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The Welfare State Needs Updating

The 62-year-old was brilliant, but also obsessive, vainglorious and prim. He proposed new benefits for the retired, disabled and unemployed, a universal allowance for children and a nationwide health service. On the right, critics accuse it of sucking the dynamism from capitalism and individuals alike. It is not so much a left-wing creation as a product of an intellectual coalition, in which the critical strand was liberalism. They saw it not as industrialised charity, but as a complement to free-market capitalism. Charity and churches were seen as failing to cope with poverty, as mass urbanisation weakened traditional social bonds. War brought people of different backgrounds together, fostering a sense of unity against a common enemy. He argued there should be “bread for all…before cake for anybody”. By 1954 the core institutions of the welfare state were in place across the rich world—social-insurance schemes, means-tested support for the poorest, free or subsidised health care, social work and employment rights. Scandinavia, with high public spending, strong trade unions, universal benefits and support for women to stay in the workplace. So policymakers have made programmes more “conditional”, forcing recipients to look for work, for example. If the shrinking welfare state is a myth, so is the notion that it is mainly about redistribution from rich to poor. Another misunderstanding is about how welfare spending relates to economic growth. But the difficulties faced by welfare states in rich countries are about more than just their size. Welfare spending is increasingly tilted towards the elderly. Moreover, taxpayers are more tolerant of benefits that are seen to look after “people like them”. Or rather, a lack of support for immediate generosity to “outsiders”. Clinton’s reforms in the 1990s limited illegal immigrants’ access to benefits. Moreover, attitudes towards immigrants are volatile and swayed by the political climate. Most had dropped out of the labour market or worked volatile hours. But they include the incentives and disincentives to work that complex benefits systems produce. For example, some have to wait weeks between losing a job and receiving benefits. It takes many very different forms, but at its heart it replaces a plethora of means-tested benefits with a single, unconditional one, paid to everyone. Under the first, countries’ spending on benefits was divided equally among everyone—a revenue-neutral reform. The welfare state predates the modern form that emerged in the late 19th century. So the welfare state was also entwined with rising nationalism. And as middle classes shared these risks, their demands for support meant the welfare state became about more than just looking after the poor. When is a benefit a right and when is it conditional on your behaviour? Perhaps the commonest charge against mature welfare states is that they have created a culture of dependency. To help them, many countries expanded “active labour-market policies” such as retraining. Subsidised child care, which helps (mostly) women stay in the labour market, is more growth-friendly than pensions, say. The three main ones relate to demography, migration and changing labour markets. Experimental evidence suggests that there is a tension between diversity and generosity. Of the other 40%, no more than a quarter met the typical definition of unemployed: out of a job but looking for one. In many countries when the jobless do find work, their benefits are withdrawn in such a way as to create a high effective marginal tax rate. Under the second, everyone would receive benefits equal to the current minimum-income guarantee, and taxes would rise to pay for it, if necessary. They also show that the effects of introducing basic income vary hugely based on what welfare system it would partly replace. For them, spreading benefits more evenly would benefit the poor, even under a revenue-neutral model.

A Strong Welfare State Produces More Entrepeneurs by theatlantic.com

His belief in a tradeoff between taking care of citizens and promoting innovative new businesses is at odds with the evidence. It seems that expanding the availability of food stamps increased business formation by making it less risky for entrepreneurs to strike out on their own. The mechanism in each case is the same: publicly funded insurance lowers the risk of starting a business, since entrepreneurs needn’t fear financial ruin. A lower capital gains tax rate does seem to be associated with a greater supply of entrepreneurs. Even the assumption that bureaucratic “red tape” holds back startups is less obvious than it sounds. It would be silly to argue that bigger government is always and everywhere good for startups. So why do pundits and politicians, on both sides of the aisle, so often assume the opposite? The evidence simply does not support the idea of a consistent tradeoff between bigger government and a more entrepreneurial economy. When governments provide citizens with economic security, they embolden them to take more risks. And in many cases, expanding benefit programs helps spur new business creation. Conservatives have long argued that they breed dependence on government. Interestingly, most of these new entrepreneurs didn’t actually enroll in the food stamp program. Simply knowing that they could fall back on food stamps if their venture failed was enough to make them more likely to take risks. The result: a 25 percent increase in the rate of new-firm creation. With food stamps, for instance, there has been a push to tie benefits to finding and holding a job , which actually does raise a barrier to starting a business. That’s not to say regulations don’t hamper entrepreneurs; of course, they often do. But what evidence we do have squarely challenges the intuition that it’s government that holds back startups. This argument is particularly important today for two reasons.

Public Opinion Test Flashcards by quizlet.com

Growing up many people are taught that one political party is right and the other is wrong because this is what their parents tell them because of this many younger people agree with their parents and side with their political party and presidential preference. Each religion will side with the party and social doctrine that supports their religious traditions. The gender gap is the difference in political views between me and women. As people go through college their views become even more liberal and those who study social sciences tend to be more liberal than those studying engineering or the physical sciences. What was the meaning of the word liberal in the 19th century? What was the meaning of the word conservative in the 19th century? The twenty first century definition of conservative is the people who opposed an activist national government. They want a small, weak government that has little control over either the economy or the personal lives of the people. They want a government that will reduce economic inequality and control business, want regulation of personal conduct, lock up criminals, and permit school prayer. Their political ideology is liberal because they stake the growth of the government and believe in pro-government. What are the limits to their ability to shape public opinion? Elite may shape the policies, but it does not de fine the solution (no elite opinion defines where we go). The framers of the constitution did not try to create a government that would do from day to day “what the people want”. What are the various influences on our individual attitudes? Younger people generally now what political part their parents are in and what their parents’ presidential preference is. What is the influence of religion on our individual attitudes? What is the influence of the gender gap on our individual attitudes? The differences in these political views involves the attitudes towards the size of government, gun control, spending programs aimed at the poor, and gay right. People who go to college might be the liberal ones not that the colleges teach liberal views. Today the definition of liberal is one that called for an active national government that would intervene in the economy, create social welfare programs, and help certain groups acquire greater bargaining power. People who are liberal on both economic policy and personal conduct. Conservative on both economic matters and liberal on social ones. Liberal on economic matters and conservative on social ones. What are the two reasons activists or the political elite tend to have more ideological consistency than those who aren’t active?

On Social Power Dynamics In Political Discourse by heterodoxacademy.org

If a scholar can be successfully branded as prejudiced, then she can be readily dismissed; and this is, in part, what such accusations aim to do — to dismiss rather than to engage. If the right started slinging comparable insults at the left in universities or print media, it would be taken even less seriously there than it already is. Critics accused her of trafficking in racist stereotypes, arguing that such remarks were likely to make her black students uncomfortable in class. Wax felt that nobody should have been offended by what she perceived to be her plain statements of fact. The first factor has to do with progressive beliefs themselves; the second, and perhaps more important one, has to do with social power dynamics. First, there is capitalist oppression — the billionaire class continues to augment its wealth at the expense of everyone else. Third, there is gender oppression — misogyny prevents women from reaching the highest levels of political and economic power. Minimum wage increases, says the right, just price unskilled workers out of the labor market; similarly rent control makes housing unaffordable. If a scholar can be successfully branded as prejudiced, then she can be readily dismissed; and this is, in part, what such accusations aim to do — to dismiss rather than to engage. If the right started slinging comparable insults at the left in universities or print media, it would be taken even less seriously there than it already is. Conservatives, in turn, are forced to ask for the benefit of the doubt and to insist on the norms of civility because they tend to hold minority opinions in intellectual venues. Wax’s reaction is characteristic of a what appears to be a conservative reluctance to understand why right-leaning views are so unwelcome on college campuses. Such conservative positions as these will appear as rationalizations, if not outright justifications, for what leftists perceive to be unequal structures of power and subjugation. Many conservatives, after all, believe that liberal policies hurt minorities and the poor in same way that liberals believe conservative policies hurt those groups. Most economic libertarians argue that government social programs are not improving the lives of the poor. Our society’s necessary and justified revulsion to prejudice makes it such that accusations of racism can tarnish entire careers. Conservatives, in turn, are forced to ask for the benefit of the doubt and to insist on the norms of civility because they tend to hold minority opinions in intellectual venues. It appears, therefore, that when people engage each other in print or in debate they make rhetorical decisions based on what the circumstances allow them.

Kludgeocracy In America by nationalaffairs.com

But that is not what the next few decades of our politics will be about. The complexity and incoherence of our government often make it difficult for us to understand just what that government is doing, and among the practices it most frequently hides from view is the growing tendency of public policy to redistribute resources upward to the wealthy and the organized at the expense of the poorer and less organized. While we can name the major questions that divide our politics — liberalism or conservatism, big government or small — we have no name for the dispute between complexity and simplicity in government, which cuts across those more familiar ideological divisions. When you add up enough kludges, you get a very complicated program that has no clear organizing principle, is exceedingly difficult to understand, and is subject to crashes. But to understand how to treat our government’s ailment, we first need to understand the symptoms, the character, and the causes of that ailment. Those costs can be put into three categories — costs borne by individual citizens, costs borne by the government that must implement the complex policies, and costs to the character of our democracy. Health insurance, too, is made nearly impossible to understand by the interplay of federal and state rules that only insurance companies fully understand. Understanding the rules and the options involved requires an enormous amount of time (and often money); failing to understand them can be even more costly. The transaction costs of the tax code are just as impressive and disturbing. The compliance costs that kludgeocracy imposes on governments are just as impressive as those that confront private citizens. The power of such interests varies in direct proportion to the visibility of the issue in question. It is when the “scope of conflict” expands that the power of organized interests is easiest to challenge. Policy complexity is valuable for those seeking to extract rents from government because it makes it hard to see just who is benefitting and how; complexity so thoroughly obscures the actual mechanism of political action that it is difficult to mobilize against. Politicians may posture against “corporate welfare,” but kludge-ocracy makes it hard for voters to see how much business profits from government, which makes it difficult to effectively target their anger. Policy complexity also benefits interests other than business. But instead of just handing over big checks to school districts on the basis of need, the federal government showers the states with dozens of small programs. It persists because the system’s sheer complexity makes it easier to organize a supportive coalition for federal education funding. Neither party is immune to the costs of kludgeocracy — the interests of both liberals and conservatives are ill-served by policy complexity. The same is true for the deduction for employer-provided health care and a variety of other pieces of the welfare state hidden in the tax and regulatory codes. Pursuing public goals through regulation and litigation does not eliminate the costs of government, but it does make it hard for citizens to see the costs of public action, which appear in the prices of goods and services rather than on the government’s books. Complexity eats away at this perception, which is crucial for maintaining public support for the expansion of the kinds of state activity that liberals favor. This is why, despite liberalism’s legislative victories, very few recent liberal policies have successfully provided platforms from which to launch new rounds of policy innovation. In both cases, the complexity of government is not good for our politics. In practice, however, every veto point functions more like a toll booth, with the toll-taker able to extract a price in exchange for his willingness to allow legislation to keep moving. First, many of our legislative toll-takers have a vested interest in the status quo. Consequently, new ideas have to be layered over old programs rather than replace them — the textbook definition of a policy kludge. Finally, the enormous number of veto points that legislation must now pass through gives legislative strategists a strong incentive to pour everything they can into giant omnibus legislation. America’s federal system of government also does its part to add to policy complexity. The decline of these regional power centers did not, however, lead to a more streamlined national pattern of policy development. American political culture and ideology have also, in sometimes obscure ways, contributed to kludgeocracy. That is, they want to believe in the myth of small government while demanding that government address public needs and wants regarding everything from poverty and retirement security to environmental protection and social mobility. Taken together, the tax code and government-sponsored enterprises amount to a massive housing-welfare state. Just as important, however, it would also cut the chains connecting citizens and government, leading the elderly to associate the improvement in their standard of living with private providers instead of the state. Finally, kludgeocracy is now self-generating, as its growth has created a “kludge industry” that feeds off the system’s appetite for complexity. This kludge industry, having pulled the fundamental knowledge needed for government out of the state and into the private sector, has thus made itself nearly indispensable. As vital as the material interests of consultants and contractors have been in encouraging policy complexity, an important role has also been played by the army of think-tank analysts on all sides of our politics. For example, instead of repeatedly making the case for fairly simple and direct mechanisms of social insurance, writers in liberal think tanks have pushed for often bewilderingly complicated policies to increase savings under the banner of “asset-building” strategies. Much of the preference for complexity comes from trying, against the background of permanent austerity, to get the equivalent of two dollars in social benefit out of one dollar (or less) in governmental effort. Whatever the cause, policy intellectuals are very much a part of the kludge-industry problem. It would be facile, therefore, to pretend that its baleful effects can be reduced without major (and extremely unlikely) changes in our larger system of government and political values. In fact, in the last few years the filibuster has faced greater criticism than at any time over the last four decades. This is not a plea for greater delegation of congressional power to the executive. In education, either we should considerably nationalize education (by, for example, creating a national voucher paid for out of tax funds that would go directly to individuals and pre-empt local funding through property taxes) or cut out the complicated web of federal education funding and regulation altogether. Mettler has shown in experimental work that tax expenditures are considerably less popular when the fact that they disproportionately benefit the wealthy is made clear. With the frontiers of the state roughly fixed, the issues that will define our major debates will concern the complexity of government, rather than its sheer scope. If anything, we have arrived at a form of government with no ideological justification whatsoever. But you cannot come to terms with such a problem until you can properly name it. The price paid by ordinary citizens to comply with governmental complexity is the most obvious downside of kludgeocracy. But behavioral economics — not to mention common sense — makes clear that few investors are willing to make these investments, and those who do are hampered by basic flaws in decision-making. Straightforward social insurance would dramatically reduce the transaction costs in the system — not to mention the rents paid to asset managers and health insurers — while depending far less on the free time and capacity for calculation of ordinary citizens. It’s highly unlikely we could achieve anything like that level of tax simplicity, but it is a striking illustration of just how much we are paying in higher marginal tax rates to preserve our kludgey tax system. The complexity of our grant-in-aid system makes the actual business of governing difficult and wasteful, sometimes with tragic results. Because administering programs through inter-governmental cooperation introduces pervasive coordination problems into even rather simple governmental functions, the odds are high that programs involving shared responsibility will suffer from sluggish administration, blame-shifting, and unintended consequences. That is why business invests so much money in politics — to keep issues off the agenda. That is why businesses prefer to receive benefits through the tax code or through obscure regulatory advantages rather than in straightforward handouts from the state. As a consequence, that anger diffuses onto our system of government as a whole, leading to a loss of trust and to skepticism of the possibility that the public sector could ever be an effective instrument of the public good. There is not much evidence that federal funding has improved the quality of schooling, and yet the morass of federal grant programs in primary and secondary schooling survives and grows. When that funding is divided into individual grants targeted to specific constituencies, those recipients will act to secure their particular aid. It hurts conservatives by concealing the true size of government. This perpetuates the national myth of radical individualism and independence while creating the impression that only other, less deserving people draw upon government largesse. Kludgeocracy also harms liberalism, by creating both the image and the reality that government is incompetent and corrupt. Much of the legitimacy of the law and the willingness of citizens to contribute to public goods rests on the perception that others are doing their share. Because the current political environment nurtures suspicion of government action, liberal politicians have developed the sneaky habit of finding back doors through which to advance their goals. So while liberals are harmed by the opacity of kludgeocracy’s successes, conservatives are hurt by the inscrutability of its failures. American institutions do, in fact, serve to constrain the most direct forms of government taxing and spending. When public demand cannot be addressed directly, it is met instead in complicated, unpredictable ways that lead to far more complex legislative solutions. Most legislation has to pass through separate subcommittee and committee stages, each of which presents opportunities for legislators to stymie action. A superficial analysis would predict that this proliferation of veto points would lead to inaction, generating a systematic libertarian bias. Most obviously, the toll-taker gets to add pork-barrel projects for his district or state in exchange for letting legislation move onto the next step. In exchange for their willingness to allow a bill to proceed, therefore, they often require that legislation leave their favored programs safe from substantive changes. In a purely federal system, in which governmental functions were clearly differentiated between the national and state governments, federalism would not translate directly into complexity. Even as the government expanded in the 1960s and ’70s in areas ranging from the environment to education to health care, the federal government and the states continued to share the duties of governing in a complex web of responsibilities. Housing is perhaps the most striking and perverse example of this pattern of government growth through seemingly non-governmental means. Added on top of that are the deduction of mortgage interest from taxable income — the third-largest exclusion in the tax code — and the delay in capital-gains taxation on home sales when another home is purchased. And although it delivers benefits to many citizens, this set of programs is fundamentally regressive — vastly favoring people in the highest tax brackets and artificially increasing the prices of homes, thus increasing barriers for first-time home buyers. Where our government does spend, it increasingly does so indirectly. The strategic decisions of conservatives over the last 50 years have abetted the growth of such public misunderstanding of government. They turned out to be wrong — this division of funding helped facilitate the growth of small, powerful interest groups that have made it virtually impossible to untangle our ineffective web of federal education programs. As the institutional and cultural incentives reinforcing kludgeocracy have gotten ever more intense, the suppliers of policy ideas have generally adapted to kludgeocracy rather than resisting it. Conservative policy scholars, meanwhile, have seen in the privatization of government’s administrative functions a way to reduce the power of the bureaucracy. But some of it comes from a preference for clever or innovative policy mechanisms; relatively simple, direct uses of governmental brute force are just not as interesting. Any attempt to chip away at policy complexity must involve reducing the number of extra-constitutional veto points in our system. These sorts of institutional changes are hardly unimaginable. It does too much of what the executive is best equipped to do, and too little of what it actually has the authority to command. We should also thoroughly reconsider our system of federal grants to the states. If the federal government wants to expand access to health care, it should pay the bill and administer the program itself. And they would be forced to rediscover their capacity to argue transparently for social action in the interest of social justice, rather than trying to come up with ever more complicated kludges. Shining a light on the costs of kludgeocracy would encourage more publicly-spirited politicians to seek to minimize them, while their more electorally minded colleagues would be made to worry about being held responsible for them. Increasing the salaries of high-level federal workers throughout the government and reducing caps on their numbers could also go hand in hand with drastically cutting the amounts that agencies can spend on consultants and contractors.

WELFARE AND CITIZENSHIP: THE EFFECTS OF GOVERNMENT ASSISTANCE ON YOUNG ADULTS’ CIVIC PARTICIPATION by ncbi.nlm.nih.gov

We examine the effects of state interventions on civic participation among young adults, hypothesizing that involvement with stigmatizing social programs, such as welfare, reduces political engagement while receipt of non-stigmatizing government assistance does not dampen civic involvement. These effects hold even when background factors, self-efficacy, and prior voting behavior are controlled. Americans who have comparatively low voting rates and who may be establishing patterns that will persist into the future. Do welfare state programs help integrate recipients into, or alienate them from, civic life? Thus, it would seem that welfare state interventions aimed to alleviate inequities could potentially promote more widespread civic involvement. Marshall (1965) theorizes that state policies can potentially foster inclusion into the citizenry, creating abilities to participate as full members in society. Yet other observations on the welfare state suggest political participation is not only suppressed by persistent inequality, but that state involvement may affect civic involvement in other unanticipated ways. What is needed is an active, reflexive, participatory citizenry who engage with one another to serve the common good. These programs initially served primarily white male laborers, excluding dependent women and people of color who were more likely to work in agriculture and domestic labor. This stands in contrast with second tier means-tested, stigmatizing programs administered at the discretion of caseworkers, where recipients learn that they are viewed as marginal and problematic to government and that their actions or voices have little effect on government actors or priorities. In line with theories of a bifurcated two-tiered welfare state we predict that different types of government assistance will have different effects on recipients’ political participation. We therefore investigate the effects of government assistance on volunteering as an additional measure of civic engagement. The interviews covered broad topics relevant to young adult lives, including politics and civic engagement. All of the interviewees were mothers, ages 29–30, and had received welfare prior to 1997 (before age 24–25). Minnesota has a smaller proportion of racial minorities than many other regions of the country, especially large metropolitan areas, we expect the dynamics of race and racism may be different in this context. We chose passages that both contextualize the quantitative findings and represent broader patterns across the interviews. We measure our dependent variable, civic participation, primarily as having voted in the presidential elections in 1996 and 2000 when the participants were 22 and 26 years old. In addition to voting, we also measure civic participation as having volunteered in the past year. Although the welfare state is generally thought to support democracy by reducing economic inequality, it may paradoxically contribute to political disempowerment of some groups. Welfare receipt is not associated, however, with suppressed participation in non-state arenas such as volunteer work. The development and recent transformation of the welfare state may play an important if unexplored and potentially paradoxical role in these developments and dynamics. By reducing the extremes of inequality, the welfare state is intended to protect its citizens and promote the possibilities for active engagement. We assess the effects of the welfare state on democratic participation by comparing the civic activity—operationalized as voting and volunteering—of those who have had direct contact with welfare state programs and those who have not. First, we describe trends in civic participation and review literature that suggests that involvement with welfare state programs may affect civic activity. Of the many factors affecting differential participation, socioeconomic status in particular is clearly associated with citizen engagement. Based on these developments, we would expect the welfare state to increase civic engagement by moderating the inequality that results from capitalism. Hays (2003) finds that rather than welfare assistance promoting feelings of integration into society, welfare mothers are regularly reminded, through the administration of services and through wider cultural messages, that they are not full members of society until they become self-sufficient workers. Those who encounter the government through non-means tested programs from the first tier learn that they are valued as full citizens in the political community, and that their participation is both desired and influential. These feelings of alienation from government were not rooted in self-doubts about their own political abilities, or “internal political efficacy,” but rather in what they had learned about government unresponsiveness to them. None of these findings are particularly surprising given the perception of welfare in the larger culture. This animosity toward, and stigma associated with, receipt does not appear to be uniform across government beneficiaries. Thus, in addition to the demobilizing effects of poverty, it is likely that encounters with government and experiences of stigma may also work to suppress civic involvement among welfare beneficiaries. We expect the strongest effects when assistance is means-tested, using discretionary criteria for eligibility, and administered by a professional with the authority to decline benefits. Habermas (1991), civic participation involves more than voting. When we do, our findings are similar and robust, but turnout rates are higher than in the total sample, particularly in the 2000 elections. Instead we address this limitation by including a measure of state residency in our multivariate analyses. The in-depth interviews lasted between 90 minutes and 2 hours each, and took place in respondents’ homes or a public setting. Minnesota are closer to national averages among young adults. While in school, welfare recipients qualified for subsidized child care, and were able to keep this subsidized care for 2 years after gaining employment. To provide a framework for understanding these results, we include excerpts from the interviews with welfare recipients. Our aim here is not to present a full-scale qualitative analysis of the interview data but rather to help draw out key findings from the quantitative analysis. Because voting increases from young adulthood toward middle adulthood, the increase in voting between elections was not surprising. About 22 percent of respondents reported that they had volunteered in the last year when asked in the 1997 wave.

The International Man’S Glossary A Z: Something About Everything! by theinternationalman.com

Some may believe this assertion, whereas most people employ the rule as an amusing social fiction that allows them to eat a dropped piece of food, despite the potential reservations of their peers. There is also a social dimension as dropped food in a restaurant or when guests are around is simply unacceptable, but in a family or private situation it may be still tolerated. He is always working towards making a reputation for himself and gaining recognition, however short-lived it may be, even at the cost of his own life. He has reached a stage where he has gained prosperity and social status. He loses his firmness and assertiveness, and shrinks in stature and personality. Marked by facilely accurate discernment, judgment, or assessment. The determination of the soul weighing 21 grams was based on the average loss of mass in the six patients. The number of musicians who have died at this age and the circumstances of many of those deaths has given rise to the idea that premature deaths at this age are unusually common. Although some relations were occasionally noticed, those rather remained a side note. Heinz said he chose “5” because it was his lucky number and the number “7” was his wife’s lucky number. An imaginary line called the axis connects the characters, and by keeping the camera on one side of this axis for every shot in the scene, the first character is always frame right of the second character, who is then always frame left of the first. The object that is being filmed must always remain in the center, while the camera must always face towards the object. Others suggest that the date marks the end of the world or a similar catastrophe. Scholars from various disciplines have dismissed the idea of such cataclysmic events occurring in 2012. The expression is now used of anyone whose talents and accomplishments are highly regarded by everyone except those at home. More specifically, this phrase refers to how hedge fund managers charge a flat 2% of total asset value as a management fee and an additional 20% of any profits earned. How many and what type of bacteria would stick to a piece of dropped food depends on many factors, the food or the floor being wet or dry among them. He is unwilling to leave the protected environment of his home as he is still not confident enough to exercise his own discretion. He tries to express feelings through song or some other cultural activity. He becomes very attentive of his looks and begins to enjoy the finer things of life. It is also the first of the teens – the numbers 13 through 19 – the ages of teenagers. Having good vision and able to see without glasses; meeting a standard of normal visual acuity. He took his results (a varying amount of perceived mass loss in most of the six cases) to support his hypothesis that the soul had mass, and when the soul departed the body, so did this mass. Three years earlier, she had expressed a fear of dying at that age. It has come to mean anything that is comprised or mixed from a lot of parts or origins. They refused to believe in his teaching because they considered him one of themselves and therefore without authority to preach to them.

Shtetl Optimized » Blog Archive » First They Came For The Iranians by scottaaronson.com

Simply because they came back to their hometowns to visit their parents. If you read history you’ll see scientists even from old ages have always been traveling. You should also talk to the ones who are really affected. Trump is promising so many impossible things that his entire program of buffoonery is likely to grind to a halt. The contraption being pulled ratchets an increasing mass over the skids that pretty soon the tractor engine chokes and quits. I think continuing to do our work as best we can is important, we can’t let them destroy who we are, but there must be more we can do. And we certainly should protect vulnerable members of our communities, as you say. Either start running these processes honestly, and for the benefit of the people that already live here, or people will get fed up enough that they vote for someone that will shut them down. So then there’s a completely different set of salient examples to draw from. Revolution, assuming success, would allow regime change while paying a cost in stability and likelihood of further revolutions toppling better governments. There are a lot of areas where white people are now a minority and that makes them afraid. The more educated people are not as likely to be afraid of the unknown. We are more likely to come into contact with other cultures, through study, work or by traveling. Thus, if you have the power to make good on your bigotry while ensuring business interests are not hurt, what do you do? I spoke out for shy nerdy males, and for a vision of feminism broad enough to recognize their suffering as a problem. Iran filled with justified anger over our having expelled them? I am emotionally affected like many other fellow human beings on this planet. I think he would feel different if we have a cup of coffee sometime. My mental picture of this is like a tractor pull at a county fair. Reasons…we were constantly lied to about the quality of the vetting process. Plenty of countries heavily restrict this and actually have vetting processes based around eliminating probable risk, nobody cries creeping fascism and they still get their foreign students. Thank to all of you who are showing your continuous supports into such minor communities and let their voices be heard by others. They have the feeling that their cities are slowly taken over by foreign forces and that soon the countryside will be next. It isn’t simply about embracing something unknown — it’s about giving up something old (and therefore good) for something new (and therefore not good). We see the world as our playing field, not just our neighborhood. We know that people in other countries are not that different from us. But, when he is done pleasing his supporters, he will probably use his power to further his own agenda. For all the lack of evidence that he has shown for his business acumen, he certainly believes strongly that he knows how to do business.

Abraham Lincoln and Slavery by abrahamlincolnsclassroom.org

He sat firm, with not so much as a muscle of his face relaxed, as he had done through much of my recital. He embraced few issues, but one was ending slavery in the nation’s capital. In this company his views chrystallized, and when he came out from them he was fixed in his ideas of the emancipation of the slaves. His reentry into national politics in the wake of the exacerbated sectional conflict of the 1850s was predicated upon the ideas that slavery was an evil and that, in certain instance, racial bigotry was unworthy of a great nation. He was effectively retired from politics for the next five years – except for occasional campaign speeches. I observed that, although awkward, he was not in the least embarrassed. It was evident that he had mastered his subject, that he knew what he was going to say, and that he knew he was right. The need for moral alertness so much emphasized in 1858, the persistent flirtation with colonization, the suggestion of gradualism, these were constants. His gestures were made with his body and head rather than with his arms. Sometimes his manner was very impassioned, and he seemed transfigured with his subject. Then the inspiration that possessed him took possession of his hearers also. I have heard celebrated orators who could start thunders of applause without changing any man’s opinion. Lincoln’s eloquence was of the higher type, which produced conviction in others because of the conviction of the speaker himself. Lincoln took a strong stand against the extension of slavery but confessed not to know what the solution was to extinguish slavery. Whether this feeling accords with justice and sound judgment’ was not the question. Lincoln “listened politically to his partner’s abolitionist arguments but he would have none of them. But he could not tolerate the violence of expression and action that was associated with extreme abolitionism. His face and its firm, drawn expression was like one in pain. I feel drawn toward you because you have seen and know the truth of such sorrow. If he was a human being, then he was included in the proposition that all men are created equal. But national concern about the future of slavery was growing. He reemerged on the political scene, injecting, for the first time, a moral argument into the debate. Lincoln was in his shirt sleeves when he stepped on the platform. He began in a slow and hesitating manner, but without any mistakes of language, dates, or facts. They were the natural expression of the man, and so perfectly adapted to what he was saying that anything different from it would have been quite inconceivable. Perspiration would stream from his face, and each particular hair would stand on end. His speaking went to the heart because it came from the heart. Their core proposition – that the nation was dedicated to freedom – resonated deeply in the free states. Lincoln knew that slavery should not be extended but he did not know how to end it. The free-soil movement that opposed the expansion of slavery was popular because it advanced the interests of northern whites who did not own slaves. He was essentially conservative, and the methods used by the abolitionists shocked and alienated him.