 |
| 1973: "Minnesota: A State that Works" |
Thomas B. Edsall writes in the New York Times:
Why Can’t America Be Sweden?
Daron Acemoglu, an eminent economist at M.I.T., has ignited a firestorm by arguing that contemporary forces of globalization bar the United States from adopting the liberal social welfare policies of Scandinavian countries.
Acemoglu ... uh-oh. Everything Acemoglu touches turns into mental fog. I agree with him a lot, but he's kryptonite to clear thought.
“We cannot all be like the Nordics,” Acemoglu declares, in a 2012 paper, “Choosing Your Own Capitalism in a Globalized World,” written with his colleagues James A. Robinson, a professor of government at Harvard, and Thierry Verdier, scientific director of the Paris School of Economics.
Because we're not Nordics?
No ...
If the “cutthroat leader” – the United States — were to switch to “cuddly capitalism, this would reduce the growth rate of the entire world economy,” the authors argue, by slowing the pace of innovation.
Characteristically, the word "Swedes" does not appear in the text of the NYT article (just in a photo caption). In the comments, however:
JohnB
Staten Island
The main reason that America cannot be Sweden is that, unlike Sweden, America is not full of Swedes. We worship diversity in this country, but Sweden has been pretty much a textbook example of the blessings of homogeneity.
Of course if Sweden continues with its current immigration policy, pretty soon it will no longer be full of Swedes either. Check out the recent (and under-reported) Stockholm riots to see where this is going.
The picture above is the cover (nominated by Time for Worst.Time.Cover.Ever) for the 1973 article "Minnesota: A State that Works" that troubled me as a 14-year-old true believer in Milton Friedman's columns in Newsweek. Minnesota was the most European social democratic state in the Union in 1973, but I had spent some vacations at my cousins' house outside St. Paul and could attest that, despite libertarian theory, it wasn't so bad. Some excerpts from the 1973 Time article:
The good life
If the American good life has anywhere survived in some intelligent equilibrium, it may be in Minnesota. It is a state where a residual American secret still seems to operate. Some of the nation's more agreeable qualities are evident there: courtesy and fairness, honesty, a capacity for innovation, hard work, intellectual adventure and responsibility.
Politics is almost unnaturally clean -- no patronage, virtually no corruption. The citizens are well educated: the high school dropout rate, 7.6 percent, is the nation's lowest. Minnesotans are remarkably civil: their crime rate is the third lowest in the nation (after Iowa and Maine). By a combination of political and cultural tradition, geography and sheer luck, Minnesota nurtures an extraordinarily successful society.
Drawbacks
Minnesota has its drawbacks. ... Unemployment outside the Twin Cities area is troublesome, and personal income taxes are the highest in the nation. ... Some argue that Minneesota works a bit too well and too blandly, that its comparatively open and serene population is a decade or two behind the rest of the U.S. ...
Racial issues
Minnesota's people are overwhelmingly white (98 percent), most of them solidly rooted in the middle class. Blacks rioted in Minneapolis in 1966 and 1967, but with only 1 percent of the state's population, they have not yet forced Minnesotans into any serious racial confrontation. Or at least, not apocalyptic confronation. ... Two black state legislators were elected last fall from predominantly white middle-class suburban districts.
Business culture
Minnesotans sometimes point to themselves as the reason for the state's success.
"You just don't have people barking at you when you're walking down the street or sitting in a restaurant," says Jim Johnson, a former Princeton instructor and Muskie campaign worker who recently moved back home. ...
Is this the 1973 version of the Jim Johnson of later Fannie Mae notoriety?
Yes, indeedy.
The land ...
Such an abundance and accessibility of nature has much to do with the Minnesotans' sense of place and roots. More than almost any other Americans, they are outdoor people, and at least 50 percent of them customarily vacation within their own state.
Civic duty
Part of Minnesota's secret lies in people's extraordinary civic interest. The business community's social conscience, for example, is a reflection of the fact that so many companies have their headquarters in the state. ...
Even more important than corporate giving is personal fund raising.
Political culture
Some of Minnesota's success can be traced to its ethnic traditions. ... In many respects, the Scandinavians, long the largest single group in the state, have shaped Minnesota's character. They, together with its large Anglo-Saxon and German strain, account for a deep grain of sobriety and hard work, a near-worship for education and a high civic tradition in Minnesota life. ...
Arthur Naftalin, a brilliant mayor of Minneapolis during the '60s, points out that no single group -- ethnic, religious or business -- has ever been able to take control of the state. There were no Tammany machines to greet the immigrants. "With our great variety," says Naftalin, "we have always had to form coalitions." ...
(In the late '30s, Gov. Harold) Stassen pushed through a comprehensive civil service law that abolished patronage. "By taking politics out of the back room and engaging thousands in political activity, from women to college students, Stassen made the governmental process in Minnesota a superior instrument of the people's will," observes author Neal R. Peirce in The Great Plains States of America. ...
Closing thoughts
Other states have more dramatic attractions, of course. To be in Ely or St. Cloud or event Minneapolis on a Saturday night and looking for excitement is to be conscious that nights are for sleeping. But there is something in the verdict of Chuck Ruhr: "California is the flashy blonde you like to take out once or twice. Minnesota is the girl you want to marry."
By the way, do people (outside of a few industries) talk about California this way anymore?
More and more, I just feel sad about things like this. Is there any hope for white people? We're basically awesome, but we're basically retarded about why we're awesome. It seems to be very deeply ingrained. The stereotypes are true.
ReplyDeletePlease keep writing, Steve Sailer.
Portland.
ReplyDeleteI moved to Minnesota two years ago. Though I am of Minnesota stock and spent summers here as a child, I was born and raised in the San Francisco Bay Area. I've lived far and wide since, and most recently spent ten years in Seattle before coming here.
ReplyDeleteMinnesota summers were magical to me as a child. Swimming in the lakes on a hot summer night was unlike anything I experienced in California. The Twin Cities' museums were first-rate. The relatives were warm and inviting.
Believe it or not, I was excited to move here (and escape Seattle) when the opportunity arose. It is not, however, what my childhood memories had prepared me for.
Leaving aside the obvious drawbacks of winter, I have been shocked by the general state of physical decay that Minnesotans seem to be in. The teenagers look great, but everyone else looks awful. The obesity rate must be off the charts here.
Traffic is horrendous. Much of the Twin Cities is an ocean of concrete. Suburban sprawl is out of control. I don't think I've ever seen such aesthetically unappealing new construction. Ugly houses, ugly town-homes, and ugly apartment buildings are going up everywhere.
My wife is a professor. She was caught off-guard by how poorly prepared her students here turned out to be. That was a huge surprise given the historic reputation of the state's public education system (and compared to her experiences elsewhere).
Minnesota politics is flat-out bizarre. Paul Wellstone? Al Franken? Jesse Ventura? The terrible mix of condescension and ignorance in Minnesota's political climate is perfectly typified by Garrison Keillor.
Of course, the state's demographics have changed radically since 1973. It's far from the place that Time described back then, and things don't look very promising for Minnesota's future.
You may also ask "why isn't Toronto Canadian?" In a 20 year period Toronto has developed road rage, surly store clerks, littering, mall shoot-outs, and a crack-smoking mayor. What ever happened to those nice, friendly, clean Canadians?
ReplyDeleteThe one interesting thing about Minnesota, really it's the only interesting thing I can think of about Minnesota, is the apparently Mandatory Jewish Senator Requirement.
ReplyDeleteI guess the Germans and Swedes and what not are to stupid to represent themselves in the US Senate so at least one of the two Senators has to be Jewish.
There was even an issue in one campaign over whether or not one candidate was really Jewish ENOUGH!!
I kid you not.
The current Jewish Senator Al Franken replaced the previous Jewish Senator Norm Coleman.
http://www.mises.org/daily/4936/Stagnating-Socialist-Sweden
ReplyDeleteSweden's successful socialism is becoming the economic equivalent of the wage gender gap; completely untrue, but held up often as an example by people with an ideological axe to grind.
Arthur Naftalin, a brilliant mayor of Minneapolis during the '60s
ReplyDeleteKind of like how a coach is brilliant when he has good players.
For the most part, people have to succeed in spite of their leadership. I can't name one leader of the usual favorites: Norway, Sweden, etc. But we are crammed with glory stories about Hugo Chavez, Castro, Mandela et al who largely rule over a decline.
Worst Top Ten List Ever!
ReplyDeletehttp://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-22685260
Swedes are doing alright.
I was born and raised in Denmark but by immigrants. So I can attest that the country works very well.
ReplyDeleteThere is no contradiction with what Friedman or libertarians argue and what Sailer is saying here. Libertarian economics talks about social democracy being worse than other systems"all things being equal". But it is exactly those other things that come into play here. Any libertarian who argues that only the political system matters is now stepping outside the theory and declaring that even if other things aren't equal the libertarian system overcomes that.
Sadly many of them can't see the obvious contradiction just as is the case when they reject supply/demand with regards to immigration.
Think of judging a country based on a mixture of politic system/biology/culture.
Nordics score high on the latter two but lower on the first.
50 years ago Denmark was one of the 3 richest countries in the world. Back then they had a very little welfare state and an even more homogenous race and culture. Most of the Swedish wealth was created before the welfare state. This has changed since they went away from the high taxes and regulations in the early 90's.
In fact the trick for Denmark has been to keep regulations low but taxes high. Low barriers but high taxes work all things NOT being equal.
Thirty years ago a distant cousin drove me around some of the Minneapolis suburbs. I was mighty impressed, but then I'm a European.
ReplyDeleteOk. So why aren't all the ISteve readers from SoCal (including ISteve himself) moving away from the SoCal they always complain about to some nice Nordic area of MN?
ReplyDeleteI mentioned this before about (German) ND.
There's a concept in economics called 'revealed preferences' which says basically that you should ignore what people say and watch what they actually do.
Apparently moving to a state whose residents believe that a Radisson Hotel is the height of luxury isn't done by people here.
Minnesota sucks. It's a terrible place. You would not want to live there. Stay away. Far away. And tell everyone you know. Especially if you live in CA or in the Northeast.
ReplyDeleteInterestingly, the guy on the Time cover who is meant to exemplify the story claiming that MN has no self-serving political class less than four years later became the last governor in US history to try the trick of appointing HIMSELF to the US Senate.
ReplyDeleteUnderstandably, Minnesotans chucked Wendell Anderson out of office at their earliest opportunity.
Just an impression of mine, no doubt formed by the zeitgeist of the day.
ReplyDeleteBut I have no interest in anything California anymore. Whatever magic and hold it had on the popular imagination, or at least my imagination is gone.
The only part of California I find interesting at all now is Northern California, specifically San Francisco. The city is still beautiful.
But the 60's were a long time ago now. That was a powerful, if unrealistic utopian moment, but still a powerful vision. And oh the music...
Today's San Francisco doesn't seem like it has squat. And the music is dead. Oh I know they have clubs and venues and people play in them, but nothing is coming out of SF now.
Just an overpriced place for elites to enjoy the scenery and pick over the corpse of something dead and gone for imagery.
The rest of California...
Just seems like people voluntarily live in a sandblaster. And what is cool about that?
This is the NYT's response to the riots in Sweden? Jeez.
ReplyDeleteMinnesota has its drawbacks. ... ... Some argue that Minneesota [sic] works a bit too well and too blandly, that its comparatively open and serene population is a decade or two behind the rest of the U.S. ...
ReplyDeleteAny words I can come up with will not express my visceral hatred and revulsion towards the writer of this statement.
Minnesota shook our host's faith in Milton Friedman? My faith in libertarian purity was shaken by the brilliant success of the most intrusive and unconstitutional government law enforcement program: game wardens.
ReplyDeleteGame wardens do not require probable cause to come onto your property, which to any libertarian (or constitutional) purist is a cause for immediate vapors. And yet . . . it works. It has worked.
There are still poachers----arguably more now than in the past, meth heads with NVGs tweaking the night away. But the deer populations have recovered from the near extinction levels of the early 20th century.
Of course, "re"introducing wolves might put paid to that. (Wolves gonna wolf, after all.)
I wonder if it's a coincidence that Minnesota boasts the largest Somali population in the USA and Sweden boasts a large Somali population as well. As far as I know there are no colonial links between Somalia and Sweden. So what is this apparent Swedish affinity for Somalia based upon?
ReplyDeleteAlso the non-Somali black proportion in MN appears to have increased substantially in the last 40 years. Why?
Liberals say Sweden shouldn't be Swedish anymore but US should be like Sweden... by turning itself into Latin Asia-Africa ruled by Jews.
ReplyDeleteSurreal.
I've spent some time in Minnesota, both years ago and more recently. It's still a very nice place, despite the importation of new people (especially Somali immigrants, who make up entire neighborhoods in M-polis).
ReplyDeleteIf we're being honest, we'd have to admit a uncomfortable fact: the importation of "poor, victimized refugees" was originally supported by a large chunk of Minnesota's population - I've never seen a poll, but my personal experience would lead me to think it was a majority. The situation is very similar to that of Sweden: the place was so safe and so stable that the people got bored. They didn't want to turn into California, but they wanted to at least bring a touch of Chicago or Kansas City to town. And they wanted to pat themselves on the back and prove how noble and sophisticated they were.
This didn't apply to all Minnesotans, of course, but it was a lot of them. Again, judging form the ones I talked to in the 90s, possibly a majority - otherwise normal, even somewhat conservative middle-Americans talking about how they were "increasing diversity." I mean, what can you say, if people willingly decide to do this to themselves?
I know, I know - "the Jews tricked them!" Fuck that. That's a lame excuse. There's always going to be someone trying to trick you. How can we make white people harder to trick? How did white people get to be so damn gullible? If we're so easy to fool, if we're always the sap in someone else's con game, and we never catch on, aren't we pretty much deserving what we get and getting what we deserve?
So,therefore, according to the econo-retards, the USA cannot practice Swedish-style 'cuddly capitalism' but must the 'cut-throat' leader in order that the rest of the world can benefit from the 'innovatory leade'.
ReplyDelete- Sounds about as close to the doctrine of 'vicarious sacrifice' as you'll ever likely to get outside of a christian theology course - and this coming from the people that decry any criticism of the econo-retardary as 'belief in theology instead'.
Just one problem - has anyone ever consulted the American people that if they are happy in playing the role of sacrificial goats n order that others may benefit from their pain?
Isn't the name of the game supposed to be the maximization of living standards for all?, doesn't this maxim even apply to the dumb goats?, what makes the goats so marked out that they must surrender their lives for the good of others?, why can't the goats just be 'like others'?
It doesn't make an ounce of sense - and even less morally.
Being an average Joe in Sweden is great.
ReplyDeleteAnd I think people underestimate the importance of this. When the average man has it great, that means that social mobility is great.
As you would know Steve, the return to the mean in terms of IQ is quite significant in the 2nd and 3rd generation. This means that for a nation to be on top, it needs to switch its elite regularly, and this is also what made America spectacular from the get-go, the notion that any guy in the middle of Nebraska, say, (Buffett) could rise to the very top. Or a Bill Gates.
But both of these men were also coming of age when America was indeed getting more and more like Scandinavia. California in the 1960s was in many ways a place not too different than Scandinavia is today, except that there was a strong optimism in California in the early 1960s before all the riots began.
What I mean by that is mostly about economic policy. Look at their university system. It's totally decent today but was world-class in the 1960s for basically no money at all. Their public schools were great, today they are ranking more or less just slightly above Mississippi.
Furthermore, you had a strong union movement. And so on.
Today, America is richer, but it is far more unequal and wealth tends to stay in the family. This is much like Old Europe which was ruled by ariostocracies and monarchies. Where Old Money meant everything.
This was also the central critique that the founders had on Europe, that it was a place where the common man could not rise on his merit.
Today, Europe has a higher social mobility than America(although it depends what you count as Europe. If you go for Northern Europe only the difference is quite significant, if you choose the Southern parts, you get less results).
But America is still a much better place for entrepreneurs and has healthier demographics(although the white demographic in America isn't that much different from Europe. The white fertility rate is 1.7 and that is at or below, say, Finland and France or Ireland).
Still, Sweden is about 85% white. This is where America was in terms of demographics around the same year that the TIME article was published.
(I don't count Arabs as 'white' like the U.S. census does). If we discount Asians and high-performing minorities like Iranians we're looking at about 10% low-performing minorities.
We also have a net-migration rate lower than yours per capita and the largest immigrant group is returning Swedes, mostly our youth from Norway(unemployment rate: 3%) or London, not Mexicans.
Conclusions: Sweden will become worse, but it will still be a better place for most white people than America will 10-20 years from now.
For elite whites, however, nothing beats the States and most likely will not for many decades.
On second thoughts, all Acemoglu et al are calling for is Apartheid.
ReplyDeleteYes really - and they want America to be the nation that practices it.
Look behind all the bluster and bullshit. They are calling for Apartheid. Simple as that.
Let me explain. As Richwine et al have amply demonstrated to all those unbigotted enough to unstop their ears and actually listen without barking their heads off, in the USA at least, income and therefore social standing is determined completely more or less by IQ. IQ is more or less determined completely by race. Ergo social status and occupation level, in the unequal society that Acemgolu praises and advocates, is determined, more or less by race. Just like it was with those 'evil' whipping-boys people like Acemgolu used to wet their panties in beating up on - white South Africans.
But I daresay econo-retard #1 (Acemgolu) hasn't thought this one out too deeply. Anyhow, he'll have a suitably 'technically' sounding dodge and quibble to use to weasel his way out.
Anyway, there si one key factor that this econo-retard, Acemgolu, negelcts to mention.
ReplyDeleteThe source of virtually all of America's lead in 'technology and innovation' over the past 50 years has been computing and micro-electronics and other areas allied to military (taxpayer funded) spending.
It was the military that nutured the micro-chip all along the way and made it what it is. No cold war, no military = no computing revolution and silicon chips.
How the bleme was *that* the result of the 'joys of inequality'?
- It was the fruit of a rich well organised nation, with lots of taxpayers, and a good education system.
But if Acemoglu is talking about the flesh-mongers of San Fernando, well perhaps the man's got a point.
I recall reading that Friedman knew the answer. When smart ass Scandinavians said there was no poverty there, Friedman would say the most Scandinavian-like state in America had no poverty either and that state was Minnesota. I vaguely recall that some academic paper around 1990-ish compared Minnesota with Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden as if it was an independent country. The findings were that Minnesota had a very similar income distribution to all 4 Scandinavian countries, slightly better than two or three of them, slightly worse than the one or two.
ReplyDeleteI believe the authors pointed out that Minnesota's tax rates were higher than the American average and the welfare policies were more generous, but by West European standards to say nothing of Scandinavian standards, they were pretty weak, but income equality and standard of living was virtually the same. I remember being surprised that a paper with those conclusions was reported by the MSM, but then I don't recall ever hearing about it again when comparisons with Scandinavian welfare states were brought up again, I wonder why?
Minnesota's people are overwhelmingly white (98 percent), most of them solidly rooted in the middle class. Blacks rioted in Minneapolis in 1966 and 1967, but with only 1 percent of the state's population, they have not yet forced Minnesotans into any serious racial confrontation.
ReplyDeleteMinneapolis now has a black population of over 18 percent (five percent of the state population), so prospects for serious racial confrontation have improved.
Some of Minnesota's success can be traced to its ethnic traditions. ... In many respects, the Scandinavians, long the largest single group in the state, have shaped Minnesota's character. They, together with its large Anglo-Saxon and German strain, account for a deep grain of sobriety and hard work, a near-worship for education and a high civic tradition in Minnesota life.
Isn't it funny how TIME magazine used to be able to speak the truth about national character 40 years ago, something it wouldn't dream of doing today? Today the only groups you are allowed to refer to as "hard working" are Jamaican and Mexican immigrants.
I'm reading E.O. Wilson right now. In the last couple years I've read most of Lynn's books. So naturally I now conceive of wealth, prosperity and such as primarily a function of biological determinism moderated by a couple environmental factors.
ReplyDeleteI'm so impressionable.
It seems to me that the Swedes are prosperous because of their genes but they would be more prosperous yet if they were a bit more free market oriented and kicked out the Muslims.
All things being equal the more free market a nation is the more prosperous. The more socialistic the less. Secularism and Christianity are also associated with wealth and Islam with poverty. All other factors seem to me to be secondary.
Lynn's work supports Wilson's notion that biology underlies all human phenomenon. Marx got it upside down. It's not economic determinism but rather biological determinism.
Economic systems are important in that they modulate sociobiological determinants. China and Japan both became more prosperous overnight when they turned against oppressive government and too much central control. Japan was biologically capable of being a world power when the Black Ships arrived. It was pre-adapted. They freed themselves from the most extreme forms of Tokogawan oppression and became a contender on the world stage overnight. Now the Chinese are doing much the same.
Ireland went from being the poorest nation in Western Europe to being the "Celtic Tiger" overnight too. Understanding that only a little more freedom can make you rich is why world communism crumbled so quickly.
Islam also exacts a prosperity penalty that other religions don't seem to have. Islamic nations vary is their devoutness. Some of the more secular Islamic nations seem to be able to achieve prosperity by another means than pumping oil. The really serious Muslim regimes however are made much poorer by their adherence to the Prophet.
Sweden has its native genomes working in its favor but that advantage has been moderated by its seduction by socialism and now tolerance for Islam.
Albertosaurus
It seems to me that Sweden and Swedes exhibit the classic problem in evolutionary theory regarding cooperation and so-called "group selection" (which can be taken to have more than one meaning).
ReplyDeleteNamely, the problem with free riders in a group with a large number of cooperators. Whether it be genetics or culture or some combination thereof, Swedes seem very much disposed to assume that everyone is a cooperator, a strategy that has worked wonders amongst their own people, elevating them to great heights in economic and other kinds of cultural success. But, in consequence of this disposition, they gladly extend their welcome and benefits to anyone who would seem to need it.
This is, of course, the perfect setup for anyone inclined to free ride, or not really capable of doing much else.
Given the strong dispositions in the Swedes, God only knows how long it will take for them to acknowledge the downside of the strategy.
Minnesota in 1970 sounded a lot like San Diego in 1970. High income, people finished high school, and low poverty and few minorities. San Diego was only 10 percent Hispanic and 5 percent black in 1970. Granted, San Diego was thought as a conservative place. Maybe its not politcs but demograhics hey, and probably more folks were marrying a little more in San Diego since it had a higher kid population in those days than Minnesota.
ReplyDeleteOk. So why aren't all the ISteve readers from SoCal (including ISteve himself) moving away from the SoCal they always complain about to some nice Nordic area of MN?
ReplyDeleteI mentioned this before about (German) ND.
There's a concept in economics called 'revealed preferences' which says basically that you should ignore what people say and watch what they actually do.
Apparently moving to a state whose residents believe that a Radisson Hotel is the height of luxury isn't done by people here.
5/30/13, 5:19 AM The reason why is Californians are sold on moving to Nevada, or Arizona or Texas. In fact Texas gets a huge promotion by the right that a lot of conservatives lead for Texas and ignore some Democratic states that have less Hispanics to deal with. Minnesota has the cold while Texas has the humidity and Nevada and Arizona the heat.
It is not, however, what my childhood memories had prepared me for.
ReplyDeleteThat's sort of a universal experience. As a child, everything can seem great and wondrous.
Well, here's a state, Minnesota versus Texas. Poverty Texas 17 percent and Minnesota around 11 percent. Texas has more low income minorities but conservatives will always prefer Texas. Also, in Minnesota the poor whites all live in Minneapolis and St Paul but in Texas poor whites are rural.
ReplyDeleteMinn. in 1973 sounds like heaven compared to CA today. But even CA in 1963 was heaven compared to Sweden of today. I'm a iSteve luker and pretty new to this subject but can someone tell me why the elites decides to inflict diversity on us?
ReplyDeleteMaybe Lewontin's Fallacy can be demonstrated through search engines.
ReplyDeleteIf one searches for:
I like star wars because it's cool...
one gets 258,000,000 results.
But if one searches for
"I like star wars because it's cool"
one gets only 3 results.
Same set of words but different order and structure.
Another way to look at it is...
there are many people among one group of people who like Star Wars, Star Trek, or Dr. Who.
and it's true of another group.
But one group has more people who like all three
while another group has a lot more who like star wars and dr. who but hate star trek.
Arthur Naftalin, a brilliant mayor of Minneapolis during the '60s, points out that no single group -- ethnic, religious or business -- has ever been able to take control of the state. There were no Tammany machines to greet the immigrants. "With our great variety," says Naftalin, "we have always had to form coalitions."
ReplyDelete@Steve
Naftalin appears to attribute Minnesota's success to diversity, as per the remarks you quoted. Doesn't that contradict your thesis?
"Ok. So why aren't all the ISteve readers from SoCal (including ISteve himself) moving away from the SoCal they always complain about to some nice Nordic area of MN?"
ReplyDeleteSpeaking as another Californian, it's the weather, stupid.
However, we are at a tipping point, admittedly.
"The only part of California I find interesting at all now is Northern California, specifically San Francisco. The city is still beautiful."
ReplyDeleteOn any given weekend, the city's center is littered with gay booths for HIV testing, for hepatitis vaccines, and all the side streets loaded with vagrants and litter.
The source of virtually all of America's lead in 'technology and innovation' over the past 50 years has been computing and micro-electronics and other areas allied to military (taxpayer funded) spending.
ReplyDeleteAh, but what was the source of America's lead in technology and innovation the 50 years before that, and the 50 years before that, and the 50 years before that?
"How Fast-Food Eaters Split Along Ethnic Lines"
ReplyDeletehttp://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-05-29/how-fast-food-eaters-split-along-ethnic-lines
"“Ethnicity is quantifiably in the driver’s seat when determining fast-food consumption,” says Placed Chief Executive David Shim. “No single demographic trait—age, gender, income—provides the signal that ethnicity does in terms of restaurant preference.”"
do people...talk about California this way anymore?
ReplyDeleteCalifornia is more like the drug abusing ex-wife that the ex-husband keeps waiting to die off so that she'll quit bringing everyone down.
" There's always going to be someone trying to trick you. How can we make white people harder to trick?"
ReplyDeleteThey used to be lot harder to trick:
http://conswede.blogspot.com/2008/07/social-paradigms-shift-eg-our-view-on.html
(...)
To illustrate what I talk about. Louis Armstrong visited Sweden in 1933. In all the news papers he was describe as something monkey-like let loose from the jungle. All across the line! And in the reviews by the most serious music critics.
Who would have imagined in 1933, that twelve years later Western Europe would undergo an America-led cultural revolution which would lead to the common belief that there are no differences between races?
Translation of two of the quotes:
Knut Bäck in Göteborgs-Posten, November 1933:
"This world is strange... No protests are raised against how the jungle is let loose into the society. Armstrong and his band are allowed to freely wreak destruction."
Sten Broman in Sydsvenskan, November 1933:
"Dare I say that he at times had something monkey-like about him and sometimes reminded of, according to our perceptions, a mentally disturbed person, when he pouted with his mouth or gaped it to its widest open and roared like a hoarse animal from a primeval forest."
The third quote compares the concert with a natural disaster, and Armstrong's trumpet with a hell machine. The only good thing coming out of it, he says, is that it solves to old dispute of whether monkeys have a language.
This is what Europe looked like, up until 1945. And since some people will live under the misconception that this was a phenomenon of the '30s, I here provide a quote from the Swedish Encyclopedia, Nordisk Familjebok, the 1876-1899 edition...
As a member of the National Association for the Advancement of Northern Pike, I find your reproduction of the speciest lynching depicted on the Time cover offensive, discriminatory and hate filled. Expect a strong worded letter from the SPLC.
ReplyDelete"How can we make white people harder to trick? How did white people get to be so damn gullible? If we're so easy to fool, if we're always the sap in someone else's con game, and we never catch on, aren't we pretty much deserving what we get and getting what we deserve?"
ReplyDeleteRemove that 'white people' part, and the question becomes worth asking. But the issue is - why exactly should we care about making other people more resistant to harmful memes?
I can see why a group would want to increase their own resistance. I can see why they might refuse to become quasi-Bene Gesserit, peddling delusions to the masses to empower themselves. But why in God's name should we care about wising up fools?
Shouldn't we be focusing on taking the sharp objects away from baby and making ourselves - defined as reasonable and skeptical people who recognize their own interests when they're slapped across the face with them - safe from others' predatory and foolish whims?
I don't care what race or ethnicity a person is as long as they can think and share my interests, broadly interpreted. You want to go save this societal Titanic? Go ahead - we'll be looking for a life raft.
Slightly OT: Why do the nerds and wonks of the Anglosphere always trot out the Swedes as examples of Scandinavian virtue? This applies to HBDers as much as social democrats. Did Hamlet forever tarnish Denmark's image?
ReplyDeleteI'm not trying to bad mouth the Swedes, but the Danes are equally industrious and upright, yet go through life with much more joie de vivre. Danes are fun. Shouldn't the cheery, playful cynicism of the Danes resonate with intellectually inclined crimethinkers?
-The Judean People's Front
@Sunbeam:
ReplyDelete60 yr. SF dweller here. I'd never reminisce about the '60's music scene (strangely, the best of it, Starship, is the one y'all love to hate), but if you're looking for reasons, how do you think the rise of public employee unions and enviro-whackjobs figures in? I'm betting whatever engergy the music scene had up to the late '80's is somehow connected to a up-till-then restrained public sector.
Why? Cuz it's too busy trying to be Mexico.
ReplyDeleteA Scandinavian economist once said to Milton Friedman, ‘In Scandinavia, we have no poverty’. Milton Friedman replied, ‘That’s interesting, because in America, among Scandinavians, we have no poverty, either’.
ReplyDeleteAnonymous said: "Let me explain. As Richwine et al have amply demonstrated to all those unbigotted enough to unstop their ears and actually listen without barking their heads off, in the USA at least, income and therefore social standing is determined completely more or less by IQ."
ReplyDeletePlease explain the Richwine findings, and how you make these conclusions from them.
ut both of these men were also coming of age when America was indeed getting more and more like Scandinavia. California in the 1960s was in many ways a place not too different than Scandinavia is today, except that there was a strong optimism in California in the early 1960s before all the riots began.
ReplyDeleteWhat I mean by that is mostly about economic policy. Look at their university system. It's totally decent today but was world-class in the 1960s for basically no money at all. Their public schools were great, today they are ranking more or less just slightly above Mississippi. This is true and in California it was a trend toward the conservaitve in the 1970's, California got rid of the cheap college by prop 13 because many middle class whites kids had went thru the school system and they were tired of paying the high property taxes. If Hispanics didn't sneak in as much, California would have done just fine with less free college more like North Dakota which doesn't' spend a lot on schools and other social services.
"I wonder if it's a coincidence that Minnesota boasts the largest Somali population in the USA and Sweden boasts a large Somali population as well. As far as I know there are no colonial links between Somalia and Sweden. So what is this apparent Swedish affinity for Somalia based upon?
ReplyDeleteAlso the non-Somali black proportion in MN appears to have increased substantially in the last 40 years. Why? "
Swedes are probably the most naive/trusting people in the world. In a homogenous society, that builds probably the best nation you could imagine.
The downsize is that high trust bleeds into childlike naivité, so taking lots of poor black people is a "sign of moral progress". Basically. You feel pity for the most backward people in the world and try to "improve them". It's also about ego. It's the white paternalistic gene.
The second question is just purely about parasitism.
This is ironic, because the blacks in Minnesota has a huge unemployment rate.
This is because Minnesota has one of America's best educated populations. This also bleeds into the long rant that #3 went into and mentioned that his wife complains a lot.
Well, it has to do with the fact that Minnesota tries to educate far more people than many red states. If you take in 50-60% of the people into college(community and 4 year), you'll never escape the fact that there will be a pull towards the lowest common denominator. Even if you're aware of that pull and actively try to avoid it, it still exerts pressure.
This also means that wages are higher and there are plenty of regulations. A low-skilled population like blacks don't get jobs but they do get benefits and this is great for lazy people.
This is similar to Sweden where the highly educated population, highly regulated labor market and high wages(all three things praised by left-leaning labor economists) means it is much harder to get a job as a low-skill black person than it would in a red-state place like, say, Texas or Lousiana.
The upside is that white people in the blue states live better. This is also true in California where whites have higher incomes and the rest, but the non-whites do worse. While non-whites do better in red states due to less unions, less regulations(but also worse pay, worse conditions and less educated labor force).
Of course neither the left or right seems to get this point. The left think they can make Nordics out of everyone and the right... thinks they can make Nordics out of everyone. The only difference is the system they want.
"Funny that both Sweden and Minnesota took in lots of Somalis.
ReplyDeleteSwedes are not smart to be smart but smart to be dumb."
Sweden's white population: Around 90%(many foreign-born come from EU countries).
America's white population: Below 60% once you take out people like Jews or Arabs(both at 2% of the population) as well as various Central Asians like people from Kazakhstan.
Oops!
"How did white people get to be so damn gullible?"
ReplyDeletePart of our DNA. You have to remember that these times are an anomaly.
Normally, you won't have to worry about how to make someone less easier to trick, because life is so brutal and death is so immediate all the time that your enemies do that for you.
It's only in high-safety situations that you can get into these kinds of situations.
Evolutionary speaking, having a high-trust towards an in-group necessarily bleeds into high trust for strangers to some extent.
Also, let's not overdo it. This is taboo topic, but frankly, who owned the media in the 60s and today?
People, even the most rugged people, are very easy to manipulate if there's only one message from the media. And the polling done showed that the common white folk weren't fooled by the propaganda, but people are notoriously lax. The problem was inaction, more than being fooled.
"Ok. So why aren't all the ISteve readers from SoCal (including ISteve himself) moving away from the SoCal they always complain about to some nice Nordic area of MN?"
ReplyDeleteI used to wonder this myself, but since have observed that iSteve's main theme is that massive immigration has made SoCal inhospitable to middle-class families due to the direct and indirect costs of education (private school vs. good school district). Since presumably iSteve is in his empty nest years, moving now to a place where it's easier to raise kids wouldn't likely reap any benefits.
The blogger I wonder more about is Mencius Moldbug, who complains about the murderous zombies on the streets of San Francisco he has to steer his daughter to pre-school through. Considering San Francisco has the most aggressive homeless people in the country, I wonder why MM doesn't quit complaining and move.
As for me, I don't have kids and immigration doesn't bother me one bit. But I live in Texas not California and the Mexican immigrants here seem much less hostile than the ones I've encountered while in SoCal. (SoCal can no longer boast of being "laid back".)
[QUOTE]I wonder if it's a coincidence that Minnesota boasts the largest Somali population in the USA and Sweden boasts a large Somali population as well. As far as I know there are no colonial links between Somalia and Sweden. So what is this apparent Swedish affinity for Somalia based upon?[/QUOTE]
ReplyDeleteWhat is the Swedish affinity for Somalians ? Sweden is the blondest country in the world. It figures they would have a thing for the Blacks.
It seems most Scandinavians and their diaspora descendents in the U.S tend to be the ones who suffer the most from White guilt and are more likely to have a positive opinion of Blacks.
The American South is the region in the U.S where you find the highest percentage of Whites who hold politically incorrect views about the Blacks.
What percentage of Whites in Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, etc are of Swedish and or Norwegian descent ? Not many, it is extremely miniscule.
The states with a high percentage of Scandinavian Americans all voted for Obama in both 2008 and 2012.
. San Marcos, Texas: 4.91 percent
ReplyDelete2. South Jordan, Utah: 4.87 percent
3. Midland, Texas: 4.87 percent
4. Cedar Park, Texas: 4.67 percent
5. Clarksville, Tenn.: 4.43 percent
6. Alpharetta, Ga.: 4.37 percent
7. Georgetown, Texas: 4.21 percent
8. Irvine, Calif.: 4.21 percent
9. Buckeye: 4.14 percent
10. Conroe, Texas: 4.01 percent
11. McKinney, Texas: 3.95 percent
12. Frisco, Texas: 3.92 percent
13. Odessa, Texas: 3.83 percent
14. Auburn, Ala.: 3.71 percent
15. Manhattan, Kan.: 3.71 percent
"Sweden's successful socialism is becoming the economic equivalent of the wage gender gap; completely untrue, but held up often as an example by people with an ideological axe to grind."
ReplyDeleteSweden is becoming non-Swedish. The Scandinavian modeal relied on homogeneity.
Maybe we can: the US seems to be trying to become kind of like Malmö. How do you say 'Si se puede' in Arabic?
ReplyDelete"Leaving aside the obvious drawbacks of winter, I have been shocked by the general state of physical decay that Minnesotans seem to be in. The teenagers look great, but everyone else looks awful. The obesity rate must be off the charts here."
ReplyDeleteYou're on to something. Though everyone stereotypes people in the deep South as obese, it's really mainly the black people skewing the numbers. I've noticed that obesity is comparatively much worse among the white population in the Midwest and upper South (think Tennessee, Arkansas, Missouri)
As Mark Steyn noted, a country's fiat currency rests at its core on the current account surplus + military power. If you don't have the one, you better have the other. The vast difference between the US dollar and Swedish Kroner, as exemplified by the late 1990's austerity push to recover from decades of deficit welfare state spending, was that Sweden lacking military power HAD TO knuckle under to market forces. As long as the US maintains considerable military power (and is seen to use it effectively) it has a "call" on the world for propping up its currency which is of course, fiat. Based on faith alone. Hey, Faith-based currency.
ReplyDeleteAs for why Minnesota and Sweden import such masses of Somalis, look no further to their women. Disgusted as women always are when their men are equal to them and equalist, they imported Somalis who will never have such truck with equality. The one thing women despise above all else in women is being equal to their men, because then their men are lacking. And they wish immediate replacements. By any means necessary. Muslims, Somalis, etc. know this in Sweden, in Minnesota, and in London and Paris too.
oof-dah, yo homey!
ReplyDeletethe politics of minnesota are inimical to the united states
ReplyDeletethe 1984 US presidential election was the biggest landslide and largest margin of victory in the history of the united states. 50 states voted. 49 voted for the republican.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1984_US_Presidential_Election
in the biggest no brainer, most obvious voting situation of all time, minnesota voted for...the democrat.
this is the equivalent of the single touchdown the denver broncos scored when the san francisco 49ers smashed them 55-10 in the most lopsided superbowl in history.
look at that map and be very afraid of the politics that minnesota would bring to your nation.
minnesota would be fine being an independent country and would do well for themselves. until their open border, deliberate race replacement politics finally put an end to minnesota itself.
if minnesota were a seperate nation it would be bringing in 50000 random brown people a year as immigrants. minnesota in it's current form would cease to exist in only 20 years. they would be on the same exact path as sweden. minneapolis would be a mish mash of riyadh, mexico city, and mogadishu. the land of 1000 lakes would be the land of 1000 languages and the minnesota vikings would be the most nonsensical name of all of US sports.
the only thing which minnesota can be trusted on is private small arms ownership and the 2nd amendment. not that minnesota is great on that, but it's nowhere close to where california and new york are. there is still some resistance to the disarmament agenda, guns are more natural to the people up there, germans and swedes living in a rural state. however if minnesota politicians got their way and opened the border, even that would go away. more brown people means more disarmament, period.
Ok. So why aren't all the ISteve readers from SoCal (including ISteve himself) moving away from the SoCal they always complain about to some nice Nordic area of MN?
ReplyDeleteI can't speak for anyone else, but I would have been gone from CA long ago but not for the fact that nearly all my extended family is here. Bad governance and self-inflicted social problems don't necessarily trump personal considerations.
Well, actually growing more minority means that California is becoming like a multi-cultural Sweden like New York state. For example prop 30 to rise taxes for the schools was passed thanks to minority vote. The minimum wage is likely to be rise to 9.25 per hr. And the ACLU keeps day labor going by blocking any city that prevents illegal immirgants from standing at a street corner which is similar to Sweden's refugee policy always have to help those poor foreigners. Well, higher taxes and more regulation lead to the area being too expensive for illegals and making it more difficult for businessmen to hire them even if liberals like immirgants?
ReplyDeletethat troubled me as a 14-year-old true believer in Milton Friedman's columns in Newsweek
ReplyDeleteI am depressed that you were already having doubts about libertarianism at age 14. I remained a steadfast defender of the faith well into my twenties. Clearly you, Mr Sailer, are the superior individual.
Ok. So why aren't all the ISteve readers from SoCal (including ISteve himself) moving away from the SoCal they always complain about to some nice Nordic area of MN?
ReplyDeleteI can't speak for anyone else, but I would have been gone from CA long ago but not for the fact that nearly all my extended family is here. Bad governance and self-inflicted social problems don't necessarily trump personal considerations. Minnesota is not closed to California, when whites want to go to a whiter placed they head to Oregon or Washington or some of the other northwest states. If they don't care, they usually head for Nevada, Arizona or Texas. Colorado is a little less Mexican but more than Oregon or Washington or currently Utah.
Minnesota is a victim of its own naivité.
ReplyDeleteLocal branches of Lutheran Social Services and other liberal Protestant charities have been actively resettling refugees/ immigrants in Minnesota since the Vietnam War. It's destructive do-gooderism on a grand scale.
Both of Minnesota's current US Senators sit on the committee that just sent the Amnesty bill to the full Senate. Both of them voted for it.
For decades, generous welfare programs have been attracting people from Chicago to Minnesota, and now the rest of the world is coming. The state legislature just passed a bill giving illegal-alien college students in-state tuition.
Meanwhile, rural Minnesota towns are undergoing the kind of transformation that took place in California's Central Valley twenty years ago, as immigrants come to dominate agricultural and food industry labor.
We are the authors of our own demise.
if minnesota were a seperate nation it would be bringing in 50000 random brown people a year as immigrants. minnesota in it's current form would cease to exist in only 20 years. they would be on the same exact path as sweden. minneapolis would be a mish mash of riyadh, mexico city, and mogadishu. the land of 1000 lakes would be the land of 1000 languages and the minnesota vikings would be the most nonsensical name of all of US sports.
ReplyDeleteSome of the most brown states are in the south including Texas. Texas will always have more hispanics or blacks than Minnesota. Sure, Minnesota has dumbed refugee polciies but it doesn't have the cheap labor thinking of Texas or its not closed to the border.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteYou should check out last Sunday's episode of Mad Men. Matt Weiner committed a staggering number of thought crimes.
Abe, the most progressive character in the show is lambasted over many scenes as a delusional liar, hypocrite, hater and general jerk. The script repeatedly makes the point that he refuses to acknowledge the reality about black New Yorkers and what they are doing to the city.
A major theme of the show is the descent of New York into a crime-ridden "shithole". (Two of the characters use that term.) Peggy, perhaps the most sympathetic character on the show, hates the crime and dishonesty and wants out - "white flight" personified. Peggy fashions a homemade spear, a visual evocation of how the city has become a jungle.
Check it out. Quite startling.
Slate's reaction is delicious. Slate has a discussion group which dissects in loving detail the show's themes and symbols. Just last week, they were talking about how the show should deal more with race relations at the time. By that, they meant having some comfy story lines about high-level black professionals. This week, they got an episode that dealt quite frontally with race relations. Their response? Utter silence. Nobody even mentioned Abe and race - just that Abe broke up with Peggy.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/tv_club/features/2013/mad_men_season_6/week_8/mad_men_the_better_half_review_peggy_and_abe_and_ted_and_don.html
The American South is the region in the U.S where you find the highest percentage of Whites who hold politically incorrect views about the Blacks.
ReplyDeleteWhat percentage of Whites in Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas, Georgia, etc are of Swedish and or Norwegian descent ? Not many, it is extremely miniscule.
Well, southern thinking has not helped it get rid of blacks. In fact Florida and Georgia have had been gains of blacks since its cheaper to buy homes for blacks there than in New York or New Jeresey.
Steve,
ReplyDeleteYou should check out last Sunday's episode of Mad Men. Matt Weiner committed a staggering number of thought crimes.
Abe, the most progressive character in the show is lambasted over many scenes as a delusional liar, hypocrite, hater and general jerk. The script repeatedly makes the point that he refuses to acknowledge the reality about black New Yorkers and what they are doing to the city.
A major theme of the show is the descent of New York into a crime-ridden "shithole". (Two of the characters use that term.) Peggy, perhaps the most sympathetic character on the show, hates the crime and dishonesty and wants out - "white flight" personified. Peggy fashions a homemade spear, a visual evocation of how the city has become a jungle.
Check it out. Quite startling.
Slate's reaction is delicious. Slate has a discussion group which dissects in loving detail the show's themes and symbols. Just last week, they were talking about how the show should deal more with race relations at the time. By that, they meant having some comfy story lines about high-level black professionals. This week, they got an episode that dealt quite frontally with race relations. Their response? Utter silence. Nobody even mentioned Abe and race - just that Abe broke up with Peggy.
http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/tv_club/features/2013/mad_men_season_6/week_8/mad_men_the_better_half_review_peggy_and_abe_and_ted_and_don.html
The terrible mix of condescension and ignorance in Minnesota's political climate is perfectly typified by Garrison Keillor.
ReplyDeleteHuh?
There's a concept in economics called 'revealed preferences' which says basically that you should ignore what people say and watch what they actually do.
ReplyDeleteTake peasants who prefer servitude to death. Individuals live where they do given the limited choices they have. Their are other possibilities. For instance:
http://facingzionwards.blogspot.com/
Judean Peoples Front said:
ReplyDelete"I'm not trying to bad mouth the Swedes, but the Danes are equally industrious and upright, yet go through life with much more joie de vivre. Danes are fun."
Danes are attached to the continent and so there's some inevitable contamination. Danes smoke and live more reckless lives. Their life expectancy is 2 years below that of the Swedes. Do the twin city/town challenge Malmö/Copenhagen or Helsingborg/ Helsingor(Hamlet's home town). 30 minutes away from each other separated by water. The Swedish side contains a lot of that Swedish virtue. It's very clean and ordered, a model of healthy living, the Danish side not so much.
When we think of Scandinavian virtues we are really thinking about the Swedes.
This 2013 study found that when obesity rates are measured by using self-reported weight figures, then the South is the most obese region of the country. However, when obesity rates are measured by using *actual measured weights* then the Upper Midwest turns out to be the most obese region of the country.
ReplyDeletehttp://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/oby.20451/abstract
So, not only are Upper Midwesterners fatter than Southerners, but they're also more dishonest.
"Danes are attached to the continent"
ReplyDeleteYes, Sweden is attached to the continent in the North but that's a technicality ...and Oresund Bridge to Copenhagen only opened for use in 2000.
once again on these internet political sites, the analysis is skin deep.
ReplyDeleteYes, a shared culture makes a better place to live. But why? Give me some reasons. And once you come up with some reasons why, then you have some RULES OF POLITICS. You apply those rules to other things, other aspects of politics, and then you have predictive value.
OK, here goes: the higher the degree of shared culture in a political district, the more common interests are shared, and therefore the easier it is for the people to elect and hold accountable political representatives. Once the majority is better able to control their politicians via a higher degree of shared interests, the less the plutocrats and other special interests are able to control the gov't.
Imagine that! A gov't controlled by the majority, working for the majority. And what further benefits might arise from that situation?
See? It's not that hard, is it?
You should check out last Sunday's episode of Mad Men. Matt Weiner committed a staggering number of thought crimes.
ReplyDeleteYup. Been happening a lot this season. When MLK was killed, the episode dwelt endlessly on the massive chimpout in the streets. Over and over this season they have basically portrayed blacks as the savage Id of America gone out of control.
Yes, Abe is a totally unlikeable character and he's portrayed as the big liberal. And also a few episodes back, Pete made a big stink about calling Harry a bigot. But Pete is one of the most morally compromised characters on the show.
And don't forget the Mammy that broke into Don's apartment and robbed the place.
The entire season has been a dog whistle about blacks. What IS Weiner up to?
Garrison Keillor is a typical representative of the people who control the culture. He's rich, thanks to the tax-subsidized dissemination of his work via NPR.
ReplyDeleteHe celebrates and/or skewers white-bread culture --it's literally his bread and butter-- but he enthusiastically supports a Democratic party making war on this very culture.
By the way, in Minnesota it's actually the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party (DFL). The name is the result of a long-forgotten party merger, but it has a nice East German ring to it.
My wife is a professor. She was caught off-guard by how poorly prepared her students here turned out to be. That was a huge surprise given the historic reputation of the state's public education system (and compared to her experiences elsewhere).
ReplyDeleteI'll take your word that your wife said this, but I won't give much credence to her judgment.
http://www.forbes.com/2008/12/10/timss-nclb-minnesota-oped-cx_dr_1211ravitch.html
"While the U.S. continues to rank well below the top-performing nations, Minnesota now ranks fifth in the world, behind only Hong Kong, Singapore, Chinese Taipei and Japan. While U.S. fourth-graders saw a gain of 11 points, Minnesota's students had a gain of 38 points."
So, not only are Upper Midwesterners fatter than Southerners, but they're also more dishonest.
ReplyDeleteI think you meant to say "they have more self-esteem."
According to the American College of Sports Medicine's Annual Fitness Index, America's 25 "fittest" metropolitan areas are:
ReplyDelete1. Minneapolis-St. Paul
2. Washington, D.C.
3. Portland, Ore.
4. San Francisco
5. Denver
6. Boston
7. Sacramento, Calif.
8. Seattle
9. Hartford, Conn.
10. San Jose
11. Austin
12. Salt Lake City
13. Cincinnati
14. San Diego
15. Raleigh, N.C.
16. Pittsburgh
17. Baltimore
18. Virginia Beach
19. Cleveland
20. Richmond, Va.
21. Atlanta
22. Providence, R. I.
23. Buffalo, N.Y.
24. New York City
25. Philadelphia
Anon said: Danes are attached to the continent and so there's some inevitable contamination. Danes smoke and live more reckless lives. Their life expectancy is 2 years below that of the Swedes. Do the twin city/town challenge Malmö/Copenhagen or Helsingborg/ Helsingor(Hamlet's home town). 30 minutes away from each other separated by water. The Swedish side contains a lot of that Swedish virtue. It's very clean and ordered, a model of healthy living, the Danish side not so much.
ReplyDeleteWhen we think of Scandinavian virtues we are really thinking about the Swedes.
.................................................................................
When I think of the Scandinavian virtues I think of honesty, discipline, self-sufficiency, and so on . I still like the Danes and don't really care if they smoke.
I'm not a Scandi, so maybe my standards are a little lower ;-)
-The Judean People's Front
For an idea of what Minnesotans look like today, I suggest this (or any) gallery of photos from the most recent Minnesota State Fair:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.designahoy.com/Minnesota-State-Fair
The state fair is a MUCH bigger deal here than it is in most states, so the fair crowd is perhaps a more representative sample of the general population would be the case elsewhere.
Scandinavia, it is not.
The US Census Bureau gives the basic demographic breakdown:
ReplyDeletehttp://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/27000.html
Looks like Minnesota is 82.8% non-Hispanic white compared with 63.4% for the US as a whole.
I was born in Minneapolis in the early 80's a stones throw from from the Mississippi in a place that is now called Little Mogadishu. When I was born there was literally probably a handful of Somalis. Today there are around 35 Thousand in Minnesota. Also I went from being represented in congress by Erik Paulsen to (crescent)Moonbat Keith Ellison due to redistricting.
ReplyDeleteThis Jefferson guy is an astounding idiot.
ReplyDeleteHere's some of what he wrote:
"What is the Swedish affinity for Somalians ? Sweden is the blondest country in the world. It figures they would have a thing for the Blacks."
Please show me any scientific support for that statement or have you watched too much cuckold porn, beta male?
"The American South is the region in the U.S where you find the highest percentage of Whites who hold politically incorrect views about the Blacks."
Because the South is 20% black, the Midwest is about 8% black. The West is about 4% black.
The whiter the community, the more left-wing the whites becomes, as they don't have to get as aggressive.
Why is this so hard for you to understand?
"The states with a high percentage of Scandinavian Americans all voted for Obama in both 2008 and 2012."
See previous point. States like Maine or Vermont vote left because Northern Europeans tend to be communitarian. America was much more right-wing because you had indians, blacks etc to deal with. This wasn't the case in 20th century Europe where the main threat was another white country.
In absence of NAMs, whites tend to vote left as they want to protect their own kind and why would they go for a nutty libertarian ideology to destroy the chances of their own children?
I'm so amused at the level of idiocy that so many Red State white conservatives are coming up with.
ReplyDeleteLike the guy who told of his wife bitching about white students not being up to task, or is it white students or just "students"? Does she even know the difference between those two?
And then a guy in the comment section found evidence that Minnesota kids place 5th in the world on high school exams.
Some people are truly brainwashed by GOP propaganda. Folks, a welfare state works very nicely with lots of white folks in it. The GOP can't say that so they're trying to make sure you think it's the system, not the people.
In this sense the GOP is no different from the left. Both sides refuse to look at the quality of the people.
I'd forgive a mainstream GOP'er for not being smart enough to understand this but as a reader of iSteve, what excuse do YOU have for the level of idiocy you're coming up with? Truly annoying.
Some people are truly brainwashed by GOP propaganda. Folks, a welfare state works very nicely with lots of white folks in it. The GOP can't say that so they're trying to make sure you think it's the system, not the people.
ReplyDeleteActually, I think Minnesota is not as generous on welfare as in the past. They had some Republican governors and the state outside of certain urban areas not as poor. In fact some of the Red States have high food stamp usage like Missouri according to the New York TImes Food Stamp usage in 2009.
Isn't the name of the game supposed to be the maximization of living standards for all?, doesn't this maxim even apply to the dumb goats?, what makes the goats so marked out that they must surrender their lives for the good of others?, why can't the goats just be 'like others'?
ReplyDeleteIt doesn't make an ounce of sense - and even less morally.
I think they've reached the "run it up the flagpole and see if anyone salutes/throw it against the wall and see if it sticks/any port in a storm/oh hell just brass it out with whatever bs you can come up with" stage of the game.
About three-five years ago I noticed that the ol' "only those ignorant in economics think it's a zero-sum game; it's win-win (except for a tiny tiny minority of bitter-clingers)!" assertions were becoming thinner on the ground. Concomitantly there has been a rise in Church Lady Economics. The acolytes of econo-spergism have had to add coercive moralism to their epicyclical tool box.
Anonymous said...
ReplyDeleteSome people are truly brainwashed by GOP propaganda. Folks, a welfare state works very nicely with lots of white folks in it. The GOP can't say that so they're trying to make sure you think it's the system, not the people.
In this sense the GOP is no different from the left. Both sides refuse to look at the quality of the people.
=============================
Exactly. And let's go another step beyond that--at the top level, the GOP and Dems both want to suppress the welfare state. And multiculti does just that. As nonwhite scab labor poured into the formerly (almost) all white nations of W Europe, the welfare state shrinks. The supposed-Left says they want a strong welfare state, but they all venerate and idolize the nonwhite immigrant, which is at cross purposes to their other purposes. And so few notice this.
And the rightwing claims (sub rosa, implicitly etc) that they are on the side of the whites in the multiculti/fakeLeftist war on whites. But the GOP time and time again refuses to do anything about affirmative action. GOP appointed judges continue to uphold affirmative action and the rights of scab labor immigrants to invade the USA and commit economic terrorism.
A federal judge in Arizona just dealt a serious blow to the AZ law allowing local AZ police to strike back against the foreign invaders. That judge was appointed by Bush.
Where are the paleocons addressing this issue? Where are the paleocons acknowledging that the GOP is on the side of the plutocrats in their war against the whites by use of foreign invading cheap labor?
Why have steve sailer, taki, vdare and the other so-called alternative right/paleocon sites ignored the fact that the AZ law was struck down by a GOP appointee?
Maybe these sites are paid by the GOP?
"Anonymous said...
ReplyDelete""The only part of California I find interesting at all now is Northern California, specifically San Francisco. The city is still beautiful.""
On any given weekend, the city's center is littered with gay booths for HIV testing, for hepatitis vaccines, and all the side streets loaded with vagrants and litter."
I concur. I never got the "San Francisco is beautiful" meme. The city looks like a dump to me. Salt-rotted stucco houses heaped one on top of the other, pot-holed streets, sidewalks reeking of urine from all the vagrants living on them, public places given over to over-the-top displays of deviancy, and all of it swathed in damp, clammy fog. And the people are some of the most self-righteous liberal a**holes you're likely to find anywhere. Frisco is a crap-heap.
Old nuclear umbrella argument
ReplyDeleteDan Henninger wrote a column some years ago about the "Q score" and identified it as the reason for every local TV news team looking the same now. Naturally you lot prefer to focus on swarthy hordes but national decay is already so advanced it figures the intense argument would've moved on to idle fanboy disputation over the ultimate blame object for "The Sixties." Minnesota only bought itself a little time by being out of the way, that's all. Go there and you will find plenty of fat morons, parasitical yuppies, ethnic entrepreneurs, plus shallow materialistic teen girls aka the drivers of the whole economy, because America now sucks. Your way of life is now giving way to a technologically sophisticated form of pagan squalor.
ReplyDeleteOnly black people in Minnesota is Prince and Kirby Puckett!
ReplyDeleteThere's a scene in Michael Moore's (pre-Bowling) movie "The Big One" where he does a self-styled cultural foray into The Mall of America near Minneapolis (occupying the old grounds of the Vikings/Twins stadium demolished in 1985). Anyway Mr. tub of lard seems genuinely enthused at being there and mocks the camera guy with, "What, you thought we were going to watch some Nicaraguan jazz musicians"
ReplyDeleteFrom my observations of everyday life, I'd say that Minnesota is experiencing a pretty noticeable deterioration in its white population. I spend time in Norway and Sweden almost every year. It's getting harder and harder to see that the whites here are largely descended from the whites over there.
ReplyDeleteWhat Charles Murray describes in "Coming Apart" seems pretty apparent here in the Midwest, especially at the low end. It's good that someone finally took a serious interest in what is happening to white Americans, but I doubt if anyone knows what to do about it. For the record, I used to take great offense at Bill Bryson's descriptions of Midwesterners. (He is originally from Iowa). Unfortunately, I'm starting to think that he was just ahead of the curve in noticing what is happening to us.
"The entire season has been a dog whistle about blacks. What IS Weiner up to?"
ReplyDeleteWeiner made his name in television writing for The Sopranos, which got much of its entertainment swagger from being politically incorrect--excused of course because the incorrect characters were also violent criminals.
While the characters in Mad Men aren't outright criminals, they are still bad boys and girls, and I doubt that Weiner has much inclination to meddle with a winning formula.
By the way, do people (outside of a few industries) talk about California this way anymore?
ReplyDeleteSure, only now California is the flashy blonde you married, now aged into a bloated, dissolute basket-case
Alaska, Nebraska, North Dakota, South Dakota, Kentucky, Wyomng, Montana, West Virginia and Oklahoma don't have high minority percentages while Ill, Calfornia, New York and New Jersey have higher percentage of minoritis. Florida has more minorities than many southern States because of the combine Latin and Black populatin while most southern states only have about 20 to 38 percent blacks. New York state has about as many minorities as Gerogia since Gerogia's is mainly blakcs while New York state is probably about 18 percent Hispanics and about 16 percent black and about 10 percent Asian. California is 38 percent Hispanic and 13 percent Asian and 6 precent black and its more liberal among whties when it was only 15 percent Hispanic and 5 percent Asian and 7 percent black in 1980.
ReplyDelete"I wonder if it's a coincidence that Minnesota boasts the largest Somali population in the USA and Sweden boasts a large Somali population as well."
ReplyDeleteAdmitting Somali refugees is the human equivalent to adopting pit bulls. SWPL status-whore gold. And no breed of human is more SWPL than the Swedes.
MKP said...
ReplyDelete" Why have steve sailer, taki, vdare and the other so-called alternative right/paleocon sites ignored the fact that the AZ law was struck down by a GOP appointee?
Maybe these sites are paid by the GOP?"
You're an idiot if you think Sailer, Taki's or V-Dare are "paid by the GOP."
Do you hear me, sir? A clueless, snaggle-toothed idiot.
----------------------------------
ha ha...you sad creature....
at the top level, the GOP and Dems both want to suppress the welfare state. And multiculti does just that. As nonwhite scab labor poured into the formerly (almost) all white nations of W Europe, the welfare state shrinks.
ReplyDeleteAs America has become more non-white over the last 40 years, the welfare state in America has grown by leaps and bounds. That's the reality, not your silly fantasy.
Personality, I was never a big fan of San Fran its overrated. Actually Oakland has better weather, San Fran is too overcast most of the time.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteWell, Minnespolis-St Paul schools are bad like inner city Dallas or Houston too many minorities. The only good schools are magnets in the inner city. In both states the more white or higher income minority usually Asian are the good schools.
"A Working Class American said...
ReplyDeleteMKP said...
" Why have steve sailer, taki, vdare and the other so-called alternative right/paleocon sites ignored the fact that the AZ law was struck down by a GOP appointee?
Maybe these sites are paid by the GOP?"
You're an idiot if you think Sailer, Taki's or V-Dare are "paid by the GOP."
Do you hear me, sir? A clueless, snaggle-toothed idiot.
----------------------------------
ha ha...you sad creature...."
No, he's right - you are an idiot. Most of us who post here are refugees from the GOP - we neither like it, nor trust it. I defy you to find one favorable thing that Steve has ever written about the GOP. You might find one or two, but not many.
Why don't you take your "I am the only one who sees the truth" revelations over to Free Republic, and leave us alone.
Idiot.
"Mr. Anon said...
ReplyDelete"Salt-rotted stucco houses heaped one on top of the other, pot-holed streets, sidewalks reeking of urine from all the vagrants living on them, public places given over to over-the-top displays of deviancy, and all of it swathed in damp, clammy fog. And the people are some of the most self-righteous liberal a**holes you're likely to find anywhere. Frisco is a crap-heap."
Yes!! A thousand times yes!
So child unfriendly, too. I could almost hear the hisses of "breeder" following us as we dragged our children around SF on vacation. It's situated in a physically beautiful location but it's rotten on in the inside.
As for nice places to live in SoCal, Orange County has to be one of the best. My husband and I are east coast transplants for twenty years now but we're not looking to leave SoCal anytime soon. My husband had a business trip to the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN in the winter. He told me about the tunnels they use to pass between building for use in the bitter cold of winter. No thanks.
From my observations of everyday life, I'd say that Minnesota is experiencing a pretty noticeable deterioration in its white population. I spend time in Norway and Sweden almost every year. It's getting harder and harder to see that the whites here are largely descended from the whites over there.
ReplyDeleteWhat Charles Murray describes in "Coming Apart" seems pretty apparent here in the Midwest, especially at the low end. It's good that someone finally took a serious interest in what is happening to white Americans, but I doubt if anyone knows what to do about it. For the record, I used to take great offense at Bill Bryson's descriptions of Midwesterners. (He is originally from Iowa). Unfortunately, I'm starting to think that he was just ahead of the curve in noticing what is happening to us.
Can you explain in more detail what you mean by this?
I guess Steve never read about Kidd Cann. Of course the fate of those who wrote about him probably explains that.
ReplyDeleteBill Bryson, THE LOST CONTINENT (1989):
ReplyDelete"Iowa women are almost always sensationally overweight-- you see them at Merle Hay Mall in Des Moines on Saturdays, clammy and meaty in their shorts and halter tops, looking a little like elephants dressed in children's clothes, yelling at their kids, calling out names like Dwayne and Shauna. Jack Kerouac, of all people, thought that Iowa women were the prettiest in the country, but I don't think he ever went to Merle Hay Mall on a Saturday. I will say this, however-- and it's a strange, strange thing-- the teenaged daughters of these fat women are always utterly delectable, as soft and gloriously rounded and naturally fresh-smelling as a basket of fruit. I don't know what it is that happens to them, but it must be awful to marry one of those nubile cuties knowing that there is a time bomb ticking away in her that will at some unknown date make her bloat out into something huge and grotesque, presumably all of a sudden and without much notice, like a self-inflating raft from which the stopper has been yanked."