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Gay at birth?
Joeseph said:.
Your link is a pay to view article citing one person's view , have you any scientific peer reviewed papers backing your claims up?
we can not stray away from our natural instincts.
Our only " natural instinct " is to survive , we are hunter gatherers all our efforts are towards achieving that goal.
You say being gay is " not natural" , living in a tree house is " not natural " so what makes something " natural"?
Being gay you're claiming is a life style choice? Seriously?
The 'article' was a massive study with almost a half a million participants - read here.
From the link:the report finds that human DNA cannot predict who is gay or heterosexual. Sexuality cannot be pinned down by biology, psychology or life experiences
Search on 'No Gay Gene' and you'll find a lot of articles referencing the study.
An important point to make is that while many of these articles will still claim that there is some 'genetic relationship' for a small number of people, what you will really discover when you dig down in the information, is that it is often heterosexuals who have a greater percentage of these alleged markers than LGBTQ+ people, and that the standard used fails to meet the official minimum threshold to be considered a true marker.
Most current studies show that sexual identify is fluid, especially among teens - See
Sexual fluidity common among American young adults
Sexual identity fluidity, identity management stress, and depression among sexual minority adolescents
Study Highlights Fluid Sexual Orientation in Many Teens
That strongly suggests that sexual orientation is not determinate.
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Can we survive 4 more years of Bidenomics?
Factfinder said:Surviving isn't the same as thriving. I wasn't as concerned about the hamburglar as much as I was thinking about the growing gap between the 1% er's and the shrinking middle class.Hello again, fact:We agree.. So, you're certainly against Trump giving his wealthy donors another zillion dollar tax cut. Right?? That'll make the gap even wider..excon
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Can we survive 4 more years of Bidenomics?
Factfinder said:Do you mean by 'thrive' paying 20 dollars for a hamburger and fries?Hello F:I remember the $.15 cent McDonald's hamburger. We survived. I remember a nickel phone call and a nickel Coke. I'm still kicking. I remember $.25 gasoline. We're here, and thriving.. Hell, I remember gold @ $300/oz.Will paying its staff $20/hr bankrupt the hamburgler?? Nahh..excon -
Can we survive 4 more years of Bidenomics?
@Factfinder
Well, my opinion is that everyone above a very young age should have a salary or some sort of income. Self-sufficiency is the most basic prerequisite for happiness as I see it. Perhaps this cultural divide is what separates us. I do not find the traditional family appealing whatsoever.
I agree that being an accountant does not sound very appealing to many. And does being a construction worker? If one was offered two jobs right now - an accountant in a comfortable office with a $80,000 salary, and a construction worker in a ditch with a $55,000 salary - which would they be more likely to choose?
These are rarely jobs people pick because they love them.
But I will add more: people should not aim this low to begin with. Unless someone really loves construction or accounting for some reason, they should be far more ambitious: the higher you aim, the further you generally go. People should not be stuck in jobs for their whole lives where they do not really grow and have to actively learn something. A cool alternative to construction, for instance, is engineering: similar subject matter, but much more interesting and profitable.
I hear you saying that everyone cannot be an engineer: construction workers are also needed. Sure. For now. But when everyone strives to be an engineer and construction workforce starts becoming scarce, then these engineers will accelerate the automation process, and eventually there will be no need in construction workers. Or make construction work as a step towards engineering: when no one wants to do construction for life, construction companies will provide incentives: "Work for us for 5 years, get your engineering degree fully funded". You get both construction workers, and a nice career pathway for them that does not get them stuck in an entry-level job.
That people used to be able to do simple manual jobs for life and live okay off that - is not something to desire. The modern world provides so many opportunities... It makes no sense to stick to the same line of work as people did 100 years ago and feel comfortable. It would be like living without a cell phone (which some people do). Just... why? Maybe I do not understand something about humanity, but to me such a decision seems to only be reasonable in the lack of alternatives. The alternatives may have been lacking 1,000 years ago... not today. -
Can we survive 4 more years of Bidenomics?
@Factfinder
Well, I said that you "can" make a better living, not that you necessarily will.
Take a fairly easy job, that of an accountant (easy in terms of the amount of education it requires: Bachelor's from an unnamed university is enough). The median salary in the US is $78,000 a year. Consider a household with two adults making this amount each and not living at the center of a megacity - and you get a very solid quality of life, without risking having a heavy metal bar drop on your head every day and coming home with aches across your body. With good budgeting, it is quite realistic to get a house in a decent area and pay it off in a few years.
I looked up the data for construction workers country-wide in 1970: around $26 an hour, or $54,000 annually (in today's dollars). This does not look nowhere near enough for a comfortable life to me, especially if the man is a sole provider (as was much more common back then). So, again, I do not see what there is to mourn.
Of course construction work is demanding. This is one of the arguments I was making: this is not the kind of job to want on today's market if your goal is to simply make a living. I would not go into construction if I was not passionate about the field. There are far easier ways to make far bigger amounts of money if you are okay with working a job you do not like.
I am not sure what difference it makes how exactly people buy their homes when they live in them as commonly as before. The modern economy is very dynamic, credit is extremely common, and it is very typical for even billionaires to be perpetually broke from the sole income-to-spending proportionality point of view - this point of view simply does not describe the economy of the modern individual well.
Lastly, I do not at all claim that tomorrow all manual jobs can be done away with. Transition is required. But that transition can be very rapid if all the rusty cogs slowing it down are taken out and replaced with well oiled ones. There is nothing more humane than an incredible technological leap that allows everyone to be 10 times as productive as they were yesterday. And nothing less humane than what happens in African coal mines, where people do prefer to live stable lives and not rock the boat too much.
I do not claim to speak for all of humanity: not everyone loves the modern world the way I do. But it is very strange to me to hear people lamenting over things like outsourcing jobs to the developing world, replacing workers with machines, missing the past... We are living in the coolest time in human history, and if one turns off their TV and turns on broadcasts of SpaceX launches or Two Minute Papers videos on Youtube, it is very hard to not jump with excitement all the time. To me, Noland Arbaugh's story alone is so unbelievably cool, that something like World War III is needed to offset such an accomplishment.
Maybe I am somehow different, but I have never looked into the past, never had nostalgia. What was yesterday is gone; I am interested only in what is beyond the horizon, out there, ahead. This allows me to look at the past impartially when I choose to analyze it, and when you look at it like this, it is very hard to feel warmth towards it. Even my own past. I do not want a single element of my childhood to come back: been there, done that. -
Can we survive 4 more years of Bidenomics?
I am sorry, but looking at the data, I am not seeing it. The home ownership rate has remained quite flat since the 1970-s, and given that the quality of newly bit houses has increased significantly, the average American has a better home today than before. The salaries corrected for inflation have increased noticeably. The jobs have become safer and physically less demanding, while providing people with higher income. It may be true that it was easier to make a living with some particular lines of work - but those were not cushy office lines of work, but hard physical labor that most people would never want to do. Being, say, a construction worker in the 70-s was a hellish job by modern standards. You can make a much better living today by being an office clerk. Why would anyone want to go back to those times? Along these lines, one could argue that Romans have it great, because a Roman could just haul logs around and get paid a decent wage for that... But who wants to go back to those times?Factfinder said:
Sugar coat or not, it was understood once upon a time that one blue collar salary did pay for the aforementioned and if one salary could do all that, imagine what a second could do? Even part time. Gain the lifestyle they wanted even? This was real, May not distorted memories. I think it's is really hard for the younger generations, and those who migrate here who are young looking for employment, to understand just how different it was back then. Sure there were some draw backs, job scarcity would rear it's head once in a while. But back then, you landed a skilled blue collar job your life changed for the better exponentially.
You seem to have a very idealist view of a future that we haven't attained yet. Fact is manual labor is still in very high demand. People still are able to take pride in what they can build with their hands. And if they know what they're doing, they make real good money (though not with the same value as before) so I think the opposite, there are people who would like the lifestyle especially if the salary matched the buying power it did back in the day.
I see what you're saying about keeping up with the times and adapting. But one should be careful not to overrun the modern changes that are taking place. Potentially leaving oneself unemployed in a world where there is a large contingency of jobs available that you've become overqualified and credentialed for. Employers tend to frown on that as they know you'll be still looking.
There is an old saying that holds true today. "Too many chiefs and not enough Indians". Meaning if everyone only sought white collar jobs and no one did the blue collar work there will be no jobs eventually. If we reach your vision of the future that may change but as of now it remains true.
I am not sure what is idealistic in my view: we are already living in what was very recently supposed to be an unattainable future. How does one attribute value to things that simply did not exist 50 years ago, such as video-conferencing, ability to work from home, instant communication between any two points on the globe, Amazon and Walmart deliveries? A high school kid with AI assistance can do higher quality research today than many professors could a couple of decades ago. I recently went to a science fair where high school students presented their work, and my mind was blown into pieces: these guys are better researchers than I was years into my PhD program. How does one quantify all that?
To your last point, I very strongly disagree with this outlook. It is natural that less efficient jobs disappear and give way to more efficient jobs. Eventually, indeed, there will be no manual labor needed: instead, there will be endless demand in managers, scientists, programmers, analyticians... And there will be plenty of resources to use to become one: most of it is not exactly rocket science. I would argue that we would be much closer to that point than we are now if people thought more progressively - but we are still doing incredibly well by historical standards. A little more celebration of these unbelievable accomplishments, and a little less focus on the negatives, would do humanity a lot of good.
A year before I was born, China was characterized by the "tank man":
This is China today:
We are experiencing a staggering change across the board everywhere on this planet. I LOVE living today. -
Can we survive 4 more years of Bidenomics?
I am always quite skeptical when hearing about the good old times: we all tend to sugarcoat the past. Housing used to be much more affordable in the past, but the quality of those houses was not comparable to what is available today. A construction worker could certainly support a family, but I do not think many people nowadays would want to have that lifestyle.Factfinder said:@MayCaesar
I should clarify, I don't think that the economy might not survive four more years of Biden. I was asking the question to stimulate conversation. Highlight the effects of Biden on the economy more than anything. I think if you reflect on what I've been saying you'll see I wasn't trying to break into the prediction game. But I see why you came from the perspective you did now. That would be a tall order for me to pull off!
I think one issue is some old timers like myself know how good it was here at one time so we understand what's been lost. Used to be the average construction worker could support a family, buy a house, a car, plan vacations on just the one salary. It was taken for granted. That's almost unheard of where blue collar work is concerned today. What kind of country will Biden leave us? Who knows but I like to consider the possibilities and possible options the future may have.
I would add that, as the market evolves, naturally certain professions become less profitable. When cars became mainstream, buggy drivers could no longer make a living - but that is a positive development, not a negative one. By the same token, the relative value of manual work such as the one construction workers do, in light of automation, machinery and the value of work of engineers, business managers, etc. has naturally decreased. But people who keep up with the times, master the new technology and apply their skills can make a much nicer living than before.
The problem is that old industries have lobbyists everywhere, so many of them are stuck in the past. The fact that construction workers still have to do so much work with their bare hands suggests to me that the industry lags behind the market, and worker unions and legacy company lobbyists make sure that it stays that way, disadvantaging the workers. The construction industry should be nearly fully automated by now, and the people who used to hold a hammer now should hold a joystick, or type on a keyboard.
Regardless, people who keep up with the market trends can make an incredible living nowadays. The job market is rough at the moment, but that too will pass soon. -
Can we survive 4 more years of Bidenomics?
Hello:Given the hot job market, not only can we survive, we'll THRIVE!- Continued hot job growth will reinforce the Fed’s cautious approach
toward rate cuts as some Fed officials will likely see job growth as
still too hot for comfort, but the details of the March jobs report
offered welcome signs that labor demand and supply are better balanced,
with the labor force participation rate rebounding and wage growth
easing.
- The economy added 303,000 jobs in March, well above consensus
expectations, while prior estimates of job growth in January and
February were revised up by a cumulative 22,000 jobs. Job gains were
broad-based, with the private sector adding 232,000 jobs and the
government sector adding 71,000 jobs. Health care and leisure and
hospitality drove the increase in the services sector while goods
employment picked up on a large increase in construction payrolls.
- The unemployment rate fell back 0.1 percentage points (ppt) to
3.8% after reaching a two-year high in February, and it held below 4%
for the 26thconsecutive month. Encouragingly, the labor force
participation rate rebounded 0.2ppt to 62.7% after holding steady for
three consecutive months, and it is now just a tad below its
post-pandemic high of 62.8%. Stronger labor supply is encouraging as it
acts as a relief valve against elevated wage pressures.
excon
- Continued hot job growth will reinforce the Fed’s cautious approach
toward rate cuts as some Fed officials will likely see job growth as
still too hot for comfort, but the details of the March jobs report
offered welcome signs that labor demand and supply are better balanced,
with the labor force participation rate rebounding and wage growth
easing.
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Reasons for your siding regarding the Israely and Palestine/Hamas Conflict?
@ZeusAres42 ; What I have now noticed here and on other threads are two extreme sides of the same coin. On the one hand we got a party that makes vile and atrocious comments about Jews. On other hand we got another party that makes vile and atrocious comments about Arabs and Muslims.
I commend you for being the most civil and reasonable on this thread.
Looks like Zeus and Factfinder are now in a Mutual Admiration Society? You bet i make vile and atrocious remarks about Muslims, and I make no apology for that. It may be unreasonable of me, but when a religion has a holy book which states that people like me (and you) should be mutilated and murdered if we do not convert to their vile and evil religion, then, even though I do not want people to think that I am a grump, I tend to revile them. . But you can kiss their arse if it makes you feel superior.
Stop criticizing Israel and then pretend that you support it. Choose sides instead of sitting on the fence and thinking that this makes you paragons of virtue.
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Whatever happened murderer Kyle Rittenhouse?
@all4actt
I've debated this before , it's very hard reasoning with a nation of gun nuts who collectively think any group of white people are vigilantes and any group of black people are thugs , this type of mentality always assumes the innocence of whites.
