Hey everybody, today we are debating whether or not racism is a significant problem in the US and we are starting right now. Ladies and gentlemen, thrilled to have you here for this epic debate as today we are debating whether or not racism is a significant problem for the US. We have CJ Cox with us as well as Kirby and want to let you know folks, if it's your first time here, consider hitting that subscribe button as we have many more debates to come in the future. So we are very excited, this is going to be an interesting one. I want to let you know today is a special day because 100% of the super chats today will be going to historically black colleges and university scholarships for black college students as we try to basically once a month make one stream, a charity stream and in this case kind of doing our part to try to contribute to greater equality in the US. And so with that, hopefully our lag is okay. I know the last stream we just tried to do, we had some lag. And so it's a tough one folks, sometimes it's just random and sometimes it just kind of happens like this where right now we're going to hope it keeps going smoothly as so far it looks like it's okay. And want to let you know though, both of the guests I am linking in the description. So that way if you want to hear more, well hey conveniently you can hear more at those links where I've put down there for you. And very excited. This is going to be an interesting kind of go with the flow type of format, 10 minutes from each side, followed by about 55 minutes of open conversation. And then we're going to have 30 minutes of Q&A. By the way, thanks so much of you. So I just appreciate so much. I'm traveling right now. And so the place that I am, the internet was a little bit unstable. And so I totally appreciate you guys, all the positivity and love as you guys are still here with us. We really appreciate it. And we are ready to get this going. So without any further ado, we appreciate you guys, both Kirby and CJ Cox. Thanks so much guys for being here, but just a pleasure to have you. Thank you. Thank you very much for having me. Absolutely. We will kick it over to Kirby then for his opening statement. The floor is all yours. Perfect. So is racism a significant problem in the United States? Yes. Just to quickly lay out our definitions, racism would be defined as prejudice, discrimination or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that a racial group is either intrinsically superior or inferior to other racial groups. A form of racism expressed in the practice of social and political institutions would be considered institutional racism, which is what I'm mostly going to be focusing my arguments around today. So I believe this to be the case because of a laundry list of data that I've come across. I'll open with these figures and go from there. So firstly, despite being 72% of the population, 55% of people killed in altercations with the police are white in the USA. Despite being 13% of the population, 32% of people killed in altercations with the police are black in the USA. So while most victims were armed, black victims were more likely to be unarmed at about 14.8% of that 32% than white victims. So that would be 9.4% out of that 55%. So when you do the math, when you crunch the numbers, that means that about 17% of white deaths from violent altercations with cops were unarmed compared to 46% of unarmed black deaths.  But I believe this is best explained by being traced back to the issue of relative poverty, which for those who don't understand, it's basically income inequality. So you have absolute poverty and you have relative poverty. And those are sort of the two sort of like sub branches of poverty. Relative poverty is the reliable metric that most economists rely on when they're trying to deduce levels of poverty within a given society. So relative poverty would be disproportionate amongst the black people in the USA compared to the average white person, as the average black family has about one-tenth the wealth of the typical white family in the USA, with the estimated median wealth of black households being about 35,000 a year, while white households estimate their median wealth to be about 150,000 a year. And my source for that is the 2017 Survey of Consumer Finance from the Federal Reserve. Now the reason why this is important is because the greater the relative poverty in a given society, the higher the crime from the group closer to the bottom of that distribution. A meta-analysis of 173 cross-cultural studies on the relationship between relative poverty and crime from 1980 to 2013 indicate that the greater the relative poverty, the higher the violent crime. As per data previously mentioned, this would contribute to those asymmetries in crime amongst black Americans. And that'd be the 2016 JRF poverty and crime review published by Leeds Becket University. Now additionally, black people experience asymmetries and hiring discrimination on top of that. The National Bureau of Economic Research conducted a field experiment on labor market discrimination in 2003. This study took in a large sample size where they sent to over 13,000 employment ads in the sales, administrative support, clerical and customer service job categories, and they sent nearly 5,000 resumes to various employers. So for those watching, what that basically means is that you have two resumes, you send them both in. They're both identical to each other. So they have the same qualifications, skills, the same template, they have the same age, the same demographics, except the only difference is that they change the names. The names are different on the applications. So one application would have what you would colloquially consider a black name and one would have what you would colloquially consider a white name. So same application, except this one says like Denzel or Lamar or Darius or something like that. And then this application would say something like Bob or George or Adam, Matthew, whatever. So the results from this study showed significant discrimination against African American names. White names receive 50% more callbacks for interviews. These living in better neighborhoods receive more callbacks, but interestingly, this effect is not differed by race. The amount of discrimination is uniform across occupations and industries. Federal contractors and employers as well, who list like equal opportunity employer in their ad, they discriminate just as much as other employers. So if you have like a workplace that talks, they tout themselves as like, oh, we're an inclusive workplace. We care about diversity and equity and inclusive, like all that sort of stuff that it doesn't matter. If you have a company like that, they're going to discriminate just as much as any other company are. These results suggest that racial discrimination is still a very prominent feature in the labor market. It's one of the biggest studies on institutional racism in the United States with over 4,500 citations. It was published in 2003. It's called our Emily and Greg, more employable than Laquisha and Jamal, a field experiment on labor market discrimination from the National Bureau of Economic Research. Now, in regards to Black fatherlessness, rather than it being solely an act of irresponsibility, what it often is, is disproportionate jail sentences and arrests. 42% of Black families experience fatherlessness, while 25% of White families do. So while the majority of Black fathers actually live with their children, there is still a clear disparity. This is based on factors previously mentioned and the fact that there is evidence that the criminal justice system itself does exhibit racial bias. So because of this, oftentimes fathers are absent for a far longer and harsher period of time amongst Black families than White families, which would stack onto unemployment opportunities as a consequence of the hiring discrimination I mentioned prior, making unemployment higher amongst the average Black person than White person and therefore contributing to a situation where they are either personally unable to support their own child themselves due to unemployment, or they're straight up absent because of the jail sentence itself, far more so again than the average White person. So as someone who considers a lack of father figures in the Black community a huge problem in regards to a child and overall family's upbringing, as well as someone who's concerned about the single motherhood in the country, this is something I consider to be deeply immoral on part of the criminal justice system. They not only don't care about the hierarchy of the family, but they also don't care about Black people either. According to a study published in 2014 called Racial Disparity and Federal Criminal Sentences, Black men constitute 6% of the U.S. adult population, but are approximately 35% of the prison population and are incarcerated at a rate six times higher than the average White man. Now a research report from the United States Sentencing Commission indicated that Black people serve 19.1% longer sentences than White people from the years 2011 to 2016 and that's actually been pretty uniform throughout the decade. So from 2007 to 2011 as well, it was about 19.5% and it's actually higher within this past decade in the 2010s than it was in the 2000s. It was about, it range from like being 11.2% to 5.5% halfway through the decade to 15.2%. So it's actually higher, the more recent statistics show that it's higher compared to what previously was last decade. And that's even when controlling for criminal history, whether someone pleaded guilty, age, education and citizenship, all of those things were controlled for in the research report. So that was published in 2017. It's called Demographic Differences in Sentencing, published by the United States Sentencing Commission. So to conclude my opening statement, all of these multivariate factors, they do stack on top of each other from history on while there was and is a gradual decline in racism amongst individuals within their own, I guess, day-to-day interactions.  Racism is still a huge problem in the United States as it's a particularly pertains to institutions. And I believe that that is on a very significant, a very significant disparity. So that would be the end of my opening statement. Thank you. You got it. Thanks so much, Kirby. And with that, we will kick it over to CJ Cox. By the way, a couple of little quick details. So one is that, as we had mentioned, all the super chats will be going to black college student scholarships. And if you want to see the donation receipt, I am totally open to sending it to anybody. You can email me at moderndaydebate at gmail.com. And we are, if even if it's your first time here, you're like, James, like, can I see the receipt? Like, absolutely, even if it's your first time here, I'm happy to send it to you as we want that to be fully transparent. And then we always send the receipt to the speakers, our guests after the show, just kind of for, you could say, accountability and record keeping purposes. Also, at once in a while, we see, because we've had some admittedly controversial characters hop on the channel here and there. We will host some controversial topics once in a while. It's rare, but we do see a person pop up here and there in the live chat. And by that, I mean different people. Oftentimes, you're easy to recognize. The people who use hate speech, you've got that Kermit, the frog profile picture. And you guys sometimes say those nasty things.  So that's one rule that we have. I'd say if you are repetitively harassing somebody, we'll give you at least a warning and say, Hey, can you take it easy on that person? We try to not harass people. But if it's hate speech, there's no warning. You'll just be banned. So with that, excited to have both of our guests here, we're going to kick it over to CJ Cox and hear from his perspective. CJ, the floor is all yours. Thank you. And I do greatly appreciate that. So I do want to just make very clear here, my opening statement. I won't be responding to anything he said in his opening statement. I want to save that for the back and forth. And I'm just going to kind of lay forward my argument and then we'll kind of, like I said, have that little back and forth there to address some of the particulars. So I want to put forward a couple of rules that I think need to be kind of understood in order for us to properly go about discussing the solutions and causes to problems such as disparities in the education system and people's income and so on and so forth. The first thing is that dealing with the effects of something do not equal currently going through said something. For example, if you got mauled by a bear and you lost your arm. Well, now when it comes to, you know, maybe opening the fridge and also carrying a soda at the same time, you're not really able to do that as well as somebody else, 60 years down the line. And that is an effect of dealing or an effect that you're having and you're dealing with because you were attacked by a bear and lost your arm in an attack 60 years ago, right? But you're not currently right now being attacked by a bear. That was 60 years ago. It was an event. It took place and it's over now, right? I think the same thing can be said of the United States. There was certainly institutional racism in the past. I do not believe there is evidence of institutional racism in the present and for quite some time. And I also think that the racism of the past was actually a lot more limited than people like to believe, though just as harsh as it is oftenly portrayed. I'll get to that in a minute. The second rule that I think needs to be commonly or needs to be, you know, understood by everybody here is that a disparity does not necessarily equal racial intent or any racism for that matter. For example, if I were to decide I wanted to take a Socratic, I don't know if that's the exact word you would use to describe it, but view on democracy, right? It's in other words, you need to be educated in order to vote. It's not a right intrinsic to you, right? If I were to take that position, which was the position of Socrates, it is significantly more likely that if I got that past, it would affect a higher proportion of black and Hispanic people in the United States for obvious economic reasons. However, that wasn't the point of the argument. The point of the argument was saying that certain folk should be educated if they want to be voting, right? In other words, it doesn't matter your race. It doesn't necessarily even matter your class. You just need to know what you're talking about, right? Now, obviously, you can debate whether or not that's a good strategy to give people as far as voting rights and stuff like that. But the point is it's not racially biased. There's no racial intent in the law. And I think we need to accept those two things as rules that are not only going to be helping us explain this situation, excuse me, but situations that we would come up in any sort of a conversation, philosophical, political, and so on. Dealing with the effects of something in the past does not mean you're currently going through that event right now. And number two, a disparity does not necessarily equal some sort of racial intent. In other words, correlation doesn't necessarily equal causation, as is commonly said. Now, I want to go over some definitions. One of them, of course, was already red, but I want to go over it anyway because I have a different view of it. Racism, the definition, according to the Oxford Dictionary, which is the first one that will show up if you look it up on Google, presidents, discrimination or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that one's own race is superior. There is a little bullet point that comes after this that says the belief that all members of each race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race, especially so as to distinguish it as inferior or superior to another race. So notice it is prejudice, discrimination or antagonism, very direct and intentional things and done for a very specific reason, namely the belief that one's own race is superior or by default, that another race is inferior. If you define things like systemic, systematic and institutionalized, which seem to be used interchangeably by activists in regards to this issue, systemic could be used, could be described with the synonym system-wide relating to a system, especially as opposed to a particular part systematic done or acting to a fixed plan or system, otherwise known as methodical and institutionalized, established in practice or custom, established as part of a official organization. So if we take those definitions to mean what they actually do mean, there's a few things. First off, in order for a law to be actually racist, in order for something to be racist, number one, it has to be deliberate. You're not unintentionally racist. You don't unintentionally find yourself superior to somebody else. Right.  But not the same way you'll be punished if you do the same to a child because we have ingrained in our society of belief that human beings are superior to animals, right? And that's not accidental. So you would be able to find that. It has to be deliberate if you're going to actually prove something as racist. Number two, it does have to specifically target a racial group either by singling out that one group or by elevating one group ahead of all others. Right. So in other words, if you have laws that specifically elevate the white man, those would be racist because they're deeming the rest inferior.  And furthermore, they have to be doing those things because they believe that they are superior or inferior, because that's the definition of racism. Other forms of prejudice, for example, ethnocentrism, for example, cultural hatreds and things like that, whilst they are certainly not OK, they're not the same thing as racism. And I would not argue that we have serious problems with those anyways, but nonetheless, to just kind of just basically prove the point, the Irish and the English hate each other, but they are both white skinned. Right. So clearly that is not a racist issue. It's a different issue. Ethnocentrism and it has its own conversation. So to kind of reiterate, it has to be deliberate. It has to be directed at a particular group, either by elevating one group ahead of all others or by specifically singling out that group to be attacked. And it has to be done specifically because one believes one's own race is superior, because that is just what the definition of racism is. If we want to say, well, there is a disparity in poverty or crime because of things that happen in the past, I may or may not be inclined to agree, but that is a different argument. It doesn't rely on people of my race or my nation necessarily having a massive problem with racism, right? It relies on completely different things. For example, a lot of white people in the South report. Is that because of racism or is it because they got bombed to smithereens in the Civil War, right? It was a total war. The same thing happened to a lot of other countries in World War Two, World War One, etc., thus is the nature of war, right? There's other things that you can use to explain away these certain statistics and disparities that don't rely on racism. And when you actually look at these numbers side by side with each other, for example, it is true that 20 percent of black Americans are considered to be under the poverty line compared to only 8 percent of white Americans. Major disparity in percentage. But you need to understand that's still 15.7 million white Americans comparatively to 8.9 million black Americans. Now, if I was a racist and I controlled the world, forget the percentages because this we're talking about individual human lives.  Why wouldn't I make it 50 percent poverty, 60 percent poverty, 80 percent poverty in regards to the black people? Of course, I don't do that. And by I mean the United States government, because there isn't a systematic attack against black people. Now, there's a lot of other things I could say, but they would reference, I think, a lot of the specific things that Mr. Kirby said, so I want to kind of save those for the back and forth. So I'll go ahead and end it there. Thank you very much. Appreciate that, CJ. And also a couple of quick reminders. I don't know if I remember if I had mentioned at the very start. If you have a question fired in the old live chat, if you tag me with at modern a debate in the live chat, that makes it easier for me to be sure I get every question in that Q&A list. And we'll try to read through as many as we can. Also, Superchats, an option, of course. And then last one to mention, we are excited as this is a new way of saying thanks so much for those who are our patrons. Appreciate your support. And this is something that even if you sign up at the lowest like two bucks a month, we're putting all of our debates. We just started doing this and huge thanks to Oliver Katwell for the idea. We're putting all of our debates on MP3. So that way, if you're like, hey, I love, I want to listen to it while I'm just like commuting or something like that, I don't have YouTube premium. This is a great opportunity where hopefully that's useful to you. And our Patreon link I am putting down in the description right now with our guest links, as I mentioned, you can hear plenty more where that came from from these guys's opening statements in the description box where their links will be. Thanks so much, folks. And we'll kick it into the open conversation. Sure. So do you mind if I go first, Jay? Go ahead. Sure. So I jotted down some of your basic arguments. The first one that I jotted down was you said the effects of something. I do not mean that you're currently going through something. And then you used your attack being attacked by the bear analogy. You meant like effects of something in the past, right? Do not currently mean that anything is going on today, correct? Right. So in other words, there's definitely effects from things like slavery and Jim Crow and stuff like that. But that doesn't mean slavery and Jim Crow are currently going on. Yeah. So I would agree that slavery and Jim Crow are not currently going on. However, redlining back in the Jim Crow days began with the National Housing Act of 1934, which implemented the decay of minor inner city neighborhoods caused by the withholding of mortgage capital and made it even more difficult for neighborhoods to attract and retain families able to purchase homes, the assumptions and redlining resulted in pretty much like a large increase in residential racial segregation and urban decay in the United States. And because of this, black people were only able to purchase the lowest quality homes up until like 1968, that disparity still exists today. And it shows in the data all of the income inequality generated from that. A lot of black people are still living within these homes today. There are even people alive today within the black community that lived through the Jim Crow era. I mean, I think that that's very, very relevant to what we're talking about today. There's a really great book. It's called The New Jim Crow Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness by Michelle Alexander. Basically, what it did was it amalgamated all of this empirical research and it's sort of a tied in all of what happened during those hundred years and explained how when you correlate all of these different factors to what happened back then, it actually does show, bears out in data that it is relevant to the income disparity today. I don't really think that that can be. Can you share, though, just to quickly point out, I would agree that in a lot of cases, there is certainly things to be said about what happened in the past because that's just a simple matter of fact. And to give what I think is a very good example, Jewish people in Eastern Europe are objectively, horribly impoverished, comparatively, to other people because of oppression, both on the part of the Soviets and the Nazis, which of course happened multiple years ago, decades even. That's an example just as good as the one that we have here and the Native Americans here are another good example. But that doesn't necessarily indicate because the thing when we talk about institutional racism happening now, this is why I bring up the bear attack, right? It's redacted, you add absurdum, but it makes the point that's not something we're currently dealing with. We're dealing with the effects of that. Certain deals are kind of cut and dry. And then the result is just going to happen, right? As an example, when we decided to nuke Japan, a completely different argument, of course, but when you decided to happen, the deals signed, right? Those people are dead. They're never coming back. The area is radiated. You have to now deal with the effects of that. But that doesn't even mean not only does it not mean we're actively bombing Japan with nukes or anything like that. We don't even have to be enemies. We're friends now. You know what I mean? And so you see there, the event itself can be separated from the effects of the event insofar as the intent of a certain party such as the United States government or in some cases, white people, because there are quite a bit. I'm sure you would agree of black supremacists for sure, like like Louis Farrakhan, the nation of Islam and things like that. Yeah, black supremacists are definitely a thing. And I definitely don't agree with those people. I don't believe it. I mean, they do not say that you didn't mean no, I don't know. I'm just I'm just emphasizing that I we are both within agreement, but that is not good. No form of like racial nationalism is good. That being said, though, when these effects have been around for 500 years and then what's happening today, and I mean today, like a lot of the studies that I cited, for example, are reflections of today, for example, again, going back to the one on a hiring discrimination by name alone, like black people get denied callbacks for jobs despite having the exact same the exact same qualifications and credentials, even when you control for things like class, the only really thing that seems to be defining it is the societal view of race. And especially if you look at again, the data that I mentioned earlier from the United States Sentencing Commission, you know, there's all with all controls like all your left, all that's isolated within that data is race when it comes to the disproportionate sentencing. So the fact that these institutions are still doing this today compared to like the past, obviously, it's not as bad, but there's still a lot of issues of institutional discrimination. I think it's very, very possible to acknowledge that today and the past are not identical to one another, but there's definitely a relationship there. Again, the law that was passed under Jim Crow law that segregated the black communities off into those disparaged areas, all of the employment data and all of the data that I mentioned earlier, like that still stacks on top of that today. So not only is that the past long term effects, but it's also there's also institutions in place today that are sort of keeping them in boxed in there. You know what I mean? Like that's kind of how I see it. I certainly do understand the argument. I do want to say two things. The first thing I just really quickly is the reason why I think it's so important to separate past from now is because when you say things like institutional racism, what it ends up implying, whether that's what people intend or not, because unfortunately, and I do believe, obviously, that your intention doesn't need to be taken into account. Don't get me wrong. But unfortunately, people kind of understand things the way that they're going to understand things, regardless of what me and you were actually going to say, right? A lot of times what you end up having is people who on both sides, by the way, this is not a black or white issue. Take this to the far extreme and they become even more racially charged. We've seen over the last 10 years, I think a huge deterioration in certain ways, obviously, it's not 100 percent the case, but there is definitely a rise in white nationalism and there is definitely a rise in black nationalism as well. Those are those are happening at the moment. And I think that's a that's a new phenomenon that could become institutionalized if we do not stop it. I want to be perfectly clear on that. Yeah, especially especially in Europe and stuff like I think like Hungary recently, like actually appointed like an actual like fascist dictator. Like and and the fascist party in Sweden, too, has been like like the polls in Sweden in like 2013 for the I don't think it's a fascist party. Actually, I think it's just like a really, really far like they want to end immigration. I mean, it is pretty serious. But that party like they had like 3 percent of the national polls like 10 years ago. And then the last election they had in Sweden, they had like 17 percent. So like, yeah, we're definitely seeing that. It's definitely a concern that is this systematic racism narrative. Because let me just give you a perfect example of police brutality, right? Because you we've mentioned police brutality and it's a huge, huge topic right now, right? So first things first, we have issues of police brutality in every community. There is a police brutality problem in the United States. I have been personally discussing that since the inception of my new show. It's it's honestly the very first thing I ever talked about, actually, because it's a problem. It's a very big problem. Now, the community where I was actually most harassed because I've lived in two, I've lived by three hundred and seventy. You get your percent. That's five point one percent. You know what I mean? No, no, it's one percent of black or of white Americans who are killed by police, right, are are unarmed. But if you do the same thing, nine divided by two hundred and thirty five last year, that comes out to three point six percent.  And I think that's a problem with police brutality, just by the way. I don't think George Floyd or Danny Shaver need to be pinned up against each other, but both were equally horrid and we have a disproportionate reaction to one because of the color of his skin, which I would argue is racist.  And nobody said anything. Duncan Lemp was killed this year, right? And he was only unfortunately actually associated either with militia groups, which some of them are constitutional, some of them are racist. And unfortunately, other racist, you know what I mean? That's the only people who even took up his cause. Which is not OK, of course, but the man was killed by police unjustifiably this year, same as George Floyd, you know what I mean? Yes, what I try to do is, oh, sorry, go on. No, go ahead. OK, so what I I try to really like avoid these anecdotal experiences when I'm talking about like some kind of like greater empirical thing like institutional racism, the problem with doing the math like that, though, is you still have to control for populations. The population doesn't actually intertwine once you do the math. I don't really know how we're going to be able to continue this point if we can't really agree on that. Because if you don't control for the amount of population, the raw data that you're looking at, regardless of what other math you want to spin in there is useless, and that's pretty much like consensus amongst like data analysts and stuff like that. You can't look at data that way when you're trying to get a sense of what's going on with the whole population of people. Well, because why not? Because what we just did is we compared the actual percentage of white Americans who were killed while unarmed by police to the percentage of black Americans that are killed while. So in other words, you're taking into account the fact that both of them are going to have certain amounts of stops and one of them has a higher, you know, there's 370 compared to 235 so on and so forth. You're taking into account those population differences when you do this math, right? That's why we're doing percentages and ratios in the first place rather than just gross numbers, which is still to be fair in my favor because it's 19 comparatively to nine. And again, I think that indicates a police problem, but it's not a racially biased police problem, right? Well, we just have like conflicting data. It's just that what I'm doing is I'm listening to what the experts derived from their data versus what someone did on a calculator. So what I do is a layman because I'm not qualified is I have to look at what the experts are saying and the data shows that it's 17 percent of white debts from violent altercations with cops were unarmed compared to 46 percent of black debts, though I think that like that data point, I mean, we can move on to something else just because I don't really think we're going to agree on this and I would much prefer going to a more like causal example, if you don't mind. So let's let's I would like to know what you think of the study that I talked about with regards to unemployment. So what did you think of what I talked about with the black names and white names on the job applications? So I think that that's actually a kind of a multifaceted problem, which I would definitely agree is a problem, but I don't think it's quite as cut and dry as we might initially think. So as an example and we can do whatever we want with this assumption, but I think we can agree that the assumption of your average American or even probably your average Canadian, if you hear something like Anquan, right, is going to be that that person is probably from a poor, more rundown kind of neighborhood and so on and so forth, whereas somebody named Michael is probably not. That's usually maybe not in Canada. That's certainly going to be the assumption we have here in the United States, right? Yeah, but now notice that particular study didn't actually say there was a racial disparity, but a disparity in the names alone. So I think that's one of those because of course, plenty of black people are going to be named Michael or David or whatever. Right. The and like I said, I'm not necessarily justifying this by any stretch, but I'm saying what I think is being described there or what is being shown there is people looking at a name like a, you know, like an Anquan, like Anquan Bolden, right? Or you know, one of my favorite YouTubers, his name goes by MK, but his name is Jamiroquan, right? I think they look at that and they think this person is probably for it from a more rundown and impoverished area, which I think is more a classist thing because there is certainly a little bit of classism in the United States. I would agree with that, but that classism affects races equally, just not necessarily proportionally, you know what I mean? In other words, the study controlled for class, the applications were identical to one another, right? I know and I understand that. But what I'm saying is that people have those inherent assumptions within them because of what I think are somewhat classist tendencies. Because for the average person, this is again an assumption I'm making. I do want to be fair. This is not something that I have back up the data. But I think the average person, if you walk up to them and said, hey, this man's name is Jamiroquan and told them nothing else, right? They would immediately have a picture in their head. And to be fair, maybe that's a little bit of a stereotypical picture. I'm not even going to deny that, right? So just a problem. So if somebody was named Jamiroquan, like if someone had a name that was more colloquially considered a black name and then you said that name to somebody without looking at them and then you just assumed, oh, well, they must be poor, they must be, isn't that racist? Not necessarily. It's more of a cultural thing because what you're assuming specifically in the name there and like I said, you can you can decide whether or not this is a good or bad thing. I'm just saying what I believe this is is you're basically making an assumption about the culture that's going to be put forward by this person. Because if you told somebody my name is Michael and also included the detail that it was black, that he was black, rather, you wouldn't actually have the exact you wouldn't have the same reaction, right? People would react to that person even knowing his race better than they would react to. And actually, if I if I know the study that you're quoting, which to be fair, I don't have it with me right now, so maybe you can correct me on this. But I believe that same study did indicate that heavily ethnic sounding white names also did actually have the same problem. And you ended up actually saying yourself that there seems to be an issue like across the I'm trying to remember exactly how you said it. I guess I can't really remember. So correct me on this. But there was a disproportionate hiring amongst certain groups of people that didn't seem to actually matter as far as the race was concerned, but more was associated with how run down the neighborhood was supposed to be. Right. No, no, what I was saying is that if a neighborhood was a poor neighborhood, it didn't have an effect. Right. And so and that is the crux with my argument when it comes to this is, I think people make classes, assumptions in the United States, regardless of your race, based on certain things that may not even actually have anything to do with your class, such as the neighborhood you live in and the name that you have. Right. So in the study, do you think that when the employers were looking through all of these applications, they weren't reading the full applications because the applications had they were identical to one another with the same qualifications, same educational standing. There's nothing about the applications themselves that would have indicated that somebody is from a poorer neighborhood. Literally, the only thing that was different was their names. So correct me if I'm wrong, but those are two different studies. Right. The poor neighborhood one is one study and the name one is another. Right. No, they're the same study. They're the same. So then what is the relation? Because you said that people who were assumed to come down. I mean, understanding what you meant by a poor neighborhood study. Like you said, that's something about like something not differing by race. And I did use that like exact wording when I was talking about the employment discrimination study. Right. Because there was the study indicated and correct me if I'm wrong, right? But the study indicated that if you came from a more run down or believes to be poor community, regardless of your race, that people were at a discrimination against you as far as hiring was concerned. Is that correct? The discrimination was still white, white, white names still received 50 percent more callbacks regardless of what neighborhood they were from, whether it was the richer neighborhood, a poor neighborhood or whatever. No, right. And I understand that people's position doesn't need to make any sense because oftentimes it doesn't. Right. Stereotypes very often don't make any sense. But what I'm saying is that what is indicated by the fact that people were deciding, hey, I'm going to turn you away because there's a problem with the neighborhood you grew up in is the same thing that I'm seeing in this other thing, which is, hey, I'm going to turn you away because the name you have in both of those things, what you have in is is an inherent cultural, cultural centric and classist assumption that they don't want. And I understand you're saying, well, these other people, they adjust for class and things like that. I'm not saying that what the person who's doing the hiring is going to say makes any sense as far as that's concerned. What I'm saying is that those certain presuppositions and biases against, for example, the neighborhood somebody grew up in or against, for example, the name somebody might have are things that are more related to their what they perceive to be really crime-ridden and lazy people, which to be fair, like I said, that could be a problem. That could certainly be a problem. If you believe poor people inherently or people from run-down neighborhoods inherently or immigrants inherently are kind of poor and run them up and committing crimes and things like that, that's a problem in and of itself. But it's not necessarily a racist problem. I could have the same thing about, I could think the same thing about poor Italians or Polish immigrants, you know what I'm saying? Yeah, it's just that they did control for that. Like it doesn't matter. What I was saying was that if you change the neighborhood around, I remember what I was saying now, what I was saying is that if you live in a nicer neighborhood compared to a poorer neighborhood, unilaterally, the white and the black people within that poorer neighborhood will still be called back less than the richer neighborhood in sheer numbers. However, statistically, regardless of which neighborhood that you are looking in, white people will still receive a 50 percent, they still receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. So the study did control for that. It doesn't matter what neighborhood it's not necessarily that you're a black person, but more that the name was Jamaeriquan or something like that, right? That's what the study was saying. For example, Michael David would still get a callback, even if they were black. Is that correct? Well, they did it just by name. Yeah, by a name alone is what they based that off of and based on certain names because there's names that society colloquially considers a black name like Denzel, Darius, whatever Lamar.  And the sample size was quite huge. They sent 5000 resumes to people, 13000 different employment as. Right. And so what I'm saying is so the fact that you have a disparity between the rich neighborhoods and the poor neighborhoods is one thing, right? That have not related to the names, right? That's one thing. That's one fact. And no, no, no, no, no, no, this study is related to the names 100 percent. Like that there wasn't anything you have the disparity between the neighborhoods, right? We were saying poor people and rich people have a disparity, right? And then you have separate over here, another disparity, which is white names versus black names. What I am saying is what is clearly indicated in the first one is some sort of a classist assumption that basically labels poor people a certain way. And I think the same can be a plot of being higher than Anthony. I'd be willing to bet that, actually. Antonio, though, could be a white Italian person and Anthony could be a Mexican person and it doesn't really matter, you know, I mean, and I think what is kind of inherent in there is this sort of classist and also a little bit anti-immigrant, I'll be honest with you. But once again, there's plenty of white immigrants that's unnecessarily racist. Well, not necessarily, I guess. But regardless, I don't really think that's relevant to this particular study because they weren't looking at people who would be white passing. I don't think that you would find someone who was white passing named like Shinikwa. I think that that is very, very, very rare. And I think that the common assumption within society, because assumptions are often based off of generalizations, when you see a name like Lamar, it's very unlikely that a white person is going to have the name Lamar. Now, maybe that's possible, but I think that it's very, very obvious within the study that the I don't know what other assumption would be. I don't know how you draw a class with George versus Lamar without the without incorporating race into that. And the study accounted for class. Again, these employers. Like I said, that's why I would want to look at ethnic sounding white names, because while you may not find a Lamar who is a white person, at least typically, you'll certainly find a Giovanni. You can certainly find an Antonio. You can certainly find loads of Spanish names, right? The Spanish people are white skin, for the most part. French names, for example. And a lot of those areas do certainly have certain biases against them. I think one of the most famous in America is certainly Irish people, because there was a lot of bias against Irish people for numerous reasons. And that could force carried over from England, right? And so that's why what I'm saying is I would want to see that same study done, but instead of focusing specifically on the black names, starts focusing specifically on some Hispanic sounding names, start focusing specifically on the ethnic sounding white names and see if you get the same thing. And if you do, then I'm saying that that would, which I would assume you would. That's the hypothesis that I would put forward, right? Yeah, I think that you end up finding the same general disparity. And the reason is, and I'm quoting now this other disparity that you had pointed out, right? I think there is classist assumptions against certain group of people. And we know that because this other thing is already something that's an established fact, right? If you are from a richer neighborhood, white, black doesn't matter. You're more likely to get a callback from a poorer neighborhood, white, black doesn't matter, right? So we know that part. What we don't know is necessarily is if Lamar is being discriminated against strictly because Lamar sounds black or if Lamar sounds quote unquote ethnic to the average suburbanite American, the same way Giovanni might or the same way something like Luke Kang or whatever, you know what I mean? I know Luke Kang's a character, but I don't really know very much in names, you know what I mean? Yeah, but like, you know what I'm saying? Like, is there data that exists on this, though, with like that that accounts for this stuff? Because if we don't have data on this at present, I mean, this just sounds like conjecture, right? Like, well, I would put forward definitely that that is simply a hypothesis that is based off of previously existing data that doesn't necessarily correlate to the name, right? In other words, I think if we did that study, excuse me. Sorry, there's previously existing data on the other names. No, what I'm saying is there's previously existing data as far as the way people portray richer versus poorer people and the way people portray people from rich neighborhoods versus poor neighborhoods and so on and so forth. Right. So that data exists. What we have here now is a question of why is it that these very African American sounding names are discriminated against? And what I'm saying is if you did the same study, which does not exist to my knowledge for the record, but I believe if you did the same study on ethnic sounding white names, Hispanic names, Indian names and et cetera. Although to be fair, there's kind of a reverse thing, I guess, with Indian and Asian names that typically are over qualified in the minds of suburbanite, but the qualifications were the same when they when they did the study, just to reemphasize that the qualifications were identical. And I understand that. What I mean is a lot of white people and really just American people in general, they kind of have this idea about Indian and Asian people that they're kind of smarter than everybody else.  I'm not very think a lot of Asian people would consider that racist if they assume that they're like, oh, smart, like big brain in school because on the basis of their race or ethnicity or whatever, I mean, I think that that would be, I think there would be a lot of history. It might be, but that is probably the general assumption, though, is what I'm saying. Whether or not it's racist is irrelevant. I do think it's probably the general assumption, you know what I mean, because that's definitely something that exists in America.  So those are jokes, though, right? Like we're referring to like society in general and what they think. Right. So well, regardless, not the point, like I said, it may or may not be racist, but the point was just that I think there's a different set of assumptions when it comes to certain races. But my point here in this regard, yeah, that would be racist. Well, I mean, I don't know. This is certainly something that would be racist again. If there are different sets of assumptions given to certain races based on them being racist, I think that that would I think that many of those races would consider that racist. I know that was a little tongue twister there. But well, so to be fair, I think everybody makes certain assumptions and I don't think they're all necessarily racist because you have to. I mean, there are tons and tons on in all the different races of assumptions people make and they some of them are true. Some of them are not. And when I say true, I mean, generally true, not true, true to a rule, right? But people just make assumptions. You make assumptions not necessarily you, but you, the colloquial American and citizen, make assumptions about Catholic, make assumptions about Mongolian people, make assumptions about the Irish versus the English, right? When you hear a group attached to something, you make certain assumptions about the group. I don't think that necessarily means that it's racist, per se.   So what? There's a cultural link with watermelon.  That's not racist. It's just something that people assumed, right? Do you think that if I'm making assumptions about somebody based off of the fact that they might be black, though, and those assumptions are sort of like prejudicial, like, say, well, I think that if I hear the name Lamar, they might be of a poorer class. It's generally, I would say that it's generally presumed within society that if you are of a lower class, that's probably not ideal when compared to being a middle class or a higher class. So if I'm assuming that a black person is like poor or whatever, based off of just like a name alone that sounds black, I don't know how that isn't racist. Well, and I would I would agree, I guess, that there's a certain level of racial bias to it, but I don't think that it's racist, I guess, is my point. So I guess to be fair, let me I would have to rephrase what I've been saying. It's not necessarily that I don't think that that's racist. It's that I don't think it would be unique to black people. And that's why I would want to see this study done about ethnic sounding white names and other kinds of names, right? From first, I mean, well, of course, I mean various different groups. I mean, that's just a problem with tribalism, right? Like various different groups, of course, receive different like assumptions and presumptions about them based off of that given group that are not good. But just because those other assumptions exist doesn't mean that you can't. Doesn't mean that if you apply those assumptions to someone based off of a given race, that it's not racist. I don't know how that logically follows. Because it's not necessarily something that is done because you believe one racial group is superior to another. And that's so for example, if you treat Lamar and Giovanni both.   You know what I mean?  The assumption is in the name because people, and rightly or wrongly, I'm not defending it. People assume certain things about certain naming customs, where you're from, so on and so forth. I can agree that that is problematic, but it is not the United States government or white race as a whole or the police as a whole or any other institution. I never said that it's white people as a whole or that it's like the government. Not you, to be fair. Not you, but there is quite a bit of. Talk in all different facets. I'm not pinning any one of these beliefs on you, but some people say it's education. So just to get this out of the way, I'm not one of these like woke, scold, like SJW activist types. I've literally just read data and I've just come to the conclusions based on what the data show.  I don't do anything like that. I'm literally just reading data and presenting data. That's all and fully granted. I'm not I'm not painting any of these assumptions on you. I'm just simply saying when it comes to things like, you know, when people say certain things like systematic racism and stuff like that, there's a various number of institutions and sometimes not even just institutions, but, you know, political parties or ideologies or even races that they end up blaming for it. So I'm kind of saying generally when it comes to this because I think for the most part, when you look at most disparities, they can be easily explained with things that relate to either past effects or cultural differences. I think in this particular, excuse me, in this particular example, that's not necessarily the case, which is why I'm kind of saying I would want to see the study on we don't have that study at the moment. But I am supremely confident that if we did have a study on ethnic sounding white names, that it would probably end up yielding the same results. And if white people are discriminating against white people because they believe them to be poor and discriminating against black people because they believe them to be poor, then the common denominator is being poor, right? I'm just surprised that this like wouldn't have shown up in the data at all. Also, when we're looking at like applications, I feel like the only way that you would be able to successfully debunk this study if you were somehow able to prove that like the employers that were sampled didn't actually look at the resumes and just like looked at the names and shut it out. Like they looked at the like employers look at resumes, they do look at them. If they pick one up to look at them, they don't look at the name and shut it out. They look at all the credentials. They look at the ages. They look at the demographics. They look at all that stuff. Um, it was literally controlled for in the study. One sec.  I'll give you a chance to respond CJ, but I just want to mention probably in a few minutes we'll go into Q and A. Want to let you know, folks, first, I am so thankful that you've stuck with us through all of these stream challenges. Sometimes I want to cry. I'm kidding. We're okay. No crying, I promise. But I really do appreciate all of you guys watching. And what we're going to do just so you know, folks is, is uh, some of these stream pieces are like they're in pieces. So I'm going to stitch together like the different pieces of the stream into a nice single video that I will both share with our speakers who I have linked in the description, by the way, in case you want to hear more of these guys and also we will re upload it here at modern day debate, probably by tonight. So just want to let you know, we appreciate you guys being so supportive. It's, uh, if this is your first time here, we're not usually this bad. So, uh, by we're, I mean me in the internet, but these speakers, I have to say, this has been a really interesting conversation. So I've really enjoyed having you guys. And like I said, maybe just a couple more minutes, we'll go to Q and A if one of you is willing to, and it doesn't have to be immediately, but shortly if one of you is willing to defer to the other and giving them the last word and so, uh, thanks guys. So back to you. Um, yeah, I mean, I guess I can conclude real quick then just because I don't really see, I think it was getting a little circular with the study or it was at least going in that direction. So I'll just conclude by saying that like, I think institutional racism is a big problem in the United States. I think I presented an adequate amount of data indicating as such. Um, I think that it's very, very easy for us to just sort of look at data and then say, well, it's possible that it could be this. Um, I think that that's just the conjecture fallacy. Um, it's very easy to say that you can say that about any piece of information, sort of like a postmodern thing where it's like, well, we can break down what could possibly be ad infinim. It's like, that's technically true. Um, so I'm just not interested in doing that when trying to describe a phenomenon that exists today because I'm a layman. Um, I don't have, we don't have PhDs. We don't have the funding to do these studies. Um, I would like to see studies to that effect. You know, it would be cool to see, um, how they account for like different, um, I guess, like Italian sounding names or all that stuff. I mean, that's, that's definitely one of the better responses I have heard to that study. There were, I have experienced a lot of, um, uh, less than adequate responses to when I've mentioned that study. That being said, though, um, it does control for class. Absolutely. It controls for different neighborhoods. It controls for all of that stuff.  Um, so I would say that, um, those arguments didn't necessarily rebuke that data, but I do appreciate the, uh, um, well, the good faith attempt to, um, sort of, I guess, uh, uh, see what other multivariates that might not have been accounted for, I guess. And I guess the last thing I would say there is just to simply, um, I would want to point out that I think the primary discussions we ended up having today were, I guess, employment and, uh, police brutality. Um, there was a little bit of talk, I guess, about income, but not necessarily so much. We didn't so much get into the income itself as much as just the employment factor. Um, and you know, I do definitely appreciate the conversation. I will say this much. If that study ends up happening and I'm wrong, I don't have another point I can see. So that would, that would be something that I do want to just make pretty clear. Awesome. Um, yeah, that, you know, this is a good conversation. I think we had good back and forth there. Certainly. Yeah. All right, James, I guess we're going to Q&A here. You bet, Shale. I want to say thanks so much folks for all of your questions. We're going to fire through these as fast as possible because we're a little over time. And with that writer, John Buck, thanks for your super chat says, Hey, Kirby question for both of you. What policy proposals would you recommend for the problems raised here? Hmm. Well, I think that's something that would be really good is a, I think a UBI would be a good one. Um, like if you make under a certain income bracket, I think giving a UBI to those under that income bracket for, I guess, like a certain amount of, I don't know how many years it would be. I mean, you'd have to do the math on that. Some economists would have to crunch some numbers, I guess. But I think like if you gave a UBI to just gave maybe like a slightly greater amount to black neighborhoods as opposed to white neighborhoods who are living in impoverished conditions, just because there are disproportionately more black people within those conditions, you would definitely have to account for that. Certainly, though, it probably could be the same amount. That would be one good way just because I think that the most statistically significant thing that prevents events like the riots, for example, right now in the United States, those things happen for, for, you know, various socio-cultural reasons. And I think when you leave relative poverty unaddressed for so long, like all the data shows that that does tend towards violence, that would be a good start. Um, yeah, that would be one policy. I have many, of course, but thank you.  So, um, I think that there is a lot of things I would want to address before policy, if I'm being honest with you. Um, there are certain policies that could certainly be taken. I think for, for, uh, for one, um, marijuana should be legalized. I don't understand why we have hundreds of thousands of people across the country arrested for pop crimes. Um, that makes absolutely no sense. Uh, certain fines, I think, inherently become fines against poor people. For example, car registration. Um, if you want to register your car with the government, by all means do it. But I think the idea that you have to, to protect it from getting stolen from you is completely insane. Um, and we all know, I think it's a money making scheme in a lot of ways. Um, I would also say, um, you know, I would culturally call upon and not just black Americans, but any impoverished group. You know, it's interesting. And don't get me wrong. I love Martin Luther King Jr. for a lot of the things he said. And I understand why people have the problems with Malcolm X that they do. But one thing where Malcolm X was infinitely better than Martin Luther King Jr. is the belief that people need to build up their own communities. Um, people need to open businesses. They need to shop at those businesses. They need to stay in the home if they can. Right. They need, there needs to be cultural revolution. And by the way, lest anybody think that this is something that I pin strictly on black people, there is a significant rise in most of the problems that we traditionally attribute with black culture in white America. It's, it's happening and it's happening very quickly. So we may end up being equal before, before too long. But the point being, I think that would be the best thing. Open your own businesses, shop at those businesses, try to, you know, make peace in gangs and things like that. That's something, of course, that a lot of people have had to deal with. It's very difficult, but that reduces the murder rate, right. Stay in homes. Don't be promiscuous all the time that way that you have less amounts of people who are born out of wedlock and so on and so forth. Right. There is numerous problems, culturally speaking, so sorry. Impoverished groups that I can't address. Sorry, that's okay. So sorry to rush you. So sorry. But just to keep moving through as many questions as possible, appreciate it. Thanks for your super chat. Writer John Buck, who says opponent drops out, Kirby wins by default. That was definitely in the first stream. Thanks for your patience as we've had many issues, most of which all are because of my connection. But second best, Bob, thanks for your super chat. I said, uh, Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry. That's okay. Go on. No, I was just going to say, um, when, when he dropped out earlier, a friend of mine who was watching messaged me saying that he got Ben Shapiro to death by data. And I just thought that was funny. Go on. That's funny. Second best, Bob. Thanks for your super chat. Said it being in England and watching what's happening over there is kind of weird. Whatever, black lives matter. Gotcha. Thanks for that. Opposer of religion. Thanks for your super chats. And thanks for donating these super chats to a good cause. I love that you take action with the channel. Thanks so much. And thanks to all of you for giving your super chats and all of your other support. We appreciate it. And all of our cat. Well, thanks for your super chat. Says education combats ignorance, intolerance, racism and inequality. Thanks for donating these super chats to the cause and praying it helps us all become closer. Thanks for that. All of her appreciate that. And Tioga. Thanks for your super chat. She says the white samurai. I hope I'm pronouncing that right. Sammy, Sammy are being oppressed by white Norwegians. Is that not racist? They're both white skin color. Not sure that's for. I mean, if they're both white skin color, it wouldn't be a racial issue. Then I guess it would be more so like an ethnicity thing. Because historically, there has been a lot of conflict between different, like European nations and stuff. So even though today we would consider them white or whatever. You got it. I basically parrot that exact response. All right. And Raven zero. Thanks for your super chat. Said so what is stopping? So what is stopping racists to be used a free out of jail card? Well, so what is stopping racist to stop racist from getting a free out of jail?  What's the line? Well, it's not that they are. Oh, sorry. Go on. No, I was just going to say, I think this is a I think this is a little bit of that sort of that that Trumpism kind of coming through from being honest with you. I am a conservative, but I am not a big fan of the Trumpism. To be perfectly frank, whilst I certainly believe the media does have a certain view of race and that they definitely are disproportionate in the way they view certain things. I think the vast majority of people do not agree with that statement. So we're all fine. There is a significant lower significantly lower amount of racial hatred in this country than you think if you watch media, and that would be kind of my response to that. And I would say that the data says that it doesn't say that like white people who get like if you there's nothing indicating that if simply turning down a black person at a job is racist within any of the data that I presented, I don't know where that's really coming from. All it says is that 50% more callbacks for interviews based on name alone with the assumption that they are white compared to black indicate that there is a large number of companies who do that. It's not saying that all institutions do that. It's just saying that there is a large amount of racism that exists within the labor market. Gotcha. And thanks for your super chat from Matthew Steele, who's been on to debate before not too long ago. He says CJ Cox, do you think that classism, obviously a massive problem in the U.S. Which often manifests as racism is a problem to be addressed separately from racism and other forms of bigotry. I think it's entirely separate. I think it is entirely separate because it affects all races equally in the sense of gross number. Right. Well, one thing that I think people often forget when they look at things like percentages is if I was a racist, I wouldn't care about percentages. There is 15.7 million individual white lives that are impoverished. That would be my problem if I actually individually care about white lives ahead of black lives. So sure, there's 20% of black people in poverty comparatively to 8% of white people. But the gross number of white people is almost double. And if I was a racist, that would concern me, right? In other words, the class distinction and the race distinction is definitely different, even in the point of view of the racist, right? I think they're completely separate issues. And I think that they are mainly caused, if I'm being completely honest, by what I would consider to be a very cronyistic version of capitalism in our country. I think in the past, we had a very, very fantastic economy, quite frankly, when it was a little bit more laissez faire, not 100% laissez-faire, that obviously caused problems. And that's a different issue. But I think that that's the main cause for a lot of the disparities that exist in classism in the United States. It's certainly a problem, but it's not a problem I think that has anything to do with racism. Gotcha. Tiffany Baer, thanks for your super chat, said just sharing some love with a modern day modern day debate community. Pass it on. The world needs more love and kindness. Well, thanks for that support, Tiffany. We are excited for today's charity stream. Cody Drummond, thanks for your super chat says minorities have been fleeing their own country and leaving their own family members to live with whites in parentheses. Who are complete strangers for over a hundred years? Can we stop pretending that racism is a thing in America? Just because immigration is good and that people want to come here and that we have good values doesn't mean that racism can't exist within that structure and run contrary to those values. Gotcha. Thanks for your super chat. Whiz bang says what's both sides definition of racism does wrong generalizations of any kind based on race fit into the definition. I think they would say generalizations. It means something like stereotypes. Yeah, so I would say that it would depend on if whether or not the person hears like a stereotype.   So stereotypes. Yeah, definitely. If I'm understanding the question correctly and of course they ask for a definition of racism. So as I said in my opening statement, prejudice, discrimination or antagonism directed against someone of a different race based on the belief that a racial group is either intrinsically superior or inferior to your other racial groups. Got you. I would kind of say that it depends. I think most stereotypes realistically are harmless and that people get offended over a lot of nothing. I think some certainly are very harmful. Absolutely. Everybody's very familiar with the Nazi propaganda and the anti-Semitic caricatures that existed there. And of course we had numerous things here not only in regards to Jews and Irish people, but obviously in regards to black people as well. And even, you know, it's funny. I mentioned marijuana legalization. It's actually referred to as cannabis, right? Marijuana exists as a way to link it to Hispanic people to make them seem like they lazy and take drugs, you know what I mean? So certainly that stuff exists and has existed. But I don't necessarily think that all of the time it is. Like I brought up the example of watermelon. There's that is completely harmless. It doesn't matter. You know what I mean? Move on. People think I eat unseasoned chicken. So what, right? People think I can't dance. So what?  It's a harmless stereotype. So it really depends on the stereotype itself, I think, is really what I'm saying. Gotcha. And Tioga, thanks for your super chat says they saw me. James, pronounce it right. And parentheses are racially oppressed. Race and ethnicity go hand in hand. Completely disagree. Complete ethnicity. In fact, ethnic hatreds a lot of times isn't even actually ethnic hatred as much as it is incredibly complicated. And by the way, that does not justify ethnic hatred. I just want to point out. But for example, if you took a Israeli person and a Palestinian person who were very, you know, righteously zealous on each side, they all they both have great points because this has been a bloody constant conflict for 70 years, right? It doesn't matter that one might be race racially Middle Eastern and the other might be racially white, although to be fair, the majority of Jews in Israel are actually misrahi, which means Middle Eastern. You know, as much as it is, there's there's an ethnic hate there. It's the same thing as gang violence. It's the same thing as football rivalry. Really, right? There is there's a long standing history that goes back and it can be completely separated from race. And in a lot of cases, though it can never be justified, it can be understandable. And I think we do need to differentiate between justified and understandable because understanding somebody who is still wrong, I think it does more to to credit their humanity and help us actually solve the problem than just well, they did an evil act and therefore it's evil. You know what I mean? They're evil. I mean, move on. Sorry, go ahead. No problem. Next up, Cody Drummond. Thanks for your super chat said 99.99% of what these SJWs attribute to quote institutional racism, unquote, is just the way people dress, behave and speak. It has literally nothing to do with skin color. Um, the data disagrees. Sorry, I don't care what SJWs say. Gotcha. And mystic wolf, thanks for your super chat says, hey, James, love the channel. I would love to see a debate between conspiracy cats and Kent Hovind on creationism. Can we make it happen? We will certainly try. I was just talking to somebody about how we we haven't. Kent doesn't always get back to my emails anymore. So we've got a we're like, you know, figuring something out to get Kent Hovind back on the show and we'd love to have conspiracy cats as well. So we'll definitely try our best. Want to say thanks, everybody, for hanging out with us. I have linked these guests in the description. So that way, if you're listening and you're like, hmm, I like that. I want more. You can hear more. That's why those links are in the description for you and want to let you know as a reminder, what we'll be doing is I will put all of these debates from today, the three or so videos of this debate. I will put them all on private shortly and then stitch together all of the pieces of the debate into a single video that we will re upload. And then hopefully you'll see it then if you want to see it in full. If you came late, it's always a fun time, folks. And we are very excited as tomorrow, we are actually having a similar topic. It's not quite the same. It's actually going to be related. It's actually going to be is systemic racism in particular real. And so that will be tomorrow at the same time, 4 p.m. Eastern Standard Time. We are going to start it. That's going to be between Losar one and the provocateur, the controversial Jill, as he goes by, will be with us. And that last time he was on was with Bosch. So that should be a wild one, if you guys remember. Oh, no. So hopefully we'll see you for that one. And then I think Sunday we've got an evolution debate you see on the bottom right of your screen. And then you we have a lot of other ones coming up though right now. It's it's an exciting time as we have a lot of debates with new people reaching out to us saying, hey, we'd love to come on. So thanks so much, folks. Very excited for it and want to say one last thank you to our guests. We really appreciate both Kirby and CJ. Thank you guys very much for being with us today. No problem. James, always a pleasure. And thank you for having me. And thank you, Mr. Kirby, for having the conversation. It was good. Thank you, Mr. Cox for having the conversation. It was good. Radical. And as mentioned, folks, all of the super chats that you have sent in today, all of it 100% will be going to the scholarships for students at historically black colleges and universities. And so feel free for real. If it's your first time here, if you want to see that receipt, the donation receipt to know that we are actually giving it to where we say we will, we want to be fully transparent. So we'll send it to anybody. And with that, I want to say have a great rest of your day. We'll hopefully see you tomorrow and keep sifting out the reasonable from the unreasonable, folks. Take care.


So I will be applying the Marxian theory of rent to wage determination in this talk. We begin by looking at what Marx says about simple and complex labor. This is sometimes referred to as the reduction problem. So he writes, more complex labor counts only as intensified or rather multiplied simple labor so that a smaller quantity of complex labor is considered equal to a larger quantity of simple labor. A commodity may be the product of the most complicated labor but through its value it is posited as equal to the product of simple labor. Hence it represents only a specific quantity of simple labor. Now there's a controversy about how to understand Marx's presentation of complex labor. So first I would like to just do some terminological clarification of a fairly basic kind that will be maybe known to those people who know a thing or two about Marxist economics. The first is the distinction between labor and labor power. So labor is the actual work done by labor. The activity that happens during the labor process and labor power is the worker's ability to work. Marx believes it is labor power that the capitalist purchases from the laborer and this distinction between labor and labor power he sees as one of his major contributions to economics and as solving a number of conundrums in the theories of David Ricardo. So the next distinction is that between value and price more specifically for this presentation the value of labor power and the price of labor power. So exploring this distinction between value and price socially necessary abstract labor time is the substance of value and price is the necessary form of appearance of value. Now I think both of these statements have a lot to unpack in them that I won't do today. The important thing is to note that Marx sees socially necessary abstract labor time as having a mediated relationship with price. We don't expect that market prices will directly correlate with the labor times embodied in those commodities but we expect to be able to account for the price of commodities using a theory that starts with socially necessary abstract labor time. A consequence of the definition of value as socially necessary abstract labor time is that labor in Engels words can therefore have no value. Labor is the substance and therefore also the measure of value. So it doesn't make any sense to talk about the value of labor. And similarly at the other end, money has no price in the same way that labor can have no value because labor is value, money can have no price because price is just a certain quantity of money. So now turning back to simple and complex labor individual labor time can diverge from socially necessary labor time. In the first few pages of capital, Marx gives the example of the power loom replacing the hand loom. So the first user of the power loom produced two hours of value in one hour. In concrete terms, the first power loom weaver was selling cloth at the price that was set by the productive conditions of hand looms. The initial users of the power loom were thus able to make surplus profits because their costs were much lower but their selling price was the same as the hand loom weavers. But the last users of the hand loom produced only one half hour of value in one hour and the logic is exactly the mirror of what I just said. So in this case, the socially necessary general productive techniques dictated that a certain amount of cloth could be made in one hour and the hand loom weavers could only achieve half of that. Despite having extraordinarily high costs, they could only sell their product at the same price that was now being determined by the power loom. So it is possible that by complex labor, Marx meant individual labor of above average productivity. That's one school of thought out there. And the solution of Caligaris and Starosta is that complex labor produces the same value as simple labor but has a lower rate of exploitation. And the reason why it has a lower rate of expectation is because complex labor is paid more. So I think that both of these solutions are logically okay and the rest of my presentation doesn't hang on this difference. In either case, what I want to emphasize is that wage is something different. Wage is the price of labor power. It is not the value of labor power. Indeed, as a footnote on the passage that I began this presentation with, Marx says, at this stage of presentation, the category of wages does not exist at all. So to some extent, this reduction problem doesn't need to impinge on our explanation of wages. So how do we determine the value of labor power? So the iron law of wages is the theory that Marx inherited from classical political economy, that the wages of workers will seldom exceed the bare requirements for them to stay alive. Marx and John Stuart Mill added that there is a moral component to the iron law of wages, namely that the minimum standard is not strictly speaking a biological minimum, but it's a social cultural minimum. Now I think the way that one can understand this is that the physical needs of workers to maintain themselves day to day, biologically sets the lower limit on wages and profitability sets the upper limits. Under certain circumstances, the capitalist might agree to pay workers more, but at the point that the capitalist business becomes unbiable because of zero or negative profitability, then that is not going to be agreed to. So I think these are the limits. We need to keep the workers alive, but we also have to have a positive profit. And within these two limits, the actual wage of workers is decided by class struggle in Marx's famous phrase between equal rights force decides. So in a period of strong unionization of an active labor movement, wages will be higher and in a period of weak unions, when capitalists are the stronger force in the class struggle, then wages will be lower. Basically, as a definitional point, the value of labor power seen from the perspective of the capitalist making the purchases necessary for another period of production is called variable capital. So the capitalist buys means of production and labor power and then brings those together in the production process. The value of labor power is not set like other commodities. So this is an important point in terms of how we understand the reduction problem because a number of Marxist scholars like Hilferding, Bauer, Meek and Shake understand that the value of labor power is set by the, if you like, the cost price of labor power. Within this perspective, education would be seen as a capital investment. So in this perspective that I'm disagreeing with, just like when you buy a machine, that machine transfers its value bit by bit across its life through depreciation into the commodities that it produces. One could understand education as, I make a big upfront investment in my education and then that leads to a higher wage. So the value of the education is being transferred to the value of products I create bit by bit. This theory, however, blurs the distinction between constant and variable capital and Marx makes it very clear that he thinks that living labor creates value through the expenditure of labor time. So there's no obvious mechanism whereby labor power would also have this sort of constant capital component to it. Now, there are reasons why from the perspective of an individual laborer things have the appearance of, to use a more contemporary phrase, human capital. This idea that you invest in your education and then you get higher income is not wrong. But it's a surface appearance. So now I turn to the core of the presentation about applying rent theory to wage determination. So first of all, just a little bit of a reminder about Marxian rent theory. So we have three kinds of rent. First kind is monopoly rent. A landlord owns a vineyard that makes a qualitatively unique wine. And then since the only place you can get that wine is from his vineyard, it means that he can charge as much as customers are willing to pay regardless of supply. It increases the individual commodity price. Then there's differential rent. So differential rent is when a landlord's land is unusually productive. So he can set the rent to soak up what would be surplus profits of the tenant farmer. So just to paraphrase that. Here we're imagining corn is what the economists always call it, we Americans call it wheat. So there's a certain price per bushel of wheat and that price is set in the marketplace. Now this land is particularly productive. So with fewer costs, less labor time, less fertilizer for instance, you can produce the same amount of corn. Well, that would mean if there were no rent that the tenant farmer would get surplus profits because the difference in his lower costs because of the fertility of the land would become extra profits. But if a landlord ever noticed this happening he would raise the rent on his land to soak up that difference. So that's differential rent and it does not change commodity price. Now that's the whole idea is that it's that the commodity price is set external to the conditions of that particular farm. And then the third type of rent is absolute rent where a landlord must be somehow compensated even if he has terrible land if he's going to make his land accessible to cultivation he's going to require some kind of compensation for that. And this increases the sector-wide commodity price. So for instance, corn, the price of corn has to be high enough to allow the landlord to make some deduction no matter what the conditions of productivity of his land are. To review the differences in terms of their effect on price monopoly rent increases the price of the specific the individual commodity that's monopolized. Then differential rent doesn't change the price of the commodity at all and absolute rent adds a certain amount to the price of all the commodities in a whole sector. Okay, so now I'm just going to apply those three concepts directly to wages. First monopoly wage. Mark doesn't go out and say this anywhere but it's my understanding that monopolies are always legally created in the case of our landlord with the particularly nice vineyard because his title to use that land is illegal creation.  In the case of monopoly wages, I think we need to look for legal protections to decrease competition in certain sectors of the economies in terms of their labor force. So medieval guilds, things like the American Medical Association not allowing the number of doctors to go over a certain number. So whenever there's a cartelization on the part of the organization of the workforce that creates a sort of monopoly wage. Yeah, it's the exact inverse of a monopoly cartelization on the side of the capitalist. And this applies at whatever level that cartel applies in. So I think that's monopoly wages. So then we turn to differential wage. So I think that personal talents is one clear example of differential wage. So maybe you can get work done faster than the guys sitting at the desk next to you. So if you can just do more in less time, you're paid the same amount. The price is set externally to you. So that is an example of this differential wage. And I think that things like athletes, musicians are a case where we're used to thinking about the personal abilities of one individual attracts a surprisingly large amount of the remuneration that's available in that sector to that person. And then I also think this is where we should understand education as coming in. So education contributes to a differential wage when that education is linked to sector specific short-term labor shortages. And now this is the point that I really want to talk through carefully. So suppose that there is a new technique that is associated with a new skill. In phase one, a very small number of workers happen to have the skill, perhaps originally as hobbyists, right? This is the first moment when this new productive technique is introduced. No one has yet had the opportunity to train on using that technique, except maybe those people who developed it in the first place. So this means that those people are able to command a share of the surplus profits of the firms that use that productive technique. When a firm introduces a productive technique that uses less labor than the amount of labor that is usually used for the production of that product. For instance, a power loom instead of a hand loom, that difference between the socially necessary abstract labor time and the firm specific labor time of an individual worker, that's captured as surplus profits, right? Now it might be still efficient for the firm to allocate some of those increased gains to the skilled workers who run the new machine. As long as they still come out ahead, they're fine, right? Like maybe the productive technique is has twice the productivity. So they've just doubled their profits and then maybe they keep 75% of that and as profits, keep it as profits, but then use 25% of it to pay their workers better, right? That can work in the short term. Now in phase two, workers train in this skill even at great expense, since they think it will lead them to command a higher wage. They see the workers from phase one getting those high wages. Now as the number of workers with the skill increases, their power in the class struggle between labor and capital dwindles and their piece of the surplus profit pie shrinks because capital finds it easier to locate these skilled workers. They are competing against each other. So the amount of the surplus profit that the firm feels like it makes sense to give to the workers is smaller. And then at the same time, the increasing number of firms using the technique also means that the surplus profits decrease. So as the new technique becomes more prevalent, the advantage of having it goes down. Now in phase three, the skill in question becomes increasingly part of general education and thus is not a specialized skill. At this point, it's not skilled labor anymore. It's just normal labor. In a fourth phase, the skill is entirely automated. When the skill is automated, then those who train in the skill are, if anything, disadvantaged in the workplace. And at this point, a new cycle begins since building and repairing the automatic version of whatever this skill is, engenders a new type of skilled labor. In principle, then we have this cycle yet. More and more skills are taken over by the machines, but then at the same time, the skill level of humanity in principle increases. So now just a side note, it's my intuition that surplus wages typically last longer than surplus profits. If an early entrant with a particular productive technique, if the key to that productive technique is a special machine, all it takes for a competitor to get in on the game is to buy that machine. That's easy to do as long as they have the money for it. They can even take it alone if they don't have the money for it. But maybe the reason why the early entrant has its market advantage is because of some specialized skill that its workforce has. Well, to train up people with that same skill or to wait until people get that training themselves, it's just gonna take a lot longer than just buying a machine. For that reason, I think that this process whereby through competition surplus profits are eroded is slower in the case of surplus wages than it is for surplus profits. Another consideration is that those with the skill might not be eager to teach it widely because they know that that skill is the source of their surplus wages. The third application of rent theory to wage determination, absolute wage. Here we're looking for a sector specific high wage that is not tied to surplus profits. Instead, the logic of it has to be you need to pay people more in order to work in this sector. The thing that I thought of that might fit the bill is wages of superintendents where you want your managers to be well-paid more or less so their class solidarity is with the proprietors and not with the laborers. And so you have to pay them a lot in order to get that class allegiance. And this affects the whole sector. It also occurs to me that maybe particularly dirty or dangerous things could be analyzed in this way. Although I'm not convinced that's the right way to analyze them. Okay, so that was my application of rent theory to wage determination. So now I'll just offer a conclusion that may not seem like much of a summing up but in some ways it was the starting point for me to think about this whole question that those who earn over $55,000 after tax in the US in the year 2021 were benefiting from exploitation. So that's the number that you get by looking at the GDP and discounting for investment and then making it GDP per capita. That is the amount of added value that each worker puts in the economy. So if you like, that's the monetary expression of labor time for a year. So any employee who's paid over that is somehow benefiting from the unpaid labor of other employees in the economy. And I just want to emphasize that this happens without these workers owning means of production. So they're not exploiting other workers because those workers don't work for them but they are benefiting from the social institution of exploitation despite themselves not owning the means of production. So if you can divert the surplus labor of other employees towards yourself through some sort of ownership claim, in this case the claim of ownership is the ownership of your particular kind of labor power that seems analogous to me to other ownership claims diverting surplus value to them in the theory of rent. And so that's why I started down this path is to think about why is it that some people are paid more than the value they create in the economy?