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ddd00001on People aged 80 and over top 10% of Japan's population for first time

Lee Kuan Yew's whole thesis re: Singapore was that multicultural societies need strict laws and punishments for those that step out of line because people don't naturally look out for each other. He learned this from going back to the UK in the 60s and seeing how social trust had degraded due to immigration.

ddd00001on Close to 2k environmental activists killed over last decade

Once adjusted for demographics I meant - d'oh.

ddd00001on People aged 80 and over top 10% of Japan's population for first time

I don't have a dog in this fight, but you just said "not impossible", then admitted that culture would change with influx of migrants.

ddd00001on Public restrooms are hard to find in America

"This is one major reason why BART boarded up their restrooms in downtown SF."

We live in a society where we can't have public restrooms and progressives (including virtually half the commenters here!) think that we're being too mean to vagrants. Just incredible.

Why are Tokyo and Singapore nice cities? What would they do if someone was shooting up in the streets in front of children?

ddd00001on Public restrooms are hard to find in America

"disproportionately likely to be brutalized or killed by law enforcement"

Hi woodruffw - what group is disproportionaly likely to kill or brutalize law enforcement? What happens when you correct for that?

ddd00001on Public restrooms are hard to find in America

Your reply is a complete and utter non-sequitur. Conservatives are not why homeless drug addicts are given free reign to camp out and harass every day, hard working tax payers in San Francisco. That's entirely due to a single veto point (a progressive judge who doesn't even live in the city), despite there finally being some local government push against such activities.

ddd00001on Without belief in a god, but never without belief in a devil

If you've seen government intervention in markets be absolutely destructive then it makes sense to vote for the party that is more pro-market.

Not to mention that national Dems are significantly to the left of the median Hispanic American in terms of social policy (especially on gender and race).

ddd00001on Without belief in a god, but never without belief in a devil

Ah the old "people only disagree with my politics because they are tricked".

You would utterly faily an ideological turing test.

ddd00001on The US climate law is fueling a factory frenzy

Democrats are in a weird position where they're relatively moderate in terms of economics, but arguably the furthest left major party in the world in terms of social issues. The latter is turning off non-college educated of all ethnicities.

ddd00001on The US climate law is fueling a factory frenzy

Not sure what you're talking about re: "criminal justice reform" - we've had an experiment on that in the last decade that has led to absolute disaster. Low level crime has increased, and now violent crime is increasing.

ddd00001on Energy Jobs Have Increased in Nearly Every County in America

For an opposite story, my family emigrated from the Mid East to Europe then USA and it was by far the best thing that could have ever happened. My QOL would have been so much worse in Mid East, and even in Europe (developed, Northern Europe at that), vs. what it is today in the US. It's the number one thing I am most grateful for.

ddd00001on Tijuana's illegal sewer hookups linked to cross-border pollution

Suggest reading some Garett Jones. Hive Mind is a great book.

ddd00001on Tijuana's illegal sewer hookups linked to cross-border pollution

We have decades of hard evidence that only a certain type of immigrant is successful and increases overall productivity. You want to ignore the wealth of data because "America was bad in the past".

Simple game theory: we have two choices - A. focus immigration on high skill or B. focus immigration on low skill. If by some possibility you're right, and all people are blank slates and genetics is fake, then either choice is correct. If I am correct (suggested by ~50 years of hard data), then choice A is a huge boon to the country, while choice B bankrupts the country.

It is astonishing that you are pushing for choice B with this knowledge. Like I said before, the worst thing for those left-of-center is thinking that there may be some inherent differences in different populations. It's the worst thought that could enter their mind. They live their entire lives trying to prove to people that they don't think this. This (plus knowing that you have enough money to shield yourself if the ideas that you advocate end up being destructive), allows you to virtue signal without a care.

ddd00001on Tijuana's illegal sewer hookups linked to cross-border pollution

Your argument is "America did bad things in the past therefore we should adopt hard leftist policies even if its not in our best interest". That is the logic of unwashed, tattooed community college dropouts.

A question dctoedt - I assume you're from DC (per your name). Do you live in Columbia Heights since you think all people are equally interchangeable? Why not? Are you one of those limousine liberals that advocates for policies you know could be destructive but know you have the money to shield yourself from?

ddd00001on Tijuana's illegal sewer hookups linked to cross-border pollution

Wow you convinced me, there is no difference between any group of people and we should just take in the entire population of Central America. There will be no negative effects whatsoever. In fact you could swap the population of Beijing with that of Guatemala and you would see no difference whatsoever. You are so smart dctoedt.

ddd00001on Tijuana's illegal sewer hookups linked to cross-border pollution

By the way, I'm totally fine with allowing some number of people that we know are going to be fiscal negatives (likely into perpetuity) come to the country. There does need to be some aspect of empathy in the immigration system. That being said, those left of center are just so naive about this topic. Noticing differences in groups is so taboo that they throw common sense out of the window.

ddd00001on Tijuana's illegal sewer hookups linked to cross-border pollution

"As a group they tend to be great Americans"

There is not a single group of Central Americans that have positive fiscal impact over their lifetime. Their kids are also not becoming doctors and engineers.

ddd00001on Tijuana's illegal sewer hookups linked to cross-border pollution

Are Americans allowed to choose which kind of immigrants they want? I know those on the left think merit-based immigration is "condescending" (Pelosi's exact words), but can we at least not pretend all immigrants come from immigrantland?

I feel like I'm the rare type of person who is both very pro immigration but also very anti- endless low skill immigration.

I take my cues from LKY, I guess:

http://thekansascitian.blogspot.com/2013/02/dont-take-fruit-...

ddd00001on Tijuana's illegal sewer hookups linked to cross-border pollution

Suppressing bad instincts is good and all, but don't overdo it. Central American farmers are not interchangeable for Chinese physicists. It's really amusing how much of leftism relies on discredited 1960's blank slate ideology.

ddd00001on Tijuana's illegal sewer hookups linked to cross-border pollution

There's a simple hard truth that intelligence is largely heritable and intelligence has a significant correlation to an individual's fiscal net effect (not only that individual, but his/her children, and the children's children, and so on). There's a level of low-skill immigration (or at least guest workers a la Asian countries) that is good because you allow high-skill people to work in high-skill occupations. But once you cross that level you just drag down overall productivity. What's happening in America is you have an extremely productive class of (typically white and Asian) skilled workers, and then an extremely unproductive class of service and public-sector workers that are increasingly a drain on fiscal health. The left doesn't see this differentiation (or they do, but they refuse to acknowledge it because noticing differences among groups is what bad people do) and just simplify it to "immigration good" like some sort of late night watching, reddit-reading NPC.

ddd00001on Tijuana's illegal sewer hookups linked to cross-border pollution

I think the much worse failure is assuming all immigrants come from "immigrantland". The impact of a Chinese physicist (and his children, and his children's children) will be much different than a Guatemalan farmer. Until those left-of-center can admit this reality of life, they just need to be totally ignored.

ddd00001on Marijuana addiction: those struggling often face skepticism

Well, also schizophrenia. Hope you like insane people wandering urban areas and harassing normal people, because you're going to get a lot more of that!

ddd00001on A California professor sues over new DEIA performance reviews

Nah I don't think it's a conspiracy. I think they genuinely believe race is the most important thing ever and that focusing every facet of public discourse on race is good.

ddd00001on In the nearly 232-year history of the US Senate only 11 senators were Black

Incredible. You believe that all different groups have exactly the same human capital, but that we should still have a system of racial spoils. These types of comments make me concerned about democracy.

What does "racial and gender makeup of the country" even mean? Should use the idiotic government definition of "AAPI" that bundles Samoans with Japanese? Or that considers Afghanis white but Pakistanis Asian? It's idiotic.

Hispanic immigration to the U.S. has been relatively low human capital (mostly poorer, blue collar workers). The average NAEP and SAT scores of black Americans are over a standard deviation below Asians. You're willing to significantly hurt the productivity and efficiency of government because having racial representation gives you warm and fuzzies? If people like you were in charge of government, we would be South Africa in less than a year.

ddd00001on Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

https://randomcriticalanalysis.com/2017/06/22/no-us-school-f...

Being a progressive and seeing real-world data crush your entire world view time after time must be a strange feeling.

ddd00001on Refusing to teach kids math will not improve equity

I don't understand how you can read that and think that the issue is spending.

The answer is (and always will be) human capital. You could airdrop TJHSST kids into a literal warzone and they would do well. Smart kids are smart because they are smart. There is no magic dirt, and "muh multicausal forces" is pure cope.

People like you got ahold of SF's school system and made Lowell lottery entrance. They swore that it wouldn't have a big impact on test results and that the new class would benefit from being on the magic dirt of Lowell High School. Of course that's what their theories would support. Lo and behold it was an abject failure as anyone who wasn't a psychotic leftist could predict.

ddd00001on The US economy and the EU were the same size in 2008, the US is now nearly 2X

The point of the convo is that Americans are much richer than Europeans. Which is true.

ddd00001on Tokyo Is the New Paris

American government spending has an extremely low multiplier because of onerous environmental regulations (primarily NEPA).

A mural in San Francisco cost $600k (!) to cover up due to environmental impact reports and legal fees.

Asking for more public spending is literally just asking to burn people's money.

ddd00001on Tokyo Is the New Paris

99.999% of people will never be in this situation and they don't care. Ask people if they want Singapore's safety and they will take it.