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 Main Page - iTunes - Soundcloud  Current Topics - Dietary fat and climate change - 12/4/2015 - Show Link What is "The Weeds"? "The Weeds" is a new weekly policy podcast put together by Vox.com, a fairly new news site that does some decent issue breakdowns and articles. Specifically, "The Weeds" is a podcast where three people dig into a handful of policy topics and usually a paper or study or data set, trying to get beyond a bit of the higher level discussion of topics. What three people? Ezra Klein - Editor-in-chief, Vox.com; progressive columnist  Matthew Yglesias - Liberal writer and blogger, economics and politics  Sarah Kliff - Senior Editor; focused on health, medicine and education  Why should I listen? Because it reminds me a lot of how D&D can get when a thread hits on a good subject. Lots of times threads in D&D can last long enough that they get into some real nuance, and then continue right along into this too far weird meta-analysis of a topic, or too narrow into an endless debate over minutiae of whether or not a disagreement is actually syntactical or if it's really just semantics and definitions and oh god why is there blood everywhere? The Weeds itches right at that sweet spot for me where things are interesting to discuss, and if we're discussing them for a week at a time then I don't think we'll boil away all substance too fast. Shouldn't this go in the podcast forums? I want people to listen, true; but more than that I want to get other views on the topics they bring up because I find a lot of the discussion more thought-provoking than a typical news discussion of these topics tends to be. Give the show a listen and feel free to discuss among the three current topics; after the next week's show comes up, please wrap it up or move it to it's own thread as warranted, and we'll move on to the next few topics and keep things fresh. Mo_Steel fucked around with this message at 00:00 on Dec 5, 2015 |
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Nov 21, 2015 01:21
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| # ? Apr 23, 2024 11:21 |
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It's Friday! Retirement age, terrorism, and C-sections is the current show topic, and the first one of the thread; this one will go an extra week because of Thanksgiving, so feel free to discuss the show in general a bit or some past topics as they come up. For now, I'm going to focus on this episode with a few of my thoughts hastily scribbled down after getting home. On raising the Retirement Age I hadn't really thought about the retirement age outside of the general rationale that I view most such cuts: I don't want to see social security die to a thousand small cuts, so to speak, and view it is a bare minimum we should be doing. The discussion of raising the retirement age having the impact of a cut on poorer people being forced to work jobs they hate for longer was interesting, not just because when you frame it in terms of sheer outcomes it becomes a lot easier to discuss and a lot less complicated to view pros and cons than when it's wound up in the entirety of the program, but also from a quality of work standpoint. I worked retail for over 10 years, in basically every department: cleaning and maintenance, cashiering, stocking shelves, pricing the store, bookkeeping, receiving, etc. Of the people I worked with while there, not many really enjoyed their work (and some couldn't only barely stand it) and understandably so: it's mostly thankless, it pays poorly, and it's physically much more demanding than an office job is. As the show put it, it was a work to live situation, and no one really aspires or dreams of that job. In that sense, raising the retirement age is a targeted impact on those people who can't afford to retire, and for most people they don't want to work anymore after 40+ years, and it definitely is another world from writing blog articles or being an office worker. On the terrorist attacks in France I was in 10th grade when 9/11 happened, basically only just becoming politically aware. Quite the world to wake up into. Looking at the attacks in France with some more years to form thoughts, the past experiences of that attack and some distance, I can kind of see where they're coming from on this: realistically, what is France going to do? They won't deploy a large number of troops to the area, and as has been pointed out most of the obvious important bombing targets are probably already knocked off the list. More importantly, what sort of response should be taken that won't hurt France in the long term? The obvious blowback is already apparent here in the U.S. where the refugee situation is concerned, but I think it is a difficult political situation to be put in. I think the general public views hardline action as more "serious" than the views of "bleeding hearts", whatever the stats about children and women refugees may say. Having said that, I definitely don't see France following our steps into Afghanistan and Iraq in force; I think the world recognizes that sort of mistake at least in some braod scope, including France, and I doubt they'll make the same mistakes. One thing I think they overlook is when it's brought up that the Obama Administration is already doing everything it thinks is a valid tactic against ISIS so what else would they do if something did happen in the U.S.? I think the obvious answer is they'd be forced to re-evaluate; my hope would be soberly, but politics does play a role and I think we'd see things escalated in some fashion if that were the case because we aren't at this place as a society yet where we can just shoulder those attacks. The framing mixes in a bit with the gun debate in that we basically have agreed there, through inaction, that we're willing to live with those deaths and not really do much about them, but I hope that they're right in the view that France can take the long view and focus on the big things they can weed out to minimize the damage of future attacks without letting it change their character. On C-sections vs. Vaginal birth I had basically no idea how much the stats varied by location, but the culture view of it makes absolute sense in much the same way that births at hospitals vs. births at home / birthing centers probably also varies wildly by location. Where people place their valuation of convenience and how importantly that weighs into their decisions is going to depend on a lot of other views you and the people around you hold, particularly in cases when a surgery wouldn't be medically necessary but rather expedient. The take away for me, that we value convenience over safety when the risks are far enough removed / minimal, I think makes a lot of sense for why the increased risk from a C-section doesn't play as much of a factor into the choice to have one, as well as why it's probably difficult to intentionally shape: you could save lives by reducing optional C-sections through a push on doctors to not recommend them as much, but while it may sound callous it'd be a hard climb for little benefit compared with other things you could push doctors or society generally on, like our eating habits. Mo_Steel fucked around with this message at 01:55 on Nov 21, 2015 |
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Nov 21, 2015 01:22
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This... might actually get me to start listening to a podcast. I love Klein and Yglesias, and Vox has been one of my go-to news sources for the last several months.
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Nov 21, 2015 01:27
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i usually hate Yglesias for being a smug contrarian jackass, but he came out pretty solidly against raising the retirement age before starting to discuss the nuance about it. that is appreciated. otoh, he just wont stop...mumbling, or something that makes him hard to understand. Did not know that the average retirement age was so (relatively) low. People really don't enjoy their jobs. EDIT - wait, was that Ezra? Cuz the guy who is arguing that 'you have to make the case against economic growth' is annoying me in a very Yglesias fashion, but is just being nerdy enough about it that I'm just not sure who is who anymore.argh. TheDeadlyShoe fucked around with this message at 11:16 on Nov 21, 2015 |
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Nov 21, 2015 11:11
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TheDeadlyShoe posted:i usually hate Yglesias for being a smug contrarian jackass, but he came out pretty solidly against raising the retirement age before starting to discuss the nuance about it. that is appreciated. There's some additional interesting stuff about retirement age in the show notes too:  People who aren't retired yet expect to work a few years more than existing retirees. quote:Implications
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Nov 21, 2015 23:36
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I've listened to the first three episodes of this and I like it. It's wonkish enough that I learn new things, but not so wonkish that I have no idea what they're talking about. The American health and welfare system continues to be entertainingly horrific. "People in a certain income bracket are about to get a 30 percent increase in their premiums!" "I've got it! We'll make them loan the difference from the welfare fund and pay it back in smaller chunks over time instead of actually fixing the issue!  "
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Nov 22, 2015 00:00
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Antti posted:I've listened to the first three episodes of this and I like it. It's wonkish enough that I learn new things, but not so wonkish that I have no idea what they're talking about. The American health and welfare system continues to be entertainingly horrific. "People in a certain income bracket are about to get a 30 percent increase in their premiums!" "I've got it! We'll make them loan the difference from the welfare fund and pay it back in smaller chunks over time instead of actually fixing the issue! Healthcare politics is really amazing because it demonstrates how well provides are getting their message out. At no point in time does anyone seriously talk about or come up with a plan curbing the ~10% Year over Year rise in medical costs. We just argue over how to pay for it. The idea that providers might take in less money next year than this year is Social Security levels of Third Rail.
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Nov 22, 2015 03:07
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Antti posted:I've listened to the first three episodes of this and I like it. It's wonkish enough that I learn new things, but not so wonkish that I have no idea what they're talking about. The American health and welfare system continues to be entertainingly horrific. "People in a certain income bracket are about to get a 30 percent increase in their premiums!" "I've got it! We'll make them loan the difference from the welfare fund and pay it back in smaller chunks over time instead of actually fixing the issue! I'm curious how it'll look over the next 10 years if polarization worsens; we end up with these bizarre "fixes" that involve a lot of gymnastics and wrangling already rather than a straightforward solution because even the appearance of "losing" is an untenable prospect, and as a result these systems get wound up together in non-obvious ways.
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Nov 24, 2015 04:49
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It's Friday! Dietary fat and climate change are the topics this week, even though 2 of our 3 hosts are absent! Ezra Klein drags two poor victims into the Weeds with him this week: Julia Belluz and Brad Plumer. Dietary Fat A primer on the discussion of dietary fats: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2mU6USTBRE They spent a little bit of time in this week's episode discussing the types of guidelines the U.S. government puts out on what people should / shouldn't eat and how it's more complicated than say in Brazil (which they attribute to powerful food producer lobbies) but they don't discuss much about the efficacy of either set of guidelines. Does anyone know of any solid research on how government guidelines on food and diets impacts what families actually eat? My gut feeling is that it's probably not a lot, and that the environment we're in plays a much larger role (availability of snack foods and drinks with high amounts of sugar, high rates of work hours allowing for less time to prepare meals, etc.) Climate Change This is where the bulk of the conversation was, trying to span the gap between "We're making progress!" and "We're gonna burn to death anyway!" The point I found interesting though was when they discussed the difficulty of getting nations on board with any sort of goal here; enforcement is realistically an impossibility unless you're the U.S. forcing a third world nation to do something under threat of total economic death, and climate change doesn't seem like the sort of thing you can incentivize a nation to jump on board with if it's not in their immediate interest. Unfortunately that leaves you with not much alternative besides a global grass roots movement to pressure governments and businesses from the inside to take serious big action on climate change, and that's about as likely as the Proletariat rising up to overthrow the Bourgeoisie across the planet in one big move. Which really seems to leave us with "Well, we're doing what we can." A glorious tribute to our species. 
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Dec 5, 2015 01:03
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