Post #227,357
9/30/05 2:09:34 PM
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Man, you took me literally.
That really is first rate hand-waving. Drewk points out the obvious flaw in your reasoning (the supposition that "if we could only get rid of the underclass..."). The problem is, of course, that you cannot. It is a part of our socio-economic system. In order for capitalism to work well, there must always be a class of "forever to have nots." Consequently, even if you did kill every member of the underclass, a new one would develop. Which, in turn, would lead to rising crime rates.
bcnu,
Mikem
It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one might say, is to give an air of respectibility to these passions. -- Bertrand Russell
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Post #227,361
9/30/05 2:21:05 PM
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"Forever to have nots?"
This is not NECESSARY to capitalism. Have nots, yes. Postulating capitalism forever, forever there must be some who have not, relatively speaking. This population need NOT be the same individuals.
You imply that capitalism must have 'have nots' that can never escape; this is NOT necessary to capitalism.
This does not logically follow, though this is one of the areas where we should clean up our implementation of capitalism.
Should you insist that it IS necessary to capitalism, I will insist on logical proof, NOT mere hand-waving on your own part... :-)
[link|http://www.runningworks.com|
] Imric's Tips for Living
- Paranoia Is a Survival Trait
- Pessimists are never disappointed - but sometimes, if they are very lucky, they can be pleasantly surprised...
- Even though everyone is out to get you, it doesn't matter unless you let them win.
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Nothing is as simple as it seems in the beginning,
As hopeless as it seems in the middle,
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
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Post #227,375
9/30/05 3:52:23 PM
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Let me be a little more clear.
If we agree that for capitalism to "work well" it must mature, then (I think) clearly an underclass will develop. And the longer capitalism is allowed to live, the more entrenched that underclass becomes. Up to the point where there is no escape, in fact.
bcnu,
Mikem
It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one might say, is to give an air of respectibility to these passions. -- Bertrand Russell
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Post #227,385
9/30/05 4:17:41 PM
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I don't see it
Any more than I see the need for communist societies to be dictatorships.
I believe that our society, based in capitalism can be improved. I do NOT see any need for an 'entrenched' underclass in capitalist society. For some to have more, some must have less, in a society of finite resources. I do NOT think this even implies an underclass. Now, I'm not saying that we don't HAVE an underclass in our (flawed) implementation of capitalism; we do. I'm saying that capitalism does not imply underclass, and lack of an underclass is not mutually exclusive with capitalism.
Socio-economic movement in our country is impaired, yes. It doesn't have to be that way, though.
[link|http://www.runningworks.com|
] Imric's Tips for Living
- Paranoia Is a Survival Trait
- Pessimists are never disappointed - but sometimes, if they are very lucky, they can be pleasantly surprised...
- Even though everyone is out to get you, it doesn't matter unless you let them win.
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Nothing is as simple as it seems in the beginning,
As hopeless as it seems in the middle,
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
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Post #227,737
10/3/05 12:05:37 PM
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If it doesn't have to be that way, can you ...
give an example of a pure Capitalist state (iow, one without significant socialist influence) in which a permanent underclass does not exist?
bcnu,
Mikem
It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one might say, is to give an air of respectibility to these passions. -- Bertrand Russell
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Post #227,739
10/3/05 12:11:28 PM
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Sure
Right after you show me a pure communist state without a permanent underclass.
Oh wait, there is not pure communist state. Just as there is no pure capitalist state.
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #227,740
10/3/05 12:12:51 PM
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Nope!
Of course, that says absolutely nothing.
Unless, of course, you are going to say that because something isn't, and hasn't been, that means it cannot be. In which case I'll just laugh, and laugh...
[link|http://www.runningworks.com|
] Imric's Tips for Living
- Paranoia Is a Survival Trait
- Pessimists are never disappointed - but sometimes, if they are very lucky, they can be pleasantly surprised...
- Even though everyone is out to get you, it doesn't matter unless you let them win.
|
Nothing is as simple as it seems in the beginning,
As hopeless as it seems in the middle,
Or as finished as it seems in the end.
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Post #227,478
10/1/05 9:50:58 AM
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entrenched underclasses are good for business
the cops, social workers, prison workers would all have to find real jobs if there was not a designated underclass. What would america's crime statistics and prison population be if all non violent drug and alcohol convictions were removed.
thanx,
bill
"the reason people don't buy conspiracy theories is that they think conspiracy means everyone is on the same program. Thats not how it works. Everybody has a different program. They just all want the same guy dead. Socrates was a gadfly, but I bet he took time out to screw somebodies wife" Gus Vitelli
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 49 years. meep
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
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Post #227,481
10/1/05 9:57:14 AM
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Henry Ford would argue with you.
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Post #227,363
9/30/05 2:29:28 PM
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That's not *Ben's* reasoning
I'm sure he can defend himself, but Ben never said he agreed with that line of reasoning. He's just laying out the argument that Bennett was aluding to. The whole issue, without getting into the specifics that keep derailing this, is: Statistics sometimes point to facts that we wish weren't true. If we base policy decisions solely on a pragmatic analysis of these statistics, we end up doing things that are simply unacceptable.
Bennett used a clumsy analogy to try to make this point. The specific analogy may have had some racist assumptions built in. It also controlled for the wrong factor, rendering the analogy invalid in any case. And it was in service of discriditing a policy that the majority of the population supports.
For his argument to work, he would first have to convince that majority that their position was as morally unacceptable than the straw man he set up. His whole chain or reasoning has more assumptions than the rapture.
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
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Post #227,373
9/30/05 3:49:39 PM
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You should read him in his posts.
The statement was a correct statement.
You may dislike the speaker and suspect the motives of the speaker for picking that example. But when you say that people cannot say the truth because you don't like to hear it, that's called censorship. [link|http://z.iwethey.org/forums/render/content/show?contentid=227184|http://z.iwethey.org...?contentid=227184] The statement he was defending as a "correct, true" statement was this: But I do know that it's true that if you wanted to reduce crime, you could -- if that were your sole purpose, you could abort every black baby in this country, and your crime rate would go down. Now, I know it's impossible that coming to the conclusion that aborting every black pregnancy would result in a lowered crime rate involved much in the way of reason, but I'm not the one who said the statement was a "correct, true" statement. If, as you say, Ben's reasoning is different, why did he claim the statement was true and correct? bcnu,
Mikem
It would seem, therefore, that the three human impulses embodied in religion are fear, conceit, and hatred. The purpose of religion, one might say, is to give an air of respectibility to these passions. -- Bertrand Russell
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Post #227,376
9/30/05 3:52:59 PM
9/30/05 5:13:10 PM
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Because it is
To the extent that any prediction based on statistics can be called "true", that statement is true.
===
Purveyor of Doc Hope's [link|http://DocHope.com|fresh-baked dog biscuits and pet treats].
[link|http://DocHope.com|http://DocHope.com]
Edited by drewk
Sept. 30, 2005, 05:13:10 PM EDT
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Post #227,378
9/30/05 3:58:55 PM
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Speaking of handwaving...
you are engaged in a lot more than I am.
I gave a concrete argument which pointed at the paltry statistics that can be gathered on a topic such as this which nobody wants to be honest about. You've given me an introduction to a communist rant.
What I said to Drew applies doubly to you. Find me Canada's economically significant permanent underclass (boxley, hold, I know the example that you're about to name but it simply doesn't have the same overall societal impact within Canada that blacks do in the USA). And if you find that there are structural differences between Canada and the USA, then reconcile that with your theory that those differences are intrinsic to capitalism.
Regards,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #227,389
9/30/05 4:29:39 PM
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What about this...
[link|http://www.cjnews.com/pastissues/00/feb17-00/front5.htm|Toronto's Underclass]. With the co-operation of Toronto shelters and with the permission of his photographic subjects, Bareket accompanied the Anishnawbe Health Toronto and the Salvation Army Street Patrol on their 4 a.m. forays on the streets of Toronto. He visited numerous shelters and "hidden places" where the homeless live.
What he saw - and photographed - is disturbing: a couple living for two years in a four-by-five doorway alcove; a father and son squeegee team; people living in a public bathroom in a park; a 17-year-old girl living in a shelter after her boyfriend kicked her out for getting pregnant; drug and alcohol addicts; a mentally ill women lying in a pool of her own urine. In short, a glimpse of those occupying society's lowest rung.
Bareket acknowledges that many have made poor life choices, "but being a drug addict or an alcoholic should not be a reason for being on the street. I don't want to argue over what "Canada's economically significant permanent underclass" means to you and me. The way I use those terms, I don't think that America has one either (e.g. permanent means unchanging to me). FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
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Post #227,406
9/30/05 6:19:00 PM
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What does "permanent" mean to you?
In the USA, blacks have been an economically disadvantaged group since before the USA was a country. Furthermore, everyone that I know expects this to continue to be true in another 50 or hundred years. I call this permanent. I admit that in a thousand years the situation may resolve itself. But on the scale of human lifetimes, it is permanent.
Sure, individual blacks may succeed. But as a group?
Now I'll agree that Canada has desperate people. But they are a smaller a fraction of the population, and are generally not as desperate as disadvantaged people in the USA. Nor are is any large ethnic minority so obviously a significant fraction of them.
Why does this matter? Well here is a joke that I've heard from multiple black women:
Q: What is the difference between a black man and a large pizza?
A: The large pizza can feed a family of four.
Imagine being a black boy growing up with jokes like this being told by your mom. Would you feel motivated to even try? Many don't, and the cycle continues for another generation.
As far as I've seen, this does not happen on a large scale in Canada.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #227,420
9/30/05 7:32:01 PM
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Briefly...
A "permanent underclass" to me means something like the [link|http://magma.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0306/feature1/|Untouchables in India]. A class status that is based soley on birth, that is enforced by the dominant culture and laws that existed for years or generations, and that is unchanging. While for generations that was the case for blacks in America, I do not believe that's the case now. Sure, individual blacks may succeed. But as a group? To my mind, blacks in America do not represent a permanent underclass. Mobility into the middle and upper economic classes is possible for black men and women in America. Is it more difficult for them than for whites? On average, yes. Imagine being a black boy growing up with jokes like this being told by your mom. Would you feel motivated to even try? Many don't, and the cycle continues for another generation. Women who are fond of jokes like that often have personal experiences that enhance the meaning. I would think, though, that if a young child were to hear his mother tell such a joke, he could take it as a counter example of how to behave differently to make his mother happy. As far as I've seen, this does not happen on a large scale in Canada. I'll not argue with your observations. All I can say is that the difficulties faced by blacks in America are much less than they were about 5 decades ago. Poverty in America has much less to do with race than it did about 5 decades ago. In college I read [link|http://www.pbs.org/fmc/interviews/wilson.htm|William Julius Wilson]'s [link|http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0226901297/103-9187968-0443030?v=glance|The Declining Significance of Race]. Although I don't recall much of the details, I think he presents a strong case that the title is correct. FWIW. Cheers, Scott.
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Post #227,426
9/30/05 8:16:30 PM
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Then we differ on what permanently means
And I'm also less optimistic than you are about the social mobility that blacks enjoy today. I agree that it is more than they did 50 years ago. But I suspect that it slipped in the last decade, and I don't see it going away in the next century.
As for your theory about how kids would be affected by that joke, I agree that the women who told it to me had cause to be unhappy, but I also think that the projects are full of black kids whose reaction is the opposite of the one that you'd hope for.
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #227,480
10/1/05 9:56:43 AM
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I would then argue for frenco canadians to hold the place
of blacks in canadian society. They have their bill cosby's and Terrel Owens but in parts of canada outside quebec and the north they are deemed equal but separate in how the other half treats them. I well remember one racist joke from Montreal, why does America have a black problem and we have a french problem, because America got first pick. Although when I was there I found dealing with the french folks a little more trustworthy than the anglo's
thanx,
bill
"the reason people don't buy conspiracy theories is that they think conspiracy means everyone is on the same program. Thats not how it works. Everybody has a different program. They just all want the same guy dead. Socrates was a gadfly, but I bet he took time out to screw somebodies wife" Gus Vitelli
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 49 years. meep
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
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Post #227,496
10/1/05 11:58:05 AM
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Not comparable
While I agree that there is English-French conflict, the French do not form a violent economic underclass in the same way that blacks do in the USA. For instance checking [link|http://www.statcan.ca/Daily/English/040728/d040728a.htm|http://www.statcan.c...0728/d040728a.htm], Quebec has a crime rate that is lower than the Canadian average. (Which is in turn lower than the US average.) While Quebec is not the most economically prosperous part of Canada, it is also not the worst.
In fact, going by ethnic jokes, the most disliked ethnic minority in Canada are the Newfies (people from Newfoundland). There are good historical reasons for that. But again, they don't form a violent economic underclass. (They do tend to be poor though - they were never that well off in the first place and the collapse of the fisheries was very hard on them.)
Cheers,
Ben
I have come to believe that idealism without discipline is a quick road to disaster, while discipline without idealism is pointless. -- Aaron Ward (my brother)
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Post #227,535
10/1/05 6:43:13 PM
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well ya were a west coaster, lets have jake weigh in on this
from my observations in the seventies the french in canada were regarded as inferior when it came to jobs, and government plums, Anglo's from Quebec treated them with a little more respect than others, particularly Ontario. As a poor subclass they certainly were not offered the opportunities that Anglos did, they had a strict glass ceiling except in areas where a vote got you a job. When they did start seeking their own destiny draconian measures were brought to bear. Compare the crime stats circa 1972 you will find that the bank robbery capitol of the world was Montreal. I am assuming much has changed now the anglo's have to take the french seriously.
thanx,
bill
"the reason people don't buy conspiracy theories is that they think conspiracy means everyone is on the same program. Thats not how it works. Everybody has a different program. They just all want the same guy dead. Socrates was a gadfly, but I bet he took time out to screw somebodies wife" Gus Vitelli
Any opinions expressed by me are mine alone, posted from my home computer, on my own time as a free american and do not reflect the opinions of any person or company that I have had professional relations with in the past 49 years. meep
questions, help? [link|mailto:pappas@catholic.org|email pappas at catholic.org]
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Post #227,807
10/3/05 3:50:18 PM
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Things are very different now
The late sixties and the seventies marked the end of the Church's social dominance in Quebec, in part because the Quebecois realised that the Church was complicit in holding them down so it could be the big fish in the small pond, through its iron control over the educational system as well as politics via the pulpit.
Nowadays in Quebec (for the most part) it's the Anglos who are in the subservient position... outside of certain super-wealthy enclaves, but that doesn't count in Westmount because there the ethnicity and religion are green.
Simply put, there aren't very many jobs left in Quebec (not even in Montreal) where English is the only required language, but there are many where one has to speak French to get in the door, let alone to get ahead.
As the Quebecois have realised that they have become "maitres chez nous" their perspective on "les anglos et les ethniques" have relaxed quite a bit, enough so that when Parizeau made a crack about ethnics and the money vote on the night of the '95 referendum it ended his political career. The hardcore nationalists are seen as dead enders by most of the Quebecois now.
In the broader national context, well, it's easy to find bigots anywhere, and anti-French bigotry certainly exists, but not like it used to (eg- it used to be perfectly acceptable to crack Frog jokes here where I grew up, but now they are very rare), and I can certainly speak from personal experience when I tell you that there are people in Quebec who hate "les tetes-carrees" no matter what. Then of course there's the West, and in particular Alberta, but I'm a complete heathen to them as someone from Ontario who lives in Quebec... the worst of both worlds! "Nuke them eastern bastards, THEN let them freeze in the dark!" ;)
Nope, the real problem with racism here are First Nations, followed by black people. However, even there, the situation is improving, though I think I'll be dead before the problem is.
--\n-------------------------------------------------------------------\n* Jack Troughton jake at consultron.ca *\n* [link|http://consultron.ca|http://consultron.ca] [link|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca|irc://irc.ecomstation.ca] *\n* Kingston Ontario Canada [link|news://news.consultron.ca|news://news.consultron.ca] *\n-------------------------------------------------------------------
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