Caption: "Julianne Carlson, a graduate of Yale, taught a prekindergarten class in Spanish last week at an elementary school in Houston."
The photo illustrates a NYT article, A Chosen Few Are Teaching for America, about the huge number of Ivy League and other top university grads who have applied to Teach for America. The main motivations for joining are given as a bad economy, as well as "the chance to help poor children and close the achievement gap".
In the photo we see the nice, pretty, young white girl, graduate of Yale - major not stated - who, instead of getting married and having a few smart white children will be using some of the best years of her life trying to "close the achievement gap" - in their own language, no less - of the disadvantaged minority that we've imported and are still importing into the country. The image also suggests the reality of a foreign power colonizing the U.S. by having its emigrants crank out the kids; it appears that every one of the children in the photo is Hispanic, at the age of five already in need of assistance from a smart white woman using her fertile years to teach the offspring of Mexican immigrants instead of having children of her own. An imperial strategy that could hardly be improved upon, even if a bit slower than tanks and divisions, which wouldn't work in this case anyway.
The article states that, in New York City, 85% of the Teach for America teachers had left by the fourth year. So the program at least appears to be useful for knocking some sense into the brains of previously clueless elite university grads, sense that in a healthy society they would have picked up in college, if not long before.
College kids who wanted to help the poor and maybe change the world used to have to join the Peace Corps to do so, but now their venues are just a short bus or subway ride away.
Ok, I know this is off-topic (somewhat), but it's too good not to share. Read this (and the comments):
ReplyDeletehttp://jezebel.com/5585176/woman-gives-birth-twins-++-one-white--one-black
It's like our version of a classic SNL skit. People vigorously agreeing with each other on how race is merely a social construct, while also providing details on their varied ethnic backgrounds.
I think Teach for America is a grand idea!
ReplyDeleteIt could just end up being the exact liberal idiocy for which the unintended consequences usher in victory for the pro-White movement.
With the bad economy (largely caused by the Mexicans, at root -- see Steve Sailer's Minority Mortgage Meltdown) causing these ostensible best-and-brightests to be denied their sinecures at think tanks and, instead, forcing them to battle the invaders' little monsters in the warzone of the public school system, these young people whose liberalism has been trained but not yet rewarded with money to set it good and solid, may just decide to pass on the whole multiculti project and regain that Ol' Time Ethnocentricity.
I'd like to believe in Just Shoot Me's prognosis. We'll see. But my impression is that the kind of young Ivy Leaguers who volunteer for this sort of thing are impervious to experience. Most have been immersed since entering school in ideology and abstractions.
ReplyDeleteAfter a while it becomes impossible for them to consider whether their working assumptions are wrong. If the results aren't what was expected, that must be because the program was implemented poorly or didn't get enough operating funds.
It would be interesting to conduct a well-designed survey of privileged white people who chose out of principle to live in minority areas or work in minority offices and systems. Perhaps it could include liberal victims of crimes committed by members of "protected classes." My bet is that some would have changed their views, but the majority would still rationalize their experiences as the result of white oppression.
Oh man don't get me started on TFA. All it really is is SWPL status striving. TFA only recruits from what it considers "elite" universities, and from this pool of applicants it selects a small number. The whole idea is ridiculous because if somebody with a college degree really wants to teach in an inner city school they will pretty much be hired on the spot, and they certainly don't need elite credentials. The applicants who get chosen get the benefit of feeling morally superior while also getting to put down TFA on their resume or medical/law school application. Below is a link to a great article about another Yale grad who got a healthy dose of race realism while teaching for TFA in our nations capitol. A must read.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.city-journal.org/html/13_1_how_i_joined.html
MadTV Skit entitled "Nice White Lady":
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZVF-nirSq5s
OMG, that City Journal article is for the record books. Anyone who would join TFA after reading that deserves everything they get.
ReplyDeleteOf course, there's always the Onion:
ReplyDeleteTeach For America Chews Up, Spits Out Another Ethnic-Studies Major
http://www.theonion.com/articles/teach-for-america-chews-up-spits-out-another-ethni,1293/
and
Inner-City Teacher Inspires Students To Stab Him
http://www.theonion.com/articles/innercity-teacher-inspires-students-to-stab-him,5571/
Seconding Dennis, I want to thank Matt G for the City Journal classic. The very concept of wasting America's brightest minds on the very worst students is just a bit loony.It strikes at the heart of liberal mythology and TFA actually serves as a cold slap in the face for these painfully naive and brainwashed products of American schooling. While many will regret such a colossal "failure," more than a few will blame themselves for not discovering the keys to the kingdom, so to speak. The use of elaborate rationalization to avoid Charles Murray's simple reality is present in millions of millennial youth whose indoctrination led to Obama's victory. True Believers die hard in the face of cruel facts, my friends. Contrary to our fondest hopes, IQ is real, is distributed unevenly, and has a profound effect on life outcomes.
ReplyDeleteNew schemes like Race-To-The-Top are megalomaniacal in lavishing vast sums on poor children whose move up the academic ladder will be from the 20th percentile to perhaps the 40th percentile. They cannot morph into little geniuses because 110 years of psychometrics teaches us so. In New York the Regents Exams separated the good from the bad for many decades without complaint, but now the armies of reformers follow Obama into the worst kind of social engineering. It is a plague season indeed.
I'd like to add a few personal anecdotes. I'm a grad student at a university that TFA recruits at. I knew a korean-american girl who had been adopted as a baby and raised by white parents. She applied to TFA and was so idealistic about the whole thing. I tried to gently warn her away from it, but she told me that her mother who was a teacher had already tried to warn her from doing it. She didn't get accepted by TFA, but applied to a similar TFA-like program and was accepted to teach middle school in the Bronx. I saw her again a year into her teaching. She didn't go into any particulars but was disgusted with the whole experience and was simply filling out her two years. One of the undergrads here got accepted into TFA. A really nice kid, but he's definitely a bit effeminate. I cringe when I think about it because they are absolutely going to eat him alive.
ReplyDeleteI used to live in Charlotte, NC and an associate of mine decided for some inexplicable reason that he wanted to teach high school. He applied to the Charlotte school system less than two weeks before school started. He had a B.S. in chemistry but no ed credentials. They hired him on the spot and he went through a crash course certification the week before school started. He ended up in the worst high school in the city which is like 99% black (God have mercy on that other 1%). The school was an absolute zoo. He told me all the horror stories. He couldn't control his class room let alone actually teach anything. The black principal covered up the most grevious offenses. A student in class openly challenged him by openly displaying a bag of marijuana. He called security to come remove the kid from class. The kid later threatened him, "That snitches get stitches." That was the last straw for him and he quit that day two months into the school year. The principal tried to threaten him since he was quitting before the end of the semester. He told her that if the school system gave him any problems he would report everything he had seen to the local TV newstations. They quickly let him go without any trouble.
When I was younger I was very idealistic and believed all the liberal bs. Then I went to an "integrated" high school that consisted of 30% inner-city blacks. Talk about having the blinders ripped from your eyes. That turned me into a race-realist long before my four years were up. You can read all the statistics but until you see the dysfunction up close you have no idea. The black underclass is truly frightening when encountered first hand. I think that "Just Shoot Me" and Rick Darby are both right. When the dysfunction is upclose and personal it seems impossible to deny, but the PC brainwashing is so intense that many still cling to their ridiculous notions. At least on the suface.
There may be 'race replacement' going on, but you better not notice it, let alone object to it. Even if it's happening to your hometown. Otherwise some Indian -- excuse me, Indian-American (in this case a doctor) -- will write a column castigating you for it.
ReplyDeleteSailer wrote about the Joel Stein piece earlier.
Now CNN has published a whining screed that reads like it was written by an overwrought teenager:
It's obvious that you were waxing nostalgic about your hometown. If I follow your logic here, should nothing ever change in America?
Should moms stay at home while we men wear our suits and ties and head off to work, cigarette in hand? Should African-Americans still drink from a different water fountain from you? Should we revoke the right of women to vote?
If that's the case, I've got a Delorean with a flux capacitor I'd be happy to sell you to get "Back to the Future."
See? It's your future, it's inevitable.
What a piece of crap the CNN site has become.
Im waiting on black professional basketball and football players to start camps any day now where they instruct Asian and Hispanic children various ways to close the athletic achievement gap. Its unbearably racist to see the NFL and NBA so dominated by blacks with hardly any hispanic or asian representation. I dont know how those millionaire black athletes live with themselves or can even sleep at night. The guilt must be overwhelming.
ReplyDeleteFrankly, the Hispanics came here of their own accord, many illegally. Why on earth would we give a damn about an achievement gap with them???
Secondly (Dammit!!!), Why aren't we worried about the Asian/Black or Asian/Hispanic achievment gap? What about the Indian/Black or Indian/Hispanic achievement gap?
Our Cultural Marxistscatti might defeat the West, but I really doubt the Chinese, Indians, Indoneseians, and Russians are going to fall for this stuff. All they have to do is say no to our elites' calls for them to accept third world immigration and they will outlast us as we descend into becoming a second-world-nation ourselves.
The only people who are being suckered by this crap are whites.
ReplyDeleteNot the Indians, the Asians, the Muslims, the Jews, the Blacks or the Hispanics.
No-one.
Just us.
Makes you think; at least it should, if that weren't off-limit.
In this life, you get what you deserve; and at the present rate, we deserve to go down.
Anon.
Teach for America is to Wall Street/D.C. elite jobs what the U.S. Army or Marine Corps is to police jobs. It's where young elites prove themselves and get some seasoning before heading to their future careers.
ReplyDeleteBut for years, the highest and noblest goal to which any White American could aspire is bettering the lot of Black people. This is just more of the same.
ReplyDeleteI wonder though if Hispanics are really secure in their status as permanently-oppressed-people riding on the coattails of Blacks. In my experience Black guys are pretty adroit at playing on White people's emotions; this is why Black women are difficult to charm or intimidate or move to pity, because they have to deal with their men. This is what you would expect, given that most Blacks come from societies where women do all the work and men are basically parasites. Parasites need social skills - and not much else, really.
I suspect our rather bizarre collective pity-party over Blacks (which has lasted over 150 years in the Northern states) is due simply to a lack of resistance to manipulation.
Hispanics, on the other hand, are no better at manipulating people than we are, and I wouldn't be surprised if they wear out the patience of American Whites. Too late, maybe, but it could happen.
Teach For America is amusing because, if nothing else, it shows rich, reasonably-bright people what passes for education and educational training in American public schools. Which they doubtless knew of only through rumour.
In general I believe the following:
ReplyDelete1. Above a certain IQ level, most people are race realists;
2. People above a certain IQ level tend do dominate decision making positions;
3. At this IQ level – status positioning is conveyed through where you stand on the issue of race (among other things);
4. This gives rise to race-unrealistic policies;
5. On the basis of above assumptions – most graduates from elite universities will be race realists, and do not believe in TFA’s effectivness but it conveys your status in the mainstream (liberal) hierarchy and provides yet another credential on the CV.
This is in reference to the comment that TFA is useful education (race realism) for intelligent misguided liberal graduate students.
"IQ level – status positioning is conveyed through where you stand on the issue of race (among other things);"
ReplyDeleteRemember something, guys:
This generation of young people has not done its healthy teenage rebelling. They've eaten the pc-mc treacle the Boomers force-fed them and proclaimed they liked it, like obedient children ought.
That pent-up libido is going to erupt eventually. I'm betting it will be just about when they hit their 30s.
Anon, remember, these elite-school grads are the future determiners of which particular opinions convey status.
I think there's good reason to expect that in 10 years when these former TFAs get the decision-making reins, their ugly experiences in the inner city schools, which will have made such an impression on them during formative years, as well as the youthful desire to do exactly the opposite of what their elders demand, may well prompt them to decide that Race-Realism is the latest thing.
Geez, the relief from the cognitive dissonance alone will be motive enough, not to mention the glee of finally doing their postponed nose-thumbing.
I think this because, having teenagers, I'm often astonished just how blunt they are with hatefacts when they think no grownup's listening. Like the WWI doughboys with a girlie mag -- but now it's not the bare breasts that's so titillatingly forbidden, but the chance to whisper the race truths.
"Rick Darby said...
ReplyDeleteI'd like to believe in Just Shoot Me's prognosis. We'll see. But my impression is that the kind of young Ivy Leaguers who volunteer for this sort of thing are impervious to experience. Most have been immersed since entering school in ideology and abstractions."
That's quite possibly true. If four years living in New Haven didn't teach her a thing or two, then she might never learn anything. Then again, she is teaching mexican kids. Perhaps she has essentially written off black people (as many liberals have without explicitly acknowledging it), and transferred her sense of white-guilt obligation to the fashionable new minority.
White women should read Teddy Roosevelt's letter on Race Suicide. I never even though about things like that growing. Race was shunted aside.
ReplyDelete"Contrary to our fondest hopes, IQ is real, is distributed unevenly, and has a profound effect on life outcomes. "
ReplyDeleteThat's exactly why I am not going to have children. Why would I bring a stupid person into the world to live a miserable life? That's almost torture. I don't know how smart my kids will be.I don't have a super high IQ,maybe 115.
"Our Cultural Marxistscatti might defeat the West, but I really doubt the Chinese, Indians, Indoneseians, and Russians are going to fall for this stuff. All they have to do is say no to our elites' calls for them to accept third world immigration and they will outlast us as we descend into becoming a second-world-nation ourselves
ReplyDeleteI don't know about Russia,but the Ukraine even has black immigrants.Why?
Charlie
ReplyDeleteDo you mind telling us exactly what work is done in black societies that are primarily done by black women.
The best part of having smart people go teach stupid kids is that they have to come face to face with real stupidity. I mean explaining painfully easy stuff 15 ways and drilling it and playing it and drawing it and after all that, the kids still don't get it. Then these chicks have their own kids who learn everything quickly. They start to smell the coffee. Gee, I killed myself for six weeks trying to teach this to my first graders but now my little preK Howard learned it the first time I showed him.
ReplyDeleteAnd finally the light goes on.
"The school was an absolute zoo."
ReplyDeleteThis metaphor doesn't work for me. Zoos are typically safe, organized, educational places. Inner-city schools are not.
University students here are forced to spend time on "community work" like tutoring Ethiopian retarded imbeciles. America is corrupting the world with its crazy ideas.
ReplyDeleteThe only people who are being suckered by this crap are whites.
ReplyDeleteNot the Indians, the Asians, the Muslims, the Jews, the Blacks or the Hispanics.
You obviously didn't read the City Journal by a Jewish TFA recruit. I don't doubt we're disproportionately susceptible, but let's try to be accurate.
Lots of colored people and Jews in TFA, as far as I can tell.
ReplyDeleteFirst Teach For America Teachers Headed to Dallas's Highest-Need Public Schools this Fall:
Incoming Teach For America corps members earned an average GPA of 3.6 and a combined SAT score of 1333. The fastest-growing segment of corps members are college graduates who are looking to transition from other professional jobs into education. Almost one-third of the incoming corps are people of color, and one-quarter received Pell Grants. Nearly 10 percent are African-Americans, which is double the African-American enrollment at the colleges where Teach For America primarily recruits.
Wendy Kopp, Leader of TEACH FOR AMERICA:
She would rather it focus on, for example, Verdel Baskin, who was making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to teach his seventh graders the importance of sequential steps when she took some potential donors to visit his classroom in the South Bronx last spring. Or on Michael Feinberg and David Levin, corps members from 1992, whose Knowledge is Power Program in Houston and New York was spotlighted at the Republican National Convention last summer. Or perhaps on Mark Levine, who quit teaching after two years in Washington Heights but has returned to the neighborhood to open a credit union....
That City Journal article is downright optimistic compared to this:
ReplyDeletehttp://martynemko.blogspot.com/2009/06/white-teacher-speaks-out-what-is-it.html
Who is she going to marry if all the white guys are reading Roissy and perfecting their game.
ReplyDeleteJazz
...who was making a peanut butter and jelly sandwich to teach his seventh graders the importance of sequential steps...
ReplyDeleteHere we teach the importance of sequential steps at age 1 : Now you put one foot, then the other little foot..."
Mangan, this subject saddens me and want to cry. Time to write something positive about America.
J: I agree, the whole thing is very depressing, observing how brainwashed our best and brightest are to the detriment of their own people and country. If you think of a positive topic to write about, let me know.
ReplyDeleteThis comment hit the nail:
The only people who are being suckered by this crap are whites.
Not the Indians, the Asians, the Muslims, the Jews, the Blacks or the Hispanics.
No-one.
Just us.
"This metaphor doesn't work for me. Zoos are typically safe, organized, educational places. Inner-city schools are not."
ReplyDeleteGood one!
You'd be better off writing about more issues just like this one, and with great emphasis.
ReplyDeleteForget the sugarcoating. Make it burn.
All this idiocy related to closing the achievement gap is amusing to me because it's like seeing how communism started in my country with trying to make everybody equal. The only way this works is by equalizing people downwards - make people who would achieve, not do it. Or make them work in groups and put an achiever in a group of non-achiever and let the group take credit and sign on the project that the achiever made - and also get paid for it, sure. And if it really doesn't work and people don't like it, forced labour camps and assassinations, plus some deportations work.
ReplyDeleteAlso, being white in America is like having political dissident parents in communist Romania - it got you passed over for promotions, jobs and it could have cost you your job. Unless you were a state informer. Same in America - you're white, you're going to be passed over for promotions and whatnot, unless you're a liberal and do the right things. Basically, "unhealthy origins" of Romanian communism which meant middle class background became European descent background. And hey, you can rename your project instead of the graveyard of the Romanian bourgeoisie, the graveyard of white Americans. Because reduced to the absurd, this closing the gap stupidity has these consequences.
Also, if I was that woman, even if I wasn't teaching those invaders, I wouldn't start competing in birth rates with foreigners simply because the men of my group prefer to dig their own graves in the name of social justice and keep everybody citizen and be against discrimination.
<>
The problem is that they're there and that they're given citizenship, not whatever this woman is doing.
Just shoot me, the housing bubble has nothing to do with the Mexicans. It's mostly stupid regulation and horrible monetary policy.
Rick Darby, that's cognitive dissonance. The truth of the matter is that the liberals are just like the typical Americans who can't imagine stripping people of citizenship or doing away with the civic notion behind being an American. It's the exact same problem. The truth of the matter is that people form models with the information they have, but after a model is formed, it ignores information that flies against it, so you must think laterally in order to cause the model to restructure. Most people don't.
Related to TFA, I have some funny anecdotes from school too. Being robbed by Gypsy kids until my school hired a private security company(the kids weren't even in school), being asked for money to not get beaten up, being robbed off my cellphone by a Gypsy classmate with who I was friends(I guess they can't help themselves near their friends either). It was great when I was in the top 400 students that finished 8th grade in 2004 so I basically could go to any highschool - I loved my 100% classmates in highschool. Sure, we did stupid things too, but we didn't rob each other or beat each other up.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGv-9beJOe0
And well, I recall that I was in highschool when that was on the news. At least the commentators on the video are insane though. Still, I'd like to be a teacher, but I'll probably not be one. The funny part is that the white and proud comment got the most thumb ups on that video. I did learn some good things in school though related to these incidents - knowing the right people who are willing to break some legs for you can come in handy when authorities fail to do their job.
The ethnic major guy is hilarious. What I want to know though is why would a white sheboy does in ethnic class?
Cornelius, what's deplorable is not just that a nation should deploy it's resources on its best, not its worst, but the poor would be better off if the brilliant Americans would do useful stuff. It's like Thatcher said when a MP told her that the British poor are worse off relative to the rich. And she told him that the poor British have the highest standard of living they ever had on average, even if the gap increased and that he'd rather have everybody be worse off, including the poor, just to have the gap smaller.
Anonymous, the only idiots who fall for this are whites because whites are the ones that went through 'Enlightenment' and believe all the ideological diarrhea that came out of it.
Charlie, what's sad is that I explained to a white guy why he is discriminating against his own children by supporting the encouraging of minorities to do whatnot - he had none of it. And people wonder why white people are going extinct. lol
Just shoot me, I have a friend who is a really good pollster there and he told me that the millenials, despite not being race realists, aren't that moved by being called racists.
Anonymous, these chicks don't have children. Liberal white women have what? One child when they're 35?
"This comment hit the nail"
ReplyDeleteNot really, as ben tillman pointed out. There are plenty of foolishly idealistic Jews.
In any case, it is depressing and absurd that smart white Americans now view it as their calling to be missionaries devoted to improving the lives of primitive people while neglecting their own.
I admit to complete befuddlement when it comes to this area. And by this area I mean the lack of identification with their own, other whites, by the preponderance of our white elite. I mean, they can't be faking it, can they? No. Some are, but the majority?..no. I grew up in a household in which not one prejudicial word was uttered. Scouts honor. And yet I instinctively sensed the otherness of blacks, latinos and orientals. Didn't and doesn't matter that many orientals are clearly bright, competent people. They are other. Impossible to be in the comfort zone with them. This I think is natural. Built into us. And yet a great change has happened in my own short lifetime. Apparently millions of whites don't have this race consciousness. Or at least this lack of comfort with the other. The other is not the other to them. Again, this phenomenon leaves me at a complete loss. That's all I can say about it.
ReplyDeleteSomething positive? I've had three really smart children! I wish I had a Nice White Lady to help out around the house.
ReplyDelete... I instinctively sensed the otherness of blacks, latinos and orientals. Didn't and doesn't matter that many orientals are clearly bright, competent people. They are other. Impossible to be in the comfort zone with them. This I think is natural. -ricpic
ReplyDeleteI think it is natural, to an extent, but I don't know how much of it is caused by fears of being called racist. If I didn't have a concept of racism or it being evil, I think i would be ten times more relaxed, around blacks at least. That's still not very relaxed though.
"rebelliousvanilla said...
ReplyDeleteJust shoot me, the housing bubble has nothing to do with the Mexicans. It's mostly stupid regulation and horrible monetary policy."
Steve Sailer has made a convincing case that it had a lot to do with mexicans. Rebellious Vanilla, you make a lot of blanket pronouncements on things you don't much understand. Based on your previous posts, I gather that you don't even live in the United States. On what basis do you make such a claim? Why should anyone lend any credence whatsoever to your opinion on this? When you make enough such pronouncements, people are going to stop believing anything you write, and will simply start ignoring you.
Another smart white woman wastes her best fertility years to teach proliferating NAMs. What an absolutely depressing image!
ReplyDeletericpic said:
ReplyDeleteI admit to complete befuddlement when it comes to this area. And by this area I mean the lack of identification with their own, other whites, by the preponderance of our white elite.
When you have manipulated other humans such that you are in the elite, you now need to ensure that other lineages do not manage to crawl to the top of the heap and compete with your offspring/lineage.
TFA seems like a perfect way to ensnare promising competition for your offspring is a trap that will forever keep them out of the ranks of the elite.
Martin B, because I actually understand economics and finance. If you can't see how without the Fed artificially low interest rates the ARMs wouldn't have existed or that without the governmental backed mortgages banks would have cared who they loan to or that without... I can continue, but it's obvious that you have no idea what you're talking about. Without the artificially low interest rates and moral hazards, all the products that allowed Americans to overpay for houses wouldn't have existed since Americans wouldn't have afforded higher house prices. House prices were bid up to those ridiculous heights by a combination of temporarily low adjustable rate payments(due to low interest rates below the market levels), a complete absence of lending standards(due to governmental guarantees) and by speculative buying(fueled by the phony increase in home prices). If you knew any economic history, you'd also know that Japan after their tech bubble had a housing bubble and they had similar policies as America after the dot com crash. And there are no Mexicans in Japan. If you were smart in 2004 or so, you could have got a no downpayment, negative amortization mortgage and simply default in 2008 when you would have had to actually start paying the real price of the house and take all the stuff in it, sell it online and you lived for free for 4-5 years. Obviously though, it was the Mexicans!!! Just like the Jews are to blame for everything.
ReplyDeleterv: Read this:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_diversity_recession_or_how_affirmative_action_helped_cause_the_housing/
Your sense of certainty seems only to be matched by your willingness to tell us about it.
Dennis, nice rhetoric. Thought about running for office? ;)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, about Steve Salier's article. The dot com bubble had nothing different than the housing bubble. Those 'smart entrepreneurs' stuff wouldn't have happened if the idiocy of dividends don't matter wouldn't have started. Heck, at some point Yahoo was worth more than the whole country of New Zealand(stock market and all the real estate). All that smart new stuff wouldn't have happened if funds were allocated properly. The business model of those companies were to make some stupid thing nobody needed or used and to go public because everybody was buying dot coms. A lot of companies had no customers or anything of that matter. Their whole business could have been done again in a few months and the people making them public were appreciating them at billions of dollars, while they were worthless. In the same way, the American houses were overpriced on the belief that housing will always go up, just like in the dot com bubble there was a new era and dot com stocks will always go up. Heck, you can even go and notice the same behaviour in the Dutch tulip insanity from quite a while back. It was hardly smart or working on paper.
Getting back at the housing mess, while what Steve Salier writes is true, all the acts that pressured banks into lending to minorities and the changing demographics are contributing factors, but of limited relevancy. Without what I mentioned, minorities wouldn't have afforded the interest payments nor would they had the down payment needed to get mortgages. It also doesn't explain why the same thing happened in Japan, which has no blacks or Mexicans, no lending to minorities or anything of that sort. The similar thing is the policy of deficit spending and low interest rates. And this happened in Japan, a country where you lose your honour if you don't pay your debts.
And another thing - the whole mortgage market was a problem, not just subprime. And the bubble wasn't a bet on the increase of the credit worthiness of the bottom half of Americans, it was a bet on housing going up forever. Sure, as I said, what Steve mentioned is a contributing factor, but it's hardly the reason why the housing bubble happened.
http://rebelliousvanilla.wordpress.com/2009/05/25/why-the-bubble-burst/
The whole housing bubble could be summed up to one thing actually - monetary policy. With interest rates at 10%, none of this would have happened.
"rebelliousvanilla said...
ReplyDeleteI can continue, but it's obvious that you have no idea what you're talking about."
It was obvious that you know nothing about NASA, but that didn't stop you from having an uninformed - yet, curiously, fixedly certain - opinion about what ails it.
I think that someday Rebellious Vanilla will make a wonderful ex-wife for some lucky fella.
"rebelliousvanilla said...
ReplyDeleteJust shoot me, the housing bubble has nothing to do with the Mexicans."
"rebelliousvanilla said...
Sure, as I said, what Steve mentioned is a contributing factor,...."
Nothing. Something. I guess it's all the same when your an economic genius. You know, you would save us all a lot of time if you would just condense all of your self-contradictions into one post.
"rebelliousvanilla said...
just shoot me, I have a friend who is a really good pollster there and he told me that...."
Another appeal to authority by our expert logician.
Martin B, you really need a logic book. What my friend told me is based on research done about it, not simply because he wished those data up. If you would have said I'm wrong, I would have gave you some polling data, not say that you're wrong because you're not a pollster. Duh.
ReplyDeleteAnd contributing factor doesn't mean causing something. Even without the illegals and all the laws favouring nonwhites, the same thing would have happened. Without what I said, even with all these laws nothing would have happened. Heck, mortgage payments being partly tax deductible is a bigger factor than nonwhites getting houses and I doubt they were the main beneficiaries of those deductions. Just saying.
Smoking is a contributing factor to pneumothorax, yet it doesn't cause it. Reading comprehension anyone?
Also, you weren't talking about anything related to NASA, you expressed an opinion with no argument backing it up. I told you that you need to present an argument to change my opinion and you just insisted that you work there so you know it, which isn't an argument. It would have been like me telling you that you're wrong since you don't have an education in economics, like that matters. I said that I'm willing to change my opinion if you bring anything relevant that proves your point to the table. The idea that illegals and nonwhites caused the bubble is silly because none of those regulations related to them CAUSED it. Sure, they were crackpot idiotic regulations that shouldn't exist, just like illegals shouldn't be allowed to move into a country. But that's about it.
And contributing factor doesn't mean causing something.
ReplyDeleterv, you must be the most original contributor to the science of logic since Aristotle.
If a contributing factor isn't a cause, then "contributing factor" and "cause" are meaningless.
Example: One of the causes or contributing factors of the housing bubble was Mexican immigration.
"rebelliousvanilla said...
ReplyDeleteMartin B, you really need a logic book."
That's a very childish retort. But then, I suppose you are a child.
"What my friend told me is based on research done about it, not simply because he wished those data up."
But you did not lead off with that data, you simply quoted a friend - i.e., relied on his authority - to make you're point. But, this is your beef, not mine. I do not reject the "argument from authority". You, as many naive people, who haven't really thought about it, do. I believe in authority, if it is legitimate, and one evaluates it judiciously. Like the previous example I gave, of going to a doctor. Yes, one expects the doctor to give his reasons for a diagnosis, but you are not in a postition to completely understand it. It is not possible for anyone to know enough to weigh every last piece of evidence and judge everything for themselves. EVERYONE relies on authority - even you, whether you admit it or not. Life is simply too short, and the human mind too limited to do otherwise. Only fools believe otherwise.
Moreover, the argument from authority is just that. It is an argument. Not proof. One has to weigh it accordingly. And one will not always choose correctly. This is why even smart people sometimes get snookered by charlatans. There are no guarantees in life. But what is the alternative? To believe that you are smarter, wiser, and better informed than everyone else? That'a recipe for disaster.
You made a blanket pronouncement about what's wrong with an institution (NASA) that you don't work for or have any experience with, in a country that you are not from and don't live in. Why should I believe you? What proof did you give? None. I on the other hand said that someone who works for that institution probably knows better how it works than you do. For those of us who are not libertarian teenagers, this is called common sense.
Oh jimminy. It's all about the semantics again.
ReplyDeleteSomeone can use cause to mean "condition which, on its own, causes something to come about". Someone else can use it to mean, "condition which increases the likelihood of something coming about".
The right needs stronger glue keeping it together than the off chance we may agree on semantics. But I know I sound like a broken record.