I agree that presidents have very little to do with gas prices, the course of wars, intelligence operations, etc... the world economy and the massive military industrial complex pretty much has its way with any president.
But look up the job numbers again. They are actually really good, no matter how you measure them. I don't think any particular set of policies helped or hurt helped much, I think it got better on its own, but the numbers are good.
Legacy of his Presidency, and what political chances he leaves behind for his party.
I think it is more interesting to jump ahead X-hundred years and assume strong'ish AI, self-repairing robots can perform 100% of all hands-on service jobs. And I'm not talking just about waiter/janitor. Most of health care is basically following diagnostic formulas and trying X, then Y, then Z until the patient reports improved health.
Nano-bots can convert any atom to any other atom using self-generated (fusion) or solar energy. Dirt becomes gold for free for anyone.
The only thing of real value are raw materials of any form, to feed the nano-bots. So who produces anything of value to purchase land/dirt? Do we end up with a "nobility" that own all the land, and no one else has any way to become a land owner generation after generation?
I suppose some subjective things will always have value, like philosophy, art/music and artisanal food/wine. "Sing your way to home ownership!".
I don't think we've reached the 'singularity' or other pivotal event that would translate into a major shift in economics. Nothing will change the basic supply/demand equations until some part of the equations involved are truly free or infinite.
Any gains in efficiency and production just go to higher profits for owners. Why would anyone volunteer to pay someone the same for 20 hours of work, that they were previously making working 40 hours, just because some new tool came out that makes the worker twice as productive? The worker will only get payed based on the demand for his product. The boss would never just give him/her more just because they became more productive, unless there is a corresponding increase in demand for that product.
Think free energy / free work provided by self-replicating nano-bots (snap your fingers and a complete house is built in one week out of dirt by tiny robots who can transform any atom to another, etc..). Strong'ish AI machines handle most hands-on service industries, like cleaning, waiting, basic health care, etc..
At that point in time, the only thing of value will be raw material and truly subjective pleasures like artisanal food/wine, art/music.
Now that would be a shift that would fundamentally break supply/demand.
You could just tax every transaction made with that currency at a fairly low percentage of the total transaction and do away with all the other taxes. Credit card companies figured this out decades ago.
Yeah, we could. However a sales tax alone is a very regressive form of taxation. Our society (USA) explicitly does not want regressive taxation.
Tax the company who creates the jobs
Companies don't hire unless there is first a demand for a product or service (or the potential to create a new market). In that sense, companies never create jobs. Customers create jobs.
"What I don't like is when the government becomes an engine for wealth redistribution"
If a government providing fire service free to poor person B by taxing rich person A is wealth redistribution, then I would argue that wealth distribution is an unavoidable part of any functioning society. The question that left/right always debate, is the level of redistribution. How much is too much? I haven't heard any serious politician say that zero redistribution is a viable option, have you?
But if researchers correct for these factors, and compare whites and blacks in similar socioeconomic circumstances, and look at black children adopted and raised by white families
Was that Rushton and Jensen's work in 2005 or are you referring to another researcher? I can't seem to find anyone else claiming a significant IQ difference when all factors are controlled for.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Philippe_Rushton#Unfavorable - Sure seems like a lot of people people are highly critical of his science.
This clearly does not make sense as the same group of people tends to do just fine when being raised in a first world country.
Not true. There is a 15 to 18 point gap in IQ test scores in America between blacks and whites. That is about one standard deviation. Similar gaps exist in other mixed race countries.
I don't have time to read the entire thing. But my first thought was this: "I bet the studies didn't control for economic or social issues..."
Sure enough, I found this in the paper:
The question that still remains is whether the cause of group differences in
average IQ is purely social, economic, and cultural or whether genetic factors are
also involved.
http://www.udel.edu/educ/gottfredson/30years/Rushton-Jensen30years.pdf
The average black person has lower income, less opportunities, trapped in poverty cycles, etc... Of course if you don't control for those factors you'll see testing differences.
Is there a study that strictly controlled for factors like family wealth and educational opportunities?
Every renewable dream has us whizzing around in electric vehicles. But this could come true only if the future is nuclear.
People on slashdot make that statement, but I have yet to see any proof of it. Meanwhile, it is factually true that the Sahara desert contains 18 times the solar energy required by the entire world. Spread out over the worlds' deserts, that isn't terribly hard to imagine.
Or are you mainly referring to things like energy storage? Because theoretically renewables can provide many times over the energy that we need. Storage and grid management are mainly political will issues (how much do we want to spend, how much will we force energy companies to upgrade), not technical ones.
...because you don't "write" html. you get something else to write it for you.
Hand coding your own HTML pages is a lost art these days.
What sort of systems are you guys involved with that you don't have to manually modify HTML structure to line up with what your CSS/JS guys need or want?
Some HTML output is automated, but you still need a thorough understanding of what the HTML tag options are, what needs to be in the HEAD section, the overall flow of the page html for ADA checking, etc..
I use php, java/jsp, coldfusion, velocity templates/Liferay portal type systems, etc.. and still need to carefully think about html structure in my projects. What sort of workflow using what sort of framework/language allows you to produce a finished and styled web application without tinkering with HTML tags?
"American political norms" have shifted tremendously over the last 30 years. I am of the opinion that the Overton Window has shifted towards the right. We can probably argue all day why/how that happened, but the bottom line is that Reagan would be pretty center... even perhaps slightly liberal on some issues (like immigration) in today's politics.
A tea party person considers Hillary Clinton liberal.
A liberal/moderate person considers Hillary Clinton center.
Mainstream news doesn't really make any fine grained distinctions other than blue/red. So yeah, Hillary is lumped into the 'blue' category, but that is just an arbitrary bucket. In terms of the history of political policies in this country, Hillary is pretty middle of the road. Just like her husband.
I'm sure that Hillary/Bill would have had more liberal policies if they thought they could, but they both seem to be pragmatists and not idealists when it comes to actual actions, not speeches.
Also https://mayday.us/
You must have missed the last election. Democrats were shellacked.
You must have missed the last election. Low turnout, which always favors Republicans, but every minimum wage increase passed, pot legaization passed, person hood amendments failed etc. In other words the liberal agenda made lots of progress. Here's a nice analysis by a GOPer:
"Democrats were shellacked"...through the power of gerrymandering and record low voter turnout. I think we are going to continue to see these contradictory election results (over 50% of a State's population is liberal, but over 50% of a State's elected candidates are conservative) until the districts can be redrawn in 2020. Of course, the Democrats need to have control in 2020 to redraw the boundries.... chicken meet egg.
Hell, we look at the start of society by farming of a carbohydrate source.
Given that modern humans were around for 100,000+ years with little population to show for it, until 10,000-8000 BC'ish when farming took off, says to me that we need to be careful with carbs more than anything. It is any extremely easy way to get a lot of calories fast. That was great for ballooning the population incredibly fast (in evolutionary time frames), but it makes sense to me that it is equally likely to balloon your waistline just as fast.
"Engineering without management is art." -- Jeff Johnson
