Though these results are in line with my own biases, I have long wondered about the validity of self-reported characteristics like these, however well scientifically collected and analyzed they may be (I hasten to add that they may also not be well scientifically collected or analyzed - in order to arrive at the desired or ‘correct’ “results”).
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The Usual Suspects would probably argue that, thanks to the better education they have imposed, people are now more honest. We always were careless, started arguments, and failed to persevere – just now we are more honest with ourselves about our failings (and therefore about the need for the Political Class to lift the burdens off of our inadequate shoulders).
On the other hand, the self-reports do seem to match what we all see happening around us. Good times create weak men, etc. The outcome is predictable.
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Self-reports into ‘scientific’ papers: garbage in, garbage out.
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The Ukrainians have lost the war. Russia has won this war.
…
Brusselian elites backed a lost cause and now Europe pays the price. While Moscow and Washington decide our fate, we’re left out in the cold. The time to drop delusions and take control of our future has come. It’s simple really: sit at the table or you’ll find yourself on the menu.
– Viktor Orban
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What did Ukraine lose? The Donbas which is pro Russian and wants be independent and ‘neutral’?
- Donbas will not be part of Ukraine
- Crimea stays with Russia
- Ukraine will not join NATO
Everyone has wasted time and money and lives for 3.5 years
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I don’t think it is fair to say “everyone”. Russia has saved a lot of Slav lives in the Donbas. Remember Zelensky’s forces had already murdered about 14,000 civilians there, and were clearly preparing in 2022 for an honest-to-God genocide to remove Russian-ancestry people from those lands. Russia has also finally broken free from the Euro-envy which had historically been so deleterious to them. But, yes, Russia and Russians have paid a heavy price for those gains.
And let’s remember all the shareholders and executives in arms-makers in Europe and the US – they have done all right. The taxpayers wasted money is their income.
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I wonder if the health care spending includes government subsidies? Otherwise it looks like as a percent of income it stopped growing around the time Obamacare was introduced and I find that hard to believe. Health care inflation was higher than CPI for all those years so either people are just not getting the same amount of health care or the graph is not including all parties paying for health care.
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I was wondering the same thing because if you receive Medicaid isn’t your co-pay and deductible zero dollars? Does that mean Medicaid recipients spend zero dollars on health care?
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There is something wrong with the graph of healthcare spending and other household expenditures. The housing and utilities category is only about 15%: not credible. Meanwhile, the other household expenses is about 40%. Mortgage, property tax, and utilities exceed 15% for homeowners. Renters have comparable costs because landlords must cover those costs. About 30% to 35% is a good rule of thumb. Estimates for homeowners and renters, and these numbers don’t include taxes and utilities. Perhaps the costs are deceptively hidden in the much larger other household category. Furthermore, the ~30% rule of thumb is as a percentage of gross income. Since the graphic does not include income tax, those percentages are implicitly as a fraction of after-tax income, which makes the discrepancy even greater.
The source is the sleazy, mendacious NYT, so it should surprise no one that this graphic is misleading. The statistics were tortured until they gave the right headline, which was to promote a propaganda message about healthcare costs. In a sense, it’s surprising that they’d want to push this narrative given that healthcare is essentially entirely government controlled in the forms of Medicare, Medicaid, and the ironically-named Affordable Care Act.
If America’s newspaper of record published it, it must be true, amirite?
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The affordable care act committed fraud.
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Asian males are second behind transgender, I wonder what is happening
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First, there are likely several cultural issues. Asian cultures are highly prone to violence and fanaticism. There is a reason why almost every video of a fist fight breaking out in a legislature is from Asia. We similarly see union violence and protest violence that is highly organized and thus accepted. When they come to the US, they get access to guns without ever having learned to control their violent tendencies. And they find themselves under cultural pressure from their families and subject to culture shock.
There may be a component shared with whites that those who are violent by nature don’t have alternative outlets for violence (e.g., gang crime).
There also likely are reporting issues. My guess is that Asian criminals are much less likely to get misreported as white than are black and Hispanic criminals.
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OK. Call me stupid but can someone explain what the Inglehart-Wetzel chart represents. ?What does the X-axis represent and how was it derived. I get what the Y-axis is supposed to represent but there too I fail to grasp HOW it was derived.
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Anyone with more than two brain cells to rub together knew all along that these climate agreements were never intended to make any difference. However, they were useful ways of getting a nice holiday in a foreign city. Sure, Nairobi and Dehli aren’t exactly garden spots but you can always send the junior staff to those meetings.
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Like most social science: GIGO.
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Without reading the paper, my surmise is the axes are interpreted composite variables, such as from a principal components analysis.
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