culture, the culture that colonized much of the rest of the world (but maybe not long enough and thoroughly enough), the culture that injected the scientific and industrial revolutions into the whole world -- for better and for worse.

White people have no more, and no less, to be proud of, and/or embarrassed about than any other people -- Africans, Asians, Aboriginals, etc. As a species, we are not all that nice, and never have been. Sure. we try to be decent, but our primate drives are powerful, and our systems of control only somewhat effective.

Always remember: Homo sapiens are primates, animals. Talk about metaphysics and ethics all you want; just remember it is an ape that is doing the talking.

The idea that Jews--and western asian people--are caucasian comes out of studies of ancient population history going back around 20,000 years. Two examples of this kind of research are: Jean Manco, Ancestral Journeys: The Peopling of Europe from the first venturers to the Vikings. 2013 & 2015, Thames & Hudson, Ltd, London.

The Horse, The Wheel, And Language: How Bronze-age Riders from the Eurasian Steppes shaped the modern world, David. W. Anthony, Princeton University Press, 2007.

What these books (and others) show is that between the first arrivals (early homo sapiens and Neanderthals) and the finally settled Europe well after the Roman Empire collapse, there was a great deal of population movement, both into Europe from Eurasia and within Europe. What was true in Europe was true elsewhere, too. Nobody, for all practical purposes, ever just arrived and stayed put for ever after. Everyone was pretty much pushed or shoved out of the way from behind, supplemented or suppressed, refreshed or replaced. Someone estimated that since the beginning of the species about 100 billion people have been born. All these people had feet and so traveled around. Sometimes they formed large groups, and their movements were very significant in the long pre-historical run.

Jews are a unique ethnic group, which is a subset or maybe sub-subset of one of the 4 or 5 racial groups). Jews are to caucasians what the Celts are to caucasians, or what Eskimos are to Amerindians: part of a larger whole.

Neanderthals and Denisovans (and maybe other archaic humans) lived among and mated with homo sapiens on the Eurasian continent. Over time there has been a lot of mating going on, and while there are several racial groups, there are hundreds of ethnic groups.

What I am saying is that there are a lot of similarities between the east Asian countries trying to maintain ethnic hegemony and what the alt-right want, similarities between the alt-right wanting whites to be prioritised in "white" countries over non-whites in the same way that governments across the world prioritise their majority races. — Judaka

The problem with white supremacists, nazis, white racists, alt right, fascists, and so on is that these are all epithets tossed by liberals, SJWs, "marxists", and so on at people they don't like, for one reason or another. Most people don't identify as "white supremacists, white racists, nazis,, fascists, and so on. (Granted, some people do self-identify as Nazi or fascist, but far fewer than are accused of it.)

What do these people self-identify as? I'm not sure what terms they apply to themselves.

So, your average white man, as frustrated as everybody else is, by the many changes going on in lots of different nations, tries to find solidarity among other white men (and women, presumably), a familiar white culture, familiar sex roles, and so on, gets blasted as "white supremacists" by (usually) other whites who quite often occupy relatively privileged positions.

Deploying terms such as these tends to set up conflicting camps--virtuous multiculti preachers on one side, and wicked perpetrators of all evil in the other camp. It is difficult to parse who which side is, in fact, most objectionable.

I can barely tolerate ultra-conservative white people who would probably join the KKK if a local was available, and I loathe listening to the virtue signalers who find a white racist or a fascist under every bush. A plague on both their houses.

Einstein wasn't even white — Judaka

So, he was Chinese? African? Native Amerindian? What?

According to some, "Caucasian" means western Europe and descendants therefrom. Broader definitions include western Europeans, plus Russians, Arabs, Iraqis, Iranians, Indians, Afghanis, and Indians. A broad definition would be consistent with language group relationships -- Greek and Sanskrit, for instance--Indo-European,

So Jews originated along the eastern Mediterranean shore. By some stories, they came from northeast (Abraham) of present day Israel. Wherever they came from they were in an area generally counted as Caucasian, or white. Jews were spread out in a diaspora before 66 AD.

So, it would seem like Einstein was probably more white than he was anything else.

Anglo Saxons are white, certainly, as are Norwegians and Finns, Latvians, Jews, and Italians. So are the French and Serbs, Greeks, Turks, etc. Caucasians are a large, diverse, multicultural assembly.

monkeys carry diseases which are fatal to humans — Jake

Sounds like quid pro quo to me.

How do you tell the difference between the escaped and cleverly adaptive monkeys and your average Florida primate householder?

This is in fact happening. All sorts of tropical pet reptiles that got too big have been let go in peoples back yards where, Florida being sub tropical, they have all done quite well. Ford has a quite fascinating collection of snakes now that they didn't used to have.

If the alligators don't get you the pythons will.

Alligators and pythons, properly deployed in urban areas, should help keep down the riff raff population in Miami and other cities, down there. The alligator hatcheries are turning them out as fast as they can. Once a constrictor starts squeezing, the subject and snake are sitting ducks for a trained alligator to move in for the kill.

work is done for survival — leo

tools helpful to survive — leo

When we do not work for basic survival — leo

because it helped our ancestors survive — leo

but why does it feel good? Isn't that simply because we know we can count on them if we need help? — leo

And so on.

The animals from which we evolved (as yet another animal) all had various survival behaviors and strategies. Those ancient mechanisms are part of us. We have, however, evolved a surplus of cognitive resources which, given a successful hunt or food gathering foray, could be allowed free play. Over a long time, we developed language, technology, and so forth. Some of our inventions are applied directly to survival, and some are not.

We can describe any and every behavior as survival-enhancing if we want to do that. But we still have lots of surplus cognitive resources that tend to engage in free play, as soon as survival requirements are met. Calling for help is a survival use of language. Writing an Ode To A Grecian Urn, however, doesn't seem to have anything to do with survival. Keats had some extra time and surplus mental capacity on his hands after his survival needs had been met.

The Philosophy Forum exists because there seems to be a lot of otherwise under-utilized surplus cognitive resources out there. People whose survival is secure for a few minutes can afford to speculate about all sorts of irrelevant and quite peripheral topics here. In the event that somebody would die if they were unable to express themselves here, I suppose we could call TPF a survival tool, but that would be stretching the term past the breaking point.

We need to eat, but nobody has to eat pate foie gras--fancy force-fed chopped goose liver--(except the French who require pate foie gras). Americans prefer braunschweiger, which is smoked pork liver and bacon sausage -- much better. But braunschweiger isn't a necessity either. Some people require kale (which was winter cattle fodder until vegans made a fetish out of it). There is evidence that nobody actually likes to eat kale, and I for one believe that life is better without it.