This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
What is this article supposed to prove exactly?
What is it supposed to prove? It is supposed to prove that the economy under biden was not all sunshine and cute woodland creatures. That the official definition of recession used by NBER, the FED, Et Al. was revised from "more than three consecutive months of negative growth" to "more than one full calandar quarter" the same week Biden would've crossed the old three month threshold.
That is that, the definition was revised such that declining growth for the last 2 months in Q2 plus the next 2 months of Q3 would not count because even if together they constitute 4 consecutive months of negative growth (a quarter being 3 months long), niether of the 2 two month blocks together would constitute "more than a full calendar quarter".
I didn't say it was. The economy does not have only two states of 'good' and 'recession'. Nobody considers any of the years of 1975-1980 as recessionary even though everyone agrees the economy was in the shitter.
This is false (and if not do please provide a source), but it couldn't even possibly be true because there is no 'official' definition of recession in the US, recessions are determined by the NBER business cycle dating committee who don't follow any strict set of rules. Even here, there was never ever any kind of rule of thumb of three months of consecutive negative growth - the only widely accepted definition (to the extent that people accepted that there was one at all) was two consecutive quarters of negative growth, though there are good reasons for the NBER not to strictly stick to this (the 2001 recession saw three non-consecutive quarters of growth, but nobody doubts that as a genuine recession). So the question then is, should the dating committee have declared a recession based on past behaviour? Well, no. If 2022 were a recession it would be the first one in American history to consist of a single quarter of negative growth, and not even a particularly severe quarter of contraction either at -0.25%. It would have been completely at odds with past practice to declare 2022 a recession - there were single quarters of greater or roughly equal contraction not declared a recession in 1947, 1956 and again in 1957, since when there hasn't been an isolated quarter of contraction, until 2022.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link