Elsewhere (154)
Daniel Hannan on stats and cover stories:
“The rich are richer and the poor are poorer,” says the left-of-centre British newspaper, The Independent, on its front page. That phrase is so common, so facile, so glib, that it is almost a truism. Except that it’s not true… On almost every measure of absolute wealth, the poor are getting richer. Because this fact seems counterintuitive, some people scrabble around for data that seem to contradict it. The Independent’s rather tendentious use of savings as its main measure of wealth is typical… The same partiality explains why leftists clutch so determinedly at their bizarre definition of poverty as having a household income less than 60 per cent of the mean – a measure which gives Britain a greater rate of poverty than Bangladesh.
And Natalie Solent on minimum wage laws and the subsequent, inevitable, dancing around the obvious:
I came across this article asking “Why are so many Seattle restaurants closing lately?” The writer, Sara Jones, goes through the possible answers to this question at some length. Ownership changes. “Concept switches,” whatever they might be. Premises too big. Ingredients too pricey. Menus too esoteric. Too loud. Too quiet. Managers who do too much. Managers who do too little. Many and various are the potentialities diligently listed by Ms Jones. It is a little hard to see why a plague of Managers Doing Too Much should suddenly descend on so many of Seattle’s eateries all at once, though. Could there be something else behind it, some really strange and frightening phenomenon whose name no one in Seattle dare speak? […] In fairness to the author, she does discuss the effect of the minimum wage hike eventually, after having exhausted all other options. She’s doing better than many.
As Anthony Anton of the Washington Restaurant Association puts it, “It’s not a political problem; it’s a math problem.” And I was rather taken by this comment here, spotted by Sam Duncan and offered in reply to a typically pious and self-flattering leftist:
No you don’t get to get away with that. You don’t get to advocate policies [i.e., higher minimum wage laws] which allow you to use force to deprive people of their jobs and their opportunities, and then claim that those who would have provided the jobs are the heartless ones. You don’t get to trot out the insipid, mindless, tendentious talking points about how you are morally or intellectually superior when every “solution” you proffer is destructive and is based upon forcing others to do your bidding. You don’t get to decide whose job is worth preserving and whose isn’t and still claim the moral high ground.
As yet the leftist in question has not seen fit to respond. Feel free to share your own links and snippets in the comments below.
Tim Newman is spot on. But, apart from costing jobs, raising the minimum wage also (a) reduces the payment of in-work benefits (by which the welfare state subsidises certain employers) and (b) increases productivity, in part from incentivising automation where appropriate. Hence, France has high unemployment but high productivity per worker, the latter being a result of excluding the least productive 10% from the workforce.
“She asked them if they had been marginalized or racialized, and when they both responded ‘no,’ that’s when she said the meeting was only for those who felt they had been,” said Anne McNeilly, an associate professor at the Ryerson School of Journalism.
Ms. Knope and Mr. Hewitt, who are both visibly white…
So.
Blackface it is.
Why are even our community colleges rife with this idiocy?
Because the faculty factories are.
Higher-education faculty is extremely incestuous. All those Humanities graduate students have to find employment somewhere, regardless of the prestige of the institution.
Universities are left-wing seminaries that crank out left-wing activists as their primary output. On purpose.
Long march through the institutions and all that.
Let us not forget the original purpose of the minimum wage in the U.S., from a comment in the Seattle Mag thread:
MinWage is SUPPOSED to inhibit employment and lookie lookie, that’s what it does.
Also, “wage slave” is an oxymoron.
Because the faculty factories are.
Not entirely. Mostly because we are suckers for (again with the misnomers) “higher education”. We can’t begin to stop this madness until we cut the funding. We can’t cut the funding so long as we permit the idiocy to go unchallenged.
And an aside (sorry to regurgitate a sore subject), we can’t challenge the idiocy so long as the politicians in the best position to challenge the “higher education” priesthood are beholden, or are perceived to be beholden, to a priesthood of their own. IYKWIMAITTYD.
Halnon is an associate professor of sociology
From the update: “Listen, the point is, I am a sociologist, and I live in an intellectual world.”
We can’t begin to stop this madness until we cut the funding.
Which funding: Guaranteed student loans? Pell grants? Donations? Endowments?
If you follow Instapundit, you know one of his favorite topics is the higher-education bubble (written a book about it he has).
The idiot system will collapse under its own weight when (more) people realize that the tuition isn’t anywhere near worth the investment/debt.
Then watch for academics to howl about society’s anti-intellectualism and materialism.
More than they do now, I mean.
In the process of emptying out our insane asylums, we appear to have fully staff sociology departments near and far.
The idiot system will collapse under its own weight when (more) people realize that the tuition isn’t anywhere near worth the investment/debt.
You mean like what happened with the real estate market? Without political pressure, the system will simply go looking for “new revenue”. College education is being pushed as a new “right”. In the mean time, the problem continues to perpetuate itself, creating more and more minions who view access to the new religion as a new right. If the investment isn’t worth the return, the blame will go to the evil rich who got theirs, etc. etc. etc. according to the ingrained mythology we have seen presented over and over again. And we schmucks who support the whole mess continue to get fleeced. Even if it does collapse, it will be quite a ways down the road. Ultimately who gets left holding the bag?
Cut government funding to non-STEM. Shine the light on the numerous mini-Ward Churchills. Obviously you don’t cut donations and endowments. That’s just plain wrong, not to mention impossible and cultural suicide, and thus a strawman excuse for doing nothing.
And just to be perfectly clear, I have absolutely no problem with institutions employing nutjob professors who are funded by private donations and endowments. Much like a bar, such institutions need a few such characters around to give the joint “atmosphere”.
She asked them if they had been marginalized or racialized, and when they both responded ‘no,’ that’s when she said the meeting was only for those who felt they had been
at which point they should have been welcome.
@ bgates
Yes. But now you’re bringing logic into it.
And that will never do.
and thus a strawman excuse for doing nothing.
As if I were in a position to do something in the first place.
Halnon is an associate professor of sociology
Incidentally, Dr Halnon’s professional interests include “marijuana,” “Marxist theory” and “women and madness.”
In the Clown Quarter of academia, the jokes just write themselves.
Another feminist intellectual roars at the stars:
Ms Davoran “hates sexism and prejudice,” and wants to “have honest conversations with people, especially those who misunderstand the issues.”
[ Added: ]
Note Ms Davoran’s attempt to sidestep the contradictions of her worldview by redefining words in ways that are absurdly tendentious or simply question-begging. And so racism is only racism when white people do it, and sexism is only sexism when men do it. How incredibly convenient. And this isn’t some random idiocy. It’s been taught. By people who get paid to blunt the minds of anyone sufficient young and credulous.
“Ms. Knope and Mr. Hewitt, who are both visibly white…”
As opposed to invisibly white, which may be one of the greater unseen crimes against humanity.
Ms Davoran “hates sexism and prejudice,” and wants to “have honest conversations with people, especially those who misunderstand the issues.”
Why do first year students think they’re in a position to educate everyone else?
Why do first year students think they’re in a position to educate everyone else?
Assuming your question isn’t rhetorical, my guess would be vanity. And few are so vain – or so eager to assert their status, even delusional status – as people who regard themselves as progressive warriors. But then I’m terribly sceptical. Wickedly so, in fact.
Why do first year students think they’re in a position to educate everyone else?
Simply, because they don’t yet know enough to know how much they don’t know.
T’was ever thus with youth.
The only difference is that that state used to be seen as something to educate them out of.
The Monbiot fatuity continues.
Furious George is appealing to Oxford alumni to renounce their degrees if the Uni doesn’t divest from the exploitation of fossil fuels.
https://twitter.com/GeorgeMonbiot/status/577469336526311424
I seem to recall that last year he was backing the ‘Yes’ vote for an independent Scotland; which (at least according to the SNP) was going to fund itself with the proceeds from North Sea oil and natural gas.
Furious George is appealing to Oxford alumni to renounce their degrees if the Uni doesn’t divest from the exploitation of fossil fuels.
It’s arrogant and fatuous all the way down.
‘It’s arrogant and fatuous all the way down’.
As ‘Casmilus’ puts it on the Twitter thread:
‘@GeorgeMonbiot please follow-up by quitting as a Guardian columnist, George, as you won’t be qualified anymore’.
Why do first year students think they’re in a position to educate everyone else?
As Terry Pratchett explains:
Students arrive at university knowing everything and leave knowing virtually nothing. The surplus knowledge is carefully dried and stored, and that’s why universities are called repositories of knowledge.
RIP
I meant to post on this thread not last weeks…sheesh. Confessions of the left. (HT Rod Dreher).
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/the-sacred-beliefs-of-the-left/
Thought I’d posted this one yesterday, so here goes again . . .
Scott Adams—yes, that Scott Adams—has a report and commentary on My Verdict on Gender Bias in the Workplace