> They seem to be way less opposed for government to bail out corporations from same tax money tho.

Not really. We had nationwide Occupy protests about exactly that, from both sides of the aisle. Not only leftists were fed up, but it also spawned the Tea Party movement on the right.

"Hands off my Medicare!" might be the prime example. Or farm subsidies. People who constantly argue that government is too expansive and always incompetent (or evil) literally seem to forget that programs benefiting them are in fact run by that same government.

Student loan forgiveness is not a one-off cost unless it's bundled with a reform that prevents the same debt from being accumulated again. I support the measure, but I wouldn't have supported it if it hadn't included the income-based repayment modifications that should limit the accumulation of unmanageable student debt in the future — I don't believe this goes far enough either, but that's a different topic. My point is that it's not possible for me to countenance supporting a reform that helps some people and "pulls up the ladder" not making it available to others in the future — generally derided as "borrowing against our children's futures".

I think there's also a generational aspect to it. Student loan forgiveness is being painted as a cash transfer to younger generations who are somehow lazy, whereas moving cash from younger generations to older (e.g. social security) is sacrosanct.

> ...going to people they deem undeserving. They're perfectly happy with the amount spend on the DOD, DHS, etc.

Defense is what the government is supposed to be spending money on. It's a textbook example of a public good.

Is it that they abhor the idea of someone else getting something unearned, or that they are frustrated and fed up with the things that they have worked for and earned being denied to them (and only incidentally that they are given to someone else)?

> can't work

Are you sure you don't mean "can work but won't"?

> perhaps arguing that the cost of the something has to come from somewhere.

This is exactly what’s going on. People know that these expenditures ultimately come out of the company’s operating budget, which diminishes the funds available for other things. Installing EV chargers is a great environmental move in my personal opinion, but we can’t pretend it’s unrelated to discussions come raise/bonus time when people are told that their raises are smaller than expected because budgets are stretched this year.

The EV chargers may be a tiny contributor, but they’re still an unbalanced distribution of the company’s funds based on something completely unrelated to performance. People are keenly aware of these things.

> (why is there voting anyway?)

Meh, it's not the best word, I'm no native speaker. There are some very vocal people pushing against this initiative which are "inciting" (DeepL) others to stand up against this.

> But this isn't so much a foot shoot.

Not sure about it.

We've got some money left from a good business year, so the CEOs wanted to make some "small projects" for the production site, with some kind of "longer impact" than one-time payments. With payments, taxes will eat most it and the holding corporation would probably step in and mess it up, as other companies from the group are struggling a little bit.

So they've built a barbecue area for example. A handful of people wanted that (it hasn't been used more than two times up till now) and some people have said that they'd like their next car to be an EV/hybrid and that it would be great if there were more charging stations. So they thought it would be a good idea to invest some of the money in chargers.

As there's this "inciting" now, it seems like that plan will be cancelled and the money will find its way into the holding group and be lost to the employees right here.

Not sure if that isn't a foot shoot in the end after all.

>"The gas-guzzling employees"

Contrary to EV driving nature saving unicorns? Ever heard that many simply can not afford EV. Or healthy food. Or many other things.

Nah, in my experience many Americans do, especially those that have the privilege to leave home (study abroad, move to a new place far away, etc.).

You will see this phenomena on discussion forums like r/science

Study participants based out of USA : Most discussion focussed on the study

Study participants based outside of USA : The study is not conclusive because the study is done somewhere else and not generalisable.

They don't say "it doesn't apply to US"; but rather they are "not generalisable".

I can't find the quote, but I believe it was one of the physicists involved in the Manhattan Project who said that the greatest secret of nuclear weapons is that they were feasible to engineer at all. Just by dropping them, the US let that secret out and ensured that other countries began engineering them.

I feel like American Exceptionalism has just turned into collective denial.

I would say that those of us in the US who are more or less "coastal elite" types are probably just kind of sophomoric about how things work in Europe. I think a lot of us have a simplified and rosy picture of how European systems work, but if we were pressed on the details, would have to concede our ignorance lol

Right?

What world are people living in? On anything other than a 30% coinsurance PPO, you aren't getting anything done without insurance pre-approval. And that's an extra month or two wait on top of the three month wait to get in the door for a consult.

I have first hand evidence that this is not the case. Let's not over-generalize here.

I only see specialists in the US and the wait time is usually less than 24 hours.

Are you calling them directly to set up appointments?

>> Illegal immigration is a market response to a failure of the government to provide a legal framework for sufficient legal migration.

No, it really is not. There's really no upper limit on how many people might WANT to immigrate to your country (other than the obvious 8B world population size), but there's an upper limit on how many immigrants your country can accommodate in the given time frame. Increasing limits for legal immigration won't stop illegal one, it might even encourage it (e.g. when one person gets an immigrant visa and some of their relatives don't but they still decide do go, illegally)

Illegal immigration is the market response to different economic potential across countries. Just like in physics, if you have chemical potential differences across a boundary and particles can pass, you'll only reach equilibrium when the chemical potential equalizes.

Even if an immigrant enters a country and is still productive and doesn't even use any social benefits, he diluted the job pool. Those getting out of the job pool get the socialistic benefits. So the average productivity could still go down. Those immigrants compete with locals equally in the job market, so dividing them into one group having benefits and another without doesn't change the stability condition. So instead of an immigrant coming and taking benefits directly, he comes, replaces a working local which just takes benefits.

Open or closed borders are a real dichotomy from higher up viewpoint which analyzes dynamics and stability condition, not a 'false dichotomy'. They represent a constraint in the equilibrium condition, which either exists or doesn't. The most you can do is filter the demographics which can enter or leave. But you'll still reach an equilibrium for each demographic with an open border. Like diffusion through filtering membrane. Or you can restrict the flow, but it only delays reaching the equilibrium, doesn't change where that equilibrium will be.

These stability conditions and dynamics are forces beyond the power of governments. You can play around them and find a reasonable trade-off, or you can try fighting them and get disappointed.

It doesn't matter whether the immigrants don't get the benefits themselves, they compete for wages with people that do. It's funny you're even suggesting to solve this problem with inequality.

By the way, in Israel for example, the construction industry is completely dominated by Palestinians. They don't get any benefits. Israelis just don't work in construction anymore. Even when people are jobless they don't even consider working in construction because the state of employment just isn't worth it.

You can't solve this by creating inequality between immigrants and locals. It's even worse.

You're engaging in the same behavior.

> This is beside the point. From the paper:

I was asking someone who made a specific claim, they were not quoting from the paper. I'm asking him about the claim they made.

Specifically the person said "A great example of this phenomenon is the white response to desegregation in the United States. White union workers voted against their labor interests".

In the context of an article titled "Individuals prefer to harm their own group rather than help an opposing group.

If the person did present an example of something claimed by the article, the article cannot be used to substantiate it, the article cannot be an example of itself, it could contain examples, but this was presented as an independent example, which needs independent justification.

> > Do we have any insights into their state of mind when taking these actions?

> Often we do

Do we have any for the specific instance in question?

> They also wrote books, letters, and op-eds, all part of the historical record, and available if you were willing to spend a little energy on this subject.

Mind citing any? I'm not going to try to do the work to substantiate someone else's claim, and besides, if I don't find anything that agrees with it your response would just be that I did not look hard enough. If you can't cite something, that is fine, just say this is your opinion, that is entirely okay, but claiming something as fact puts the burden of proof on you to substantiate it.

I'm not an American either, and my grandfather is demented now but I think I know him well enough to know that he is would not have done something like that, and I know of at least one case that could be said to show the opposite, where he voted against his own group interest to benefit another group.

> We’re talking about an era in the US where white people were literally in control of everything, nobody else could have done this.

It's also the era that created the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Rights Act, Medicare, Medicaid and the War on Poverty. You're correct that political leadership in the United States was almost entirely white at the time. But the fact that they passed many substantial pieces of legislation helping other groups shows that people are more decent than the "race war" narrative that gets pushed a lot these days.

> you want a carve out so you can feel separate from them.

I am separate from them. I didn’t do any of that stuff.

Also, I have many opinions that disagree with the overwhelming majority of my peers. Do you think you would have been racist back then?

Is there some "fellow white people" group I need to apply to ?

Or you you're a "member of a group" that you never even joined or cared to get close to ?

That's incredibly racist dude. It is exactly same thing actual racists do when they assume someone is <minority> therefore they will do <bad thing>.

> You’re just uncomfortable with a group of people that you’re a member of did something

Projection much? I'm not white and I feel the same way as gp

> white people were literally in control of everything

I think there's a big difference between "white people were in control of everything" and "the people who were in control were white".

They left due to a rise in crime and other low trust behaviors exhibited post desegregation.

That trend persists today - look at crime rates by race especially the white on black vs black on white crime rate. Controlling per capita shows an enormous disparity. And that’s just the extreme end of low trust behaviors and certainly indicating a litany of other reasons one would want to move away. It only takes 1 instance of being a victim to realize it’s not worth the risk.

No the quality of life declined because of rioting in the streets.

The historical perception is part of the problem.

This mentality is was created the Cold War and has cause immense international damage throughout history.

I’m no fan of the Russian federation, but they have legitimate security concerns regarding nato expansion.

We’ve been actively destabilizing the region for decades so they probably say the same thing about us.

Do we really want to go back to perpetual proxy wars with our adversaries?

> So not really different to what it was before.

The hyperbole here. Functioning infrastructure + corruption is a lot better than destroyed infrastructure + corruption

I see what you’re saying but now huge portions of the country and it’s infrastructure are literal rubble atm.

As is/was most post USRR countries. It's a national disease that's hard to heal, and it was also kept there by the Russian influences

To clarify what I mean: in the 2020 Senate runoff it was between Raphael Warnock and Kelly Loeffler. Despite what some people want to claim, Georgia is still a very red state, and has had Republicans at the helm for nearly 20 year. Even the Democrat leaders of yore (Zell Miller, Max Cleland, etc.) would be considered to the right of Joe Manchin - blue dog Democrats. Loeffler was going to win, but Donald Trump tried to wield his influence on the election, which did two things 1) turned off would-be Republican voters and 2) riled up Democrat voters. Prior to the rally to support Loeffler her numbers were up - pretty far up too. Warnock's win was a referendum on Trump. But apparently that wasn't enough - Hershel Walker is Trump's hand picked candidate, and is not a very good one besides that. He's probably going to suffer the same fate. Walker has popular social appeal as you correctly point out - he was an all star running back for the University of Georgia and everyone in the state over the age of 30 knew his name even prior to his political career. But as I say, he's a terrible candidate.

That's fair. Warnock most likely would not have been elected had Trump not come in and made a scene. Prior to that one rally Leoffler's numbers had her winning by a decent margin. After that she never recovered.