Quote from Elvish Crack PiperBecause trusting a statistic is obviously a liberal thing to do
Or the reverse; is the conservative thing to do is to post a statistic and not the preceding paragraph that adds context?
http://www.pewinternet.org/Reports/2012/Social-networking-and-politics/Main-findings/Social-networking-sites-and-politics.aspx
Who gets dropped?
The 18% of SNS users who had dumped or shunned someone because of their political disagreements were asked a follow-up question about the people who were dropped. The majority were people who did not have deep connections to the user who dropped them:
67% of those who blocked, unfriended, or hid someone on a social networking site did it to a distant friend or acquaintance
31% of those who blocked, unfriended, or hid someone on a social networking site did it to someone they had never met in person
31% of those who blocked, unfriended, or hid someone on a social networking site did it to a close personal friend
21% of those who blocked, unfriended, or hid someone on a social networking site did it to a coworker
18% of those who blocked, unfriended, or hid someone on a social networking site did it to a member of their family
The cohort is so small that it is not possible to do a statistically reliable analysis of trends. But as a rule, there were no ideological differences among those who had dropped someone from their SNS world because of politics.
1
During election cycles you can see it occur in the political world a lot where a single defection in opinion is suddenly 'liberal' or a 'RINO'. When the litmus to be 'right' is complete ideological purity besides whatever blind spots you allow voluntarily or involuntarily everything will feel like it skews off of that as a majority.
The same isn't a 'right' exclusive phenomena either, find someone hard line 'left' (which admittedly is rather hard to do they are a rarer breed - what's media portrayed as hard left is barely left of center in most cases...) and their observations would likely be similar. But the media fortunately doesn't get gungho about promoting 'not really a democrat' type nonsense outside of one instance in recent memory because the party doesn't mind ideological diversity.
In a nutshell, I think it comes down to the intolerance for ideological diversity that promotes it. I certainly hope it is, after all - that's why I no longer consider myself very right anymore. Most of my goals are right in line, but the methods I almost alwaysdisagree with - and versus my early ddays of politics there's a night and day difference with how variant methods are received. Especially ones that involve refinement to something over scrapping and restarting which is always going to be problematic. (The 'beta software' effect - think about the last time you got a 1.0 program that never needed further patching... Laws are similar to me managed appropriately by their guardians)
Anyhow TTFN lost my care about debate and debating mostly. The attrition isn't completely one sided...(although I still maintain I'm barely left)
1
(or was? seems like posting this fixed it for me...)
Edit: Its baaaaaack.... (Poltergeist quote is timely I suppose)
1
"Houston - we've got a problem".
Minimum wage should be tied to a minimum standard of living - which we already have welfare and other programs caged to so the figure already exists, although it's variable depending on the program - I think the 200% of poverty level figure is the best however and it is the most commonly used. Only a few use below (i.e. housing assistance) and only a few use above (i.e. ACA subsidization).
There is no sensible reason even the lowest paid workers should qualify for government benefits while working full time - ZERO. They should literally get just enough to be right above that as a baseline IMO where ever the figure ends up specifically. (And yes, some localities would require something higher)
1
1
Glaring flaw in their logic:
Right now welfare benefits are very close to what you can earn at a minimum wage job working full-time (I'd say greater until the ACA rules kick in - since Medicaid vs. no insurance is a huge boon even before the financials being close) and very much in excess of working one part time. They admit a good number of people in poverty wouldn't count in the figures - but they at the same time refuse to acknowledge if we raise minimum wage a reasonable number would be motivated to work again.
Which there's no historic precedent - only one to point at is as welfare and minimum wage got closer [to the point of nearly overlapping now] welfare rates rose while unemployment largely didn't which strongly implies that those people being added to the welfare rolls aren't making any attempts to find work.
Additionally, they seem to ignore the FACT that under how the law is allowed to operate you CAN exempt children (and likely dependents living in a home they're not the primary earner in) from any such raise - there's already different minimum wages for children in many cases. As low as $3/hr last I checked in some of the cases.
So yea, it's a rather flawed "study". Additionally as they note - net pay was actually higher, payroll as a whole was higher - so while a fraction of people lost jobs the majority did not.
(Additionally note, why note something that's studied something a more recent minimum wage bump - 1992 is at least two minimum wage bumps ago, I think 3 or 4 - clearly something more recent than when George Bush Sr. was in office would be more with the times...)
1
You do realize that in 1938 the average rent was $15-25/mo, right? (with the high end being high cost areas like NYC) And that food costs were around $15/mo, right? (penny coffee, 15c for a loaf of bread, etc) It wasn't comfortable, but it absolutely was livable to be earning $10/wk at full time in 1938. You could pay for housing and food with a minimum wage job and no external support - barely. [Hell, some people were lucky enough to find similar housing even later down the line - my parents in the 50's paid $30/mo in rent for their first house before any of us kids came along in Canton, Baltimore - we actually walked by the exact house like two years back and there was a for rent sign asking 30 times that now, heh - and at ~$900/mo it actually was reasonable sounding by today's standards....]
Not to mention that the "first minimum wage" wasn't actually $0.25/hr - the initial implementation to the first minimum wage was phased in over a few years (surprisingly hard to verify how many years - sometime between 1938 and 1944) to the laws initial target of $0.40/hr which was also scheduled to increase in the initial law to $0.75/hr on the 10 year anniversary of the bill. (And in 1949 when the $30/wk rate was established, that just barely missed the middle class! It landed in the middle of the THIRD tax bracket - AKA Upper Lower Class) [Note: The phase in is why the US Dept of Labor doesn't really like to quote pre-1955 statistics on it - although the 1955 increase wasn't established in the bill it was established that the minimum wage would be revised on or before 1958 - so it was loosely connected to the bill and where the bill truly "ended"]
The 1938 start point of $0.25/hr was meant to be a slight improvement for workers that didn't hurt employers that much but wasn't the actual targeted value for the bill, which was $0.40/hr. The $0.75/hr was them preparing for inflation every ten years. (Which note, previous to the past few decades it was revised and kept at a similar point against inflation every ten years or less)
Bills need to be looked at by their full content not their phase-in stuff. You should know this by now.
As for "self-checkout" type things - as I've explained to you in the past - and provided articles for - they've been relegated to a consumer convenience for the impatient that doesn't replace actual workers for businesses that use them across the board - the only places that "mandate" their use actually have to dedicate 2-3 humans to cover 6-12 terminals to keep things going at a reasonable clip otherwise you need an impractical amount of floorspace dedicated to setting up transactions that hurts the profitability of the business. Fast food may be an exception, but then again - you're talking about replacing 1-2 people that are on at any given shift at that point - and you'll be losing some degree of customers for it because some people hate having to deal with machines over humans (note: I'm absolutely not one - I've loved this ATM over teller era we're in). But talking like it would cause a great exodus of jobs in the one place it could actually work is ludicrous because in a given shift at a Wendy's or McDonald's or whatever you're talking about 2 workers out of 12-20 on at a given time.
1
You may disagree with the value of his point, but he is absolutely right that some people would lose jobs and have to go for something that is underemploying them for their qualifications.
1
1
That's spoken as someone that's never clearly been involved in much hiring before: Bill would likely be looked down upon once a job that he was qualified for opened up since he did "low education labor" (often indicating to a hirer that they're not up to snuff for their preferred work) and that he was flighty because he was willing to leave a new career he'd only been in a short time.
As a professional hirer, it was far more appealing to see gaps in a resume while someone had a hard time finding another job that was appropriate for them or "personal time" of various sorts than seeing them working in the coal mines. Because that time in the coal mines puts their entire qualifications into question.
And "gainful employment" for purposes of receiving non-unemployment benefits is scaled to poverty level. Unemployment benefits are scaled to previous income (although something like 25% of existing wage). In neither case does "gainful employment" under the 75% threshold apply for Federal Unemployment figures provided by the BLS. Straight from their own words "Underemployment (receiving income from a single reported income source below 75% of the mean of your previous work quarters) is reported as unemployment for purposes of these figures" it also elaborates in a separate section about full time of 30+ hrs being required for it to be reported as a job as well. [Which is sort of weird if you think about it - make $500m/yr under some sort of hourly agreement but work less than 30/wk? You're unemployed! Not that many folks earning past $40-50k aren't on contract work or a salary where hours become moot - but still... weird case that could technically occur]
1
Cake as mentioned does amazing covers (Mahna Mana being my fave, 2nd to I Will Survive)
Vanessa Carlton does a great 'Paint It Black'
Ben Folds does great covers of 'B$%#@s ain't S$%t' and 'Such Great Heights' amongst others.
Uhm and I could think of more later I'm sure, love good covers.
Oh one more - Nonpoint's 'In the Air Tonight' (its the version used in the Dead Space 3 commercials)