Red Mosquito

stip wrote:Why can't it be possible? When you factor in debt, costs of essentials, class mobility, etc it doesn't seem far fetched.

iPhones will be better, though

I guess the question then is what is the definition of "standard of living"? Usually it includes things like comfort and convenience and surely our lives are becoming more comfortable and convenient. I'd be interested to see statistics regarding hours spent working, retirement age, (paid) vacations, etc.

I'd argue that many "essentials" are as cheap as they've ever been in real terms but we have more "essentials" than ever to pay for.

4/5 wrote:

stip wrote:Why can't it be possible? When you factor in debt, costs of essentials, class mobility, etc it doesn't seem far fetched.

iPhones will be better, though

I guess the question then is what is the definition of "standard of living"? Usually it includes things like comfort and convenience and surely our lives are becoming more comfortable and convenient. I'd be interested to see statistics regarding hours spent working, retirement age, (paid) vacations, etc.

I'd argue that many "essentials" are as cheap as they've ever been in real terms but we have more "essentials" than ever to pay for.

Daycare is incredibly expensive, I'm spending more than twice as much on that than I am on my mortgage.

Having children in retrospect, even though they are great little people, probably freaking stupid.

Electromatic wrote:

4/5 wrote:

stip wrote:Why can't it be possible? When you factor in debt, costs of essentials, class mobility, etc it doesn't seem far fetched.

iPhones will be better, though

I guess the question then is what is the definition of "standard of living"? Usually it includes things like comfort and convenience and surely our lives are becoming more comfortable and convenient. I'd be interested to see statistics regarding hours spent working, retirement age, (paid) vacations, etc.

I'd argue that many "essentials" are as cheap as they've ever been in real terms but we have more "essentials" than ever to pay for.

Daycare is incredibly expensive, I'm spending more than twice as much on that than I am on my mortgage.

Having children in retrospect, even though they are great little people, probably freaking stupid.

Good lord man.

A lot of household income/costs comparisons across generations have got to be somewhat tough to measure as a result of a majority moving from single earner to two earner households.

Mine wrote:I don't think how Trump does in one on one debates matters to a relevant degree. He's unlikely to lose or gain a substantial amount of votes regardless of how he does.

I know. It's a selfish impulse. I just want to watch him squirm.

theplatypus wrote:

Mine wrote:I don't think how Trump does in one on one debates matters to a relevant degree. He's unlikely to lose or gain a substantial amount of votes regardless of how he does.

I know. It's a selfish impulse. I just want to watch him squirm.

It'd definitely be enjoyable. And then it'd be maddening to see the aftermath that his supporters wouldn't be phased at all.

538 (I think) claimed that Trump supporters aren't uninformed, but rather they are misinformed, and then cited some behavioral studies that suggest that when errors are pointed out to the misinformed it actually reinforces their misinformed beliefs and they believe even more strongly that they are correct. Polling data seems to indicate that these are largely the people supporting Trump.

People.

4/5 wrote:

stip wrote:Why can't it be possible? When you factor in debt, costs of essentials, class mobility, etc it doesn't seem far fetched.

iPhones will be better, though

I guess the question then is what is the definition of "standard of living"? Usually it includes things like comfort and convenience and surely our lives are becoming more comfortable and convenient. I'd be interested to see statistics regarding hours spent working, retirement age, (paid) vacations, etc.

I'd argue that many "essentials" are as cheap as they've ever been in real terms but we have more "essentials" than ever to pay for.

Rent, education, health care?

The poverty line figures we use are way off. In the 1960s, when this was created, food was 1/3rd of a family's budget, so the cost of a 'thrifty' food basket x3 was the metric we used for the poverty line. Today food is only about 1/6th of a budget, but I believe we still use the thrifty food basket measure, so even stats like that don't really capture any kind of reality.


This is an interesting website, which tracks the cost of true essentials (no recreation, vacation, etc), and gives a sense of the fuller picture.

http://livingwage.mit.edu/

this is also a brief but interesting read

https://www.bostonfed.org/education/led ... easure.pdf


This seems to indicate that perhaps Sanders was wrong, at least in terms of people's perceptions of standard of living, but it's also 13 months old and this is a subjective survey, so it's highly likely to swing based on public conversations.

The other thing to look at when Sanders makes a comment like that is the generational element to this. younger people are potentially looking at an economy that offers them significantly less stability, are facing tremendous inequality, are starting with more debt, will be facing a workforce where people have a hard time retiring due to the retirement savings deficit, and did not have the advantage of years to build up an asset base before these changes accelerated.

The overall GDP may increase, but that figure is irrelevant without also factoring in distribution.

4/5 wrote:

theplatypus wrote:

Mine wrote:I don't think how Trump does in one on one debates matters to a relevant degree. He's unlikely to lose or gain a substantial amount of votes regardless of how he does.

I know. It's a selfish impulse. I just want to watch him squirm.

It'd definitely be enjoyable. And then it'd be maddening to see the aftermath that his supporters wouldn't be phased at all.

538 (I think) claimed that Trump supporters aren't uninformed, but rather they are misinformed, and then cited some behavioral studies that suggest that when errors are pointed out to the misinformed it actually reinforces their misinformed beliefs and they believe even more strongly that they are correct. Polling data seems to indicate that these are largely the people supporting Trump.

People.

It's not like he's running on facts or well articulated positions. As long as he keeps being a megalomaniac he "wins".
What may end up humiliating him would be a debate with a woman like Hillary because he'd be emasculated in the process and that could actually be perceived as humiliating by his base.

Those misinformed believes are usually reinforced by dismissing the information used in pointing out of errors as product of a conspiracy.

Perceptual bias is a lot more impactful and complicated than that. And confirmation bias is as much a key to understanding politics as anything.

I'll bring up an example I used in the cops thread: research has very consistently shown that, when you are cruel towards or move to cause any kind of harm to another person, it affects your opinion of that person more than it affects your perception of yourself. If you, for example, are a cop investigating a suspect, the fact that you are investigating them at all increases your certainty of their guilt. A person asked to describe a friend's personality before and after having to testify against them in court expresses a drastically more negative opinion of that friend, even when they are ultimately found innocent of the crime in question

And there's more. Neuro-imaging of people who are shown evidence that supports their beliefs, and then shown evidence that contradicts them, reveals that the centers associated with reasoning diminish their activity when shown information conflicting with held beliefs...and that our pleasure centers activate when the evidence supports us. We are literally bombarded with these tiny rewards for only concentrating on the evidence that protects our views, and our brains reduce processing in response to opposing ideas.

In short, the mind has a very natural tendency to protect itself by defending its own behaviors against change, and this tendency alters the way we interpret people and events.

Racism, sexism, fascism, cruelty, environmental skepticism and government conspiracy panics...these are all fed by a natural, internal feedback loop that constantly reassures us that we wouldn't have believed it if it weren't true.

Interesting.

Because of that post I think I want my summer reading to focus on human behavior.

McParadigm wrote:Perceptual bias is a lot more impactful and complicated than that. And confirmation bias is as much a key to understanding politics as anything.

I know, i brought up the conspiracy as counterargument because of how often i'm seeing it in the last years.

I think people in charge of electoral campaigns take those concepts very seriously. When you have candidates talking about complex issues as if they were banally simple, this is exactly what they are going for. It can be really difficult sometimes to discern from someone's actual views and what they're presenting as their views when trying to get elected. It's all aimed at the electorate's reliance on some form of those biases above pragmatism.

McParadigm wrote:I'll bring up an example I used in the cops thread: research has very consistently shown that, when you are cruel towards or move to cause any kind of harm to another person, it affects your opinion of that person more than it affects your perception of yourself. If you, for example, are a cop investigating a suspect, the fact that you are investigating them at all increases your certainty of their guilt. A person asked to describe a friend's personality before and after having to testify against them in court expresses a drastically more negative opinion of that friend, even when they are ultimately found innocent of the crime in question

This makes perfect sense. Put simply it means that people tend to convince themselves when they're causing harm to someone, they deserve it - rather than questioning their behaviour.

McParadigm wrote:And there's more. Neuro-imaging of people who are shown evidence that supports their beliefs, and then shown evidence that contradicts them, reveals that the centers associated with reasoning diminish their activity when shown information conflicting with held beliefs...and that out pleasure centers activate when the evidence supports us. We are literally bombarded with these tiny rewards for only concentrating on the evidence that protects our views, and our brains reduce processing in response to opposing ideas.

I'd be surprised if it was any other way. I think it has to do with what belief confirmation vs. challenge reflects back at self esteem. It makes me think how people can be hurt when their beliefs aren't taken seriously by someone they're close to and who's opinion they respect. It's usually because they are made to feel like idiots rather then the beliefs themselves.

McParadigm wrote:In short, the mind has a very natural tendency to protect itself by defending its own behaviors against change, and this tendency alters the way we interpret people and events.

Racism, sexism, fascism, cruelty, environmental skepticism and government conspiracy panics...these are all fed by a natural, internal feedback loop that constantly reassures us that we wouldn't have believed it if it weren't true.

Obviously, but that's just part of the equation. We still change our minds. I presume it largely depends on how much we value a specific belief's veracity which i guess is proportional to the pleasure or discomfort activity when they are addressed.

democracy is one big aristocrats joke.

get ready for the Mike Bloomberg open mic set

supposedly Hillary's plan is to go into full-on bitch mode in tonight's debate

i think if she canned the insincere happy abuelita act and just focused on being a Type A bitch she might get more supporters

i personally might prefer a benevolent dictator to our current system

or someone mostly benevolent

we could finally repair our nation's failing bridges

I wonder to what degree the left's ad hominem attacks on Trump (a la Dime's nude post) serve to strengthen him. Even in the best of times, social media is a stream of petty public shaming of candidates that don't play for the right team, but its especially bad with him (who admittedly gives as much as he gets) and its made all the worse by the fact that there are genuine things about him they should be attacking. Everyone thinks they are oppressed these days, and seeing a steady barrage of 'small dick' and 'worse than Hitler' posts probably cause more people to double down on their beliefs than change their opinions.

oh wait, the evening news has an important story about Olympic athletes getting the Zika Virus... very important...

agreed the left should spend more time focused on Hillary's terrible wardrobe which threatens to turn this country into a fashion police state

96583UP wrote:agreed the left should spend more time focused on Hillary's terrible wardrobe which threatens to turn this country into a fashion police state

"Is that dumb bitch wearing a raincoat?"

BurtReynolds wrote:I wonder to what degree the left's ad hominem attacks on Trump (a la Dime's nude post) serve to strengthen him. Even in the best of times, social media is a stream of petty public shaming of candidates that don't play for the right team,
but its especially bad with him (who admittedly gives as much as he gets) and its made all the worse by the fact that there are genuine things about him they should be attacking. Everyone thinks they are oppressed these days, and seeing a steady barrage of 'small dick' and 'worse than Hitler' posts probably cause more people to double down on their beliefs than change their opinions.

Social media allows for a echo chamber effect, people chose their friends and create spaces where their beliefs are never challenged, but reinforced by like-minded souls from across the globe. I would put for that this effect is probably responsible for much of the radicalization of social and religious movements over the last decade at people try to one-up each other, but that's another thread.

The Hitler thing really bothers me. It's not that I don't think Trump should be called out for repeating bigoted statements, misrepresenting demographic and economic data w/r to immigration, and not even feigning listening to minority issues, it's that what Hitler did was so bad that equating his to Trump's ideas actually imply Hitler was less bad than he was and make me wonder if people still remember or are still taught the scale of Nazi crimes across Europe. But I had the same reaction to comparisons between W. and Hitler, so it might just be me.

i did as well. bush was one of the worst presidents in US history. he was not hitler. he was not a fascist (neither is trump). there are other bad words out there

You guys are coming across like a couple of real Hitlers, right now.