Post a controversial opinion

i care about all those things and realize they aren't on a continuous path of improvement. i even have a part time contract job studying things related to that. like here's a graph i made today that charts real weekly earnings of the bottom 10% of workers (horizontal axis) against the share of the income distribution held by people making 200% of the median income (vertical axis) (in Canada)

http://i.imgur.com/jPgU54y.jpg

and yet... i'm still optimistic. sometimes i think focusing too much on the plight of workers in the rich countries misses the forest for the trees. like, have you seen this graph by branko milanovic?

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CUXukb8WUAA-AHj.jpg:large

so much of the economic anxiety you read about in the guardian or new york times is worrying about people between the 85th and 95th percentiles of global earnings--while people in the lower percentiles have done really good!

i don't wanna get super into this cause last time i came out in favor of modernity on ilx shakey called me an idiot and hurt my feelings, but ya idk i think things are ok

that graph above is pretty crazy actually: over the same period the bottom 10% of workers' weekly real wages increased by 15$, the share of total earnings of people who make double median income increased by 6%

i'd like to see the version of that graph that uses the same units for both axes (either real earnings by $, or share of total earnings as %)

i can hook you up no problem

wait which one, branko's or mine?

last time i came out in favor of modernity on ilx shakey called me an idiot and hurt my feelings

no memory of this, but I apologize for hurtin yr feelings

thank you

xpost yours!

and actually, i guess you can deduce the % just by what's on the graph. if weekly earnings for 10th percentile workers went from 245 to 260, then they increased by...6%? so the weekly wage increased by 6% for both 10th percentile workers and people making 200% of the median income? i'm probably fucking something up.

yeah it's a weird graph cause it's levels on one axis and a share on the other, i was inspired by the graph in this blog post http://crookedtimber.org/2015/08/12/up-and-down-left-and-right/ but i don't have gini (and i don't really like gini) so i used high earners' income share. i just finished cleaning the data for this project and that was one of the first graphs i shot out. pretty pumped to dig in

i do love a good graph! just wanted to make sure i was interpreting it correctly

can't stand stevie wonder's harmonica

adult people probably should not care about star wars

deep dish pizza is good

I don't care about Star Wars that's for sure.

Marc Maron is a better comedian than Louis CK

The US Constitution really does guarantee the individual right to own firearms so even though it leads to the deaths of thousands we're stuck with it

can't stand stevie wonder's harmonica

Insufficiently controversial tbh.

All of Lindsay Buckingham's songs on Tusk, except for Tusk, are underworked coke-addled sketches that go nowhere. the raspy banjo sound is horrible.

Better.

It say controversial, not scary.

Stevie Wonder's harmonica is tolerable. He doesn't use it on every song. DYLAN, on the other hand, should have given the harp a rest more often.

In health care, rationing/death panels are not only good but necessary. I'm down with single-payer health care being provided for all, but you can't get there without triage and rationing. Collectively we pay like a gazillion dollars a day to keep oldsters alive for slightly longer. A fraction of those dollars could be vaccinating children / feeding hungry people for far more long-term benefit. Kill granny. Yes, even mine.

OTM

Ask me again in 40 years, but I think I would volunteer to live until a certain set age, at which point I'd be "sent to live on a farm". I don't want to be an ornery oldster tenaciously clinging to life out of spite. And having an endpoint in sight would significantly reduce anxiety about when the sweet embrace of death would finally claim my shambling, decrepit shell of a body.

we should have an auction. the highest bidders get to avoid kiling their grannies

you've got it backwards

Their grannies get to kill the highest bidders.

'death panels' not overly controversial depending on your country and how often they get referred to as 'death panels'.

'Death panel' sounds awful and it's so misleading. It's not really a panel so much as a giant pit that they throw you into.

Of course they already exist and they're called "insurance companies," but why not get it out in the open?

over here they're called NICE

there should be plenty of money for the government to help old people longer AND help children and impoverished people. but it doesn't work because taxes are evil and when the government helps too many people we teeter on the edge of communism and the apocalypse.

Wealth really only has meaning when others are living in the dirt.

just make euthanasia non-taboo idk

All of Lindsay Buckingham's songs on Tusk, except for Tusk, are underworked coke-addled sketches that go nowhere. the raspy banjo sound is horrible.

― ledge, Thursday, December 10, 2015 5:55 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is what makes them so good, though

most stand-up comedy is lame and not very funny

not remotely controversial

understatement maybe

definitely

I really annoyed a normy with that opinion a few months ago, had some jibe about how I must not have a sense of humour or something stupid.

i think even stand-up comedians would agree? my impression is they generate an awful lot of material that gets discarded bc it doesn't work when they try it out on stage.

what's a 'normy'?

https://s3.amazonaws.com/rapgenius/norm3.jpg

a normy is someone who wears nonbranded clothing with solid colors so the world's most hated tech companies can't use algorithms to identify their fashion preferences and sell them to other companies without the normy's knowledge

i think we can all agree on that

http://www.bedlammag.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Angus_Black_and_White.jpg

those are norms

normys are people without substance abuse / mental health problems

I didn't mean that brimstead, I meant "normal" aka dull, though it would also work with that other definition tbh

lol brimstead

there are no conspiracies

Natural rights is simple nonsense: natural and imprescriptible rights, rhetorical nonsense — nonsense upon stilts.

nonsense, when walking on stilts, actually becomes true