SkepticalButOpenMinded @ SkepticalButOpenMinded @lemmy.ca

Posts

2

Comments

506

Joined

2 yr. ago

Yes, Obsidian is great. The app itself is proprietary but the files are portable plain text. I feel like that makes it pretty future proof. If it ever shuts down or enshittifies, there will be alternatives.

I didn't say you're evil. Let's not focus on hurt feelings. You made specific claims, and I gave arguments against them.

Better outcomes have nothing to do with government programs. That is an extreme position. I have never heard anyone endorse it with a straight face until now. Obviously, no economist left, right, or centre believes anything this extreme.

Immigrants cause problems in the US. The data does not bear this out. In the US, they commit fewer crimes and there's no evidence that immigrants treat their children worse or educate them poorly. This is just false.

Other countries do better due to culture and societal homogeneity. I gave you a concrete counter example of a country that is as similar to the US as possible in almost every way. In fact, Canada is more diverse, and has more immigrants. And yet, the outcomes are much better across the board.

If you're being intellectually honest, you should be willing to modify your beliefs based on argument and evidence, not just double down.

I am all for criticizing the Chinese government and bad Chinese policies, but “China is a shitty haven for cheats and liars” is a broad generalization verging on just straight up bigotry.

This is horrifying. Did they learn this from the US and Canada? It sounds extremely similar to residential schools.

Ah the mask comes off!

You're actually claiming that the better outcomes of other countries has "nothing to do with government programs"?? Literally nothing? Even a hyper conservative rightwing ideologue, if they are intellectually honest, would admit that government programs have some effect. Such black and white thinking.

You say it has to do with "culture and societal homogeneity"? I've heard this racist dogwhistle before. And sure enough you go on to blame immigrants as "part of the problem". Contrary to what you say, immigrants to the US commit fewer crimes than non-immigrant Americans. Contrary to conservative stereotypes, immigrants to the US fare very well on most metrics.

When you say "societal homogeneity" and lack of immigrants, how do you explain Canada, which is one of the most racially and culturally diverse countries in the world, more so, in fact, than the US? Canada has way more immigrants per capita than the US, and Toronto has about the same proportion of black people as LA. Canada has many more Muslim immigrants. And yet, poor people in Canada have much better outcomes than the US. Crime is a fraction of what it is in the US across the board. Universal publicly funded healthcare, one of the best public education systems in the world, and, as of a decade ago, a direct cash transfer program to poor families have all lowered the poverty rate. It is insane to claim that this has "nothing to do with government programs", and that Canada is such an alien and different culture to the US.

One can of course argue that said bad decisions are due to social problems linked to the client's impoverished background, and that's true, but it's not a direct consequence of the parent not having enough money to take care of their children, and the distinction is important. One is an issue of one government system punishing a person for another government system's failure, not the parent's; the other is a much more complex societal systemic issue that is not a problem with government systems per se, but rather a sociological problem that requires a much more complex solution.

I don’t get this reasoning. Whether some problem is the “direct” or “indirect” consequence of poverty does not matter for whether poverty reduction programs like TANF are effective. It’s a non sequitur.

You imply that improving the delivery of social supports like TANF will not be effective at helping the poor (who are, after all, the direct cause of their own problems in your experience!). But other rich countries with better social safety nets enjoy much better outcomes for the poor than the US. It’s strange that you criticize a systemic change to the delivery of welfare to the poor for not being “complex” or “systemic”. I’m not sure how blaming the poor for their problems is more “complex” or “systemic”. On the contrary, that’s highly individualistic and moralizing.

I would say it’s a very noisy signal but not meaningless. Also, one affects the other: the polling affects when there will be an election. Not now!

“Handing out public money”? So if we increase funding of healthcare or education, are politicians not allowed to talk about that either? Is it less icky if you tell people they got a tax cut, as conservatives do? This is just nonsense. You may as well say that progressivism is icky to talk about.

Agreed. I thought it would be evident by the fact that I admitted to using these programs myself that I’m not blaming consumers for using them.

That said, we do need to call out people who defend the credit card reward system, even if they do so out of ignorance. Otherwise, regulatory change is impossible.

OK, I think we mostly agree. The wording is still important because there are, sadly, a lot of people who defend the practices of these credit card companies, fooled into thinking they're getting a "deal".

Don't get me wrong, I heavily use and pay off my credit cards fully to get points. But that's precisely the problem. They've set up a "tragedy of the commons" where they extract economic rent: Individually, we are incentivized to use the cards, even though, collectively, it costs us all more for no benefit to the economy or society. (I am talking specifically about the rewards program portion. The transaction processing is useful, but should not cost that much.)

Imagine if this was a functioning market: using your high rewards credit card would cost more at the till. Say using a 2% cash back card means your purchase costs 2.1% more than baseline. Would you do that? Of course not. But because of corrupt pro-Wall Street laws, it's actually illegal to charge different amounts to customers for different cards.

Yes, some credit card fees are independent of funding the rewards programs, and some of those fees existed before widespread use of rewards programs. But so what? Today, some significant portion of those credit card fees definitely exist because of the rewards programs.

I’m not sure what you’re arguing with your comment. Of course there’s a charge — the payment processing itself is a service that costs money — but are you implying that therefore credit card points really are a net benefit to consumers? With vague comments like yours, I will respond and people sometimes reply “I never said that”, but, then, what are you saying?

The “rewards” are costs passed down to the merchants over and above the cost of merely processing the electronic transaction. With the state of technology now, payment processing itself should cost fractions of a penny per transaction. Besides fraud protection, everything else is mostly skimming off of the top. This is why these sleazy companies are some of the most profitable on Wall Street.

You’re not getting a discount, you’re just getting less screwed.

It drives me crazy that people think credit card points are “free” benefits. You’re just getting your own money back! If you get 2% cash back or whatever, it’s obviously only possible because they’re charging merchants more than 2%, raising prices for everyone. It’s basically a hidden tax on everyone.

What’s worse is that it’s a regressive tax. The better credit cards with more benefits are available to the rich, not the poor. But the elevated prices are paid by everyone.

I’m in favour of more regulation of big corporations, especially for financial services, so I’m not ready to dismiss this move as “complete nonsense”.

Apple/Google Pay is an additional intermediary that allows you to pay for things on your devices using your credit card. They charge fees over and above the credit cards, and have power over their respective digital platforms — for example, where and when you can easily use the service.

Now you might counter that they both happen to be pretty fair about that. They haven’t been using their power to unfairly exclude merchants or credit cards, and maybe their fees are fair. I don’t personally know. But the fact that they have the power to not be fair is evidence to me that there is something to be regulated there, independent of regulation of credit card companies.

That’s a good point. There are (at least) two vowel sounds written with a letter “i”. A short sound like in “fin” and a diphthong like in “fine”. All the examples are the short sound, not the diphthong. So the rule described above probably only applies to the short sound.

I actually think that funding border security helps Biden politically.

Agreed. It’s a vicious feedback loop. Failing institutions leads to lack of public support for those institutions, which leads to even worse institutions. I think it’s still possible to get out of this nose dive, but I’m concerned.

Am I the only one experiencing little 1-2 second jitters? It’s as if it skips where an ad should be. I still don’t see an ad though.