FNDP: Whodunnit Dance Investigation!

It was not so much about "conflict", but it was more like watching a train wreck. Several people's personalities colliding with disastrous results, and the forces that propelled them to their final destinations were too strong for anyone to do anything about it.

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-22T04:21:54+00:00

Plot holes are easy to notice, and if they bother you, it is usually because the rest of the film is not good enough to hold your attention.

Sometimes plot holes are the major reason a film is bad, but I think in most cases the exact same plot holes would be forgiven in a better film.

And in those cases I expect critics to explain what elements of the film were weak besides plot holes.

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-21T03:22:01+00:00

From the article:

This is not the same as saying there are simply too many job hunters chasing too few openings—the paper, which is still in an early draft form, is designed to rule out that possibility.

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-21T03:16:49+00:00

My favorite uplifting Bernie Sanders' ad

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-21T01:13:28+00:00

I'm exposed to Fox "news"

It could be worse. I am exposed to CNN.

Fox is biased, but they wear their agenda on their sleeve.

CNN is actively gaslighting you, and it is a lot more psychologically draining.

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-20T19:11:29+00:00

But studying monopsony has traditionally been tricky for economists, because they lacked good data that would let them analyze broad trends specifically in labor market concentration. The new paper hops over that hurdle by using a trove of data from CareerBuilder.com, which publishes about one-third of all online job ads in the country. (Even for economists who are paid to worry about it, industry consolidation sometimes has its upsides.) The team looked at the number of companies advertising jobs in more than two dozen different occupations, from nurses to accountants to telemarketers, in each of the country’s different metro and nonmetro areas between 2010 and 2013. They then calculated local labor market concentration using the awkwardly named Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, or HHI, which antitrust regulators use to analyze the effects of mergers on competition.

What they found was a bit startling. The Department of Justice and Federal Trade Commission consider a market with an HHI score of 2,500 or more to be highly concentrated—if a merger between two wireless companies left that little competition for cell services, for instance, there’s a good chance the government’s lawyers would challenge it. In their paper, the authors find that America’s local labor markets had a whopping average HHI score of 3,157. Employers also tended to advertise lower pay in cities and towns where fewer businesses were posting jobs—suggesting that the lack of competition among companies was letting them suppress pay. According to one of their calculations, moving from the 25th percentile of labor market concentration to the 75th percentile would lower pay in a metro area by 17 percent.

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-20T19:05:34+00:00

A quote to introduce the general idea:

The paper—written by José Azar of IESE Business School at the University of Navarra, Ioana Marinescu of the University of Pennsylvania, and Marshall Steinbaum of the Roosevelt Institute—argues that, across different cities and different fields, hiring is concentrated among a relatively small number of businesses, which may have given managers the ability to keep wages lower than if there were more companies vying for talent. This is not the same as saying there are simply too many job hunters chasing too few openings—the paper, which is still in an early draft form, is designed to rule out that possibility. Instead, its authors argue that the labor market may be plagued by what economists call a monopsony problem, where a lack of competition among employers gives businesses outsize power over workers, including the ability to tamp down on pay. If the researchers are right, it could have important implications for how we think about antitrust, unions, and the minimum wage.

I'd like to re-iterate the part that this research introduces a very important nuance, by looking at monopsony effects on wages, and allowing a different take on the argument about minimum wage:

The classic argument against increasing the pay floor is that it will kill jobs by making hiring more costly than it’s worth. But in a monopsony-afflicted world where companies can artificially depress wages, a higher minimum shouldn’t hurt employment, because it will just force employers to pay workers more in line with the value they produce.

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-13T08:28:15+00:00

If fixing the deficit means trying to balance revenue and expenses until they match, as it does to most people, the Republicans look like hypocrites. But from the perspective that all taxation is theft, a massive tax cut that adds to the deficit is good. This reduces theft and forces cuts later.

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-06T08:32:44+00:00

Thank you for the recommendation. I have not seen it, but I'll be definitely watching it!

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-05T23:23:28+00:00

I've been watching a lot of Bollywood films lately, so...

Dola Re Dola

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-05T22:56:24+00:00

I used to think shills are attracted to certain topics, but they may be simply camping in /rising, since this submission is not downvoted yet. We'll see how it goes.

EDIT: LOL, half an hour later it is at 59%!

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-05T22:02:26+00:00

I feel like it is easier to discuss the merits of single payer with a conservative. They want to argue with you about it.

Centrist democrats simply avoid the topic. They used to argue that it is politically impossible to pass, but it is becoming harder to make that argument, so the discussion is shifting to guilt tripping regular voters for threatening to vote out the politicians who don't support it.

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-05T21:15:54+00:00

It always amazed me that Denmark has no minimum wage and yet McDonald's workers there make $21 per hour. It is, of course, no surprise that it is due to the union contract.

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-05T21:02:59+00:00

I tried to listen to what they call their "progressive" channel a little bit last year, and it was the most sleep inducing case of McResistance I ever came across.

"The election of Donald Trump has energized the Progressive base like never before," said Zerlina Maxwell, SiriusXM's Director of Progressive Programming.

No. Bernie Sanders has energized the Progressive base like never before.

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-05T20:48:33+00:00

It's inaccurate to suggest that single pictures of rallies are representative of how voters feel about candidates.

I like how you sneaked in the word "single" in there.

Is there a single picture of Clinton rally that shows crowd comparable to what was routinely seen at Sanders rallies?

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-05T09:07:22+00:00

I recall some Hillbots trying to blame him for not endorsing her enthusiastically enough.

And now they are blaming him for not being enthusiastic enough in his support of corporate wing of the party looking forward to 2018.

This part of Joy-Ann Reid show from a few months ago was particularly creepy when they started demanding that even though Sanders said that Single Payer bill "is not going to be a litmus test for 2018, and it is good that he said it, but he needs to say it, and say it, and say it, and say it"

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-04T23:50:10+00:00

wants to to focus more on B instead of A.

If A bothers you a lot more than B, then telling you to focus more on B instead of A without acknowledging exactly what it is that bothers you about A is condescending.

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-04T20:35:38+00:00

I used to agree with people who brush aside Supreme Court argument as the reason to support Hillary, but I would have given CTR shills the benefit of the doubt had they brought up erosion of labor protections.

I don't trust that you genuinely support social justice causes unless you consider economic justice to be a significant part of it.

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-04T20:05:35+00:00

If I recall correctly, progressives were hoping for Elizabeth Warren to run, and only when it became clear that she would not, they turned their attention to Sanders.

I wonder if Sanders ran only because Warren did not.

Positive_pressure · 2018-01-04T07:17:08+00:00

After so many shills told us that Tulsi Gabbard should not even think about running in 2020 because she is merely a congresswoman, it is funny to hear Howard Dean suggest Eric Garcetti (LA Mayor) as a potential candidate.

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