The Democrat Thread

[Jenksismyhero]

That is nothing to do with it, but, yes I will cry zero tears that someone didn't get into their "dream school" that they were a fringe acceptee for, because they were just as susceptible to another white kid with money taking their spot as to a minority.

 

Diversity at a university is good, kids learn just as much from each other as the uni. Grabbing students from different areas, backgrounds and cultures is absolutely worth it, especially since the success rate of "student with 21 ACT" and "student with 23 ACT" is negligible in difference. Looking at two students with such similar academics in GPA or test scores is just meaningless, it'd be like looking at one baseball player with a 1.6 WAR and another with a 1.5 WAR and saying "clearly 1.6 is better than 1.5, we must go with the first!" That difference is so small to be a fluke, and at the end, they'll go with who is a better fit for the university and their goals.

 

If it was their dream school and did not get in, they can spend a year at a different school, do well, and transfer, where they will find it much easier after all the other freshman have dropped out due to drinking too much.

 

Back to this:

 

1) So long as you recognize you don't truly believe in equal protection and anti-discrimination policies. You, and others, basically ignore that supposed universal truth when it suits your aims. Everyone is equal! Everyone deserves an equal chance! Unless you're white, and there's enough white people already, so it's cool to discriminate against them.

 

2) I agree diversity is a good thing, and that it has value. But interestingly, blacks and hispanics aren't the only minorities out there. Other minorities get to those schools and provide that "diverse" experience without being favored in admissions processes. Schools don't go out of their way to attract under-qualified or barely-qualified asian and indian students in the name of diversity. I agree that step is important, but I don't agree it's the universities responsibility to do that.

 

3) As to the last comment, hey, black kids can just be better at school and read a book about financial aid and get into the school they want! No biggie.

 

 

[Balta1701]

I want to say that ptact mentioned something about GSU considering doing this.

Oregon had a President who tried to do it and was fired like 2 days before I interviewed there. Their trick was going to be setting up an endowment funded by the head of Nike that would fill in the tiny portion the state was contributing. The state got pissed and forced him out, leading to protests and I'm not sure what else.

 

Eventually it's going to happen and once one does it, a whole lot will start trying.

[StrangeSox]

By your logic, you vote for different politicians to influence school policy.

Yes, and? I'm in favor of democratic accountability, especially for public institutions.

 

edit: I should clarify a bit there that I don't think academic decisions should be subject to political pressure or changes. I think where we got off though was the correct idea that public institutions can be unduely influenced by politicians/public officials. While that's true, we also have a direct recourse for that (elections), whereas there's not really anything we can do about private donor influence.

Edited September 3, 2014 by StrangeSox

[StrangeSox]

Johnathan Adler just commented on this case over at the Volokh Conspiracy, and his post contains numerous links to other sources/discussions. Adler's a conservative legal scholar who's work is at the heart of the Halbig challenge to Obamacare's subsidies, so it's not just a bunch of liberal or leftist professors who have strong concerns about UIUC's actions.

 

Adler quotes from FIRE, an organization concerned with free speech on campuses that more often than not takes up conservative causes:

 

The university forbids “personal and disrespectful words” that “demean and abuse” “viewpoints themselves”? Is this meant to be serious? If I am an Illinois student or professor, am I actually to be prohibited from “disrespectfully” “abusing” ideas with which I disagree? What about racism, fascism, or communism? What if I am “disrespectful” of a colleague or fellow student’s belief that the world is flat, or that the Sun circles the Earth? What if I “demeaned” another student’s racist tweets about Chancellor Wise?

 

Does anyone think for one second that Chancellor Wise or anyone else at the University of Illinois would have a problem with demeaning, abusing, or disrespecting such viewpoints? Of course not. That would be ridiculous. Vehement challenges to these and other viewpoints would (and should) absolutely be tolerated at Illinois and at virtually any other college in this nation, and everyone knows it.

 

If this statement represents the best defense the University of Illinois can muster for its actions, the university has some serious problems.

 

[cabiness42]

There are plenty of examples of professors out there who continue to hold tenured positions despite saying awful things. Either way, I don't think donors should be able to use their wealth to create pressure over the school, period.

 

This guy said some things on twitter, not to a group of people directly. The admin then reacted, sure, but they flailed around a lot and have offered several different flimsy excuses for their actions. As far as I'm aware, this doesn't very often at all in academia, and when it does, there's usually a lot of backlash.

 

Well, I've never heard of this kind of thing happening at ND with regards to an academic position, but there are hundreds of people in administrative positions at ND because of connections to wealthy donors.

[StrangeSox]

Well, I've never heard of this kind of thing happening at ND with regards to an academic position, but there are hundreds of people in administrative positions at ND because of connections to wealthy donors.

Oh absolutely. That's how the boards at most of these schools get staffed.

 

But when it comes to free speech and academic positions, there's actually a lot of case law that says public schools cannot base hiring/firing decisions on viewpoints. Far from happening all the time, like jenks said, it's actually explicitly illegal to do so.

[cabiness42]

Oh absolutely. That's how the boards at most of these schools get staffed.

 

But when it comes to free speech and academic positions, there's actually a lot of case law that says public schools cannot base hiring/firing decisions on viewpoints. Far from happening all the time, like jenks said, it's actually explicitly illegal to do so.

 

Well, I would guess you might have a difficult time finding many, if any, people in academic positions at Berkeley that has ever publicly expressed a conservative viewpoint.

[StrangeSox]

Well, I would guess you might have a difficult time finding many, if any, people in academic positions at Berkeley that has ever publicly expressed a conservative viewpoint.

I'm not sure what Berkeley has to do with this, but John "torture memos" Yoo has been a law professor there since the 90's.

[ptatc]

You do know that most (if not all?) public schools have had their funding cut repeatedly over the years and that rising tuition rates reflect that, right? There are other causes as well (bloated admin salaries and head counts), but loss of public funding is a major part.

The schools in Illinois have had the funding dramatically cut (our budget is equal to what we received in 2001) and cannot raise tuition very much. This is why you see schools like UIUC bring in a great number of foreign students, they are not subject to that tuition cap.

 

Also the way schools received their "budgeted money" is not like the real world. The state say you get X amount this year. However the way it works is that the school pays a bill and must submit a request for reimbursement from the state for the budgeted money. The state then usually waits months to reimburse the school and at the end of the budget cycle states" we decided not give reimburse your full allotted budgeted money." So the schools can usually depend on a 10-15% decrease in whatever budget was promised.

 

When I started in the mid-90's the state supplied 80% of the total budget, now they are down to 25%.

 

As I say we've gone from a state school to a state supported school to a state affiliated school.

[Balta1701]

A Fox & Friends laugh line on the Ray Rice video: "I think the message is take the stairs".

 

[StrangeSox]

Pretty shocked by the Willie Horton style ads from Rauner.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion...0922-story.html

[bmags]

Those are ridiculous. He should have continued his "I'm a likeable guy and want to help" rather than this garbage.

[StrangeSox]

The other one tying him to Blago is corny but the "Quinn let this man out of jail so he could rape your daughter" ad wasn't something I expected in Illinois in 2014.

[bmags]

It honestly wasn't something I even expected out of Rauner. I thought he has played this thing absolutely perfectly, and then that.

 

[StrangeSox]

I can't imagine it actually being effective these days. It's so over-the-top that it seems like a parody.

 

Related, Pat Quinn's grass-mowing commercial is pretty dumb.

[StrangeSox]

[southsider2k5]

 

I'd bet there is a really strong relation to workforce participation rates and government spending there.

[StrangeSox]

Sort of

 

 

 

Do you imagine there's a causal relationship there?

[southsider2k5]

Absolutely.

[StrangeSox]

Care to expand on it a little more?

 

I think I get what you're driving at with the labor force participation rate. There's a bigger supply of labor, so you can keep wages down when everyone is fighting just to have some sort of a job. The mobility of capital to go look for labor in places that a far, far cheaper and with much lower labor and environmental standards seems like it'd be a bigger factor than US workforce participation, though. Opening the manufacturing labor market to Polynesia, India, China, etc. means a lot more people than a few percent more Americans. Without digging into the data closer, I'd also wonder if workforce participation actually lagged what we see in the first graph I posted, possibly indicating that incomes were being squeezed or frozen so more people had to find work to support their families.

 

I don't see the causal link for government spending, though.

[bmags]

I'd be interested to see what that looks like from 91-94 during a somewhat similar credit situation, also 32-35

[southsider2k5]

Both fall under the same ideas. Less labor force participation and more government spending means more dependence on the government for income. There is no wealth building if you are depending on the government for your income. There is no wage growth that could outpace inflation. The more and more people who move that way, the less and less people there are who have the opportunity to accumulate wealth.

 

Plus as government spending has become a larger and larger portion of GDP, extra spending has less and less of a stimulative effect on the economy, which is born out with the government spending more and more for recover after each subsequent recession and the recoveries being shallower and shallower.

 

You are also balancing the economic recovery on a smaller and smaller portion of those who are working and paying taxes, meaning that their problems affect a larger and larger portion of the economy, meaning recessions will be deeper and longer to recover from.

[Balta1701]

Both fall under the same ideas. Less labor force participation and more government spending means more dependence on the government for income. There is no wealth building if you are depending on the government for your income. There is no wage growth that could outpace inflation. The more and more people who move that way, the less and less people there are who have the opportunity to accumulate wealth.

 

Plus as government spending has become a larger and larger portion of GDP, extra spending has less and less of a stimulative effect on the economy, which is born out with the government spending more and more for recover after each subsequent recession and the recoveries being shallower and shallower.

 

You are also balancing the economic recovery on a smaller and smaller portion of those who are working and paying taxes, meaning that their problems affect a larger and larger portion of the economy, meaning recessions will be deeper and longer to recover from.

But just as an example, the last "expansion" was the exact opposite of what you said. Government spending as a share of GDP was lower in the 2002-2007 expansion than it was during any time since before the 1980 recession and at the same time, the growth was much more concentrated at the top than any time beforehand. The 1992-1997 expansion saw decreases in government spending compared to the previous expansion and increases in inequality.

 

Government might play a role in this by rigging the game in favor of the rich as laws get easier to buy, but varying government spending levels from one expansion to another do not support the trend you're saying exists. The trend in increasing inequality continues regardless of whether government has expanded or contracted.

[bmags]

But just as an example, the last "expansion" was the exact opposite of what you said. Government spending as a share of GDP was lower in the 2002-2007 expansion than it was during any time since before the 1980 recession and at the same time, the growth was much more concentrated at the top than any time beforehand. The 1992-1997 expansion saw decreases in government spending compared to the previous expansion and increases in inequality.

 

Government might play a role in this by rigging the game in favor of the rich as laws get easier to buy, but varying government spending levels from one expansion to another do not support the trend you're saying exists. The trend in increasing inequality continues regardless of whether government has expanded or contracted.

 

Growth in income. It was still fine because people accumulated so much wealth in their homes. It was a great 5 year run.

[StrangeSox]

Both fall under the same ideas. Less labor force participation and more government spending means more dependence on the government for income. There is no wealth building if you are depending on the government for your income. There is no wage growth that could outpace inflation. The more and more people who move that way, the less and less people there are who have the opportunity to accumulate wealth.

 

Plus as government spending has become a larger and larger portion of GDP, extra spending has less and less of a stimulative effect on the economy, which is born out with the government spending more and more for recover after each subsequent recession and the recoveries being shallower and shallower.

 

You are also balancing the economic recovery on a smaller and smaller portion of those who are working and paying taxes, meaning that their problems affect a larger and larger portion of the economy, meaning recessions will be deeper and longer to recover from.

 

I think there's two things wrong here. First, looking at the income % in the first chart, we see the shares of the bottom 90% steadily decline and the shares of the 10% steadily increase. But for labor force participation, we see a steady increase up to a peak in the late 90's. If dropping labor force participation was a driver of the income %, we should be seeing them moving in the same directions, but they're inverse.

 

The second thing wrong is what I see as an assumption that government spending cannot build wealth. That would take longer than I have right now to unpack, but I'll just note that by visual approximation, the correlation just isn't there.

Edited September 25, 2014 by StrangeSox