General Politics thread

I feel like this is one where they could cook up some kind of “material support for terrorism” excuse.

I have news that should unite the thread in panic.

SPERM COUNTS AMOUNG WESTERN MEN HAVE HALVED IN THE LAST 40 YEARS.

Apparently the decline shows no sign of levelling out any time soon.

Discuss!

 Due to 'plastics leach[ing] synthetic estrogren'?

IIRC the idea floated during the Nixon era was for a negative income tax, something like the EITC, which was supported by Milton Friedman. The proposal collapsed, I think, in part because conservatives envisioned the negative income tax as a replacement for the regular income tax, whereas Nixon’s policy would have ended up layering the negative income tax on the regular American tax bracket, making it even more progressive.

I think the big challenge with basic income is that it often comes with the unspoken (particularly among Silicon Valley types) assumption that it can be a way of mitigating gross inequality without actually addressing it—if enough is redistributed, it doesn’t matter how skewed the Gini coefficient gets from a handful of people pulling away at the top. There’s also the issue of it potentially being a replacement for parts of the welfare state—I think there are definitely aspects that would work better by just giving people cash, like food assistance as opposed to food stamps, but for others it clearly wouldn’t work. Finland’s probably going to be a good example of how to do it because I doubt it will be paired with contractions in the welfare state; for the US I think it depends on who’s proposing it. To me it looks like the big political hurdle  seems to be that American voters (wealthier and whiter than the average American) don’t trust people to make their own decisions—you can’t buy alcohol on food stamps, for example, and the various outrages about poor (and especially poor and black) people buying smartphones and such with their own money.

Isn't the concern among potentially sympathetic, non-libertarian/anti-robber-baron-types that UBI as envisioned by the Zuckerbergs and its even shittier proponents (an appreciation for white supremacy wasn't the only thing Friedman had in common with Charles Murray, as the latter supports a form of UBI as well), that it will just lead to destroying what remains of welfare while ignoring an even more acute concentration of wealth among the ultra-rich like Lemur said, and ignoring the need to raise wages or address the shittiness of the gig economy or to make healthcare, housing, etc. affordable?  Clio Chang had a good piece on the issue recently in the New Republic, and it and her recent appearance on Chapo Trap House have admittedly heavily informed my opinions on the issue.  

And, as Lemur pointed out, in spite of there even being a handful of white supremacists like Murray supporting UBI, the idea of the government giving money to the poor, especially poor minorities, has such great stigma attached to it, that it's quite hard to see it becoming reality anytime in the foreseeable future.

This looks very interesting!  I look forward to reading it.

Another whose personal malversation, though not war crimes, may have caught up to him:
www.haaretz.com/amp/israel-news/1.805112

And, fittingly, he's a friend of Trump's, as he pauses to repulsively emphasize.

This and the succeeding three pages are interesting on the question on whether, how and to what extent 'mass culture tend(s) to depoliticize visions of the social order' and militate against class consciousness.

books.google.ca/books?id=ygfxDQAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=s+a+smith+russia+in+revolution&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjqyNmo_dfVAhWsLsAKHWa_DVAQ6AEIJTAA#v=onepage&q=Another%20manifestation&f=false

Thank you, rando.

Hate to bring the back across the Pacific to American politics, but I can't access the TMI board yet, and I'm not gonna spam just to get to 100 posts.

There's something that any Michiganders on the board should be aware of though, if they're not already.  On Thursday, the election board is going to review language (attached) for a ballot initiative.  Its goal is amending the state constitution to require redistricting be done by a non-partisan commission, starting in 2020.  If it's approved, the organization behind it has 90 days to get over 300,000 signatures.  I'm going to volunteer my time to get them.  Never done that before, but gerrymandering is killing fair representation in our state, and I think it's a cause when people from across the political spectrum could get behind supporting ("want to take power back from the politicians in Lansing and Washington?").

So if you're in Michigan, please consider signing the petition, assuming the language passes muster.  And please, even out-of-state folks, encourage your Michigan friends and family to get out and vote for this constitutional amendment in 2018.  You just know that the entrenched special interests are going to throw their entire arsenal against this movement.  

Edited:  Derp.  Whole amendment is too big to attach.  Linking to website instead.  Be warned:  It's 7 pages of legalese.

Constitutional amendment proposed language

Whew! First I've seen this comment, but I signed before I left for Wisconsin! Voters Not Politicians were collecting signatures outside the library and I went ahead and signed based on the lady's pitch before I worried it might be some sort of trick (wouldn't be the first time right wing groups had twisted local idealism to their own purposes). Meant to look them up but never got around to it; glad to hear it's legit and seems to be going ahead.

This is Payette from a photo on the Canadian Space Agency website.  Seemingly taken in outer space?