Wednesday, April 6, 2011

Miscellaneous Thoughts

Matthew Yglesias makes an interesting point about how technological improvements change the specifics of market pressures for jobs. This is specifically pushing towards certain types of service jobs which can neither be automated or "off-shored". What's worryingly lacking from his analysis is a good look at how current aspects of state policies actively undermine large numbers of people for those type of jobs. With declining funding of vocational education as part of many nations' anti-recession "fixes" a lot of potential service-providers won't be taught the necessary skills to thrive in this economy. Likewise, with the economic problems having given nationalistic groups a political edge and already prevalent ethnic biases in service jobs, it won't be surprising to see people of color, women, and other marginalized groups as failing to proportionately take part in this new economy.

According to the Economist, multiple critics of the anti-blasphemy laws in Pakistan have been killed.

Apparently, Republicans are determining tax policies from biblical parables. Unsurprisingly, they conclude that the Bible agrees with what they already believed. What might that suggest about their use of the Bible?

Jonah Goldberg, of course, wrote something pretty clearly internally inconsistent. First he states that high crime rates are driving the black middle class away from the District of Columbia. Then he says that dropping crime rates are pulling white professionals in. And then he hilariously misunderstands how 1950s racism worked.

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