Fair point. I should not have carelessly imputed his views to conservatives.

You have grossly underestimated the position, power, influence and wealth that await a talented young community organizer.

B. Obama

We don’t. I have never heard conservatives make the arugment Independent is making. I was simply taking his argument on its own terms.

Any black person who has the talent to pursue a successful white-collar career should do so. His primary responsibility is to himself (and any family members he supports), not to the “black community.”

Sure, if he’s civic minded, he can speak out on the social pathologies of the black community too. Bill Cosby has done so. But he was a successful actor first.

>> “Well, it’s true that some “developing” countries (the Philippines, Costa Rica)
>> fare better than the West in this regard, but these are isolated exceptions”

> I’m really talking about cultures not countries and I’m really not talking about things like “life
> expectancy” models of quality of life, I’m talking about happiness and having a fulfilled life

That’s what I am talking about too, i.e. the correlation between telling a pollster you are “happy” and your (material-) wealth. Life expectancy etc. has nothing to do with it.

International surveys consistently indicate people from the Third World are less happy than those living in industrialized countries. The Europeans least happy with their personal situation tend to live in the post-communist East where standards of living are lower than in western countries. There is a fairly clear correlation, although some moderately successful developing countries like the Philippines also report high levels of personal “happiness.”

>> .”..the producers and providers receive vast government subsidies anyway
>> so it makes sense to e.g. shift farm subsidies from meat production to vegetables
>> even if it means the price of the former will go up.”

> But I’m against those. Two wrongs…

Sorry, but this makes little sense.
I personally dislike farm subsidies very much but they are impossible to kill as long as the Senate strongly protects the interests of sparsely populated states. So there is always going to be “market distortion” due to lobbying by special interests no matter what you or I think. But at least the government could divert those subsidies to production of healthy food and away from meat producers.

MARCU$

Look, I don’t take issue with the First Lady addressing black issues if that’s what she wants to do. I do, however, take issue with people holding her to a different standard than they held white predecessors to.

Why should she focus her efforts on issues unique to the black community? What is the evidence that she will be more effective with the black community than her white predecessors were with the white community?

Government spent decades telling parents to fatten their kids with milk. Why? Dairy farmers demanded it. So now we’re going to spend billions helping parents unlearn the previous lies and embrace new lies? Why not just save ourselves the expense and leave it to people like Jamie Oliver, who don’t have an agenda?

In reality, I think this will end in a soda tax, which will pay for the Let’s Move initiatives, as well as some healthy kickbacks for big corn to offset their losses. The big losers will be Coca-Cola (anathema to liberals) and wholesalers and distributors (a major Republican constituency). I’m not sure why Mr. Gratzer is so confident this will not come about. What do New York and California have in common?

But I’m against those. Two wrongs…

“Well, it’s true that some “developing” countries (the Philippines, Costa Rica) fare better than the West in this regard, but these are isolated exceptions”

I’m really talking about cultures not countries and I’m really not talking about things like “life expectancy” models of quality of life, I’m talking about happiness and having a fulfilled life ,as in pointing out our high teen suicide rate as an example of a unrecognized problem in our culture. On one hand I certainly agree there is a clear co-relation between material wealth and happiness, yet I believe the means of measuring this is biased. Something like “happiness” is very difficult to measure objectively and is certain to contain embedded cultural assumptions. Did American Indians live longer in the 17th century? No. They live longer now. But go to a US Indian Reservation today and ask yourself, are these people happy? Should a man sweep up cigarette butts from a casino floor listening to ungodly bells and mechanical whirrings all day, or would he better enjoy hunting buffalo on horseback and dancing around a fire at night? That is the kind of thing I’m talking about. I’ve lived in comfort and in some discomfort, yet the times I wasn’t comfortable didn’t affect my “happiness” level too much. Our modern culture helps us live longer and be somewhat safer and lots more comfortable, but there are things it takes away that somehow never are even measured.

“Would you say the United States circa 1910 was less violent and less corrupt since unions and civil government were much weaker back then?”

This is a difficult question because so much has changed. I would like to answer now but it will have to wait for some other time. In short – no it’s probably about the same, it’s just a different scale and a lot of the opression has been displaced to other countries. We still have child labor, just not in this country. And BTW child labor isn’t always that horrible a thing. Children working in their family restaurant otherwise apprenticing can be very good. I don’t think it’s realistic to expect every kid go to college, our economic model is naive and unrealistic.