When you live in a society there will always be some set of social norms that apply in specific situations. Violating a social norm is generally considered disrespectful to the rest of us. The majority of Americans are aware that not dressing like a slob in the work place is a social norm. That’s why when you tell the…

You are totally right, I typed industrial when I meant to write commercial. That’s what I get for not reading my comment over before submitting.

If anything the electoral college disenfranchises red voters who live in blue states and blue voters who live in red states. More than 40% of Texas voters chose Clinton. Between 30-40% of California, Illinois and New York voters went for Trump. America has bad voter participation rates at least in part because the…

Literally only the east coast existed when the Madison put the electoral into the constitution. It was put in place as a compromise so that states with primarily agrarian economies wouldn’t have less power than states with more industrial economies.

The comments on this article (and the prior one) are prime examples of why so many people put up with HOAs as a necessary evil. Because there is always eventually going to be “that guy” who thinks technically/legally allowed = not inconsiderate. It’s like how every time I wonder why my work bothers with a business…

I think you’d have a hard time finding many economists who think we aren’t on average better off with NAFTA. I am in general open to well thought out criticisms of specific aspects of NAFTA or other trade agreements, but that is rarely what happens in the public discourse surrounding these agreements.

My jurisdiction comment related directly to the federal governments ability to broadly block pipelines from being constructed. They can obviously not allow them to be built on federal land. My point was that sort of action would at best changes the routes that pipelines can take, it doesn’t mean they would stop being…

Oooooh my god, you stupid chucklefuck, this conspiracy comes directly from fucking InfoWars siting Defcon Warning System. The Defcon Warning System is a private organization of nuclear-war preppers and completely unaffiliated with the U.S. military or DoD. The actual DEFCON level is under the control of the president,…

The second part isn’t meant to imply we were gonna pass legislation to block the energy industry’s ability to build pipelines, that was never on the table in any real sense. Any law passed would have just been a regulation on where they could be placed. This sort of regulation already happens to some degree, so I…

I mean, yeah, most of what I’ve read indicates there’s not a strong legal precedent for the federal government to completely block the project. I think the most achievable outcome has pretty much always been that the pipeline could be rerouted further away from tribal land and that the stage could potentially be set…

Opposed by unions does not equal “anti-union.” Many economist are pro NAFTA or trade agreements and pro-union. I’m one of them. In the long-term, free trade has quantifiably helped the average person’s quality of life increase whether they realize it or not. I fully agree that we have generally done a shit job of…

I like the cut of your jib! 

Exactly. Sometimes the only answer to a problem is letting the government/society help you via a strong social safety net, but a lot of Americans are too invested in their rugged individualism and bootstrap-philosophy to get on board with those policies. Machines are going to continue to make many routine (and…

The problem is, those aren’t actually synonyms; as I explain in another comment, they do mean different things in a statistical context.

In general parlance they are used interchangeably, but you are correct probability and likelihood are different concepts in statistics. That was kind of the point of my anecdote. :)

Because a solid 95% of the American public, including the very educated, don’t understand even basic probability.

I loathe Trump, but it’s been rumored for a while that she was planning to resign at the end of Obama’s term regardless of the election outcome. Being in charge of the SEC is a shit job, most chairs burn out way before the 3 year mark.

I mean I enjoy the humor of Curb and Seinfeld, but I would not want to be IRL friends with the TV-versions of Jerry Seinfeld or Larry David even if it were a paid position. Not that I chose who to vote for based on BFF potential, I would have happily voted for Sanders if he had won more votes in the primaries. But the…

It’s generally understood that you aren’t supposed to go full nuclear in the primaries and that you’re supposed to drop out and be gracious once you have mathematically lost. I don’t think Sanders alone cost HRC the election, but I doubt anyone thinks his railing against the “establishment” in the primary helped.

I am not surprised, but I was also super confused by my millennial peers who thought he was charmingly grumpy.