I’m a cop. If you don’t want to get hurt, don’t challenge me.

Only difference being Nazi liberals will keep 'em poor rather than fry them.

More compassionate that way.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/ben-carson-comparisons-nazi-germany

 

Eh, just give them 20 years for stealing a loaf of bread. Make it 25 if it's cigars. Problem solved.

 

http://www.epi.org/publication/the_lessons_of_black_poverty/

Audit or paired-tester studies where black and white job applicants present basically the same qualifications in the same way to employers consistently find that the white applicant is much more likely to be offered the job.

 

Maybe this is true, but you haven't shown it.

How do those numbers compare historically? What were they 50 years ago, or 100 years ago?

 

I just did.

We know the other alternative.

 

He should have been like this guy -- I posted on the Running Deadly Force Thread:

 

http://kff.org/other/state-indicator/poverty-rate-by-raceethnicity/

https://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/census/1960/list.html

 

You've shown no such thing.

The question is -- or at least should be -- what percentage of folks in poverty remain stuck in poverty for generations, and are the numbers different depending on race.

 

That question is not in any way relevant to the argument I have been making. Black people, as a group, are disproportionately impoverished and disproportionately undereducated as compared to white people, as a group, in the United States. That is a problem, and it is a policy failure. Slavery was a policy. Jim Crow was a policy.

 

Your argument is irrelevant.

Can we stipulate that slavery and Jim Crow were policies that that were not good for the economic health of Black people in America?

I thought we were trying to look at current policy, and how it could be changed to break the generational cycle of poverty.

Current policy does not appear any better at breaking the generational cycle of poverty for whites or Native Americans than it does for Blacks.

Therefore, I would say that current policy might suck, and need to be thrown out, but should not be thought of in terms of race.

What can we do to help poor people?

 

"Current policy" includes unequal education, unequal employment prospects, unequal income, unequal treatment by the law, and a hugely regressive tax structure.

 

To me, it mostly comes back to education. I don't know precisely how to close the education gap between poor kids and wealthy kids - you have a lot more certitude about that than I do right now. But it's the great, long-term equalizer. It's not a magic bullet, of course. But it's a huge component of any long-range plan to reduce poverty.

And I actually think my idea - a black minimum wage and a white minimum wage - would work wonders for the black community, in the long run. Couldn't do it, of course. But it would work wonders.