SkepticalButOpenMinded

I am all for criticizing the Chinese government and bad Chinese policies, but “China is a shitty haven for cheats and liars” is a broad generalization verging on just straight up bigotry.

This is horrifying. Did they learn this from the US and Canada? It sounds extremely similar to residential schools.

Ah the mask comes off!

You're actually claiming that the better outcomes of other countries has "nothing to do with government programs"?? Literally nothing? Even a hyper conservative rightwing ideologue, if they are intellectually honest, would admit that government programs have some effect. Such black and white thinking.

You say it has to do with "culture and societal homogeneity"? I've heard this racist dogwhistle before. And sure enough you go on to blame immigrants as "part of the problem". Contrary to what you say, immigrants to the US commit fewer crimes than non-immigrant Americans. Contrary to conservative stereotypes, immigrants to the US fare very well on most metrics.

When you say "societal homogeneity" and lack of immigrants, how do you explain Canada, which is one of the most racially and culturally diverse countries in the world, more so, in fact, than the US? Canada has way more immigrants per capita than the US, and Toronto has about the same proportion of black people as LA. Canada has many more Muslim immigrants. And yet, poor people in Canada have much better outcomes than the US. Crime is a fraction of what it is in the US across the board. Universal publicly funded healthcare, one of the best public education systems in the world, and, as of a decade ago, a direct cash transfer program to poor families have all lowered the poverty rate. It is insane to claim that this has "nothing to do with government programs", and that Canada is such an alien and different culture to the US.

One can of course argue that said bad decisions are due to social problems linked to the client's impoverished background, and that's true, but it's not a direct consequence of the parent not having enough money to take care of their children, and the distinction is important. One is an issue of one government system punishing a person for another government system's failure, not the parent's; the other is a much more complex societal systemic issue that is not a problem with government systems per se, but rather a sociological problem that requires a much more complex solution.

I don’t get this reasoning. Whether some problem is the “direct” or “indirect” consequence of poverty does not matter for whether poverty reduction programs like TANF are effective. It’s a non sequitur.

You imply that improving the delivery of social supports like TANF will not be effective at helping the poor (who are, after all, the direct cause of their own problems in your experience!). But other rich countries with better social safety nets enjoy much better outcomes for the poor than the US. It’s strange that you criticize a systemic change to the delivery of welfare to the poor for not being “complex” or “systemic”. I’m not sure how blaming the poor for their problems is more “complex” or “systemic”. On the contrary, that’s highly individualistic and moralizing.

I would say it’s a very noisy signal but not meaningless. Also, one affects the other: the polling affects when there will be an election. Not now!

“Handing out public money”? So if we increase funding of healthcare or education, are politicians not allowed to talk about that either? Is it less icky if you tell people they got a tax cut, as conservatives do? This is just nonsense. You may as well say that progressivism is icky to talk about.

Agreed. I thought it would be evident by the fact that I admitted to using these programs myself that I’m not blaming consumers for using them.

That said, we do need to call out people who defend the credit card reward system, even if they do so out of ignorance. Otherwise, regulatory change is impossible.

OK, I think we mostly agree. The wording is still important because there are, sadly, a lot of people who defend the practices of these credit card companies, fooled into thinking they're getting a "deal".

Don't get me wrong, I heavily use and pay off my credit cards fully to get points. But that's precisely the problem. They've set up a "tragedy of the commons" where they extract economic rent: Individually, we are incentivized to use the cards, even though, collectively, it costs us all more for no benefit to the economy or society. (I am talking specifically about the rewards program portion. The transaction processing is useful, but should not cost that much.)

Imagine if this was a functioning market: using your high rewards credit card would cost more at the till. Say using a 2% cash back card means your purchase costs 2.1% more than baseline. Would you do that? Of course not. But because of corrupt pro-Wall Street laws, it's actually illegal to charge different amounts to customers for different cards.

Yes, some credit card fees are independent of funding the rewards programs, and some of those fees existed before widespread use of rewards programs. But so what? Today, some significant portion of those credit card fees definitely exist because of the rewards programs.

I’m not sure what you’re arguing with your comment. Of course there’s a charge — the payment processing itself is a service that costs money — but are you implying that therefore credit card points really are a net benefit to consumers? With vague comments like yours, I will respond and people sometimes reply “I never said that”, but, then, what are you saying?

The “rewards” are costs passed down to the merchants over and above the cost of merely processing the electronic transaction. With the state of technology now, payment processing itself should cost fractions of a penny per transaction. Besides fraud protection, everything else is mostly skimming off of the top. This is why these sleazy companies are some of the most profitable on Wall Street.

You’re not getting a discount, you’re just getting less screwed.