Does 'progressive racism' exist?

[-1=e^ipi]

I read the abstract but it says nothing about 'integrating better' in there.

Well duh, it's an economics paper by rigorous economists from the University of Ottawa. The term 'integrating better' isn't exactly a well defined economic concept, and good luck trying to get funding to do a study that could even be remotely considered 'racist' or 'islamophobe'. That said, the paper in question, isn't a study on the effects of 'cultural compatibility' of immigrants from different nations, it's a study that focuses on education and human capital of different immigrant groups and how that relates to their incomes once they come to Canada. It shows how language ability, different levels of education, income from host countries and other factors are correlated with the incomes of immigrants once they arrive to Canada. Income of host countries is shown to be a good proxy for human capital of immigrants.

Though what the paper might doesn't say is that income of host countries & human capital of immigrants should be strongly correlated with 'cultural compatibility' as generally richer countries are more similar to Canada (Western Europe, Japan, etc.) than poorer countries; furthermore, culture is a significant factor in a country's economic prosperity and well being (there is are reasons why South Korea has gone from one of the poorest countries in the world to one of the richest countries in the world and it is very much related to the country's culture). It also shows that there is some significant unexplained variability in resulting immigrant income, that isn't explained by the factors used in the regression model (so could be the result of other causes such as the influence of culture).

It is also really interesting if one looks at the appendix table B1 of the regression model. Is it just a coincidence that islamic countries such as Iran, Afganistan and Bangladesh generally have negative unexplained regression coefficients (afganistan and Bangladesh have coefficients of approx -2.6 for both males and females)? Admittedly, Egypt and morocco have positive coefficients (though of course both countries are quite secular). While places that are very culturally similar such as Britain, France and Northern Europe have positive regression coefficients? Please correct me if I am misreading something. Edit: actually most of these coefficients are within the t values, so aren't statistically significant, so forget I made this comment; not much can be concluded from table B1 other than the regression model used having good results at explaining variability in resulting immigrant income.

Anyway, I referenced the study not because it is a study that specifically says how terrible islam is and how important culture is when it comes to an immigrants 'compatibility' (which the paper doesn't do, and I would never want to suggest that out of respect for the economists), but because it shows a rigorous approach to examining how different factors affect resulting immigrant income, how we can measure those factors, and how the results of such factors suggests modifications to Canada's immigration system to improve the quality of immigrants that come to Canada. It would be interesting to see the results of regressions that try to estimate the cultural effects on resulting income (maybe use proxies such as government type, freedom indexes, religious make up, languages used, etc. to estimate this). It would also be interesting to compare how countries such as Canada & Australia, which do immigration very well and do not have relatively much immigration from radical islamic countries, fare when compared to countries such as UK & Frace, which do not do immigration as well and have high immigration from radical islamic countries such as Pakistan and the Maghreb, in terms of the quality of immigrants.

The analogy you provide to GDP and standard of living also isn't helpful, as most people could see an immediate connection between GDP and standard of living but not 'GDP of a source nation' and 'fit with Canada'.

'Most people' believe in nonsense fairy tales (i.e. religion), do not understand basic maths (let alone regression analysis), and follow ridiculous political ideologies, so I'm not sure if 'most people' is a good standard to examine anything with. Also, 'GDP of source nation' is not a proxy for 'fit with Canada' (like GDP is a proxy for standard of living), rather 'GDP of source nation' is a good proxy for human capital (which then affects immigrant income) as explained in the referenced study.

We haven't discussed methodologies at all on here, so it's astounding that you would jump to that conclusion about me. I wouldn't make such a judgement about you without knowing your background.

My comments were based of various comments that you have made which are along the lines of: 'we can't actually objectively measure things, or use statistics in any meaningful way', which of course basically disregard the entire field of econometrics, or calling my explanation of a methodology to determine ways to measure cultural compatibility as 'a mathematical tower of Babylon, can't work and will only feed your biases'.

You haven't shown us yet why.

The University of Ottawa study clearly suggests that current immigration distribution is un-optimal with respect to not properly accounting for the human capital of different immigrant groups. There are thousands of studies that suggest that the immigration distribution is un-optimal for a variety of reasons.

You said something to the effect of 'not caring about the fabric of Canada' earlier on, so even if you DID think the immigration distribution is wrong, why would you care ?

Again define fabric of Canada.

Also, you are suggesting that we shouldn't care if the immigration distribution is un-optimal? lol, good luck with that...

You haven't shown us the 'net benefit analysis' you promised either.

I probably shouldn't have used the words net benefit analysis. Performing cost-benefit analysis on immigration policy is quite difficult for a variety of reasons (since immigrants become Canadians it is difficult to determine who the 'stakeholders' are, it is difficult to estimate social effects such as how much people value 'diversity', etc.). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cost%E2%80%93benefit_analysis

Cost-benefit analysis is useful if you are looking at more specific questions such as 'what kind of policy should Canada have with respect to the Canadian Pacific Salmon fishery?', should Canada build a new bridge between Windsor and Detroit?' or 'Should the Northern Gateway Pipeline be allowed to be built?', but I think econometrics is a more useful approach in determining immigration policy. So in that case, I'll take back my earlier offer to provide links to CBA's of immigration policy.

All right. Let's just say 'Canadian policy'.

Yeah... still don't understand the meaning. 'Fabric of Canada' means 'Canadian policy'? Yeah... really helpful! *sarcasm

And yet you're starting out with the opinion that immigration is not optimal, and presumably that Muslims are a problem since you keep going back to those examples.

Yes, my opinion is based of a variety of evidence. Wait, are you saying that your default position is that immigration distribution and immigration levels are somehow magically optimal? Could you provide justification for such a position.

I'd love to have a discussion with you based on facts, but all you have is one study that says people who come from countries with higher GDP tend to have higher salaries. It doesn't amount to the conclusion you're making, which I must conclude is based on personal preferences of some kind.

What exactly do you want? A study that says in it's conclusion "muslim immigration is super bad and we need to limit it"? No self-respecting economist would publish such a thing. Are you saying I shouldn't post evidence that does't directly support my opinions? Such an approach would be dogmatic; I care more about the rigority of the study than if it fits my opinion or not. The econometric analysis admits that resulting immigrant income varies greatly depending on country of origin, shows that this is due to a variety of factors (education, human capital, language skills), and concludes that the current immigration distribution is unoptimal. So what if it doesn't discuss effects of islam or culture, it still adds to the discussion and shows that you are wrong on a variety of comments made. Furthermore, I wanted to show you a rigorous econometrics paper so you would stop disrespecting (unintentionally) the field.

I simply believe that the government is interested in sound fiscal management, and manages the immigration and refugee system to that objective, more or less.

I do not disagree with this, but that doesn't mean that government policy (especially immigrant distribution) is optimal.

Again, it's to you to convince us of your thesis, not us.

What do you see my thesis as? A variety of inter-related issues are being discussed here. I'm mostly just correcting other people's wrong opinions/claims.

So far, it seems muddled and based on a study that doesn't reach the conclusions you think it does.

I never claimed the study reached my supposed conclusions on immigration (especially with respect to islam). Such an approach (in terms of only providing information that directly supports my conclusions) would be dogmatic, and I posted the study for other reasons (also I know and respect the economists who made the study).

Edited October 24, 2013 by -1=e^ipi

[-1=e^ipi]

Military power is inherently a threat, and there are many incentives to use it. MAD does not apply to many conventional wars and military strikes during and after the Cold War. Human life means nothing except for the body count.

Military power isn't an inherent threat unless there is reason to use that power against you. USA has military power, Japan has military power, Britain has military power, and France has military power, but those aren't threats because they are our allies. I will agree that Soviet military power was a threat, but I wouldn't go so far as to say it is an existential threat.

Variants of "communism" in the form of Leninism, Stalinism, Maoism, etc. directly led to the deaths of millions in domestic purges and persecutions. The scale of such actions dwarfs anything by radical islamists hell bent for jihad. Technically, Christians have killed far more people than Islamists.

Oh wow, you really want to go there? lol. Even if I ignore the fact that deaths caused by leninism, stalinism and maoism aren't caused by the ideology of communism (those 3 ideologies aren't subsets of communism, but rather ideologies that include communism as well as other aspects such as totalitarianism), over 270 million people have been killed by islamic jihad (not to mention all the people put in slavery, were forcibly converted, had their limbs chopped off, got stoned for being raped, lived in 2nd class dhimmi status, etc.). I guess I'll need to provide some references.

http://www.infideltaskforce.com/tearsofjihad.html

Yay, finished responding to page 3! Nearly caught up.

[-1=e^ipi]

Ok, but why call it 'racism' ? You could call it what it's always called 'political correctness'. Is that what this thread is about then ? Let's see.

Progressive racism and political correctness are not the same thing, and I have made no such claim. Progressives silencing criticism of islamism can be done for a variety of reasons including progressive racism, political correctness and cultural relativism.

Wow. Not debatable ? Wow. This seems to be a case of "you become the thing that you hate".

Perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully, but what I meant to say is that I did not expect so much disagreement given overwhelming evidence in favour of 'my position' that any reasonable person would agree with. I guess you will always have some people try to argue ridiculous positions (moonlandings being fake, 911 caused by US government, earth being 6,000 years old, islamism not being the biggest threat to the west today, etc.). Nazism is dead, communism is mostly dead (cold war is long over), if islamism isn't the biggest threat to the west today, what is? Look even Stephen Harper agrees that islamism is the biggest threat to Canada.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/harper-says-islamicism-biggest-threat-to-canada-1.1048280

The Soviet system died from within, and if the US ever declines significantly it won't be due to Islam

The soviet system died by a combination of inside and outside (western + islamic) influences. The cliche of great civilizations only falling because of what happens isn't 100% true. Also, I wouldn't suggest that something needs to cause the US to decline significantly to be a significant threat. You don't think terrorism and damage to property / killing of people counts as a significant threat. As for islamism not contributing to the decline of the USA, I think they are doing a pretty good job at it. Osama Bin Laden, despite being dead, has managed to get the US involved in 2 costly wars (Afganistan & Iraq), cost the USA trillions of dollars, cost the USA goodwill from other countries, got the idiot George Bush elected a second time, and caused the US policy makes to be more concerned with foreign issues than with domestic issues.

Statisticians, sociologist and the like would be amused that their studies actually "assess values of people" rather than measure metrics.

Income per capita is a value that can be associated with a group of people. Literacy rates is a value that can be associated with a group of people. Average years of schooling is a value that can be associate with a group of people. If those don't count, I have no idea what you mean by values of groups of people.

Here's my example of a fake "proof" that somebody could submit as a misrepresentation of statistics. It comes from HRDC Canada:

Wow, what an absolute nonsense statistics and misuse of data. I asked you to "produce 'a government statistic' that "proves" that Chinese people are worse at assimilating than Somalians". No where in your data do you have Somalians or even East Africans. This data neither defines racialized persons, nor poverty, nor how the data was collected, nor mentions which country this data is for. Looking at the percentage of the 'racialized persons living in poverty' who are chinese, rather than looking that the number of 'racialized persons living in poverty' per capita makes no sense given that Chinese people probably make up the largest visible minority group.

Showing me that idiots can misinterpret data doesn't satisfy your earlier offer. Now again I ask you to produce 'a government statistic' that "proves" that Chinese people are worse at assimilating than Somalians or back off with your ridiculous claims.

I already explained to you: the paper talks about the relationship between earnings and source country GDP. That says nothing about overall "fit". I imagine somebody could use this study, for example, to justify increasing immigration from Saudi Arabia. How would you like that?

Yeah... good luck trying to argue that a study that doesn't even use data from Saudi Arabia (as seen in appendix) somehow justifies increasing immigration from Saudi Arabia. Actually I'd like to see you try to use the study to justify increasing immigration from Pakistan. Go ahead. If you cannot then please stop trying to claim things along the lines of, 'people can use statistics to justify whatever'.

you somehow have made an elementary mistake despite your status as an expert on stats.

What is this 'mistake'?

So, I ask if you still have anything to add other than this one study that doesn't prove what you think it does ? Do you have a link to the overall benefit study that you promised earlier ?

If I find a study that contributes significantly to the discussion, I'll link it regardless of if it fits my conclusions or not; I do not approach things dogmatically. See my last post with respect to cost-benefit analysis vs econometric analysis (edit: I have found many attempts at cost-benefit analysis on immigration online but they are either not very well done or not relevant to the topic at hand, and again I think econometric analysis is a more useful approach in this case).

I think that you have failed in your attempt to prove your point that our immigration system isn't optimal.

There referenced study suggests that immigration policy is unoptimal and proposes changes. I even quoted the passage in the conclusion that suggests this for you.

From your points and the examples you use, it seems to me that you're another poster who doesn't like Muslims

Oh noes, name calling! Look I don't dislike Muslims, I dislike islamism and islam. In fact I dislike all religions. Muslims are arguably the group of people that suffer the most from islam so I feel sorry for them.

You're deluding yourself in that you think that the objective part of the analysis came first, and led to the conclusion that immigration policy needs to be changed.

My opinions on islamism are based on a variety of evidence. I've been familiar with the work by Serge Coulombe et al. (University of Ottawa group) before I became familiar with islam and islamism. I used to hold opinions along the lines of 'all religions are roughly equally as bad' or 'christian extremists are as much a threat as islamic extremists' before evidence changed my opinion to something different. Islam is such different (and I would argue more complete) religion compared to anything else, and the amount of text in the Qu'ran, the Hadiths and other islamic text that can be used to justify terrorism is quite high.

Edit: Finally caught up on replies. Arguing against 4 people is difficult.

Edited October 24, 2013 by -1=e^ipi

[DogOnPorch]

Tell me about it.

[Michael Hardner]

Well duh, it's an economics paper by rigorous economists from the University of Ottawa. The term 'integrating better' isn't exactly a well defined economic concept, and good luck trying to get funding to do a study that could even be remotely considered 'racist' or 'islamophobe'.

Ok, so if you admit that this doesn't speak to your point about 'integrating better' then why did you bring this paper into the discussion ? This is also the only thing close to hard evidence you have brought to the discussion.

Here's what you said:

Similarly, while there is no objective way to measure 'integrating better', it is possible to do objective analysis of proxies for 'integrating better'.

If you would like, here is a 2012 paper on Human Capital and Immigrant Wage gap by three professors from the University of Ottawa.

Though what the paper might doesn't say is that...

Exactly. What the paper [might] doesn't say. It doesn't say that.

It is also really interesting if one looks at the appendix table B1 of the regression model. Is it just a coincidence that islamic countries such as Iran, Afganistan and Bangladesh generally have negative unexplained regression coefficients (afganistan and Bangladesh have coefficients of approx -2.6 for both males and females)? Admittedly, Egypt and morocco have positive coefficients (though of course both countries are quite secular)

You studied statistics in university, it seems. Did you not take a course in the proper uses of statistics ? Looking at experiment results, and then working backwards to find conclusions is a fundamental error.

This further supports my supposition that you're starting out with a belief, and working backwards to produce reasoning that supports it.

Anyway, I referenced the study not because it is a study that specifically says how terrible islam is and how important culture is when it comes to an immigrants 'compatibility' (which the paper doesn't do, and I would never want to suggest that out of respect for the economists)

Then how did it get entered into the discussion ? You're approaching intellectual dishonesty here. Why don't you just admit you included this study erroneously ?

It would be interesting to see...

Yes, that would be interesting. But, given the errors you've made already, that would probably just take us to the discussion of correlation vs causation and the difficulties in separating out independent variables in statistical regression.

'Most people' believe in nonsense fairy tales (i.e. religion), do not understand basic maths

I agree.

(let alone regression analysis), and follow ridiculous political ideologies, so I'm not sure if 'most people' is a good standard to examine anything with.

I was making the point that everybody can see that 'standard of living' and 'GDP' are similar or maybe even the same thing, but the study you brought to the discussion has no obvious relationship with your thesis.

Also, 'GDP of source nation' is not a proxy for 'fit with Canada' (like GDP is a proxy for standard of living), rather 'GDP of source nation' is a good proxy for human capital (which then affects immigrant income) as explained in the referenced study.

You're explaining back to me what I pointed out to you.

My comments were based of various comments that you have made which are along the lines of: 'we can't actually objectively measure things, or use statistics in any meaningful way',

You read things that I didn't write, and which I already corrected you on.

which of course basically disregard the entire field of econometrics, or calling my explanation of a methodology to determine ways to measure cultural compatibility as 'a mathematical tower of Babylon, can't work and will only feed your biases'.

And I have already shown how you did that in the previous posts, and how you continue to do it.

Econometrics and statistics are sciences, but you're using them incorrectly.

The University of Ottawa study clearly suggests that current immigration distribution is un-optimal with respect to not properly accounting for the human capital of different immigrant groups. There are thousands of studies that suggest that the immigration distribution is un-optimal for a variety of reasons.

No, it talks about earning levels - not of overall economic benefit.

If there are thousands of studies, then why did you bring one single study that doesn't support your theory ? Why not quote the overall benefit study that you promised instead

Again define fabric of Canada.

Also, you are suggesting that we shouldn't care if the immigration distribution is un-optimal? lol, good luck with that...

I don't know why you're laughing - you're the one who said it.

I probably shouldn't have used the words net benefit analysis.

Ok, thanks for the retraction. That's fair of you, and I will stop asking for it.

Performing cost-benefit analysis on immigration policy is quite difficult for a variety of reasons (since immigrants become Canadians it is difficult to determine who the 'stakeholders' are, it is difficult to estimate social effects such as how much people value 'diversity', etc.). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costbenefit_analysis

Cost-benefit analysis is useful if you are looking at more specific questions such as 'what kind of policy should Canada have with respect to the Canadian Pacific Salmon fishery?', should Canada build a new bridge between Windsor and Detroit?' or 'Should the Northern Gateway Pipeline be allowed to be built?', but I think econometrics is a more useful approach in determining immigration policy. So in that case, I'll take back my earlier offer to provide links to CBA's of immigration policy.

Econometrics - I have to confess I'm not familiar with that as a branch separate from statistics and economics but I agree with what you've written here.

Yeah... still don't understand the meaning. 'Fabric of Canada' means 'Canadian policy'? Yeah... really helpful! *sarcasm

Rather than go down a rabbit hole defining 'Fabric of Canada' with you, I'd rather talk about changing Canadian policy. I may have misunderstood you when you said, earlier, " I'm not really sure what the fabric of Canada is and personally I don't really care."

Did you mean that you didn't know what the phrase means or that you don't care about Canada ? I think this is where we started misunderstanding each other. I thought it was the latter, so I was asking you why you would delve into matters of policy.

The rest of the post is for Bleeding Heart.

You strike me as somebody who has intuitive concerns about immigration policy, and some education in statistics - which is a good basis for a discussion, I think. Even with the elementary errors you've made above, I think it would be worthwhile to discuss how an evaluation of immigration policy overall might happen, versus how it happens today.

Neither you or I seem to have the qualifications to discuss how these studies should be done (my professor used to do these for the government, back i the 1980s) however as members of the public we should be able to understand the concepts and find some kind of common ground that is understandable. That would be some kind of achievement in public discussion, I think.

I suggest you start a new thread wherein we can come up with an understanding of how such policies are enumerated today, and how they might be in the future. I'd certain take part in that, but this thread seems to be done like yesterday's dinner IMO.

[Michael Hardner]

Perhaps I should have chosen my words more carefully, but what I meant to say is that I did not expect so much disagreement given overwhelming evidence in favour of 'my position' that any reasonable person would agree with. I guess you will always have some people try to argue ridiculous positions (moonlandings being fake, 911 caused by US government, earth being 6,000 years old, islamism not being the biggest threat to the west today, etc.). Nazism is dead, communism is mostly dead (cold war is long over), if islamism isn't the biggest threat to the west today, what is? Look even Stephen Harper agrees that islamism is the biggest threat to Canada.

What's the biggest threat ? I don't know - separate thread for that I guess.

Can you produce a quote from Harper saying that Islamism is the biggest threat ? Please don't make me ask 3 times.

You don't think terrorism and damage to property / killing of people counts as a significant threat.

Not in unqualified terms, no.

... caused the US policy makes to be more concerned with foreign issues than with domestic issues.

The US was policeman of the free world long before 9/11.

Income per capita is a value that can be associated with a group of people. Literacy rates is a value that can be associated with a group of people. Average years of schooling is a value that can be associate with a group of people. If those don't count, I have no idea what you mean by values of groups of people.

Yes, and those are metrics not 'values of groups'. Values are subjective, while metrics, facts and numbers are objective. I'm not interested in teaching these basics to you for much longer.

Wow, what an absolute nonsense statistics and misuse of data. I asked you to "produce 'a government statistic' that "proves" that Chinese people are worse at assimilating than Somalians".

You're right, I didn't prove the point implicitly, but I "fake proved" that Chinese are doing the worse of everyone.

As you correctly detected, I'm trying to show that stats can be misused, and your suggested approach earlier is no better than using this graph to 'prove' Chinese are poor at assimilating.

I'll resubmit this as a claim that I have a 'fake proof' that Chinese are assimilating worse than visible minorities labelled as "black".

Do you understand now ?

Yeah... good luck trying to argue that a study that doesn't even use data from Saudi Arabia

My point is that using criteria similar to yours, you could easily justify putting Saudi Arabia on a preferred countries list. Want to use a metric ? How about GDP per capita ? Using the IMF list on the page below, SA would come before New Zealand in ranking.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP)_per_capita

You're getting caught in the specifics of the examples, as if I believe the false conclusions. It's the methodologies which are bad, including yours. You look at the data then work backwards to find a hypothesis, which is not how it works.

If I find a study that contributes significantly to the discussion, I'll link it regardless of if it fits my conclusions or not;

That's fine, but your study should supplement some kind of proof of your thesis.

There referenced study suggests that immigration policy is unoptimal and proposes changes. I even quoted the passage in the conclusion that suggests this for you.

'Unoptimal' meaning what ? That some groups earn less than others ? If you divide any population into groups and metricize the groups, there will be different results for each group.

Oh noes, name calling! Look I don't dislike Muslims, I dislike islamism and islam. In fact I dislike all religions. Muslims are arguably the group of people that suffer the most from islam so I feel sorry for them.

What name calling ? I just said that you seem to dislike Muslims. No names were called here. You seem to be easily offended, I'm sorry to tread on your sensibilities.

My opinions on islamism are based on a variety of evidence.

Oh here we go again... You have provided no evidence of anything. You keep alluding to all this evidence and you have failed to provide anything, while instead talking about bringing irrelevant studies to 'contribute to the discussion'.

[GostHacked]

When someone says things like 'the liberal left has lost its way' and 'my natural constituency has been poisoned' that doesn't sound like he is saying that two lefts have always existed and I don't acknowledge the supposed accomplishments of the far left who I now identify as the enemy. It sounds like he is saying that he feels that the political left has become corrupted and has morphed into something different.

I think all parties have morphed into something different. The Dems are not what they were 20 years ago, and the like of Ron Paul said the current manifestation of the Republican Party is way off base from what it was decades ago. So both sides have changed.

But here is what I keep bringing up with little responses too it. The left and the right, in terms and context of political structure and platforms are really the same. They both work together to achieve a goal. No matter if the population likes it or not. We see heavy resistance to Obamacare, but yet went through and was full of issues and will be for a long time. Political lines have been drawn and it's easy to whip up an ignorant/uninformed population to support one side or the other with little sound bites that are so generic, that they can be applied to anything.

Both the left and the right love to point the finger at each other when things go wrong. 'Don't blame! I did not vote for him.' But if you did, and the bad things still happened, then what does one say? 'Don't blame me! I am not the politician.'

These so called elected officials that run the country don't care about you. There are some genuine people in these positions, but when surrounded by talking head puppets, what kind of progress can they really accomplish? And when they try to hold others accountable, they are run out office. The game is huge.

Politics is full of egos and gets in the way of making real progress. One person has a pet project but may be more problematic and costly than what it is worth but gets funding anyways. Egos are probably the biggest issue among this batch of people we call elected representatives.

You have no enemies on the left or the right. You simply have enemies. And people that prevent the progress and improvement of the state are enemies of it. But I guess 'progress' and 'improvement' may be subjective.

[bush_cheney2004]

Oh wow, you really want to go there? lol. Even if I ignore the fact that deaths caused by leninism, stalinism and maoism aren't caused by the ideology of communism (those 3 ideologies aren't subsets of communism, but rather ideologies that include communism as well as other aspects such as totalitarianism), over 270 million people have been killed by islamic jihad (not to mention all the people put in slavery, were forcibly converted, had their limbs chopped off, got stoned for being raped, lived in 2nd class dhimmi status, etc.). I guess I'll need to provide some references.

The numbers are less important than your seeming refusal to consider such things objectively. A bias against "islamism" is all well and good if that be your cup of tea, but no thinking person with a thorough understanding of world history and conflicts would tremble at the thought of "jihad" over all other real and perceived threats, past or present. Body count web sites are a dime a dozen and easy to find from many groups with agendas for doing so.

Military power is always a threat regardless of alliances because it represents the purposeful capability to launch tactical and strategic attacks against varying and sometimes conflicting nation state interests. See "USS Liberty".

[-1=e^ipi]

Ok, so if you admit that this doesn't speak to your point about 'integrating better' then why did you bring this paper into the discussion ?

Guess I have to repeat myself... The paper shows a number of things:

- It suggests that income differences among different immigrant groups based on country of origin are due to factors such as human capital (education + work experience), has a theoretical regression model to test this claim, tests that claim, finds that the results of the regression model are statistically significant, meaning that the model is reasonable. Again, 'integrating better' isn't exactly a well defined economic concept, but how well different immigrants perform (in terms of income) after one takes into account levels of human capital could be a good proxy to use to test if different immigrant groups are 'integrating well'. Anyway, point is the study clearly supports my claim that different immigrant groups (from different countries) have statistically different value to Canadian society (in this case in terms of income and how much human capital they have) from one another. Perhaps I should have referenced this paper which focuses more on human capital quality instead? http://aix1.uottawa.ca/~scoulomb/pages/CGN-dev-August_2013.pdf

- It suggests changes to Canadian immigration policy (implying that immigrant distribution is unoptimal). Supporting my claim that immigrant distribution isn't optimal (why anyone would have the default position that it is optimal given the large number of ways we could modify immigration policy is puzzling to me).

- It shows a rigorous statistical methodology for testing the value of different immigrant groups (econometrics), which I think is helpful given the number of ridiculous statements about statistics made in this threat ('people can use statistics to show anything', 'you cannot objectively measure 'values' of immigrants', etc.).

- You are really tempting me to take the data, create a regression model to include 'cultural compatibility' (as well as other factors like human capital from education & work experience), test the hypothesis, calculate the results and post them. I do not have time to do so however.

Also, you misinterpret what I have said about 'integrating better'. While I agree that GDP of former country and GDP of immigrant group in Canada aren't good proxies for 'integrating better', taking whatever is left over from variance in GDP per capital of an immigrant group after explaining for other factors that might affect GDP per capita (such as human capital, of which GDP of former host country is a good proxy as shown by the referenced paper and others), should yield a good proxy of the cultural effects of how well immigrant groups 'integrate' and therefore be a good proxy for 'integrating better'. Or if you want it explained another way, use this quote by Sherlock Holmes:

"If you’ve eliminated all other possibilities, whatever remains must be the truth"

Exactly. What the paper [might] doesn't say. It doesn't say that.

Sigh... Look does everything have to be spelled out for you in the written conclusion or abstract for you to understand things? In econometrics you create a theoretical regression model which you try to justify based on economic theory, test the model against the data, then conclude how well the results support or falsify the model. There is often lots of information in a regression study that isn't included in the conclusions; and results of a regression can be explained in a number of different ways.

While the econometric model used doesn't include culture, it is generally accepted by economists that culture effects GDP per capita. Generally richer countries have more similar cultures to Canada than poorer countries (like western europe), therefore the cultural effects on GDP per capita of immigrant groups should be correlated with income per capita (which is used as a proxy for human capital). Basically I'm suggesting that income per capita can also be used as a proxy for cultural compatibility and not just human capital when i said:

Though what the paper might doesn't say is that income of host countries & human capital of immigrants should be strongly correlated with 'cultural compatibility' as generally richer countries are more similar to Canada (Western Europe, Japan, etc.) than poorer countries; furthermore, culture is a significant factor in a country's economic prosperity and well being (there is are reasons why South Korea has gone from one of the poorest countries in the world to one of the richest countries in the world and it is very much related to the country's culture). It also shows that there is some significant unexplained variability in resulting immigrant income, that isn't explained by the factors used in the regression model (so could be the result of other causes such as the influence of culture).

Looking at experiment results, and then working backwards to find conclusions is a fundamental error.

This further supports my supposition that you're starting out with a belief, and working backwards to produce reasoning that supports it.

Accusing me of dogmatic methodology now?

Again, the study was posted cause it showed a number of things (as listed at the top of the post) so invalidated some of the claims you made earlier in the thread. Having a hypothesis (such as suggesting that culture or human capital affect GDP) isn't the same being dogmatic.

Yes, that would be interesting. But, given the errors you've made already, that would probably just take us to the discussion of correlation vs causation and the difficulties in separating out independent variables in statistical regression.

While regressions generally only show correlations, not causation... that is where economic theory (to develop theoretical model which you test) and time series analysis come in. Also, what errors have I made? Anyway, I'm saying that questions like 'how much does culture affect immigrant performance?' can be answered using econometrics (and this is relevant with respect to determining immigration policy).

I was making the point that everybody can see that 'standard of living' and 'GDP' are similar or maybe even the same thing

I'm not sure about that... I'm sure you can find a bunch of eco-Luddites that think that society was better off before industrialization, and might argue that standard of living and GDP are negatively correlated.

Econometrics and statistics are sciences, but you're using them incorrectly.

Proof? Or are you just going to keep strawmaning what I say (by suggesting that I suggest that the paper suggests conclusions which it doesn't suggest)?

No, it talks about earning levels - not of overall economic benefit.

Obviously income of immigrants one they move to Canada are correlated with the over economic benefit of the immigrant. Or do you really not see the difference between an immigrant with a strong education that comes to Canada and earns $100,000 dollars a year and an immigrant with little education, little language skills and earns $10,000 dollars a year?

If there are thousands of studies, then why did you bring one single study that doesn't support your theory ? Why not quote the overall benefit study that you promised instead

First you complain that the study doesn't support 'my conclusions' and that I'm not being dogmatic enough. Then you claim I'm only picking this study to support 'my conclusions' and I'm being too dogmatic. Make up your mind please. And at least I'm bringing studies, videos, quotations and a variety of links to this thread...

Did you mean that you didn't know what the phrase means or that you don't care about Canada ? I think this is where we started misunderstanding each other. I thought it was the latter, so I was asking you why you would delve into matters of policy.

No I meant that I do not know what it means, and I do not care much about not knowing the meaning (because it probably means something silly).

Edited October 24, 2013 by -1=e^ipi

[-1=e^ipi]

What's the biggest threat ? I don't know - separate thread for that I guess.

Could you at least list some potential threats to the west that come close enough to par with islamism such that the issue of 'islamism being the biggest threat to the west in 2013' is at least debatable by people with a reasonable understanding of geopolitics?

Can you produce a quote from Harper saying that Islamism is the biggest threat ? Please don't make me ask 3 times.

Let's see... I provided a link to an article titled 'Harper says islamism biggest threat to Canada', which quotes Harper saying something along those lines and has a video where he says it. How is that not enough for you?

Not in unqualified terms, no.

What does unqualified terms mean???

The US was policeman of the free world long before 9/11.

I never denied this. At the same time, islamic jihad has been going on for 1400 years before George Bush invaded Iraq.

Yes, and those are metrics not 'values of groups'. Values are subjective, while metrics, facts and numbers are objective. I'm not interested in teaching these basics to you for much longer.

Now we are just arguing semantics here. Clearly I have a different definition of 'values' than you (probably cause of a different academic background). To me, a number is a value.

You're right, I didn't prove the point implicitly, but I "fake proved" that Chinese are doing the worse of everyone.

As you correctly detected, I'm trying to show that stats can be misused, and your suggested approach earlier is no better than using this graph to 'prove' Chinese are poor at assimilating.

I'll resubmit this as a claim that I have a 'fake proof' that Chinese are assimilating worse than visible minorities labelled as "black".

Do you understand now ?

You fake 'proved' nothing. Even after all this supposed 'fake proof' the graph still has Chinese at 24%, which is not 'nearly half', so a better thing to call the graph is a blatant lie. You provide no reference to where the data comes from, or the methodology used. I could make a graph that says 99% of rapists are forum posters named Micheal Hardner, and not provide any reference to where the data comes from (i.e. make up data) and it wouldn't make it 'fake prove' anything. And given that Chinese make up a much larger percentage of the visible minorities, one could argue that the graph shows that 'Somalians' are worse immigrants than 'Chinese', not the other way around. Please stop trying to compare this garbage graph to the paper done by the group at University of Ottawa, it's insulting to statistics and econometrics.

My point is that using criteria similar to yours, you could easily justify putting Saudi Arabia on a preferred countries list. Want to use a metric ? How about GDP per capita ? Using the IMF list on the page below, SA would come before New Zealand in ranking.

Yes, if one wants to argue that GDP per capita of host countries is the only thing we should concern our selves with when asking about the quality of immigrants, performs rigorous econometric analysis that strongly suggests that this hypothesis is true, then I have no problem favoring Saudi Arabian immigrants over New Zealand immigrants. However, in reality there are a variety of factors that affect immigrant quality (language skills, education levels, literacy rates, cultural compatibility, etc.) so you will most likely need to consider more than just GDP per capita of host country when determining optimal immigration policy.

You're getting caught in the specifics of the examples, as if I believe the false conclusions. It's the methodologies which are bad, including yours. You look at the data then work backwards to find a hypothesis, which is not how it works.

That's fine, but your study should supplement some kind of proof of your thesis.

Again you are asking me to be less dogmatic in one sentence then requesting I be more dogmatic in the next. Make up your mind please.

'Unoptimal' meaning what ? That some groups earn less than others ? If you divide any population into groups and metricize the groups, there will be different results for each group.

Unoptimal in the sense that it would be of greater benefit to Canada to either change our immigration distribution or our immigration levels. Income of immigrant groups is probably one of the largest factors, but there are other factors that contribute to overall benefit (such as how often immigrants give to charity, the average age of the immigrants, the average retirement age, how many children the different immigrants tend to have, if different immigrant groups bring over dependents or not, etc.).

What name calling ? I just said that you seem to dislike Muslims. No names were called here. You seem to be easily offended, I'm sorry to tread on your sensibilities.

Saying someone dislikes muslims is synonymous to 'islamophobe', is it not? And I just said that I didn't dislike muslims, I dislike islam... Please reread what I said.

Oh here we go again... You have provided no evidence of anything. You keep alluding to all this evidence and you have failed to provide anything, while instead talking about bringing irrelevant studies to 'contribute to the discussion'.

Let's see, I have provided numerous links to videos (especially to answer bleeding heart's false claims with respect to to what Pat Condell's opinions are), links to articles (ex. the one that estimates that the number of humans killed by islamic jihad is over 270 million), various quotations (including quotations of the qu'ran & quotations from politicians such as David Cameron, Justin Trudeau and Stephen Harper), references to econometric studies that discuss the value of different immigrant groups. Yet I have provided no evidence of anything?... How does that compare to what everyone else in this thread has provided combined? I guess everyone else has provided less than nothing... Are you trolling me?

Edited October 24, 2013 by -1=e^ipi

[Michael Hardner]

Guess I have to repeat myself... The paper shows a number of things:

No - you've changed your tune on this paper several times. No need to explain it, as I had to explain it back to you.

- It suggests changes to Canadian immigration policy (implying that immigrant distribution is unoptimal). Supporting my claim that immigrant distribution isn't optimal (why anyone would have the default position that it is optimal given the large number of ways we could modify immigration policy is puzzling to me).

Well, if we're going to be precise, how could anyone think any policy is 'optimal' ? A better way to characterize it as "in need of change" or not.

which I think is helpful given the number of ridiculous statements about statistics made in this threat ('people can use statistics to show anything', 'you cannot objectively measure 'values' of immigrants', etc.).

If it's so ridiculous, then disprove it. You make elementary errors all over the place, then try to pretend you didn't.

- You are really tempting me to take the data, create a regression model to include 'cultural compatibility' (as well as other factors like human capital from education & work experience), test the hypothesis, calculate the results and post them. I do not have time to do so however.

Imagine that. But why would you have time to do such a thing when you don't apparently have time to link to one of the 1000s of studies that you say exist.

Also, you misinterpret what I have said about 'integrating better'. While I agree that GDP of former country and GDP of immigrant group in Canada aren't good proxies for 'integrating better',

Will you just admit to your flip flopping on this ? I can't keep track of whether you want to use that original study or not.

taking whatever is left over from variance in GDP per capital of an immigrant group after explaining for other factors that might affect GDP per capita (such as human capital, of which GDP of former host country is a good proxy as shown by the referenced paper and others), should yield a good proxy of the cultural effects of how well immigrant groups 'integrate' and therefore be a good proxy for 'integrating better'. Or if you want it explained another way, use this quote by Sherlock Holmes:

"If youve eliminated all other possibilities, whatever remains must be the truth"

How does working backwards from an errant observation "eliminating all other possibilities". There are many other possibilities, especially because you're playing with variables that are not independent. Do you understand what I mean ?

Sigh... Look does everything have to be spelled out for you

Well, since you haven't provided any evidence - yes I do.

You can stop explaining regression analysis to me now. In fact, I think I have some unanswered questions and points above. If you would respond to my criticisms of your method, that would probably better.

Accusing me of dogmatic methodology now?

Dogmatic methodology ? What is that ? It should be clear what I was saying about your method, and why I was saying it.

You didn't have a hypothesis - you looked at the RESULTS and drew conclusions apart from any hypothesis. No real statistician would do that.

Also, what errors have I made?

Ok, you're not reading my posts.

Anyway, I'm saying that questions like 'how much does culture affect immigrant performance?' can be answered using econometrics (and this is relevant with respect to determining immigration policy).

You can't create any kind of indicator variables for culture with any accuracy. This is another mistake on your part. There is no "culture metric" that you can read from a person like a temperature.

You strike me as somebody who learned about stats and want to use it to do everything. But you don't understand the difference between subjective/objective as I pointed out.

Proof?

See my previous posts.

Here are some errors:

1) Looking at data, then working backwards to a conclusion.

2) Confusing objective and subjective.

3) The fact that you haven't got a study to support your thesis

4) That you expect others to disprove your claims

5) You flip flop constantly on whether your studies prove your case or not.

With regards to 5), in your last post, here you went yet again:

"could be a good proxy to use to test if different immigrant groups are 'integrating well'"

Could they ? Could they be ? Why so milquetoast ? If it IS a good proxy, then use it and say so. If it's NOT, don't hide under the blanket by saying "the study helps the discussion".

It doesn't. It shows this:

"This paper argues why and shows how

per capita GDP in an immigrants country of birth can be usedin a standard Mincerian

modelas an indicator of the quality of schooling and work experience acquired in that

country."

I don't understand how earning power is a proxy for suitability and fit to Canada, and it's up to you to show how it could be.

I also showed you very explicitly how GDP/capita as a metric is meaningless, and I did this to explain that no metric you can produce will ever provide a true worth of an individual to the country.

You didn't acknowledge the Saudi Arabia example - why not ? You retracted an early claim - I liked that because it felt like we were working together to make some kind of mutual progress.

Enough blather - why not post some proof if you have it, not the same irrelevant U of Ottawa study over and over again.

[-1=e^ipi]

@ GhostHack - I've heard the whole 'both the left and right are bad, all politicians are corrupt and don't care about you' argument. I'm not really sure how bringing it up is helpful to this thread, so I'm not going to give your post a long reply.

The numbers are less important than your seeming refusal to consider such things objectively. A bias against "islamism" is all well and good if that be your cup of tea, but no thinking person with a thorough understanding of world history and conflicts would tremble at the thought of "jihad" over all other real and perceived threats, past or present. Body count web sites are a dime a dozen and easy to find from many groups with agendas for doing so.

So I provide estimates of the number of people that have died to islamic jihad (270 million) to refute your claim that things done under Leninism, Stalinism and Maoism dwarf what has happened under islamism, and you respond with ad hominem attacks? Cool, good to know I won the point.

Military power is always a threat regardless of alliances because it represents the purposeful capability to launch tactical and strategic attacks against varying and sometimes conflicting nation state interests. See "USS Liberty".

So Shinzo Abe wanting to bolster Japan's military and change the constitution so that Japan can defend its allies if they are attacked (Canada) is a threat to Canada? Having allies that share similiar values increase their military power is not a threat to Canada in the 21st century.

http://www.scmp.com/news/asia/article/1332507/japans-shinzo-abe-outlines-plans-bolster-defence-capabilities

[Michael Hardner]

Could you at least list some potential threats to the west that come close enough to par with islamism such that the issue of 'islamism being the biggest threat to the west in 2013' is at least debatable by people with a reasonable understanding of geopolitics?

4) That you expect others to disprove your claims

Let's see... I provided a link to an article titled 'Harper says islamism biggest threat to Canada', which quotes Harper saying something along those lines and has a video where he says it. How is that not enough for you?

Hm ? I didn't see that link before. But Harper didn't say that at all.

You owe me 1.5 minutes of my life back by the way.

What does unqualified terms mean???

You made a statement with unqualified terms, very unspecific, which I don't agree with.

You fake 'proved' nothing. Even after all this supposed 'fake proof' the graph still has Chinese at 24%,

I proved that according to this stat, they're doing the worst of any group. Attacking the methodology is beside the point.

Your methodology is no better.

And the problem isn't with econometrics, it's with your misinterpretation and misunderstanding of them.

Yes, if one wants to argue that GDP per capita of host countries is the only thing we should concern our selves with when asking about the quality of immigrants,

Oh, please. You're missing the point again.

I really believe if you ran your test and found British immigrants and the bottom of the list you'd change the parameters. Do you know what a Tower of Babel is ?

I'm not asking you to be dogmatic, I believe that you are dogmatic and that is affecting your thinking.

Let's see, I have provided numerous links to videos (especially to answer bleeding heart's false claims with respect to to what Pat Condell's opinions are),

I haven't read your posts to BH, and I don't care about some comedian's videos. You should be able to make your case on its own, and you haven't done so.

All you have is this U of Ottawa study that talks about GDP, education and earnings. You only understand part of the science here, and you're not interested in my points about what you're getting wrong.

Just post something that proves your point, please - that's all I ask. Otherwise, I'm just listening to another guy who doesn't like Islam, but knows a little bit about statistics so he thinks he can make an objective case against it.

It's not interesting.

[bush_cheney2004]

.... Cool, good to know I won the point.

Great.....I'm sure that counts for something in the grand struggle against "unoptimal" immigration and the islamist hordes.

Having allies that share similiar values increase their military power is not a threat to Canada in the 21st century.

Canada is no longer a credible "middle power" and could not defend sovereign interests if threatened by friend or foe.

[eyeball]

Could you at least list some potential threats to the west that come close enough to par with islamism such that the issue of 'islamism being the biggest threat to the west in 2013' is at least debatable by people with a reasonable understanding of geopolitics?

Oh oh oh! I know this one!

Islamophobism.

[Argus]

There's no support for that, that I have seen. Moreover, organized crime in Canada has been blamed on previous types of immigrants or biker gangs, I suppose, who are made up of English and French Canadians, right ?

No support for that? There's actually no contesting that. The first American style street gangs in Canada came about because of our immigration system allowing Jamaican women who had spent time here as caregivers. These women left their children behind in Jamaica. By the time they were elligible and had the money to bring them to Canada those children were often largely extranged. Jamaican teenagers, particularly males, found themselves in a cold, foreign country in the house of a mother they barely knew, with little in common with classmates, and often enough without the proper education to fit in with their age groups. They tended to hang around together and get into trouble. They formed gangs based upon the model in Jamaica and got involved in drug smuggling and trafficing. To a certin extent the same happened with Haitians. With other nationalities the creation took different routes. The Vietnamese 'boat people' when we brought them over, had spent a lot of time in refugee camps in Asia, very rough, nasty, violence pronce camps, where the young men had formed gangs. Those gangs arrived in Canada and expanded. Chinese groups brought their triads. The issue with East Indians was largely parental neglect from abroad. With Somalians its a combination of things.

The result in all cases was the formation of ethnic gangs which now dominate inner city crime, particularly violent crime, and drugs, and which were the inspiration for aboriginal gangs which now have taken hold in western Canada.

So we largely have immigration to thank for our violent street gangs.

[Argus]

Oh no....biker gangs and associated crimes are only caused by imported "American Blacks and Hispanics". LOL !!

Biker gangs grew and flourished in the United States due to incompetent law enforcement, and their small, local immitators have all long since been absorbed by the giant American crime syndicates. So in that sense, yes, they are an import.

[Argus]

I don't understand how earning power is a proxy for suitability and fit to Canada, and it's up to you to show how it could be.

I much prefer earning power in Canada as an indication of economic success and value to Canada. As per statitics taken from a previous thread I believe you are familiar with.

In fact, immigration, with reference to progressives, is a reasonably good indication of how the mentality has stifled debate in that the vast majority of Canadians (certainly everyone I've ever spoken with) is disssatisfied with the overall quality of immigrants to Canada. And while there are a number of reasons for that dissatisfaction, percieved economic negatives generally lead the list.

However, it seems impossible to convince those on the Left that we should take any sort of broad geographical performance indicators (such as economic failure or success)from existing immigrants into account when recruiting new immigrants. And you'll excuse me for saying it but I believe the entire reason for that impossibility is colour. If all immigrants were the same colour I think the Left put up less of a stink over the idea of favoring the more economically successful immigrant source areas.

I'll go further. My suspicion is that if the Muslim source countries were white, and if instead of Islam their religion was fundamentalist Christian, but with the same retrograde social beliefs most on the Left would, instead of challenging those who oppose further immigration from those areas, be joining them in their opposition.

[jacee]

Biker gangs grew and flourished in the United States due to incompetent law enforcement, and their small, local immitators have all long since been absorbed by the giant American crime syndicates. So in that sense, yes, they are an import.

You like to blame everything on ethnic immigrants eh Argus?

Violent criminal white street and biker gangs existed in Canada in the 1950's. They didn't come from 'somewhere else'.

[jacee]

I much prefer earning power in Canada as an indication of economic success and value to Canada. As per statitics taken from a previous thread I believe you are familiar with.

In fact, immigration, with reference to progressives, is a reasonably good indication of how the mentality has stifled debate in that the vast majority of Canadians (certainly everyone I've ever spoken with) is disssatisfied with the overall quality of immigrants to Canada.

I read the reports you linked in more detail than you did. Despite the author's obvious bias, the statistical analysis discounted the theory of 'source country characteristics' as a predictor of racial minority immigrants' economic success in Canada.

Instead, it raised the question of racism in hiring in Canada.

You see through a racial prism Argus.

You've made up your mind that racial minorities are 'a problem' and you don't seek truth, only justification for your racial prejudices, imo.

How does that affect you in your workplace?

Do you have any responsibility for hiring?

Do you exclude colleagus from racial minorities from discussion or decision-making?

How are your racial beliefs expressed in your own life?

[cybercoma]

The first American style street gangs...

What are "American-style" street gangs and how do they differ from other style street gangs?

[eyeball]

They don't differ in the slightest, see The Gangs of New York.

[bush_cheney2004]

Biker gangs grew and flourished in the United States due to incompetent law enforcement, and their small, local immitators have all long since been absorbed by the giant American crime syndicates. So in that sense, yes, they are an import.

You don't even know your own nation's history with respect to 'biker gangs', government complicity, bribes, and confessions. Keep scanning American cable channels for the full story.

[Michael Hardner]

No support for that? There's actually no contesting that.

...

So we largely have immigration to thank for our violent street gangs.

Seems like people are contesting it, after all.

That's not true, unless you want to go back to the beginning, the Irish maybe, the British, the French ?

[Michael Hardner]

I much prefer earning power in Canada as an indication of economic success and value to Canada. As per statitics taken from a previous thread I believe you are familiar with.

Economic success, perhaps, but value to Canada not. The benefits to Canada could be great even for a minimum wage earner, if they're generating enough economic activity.

In fact, immigration, with reference to progressives, is a reasonably good indication of how the mentality has stifled debate in that the vast majority of Canadians (certainly everyone I've ever spoken with) is disssatisfied with the overall quality of immigrants to Canada. And while there are a number of reasons for that dissatisfaction, percieved economic negatives generally lead the list.

However, it seems impossible to convince those on the Left that we should take any sort of broad geographical performance indicators (such as economic failure or success)from existing immigrants into account when recruiting new immigrants. And you'll excuse me for saying it but I believe the entire reason for that impossibility is colour.

Geographical ? I assume you mean by country ?

Colour ?

I'll go further. My suspicion is that if the Muslim source countries were white, and if instead of Islam their religion was fundamentalist Christian, but with the same retrograde social beliefs most on the Left would, instead of challenging those who oppose further immigration from those areas, be joining them in their opposition.

I guess we'll never know. I have never heard of the left or anybody reducing Christian immigration.

As far as stifling debate. On that other thread, for example, we had a purported attempt to use statistics but even within that framework I felt that the poster was starting with his dislike of a certain group rather than starting with a desire to create the best immigration policy possible.

I don't agree with anybody stifling debate, but based on our experiences here and the poor attempts at debate we've had, I can see why it happens.