Milton Friedman speaks fairly eloquently on the topic of trade and tariffs. I'll post a mixture of his statements on the issue of free-trade and the promotion of it, as well as his thoughts on tariffs as a matter of protecting industries to allow it to gain a temporary advantage over other countries, thus creating employment in the process.

> Today, as always, there is much support for tariffs–euphemistically labeled “protection,” a good label for a bad cause. Producers of steel and steelworkers' unions press for restrictions on steel imports from Japan. Producers of TV sets and their workers lobby for “voluntary agreements” to limit imports of TV sets or components from Japan, Taiwan, or Hong Kong. Producers of textiles, shoes, cattle, sugar–they and myriad others complain about “unfair” competition from abroad and demand that government do something to “protect” them. Of course, no group makes its claims on the basis of naked self-interest. Every group speaks of the “general interest,” of the need to preserve jobs or to promote national security. The need to strengthen the dollar vis-à-vis the deutsche mark or the yen has more recently joined the traditional rationalizations for restrictions on imports.

As stated, trade tariffs which are often lobbied for and advocated by certain groups of people commonly make the argument that it is in the self-interest of the general population. The contrary is true: it is in the interest of a select group of people to have tariffs raised or implemented or have subsidies granted under the guise of competitiveness and efficiency. If a U.S. manufacturer is 2x less effective than a Japanese manufacturer at creating a certain good, is it the right decision to subsidize this manufacturer in order to raise its level of competitiveness versus the Japanese one? I would say no. As will be discussed later, jobs lost in export industry are gained in import industry, which is a point often forgotten. Americans will still desire cars or televisions even if there are no American manufacturers to produce said products. New jobs and business in import will appear to fill this employment gap and to provide for the consumer what they desire.

> One voice that is hardly ever raised is the consumer’s. That voice is drowned out in the cacophony of the “interested sophistry of merchants and manufacturers” and their employees. The result is a serious distortion of the issue. For example, the supporters of tariffs treat it as self evident that the creation of jobs is a desirable end, in and of itself, regardless of what the persons employed do. That is clearly wrong. If all we want are jobs, we can create any number–for example, have people dig holes and then fill them up again or perform other useless tasks. Work is sometimes its own reward. Mostly, however, it is the price we pay to get the things we want. Our real objective is not just jobs but productive jobs–jobs that will mean more goods and services to consume.

Countries should produce goods of which they have the comparative advantage in producing. This is low hanging fruit but a good example of this. Why should Canada outsource the production of postage boxes to Belgium when we could readily manufacture them in Canada? If it is inefficient for us to do so then we should not do so, if we can get the good for cheaper elsewhere then we should strive to do that and to produce goods at which we are more effective. If a lawyer is 10x more efficient than practicing law than his secretary and also 2x a faster typist, should the lawyer do both jobs? No, of course not. The lawyer should practice law as comparatively he has the advantage in doing so, and let his secretary do the typing. The argument should not be surrounding the "creation of jobs", but the creation of jobs that are meaningful and more productive and beneficial for our population to be employed in.

> Another fallacy seldom contradicted is that exports are good, imports bad. The truth is very different. We cannot eat, wear, or enjoy the goods we send abroad. We eat bananas from Central America, wear Italian shoes, drive German automobiles, and enjoy programs we see on our Japanese TV sets. Our gain from foreign trade is what we import. Exports are the price we pay to get imports. As Adam Smith saw so clearly, the citizens of a nation benefit from getting as large a volume of imports as possible in return for its exports or, equivalently, from exporting as little as possible to pay for its imports.

Imports are not bad, and trade deficits are not (necessarily) bad. Nation A trades with Nation B, but Nation B also trades with Nation C, Nation C also trades with Nation A and thus Nation A's currency will return back to their country. Because of markets for foreign currency, it is desirable that we import goods and do not necessarily need large trade surpluses as an indicator of a strong performing economy. The worst case scenario in this example of three countries trading is that if Nation A's currency never returns back into the country. If you were to think of a country as a household, you would certainly wish to pay less to receive more than the other way around.

In fact, Friedman describes almost perfectly why people who believe that the reduction of tariffs will in fact hurt domestic industry are misguided:

> The fallacy in this argument is the loose use of the terms “high” wage and “low” wage. What do high and low wages mean? American workers are paid in dollars; Japanese workers are paid in yen. How do we compare wages in dollars with wages in yen? How many yen equal a dollar? What determines the exchange rate? Consider an extreme case. Suppose that, to begin with, 360 yen equal a dollar. At this exchange rate, the actual rate of exchange for many years, suppose that the Japanese can produce and sell everything for fewer dollars than we can in the United States–TV sets, automobiles, steel, and even soybeans, wheat, milk, and ice cream. If we had free international trade, we would try to buy all our goods from Japan. This would seem to be the extreme horror story of the kind depicted by the defenders of tariffs–we would be flooded with Japanese goods and could sell them nothing.

> Before throwing up your hands in horror, carry the analysis one step further. How would we pay the Japanese? We would offer them dollar bills. What would they do with the dollar bills? We have assumed that at 360 yen to the dollar everything is cheaper in Japan, so there is nothing in the U.S. market that they would want to buy. If the Japanese exporters were willing to burn or bury the dollar bills, that would be wonderful for us. We would get all kinds of goods for green pieces of paper that we can produce in great abundance and very cheaply. We would have the most marvelous export industry conceivable.

> Of course, the Japanese would not in fact sell us useful goods in order to get useless pieces of paper to bury or burn. Like us, they want to get something real in return for their work. If all goods were cheaper in Japan than in the United States at 360 yen to the dollar, the exporters would try to get rid of their dollars, would try to sell them for 360 yen to the dollar in order to buy the cheaper Japanese goods. But who would be willing to buy the dollars? What is true for the Japanese exporter is true for everyone in Japan. No one will be willing to give 360 yen in exchange for one dollar if 360 yen will buy more of everything in Japan than one dollar will buy in the United States. The exporters, on discovering that no one will buy their dollars at 360 yen, will offer to take fewer yen for a dollar. The price of the dollar in terms of the yen will go down–to 300 yen for a dollar or 250 yen or 200 yen. Put the other way around, it will take more and more dollars to buy a given number of Japanese yen. Japanese goods are priced in yen, so their price in dollars will go up. Conversely, U.S. goods are priced in dollars, so the more dollars the Japanese get for a given number of yen, the cheaper U.S. goods become to the Japanese in terms of yen.

> The price of the dollar in terms of yen would fall, until, on the average, the dollar value of goods that the Japanese buy from the United States roughly equaled the dollar value of goods that the United States buys from Japan. At that price everybody who wanted to buy yen for dollars would find someone who was willing to sell him yen for dollars.

The actual situation is much more complex than this overly simplified answer, but it gives a good explanation as to why free-trade and a reduction in tariffs is beneficial. We often ignore the presence and importance of currency exchange markets when it comes to trade.

/u/paulatreides0, /u/jetjaguar124, u/WeAreAwful

This is not my best guide, but it is a guide. Refinements welcome.
I wish I knew where to post the refined version, because it seems wasted
on the ephemeral DT.

PC building notes, 2019 Q3

Introduction

This post is a a "guide" to PC building in late 2019. It is incomplete
in two senses. First, I make no special claims to authority or objectivity.
I'm just an enthusiast. I have only personally tested a fraction of the parts
listed below. Second, I am writing this before the Intel 10th-gen refresh
and before the release AMD's flagship 3950X. Those new parts may impact some
of the advice given below.

This guide is extremely opinionated. I will simplify and exaggerate to
keep things simple.

This post was written while drinking whisky and listening to
enka.

Internals

What's inside your PC

A PC has seven core components. They are,

1. CPU: the central processing unit. The thing that does calculations.
   
2. Motherboard: the bit that all the other bits slot into
   
3. GPU: the graphics processing unit. For frames in games.
   
4. RAM: Random Access Memory. Fast, volatile, short-term storage.
   
5. Storage: longer-term storage. Comes in several flavors, mainly solid state
   and hard disk.
   
6. PSU: the power supply unit. The bit that delivers power to the other bits.
   
7. Case: a steel box that you put the other bits in.
   
   A word first on compatibility. The skeleton of the build is the motherboard,
   and you have to make sure that every other bit is compatible with your board.
   There are two CPU manufacturers, AMD and Intel; each has their own CPU
   design and thus has their own motherboard type. RAM, storage, PSUs, and GPUs
   are all cross-compatible with either AMD or Intel motherboards.
   Motherboards come in different sizes. A case will be compatible with certain
   size ranges. From small to big, these are ITX, m-ATX, ATX, and
   E-ATX. You'll want to check that your motherboard can fit in your case.
   
   

   CPUs
   

   
   AMD's most current CPUs are the 3000-series Ryzen chips. There are a bunch
   of them, but the only two you have to care about are the
   
   

• AMD Ryzen 5 3600 ($200)
  
• AMD Ryzen 7 3700X ($330)
  
  The other options are the 3600X, the 3800X, and the 3900X. None of these
  are interesting compared to the two listed above, and can be safely ignored.
  
  Intel's current CPUs are the 9th-gen Core chips. I would only seriously
  consider two of these chips,
  
  
• Intel i7-9700K ($380)
  
• Intel i9-9900K ($450-$500)
  
  and I'd ignore the rest. If you want to spend less than $350 on a CPU,
  then go AMD. If you want to spend more than $350 on a CPU,
  go Intel.
  
  A word about prior-gen chips. The AMD 2000 series (2700X, 2600) and the
  Intel 8th gen series (8700K) are still viable at the right price. Look at
  benchmarks. More on that later.
  
  A word about lower-spec CPUs. AMD sells cheap CPUs that have integrated
  graphics. That means you don't need to buy a graphics card with these chips.
  As such, a build with the 3400G or 3200G can be extremely inexpensive. Consider
  them for office use or basic builds that don't require heavy graphics.
  I have personally tested them and they play 4K video flawlessly; they should
  be perfectly adequate for basic tasks.
  
  For scientific workloads, ask me to write another post. I can't cover
  everything here.
  
  
  

  Motherboard
  

  
  Motherboards only accept either AMD or Intel CPUs, but not both, so you must
  choose a board that is compatible with your CPU.
  Once you decide between AMD or Intel, you can proceed to figure out which
  motherboard you want. There are approximately six billion boards. For AMD,
  skip the hassle and just buy the
  
  

• MSI B450 Tomahawk MAX
  
  Note the "MAX." The Tomahawk was released during the 1000- and 2000-series
  of AMD processors. The MAX variant is compatible with 3000-series chips
  out of the box.
  
  For Intel, I know far less. Any Z390 board should be acceptable.
  
  For AMD, the new X570 boards are available as well. They are pricey and
  overkill for 90% of desktop users. Feel free to skip them. Look out for the
  B550 boards that are to be released in 2020Q1.
  
  
  

  GPU
  

  
  There are two main manufacturers of GPUs: AMD and Nvidia. Confusingly, they
  do not sell GPUs themselves, but market them through partners like MSI,
  EVGA, PowerColor, Sapphire, etc.
  
  The GPU stack is a little confusing.
  That chart lists all of the main GPUs on the market, and if you count, there
  are over 25 GPUs listed. Multiply 25 GPUs by 10 or so board partners,
  multiplied again by the fact that each partner sells multiple types of the same
  GPU, and you have a recipe for an absolute nightmare of a market.
  The prices are only approximate.
  
  Let me cut through the fog. You should buy one of
  
  

• AMD RX 570 ($130)
  
• Nvidia 1660 or AMD RX 590 ($220-$280)
  
• AMD RX 5700 XT ($400-$430)
  
• Nvidia 2080 Super ($700)
  
• Nvidia 2080 Ti ($1200)
  
  Pick your price point.
  
  
  

  RAM
  

  
  RAM is distinguished by its generation. We are currently on DDR4, with
  DDR5 to come in either 2020 or 2021. This part is easy. Just buy
  16GB of DDR4 3200-speed RAM and be done with it.
  This kit
  will set you back $75 to $85 depending on the day of the week and will perform
  adequately for 99.98% of users.
  
  

  Storage
  

  
  In 2019, there is no excuse for not buying fast solid-state storage.
  For 90% of users, you should buy either the 500GB or 1TB variant of the
  Intel 660p and call it a day.
  This reviewer
  is 100% paid off by Intel, but he's also right on this topic. Buy a 660p
  and rest easy.
  
  For enthusiasts, the 660p uses new, cheap, somewhat fragile QLC NAND technology
  and you might want to go with a Samsung 970 instead.
  
  That does it for your boot drive. If you need further long-term storage for
  music, movies, videos, games, etc, look into either Seagate or WD's 8TB to
  12TB options.
  
  I personally have a few WD Gold 12TB drives. They're pricey, but they're
  enterprise-grade and haven't done me wrong yet. My firm, which buys storage
  by the truckload, loves these things. They rarely fail.
  
  I personally am using a 660p for OS, a second SSD for
  some of my media, and HDDs for long-term storage.
  
  

  Power
  

  
  I have neither the time nor the expertise to get into a deep discussion of
  power supplies. The topic is apparently very complicated. You should buy
  something in the 550W to 750W from a manufacturer like Corsair, EVGA,
  or CoolerMaster. Make sure it has the number of VGA connectors that your GPU
  requires.
  
  

  Case
  

  
  The case is the place to really personalize your build. Try not to spend
  more than $100, though; at the end of the day, it's just a steel box.
  
  

  Peripherals
  

  
  In some ways, the bits outside the computer are more important than the bits
  inside. After all, these are the bits you interact with on a daily basis.
  
  

• Monitors
  
• Keyboard
  
• Mouse
  
• Headphones or speakers
  
• Chair
  
• Desk
  
  

  Monitors
  

  
  Monitors are distinguished by size and resolution.
  
  The resolutions available are 1080p, 1440p, and 4K. I recommend the following.
  
  

• 24" 1080p for entry-level gaming and for most office work
  
• 25" or 27" 1440p
  
• 32" or higher 4K
  
  You may also care about refresh rate; the most common refresh rates are 60Hz
  and 144Hz. These only matter for gaming.
  
  One particular sweet spot is the "1440p, 27", 144Hz refresh rate" class. Look
  up benchmarks and comparison videos.
  
  

  Keyboard
  

  
  Pick to taste. Some swear by mechanical keyboards. Others buy standalone
  keyboards that mimic the laptop keyboard that they're used to.
  
  

  Mouse
  

  I have used the Logitech G500 and Logitech G403, and both are fine. They're
  somewhat expensive and will run you about $70.
  
  

  Sound
  

  
  There are a million ways to fulfill your sound needs. For wired headsets,
  the bone-stock recommendation is the AudioTechnica ATH-M50x.
  For speakers, I can recommend the Klipsch 2+1.
  
  For more earphone and headphone suggestions, ask me for an extended discussion.
  
  

  Chair and desk
  

  
  Don't neglect these. You'll be sitting at that chair for several hours per
  day, and you'll use that desk forever. Measure how wide your monitors will be
  and buy a desk accordingly. Go to an office supply shop and sit in a few chairs;
  pick one that you like. Your desk and chair will last forever, so don't be
  afraid to spend a little money here.
  
  

  Advice
  

  
  Read Logical Increments in its entirety.
  
  Watch videos from real, serious hardware reviewers. I recommend
  Gamers Nexus, Paul's Hardware, and Hardware Unboxed. Anyone else is either
  subpar or bought out or provides worthless advice.
  
  Do research, think for yourself, and ask me questions. I'll either give you
  advice or point you to reliable resources if I think my advice would be lacking.

/u/JetJaguar124 /u/Integralds

So first thing's first, Windows: ~$130 for Home Edition.

Okay, so things to keep in mind:

1. If you go Intel, overclocking isn't too great on 9th gen intel, especially if you don't have a beefy aftermarket cpu cooler. So if you don't plan on doing that at some point then you don't need a K series CPU and an overclocking motherboard. So your motherboard should primarily focus on giving you decent I/O options.
   
   
2. You also probably want to aim for 1080p or 1440p tops, given your price range.
   
   
3. Related to #1: If you don't plan on overclocking then a basic-ish mobo will do fine, and you mainly want to focus on I/O and other features. If you are getting Intel doubly so, as, as I mentioned before, intel 9th gen doesn't overclock well due to relatively low headroom to begin with. For intel overclocking boards are "Z" while non-overclocking boards are "B". For AMD they are "X" and "B" respectively.
   
   The GPU you should be seeking to use is the 1660 Ti, which is basically a slightly gimped RTX 2060 but without the raytracing stuff. If you are willing to spend a bit more then you could get an RX 5700 instead, which is nearly ~30% faster on average.
   
   That'll put you at $270 - $360 depending on the model you pick. Yes, it's a third of your budget, but the GPU is the single most important part of your build.
   
   Secondly you'll want a decent CPU to go with that.
   
   The Ryzen 5 3600 looks like a pretty good CPU, its a bit under $200, its fairly beefy and extendable so it's somewhat "future-proof" - in that it shouldn't cause much bottlenecking and you could upgrade your GPU past a 2080 Ti before needing to change the processor.
   
   This MSI Tomohawk Mobo looks good for the 3600.
   
   So we're at ~$320 for that, or about $640 total. Plus windows that is ~$730.
   
   The RAM Inty recommended before should be fine. You only really need 16 GB. This will set you back ~$80. If you find yourself wanting more RAM later down the line you can always add another pair of sticks later and double up your RAM.
   
   That puts us at around ~$800.
   
   $80 for a 750W Fully Modular Corsair PSU is basically a steal. It's refurbished though, although that shouldn't be a problem - especially with a PSU.
   
   We're at ~$880.
   
   Some good thermal paste for your CPU.
   
   We're now at ~$890.
   
   Storage depends on what you want to do. Do you install a lot of stuff and files at once? In which case you might want to get a nice sized SSD plus a big HDD.
   
   For your system drive. Plenty of space, good price, AND its an nvme SSD.
   
   That makes for ~$990.
   
   If you need lots of extra space
   
   If you need extreme extra space
   
   Keyboard and case are up to you, decide as you please. For the case just make sure that it can support an ATX mobo, as the mobo listed here is full ATX. Mechanical keyboards are crack, but they tend to be more expensive so they're probably out of range. This will be another $100 to $150 depending on what you pick.
   
   Something to keep in mind though: Your case and your monitors are basically "future proof". In other words, they won't really get "worse" with time or cause future performance issues. So monitors and case are things where you want to consider what you'll eventually want and buy ahead, even if you have to stretch a bit.
   
   This just leaves your monitor. I would NOT recommend a 1080p monitor above 24 in. Honestly, if you can go for a 1440p monitor then do it. I'm a bit of a resolution whore tho, so if 1080p works for you then that's fine. I would also avoid TN panels - they tend to look more washed out, tinny, and have worse viewing angles . . . although they also tend to be a fair bit cheaper than the good panels (namely IPS panels).
   
   I used to own one of these . . . it was vvy vvy gud. This is a relatively artsy monitor, so if color gamut correctness or whatever is important for you for photo or video editing or whatever, then this is a good pick. It's a bit expensive, yeah, but also super gorgeous. It also goes up to 75 Hz. Conversely, get a freesync monitor, and this one is probably good - haven't done much research on it, but Dells are generally pretty good in my experience (my current 4K monitor is a Dell too). Freesync will allow you to basically eliminate screen tearing and will provide a smoother feeling experience because it will even out frame rates better.
   
   One last thing to keep in mind: Shopping around on ebay and other sites can save you a fair bit. My rule of thumb is to never, ever buy sensitive parts like hard-drives, cpus, or motherboards second hand or refurbished. But everything else is fair game. So refurbished GPUs, Monitors, PSUs, Cases, etc. should be fine. Pre-owned? Ehhh . . . that I'm much, much more sketchy on - personally I wouldn't, but that's just me.
   
   So in total it'd be somewhere in the range of $1500 including monitor, OS, case, and keyboard. The system itself is around $1000. But you can perhaps knock off a hundred bucks or two by shopping around and looking for where you can buy these parts cheaper than Amazon.
   
   But again: investing in a good monitor and case can be worth it. It means you won't have to replace it if/when you do upgrade. And worst case scenario you can offload your monitor as a side/secondary monitor when you upgrade your monitor to a new one.

In addition to Shattered, I also read Chasing Hillary which I actually preferred because it was a bit more ‘human touch’.Here are my Kindle highlights from this book.


On the author working from the NYT offices


>“I just feel like the election isn’t happening in my cubicle,” I pleaded to Very Senior Editor, who—hand raised as if answering a question in science class—reminded me that the Times’ Upshot election model gave Hillary a 93 percent chance of winning. “But it’s over,” Very Senior Editor replied.


On Hillary’s first trip to Iowa


>Then she gave the photographers a smile so open mouthed and amplified that, looking back on it, I should’ve seen it as a cry for help. The entire Democratic Establishment should’ve seen it. The image screamed all at once, How long do I have to act like I enjoy this shit? and Why the fuck am I back in this state? and Dear God, what am I doing?


On Hillary’s press conference about her email crisis


>One of Trump’s close associates told me Trump had been baffled watching the spectacle unfold on CNN. It was one of the first times he knew that if he ran, he could beat her. Trump said he would’ve ended the first press conference with an emphatic “I’m DONE talking about this.”


On reporting the email issue in 2015


>I never agreed with Hillary that her email server was a nonstory, especially after the FBI opened its investigation, but I would regret—and even resent—that it became the only story. But that was months later, when the emails swallowed everything.


On Hillary’s video announcing she was running, but not explaining why


>The best historical analogy was to Edward M. Kennedy, a front-runner ahead of the 1980 election who’d been reduced to incoherence when CBS News’ Roger Mudd asked him, “Why do you want to be president?”


On Hillary as a candidate in 2008 vs 2016


>Indeed, by the time she first ran for president in 2008, Hillary was a hands-on senator constantly in touch with her upstate constituents. That was her frame of reference during the ’08 primary when the press all crammed into a living room in a prefab home in a predominantly white suburb in Indiana to see Hillary sit at the kitchen table and listen for over an hour to a proud Sheet Metal Workers Local 20 member who’d lost his job. Or when I heard her tell an unemployed waitress on the rope line in Columbus to personally follow up with her about her hysterectomy.


>But by her second campaign, Hillary had spent four years traveling the world, meeting with the likes of Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi and the Burmese opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi in Rangoon—a long way from Rochester. Hillary seemed like Rip van Winkle, awoken after a seven-year slumber to find a vastly different country.


On her over-engineered and poll-tested lines


>[Hillary] complained to aides that the poll-tested lines they kept handing her were duds. What, she wondered, does “I want to make the middle class mean something again” mean?

…

>It took six staffers and a focus group to compose an official tweet, signed with an “H.” (“FOR APPROVAL: Slight Edit to Tweet,” the emails read.)

…

>Even if Hillary could’ve attracted the same all-you-can-eat buffet of random rallying cries, her corporate campaign regularly confiscated homemade signs. Brooklyn thought it best that the Everydays hold professionally produced signs that displayed the message du jour rather than something made with love and some finger paint and magic marker. In Phoenix, I watched a young Clinton staffer rip from the hands of a little girl an I <3 HILLARY sign she’d drawn in crayon in art class that afternoon. They gave her a blue BREAKING DOWN BARRIERS sign with the campaign’s H-arrow logo and hillaryclinton.com at the bottom.


Hillary on the the press


>Hillary also reminded the newer aides about her fraught dynamic with the New York Times. She’d seen this movie before, she told them. “They’ll absolutely hammer me over emails and then they’ll give me the biggest wet kiss of an endorsement and it won’t matter by then,” she said.

…

>The campaign’s press shop assembled an album with all our faces [the press corps following her campaign full time], names, and news outlets. Hillary studied the Face Book with her briefings not so that she could occasionally say, “Hi, Tamara,” or “How are you today, Monica?” or “Good morning, Hannah,” but so that she wouldn’t mistake us for voters and—gawd forbid—accidentally interact with us when we approached her on the rope line.


On Mook’s use of data and not listening the single best political mind of his generation


>Many months later, during the general election, Brooklyn resisted dispatching resources to Michigan and Wisconsin, despite on-the-ground pleas from labor unions that Trump was gaining there. Ed Rendell, the cocksure former Pennsylvania governor who has butt-dialed me more than once, urged Brooklyn to spend more to reach suburban and rural parts of his state, but he was always told no. Three weeks before the election, Brooklyn stopped polling altogether in Pennsylvania, Florida, and other states. By one estimate, the campaign ended with $20 million in unused funds, which could’ve paid for a pile of yard signs and polling and targeted ads in the Rust Belt but instead partly went to Jill Stein’s recount efforts in Wisconsin.

…

>Robby was an Organization man; Bill Clinton, the ultimate Enthusiasm guy. “What’s the data and organization for if voters don’t like Hillary?” Bill would say to anyone who would listen. “They need to see the person I know.”

…

>By late February, Bill went red in the face on almost daily conference calls trying to warn Brooklyn that Trump had a shrewd understanding of the angst that so many voters—his voters, the white working class whom Clinton brought back to the Democratic Party in 1992—were feeling. He’d wanted Hillary to speak at Notre Dame, as he and Obama and Biden had all done. But Robby told him white Catholics weren’t the demographic she needed to spend her time talking to.

…

>Behind his back, Robby did a Bill impersonation (“And let me tell you another thing about the white working class …”) waving a finger in a Clintonian motion. Mook’s mafia would laugh. Any Democratic operative under forty knew that those white voters were never coming back. The Hillary Coalition was built on suburban women, minorities, and the young. Trump had insulted so many voting blocs (women, Muslims, Mexicans, the disabled, Diet Coke drinkers, etc.) and provided such a veritable feast of offenses that Hillary, her top aides, and the DNC didn’t think they needed to overthink the strategy.


How the Press were given a bus to follow her campaign…while Hillary ignored them and took a plane- meaning they missed lots of her events


> I found myself somewhere on I-80 perched over the back of my seat pleading with the [Clinton staffers on the bus] to let me watch their video feed of Hillary’s town hall. Because Hillary preferred to fly to her events (and really, who wouldn’t?) the bus-bound Travelers couldn’t make it to the Cedar Rapids and Osage stops. Our only option was to live-stream Hillary’s Iowa events from the press bus in Iowa.


BernieBros
>I initially brushed Bernie off with such casual nonchalance, such ill-informed, elite-media snobbery that I almost canceled our first one-on-one coffee because I didn’t want to miss abs-and-back day at boot camp.

...

>Bill Clinton had gone off message. He told a crowd in Milford, New Hampshire, that Bernie was a “hermetically sealed” hypocrite. “When you’re making a revolution, you can’t be too careful with the facts,” he said.

…

>[after Bernie had mathematically lost] The Bernie Bros didn’t want to accept this reality. They flooded my inbox with the literary flair of an unemployed liberal arts major whose prime interests were Holden Caulfield, the presidential campaign, and Internet porn.

…

>AS FOR HILLARY, she was so done with her Esteemed Opponent that she could hardly stand to be on the same stage as Bernie at the Brooklyn debate. She didn’t see any real difference between Bernie’s peddling of empty promises to his hordes of sexist supporters and Trump’s campaign, except that people seemed marginally better groomed at Trump rallies. One person who talked to Hillary about her views on Trump crowds vs. Bernie crowds broke it down to me as “at least white supremacists shaved.”

Hillary’s Schedule


>As she headed for the door, Hillary looked back at the ten or so of us and said, “I love being in Wisconsin! I look forward to being here, meeting with people. We’re just going to work hard.”

>[Hillary’s schedule after stating the above]

>Wednesday, 3/30—HRC will be campaigning and attending fundraising events in New York City.

>Thursday, 3/31—HRC will be likely campaigning in New York and attending fundraising events in Massachusetts.

>Friday, 4/1—HRC will be attending a fundraising event in New Jersey.

>Saturday, 4/2—HRC has no events scheduled at this time.

>Sunday, 4/3—HRC has no events scheduled at this time.

>That was Hillary’s last trip to Wisconsin.

From what I've been told even most economists don't really know much about these. They just don't spend much time with the old history of economic thought. They're taught certain ideas that originate from these schools of thought and stood the test of time, but they aren't really told they're doing so.

I'll try to give a quick rundown though of some of the terms in the meme:

1. Marxist Economics: IIRC people usually say Marxian in this context but w/e. This refers to the economic school of thought deriving from Karl Marx (duh.) I'll try to summarize them in a couple of key ideas. 1. They think crisis is inherent to capitalism, and that these crises will worsen until the system is destroyed, 2. Value is derived from labor hour put into a commodity, and 3. profit rate falls over time for firms (this ties into #2 and #1.) The latter two ideas are pretty much not accepted at all in modern economics. But on crisis he was one of the first iirc to really think of crisis as cyclical. There are modern marxians but they're pretty scarce and not really relevant outside of socialist circles.
   here's a little more reading from a non-marxian about what he contributed, scroll down to the econ section
   
   
2. Austrian school: Holy FUCK i love the free market. I'd say they're important for three big things. 1. They thought that the value a commodity has is subjective, in contrast to the labour theory of value. This is where marginalism comes from too iirc (i'd google that.) 2. The idea of opportunity cost. and 3. They battled with the marxists a lot, and laid down a lot of great theoretical criticism. Austrian economics didn't keep up with Keynesianism and nowadays isn't relevant, they're honestly more of a joke/meme than anything else. Probably the best known "source" is mises.org. You'll find their advocates being libertarians and anarchists.
   
   
3. Mercantilism: This is what old European empires functioned by, and old America somewhat as well. The idea was that trade is actively bad and your nation should be as self-sufficient as humanly possible. They backed their money with gold and silver and believed that the more precious metals you had, the better your economy was simply doing, hence the Über-protectionism. This was a big motivator of colonialism too which is fun stuff. This school is some old (15th-19th century) shit and you won't find any economists (really even at the time) claiming to be mercantilist.
   
   
4. Classical Economics: This was the original statement of market economics pretty much. It's big "origin" is Adam Smith and his book "The Wealth of Nations." It's very important because first and foremost it challenged mercantilism and asserted that trade is a good thing. They generally believed that the free market worked well without intervention (not always, though, they weren't libertarians.) And monopoly sucks and competition is fucking fantastic. This is where I'd say they're fairly unified. But otherwise, classical economics was veeery diverse.
   
   
5. Keynesianism: This is actually pretty hard to summarize since it's pretty much a "current" set of schools so I can just grab a few key ideas. I think the shortest way I can put it is that instead of focusing mostly on supply as classical economists did. The big revelation we get from Keynes is that in the short-run, fluctuations in aggregate (total) demand can affect economic output. People then go on and use this to justify government policy to inject stimulus into aggregate demand to bring the economy back to full output. You can split this into A. Monetary policy and B. Fiscal policy. Monetary policy means fucking with the money supply, actions done by the central bank (for americans, the fed.) Fiscal policy means government spending and taxation pretty much. There's a lot of schools claiming to be "keynesian" such as new keynesian, neo-keynesian, and post-keynesian. Neo-keynesian was the dominant school after world war 2 until the oil shock in the 70s. After that we got new keynesianism which is the most "current" mainstream theory and is a part of the new neoclassical synthesis. Post-keynesianism is a modern heterodox school of economics. I don't know much about post-keynesianism but IIRC it's considered a more respectable heterodox school than marxian or austrian economics at least.
   
   
6. Monetarism: People who really emphasize the role of monetary policy. Milton Friedman was a very important monetarist. For example he argued that the federal reserve's failures caused the great depression to be magnitudes worse than it could have been. This was pretty important at the time but is another thing that's pretty much taken for granted by modern economists.
   
   
7. New Neoclassical Synthesis: Pretty much any economist nowadays. This is the name referring to the synthesis of New-Keynesianism with New-Classical economics.
   
   
   I'm tired now and I probably could have done a lot more regarding classical -> neoclassical/new classical but that's an okay gist on some of them I think. I don't know anything about pre-classical economics or ancient economics so I didn't bring them up.
   
   https://www.amazon.com/Worldly-Philosophers-Economic-Thinkers-Seventh/dp/068486214X
   
   You can check out of this book if you want to go a bit more in-depth. Note: I haven't read it. I just went to the r/economics sidebar to see what they had.

Most of my thoughts were already said! I'll post them anyway to add support though.

1) Since your state income tax is a flat tax, it would be entirely realistic to replace it with a Land Value Tax (LVT). It would be a yearly tax on the unimproved value of land. This encourages land use and development, and discourages vacant lots just sitting empty year after year, or, it would encourage the owner of an under-used land parcel to sell it to someone who would make use of it.

Plus, taxing the value of land holdings has better outcomes philosophically/ideologically than an income tax.

2) Get rid of most occupational licensing. The arguable benefits of occupational licensing (for most jobs) do not outweigh the clear negatives. It's a largely needless thing that just creates bureaucratic (not to bash bureaucrats!) and financial roadblocks to those wishing to enter a trade, while benefiting those already in place.

Plus, it's a bipartisan issue! Or it can be! It has been at the national level. You're much more likely to face resistance from interest groups than lawmaker's ideology.

3a) Zoning reform! It can be hard to do at the state level, and I'm not familiar with Colorado's regulations at the state or municipal levels, but zoning reform is beginning to catch fire across America.

The Obama White House put out a zoning reform toolkit in 2016 to destroy the NIMBYs help local leaders implement basic, but significant, zoning reforms.

3b) A few basics:

-abolish, or aggressively reduce, single-family zoning areas. If someone wants to build a fourplex or apartments, let them!

-abolish, or reduce, parking minimums at least in metro/core areas. Many businesses are forced to build more parking spaces than they want, which takes up valuable land in a city's economic and cultural center. It's a burden on businesses, it makes cities less walkable, it encourages driving, and it just takes up space. You can't build a new shop or apartments or theater or whatever where a required parking lot is.

-general upzoning- loosening height limits, allow denser housing along transit corridors, even provide incentives to build denser housing units

3c) Some plans to look at for inspiration:

-Minneapolis 2040. Minneapolis just undertook the most ambitious zoning reform in the country. It's been diluted somewhat, but is still tenacious. It can be an inspiration to all cities across America

-California's proposed SB 50 (useful illustration). This bill specifically is a state-level attempt at mandating certain zoning freedoms onto counties. It's awkward in that sense- I'm always hesitant for a state to force very local ideas onto its cities, but in this case I do believe it's entirely called for. Again, I don't know about Colorado's housing in general, but bad zoning is a pretty standard thing across the entire country.

-LA Times on SB 50

4) Drug decriminalization. I'm not sure how you would feel about pursuing something so controversial, but you guys were first to legalize pot, and Denver just de-prioritized psilocybin, so I figure this is worth a shot!

There can be two levels to this: recreational/criminal justice, and medical. We've been seeing legitimate medical studies, and FDA trials, lately regarding certain drugs', especially psychedelics', ability to treat mental health disorders. This isn't to say "legalize LSD so my husband can trip balls all day, because he has nightmares sometimes." This is to say... it's hard to do studies on these substances because of their legal status, and 1) They're the only thing so far that's shown promise in treating certain disorders, and 2) They show promise in treating some disorders better than the methods we have now- both in the sense of the treatment being more effective, and in the sense of less severe side effects.

I swear this isn't some "duuuude, pot cures cancer, mannn" bullshit.

-MDMA/ecstasy is being researched for its ability to treat PTSD. There's nothing certain yet, but results seem promising. After 1 year, over 70% of patients no longer met the definition for PTSD. It's moved on to FDA phase 3 trials.

-LSD microdosing is just starting to be studied. Participants take an amount of LSD that will not trigger any noticeable effects. There's much anecdotal reporting on its effects, but no good clinical data... hopefully that can change. In the first study from England, it was found that microdosing doesn't trigger noticeable effects, and that people on LSD could perceive or recall time spans more accurately. Nothing remarkable, but it's where we have to start.

-Psilocybin is being studied for its ability to treat a variety of mental health disorders, and more specifically "existential dread" in terminal cancer patients. Although some people don't agree it should be legalized today, it seems important to study.

---------------------

Damn, writing these, I forgot my other two .-. if I remember, I'll edit later!

Lightning round:

-sanctuary state

-edit: mandatory vaccinations, or something comprehensive enough to ensure herd immunity in all groups. It's a public health issue. The only argument against mandatory vaccinations that I'm sympathetic to is religious liberty, especially for non-Western immigrants with deep cultural differences, or a lack of exposure to what Western medicine is... but the health risk is too serious to mess with.

-NUDGES, some people covered this really well already. For organ donation; 401k/pension plans; and virtually anything that someone has to re-sign up for that they'd typically do anyway; or for things that are good for people, but that people generally forget to sign up for. Always allow an opt-out, but when it's something people would generally want, just enroll them!

-edit: and school-to-trades pipelines! This is incredibly dependent on localities and the needs of each state, so again, idk what this looks like in Colorado.

But, getting high-schoolers who are thinking about the trades involved in apprenticeships and similar things in high school. Working with community colleges and local businesses to put systems in place to train local kids and workers. Let them do half a day at school, and half a day at a job site, or local tech college, or whatever.

The German system does this really well, though might go too far.

Get into high schools, and bring the idea of the trades to kids' attention while there's a clear chance to do so. And set up systems to get them trained and in a job. It's amazing what can be done if programs can just match kids with jobs.

Sorry this is so vague, but it's one of those issues that just requires tons of details, and the involvement of local government, local business, and local schools.

Reposting this because I originally posted in the early morning on Sunday when not a whole lot of people would see it.

/u/papermarioguy02's reading list outline:

Several people have asked me about what things to read to get initiated in the stuff I'm interested in. I don't really think that I'm the best teaching resource, but I can at least list off the pieces of media that have influenced my thoughts to a certain extent. This is just an outline, and you should probably use /u/integralds' list as a more authoritative resource, he's not 14, but this is how I got where I am (I also don't 100% agree with all of the arguments presented on the reading list, but they have influenced me).

Articles

In Praise of Cheap Labor - Paul Krugman

The Obama Doctrine - Jeffery Goldberg

The Case for Reparations - Ta-Nehisi Coates


How Politics Makes us Stupid - Ezra Klein


What the Fox Knows - Nate Silver

Books

Principles of Economics - Greg Mankiw

Thinking, Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman

International Economics: Theory and Policy - Paul Krugman and Maurice Obstfeld (READING STILL IN PROGRESS, and reading Princples of Economics or some other 101 textbook is probably a prerequisite here)

Capitalism and Freedom - Milton Friedman (READING IN PROGRESS, and again, you should probably read the 101 textbook before this one)

Non Print Stuff

Any of the Crash Course series hosted by John Green. They aren't anywhere near perfect, but they do a good job of introducing you to subjects, and giving some insight on how to think about some topics.

Any of Khan Academy's math stuff. All very good explanations of many different ideas

Grant Sanderson's Essence of Calculus series, a way of getting a good visual intuition for how some really important math works.

____

Again, this is just one 14 year old's list. I do not pretend to be authoritative or that anything here is perfect, but they are things that have influenced the way I've thought about things. This is still an outline, so I might add things here in the future.

>It's like you guys live in a parallel universe where socialist measures are taken by some magician that magically gives "the workers",

Eh, in Barcelona in 1936 when the workers turned their workplaces into self-managed bodies and started organizing in federations they just sort of did it themselves through pre-existing labor organizations. I'm not sure if any magicians of note were affiliated with the Confederación Nacional del Trabajo, the Federación Anarquista Ibérica or the Unión General de Trabajadores but as far as i know the workers didn't need any magician to help them with that.

And usually when a community of resource-appropriators shares a commons they come up with their own set of norms and protocols to manage it, with no need of "magicians" to do that for them. I take it you're into "economics", right? You should check out Governing the Commons by Elinor Ostrom, she did win the Nobel Prize in economics for her work on the self-management of common-pool resources after all.

>whoever the fuck you mean, the "means of production", another meaningless buzzword, and only then there is some sort of socialism where democracy doesn't exist and the "workers" are in charge.

You appear to be very knowledgeable in all of these subjects, indeed.

>Why don't you try living in the real world for a while,

I do it every day, thank you. Where else would i be living?

>where socialist measures can only be taken by a government, no matter if it's right or left, you think that Trump tariffs aren't a socialist measure just because he is republican?

Eeeeh, for real, do you honestly think that "socialism" is a generic word for "government doing things"?

I don't think Trumps tariffs are "socialist", but not because he is Republican, but just because tariffs are not socialist. You do realize that even Karl Marx was against protectionism, right? Even as early as 1846 he gave a speeches to workers in Brussels explaining why free trade was a good thing. One of the first North-American socialists, Benjamin R. Tucker, was not only radically in favor of free trade but he believed that protectionism was one of the "Four Monopolies" which he held were the main obstacles to the liberation of the workers and which socialists should fight against first and foremost. I am in favor of free trade.

Are you sure I am the one who is "not living in the real world"? Your vision of what socialism even is doesn't quite correspond to reality. And it's sort of weird that you are wasting your time arguing on the internet about something you can't even properly define.

>It's impossible to discuss anything with you guys because it's like you live in a different world made of buzzwords and strawmans...

I am starting to question your capacity for self-awareness.

>Do you think there's no middle ground between foreigners showing up with guns and ships and taking your shit, and being separated from world trade?


Yes, I believe trade and foreign investment is that middle ground.

>Despite being grotesquely unequal (as all countries were at the time), India was once enormously wealthy. I cannot help but think that if its wealth had remained in India or been traded for other forms of wealth, rather than just being taken, India might be doing a bit better today.

Read this book it's a great book about the topic at hand.

u/integralds

PCPartPicker Part List

Type|Item|Price

----|:----|:----
CPU | AMD Ryzen 5 3600 3.6 GHz 6-Core Processor | $194.79 @ OutletPC
Motherboard | MSI B450 TOMAHAWK MAX ATX AM4 Motherboard | $114.99 @ Best Buy
Memory | Corsair Vengeance LPX 16 GB (1 x 16 GB) DDR4-3000 Memory | $72.98 @ Amazon
Storage | Intel 660p Series 1.02 TB M.2-2280 NVME Solid State Drive | $97.99 @ Newegg
Storage | Seagate Barracuda 3 TB 3.5" 7200RPM Internal Hard Drive | $79.89 @ OutletPC
Video Card | MSI Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB Video Card | $399.99 @ Best Buy
Case | NZXT H510 ATX Mid Tower Case | $69.98 @ Amazon
Operating System | Microsoft Windows 10 Home OEM 64-bit | $99.89 @ OutletPC
Wireless Network Adapter | Gigabyte GC-WB867D-I PCIe x1 802.11a/b/g/n/ac Wi-Fi Adapter | $33.99 @ Amazon
| Prices include shipping, taxes, rebates, and discounts |
| Total (before mail-in rebates) | $1174.49
| Mail-in rebates | -$10.00
| Total | $1164.49
| Generated by PCPartPicker 2019-10-31 15:03 EDT-0400 |

I picked up my PCU earlier in the month when it was on sale - Corsair RMi Series, RM750i, 750 Watt, 80+ Gold , Fully Modular - Digital Power Supply

What do you think is a better option for screen? Either two of these or one of these. I'll be doing some moderate gaming on it, I don't have tons of time for games, but when I play I'd like them to look great if I'm spending this much. Same goes for movies.

Anything else I'm missing? I'll keep the mouse I already have and I found a mechanical keyboard that seems fine.

He should be banned from polite society just for the writing on display in this:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01LVYP4GR/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1

>Brett Hawthorne was the youngest general in the American military. He’d grown up lower middle class in Chicago, his mother a teacher, his father a salesman for the local phone company. When his dad lost his job, the family moved from the more expensive North Side to the South Side of Chicago—poorer, industrial, and heavily black.
>He’d been a shy kid, gentle, quiet, built like a reed. But he learned one skill pretty quickly at Thomas Edison High: how to talk his way out of a bad situation.


>That, he learned from Derek.


>On the second day of school, Brett was sitting by himself at lunch. He wasn’t one of the Irish kids, and he wasn’t one of the Italian kids, so he couldn’t sit with those cliques. And he’d made the mistake the day before of trying to befriend a couple of the black kids. That hadn’t gone well. He’d ended up with a black eye and a few new vocabulary words to add to his dictionary.


>So today, he sat alone. Until he made the mistake of looking up. Standing above him, glaring at him, was a behemoth, a black kid named Yard. Nobody knew his real name—everybody just called him Yard because he played on the school football team, stood six foot five, clocked in at a solid two hundred eighty pounds, and looked like he was headed straight for a lifetime of prison workouts. The coach loved him. Everybody else feared him.


>If Brett hadn’t looked up, everything would have worked out just fine. But then again, he didn’t have much choice, given that Yard grabbed him by the shirt and pulled him out of his seat like a rag doll.


>Then Yard mumbled something in his face.


>“What?” said Brett.


>“I said,” Yard growled, “did you just call me nigger? Because I just heard you call me nigger.”


>The entire room turned to watch the impending carnage.


>Yard’s hand came down on Brett’s shoulder, heavy as doom. Brett could feel his bowels begin to give way when a smallish hand emerged on Yard’s shoulder. A black hand. Yard swiveled ponderously to face down the person connected with the hand.


>A small person, slim, wearing glasses and a wide smile across his face.


>“Yard, man,” he said, “he didn’t call you nigger.”


>“What you talking about, Derek?” rumbled Yard.


>“It was me, man! I called you nigger.”


>Yard looked puzzled. “No,” he said slowly, “it was the white boy.”


>“Oh, yeah, man,” said Derek. “It was. I’m white. You just mixed us up.” He moved around to stand next to Brett. “See? We’re twins. Identical. Anybody could mix us up. Even though I’m more handsome.”


>Yard’s eyes glazed over with confusion. The giggling started at the back of the room. Yard’s hands clenched and unclenched as the wave rose over the room, until the kids were slapping each other on the back. Yard’s fists closed tight.


>But as they did, Derek leaned forward, reached out, and lightly tapped Yard’s hands—and then started singing at the top of his lungs that Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder song, “Ebony and Ivory.” “Come on, sing with me, Yard! You be ebony, I’ll be ivory!”


>But Yard was backing away now, a look on his face asking, who is this nut job?


>Derek turned to Brett and continued singing.
And Brett smiled and crooned back, in warbled harmony.


This has it all. The wooden dialogue; the clunky, pretentious writing style; the barely sublimated terror of black people - it's a truly exemplary work of conservative literature.

about 1000x yes

get the biggest, thiccest cutting board you can afford. edge grain is good, but end grain is top of the line.

It saves your knives, and wont move around on you when slicing and dicing.

​

EDIT: boos blocks are pretty good and affordable https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00063QBKY/ref=psdc_289863_t3_B00063QBDQ?th=1 pick what size works best

'Strong Agree', especially the latter part

This is a bit of a tangent, but one speech I always give to people wanting to dismantle capitalism, is to remind them that the root causes of labor alienation really wouldn't be solved by collective ownership. Braverman's Labor and Monopoly Capital discusses this at length, showing that one of the big undressed issues of labor organization is that most jobs are being continually subdivided to allow for more efficiency, at the sake of the autonomy or agency of the worker. Work becomes less existentially fulfilling as efficiency increases, except in the case of special knowledge industries which are resistant to this. Every conception of capitalism-dismantling socialism/communism I have seen ignores this, and all they would do would be to create a society where the majority is stuck performing equally unappealing labor for slightly more equally distributed rewards, in an overall under-efficient economic system.

!ping READING

Zach Weinersmith, the man behind Neoliberal Genghis Khan and Why NIMBYism is human kind's greatest asset, has illustrated a book about open borders with libertarian economist Bryan Caplan, and it goes on sale today.

If that sounds vaguely interesting to you, I highly recommend you read his short essay Immigration as a Civil Right. It's one of the most persuasive arguments I've read in favor of open borders, so I have very high hopes for the book.

You can order the book here on Amazon or go to the official website for more purchasing options and info.

The New Palgrave series from the 90s is pretty good for essays on basic economics, especially given the price tag.

If you're just getting into economics as an econ major (like I am), I recommend The Worldly Philosophers by Robert Heilbroner. Heilbroner really helps to break down how each of the main economic thinkers perceived the issues of their day, built off of or on the ideas of past thinkers, and how their ideas are perceived today.

>make them SEZ

Zero federal taxes and zero federal regulations? Cause I’d be okay with this. Mmmhmmm that capital inflow would be so hot.

>redistribute those votes to new immigrants

Lol wow here you need this

>limit the civil rights

Like what exactly?

"Speaking of subreddits," I said, "you remember we decided once you, /u/THE_SHRIMP and I, that /r/LateStageCapitalism was a huge illiterate fairy tale, a protectionist's dream, totally unconnected with any possible people in any historical Russia, a sexual travesty and a colossal farce, the vocabulary of poverty and its poetry, but no more--stop Wumbo, please let me speak--and even ruder mods, mechanical Marxist rhetoric and Trotskyist "critiques" of sweatshops repeated and expanded to an insufferable length, adorable populism, melting syllogisms--no, do not interrupt me--prax and normatives rivaling those of the greatest Austrians, a flora of oblivious memes, described--by Althusser, I think--as 'a mirage of a suspended gulags,' and, I have not yet finished, an absurd, rubber-and-wire hope for a socialist utopia (some divine Kibbutz, perhaps), and an impossible 2020 election where Bernie could have, indeed did win, but--and now let me finish sweetly--we were wrong, Wumbo, we were wrong in denying our little rival subreddit the capacity of evoking "economics": it is there, it is there--maybe a rather twentieth, or even ninth-century brand, but it is there. Please, dip, or redip into this book [offering it], you will find a few paragraphs in it, highlighted, that I think will be worth your while. Au revoir, /u/Wumbotarian, I must go now. I don't want to lose my place in the breadline."

https://www.amazon.com/Open-Borders-Science-Ethics-Immigration/dp/1250316960/

😍😍😍

Why Nations Fail seems to be the consensus book to read from this sub. I think it's a great book as well, pretty entertaining with lots of historical examples and history in why some nations fail.
https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1500148199&sr=8-1&keywords=why+nations+fail

Here's a pretty good book on the subject: https://www.amazon.ca/Nurture-Assumption-Children-Revised-Updated/dp/1439101655

Based on all the literature she reviews, her estimate is that genes determine like 60% of us.

The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver.

It's a great introduction to how probability and statistics can be used to model real events in the future, and why many of those predictions don't work very well at all. The book is more about the logic and principles of predictions than the math behind them, so if statistics intimidate you but forecasting fascinates you, this is the book you'll want to read.

He is a statistician and analyst who wrote a pretty good and very accessible book called The Signal and the Noise

I think you will be surprised to learn that what you have come to understand about neoliberalism and the positions supported by this sub are not always in alignment.

Make sure to read Why Nations Fail. Your first book report is due in two weeks.

Pre-ordering Open Borders: The Ethics and Science of Immigration so it can beat Ben Shapiro and that fake historian Rutger Bergman on the best seller list is the only ethical consumption under capitalism.

then I've got a great place for him to start

My Open Borders book is arriving Tuesday!! Can’t wait! 🤗


https://www.amazon.com/dp/1250316960/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_S22SDbBJZB6VS

What are some good introductory economics books? Is this good?

Obviously it’s more complex than simply “make more money dummy.” But simply putting a few $ into an S&P index each paycheck would completely change the lifestyle they are destined for once they are too old to work.

I have tried to explain compounding interest to my less affluent family members multiple times to no avail. It’s hard to convince someone to contribute to a Roth IRA when they don’t even want a bank account.

IMO, the biggest hurdle we have in the US is the complexity of the system. It’s one reason I am a huge fan of Nudge [Thaler / Sunstein]. We need a default that is easy for everyone to save money, that people who want to educate themselves can opt out of. That used to be the pension system, but as that disappears, we are headed toward a bleak future for a lot of people.

Here's a good starting place for you.

The three first results when searching for "open borders" on Amazon.

Guys, I'm confused, which one should I pick?

https://www.amazon.com/Open-Borders-Science-Ethics-Immigration/dp/1250316960/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=open+borders&qid=1572618411&sr=8-1

https://www.amazon.com/Open-Borders-Inc-Funding-America/dp/1621579719/ref=sr_1_2?keywords=open+borders&qid=1572618411&sr=8-2

https://www.amazon.com/Why-God-Hates-Open-Borders/dp/1732785902/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=open+borders&qid=1572618411&sr=8-3

Surprisingly it goes on like this, there is a balance between pro and anti in the following results.

>Is social democracy neoliberal

No


>liberal government institutions

• democracy
  
• pluralism
  
• rule of law
  
  etc.
  
  this book goes into more detail what exactly thoes institutions are and why they're a good thing. If you read it you're probably gonna be more informed than 75% of this sub so I highly recommend you to read it.

Principles of Economics by Mankiw is what you are looking for.

Caplan has also written a book about open borders, illustrated by Zach Weinersmith /u/MrWeiner, available for pre-order. https://www.amazon.com/Open-Borders-Science-Ethics-Immigration/dp/1250316960

til that Bryan caplan wrote a graphic nonfiction weeb mangashit on open borders.

!ping WEEBS

Let me just fix that for you

https://www.amazon.com/Capitalism-Freedom-Anniversary-Milton-Friedman/dp/0226264211

Why Nations Fail by Acemoglu and Robinson.

It's wholesome to spend Valentines Day with my crush

Why Nations Fail

https://www.amazon.com/Why-Nations-Fail-Origins-Prosperity/dp/0307719227

Is this a good book to get started with neoliberalism?

> why should we believe that immigrants would pay net more taxes than they cost in services

Read the textbook my dude (or alternatively the sidebar, since they're both drawing from the same paper).

The author of this comic, u/MrWeiner of SMBC, stops by here sometimes and has a book coming out on open borders with Bryan Caplan: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1250316960/ref=as_li_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1250316960&linkCode=as2&tag=bryacaplwebp-20&linkId=1ed2cdfe4a1c0cd2a62e942a39f87b9d.

> yeah because the people there are too stupid to set it up properly and dont have the knowledge to actually teach

>there would be if people there were smart enough to create a real civilisation

You're not someone who should be using lack of intelligence as an insult, buddy.

> not without artificially giving them an advantage over all the locally trained citizens they wouldnt

There aren't a finite number of jobs, my simpleminded friend. If nothing else, we would need to grow more food and provide more services for these new migrants, not to mention construction of new homes and expansions of existing cities just to accommodate them. Ultimately though, as long as a migrant can be paid $X an hour to generate $X+1 of profit per hour, then they'll be hired to do so.

>england france sweden germany

All countries that are doing very well. The problems they do face (read Brexit) are not caused by migrants. I get the feeling you're not the worldly sort, so I won't bother to assume you've met anyone from these countries or, heaven forbid, have been there yourself, but things like grooming, rape, and even the infamous grenade attack are all not only very rare (all violent crime is lower than in America for same density cities) but immigrants commit even less violent crime than native born citizens. If you really want to stop crime you've got to look at their children whose levels of crime go up all the way to checks notes the same level as native born citizens.

>and they just let anyone in, right? not particular demographics they thought would be able to be integrated easily or anything?

Yep, until 1920 the US literally just let in any immigrant that landed. And our country went from a poor backwater agrarian country to an industrial powerhouse. None of this to imply that "native born" countrymen particularly liked immigrants, because none of them were "white". Instead they were all dirty races such as Slavs, Germans, Chinese, and Irish aka the "Albino Negros". The fact that you can think all these people integrated as well as you do shows just how well immigrant populations are able to integrate over a couple generations.

>oh no japan might have slightly less people! what a disaster! except of course for the fact that theyre massively overpopulated and crowded as is and a high density population isnt even desirable

Japan's economy has not grown for decades, they have an aging population that they have no ability to properly care for, and projecting a 25% population decline by 2050 is a far cry from "slightly less people". Also, Japan's population density is 336/km^2 which puts it under Netherlands and Belgium and only a tad higher than the UK. Just because the Japanese are able to construct dense megacities (with proper infrastructure, zoning, and transportation to make them livable) does not mean they're overpopulated or crowded.

Now I realize this was a lot of words and reading isn't your strong suit, but if you want a recommendation for learning all this same info through colorful cartoons, then I highly recommend checking out this wonderful comic book on the subject.