urbanoid Posted April 25, 2023 Posted April 25, 2023 1 minute ago, Josh said: Fair enough, but the US has always been a mongrel nation of third worlds. If you ever come here. Take a walk through Queens. Jackson Heights has a a little Nepal. Why? I have no idea. But we can stamp out Americans all day and skip the the 18 year entry cost. Always? I'd say it was more of a 'mongrel nation of Europeans' until 1960s, others weren't really invited until then and if they were it was in small numbers. 1950s US was 85-88% non-hispanic white and about the vast majority of the rest it couldn't really be said that their ancestors have immigrated.
Josh Posted April 26, 2023 Posted April 26, 2023 (edited) 2 hours ago, urbanoid said: Always? I'd say it was more of a 'mongrel nation of Europeans' until 1960s, others weren't really invited until then and if they were it was in small numbers. 1950s US was 85-88% non-hispanic white and about the vast majority of the rest it couldn't really be said that their ancestors have immigrated. But after 1960s, the US let everyone in, obviously to the consternation of some. My point is eventually an immigrant in the US will make a niki Hali or even a Ted Cruz. The US can make Americans indefinitely; China cannot. At least, not in the way it pictures itself now as Han Chinese. If the U.S. wants more Americans, it can make more. Culturally we just get more food options. But despite the current vibe against immigration, it is always how the US filled its ranks and legal immigration still ensures that the U.S. will never depopulate, and if it does, all it has to do is change the rules. ETA: and also there was a time when the Irish and Italians weren’t considered “white”. “American” and “white” are clearly sliding scales. Edited April 26, 2023 by Josh
Josh Posted April 26, 2023 Posted April 26, 2023 I’m riding on a Baltic ferry with a Burger King on board. I fucking hate US fast food. But are you going to tell me we can’t make an American out of anything?
NickM Posted April 26, 2023 Posted April 26, 2023 6 hours ago, Josh said: Fair enough, but the US has always been a mongrel nation of third worlds. If you ever come here. Take a walk through Queens. Jackson Heights has a a little Nepal. Why? I have no idea. But we can stamp out Americans all day and skip the the 18 year entry cost. No no no, old chap! Per my commie relatives during the cold war, the US is a nation of criminal syphilitics and mongrels...keep your rhetoric up to date.
DB Posted April 27, 2023 Posted April 27, 2023 On 3/29/2023 at 7:53 PM, Skywalkre said: Only a third of a way through this but some interesting takeaways from this guy. The opening clip had me hooked with that statistic he throws out. Where I'm at currently he's talking about how it's not that women don't want children. Instead, most claim they do and it just doesn't happen for various reasons. That's new to me. My understanding was that a large swathe of women simply didn't want kids. Instead, it turns out most do but for so many the time is just never 'right' and it doesn't happen at all. His bit about the numbers... and how quickly you get a halving of birth rates based on birth rate was also enlightening. Seems very likely we'll see some near collapse conditions in some of the countries with the lowest birth rates in the next two decades or so. The consequences of the desire to delay pregnancy for career or lifestyle reasons is mentioned in just about every one of the hookup culture videos I've seen over the last year. Quite why it comes as a shock to mid 30s women that the time bomb has been ticking when they've certainly been told it many times just highlights the lack of logic behind what is laughingly called a decision making process.
Josh Posted April 27, 2023 Posted April 27, 2023 2 hours ago, DB said: The consequences of the desire to delay pregnancy for career or lifestyle reasons is mentioned in just about every one of the hookup culture videos I've seen over the last year. Quite why it comes as a shock to mid 30s women that the time bomb has been ticking when they've certainly been told it many times just highlights the lack of logic behind what is laughingly called a decision making process. To be fair, women are under a unique amount of pressure in that regard. It’s a little easier for men to spend five minutes producing a child and getting on with their life. If a nation wants more children it is going to have to make it a fairly risk free proposition from several different directions-career, health, etc. to the extent women get paid less in the US, it is basically all mothers-the average single girl can almost keep up with a man. Motherhood, healthcare, and education are huge resource sinks, and it’s no wonder some people put it off and some people simply don’t want the hassle.
DB Posted April 27, 2023 Posted April 27, 2023 It's an irrelevant argument, Josh, and not a any kind of counter to the point that needs to be made - there is a biological imperative at play. You get to pick one - having kids, or having that hedonistic responsibility-free lifestyle you think you deserve. Pick one, but understand what you've chosen and don't become twisted and bitter about it when you can't have that cake and eat it too. Also, men are on the hook for at least until any offspring reaches majority, whether they wanted a kid or not, and that's atopic also covered in the hookup culture videos - women with kids are a protected class and men suffer for it.
Josh Posted April 28, 2023 Posted April 28, 2023 I think the relevant point is that for many women there is simply never a “good time” for children and that is why it gets put off, even when it’s desired. You can make it is easier or accept the tumbling birth rate.
DB Posted April 28, 2023 Posted April 28, 2023 So, they're in denial. Maybe they can't have that cake and eat it too. Life is hard, the sky is blue, etc. Nobody likes to make hard choices, and failing to pick either of these means you don't get to have kids (in the grand statistical manner, of course, individual decisions and outcomes are irrelevant here). Thing is, when you look at the (often) vapid thots being lectured to by Brian on the @whatever videos, you can see how some of them come to the realisation that what they're being told is right, but they just glaze over and reject it because "it's not fair" or some other irrational nonsense, whilst insisting that they're being gaslighted.
Tim the Tank Nut Posted April 28, 2023 Posted April 28, 2023 but "feelings"! To me it ties in with so much other debate about reality. You can "be anything you want to be". It's just not true. It never was and it never will be true. I WANT to be a starship captain. My problem is that it isn't a real thing. It doesn't stop me wanting it but I recognize it isn't real. Women got what they wanted.
DB Posted April 29, 2023 Posted April 29, 2023 Thing is that women have been told so often that men have things easier, that the reason they don't have that idyllic lifestyle is because of men's oppression of women and so on that they believe it to be true. And when they go out and try to take all that good stuff for themselves, they find out that the world isn't fair, that life is hard and that's one reason why men have a suicide rate that's multiple times that of women.
Josh Posted April 29, 2023 Posted April 29, 2023 On 4/28/2023 at 11:06 AM, DB said: So, they're in denial. Maybe they can't have that cake and eat it too. Life is hard, the sky is blue, etc. Nobody likes to make hard choices, and failing to pick either of these means you don't get to have kids (in the grand statistical manner, of course, individual decisions and outcomes are irrelevant here). Thing is, when you look at the (often) vapid thots being lectured to by Brian on the @whatever videos, you can see how some of them come to the realisation that what they're being told is right, but they just glaze over and reject it because "it's not fair" or some other irrational nonsense, whilst insisting that they're being gaslighted. Honestly I don’t particularly think there’s a problem that needs to fixed as much as a need to prepare economically for the inevitable outcome of depopulation. Moreover in the US, changes to immigration can likely solve the workforce issue quite easily for far less money than making parenting more attractive.
DB Posted April 30, 2023 Posted April 30, 2023 Give AI and robots another decade and the productivity problem goes away, right? Then the senile old folk can be cared for by robots and nobody will have to work for a living either. The wonders of the true post scarcity society...
Josh Posted April 30, 2023 Posted April 30, 2023 It seems more likely everyone is just out of a job and wealth gets further concentrated. More over while I can believe AI will replace some office work, physical automation doesn’t seem to be moving forward in the same leaps and bounds.
Detonable Posted April 30, 2023 Posted April 30, 2023 On 4/3/2023 at 3:36 PM, DB said: This overlaps strongly with the other discussion about relationships between women and men. More women are competing in the jobs market than in previous generations. For women to be equally successful (given an otherwise level playing field) in any job, they will have to work as long and as hard as successful men do. As a consequence, they cannot afford to maintain that level of commitment and take two years or more out to have two kids in their early careers. When they finally notice the ticking time bomb that is the exponential decrease in fertility with age, they find themselves in a position where the men they want to have kids with aren't interested in a "boss bitch" pushing 40, so they get one or none children and there you go. Yes, this is broad brush, and implicitly covers nominally "white collar" work, and the social demographic that is usually associated with that, but that's the demographic where the children aren't being born - blue collar and welfare seems to be able to pump out the worthless mouths just fine. Spot on regarding welfare families. I think in the nearby city (Baltimore) about 40% of school students are truant throughput much of the year. Regarding blue collar men, my son graduated from high school last year. Many of his classmates had started trades in high school and are now apprentice mechanics, plumbers, etc. They are making decent money (although at the bottom of their pay band), have no college expenses, and will have 4 years of income under their belt by the time the college students start working. Their blue collar parents did just fine.
Detonable Posted April 30, 2023 Posted April 30, 2023 Regarding the very low Italian birth rate… To me that is surprising because of the culture of the Catholic Church, plus also I think Italian men have a strong reverence for their mothers. I wonder what’s happening there. For the high Czech birth rate could it be partly that Czech women are smoking hot?
urbanoid Posted April 30, 2023 Posted April 30, 2023 30 minutes ago, Detonable said: Regarding the very low Italian birth rate… To me that is surprising because of the culture of the Catholic Church, plus also I think Italian men have a strong reverence for their mothers. I wonder what’s happening there. For the high Czech birth rate could it be partly that Czech women are smoking hot? Actually the birth rate in 'Catholic' countries is lower than European average - Italy, Spain, Poland, Portugal, I culd go onand on...
Angrybk Posted April 30, 2023 Posted April 30, 2023 Most of the high-powered career women I knew who had kids in their late '30s took lots of fertility drugs and now they have twins.
Angrybk Posted April 30, 2023 Posted April 30, 2023 (edited) On 4/25/2023 at 2:56 PM, urbanoid said: Always? I'd say it was more of a 'mongrel nation of Europeans' until 1960s, others weren't really invited until then and if they were it was in small numbers. 1950s US was 85-88% non-hispanic white and about the vast majority of the rest it couldn't really be said that their ancestors have immigrated. Yeah but back then, European immigrants were seen as very different based on the countries they came from (it wasn't like they were all Generic European People), and subject to the same prejudices. English and Irish in NYC f*cking hated each other (ref the Civil War Draft Riots), Germans wore weird clothes but didn't cause any trouble so they were okay, Italians were all lazy criminals, Jews were greedy and untrustworthy, Poles were stupid bricklayers, etc. USA has thousands of ethnic jokes about various European immigrants, even Scandinavians! Also Texas has a longstanding and huge Mexican-descended community whose families have been here for longer than a lot of "white" people and quite often vote Republican. California's full of Asian immigrants whose families have been here for quite a long time (the only good part about the Vietnam War is that we got an influx of Boat People who turned out to be major assets, after the second generation they're mostly computer programmers and surgeons and stuff). IMHO we've always been an immigrant nation and that's how we've prospered. The answer is to figure out some intelligent policy sh*t and focus more on melting pot vs salad bowl stuff. Edited April 30, 2023 by Angrybk
Skywalkre Posted April 30, 2023 Author Posted April 30, 2023 On 4/25/2023 at 5:19 PM, Josh said: The US can make Americans indefinitely; China cannot. At least, not in the way it pictures itself now as Han Chinese. While the US can keep making Americans through immigration... this is still bad for the countries these immigrants are coming from and even moreso in a world with shrinking populations across the board (even in 3rd world countries eventually). If you follow Zeihan he talks about this and highlights how from an American perspective this is great... because with globalization decreasing and America sitting either directly on or with good ties to countries with all essential resources needed to keep its economy going we'll be fine. The rest of the world... well...
Angrybk Posted April 30, 2023 Posted April 30, 2023 On 4/27/2023 at 10:38 PM, Josh said: I think the relevant point is that for many women there is simply never a “good time” for children and that is why it gets put off, even when it’s desired. You can make it is easier or accept the tumbling birth rate. The kinda ironic part about feminism is that the "never a good time" stuff applies mostly for women who want to have high-powered careers. If the tradeoff is that you can be a stay-at-home mom with a wage-earner husband and have to give up your job at Burger King, it's a lot more attractive than giving up your rewarding corporate-lawyer job.
Skywalkre Posted April 30, 2023 Author Posted April 30, 2023 On 4/27/2023 at 12:25 PM, Josh said: If a nation wants more children it is going to have to make it a fairly risk free proposition from several different directions-career, health, etc. to the extent women get paid less in the US, it is basically all mothers-the average single girl can almost keep up with a man. Per the bolded bit in the US and UK for sure women in their 20s aren't keeping up - they've clearly passed men at this point. The breakdown of women and men getting degrees is apparently approaching 60:40 now (don't quote me on the specific ration but it's well past 50:50). And folks like Jordan Peterson were apparently wrong about what they're getting degrees in. Peterson always argued (supposedly from data from Nordic countries) that women tended to get degrees in fields that were more... feminine. Apparently the latest data shows women now outpacing men in STEM degrees and other more traditionally male areas. The above graduation rates are apparently from the US and UK. I'd be curious if they're the same in all Western nations and if Peterson's Nordic anecdote was from a time when rates had just hit parity (but were trending in the direction we're now seeing in the US and UK and that was an incorrect conclusion he made).
Angrybk Posted April 30, 2023 Posted April 30, 2023 10 minutes ago, Skywalkre said: While the US can keep making Americans through immigration... this is still bad for the countries these immigrants are coming from and even moreso in a world with shrinking populations across the board (even in 3rd world countries eventually). If you follow Zeihan he talks about this and highlights how from an American perspective this is great... because with globalization decreasing and America sitting either directly on or with good ties to countries with all essential resources needed to keep its economy going we'll be fine. The rest of the world... well... Yeah but I'm patriotic and don't care too much about that sh*t. I've got no problem with us giving human beings better lives and having them be loyal citizens. I do have a lot of sympathy with the counter-argument that libs only care about getting new tech-bros and having new interesting ethnic restaurants (because the blue-state experience of immigration is very different from the red-state experience).
Skywalkre Posted April 30, 2023 Author Posted April 30, 2023 On 4/29/2023 at 11:03 AM, DB said: Thing is that women have been told so often that men have things easier, that the reason they don't have that idyllic lifestyle is because of men's oppression of women and so on that they believe it to be true. And when they go out and try to take all that good stuff for themselves, they find out that the world isn't fair, that life is hard and that's one reason why men have a suicide rate that's multiple times that of women. There is some truth to the first point. If anyone wants to hear a very well researched perspective on this issue find any of the plethora of podcasts/interviews with professor Scott Gallloway out of NYU. He's made it his own little crusade to discuss the plight of young men in this country (and the western world). So, where I was getting at with my comment... Galloway touched on this in a recent interview where he was talking about the developmental limitations men have in modern western society (basically college comes too early for men developmentally). The interviewer asked if men had these limitations why didn't women surpass them sooner? Simple answer - blatant sexism. Now that that's removed women are shooting past men at a remarkable rate and we're not sure where it's going to stop. As to the second point you made... one of these podcasts I just listened to touched the fact that women aged 40-45 are taking the most antidepressants than any other 5 years grouping of men and women. Take a wild guess why that is...
Angrybk Posted April 30, 2023 Posted April 30, 2023 (edited) 3 hours ago, Detonable said: Spot on regarding welfare families. I think in the nearby city (Baltimore) about 40% of school students are truant throughput much of the year. Regarding blue collar men, my son graduated from high school last year. Many of his classmates had started trades in high school and are now apprentice mechanics, plumbers, etc. They are making decent money (although at the bottom of their pay band), have no college expenses, and will have 4 years of income under their belt by the time the college students start working. Their blue collar parents did just fine. Used to live a block away from a working-class Brooklyn high school that got a lot of sh*t for being lower-performing, fewer kids sent to college etc. I used to get beers with their choir director(!) who told me "no way, those kids are all doing great now, they're all Lexus mechanics making six figures at 20!" Their vocational ed stuff was incredible, it was literally called Brooklyn Automotive High School. They had a bunch of cars in the back of the school they'd make the kids try to fix up. Edited April 30, 2023 by Angrybk
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