Joe Biden Love Thread

[Frownland]

Originally Posted by jwb

Did I mention I used a tracfone?

I already agreed with the bit about it being a bandaid if you don't fix the costs. I didn't even say "any form of addressing the issue of college debt would only help the middle class."

I said that I'm guessing more middle class and upper middle class people have a lot of student debt than people who are lower class since they go to uni a lot more so I bet they have more debt to be forgiven. That's what I assumed elph meant when he said it could be called regressive and I was just saying I could see that point not even that it was my main concern.

I would think when you say "any form of addressing the issue of college debt" that would also include lowering prices or having free college so there's not so much debt to be forgiven in the first place. Otherwise poor people will largely continue to be priced out of universities even if you decide to forgive the debt of those who manage to make it in.


I think your last sentence seems reasonable... hopefully it's a precedent that gets built on but if not and it's just one time debt forgiveness then it really doesn't hurt anyone and at least it helps some people.

to be fair the worker/owner distinction offers up ambiguities of its own. The idea that Elon musk is a capitalist and Apu from the Simpsons is a capitalist and therfore they are part of the same strata of society seems pretty questionable to me.

In that one abstract sense they are but I don't think that one sense fully embodies the way we actually experience class. Class seems to imply a sort of mixture of wealth and social status. A millionaire who made all their money playing sports is of a higher status in our society than a small business owner with a single corner store, despite the owner/worker distinction. The millionaire will be treated better in virtually every way other than the one you identified, so it seems wrong to say the owner is necessarily of a higher class just by virtue of being an owner.

Similarly, while I largely agree the starkest and most socially significant class distinction is between the bottom 99 and the top 1%, I don't think that somehow means the difference in lifestyle between the poor and middle class isn't also large enough to meaningfully distinguish.

I get your point about them "adopting the asthetic" of the bourgeois but to me it's more than that. Having twice as much money isn't just an appearance. IIRC I've heard something like after 70k a year it caps off in terms of how much happier money makes you but before that it makes an obvious difference just in terms of not being stretched quite so thin financially. Which makes sense since obviously the less you make, the more of a difference an additional 10k a year can make in your life.

I'd clarify but you don't care.

[jwb]

That is true. And well worth the wait.

Edit: this was in response to frownlands post before he edited. He pointed out that Apu is a cartoon.

[jwb]

Originally Posted by Frownland

I'd clarify but you don't care.

Lol... this is possibly the most emo debate tactic I've ever seen frowny.

[The Batlord]

Gimme a little bit of time to respond to this as I'll actually have to do a little bit of research on ****ing Wal-Mart to give a meaningful response, but I will say that my previous post isn't saying that only specific levels of wealth in all times and places are capable of producing greater wealth. There are times and places where you can have less SEED MONEY and do greater things wit it. Post WW2 America, when a destroyed world economy allowed America to hold half the world's wealth and where the New Deal actually redistributed a degree of wealth to the middle and lower classes that they hadn't had access to previously. Also the invention of the standardized shipping container around the Vietnam War allowed for far greater and far cheaper international trade than ever before, an economic frontier that made Walmart's success far more possible than just hard work and good decision making.

Again that's not a full response but just some food for thought for now as I think your Wal-Mart example seems reductive.

[jwb]

Lol... it's not even about specifically Walmart. Are you ruling out that a small business can grow into an empire or is your only point that this is exceedingly unlikely? Cause that's all I'm really trying to drive at with these examples.

[jwb]

Like with the Vietnam Nam thing and the shipping containers... let's say you're right and they lucked out and that made their business possible. What even is your point? Remember I wasn't saying the cliche trope of through enough elbow grease anything is possible or that they are the sole authors of their own success. So the fact that you are bringing this up sorta gives me the impression one of your motivations is to convey that they don't deserve credit for said success. But that is actually besides the point in this case.

[The Batlord]

Of course it's not a black and white view, you idiot, nor is it a conspiracy of the rich, but the level of money needed to build money-making system (aka a business) grows with the level of economic development as competitors grow, fail, spread, and monopolize. It's new economic frontiers that allow for those who can't afford to break into the pre-existing markets to have a chance to develop their own foothold but the more developed the markets in general the more SEED MONEY is required even for developing in new economic frontiers.

Bill Gates got funds from his family but still used non-copyrighted software made by enthusiasts to develop his computers and operating system because computers were largely an untapped frontier.

Bezos was shut out of that frontier by the 90s because Microsoft was already a mega company but he could exploit the internet as a way to sell people ****, but that required so much startup capital that Amazon wasn't even profitable for years.

And now that computers as a general concept is a tapped market and using computers to do useful things is also kind of tappe you now see galaxy brained tech bros desperately trying to find the next computer frontier and inventing crypto and NFTs because the obvious avenues of monetizing computers are already taken and even though there isn't really a use case for any of that **** the energy use of all those servers doing crypto **** is as much as a country. If an actual use case that people latch onto is found then how many new servers will you need?

[Frownland]

Originally Posted by jwb

Lol... this is possibly the most emo debate tactic I've ever seen frowny.

Didn't mean to make you sad with reality, my bad.

[jwb]

Originally Posted by The Batlord

Of course it's not a black and white view, you idiot, nor is it a conspiracy of the rich, but the level of money needed to build money-making system (aka a business) grows with the level of economic development as competitors grow, fail, spread, and monopolize. It's new economic frontiers that allow for those who can't afford to break into the pre-existing markets to have a chance to develop their own foothold but the more developed the markets in general the more SEED MONEY is required even for developing in new economic frontiers.

Bill Gates got funds from his family but still used non-copyrighted software made by enthusiasts to develop his computers and operating system because computers were largely an untapped frontier.

Bezos was shut out of that frontier by the 90s because Microsoft was already a mega company but he could exploit the internet as a way to sell people ****, but that required so much startup capital that Amazon wasn't even profitable for years.

And now that computers as a general concept is a tapped market and using computers to do useful things is also kind of tappe you now see galaxy brained tech bros desperately trying to find the next computer frontier and inventing crypto and NFTs because the obvious avenues of monetizing computers are already taken and even though there isn't really a use case for any of that **** the energy use of all those servers doing crypto **** is as much as a country. If an actual use case that people latch onto is found then how many new servers will you need?

Uh you can say no obviously it's not black and white and by that I presume you mean you agree with me that said general store could indeed grow into a retail empire. So I don't know what use it was going to be for you to try to do more research on Walmart to disprove that particular notion. You call me the idiot but you originally tried to correct what I said which was that the main distinction between the large business owner and a small business owner is their level of success. You said its actually how rich their parents are. Which is just a vacuous anti capitalist virtue signal that even you realize isn't the actual distinction. You were just tone policing because the way I framed it almost made it sound meritocratic but my actual point was they are essentially (albeit very uneven) competitors driving at the same goal. So I don't see any particular moral high ground in being the loser in that race, even if you did start with a handicap.

But yeah I've seen pirates of silicon valley and none of that **** changes my point either bro. I'm not saying they don't cut throats to get ahead either.

[jwb]

Originally Posted by Frownland

Didn't mean to make you sad with reality, my bad.

...

Originally Posted by Frownland

I'd clarify but you don't care.

Do you want me to reassure you that I care so you can go ahead and make your point?