There's a whole chicken and egg thing that comes into play whenever "structural racism" and its proposed solutions are discussed. The assumption in this case, I assume, is that if you inflate the grades of poor (i.e., black - but I suppose it applies to other poor kids as well) kids to get them into college, they'll rise to the occasion and succeed there. In other words, we're totally giving up on the K-12 education system's ability to educate poor kids in favor of a college system that presumably can do better - even with kids entering poorly prepared by their K-12 experience. And that probably works, in some cases, but still...

Back in 1964, affirmative action made sense. You don't just stop disadvantaging kids and then wait 18 years for the first crop to reach college age. And, yeah, maybe 18 years isn't enough. It takes a while for K-12 equity to take root. So, maybe 36? 56? My point is that affirmative action is a band-aid, and if you still need it 60 years later, it's not working. And, of course, it can't work if you don't actually address the inequalities of the K-12 system. But we don't even attempt to determine what those inequalities are. Is it school funding? Chaotic school environment? Chaotic home environment? Is it poverty - or concentration of poverty? I don't know that anybody knows - or if they do, it's some kind of "blaming the victim" taboo to discuss it. Or else the solutions are "racist" in and of themselves.

In terms of this proposal, it seems to be "the bad-aid isn't working - and it's been ruled illegal, so let's be good people and apply a different band-aid and wait another 50 years for results.

As far as the argument that "poor is a euphemism for black", well there's some truth to that. Consider your typical New York Times "Problem X Disproportionately affects people of Color" article. Invariably, problem X will turn out to be something that is a clear result of poverty, and well, black people are disproportionately poor (yes, as a result of past and present racism), so the headline isn't inaccurate, per se. It simply double-counts the racism. And for what purpose? To add an extra layer of moral weight to the reporting? What's obscured by this kind of thing is that there may well be a strictly racial component to problem X. It's almost never the whole problem, and framing it as such is easier than teasing out the real racial effect. It also doesn't make it easier to solve. And, oh. There's the other obscured fact that in sheer numbers (rather than proportion), it generally turns out that problem X actually affects more white people than people of color (if only because there are more of them - yes, even more poor ones - in the country). And that's important, because if addressing poverty addresses the problem better than addressing racism does, you actually, y'know, address the problem. Without alienating a huge swath of the population and leaving them easy pickings for demagogues like Trump.

> We in the US NEED to be able to manufacture for our own needs.

Really? Why?

The global system has worked really well for the last 70 years. Covid was a blip to supply chains, having them shorter may have helped get through the shocks faster but it wouldn't have eliminated the problem.

A core issue with being trade isolationist is that the US doesn't have the raw materials it requires to stand alone. No country does, event big ones like the USA. Some imports are always going to be required.

The second issue is why would you do it the expensive way. The USA has bauxite deposits and bauxite mines, but they are small and don't produce much. I'm sure with effort they could increase their output but it would be expensive. It is much much cheaper to buy bauxite from Guinea or Australia. Why would the United States choose to produce their own aluminum from their own bauxite? Why pay considerably more for the same commodity rather than just buy it? And of course it isn't just bauxite.

When PCs were introduced to businesses in the 80s and 90s we didn't see productivity improvements, on an economy wide level.

It seems super weird and backwards, hence it's referred to as the "productivity paradox".

Worse, the introduction of the internet to most businesses in the 2000s actually corresponds with a productivity slowdown, where it increased at a lower level than normal.

As the introduction of PCs didn't trigger economic growth and the introduction of the internet retarded economic growth it is ambitious to suggest that AI will buck the trend.

I know this seems super weird, I certainly feel sure we are all more productive with PCs and the internet, but the data doesn't support this.

Having your SSN and financial details exposed is a 'minor inconvenience'? No.