I agree that punishment should always be fair, proportionate, and humane. I would add that it should also be "effective" -- that is, it should fulfill the intention of the sentence. Our intentions in punishment are not always clear.

If capital punishment is going to be carried out by a competent system, then it should be carried out swiftly and without dithering over the method. It seems to me that a firing squad is as humane as any other method, and less fussy than the lethal injection routine.

I'm not in favor of capital punishment (among other reasons) because the system that serves it up doesn't seem to be sufficiently competent to not make many serious mistakes in identifying the right defendant, and in conducting the proceedings fairly and honestly. That it can take 10 or 20 years to complete legal challenges, or that the "Innocence Project" has exonerated scores of inmates, seems to validate the questionable competence of the system.

If the people are against capital punishment (for whatever reason) then they have to think about prisons.

Different people expect imprisonment to be instructive, rehabilitative, or punitive for the subject. We do a better job of "punishing" than "instructing" or "rehabilitating". We put criminals into institutions designed to be punitive and expect rehabilitation. But even as "punitive" institutions, many prisons do not deliver as advertised. They are just warehouses where criminals are stored, being not quite punished and certainly not instructed or rehabilitated.

Firstly what do you mean by "life in toto"? — ThinkingMatt

All of life -- the biosphere.

This statement has no logic - if we as humans have the power to create and take life away then for what reason makes you think we can not discontinue it as a whole? — ThinkingMatt

I think it is logical; you may disagree, but that doesn't make it illogical.

Humans are late arrivals in the biosphere. We were not there at the beginning. We are not in charge of all life now, either. We can not be in charge -- such a responsibility is far beyond our operational capability. We are hardly capable of managing our own wretched affairs. We are capable of creating life like unto ourselves, which is no great credit to us. Rats and flies are also able to create life like unto themselves. Individuals aren't even responsible for their own existence -- their parents are responsible for that. Humans can't take responsibility for their existence until quite a few years after they are born, if then.

We can, one by one, end our own lives. We could, I suppose, try and end ALL life, from the atmosphere into the uppermost layers of the lithosphere, and down to the bottom of the oceans. We could try, but we should really not even think about it. It isn't our responsibility to end all life. That is something we should - just - not - do.

Most people live out of habit or because they fear death. — darthbarracuda

Most people, if questioned closely, probably would agree with Woody Allen: "I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens." Dying is generally a pretty disagreeable experience. Death, once dying is accomplished, is beyond our knowledge. You know this, of course.

Most people live out of habit because that is the easiest way to live. Each of us have a long string of habits -- behaviors, thought routines, that we keep repeating over and over. Without habits, we would have to reinvent the wheel every time we did something. Thank heaven for helpful habits.

There's really no "decision" to live usually. — darthbarracuda

No, there isn't -- and that's the way it should be. The verb "live" is the default setting. Deciding to pull the plug is a momentous decision that we dwell on for quite some time (in this forum it is interminable) and with great angst before we reach out, grab the cord, and give it a good hard jerk, and then sic transit gloria whoever.

If this logic is true, then our purpose as living things is purely to sustain our life and future life. With that I leave you not asking what the purpose of life is, but instead, ‘what is the purpose of continuing the life of all living things?’ — ThinkingMatt

The wave of life, traveling along for the last 3 billion years or so, is its own motivation. In the case of humans, who have the power of despondent nattering about stuff like this, we can decide we have had enough and resign. "The life of all living things" -- life in toto -- however, isn't ours to discontinue.

Jeah my problem is not the rating system itself but how it is done today. My English just simply sucks so I can't express myself well enough.
You and your "pedigree" are basically the same in most aspects of life.
-i dont understand that sheep/maths problem and what it has to do with this. — Meta

Your English seems to be good enough. You employed the slang term "sucks" properly, but "Jeah" is mis-spelled. Are you a native German or Scandinavian-language speaker, where 'J' sounds like the English 'Y'?

Unenlightened's comment about sheep and maths is a reference to the Gospel story about the lost sheep. The shepherd went looking for the lost sheep and was very happy when he found it. Maybe the lost sheep was happy too. Don't know -- Jesus didn't say. The sheep who stayed home and didn't get lost were annoyed by all the attention the stupid sheep without way-finding skills got.

In America, 'mathematics' is plural, math is singular -- no 's'. The English, damn them, put an 's' on the end of math to get 'maths'. This is an abomination. God hates abominations as much as he loves lost sheep that have the good sense to be found.

I voted for grades being moral and salary being immoral. They are not the same thing. Grades are measures of effort and accomplishment by students. Students need feedback on their performance -- how else can they know whether or not they did well on a biology test or not? How would they know whether their writing was improving or not? The accomplishments of students benefit themselves first and foremost.

Wages (or salary) are payments for either services provided or production of goods. Workers receive less than the value of the goods and services they produce. If, during an hour, a worker produces $50 worth of goods, and gets paid $20, the remaining $30 is kept by the employer. The employer did not perform the work of production, but is keeping 60% of the proceeds. Work in a capitalist economy is a system of exploitation -- wage slavery.

Grades and wages are different things. Grades may be realistic or not, inflated or not, lower or higher than they should be, and all manner of inconsistencies -- but still, grades and wages are different.

What is immoral in school is institutional failure to perform in the task of providing good education. It might be very ill-advised, might be quite stupid, for a student to do little to learn, but it isn't immoral.

Scientific American ran an article quite a few years ago about profit vs. non-profit hospitals and outcomes. They showed that for-profit hospitals (Humana would have been the prime example at the time of the article's writing) were more expensive, were less efficient, provided less service to communities, and so on.

Whether non-profits are now much different than for-profits is probably less clear. Many non-profits, for instance, are rated as mediocre in providing excellent care. That's probably true for many for-profits as well. It isn't clear to me why some hospitals are able to deliver much better outcomes than other hospitals. For instance, a handful of states have low rates of readmission for a given problem (that is, the problem is successfully treated the first time around). Other states have much higher rates of readmission (patients were discharged, did poorly, and needed to be readmitted for the same problem). I don't know what all of the factors are, or why entire states seem to have low first-time treatment success.

I agree with you that economic is the study of behaviors connected with producing and consuming (GDPs, CPIs, inflation, deflation, money supply, all that dismal stuff).

But politics does seem to be about the allocation of resources--just not directly. Tax law, for instance, is conceived in politics to finance government -- but it frequently benefits one group more than others. For instance, minimum wage laws tend to be ceilings on low wage jobs, rather than floors. Inheritance laws generally benefit people with a lot of plunder to leave to their off-spring or alma maters. It is tax law that has greatly expanded the large share of wealth a very small fraction (1% - 5%) of the population possesses.

I also agree with you

Either way it is about resources and their allocation, not the moral lives of people. WISDOMfromPO-MO
— WISDOMfromPO-MO

No, either way it is about much more than that, as I have shown. — Thanatos Sand

Numerous behaviors are sanctioned in law created in politics. The law may not say that "Fraud is immoral" but it does say that it is wrongful, and deserves punishment. I don't think that morality is cleanly one thing, and that law is cleanly something else. Morality may come first, but law often validates morality and visa versa. Law and morality are entangled.

But... there are many instances of law and morality parting ways. I think it is a moral act for women to abort a fetus during the first 20 weeks. The law may or may not agree. I think the accumulation of material resources (land, factories, rental housing, etc.) is immoral. The law generally does not agree. Whether individuals are free to accumulate as much property as they can get their hands on (they are free to do so, pretty much) is going to be decided through politics. If socialists had their way, accumulation of capital would not be legal. However, the process of developing socialist parties into a force capable of rewriting property law would be entirely political--involving all kinds of speech to persuade, endless organizing, membership drives, demonstrations, etc.

Interesting.

But what is a non-profit these days? Just going on the hospitals in the Minneapolis metropolitan area, the nature of "non-profit" seems to have changed. Many of the hospitals here were formerly denomination affiliated not-for-profit institutions and have since collapsed into several chains of hospitals and clinics which have little resemblance to "not-for-profit". And what is a government-owned hospital but a not-for-profit?

I don't see much difference, these days, between "for-profit" and "not-for-profit".

(Quality or care, based on readmission rankings, is a mixed bag across the board, across the US.)

We spend more money on medicine as health declines. But the issue of money needs to be separated from the incidence of disease and treatment. Americans, I suspect, live less healthy lifestyles than Europeans, and this is mostly a matter of culture. Americans, for instance, take much less vacation time than Europeans. American eating habits involve waaaay too much bad fast food (it isn't the fastness, its the badness). I don't know whether European young people binge drink as much Americans do.

European countries generally have more effective public health programs -- like good, practically universal pre-natal care--something that a lot of American women don't get.

You probably know that obesity is a world-wide problem; even in countries with much different cultures than either European or American, are experiencing more obesity (which is most likely caused by cheap fat and cheap sugar).

As for costs, a Rx for XYZ drug is likely to cost much more in the United States than in France or Germany. Why is that? Well, for one thing, the Medicare program was forbidden by Congress from negotiating prices. Crazy? It's flat out insane.

The way we finance health care allows for run ups in costs; the insurance companies raise premiums to match costs, rather than forcing the prices for drugs and procedures down. Single Payer could flatten prices.

This is a personal issue. My copay on eyedrops for glaucoma medication is $24--not a lot, but the amount of medication is only a skimpy 1/2 teaspoon of liquid, if that. It's an old drug, not hot off the lab table. There is no reason for it being that expensive.

↪Bitter Crank As all studies on the subject conclude, it is lifestyle choices that are far and v away the leading causes of chronic illnesses and healthy people are getting a little tired of paying for the poor lifestyle choices of other Americans. 20% of the GNP is going to medical care. This is astronomical and it is growing. — Rich

It isn't terrible that we spend 20% of GNP on health care -- it's terrible that we spend that much without getting better results.

Look, I agree that lifestyle is a very significant factor in disease. That's an axiom of public health. But bear in mind, all the healthy people in Europe and America, Japan, Australia, China and Mozambique, and everywhere else are still going to die, and they are going to die of very similar causes: Cancer, Heart Disease, and stroke (circulatory failures in the brain).

Like I said, it's very important for an aging population to get healthy before they get old, and that means dealing with excess weight, exercising, stopping bad habits like smoking and drinking, eating a healthy diet, avoiding excessive amounts of preserved, fried, and barbecued food (factors in stomach and gut cancers), and so on.

Disease has deep cultural roots, so it isn't just a matter of irresponsible individuals; it's also irresponsible social practices.

"This year, more than 1 million Americans and more than 10 million people worldwide are expected to be diagnosed with cancer, a disease commonly believed to be preventable. Only 5–10% of all cancer cases can be attributed to genetic defects, whereas the remaining 90–95% have their roots in the environment and lifestyle. The lifestyle factors include cigarette smoking, diet (fried foods, red meat), alcohol, sun exposure, environmental pollutants, infections, stress, obesity, and physical inactivity." — Rich

Well some cancers are preventable. Lung cancer is mostly preventable. People who don't smoke usually don't get lung cancer. Ditto skin cancers: people who stay out of the sun usually don't get melanoma (or even basal cell carcinomas--much less serious). Diet, drinking, and smoking probably have a significant role in colorectal cancer. However, there has recently been an spike in colorectal cancer among people younger than 40, sometimes in people who are only 25 years old. There doesn't seem to be any lifestyle influence there. Hepatitis B and C are probably causative in certain kinds of liver cancer -- but not liver cancers that start somewhere else (like pancreatic cancers that spread to the liver).

Actually it is prescription drugs like opioids that are killing 10s of thousands of people each year and hospitals that are killing hundreds of thousands, making hospitals the third-leading cause of death after after cancer and heart disease. So in a sense staying away from hospitals is a good lifestyle practice right after eating veggies and fruits. — Rich

2.6 million Americans die every year.

Prescription drugs do, actually, kill quite a few people. Hundreds of thousands people die in hospitals -- but this is a bit misleading.

People aren't dying left and right from taking the common Rx drugs. Quite often very sick people die from very potent drugs which might cure their disease. Drugs for cancer can have devastating consequences. But... it's the certainty of death by cancer or traded off against the possibility of dying from the cure.

As for opiates, most people take narcotic drugs as prescribed and not have the slightest inclination to abuse them. However, maybe 10% of the population run the risk of dependence and addiction. Some people's brains are sitting ducks for drug abuse. Sad, but predictable. So -- give certain histories, some people should avoid narcotics.

Yes, noscosomial infections, surgical errors, treatment failures and so on do kill quite a few people in hospitals. Without excusing poor infection control or surgical mistakes, people who are in hospitals for extended periods of time generally have one foot in the grave already. a very large number of people die in hospitals who could just as well die at home. They are admitted late in life, in poor health, and all sorts of things are done to keep them alive for another month or two, then they die.

The purpose of health care is actually not to prevent death. Everybody is going to die. Roughly a third will die from heart disease, roughly a third from cancer, and roughly a third from strokes. Then there are infections, accidents, gun shot wounds, and so on. Many of the corpses will have been paragons of healthy living.

The purpose of health care, and healthy life styles, is to preserve good health for as long as possible. This is becoming more important as people live longer (but still die). Healthy old people can take care of their personal needs, walk, bike, drive, enjoy life, and so on, but they have to be reasonably healthy BEFORE they get old.

Death from cancer can't yet be prevented, and whether it's heart disease, stroke, infection, a car crash, or whatever -- the specifics of dying are quite often pretty bad, whether it happens when you are 50, 60, 80, or 100.

That's a good request. I don't have a nice succinct resource.

A lot of the reporting on health care is not helpful. There are some questions, however, that can be productively pursued:

1. Health care is provided less and less by small clinics, independent hospitals, and individual physician practices. Most of the care is now provided by a much smaller number of very large clinics and hospital chains. What difference might concentration of capital make?

2. In 1980 there were still many non-profit hospitals and clinics, many operated by religious organizations (like Sisters of St. Joseph Carondolet or large denominations like the Methodists, Lutherans, or baptists). Most of these non-profits either closed or were sold to for-profit companies. What effect on cost might the departure of non-profits from health care had?

3. Doctors quite often buy expensive equipment such as MRI and CT scanners to which they then refer patients for diagnosis. What effect might this practice have on health care?

4. Uninsured individuals generally avoid early proactive visits to a clinic. They tend to wait until their medical problem is very uncomfortable or unbearable, and then they utilize emergency rooms. What effect might this practice have on the complexity of care needed, and cost? What effect does this practice have on emergency room operations?

5. Surgeons, dentists, and orthodontists are among the highest paid professions. How might very high rates of pay affect cost of care?

6. Hospitals consume a vast array of single use disposable material, all purchased from for-profit companies. What effect might this have on cost of health care?

7. Insurance companies do not finance or provide health care. Their only function is to make money by managing premium income and paying claims. This function is a significant part of the overhead cost of medical care. Health care would be cheaper if the government collected premiums (from taxes) and paid all claims at a fixed rate (as they do for Medicare and Medicaid). A single payer health care payment system would eliminate perhaps 10% to 15% of the cost of obtaining health care.

8. Many Americans have unhealthy lifestyles relating to diet, exercise, smoking, and drinking. A significant share of avoidable illness is caused by poor diet, insufficient exercise, smoking, excessive drinking, and so on. We spend very little time, effort, or money in actually promoting good diet, regular exercise, smoking cessation, and moderation in alcohol use.

So, research these angles and you will find out a good deal about why health care costs are so high.

Probably because Father Board sounds bloody stupid. — Sir2u

The rectangular key board is the Father Board, ejaculating text from the Mind of God into the Ever Virgin Mother Board. The mouse represents spermatozoa probably? OR, maybe the printer is the uterus -- churning out useless offspring like rabbits.

Paper copies are a crime against trees.

End credentialism. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

A good many post graduate degree programs (MA in Public Administration, MA in Educational Psychology, etc.) are nothing but credentialing mills, even though they are part of distinguished universities. They aren't frauds, they're just not hard core. Students go for these credential mill degrees for purposes of salary advancement or job opportunities.

People with inquisitive, information-hungry minds keep learning after they finish their college degree, whether they gain any additional credits or not. They keep reading, they learn on the job, they find ways to acquire enriching experiences. Of course there are college graduates who never read another book after college, which for some reason, they think is worth a boast.

High school graduates could do this too. Some student's get a good enough k-12 education to build on after they graduate, without going to college. Whether HS grads can duplicate the benefit of even a moderately good undergraduate program... I kind of doubt. The function of education is to confront the individual with information that they didn't know existed--whole fields of information. It's hard to engineer that experience on one's own.

Surely it's time to rethink education lock stock and barrel? — Jake Tarragon

Education has, periodically, been rethought -- lock, stock, and barrel. The American public school was a rethinking (probably with big European contributions). The public school has, at different times, taken on a number of tasks, never succeeded 100% at any of them (nobody else did either), and has always been somewhat troubled (collecting 10, 100, 500, 1000... sometimes squirrely, resentful, playful, bored, confused children and adolescents in one stuffy building was never easy).

Parochial schools spread across the country, run particularly by Lutherans and Catholics, and taught religious doctrine along with the 3 'R's, reading, riting, and rithmetic, though they almost certainly didn't spell it that way.

The 'open' school has been tried, and used some good ideas and had a following.

Trade training was tried for high school--very good idea for some students.

Military academies and imitations of the English upper class system have been tried.

Charter schools are the latest nostrum.

One of the functions of the school is to prepare citizens to be effective economic units, one side for production, one side for consumption. Schools are no longer needed for teaching consumption. Mass media has taken over that task, totally. Production requirements have changed radically in the last 40 years. It isn't that school staff aren't aware of these changes, but the institutions are still working on old theory -- some of it quite old.

Lock, stock, and barrel describes the degree of experimentation that is needed. Let there be radical experimentation. (Hey, the results couldn't be any worse than what we're getting.)

Let there be no-holds-barred discussions about what education is supposed to do, now -- 21st century.

I like a lot of different stuff, but let me put in a plug for some of my favorite oratorio/choral works:

1. Carmina Burana by Carl Orff.
Day, night and everything
is against me,
the chattering of maidens
makes me weep,
and often sigh,
and, most of all, scares me.
O friends, you are making fun of me,
you do not know what you are saying,
spare me, sorrowful as I am,
great is my grief,
advise me at least,
by your honour.
Your beautiful face,
makes me weep a thousand times,
your heart is of ice.
As a cure,
I would be revived
by a kiss.


2. John Dowland, Now O Now I Needs Must Part

3. Happy We by G. F. Handel

4. Haydn Te Deum in C Major - Hob.XXIIIc:2:

5. Vladimir Martynov - Come In!

I've also decided to switch my sleep and wake patterns. For some reason, I do better at night when everyone else is asleep and nobody to bother me. My mind picks up around 9 PM until daylight. I figure I can get more done during the day when I'm left alone at night to study or contemplate things in peace. — Question

Reversing day and night isn't a big problem AS LONG AS you are actually getting enough quality sleep during the day. People really do need around 8 hours of normal sleep. Poor sleep or insufficient sleep degrades cognitive functions when one is chronically tired; it also aggravates depression. Getting 8 hours of good sleep definitely will not cure depression, but most people feel much better when they get it.

I too enjoy being awake and active late at night (say, up to 3:00 A.M. or so) and if I sleep till noon, I feel good.

It increasingly looks like the only way to get anything permanent and good accomplished is to have the skill to work around labels like "conservative" and "progressive". — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Leaders need to find kernels of common vital interest in their constituent and opposition groups. That's how leaders get around those divisive labels. But if some blocks, like the Tea Party extremists, would rather destroy the process than fail to achieve very narrow goals, the leadership is up against a brick wall. The same goes for the extremists at the other end of the political spectrum. There too rigid goals and do-or-die approaches can scuttle cross-boundary agreements.

Given all that, you are still right in saying leadership is critical.

I believe that a leader with the right skills could get enough people to work together to resolve problems. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Leadership IS a critical issue, absolutely, and there are a fair number of skilled leaders out there -- in the school boards, universities, and so on up the line. Even Congress has some good leaders.

One of the big problems in decision making, though, are agents with lots of money, very narrow agendas, and no responsibility to the Congressional or legislative leadership: lobbyists, political pressure groups, NGOs, and so on In Congress, for instance, there are all of these groups leveraging resources to sway votes on appropriation and policy. They give congressmen the money they need to meet fundraising quotas for the parties and to fund their own campaigns for office. These same groups provide expertise services to Congressional committee people, which may be even more influential than money. These various background players have their own leaders, some of whom are very competent.

In state houses, all these players can be even more influential, because state legislators have fewer resources on which to draw.

It takes a major, looming-up-over-the-capitol-building crisis to get cross-party line consensus--hence the expression, "Never waste a major crisis."

Things like dismantling a millennia-old patriarchy would not even be on my radar. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Right. It wouldn't be on mine either. I don't even buy the patriarchy vs. matriarchy crap. But some people can really get into this issue because there is absolutely nothing at stake. One can immerse one's self in identity politics without risking anything. It's perfectly safe to express outrage over the disadvantages transgender people face. No one will penalize you for marching around carrying a sign saying "Smash Gender Stereotypes today!" or "Down with Binary Gender Identity Now!" No one of any importance cares about your views on gender, one way or the other. And most people of no importance don't care either.

Most activists are risking nothing by their activism--I say this as a retired activist. Most of the time nothing of value was at stake. Peace activism, religious activism, gay activism, labor activism -- all fairly safe dilettante amusements.

Now, actual transgender people do have something at stake, and they take real risks to be open about their identity. Newly self-identified transgenders are often ridiculed in public because they haven't gotten very far on the opposite-gender learning curve, and they may, frankly, look quite ridiculous. It takes balls to put together women's outfits on a shoestring and take the show on the road for the first few months. But... this isn't your average demonstrator's situation.

None of this would be a problem if conservatives, progressives, libertarians, etc. were open-minded and respectful of diverse viewpoints. But if there ever was a political climate like that it doesn't seem to be anywhere to be found now. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

If political views matter -- I think that they do -- and if there is anything at stake -- there is -- then conservatives and progressives, statists and libertarians, etc. have little reason to work together. You can get people of various opinions to sit down and explore their differences, and that's fine -- nothing is a stake there. If a 2 or 3 trillion dollar budget is at issue, there is absolutely no reason why these disparate groups would cooperate -- the interests they represent are very antagonistic to each other.

If conservatives represent the interests of capitalist health care businesses (a very big financial block), they aren't going to cooperate with any group which wants to deal insurance companies out of the game and forces medical businesses to abide by cost caps. Conservatives can't stand even the relatively minor restrictions of ObamaCare, let alone the progressive Single Payer plan.

Because "The People" have been largely shut out of any meaningful role in politics (except to vote for Mr. Twidleedee or Ms. Twidlydum and not riot in the streets) there are only the well organized and corporate funded ideologues playing the game -- whatever political stripe they happen to be, and their stripes tend to be all rather similar.

"The People" don't stay out of the game because they are indifferent; they are locked out of the game. As a result, the common interests of "The People" are pretty much unrepresented and malignantly neglected.

conservatism... and what now seems to be exclusively called "progressive"... are two sides of the same coin. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

You could say they are two sides of one coin; that's one way of putting it. Another way of putting it is that they are quite close on the continuum of political views. A third way of putting it is that they are both in the same ball park playing the same game.

The conservative and progressive groups certainly don't share the same rhetoric, and they do have separate interests (the conservatives representing entrenched capital, the progressives representing social insurgents). Conservatives are rabidly against ObamaCare (the ACA) while progressives are currently obsessed with transgender and BLM.

It is, frankly, hard for many people to find their group on the political continuum--partly because the range of political opinion that is expressible has been extremely compressed and shifted rightward by media, which by and large is owned by conservative financial interests.

I want to see a single payer system of health care finance which would essentially deal insurance companies out of their business. They are nothing but parasites and serve no useful purpose. There are people who agree about single payer, but disagree about a lot of other similarly left of progressive views. Where is my group?

As you pointed out, we do indeed have many social and economic problems to tackle.

That's my understanding of the futility (in essence) of CBT in trying to make a cake out of shit. — Question

What you have here is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

"I am am unhappy and am in therapy, but it isn't working."

"Why isn't it working?"

"Why, therapy just doesn't work. It's a useless waste of time."

Sure enough, the therapy didn't work.

Some problems get better with age because one's circumstances change, and better circumstances make people feel better. I have no idea what that change might be for you.

Some problems get worse with age because there are neurological costs to mental illness and treatment. For instance, severe bi-polar disorder, epilepsy, or schizophrenia can cause physical damage to the brain, and the medications that help control these disorders have side effects. A 40 or 50 year history of mental illness (or serious epilepsy) often leaves people with decreased emotional and cognitive functioning.

Some problems don't change much with age, because people keep doing the same things over and over again and keep getting the same results. There are... hundreds of millions in this boat.

Some people do commit suicide, that's true. My guess is that the usual cause is NOT that people get tired of dealing with the suicidal thinking. Something precipitates a surge in despair, like losing a mate, losing a job, chronic illness that gets worse... that sort of thing.

If you have been thinking about suicide for a long time, you might very well keep thinking about it into old age and die of heart disease, cancer, or stroke. It would probably help the quality of your life if you generated more positive thinking about your life.

While that sort of advice (think positively) is cheap and easy to hand out, I'm still billing you $100 for this brief therapeutic post.

People had to take those loans for it to work. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

Well, that's true, but there is a pent up demand for single-family homes, and many of the people who took those loans were financially illiterate (which the banks knew), or the loan officers misrepresented the nature of the loans to people who were a bit more savvy. How? Well, they told them that the interest rates were very low. That was true, but only for a while -- maybe only a few months. Then the interest rates started rising. If they could just barely afford the mortgage at 1% interest, they probably could not afford it at 4% or 5% -- or higher. Plus, the houses were grossly overvalued at the time, and lots of people -- not just the financially illiterate -- thought that very high housing prices would continue indefinitely. When housing values dropped 20% to 30% or more, the found themselves totally screwed.

I can't even figure out if I am poor, middle class, living in poverty, or something else. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

I can answer these two questions for you:

IF you depend on a wage (payment that you have to work for to receive) then you are, by definition, working class. Most people are working class. If they don't work, they don't get paid, then they starve to death. Even if your wage adds up to 100,000 a year, you are still working class.

IF you own a small business and employ other people, and you live on the proceeds of your small business, OR if you are a professional living on the proceeds of your practice, then you are middle class. About 10-15% of the population is middle class. Middle class people don't starve to death very often. If you live off of investments and don't have to work at all, then you are upper class. Upper class people never starve. If you are in the top 1% of rich people, then you get to make other people starve.

Here are the Federal Poverty Guidelines: Some programs define eligibility at 100% of the guideline, and others define it as 133% of the guide. (Actually, the numbers go up to 400% of the guideline.)

2016 Federal Poverty Guidelines
-----100%----133%
1 $11,880----$15,800
2 $16,020----$21,307
3 $20,160----$26,813
4 $24,300----$32,319

So a single person earning $11,880 per year is flat out poor. At 133% of the poverty level, you are still poor. A family of 4 is poor at 24,300; they are still poor at $32,319.

If you were single and making $16 per hour (33,600 annually), you individually might still be a bit poor, and certainly not rolling in extra cash. If you had a wife and two children to support on $16 per hour, you'd still be pretty poor.

If you were single and making $25 an hour, or $52,500 a year, you would not be poor. You'd be somewhat well off. But if you had a wife and two children, you'd only be at 400% of the poverty level.

Some Lutherans have orgasms listening to the tubular pipe organs. Part of their edifice complex.

I haven't felt bitter-crankish for quite a while. Any suggestions of what I might change my name to?

I got Dietrich Buxtehude right away, but why not Carl Ditters von Dittersdorf? Some people just like saying the name all by itself.

When it comes to police violence, you are right -- blacks and whites are not in the same boat. Here's a link to a Vanity Fair article that quotes a number of studies validating your statement about police violence against blacks.

Some of the police violence against blacks is just plain incompetence. 12 year old Black Tamir Rice would probably not have been killed IF the responding officer had followed tried and proven de-escallation procedures: Stop the police car a good distance from the suspect (even a 12 year old). Use a loud speaker (or voice) to instruct the suspect what to do (like drop the gun or object and walk away from it). THEN approach the suspect, slowly.

Instead, the officer roared up to the 12 year old, rolled the window down, and shot him -- all with in 2 seconds stop time. Very, very bad procedure, never mind it being a crime in itself.

One sees the opposite approach in all sorts of situations: A police call is made (might be a shoplifting complaint) and 4 or 5 police cars roar into the intersection or driveway...whatever, and jump out and start running around. It's a wonder they don't shoot each other. They are OVER REACTING which is very bad practice, but you see it all the time.

But blacks and whites in poverty are in the same boat, because once you reach poverty, the chances of economic recovery are poor -- for anyone. It's just very hard to rebuild a life after you have been ratcheted down. For instance, well educated people who commit crimes and go to prison, usually have a very difficult time gaining employment (any job, not just the kind of job they used to have) once they leave prison. Felony convictions and prison are the kiss of economic death.

Some good books have been published just recently and over the last few decades, documenting how the federal government, banks, and real estate interests acted in concert to destroy black communities. It wasn't KKK terrorists. It was explicit federal policy in conjunction with banks and real estate interests (all who shared the same goals) to segregate and suppress black people. "They" were extremely effective, and over the course of 80 years, effectively kept black people marginalized and poor.

THE COLOR OF LAW: A Forgotten History of How Our Government Segregated America
Richard Rothstein
2017
W. W. Norton & Co.

On Hand (see Erik)

AMERICAN APARTHEID: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass
Douglas S. Massey and Nancy A. Denton
1994
230+ pages
Harvard University Press

MAKING THE SECOND GHETTO: 1940 - 1960
Arnold R. Hirsch
1983
Cambridge University Press

FAMILY PROPERTIES: How the Struggle over Race and Real Estate Transformed Chicago and Urban America
Beryl Satter
2009
Henry Holt & Co.

THE NEGRO GHETTO
Robert C. Weaver
1948
Russell & Russell

Everything you said here is true. Lots of people have been saying the same thing for a long time.

All problems usually have aspects which can be addressed by differing approaches. Enforcing (or changing) laws about fair housing, fair employment, equal educational opportunities, and so on are one approach. Limiting stop-and-frisk actions may or may not help (I don't know). School integration has been employed. Social programs have been dumped (like AFDC = Aid For Dependent Children) and replaced by 'welfare to work' programs. Welfare benefits are skimpy and get trimmed every now and then. All of these (and other) approaches have failed to make much of a dent in racism. Frontal attacks on racism on college campuses (minority safe zones, hate speech rules, etc.) don't seem to have helped a lot either

The fundamental fact for a majority of colored people in white societies is that they are poor, have very low status, and continue to be the object of discrimination, abuse, scorn, and so on -- and they don't have many resources to draw upon to improve their situations.

Poor white people (white trash) are in the same boat. They are scorned and discriminated against, have low status, are abused, and so on -- and they don't have a lot of resources to draw upon to improve their situations, either.

What poor people need are jobs that give them independence, capacity to improve their lives, afford better education, better housing, better diet, better medical care, and so on -- and the one way to get that is through work. The pride of self advancement can't be dumped on people.

If the poor can't improve their lot as working people, then they are just totally screwed. That's why economic distribution of wealth is a working class issue that very much touches upon racism and white trashery. Access to at least some wealth through work provides the best and (for the most part) only means to empower one's self. (I'm not a big believer in symbolic empowerment.)

As much as work is over rated and can be a very disagreeable experience, it's still the best place for people to forge bonds with others, and to build a community base. Healthy poor black and poor white communities used to exist that had mostly working people, had community organizations that helped tie life together, provided a place to feel pride and authenticity, and all that good stuff. A lot of those communities were deliberately destroyed by urban "renewal", suburbanization, industrial flight to cheap labor, and so on.

Let's just leave it at that. — Thanatos Sand

Let's just leave it at that. — WISDOMfromPO-MO

"Whose "that" are we going to leave it at?" said the rat in the hat.

For me philosophy is nothing to do with defending our societies and our actions now. — Andrew4Handel

All right, but the very act of challenging foundational assumptions takes place in the present by someone in particular, and they need to understand what they are about. For instance, one can uproot any foundational assumption -- like "individuals have the right to fulfillment" or "taking care of the poor is a good thing". One can stir up a great deal of uproar. (There are some who do that here -- like by insisting on the rights of unborn people to not be born, as if they could make a decision as non-existing beings.)

Even though I live in a mature capitalist society which many people seem to like a lot, I still think it is dead wrong to organize production for profit. I have to find a way of putting that in terms that people who think capitalism is good for them can understand.

So, we have to take into account the society we are in now, and the persons we are now, so that it is clear where we are coming from.

I think we need a radical confrontational philosophy not one that delineates and attempts to justify the norms, nor just a dry fairly helpless theorising. — Andrew4Handel

Absolutely. Some of the ideas lodged in various minds that need to be attacked:

• Only minorities are oppressed.
• Poor people are inherently lazy, shiftless,

Minorities are selectively oppressed as part of the general suppression of the working class--which is populated by people who retired from wage work, work for a living now, or would work if they could get a job. If you depend on a wage for your sustenance, then you are working class.

There are people --poor and otherwise -- who are just plain lazy and shiftless. People whose multigenerational experience has been about nothing but poverty tend not to be go-getters. This shouldn't surprise anybody. Poverty is a grueling, dehumanizing, discouraging condition. Their experience tells them that hard work is not rewarded. Some poor people do get ahead -- poor immigrants, for example, usually in the first and second generation, because they have experience which tells them that their hard work will pay off. (It may pay off to some degree for a while.)

• Capitalism is the best arrangement for satisfying human needs.
• Economic freedom is the most important freedom. People should be able to make and spend money however they want -- it's their money, after all.
• Everybody has the right (and a chance) to become as rich as possible.

Capitalism and its markets have proved to be a very effective way to marshall capital, put capital to work, and generate profit for a small percentage of the population. The logic of capitalism does not countenance the widespread distribution of wealth. ("What would be the point of doing that?" the capitalists say.)

Freedom IS a very good thing; let's have more of it! But economic freedom in a capitalist economy requires enough wealth to play the game of economic freedom. Now, having $10,000 in the bank for emergencies gives one a cushion against small disasters. But economic freedom under capitalism requires having a few million in the bank, and the backing of investors.

No rich person has expended much, if any, effort in producing wealth. Ultimately, labor produces all wealth (except for crooked speculation using non-existing assets). Real property (factories, railroads, airlines, shopping malls, warehouses, etc.) is theft--taken from the working class.

"Getting rich" is a dream which many people entertain. Most people have a better chance of getting rich by their own labor than a snowball has in hell. The changes of winning the multi-state power ball lottery for $100,000,000 is about 80,000,000 to 1. Dream on.

• America is vastly different than all other countries.

There are some bits and pieces of "American Exceptionalism" to be sure. Some of it is good (The ethos of the City-on-the-Hill Puritans, and some of it is bad (genocide and slavery, for instance). The good and bad tend to be mixed in together.

But in most ways, the United States is pretty much like every other nation. That's because people are pretty much alike. We are one species with a particular evolutionary history, and we all tend to act alike, given similar circumstances. Pick a nation, any nation on any continent, and it is likely that bad things happened there. Not just bad things to one or two people, but bad things happening to hundreds of thousands of people. Humans have a long history of wiping out people who are in their way. The American genocidal experience seems like such a deviation because it is recent and present. But bear in mind, the people who started genocide and slavery were Europeans. As a specifically "American" society developed, it incorporated good and bad parts of European culture, including capitalism.

Americans don't need to feel unusually guilty about their history. What is important is that we undo the damage of past generations, and improve society now and in the future.

The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.

Karl Marx

Is it philosophy that is lacking, or is it knowledge about the world (and its political/social/economic problems) and the will to struggle for change that is lacking?

Very large numbers of people appear to want change, but they do not know how to marshal their strength and use it. This is one of our political problems. A few people are immensely wealthy and have control over essential institutions, and their interests operate against all others. This is one of our political problems. Many people are engaging in self-destructive, counter-productive activities which add to other social problems.

Is it philosophy that is lacking here?

Neo-orthodox wing, 1962 reformation sect Appolloian — Hanover

A memorable reformation in the sect of the far-seeing, boundary observing Apollo Sun God, if I remember correctly, which I, of course, do. We studied your sect in Classics back in 1979. I took notes. I got an A in the course.

Yes, you have named MO's problem, obstinate sun-worship. But even sun-worshipers, worthy though they may be, should understand the origin of the disk of which their sun is the star performer. IF they don't, the TRUE worshipers of the sun will have to extirpate this heresy and burn them all at the stake. If stake-burnings happen to not be in vogue (it comes and goes), there's always the Cult Cure Camps to which they can be sent for re-education.

False Sun Worshipers, consider yourselves warned.