Age of consent is a good example of a law we often don't want enforced. Prosecuting two underage people would be ludicrous and so would prosecuting someone who's a few days over for having sex with someone who's a few days under. There's no perfect way to frame this law so we have an age of consent and use some judgement on when it should be enforced.

Immigration is more complicated but if we are having laws then I suspect the best answer is laws that are often not enforced. It's trickier because illegal status leaves you open to exploitation/abuse and creates conditions that trump/etc can exploit. The only good solutions are very welcoming once.

Meh I think merely looking at "should we be flexible in enforcing these laws?" is a narrow way of looking at it.

Currently, the naivitist hardliner Trump, in spite of all this talk about foreigners, keeps asking for visas for foreigners to work for him, because they're cheaper than Americans. ICE raids happen mostly in liberal urban enclaves, not in the Midwest where huge swaths of the farm workers are illegal immigrants because it would devastate the mostly white conservatives who are advocating for mass deportations of immigrants.

Are huge swaths of farm workers in the midwest undocumented? I know chicken farms require lots of labor but corn, soybean, wheat production is all mechanized. When you drive past those fields you never see anyone...or it is one guy driving a tractor.
It's California that requires lots of labor because they have things to pick that can't be harvested mechanically.

I think the ideal is clearly that we have good laws on the books and that they are enforced fairly and consistently. This is not a practical reality, for a variety of reasons, and therefore some flouting of the law is desirable in society.

But when the status quo is cities/states passing their own laws to block the federal government from enforcing its laws, That is probably a sign the current working solution isn’t working at all.

think dairy farms and slaughterhouses.

Sometimes no one is driving the tractor.

Enforcement is a fairly nebulous term as it can mean different behaviors in an array of situational context.

Makes sense. My part of the midwest (central Missouri) has none or few of those and that aspect of midwest agriculture is foriegn to me.

It's inevitable Amazon will have a presence in NYC. Amazon going from a few million sqft of space as an anchor tenant that can transform a neighborhood to a few hundred k sqft in a neighborhood that's already overdeveloped is still a huge loss for NYC.

Kelhus, in the past, have you learned anything about how accurate your "guesses" are?

Also, what the **** are you talking about? Is this what you think "Sanctuary Cities" are? Jesus Christ.

(the weird undercurrent through all of this is the xenophobia allegedly caused by immigration which is the reason to curb immigration is represented here by.... Kelhus himself. Just cut that **** out? How about that as Plan A)

Yeah, no kidding. That is precisely why giving them a billion dollars to set up shop was an incredibly stupid idea.

Why we should have pre filled tax returns and cut out tax software companies entirely. Intuit wants to take their cut regardless of how simple you make taxes and they'll continously find ways to get it


https://www.propublica.org/article/t...ampaign=buffer

Yeah, Intuit got me this year. I didn't want to pay, but I'd already put the time into it and saving a few bucks wasn't worth it

The Atlantic has an interesting profile of Raj Chetty, a Harvard economist who has done a lot of work on mapping intergenerational mobility, some of which I've linked in the past. Pretty good read.

Goes to my theory that a lot of people know you can't use race so they just use "culture" as a stand in.

https://www.vox.com/2019/7/17/206965...nce-2019-trump

The left has no issue painting racism as largely a white american flaw that has, and continues to plague that particular demographic, with the implicit understanding that flaw is not inherent. It's not an unreasonable position.

The issue comes in when you start to address things unique to minorities, especially negatives ones. The left almost always classify such concern with those issues as racist. By and large, unless it has to do with, or the affects of the racism perpetrated by white people, those other issues never get passed "that's racist to say that". The left almost always considers such issues as an attempt to attribute an inherent negative characteristic, when it most cases it's clearly not meant as an inherent characteristic, but rather extrinsic. So, those issues never get discussed.

Why is that?

PS: I'm not proponent of what Wax said in that article

The high-opportunity places, they’ve found, tend to share five qualities: good schools, greater levels of social cohesion, many two-parent families, low levels of income inequality, and little residential segregation, by either class or race. The list is suggestive, but hard to interpret.

For example, the strongest correlation is the number of intact families.

It seems pretty evident that identity politics negatively impacts all of these measures of social cohesion; so it probably shouldn't be too much of a surprise social mobility is at an all time low and income inequality an all time high.

I doubt a sitting President holding rallies to attack his political opponents along identity politics lines is helping very much.

Culture is an easy example because 'culture' is a difficult thing to study, especially when it comes to how people act, are acted on, and react to. It takes a lot of surveying, ethnographic study, etc. But it's used in a lot of 'just so' stories.

Someone will pick some perceived fact for something and then blame the culture with no studying and declare that until they fix that issue they're never live up to what society expects.

It's certainly possible to be concerned about culture or whatever in minority populations but you have to show that you're going to actually put the in the work. It won't stop every malintended comment obviously but at least someone might take that person seriously and not dismiss them.

wtf have I missed?

brexit sorted?

Nope not that, but just about everything else.

any book recommendations on corruption in modern day government? I want to learn how the various pay to play schemes work.

https://www.amazon.com/Corruption-Am.../dp/0674659988

A little older now, but Plunkitt of Tammany Hall is still a classic worth reading.

https://www.marxists.org/reference/a.../tammany-hall/

CALIFORNIA CITIES STRUGGLE WITH SEVERE RAT INFESTATION

Quote:

DEAR CALIFORNIA RESIDENT:
California is being overrun by rodents. Without immediate emergency action by state and local government, we face significant economic costs and risk a public health crisis.
Over the past six months, there have been numerous, shocking accounts of city workers being bitten by rodents, police officers diagnosed with Typhus, and even a rat falling from the ceiling of a restaurant onto the menu of a patron. These incidents all signaled an undeniable problem with the population of rodents in our state.
As a result of these incidents, Reform California commissioned this study, assembled a study team, and surveyed pest control professionals, city workers, and public health experts.
The results are quite concerning. Both in terms of measurement and observation, it is clear that California’s rodent population is exploding.
Worse, as this crisis is just now coming to public light, California politicians are poised to do the worst possible thing: pass a law (AB 1788) to ban the most effective rodent control tools we have!
Without these proven rodent control tools in our arsenal, we may see rodent infestations spread.
While the economic costs to Californians of widespread rodent infestations is significant, the public health risk is even worse.
It is time for state and local government officials to acknowledge this problem and take immediate action to control on the rodent population. Failure to do so will result in severe consequences to residents of our state.
Sincerely,
Carl DeMaio
Chairman
Reform California

SUMMARY OF KEY FINDINGS
• California is experiencing a massive spike in its rodent population that is both measured by available data sets and observed by field personnel
• Pest control professionals and sanitation workers have observed an alarming increase in
Norway rats moving around during the day which is highly abnormal behavior for these species of rodents
• Increase in California’s rodent population is not explained by environmental factors – but is directly related to the elimination of effective rodent control methods and a spike in the homeless population
• Rodent infestations will impose a massive economic cost on California homeowners, businesses, and communities
• Winter is coming: California residents will see increased rodent impacts as weather cools
• Rodent infestations fueling an increase in dangerous diseases such as Typhus – current rate of increase in cases raises concern regarding possible public health epidemic

So sad to see this happening in such a great place.