There are times when I don't try to explain someone's actions, because they are acting stupid. Someone who tries to understand the story of this idea not being used might have difficulty understanding these parts of it.
For example: "Why economists are wrong". I said they only want to make the numbers go up. 'The numbers' is best interpreted in this case as GDP. If this idea reduces unemployment, why would it not raise GDP? Because I think the method for calculating GDP incorrectly takes into account higher qualities of goods, such that lower inequality would lead to a lower GDP, because people might purchase the same quantity of a high quality of a good but its price would go down.
When inequality only goes up, as it has in the US since ~1980, this error in the GDP calculation just means that measured GDP growth is a bit higher every year. Few people in the US would complain about that; people like to boast that the US has the highest nominal GDP, though it fell behind China in purchasing power parity GDP in 2014.
I don't think most economists would be aware of this error, if I am right that it exists (and it might be wrong). So if an economist did not think this would happen, then I was giving them more credit than they deserved, making them out to be smarter than they are.
If I did something stupid that had serious consequences, I would want other people to point it out. But I am in no danger of being seen as less smart than average, for anyone who knows something about me (a random person, like a police officer, might still make this mistake). Other people might consider themselves to have this risk, so they would not want people to point out stupid things that they do.
Pey has a memory of when she was playing original World of Warcraft on her older brother's account, ~20 years ago when she was like 12 years old, and she did something that made another player ask her, "are you stupid or something?" (I never shared the idea with Pey.)
Ellie retweeted this: https://nitter.net/FamedCelebrity/status/2046526221245382871
(I use Firefox's Reader mode, the page icon on the right side of the URL bar, to avoid the signup banner, or equivalently prepending 'about:reader?url=' to the URL.)
From that article I also saw Louisiana dad executed his seven children and nephew in rage after wife discovered his disgusting betrayal, relatives say
The article say it's "one of the deadliest family massacres in American history", otherwise I wouldn't mention it. Timeline:
2012: Snow and Elkins, aged ~17, start a relationship. Youth unemployment at 16%, Unemployment Level/Job Openings: Total Nonfarm is around 3.3.
2013: Elkins, aged ~18, joins the National Guard as a Signal Support System Specialist and a Fire Support Specialist.
2015: Their relationship ends (aged ~20).
2016: Baby drama and legal conflicts over paternity (Snow and Elkins are ~21 years old).
~2019: Shaneiqua Pugh's first baby.
~2021: Christina Snow's third baby (Snow and Elkins are ~26 years old).
The timeline on the day of the deaths is a bit confused: did he Elkins kill his children, then go to the other property and shoot Snow, and then return to the first property to shoot Pugh?
Despite not knowing this, I conclude that Elkins killed his children because he was convinced by his wife's actions that he was a bad person, and he thought the world would be better off without anyone who was similar to him. He was killed by police, instead of killing himself, because he didn't want other people to think that this was his motivation, which a few more people might have thought if he had killed himself, although in both cases most people would just think that he was a bad person who wanted to cause harm to others.
Compare 2022 Nong Bua Lamphu massacre where most people who died were not related to the perpetrator: someone who criticized the way other people acted and wanted to harm them, by killing the ones they cared about most. 2024 Zhuhai car attack: "Police say he was upset about his divorce", which I interpret as being at least partly about his wife's actions. "Most of the victims were middle-aged or elderly people in exercise groups", and the fact is (look at people ignoring Covid-19) that people care less about old people dying than young people dying, and yet the the perpetrator chose to attack old people instead of young people at a school.
To summarize, Elkins: "I am bad."
Nong Bua Lamphu massacre: "Society is bad."
2024 Zhuhai car attack: "My wife is bad."
The solution to any problem could be said to be for people to not be bad. People might disagree with the 'blame' in the last two cases, but few would disagree that Elkins was bad. So, how to prevent someone like Elkins from being bad? Exercise for the reader.
First article, Spain's immigrants. Someone in the replies on Chirp Club mentions youth unemployment, but few people ever think of linking data. Without data, people can just say, "well maybe this person is wrong" and move on to the next tweet, 0.5 seconds later.
25% youth unemployment in 2025 is certainly much better than 55% in 2013. The latest figure for the US is 8.5%; recent peaks were 19.5% in Apr 2010 and the brief Covid-19 lockdown spike of 27.5% in 2020, which lasted a couple months. So for about 14 years, Spain had worse youth unemployment than the highest level the US reached during its lockdowns for the still-ongoing Covid-19 pandemic.
So how can Spain's Prime Minister get away with the following?
Sanchez described the drive in a letter addressed to citizens published on Tuesday on X as not only an act of justice but also an economic necessity.
'Spain is ageing... Without more people working and contributing to the economy, our prosperity slows, and our public services suffer,' he wrote.
[...]
But with about 90 per cent of new jobs going to immigrants, income per person has barely grown in Spain.
Because applicants need to show a clean criminal record, so the government can claim that crime won't increase from the policy, and it's like having more slaves. The poor are harmed: people who compete with immigrants for jobs. The rich may seem to benefit, as they become richer while prices for many things do not increase.
Economists sometimes try to show that inequality causes harm to a society, with worse outcomes on many measured metrics. I won't bother to look any of that up. If you filter out crime, few negative outcomes remain.
The question then becomes, what kind of society do you want to have? It's no longer a simple matter of "everyone would prefer it this way." There are people who seem to want inequality, even if it comes with effects like "the majority of voters think that job creation is more important than dealing with climate change", and others who think that inequality is a bad outcome. It makes the future uncertain and subject to the influence of individual people who decide that one outcome is better. I don't want to say "take a side", because it implies that one thing, like inequality, is the only important topic: in reality, people may disagree on one thing, but agree on many other things, so no one is really on the opposite side from someone else.
Spain fertility rate: 1.12 births per woman (2023).
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