Talk:United States

Template:Vital article

Inequality, tax incidence, and AP survey

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

• Ellen's replacement of the very long-standing (by several years) housing development image with yet another politically-motivated inequality graph needs to be discussed first. The image is long-standing because it is neutral and cannot be disputed, and this graph does nothing but continue to over-emphasize inequality issues in the country.
• The removal of both graphs in Government finance (including the ITEP one) as a compromise has gone uncontested for weeks. The re-addition of just one of the graphs threatens to stir the pot once again on an issue that had been settled.
• "Four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives." This has already been described as a frivolous, highly vague statement that is not elaborated on at all, and does not add anything valuable to the other details in the section. Its removal weeks ago was not contested by anyone, except now EllenCT.

In Ellen's 2-3 week-long absence this article has remained relatively stable, and changes made weeks ago had been agreed on or uncontested, and it shows that there are only a couple of users here that catalyze edit disputes and article instability. Cadiomals (talk) 08:22, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Regarding your deletions:

• The housing image is not an image of housing development, just suburban subdivision-style ranch housing which is neither unique to or particularly illustrative of the United States, given that such style of housing exists on every continent except Antarctica, nor illustrative of the section it is in. The article is filled with uninformative photographs. Replacing a photo of suburban housing with an image showing the rise of the top 1% of incomes, as was specifically requested in other comments above, objectively improves the article and the section. There is no evidence that inequality issues are over-emphasized in the article. There is abundant evidence that inequality issues are not given the weight due their importance in economics.
• The Heritage Foundation income tax incidence graph is objectively and mathematically incorrect, and was rightly removed. Even VictorD7 admits that corporate taxes are borne in large part by low income consumers. The ITEP graph is supported by the many sources which correctly attribute corporate tax incidence, even if a few recent think tank sources do not do so correctly. Pretending that there is no objective mathematical truth is the worst kind of abuse of the NPOV policy, tantamount to "he-said-she-said" journalism in the face of obvious factual accuracy of one side and inaccuracy of the other, or the view from nowhere which is rejected by reputable editors with reputations for fact checking and accuracy. I will continue to replace the accurate graph in accordance with the comments about it from the majority of respondents concerning it in the sections above.
• I will not be bullied because I turned my attention to other work for half a month. The AP poll indicating that 80% of Americans must deal with joblessness, low income, or welfare is not reflected in any other statements in the section or the article. There is no evidence that it is either frivolous or vague, and the assertion that it is not elaborated in the source cited is objectively false as anyone reading the source can see. I strongly object to such falsehoods being used to try to bully editors.

The comments above indicate that the article has been losing editors because they are exhausted dealing with an editor who chooses to draw inferences from what he admits are contradictory premises. Who wants to read an encyclopedia by those who know they are harboring falsehoods, but allow their ideology to guide them down mathematically incorrect paths anyway? Not me, and I refuse to turn my back on this article just because one such person willingly edits with an admitted competence deficit. EllenCT (talk) 11:20, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

• When a long-standing image or piece of info is removed and subsequently disputed, it should be discussed first based on WP:BRD. The image is illustrative and follows relevant guidelines and recommendations, and no one has disputed it until now. You think there are a lot of "uninformative photographs" in this article because they are not all conveying the message you want them to.

• If your proposed replacement image is added there will then be two graphs portraying growing economic divides in the country. That is placing too much emphasis and weight to inequality in this summary section and article. And if you add your proposed graph, the graph showing the growing divide between "productivity and median incomes" ought to then be removed. Drilling it into the readers' heads that the US has inequality problems through multiple paragraphs and two graphs is placing undue weight and is a form of soapboxing and advocacy when there are many other aspects of the economy that are only brushed upon. Your argument that it is "crucial to current political debates" has absolutely no relevance in this summary article. Go nuts in Income inequality in the United States.

• I don't know as much about the ITEP tax graph. I just know that both graphs that used to be in the Government finance section were disputed, the section was trimmed and they were both removed as a compromise, and that this change had gone uncontested for weeks despite continued activity and discussion by many editors on the talk page, which also refutes your claim that it was uncontested because editors were driven away. Nevertheless, this will be put to a definitive vote and I of course will respect consensus if many really want it re-added.

• That statement is vague. It's the same as saying 95% of people have had either a headache or breast cancer at some point in their lives, or that 90% of Americans own either a car or an airplane. 80% of Americans deal with joblessness and low-income at some point in their lives? I'm surprised it isn't 95% percent. It is no surprise that most Americans have likely been jobless at some point if they are laid off or look for a new one; that is typical of almost every country. And who hasn't been low-income at some point in early adulthood, when one is still in an internship or entry-level job? Very few readers are going to check the source for clarification. The statement conveys nothing of educational value to the reader, except for furthering the biased tone in the section you wish to convey: that Americans somehow experience undue hardship relative to other countries.

The best way to resolve this of course is to bring in other editors' opinions for the survey below. Cadiomals (talk) 13:31, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

EllenCT just told multiple outright lies. I already corrected her mischaracterization of my views on corporate taxation here (diffs [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]) so she has no excuse for invoking my name and repeating that falsehood here. I've always consistently said that corporate tax incidence should be attributed to owners since they're the ones most directly paying them, that they're only borne by others (not just consumers) in the same way all taxes are borne by others, and that we shouldn't cherry-pick a single tax type for political reasons and treat it differently when determining tax incidence. And what "Heritage Foundation income tax incidence graph" is she referring to? The graph was drawn by the Peter G. Peterson Foundation based on Tax Policy Center numbers, not the Heritage Foundation, and she hasn't shown it's "inaccurate" in any way. The Tax Policy Center is far more widely cited and mainstream than ITEP (and its liberal lobbying arm, CTJ), and, as my link to the archived discussion shows, she was unable to answer my basic questions about how her graph even got its numbers, how it attributes corporate incidence (or anything else), or why its internal federal rates are such an outlier compared to the TPC and CBO, both of which corroborate each other and contradict ITEP over time. A single editor bent on soapboxing should not be allowed to destroy this article's fragile stability with loads of massive, undiscussed, contentious edits, or get away with outright lies about other editors and content. We can't let this article be hijacked into becoming a platform for one sided partisan propaganda. Even her flimsy edit summary justifications betray her partisan POV agenda, repeatedly citing things like "material central to recent political debates" or "campaigns". She's a disruptive talking point spammer with no regard for the Talk Page process or encyclopedic quality. VictorD7 (talk) 20:47, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

You have not exactly been helpful in the progress of this article either, Victor, so I would advise you be more mellow this time and also keep your responses more concise. In my opinion your full revert of Ellen's changes as opposed to my partial revert was uncalled for and catalyzes edit wars. Both you and Ellen's insistence on fully getting your way has been a roadblock in achieving a balanced and stable article and frustrating for the majority of editors who are less politically motivated and more willing to compromise. Both of you will need to respect consensus no matter which way it goes. Cadiomals (talk) 22:51, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Actually I'm one of the primary reasons this article has improved over the past year and in particular in recent weeks, and I have a right to correct outright falsehoods, especially when my name is invoked. I didn't fully revert Ellen's changes as I left the one proposal that had been specifically discussed. The other changes are controversial and opposed. I obviously haven't gotten my way on many things, but one difference between me and Ellen is that I respect the Talk Page process and have shown that I'm willing to participate in it. Significant changes should be discussed here before implementation, especially to the politically sensitive sections. A return to mass, unilateral, undiscussed edits will undo everything that's been accomplished in recent weeks, sparking off new waves of continuous counter editing, bloating, and likely edit warring. VictorD7 (talk) 23:51, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Survey

There is currently a dispute (and a discussion above) about whether a few pieces of information are fit to be added to the Government finance and Income, poverty, and wealth sections. Please see the arguments in the thread above and indicate with "support adding" or "oppose adding" as well as your opinion:

Income inequality

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Changes in real US incomes for the top 1%, middle 60%, and bottom 20% from 1979 through 2007.

Should EllenCT's proposed image to the right be added to Income, poverty, and wealth, replacing the long-standing (by several years) housing development image and alongside a similar image also showing growing economic divides? Or should it be traded out with the other graph while keeping the housing image? What do you think of the emphasis the section currently places on income inequality?

• Oppose adding based on my arguments above. Cadiomals (talk) 13:30, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose, for reasons given. Also the graph is intentionally skewed in appearance by 1% of the pop. which was disproportionately boosted by the bull stock market of much of the period. Ellen's own past inclusion observes that real median income rose over most of that period, but the skewed graph hides the increase by featuring an infinitesimal portion of the country. VictorD7 (talk) 21:41, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
• Support per the ability to reason correctly when contradictions are eliminated. The proposed graph is more informative than the graph proposed above which only shows one variable (proportion of incomes in top 1%) instead of three (the middle 60% and lower 20%) -- who speaks for the lower 20% on Wikipedia? EllenCT (talk) 00:03, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Ellen is referring to the "graph proposed above" that was rejected by most respondents, so to be clear this isn't a choice between those two options. VictorD7 (talk) 00:48, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

• Support, per ellen. Pass a Method talk 20:37, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose A graph showing this might be useful, but this graph is not satisfactory. It tries to show three different line with widely varying magnitude on the same linear axis, which means the actual values of the two lower ones cannot be determined. It would probably be better to use a single line for the top 1%, but if all 3 are really wanted a log scale would be needed or separate graphs--these would, though, be less dramatic. DGG ( talk ) 00:15, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Why not have a graph that shows the change in incomes for the population as a whole, rather than choosing certain sections of the population? Its just confusing this way. Rwenonah (talk) 23:55, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

So do you support or oppose adding this particular graph? This is the specific issue right now; we can discuss possible alternative graphs afterwards/separately. Cadiomals (talk) 01:54, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

• OpposePer objections above.Rwenonah (talk) 12:22, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose per above. Graph needs adjusting. →Davey2010→→Talk to me!→ 21:43, 7 December 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose excessive detail for this specific article. Any arguments on the merits are irrelevant as far as I am concerned. If this information has merit as claimed, it would be perfectly appropriate in a different article (not saying it does, though, I have not evaluated it as such) but it simply is too esoteric for this overview article --Jayron32 18:22, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
• Support The general rule is that more information is better than less, and people looking at Wikipedia for information on the United States will most likely use Wikipedia as their sole source. The information is relevant and valid so it should be included. Remember: Wikipedia seeks to be encyclopedic, and the information is relevant and informative. Damotclese (talk) 19:01, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
• Qualified Support I think the graph could be improved (as has been noted, scale obscures information about the two lower categories), but failing that, there are no disputes about accuracy and it is a good graphical summary of an important issue. I've seen variants of this in blogs that are generally considered right and left of the political spectrum and do not believe graph is POV. As to those who believe too detailed, this summary graphic seems appropriate to overview article. Note: Here from WP:FRS Haven't previously been involved with this article. --Federalist51 (talk) 18:34, 13 December 2013 (UTC)
• Qualified Support As above, it'll always be seen as a "dodgy" graph when the Y Axis is skewed like that. If that issue was fixed, I'd fully support the inclusion of that graph. But until the graph is fixed, I don't support it. --HighKing (talk) 11:36, 16 December 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose. Aside from rounding errors, any graph showing this kind of data absolutely needs to account for 100% of the people. Because it leaves out 19% of the population, I'm suspecting that someone's begging the question. Bring in a graph showing the average incomes of the bottom 20%, the middle 60%, the upper 19%, and the top 1%, and I'll be much more inclined to support it. I also note that Jayron's got a solid argument about this kind of graph being out of place in such a broad article; Damotclese's argument fails on WP:SS grounds. More is better than less, but we can get to the "too much" point like any other encyclopedia; the only difference is that our virtually unlimited space means that we split extra details out to a more specific article instead of removing them entirely. Nyttend (talk) 01:36, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose The original source[6] (which is specifically a blog estopped by WP:RS) states: Income inequality in the United States has been rising since the 1970s. What is the most effective way to succinctly convey this fact? Here is my choice which rather clarifies that the purpose of the graph is to accentuate the "income inequality" claim. The heading of Kenworthy's blog post is "The politics of helping the poor Politics and rising income inequality" and as a blog post it does not meet WP:RS for any purpose of making a claim -- and a graph is, indeed, a "claim" here. Collect (talk) 01:49, 17 December 2013 (UTC)
• Strong Support Speaking from a social scientist standpoint, income inequality is one of the primary indicators for what is happening in a society - much more so than housing. It should definitely be included. LK (talk) 04:10, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose This looks like it was pulled from a "We are the 99%" pamphlet. What about the top 5%, 10%, top 20%? Why just the bottom 20% and 60%? Why the 1%? This looks like it was created to make a specific point regarding inequality and highlight a distinction to push a POV, which I don't think is appropriate. If we're going to include something, it should try to include a more full range and not cherry pick the figures that make the most shocking graph. Morphh ^(talk) 14:50, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose per RfC comment: I oppose this particular graph. Each of the following flaws would need to be addressed: DGG (needs log scale on y-axis); Collect (source issues); Morphh (choose most relevant deciles, with justification as to why they're relevant). Also, I noticed that the time interval runs from 1979 to 2007. It is now nearly 2014. There IS more current data, from highly reputable sources, that include 2011. I know of one such chart from a recent OECD econometrics publication (October 2013) which is public domain. There are others. There's the issue of relevancy to the U.S.A. as well, in considering inclusion of a chart like this. The Emmanuel Saez charts compare the U.S., Germany, and Japan from 1910 to 2011. I would also suggest that income isn't even the most relevant information to present, but rather, asset holdings. Yearly income varies widely, especially for the very wealthy. Net asset value does not, and a chart with assets on the y-axis instead of income would be more meaningful. It is a trend that is unique to the USA in comparison to many other developed and even some developing nations. We need a good chart here, or nothing at all. Otherwise, our credibility will be diminished or possibly be considered political advocacy, which is entirely unacceptable.--FeralOink (talk) 21:14, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Tax incidence

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

ITEP estimate of the total effective tax rate for federal, state and local taxes (personal and corporate income, payroll, property, sales, excise, estate, etc.) by income level in 2011.

Should the ITEP tax graph to the right be re-added to the Government finance section or should the section remain without an image?

Oppose adding based on my arguments above. Cadiomals (talk) 13:30, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Oppose, for reasons laid out above. Graph is from a partisan lobbyist and its accuracy is disputed by multiple reliable sources. VictorD7 (talk) 21:41, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Support per Ostry and Berg (2011). EllenCT (talk) 23:20, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

That link doesn't appear to mention the graph (unless I missed it) or be pertinent to this topic. VictorD7 (talk) 00:48, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Can you think of the reason that I think it supports it? EllenCT (talk) 01:03, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I'd hate to presume. VictorD7 (talk) 01:12, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Your best guess? EllenCT (talk) 16:36, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

• Support per reasoning cited by ellen Pass a Method talk 20:39, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose a graph that tries to lump state & local (which can vary wildly) and federal taxes (a combination of over 100 tax systems) along with mixing different tax bases (income & consumption) is not appropriate. You can't even measure these the same way. Any such graph is filled with tons of assumptions and heavily modeled for tax incidence and considering the source, highly partisan. It's not even clear how they came up with these figures. If you're going to include graphs on taxation, federal taxation should be a different graph than state taxation, and consumption taxation should be separate from income taxation when showing distributional effects in order to make any logical sense out of the graph. Morphh ^(talk) 14:31, 19 December 2013 (UTC)
• Support Oppose until an alternative source is found for the same information. The graph shows an important reality of local and state taxes for education including property taxes and sales taxes, for instance. Nearly a flat tax ideal by income distribution, with breaks in the aggregate for the most disadvantaged? The reality of American economic life-as-taxes is perhaps a conservative ideal? Where's the beef? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 06:54, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Virginia, where were you when I removed both of the graphs from Gov't finance weeks ago as a way to finally stop the bickering over it? If you really wanted to include this graph, why didn't you raise an objection on the talk page? Cadiomals (talk) 04:39, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

• The beef is it's inaccurate. It was cooked up by a far left lobbyist group and it's internal federal component is massively contradicted by the far more prominent Tax Policy Center (a joint Brookings and Urban Institute project), especially (but not only) for the top 1%, where there's around a 10 point difference. The CBO also tracks closely with the TPC over time, with the federal only top 1% tax rate around 30%, not around 20% (where ITEP has it), from year to year. By contrast the ITEP chart has no corroboration whatsoever, and an opaque methodology we can't examine. The differences aren't a one year fluke, but are consistent over time, as the link in my above post lays out. Doesn't any of that bother you? Shouldn't we hold off on making such a controversial chart the section image in a country summary article? The graph is disputed, unverifiable partisan propaganda. VictorD7 (talk) 19:54, 3 December 2013 (UTC)
• Here's a Tax Foundation piece criticizing the ITEP chart and showing a very different one for total taxation, with a bottom quintile rate of 13% and the entire top quintile (not just the top 1%) averaging 35.6%. VictorD7 (talk) 22:25, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

That "piece" is neither accurate or in agreement with the peer reviewed literature. EllenCT (talk) 04:14, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Hogwash. So far I'm the only one between us actually backing up what I say. Whether you agree with it or not, it's just one more prominent source disputing your chart. VictorD7 (talk) 04:57, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Oppose The CBO and Tax Policy Center are far more mainstream and reliable sources for this kind of information. It's absurd to include such a heavily disputed partisan graph in a country summary.TheTimesAreAChanging (talk) 22:38, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Indeed, and as a solution and compromise we opted not to add any graphs to that section at all, including the one added by VictorD7. That was fine for everyone, but now EllenCT wants to stir the pot again, insisting we re-add just this one and drawing our attention back to a tired debate that had already been settled. Cadiomals (talk) 01:49, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Your characterization of the issue which has played very if not most prominently in recent election cycles as settled lacks accuracy. Deleting both graphs was obviously not "fine for everyone". EllenCT (talk) 04:16, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

I meant everyone except you, because both graphs were removed three weeks ago and no one said a word about it despite continuous discussion on the talk page, mostly because people wanted to finally move on from that issue and the bickering over those graphs that had been occurring weeks prior. As such, the issue of including those graphs was settled, and it showed that you were really the only one insistent on advancing your political agenda. I couldn't care less about your babble regarding "election cycles". Cadiomals (talk) 04:39, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Settled it may be, but the editor opening this string sought multiple editor input regarding adding information to the encyclopedia. Could someone repost Victor's chart? (Is there really a question as to whether corporations are people too? I thought I was the only one in the country who disagreed with the Supreme Court at Citizens United.)

It seems to me that Ellen might agree to Victor's chart now for the sake of presenting something on total effective tax rates, as the information conveyed is a relatively flat tax rate compared to national income tax, and that is informative to the general international reader unfamiliar with how federal regimes tax their populations in actuality. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 08:48, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Are you referring to the Heritage Foundation's chart which doesn't apportion corporate taxes to consumers? Are you aware of how few sources agree with that? Victor frequently cites all three. Meanwhile in reality.... EllenCT (talk) 16:35, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't know, does it show a relatively flat tax for total effective tax? If so it is of much the same utility to the general international reader, the difference in sources is a wash. ITEP, Heritage, CBO and Tax Policy Center were alternate sources mentioned above. To date in this string, I only see ITEP which generally corresponds to my earlier study, a relatively flat tax for total effective tax in the U.S. -- which is why I support ITEP until another source can be agreed to... which Cadiomals informs me cannot be done... for now ?? Might you allow something from CBO or Tax Policy Center, are their charts readily available at commons? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 18:20, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

There is no "Heritage Foundation" chart. Ellen's confused (or lying again) and apparently referring to this PGPF chart of TPC numbers for federal tax rates. Note how its top 1% rate is a few points higher than ITEP's purported total rate. There are no good overall tax incidence charts, because it's notoriously difficult to study local/state taxes with precision. The only one I know of is the ITEP chart, but we know that's problematic because its internal federal component is contradicted so dramatically by the CBO and TPC, the two most prominent and widely cited outfits that do tax incidence. It was also lambasted by the Tax Foundation, which actually produced its own using TPC federal and ITEP state/local numbers, not that ITEP's state/local figures are necessarily credible either. It would be better to have no chart than to post misinformation cooked up by a partisan lobbyist. The relative flattening you mention (still nowhere near a flat tax) is already described in the text, which is a perfectly fair way to handle it. This also isn't about corporate taxation. That's a dishonest smokescreen tossed out by Ellen as a diversion. She has no idea how ITEP even attributes corporate taxes. Unlike the CBO and TPC, they don't provide component breakdowns and their methodology is opaque. Their chart says they count it, but even if they attributed zero to the top 1%, which would be ludicrous and would contradict a statement I found and posted by their spokesman, it still wouldn't account for the discrepancy. BTW, while Ellen's link has absolutely nothing to do with this topic, I have to say I'm shocked, shocked I tell you that liberals' predictions scored better in a cycle where Democrats won. It's a shame the "study" only looked at one election, and didn't examine if conservatives' predictions were better in a year Republicans won. VictorD7 (talk) 18:52, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Insert - Actually it's the Urban-Brookings TPC VictorD7 (talk) 16:46, 14 December 2013 (UTC)

The U.S. tax regime is highly regressive unless one takes into account federal and state and local taxes. That is the best picture of the actual effect on the individual. This is mostly attributed to local property taxes for education funding education, not national or state funding sources, leading to wild inconsistencies of funding levels from place to place and over time for any one place.

Here is something from an VictorD7 sourced as generally unbiased, Wall Street Journal's the Tax Policy Center. It shows effective payroll tax rate in a manner which I find consistent with prior study. But for the first quintile progressive feature, the curve fitted to the bar graph is generally flat until the regressive tax structure for the richest incomes.

The effective tax rate including state and local taxes is more like a flat tax. Do we have an alternative to the ITEP chart which shows the federal, state and local together in a federal system? I believe that would be instructive for the general international reader living in a centralized form of government. --- and lacking an alternative to the ITEP graph for now, we should use it because it does not show the statistical inequity that federal income taxes alone would in error. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 12:03, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I just posted an alternative by the Tax Foundation above that gives a radically different total overall breakdown. ITEP has zero corroboration and its internals are disputed by the TPC, CBO, and Tax Foundation. Misleading people with misinformation is not in Wikipedia's interest. TVH wants to use a hotly disputed, extremely partisan chart.....just because? We aren't obligated to have any image. If you don't want an alternative, then we don't have to add one. No one's seriously proposing a different image. And to my knowledge the TPC (which I never said is unbiased, it leans left but is the most prominent tax incidence outfit and produces reliable data) has nothing to do with the WSJ. Perhaps TVH is confused. I'm not sure what the point of the payroll tax chart is (the TPC chart he apparently objects to already showed the federal breakdown by component, including payroll), but in terms of international comparison (if that's what he was getting at) the US is more progressive than Europe in every tax type. I encourage TVH and anyone else here to actually read the sources posted. VictorD7 (talk) 22:06, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Lol; the reason VictorD7 uses the Tax Foundation source is because he can't find a real source supporting his argument (don't take my word for it, just ask him). More nonsense from a hardcore right winger. -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 22:17, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

LOL! I've just irrefutably made my case on every point using sources that include the Tax Policy Center, the CBO, the Tax Foundation, and even ITEP. And that lame, substanceless reply is all the hard core left winger Somedifferentstuff can muster. Telling. VictorD7 (talk) 22:38, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Yes, you've provided ZERO SOURCES other than TF. -- Have you applied for a job with the Koch Brothers yet??? -- Ahhhhhhhhhhh, the boy with the broken mirror. ---- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 23:07, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

^Ad hominem drivel. I've posted sources all over this section and page. Stop trying to disrupt the discussion process. VictorD7 (talk) 23:13, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Your reply is, "I WILL PROVIDE NO SOURCES HERE!". Brilliant right-wing garbage. -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 23:27, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I suppose until Somedifferentstuff is condemned by other editors and/or banned for trollish disruption, I can repost sourced evidence every time he repeats his lie.

Effective Federal Tax Rate for the Top 1% in 2011

TPC - 30.4%

ITEP - 21.1%

No reason his presence should be a complete waste of time. VictorD7 (talk) 00:12, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

But Victor, I like the linked chart, it shows increases in property tax which is my point, and the steeply regressive corporate tax which is Stuff's point. Two problems. First, it does not aggregate the changes by income segment, second and more importantly, you have not downloaded it into the Wikicommons for our use in this article. Is there not a blanket release for online publication with attribution?

My point is that taxes are effectively flat when incomes are arrayed low to high on an x-axis, not 45-degrees slope positive (progressive), not 45-degree slope negative (regressive). Most local schools are mostly funded by local corporate taxes, regardless of the effective income tax on them, so the aggregate taxes of federal, state and local show a nearly flat tax in aggregate, not the regressive outrage if income taxes were taken alone, and the ITEP chart shows that overall effect, regardless of the corporate tax detail variances that you have successfully pointed out. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 10:08, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Not sure which "linked chart" you're referring to, but maybe you missed when I checkmated Ellen. Her own graph source calls corporate taxes "very progressive" and attributes them to shareholders, completely refuting what she'd been claiming (guessing). No meaningful variation in corporate incidence has been shown, much less by me. ITEP's huge discrepancy with multiple reliable sources remains unexplained. Stuff doesn't see corporate taxes as regressive (and he had no point; he was trolling). I'm not sure where you got that idea. I haven't seen a chart showing property taxes, but income taxes are progressive (not "regressive"), and you keep making unsourced claims. Yes, there's flattening effect when total taxes are considered, but it's nowhere near as much as ITEP shows (side point - even they call overall taxation "progressive", not "flat"; doesn't have to be a 45 deg. slope). ITEP's 2011 top 1% rate was 21.1% federal + 7.9% state/local = 29% shown in graph. If the federal component is off by around 10 points, then so is the overall number. ITEP's openly stated purpose is to agitate for higher taxes on "the rich". If casual, uninformed readers see that chart, showing the top 1% paying a lower rate than the preceding percentiles, then they'll likely think "Yeah! We should raise taxes on the rich!" However, a more reliable chart properly showing the top 1% paying the highest rate wouldn't have that impact. It was 30.4% federal in 2011 (per TPC), a few points higher now, and in the ballpark of 40% if state/local taxes are added. ITEP's chart isn't harmless misinformation we can tolerate to illustrate a broad principle. That's a meaningful difference.

If you're saying you like the Tax Foundation chart combining TPC federal rates with ITEP state/local ones, then you're free to try to add it to the commons. Wiki rules forced me to go through a lengthy process to get the PGPF chart added, though PGPF itself was great and instantly granted permission. I'm sure the Tax Foundation would too, if permission is even required. I haven't explored their copyright situation recently. My only concern would be relying on ITEP's state/local data, which, while not explicitly contradicted, is uncorroborated and may be as wrong as their federal data. But it wouldn't hurt to add the graph to the commons so it's available during future discussions. VictorD7 (talk)

• Oppose excessive detail for this specific article. Any arguments on the merits are irrelevant as far as I am concerned. If this information has merit as claimed, it would be perfectly appropriate in a different article (not saying it does, though, I have not evaluated it as such) but it simply is too esoteric for this overview article --Jayron32 18:25, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
• Support The general rule is that more information is better than less, and people looking at Wikipedia for information on the United States will most likely use Wikipedia as their sole source. The information is relevant and valid so it should be included. Remember: Wikipedia seeks to be encyclopedic, and the information is relevant and informative. Damotclese (talk) 19:02, 10 December 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose adding Too detailed for this overview article. Including it gives undue weight to a graphic which, at the least, is open to challenge as being POV. Note: Here from WP:FRS Haven't previously been involved with this article. --Federalist51 (talk) 18:39, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

@VictorD7. When y-axis numbers are close together, the curve of the x-axis is flat. A curve through the ITEP top shows progressive but flattening across the first 80% under $68,700, @ 17, 21, 25, 28. The curve kinks at the top 40% over $68,700 becoming relatively flat, @ 28, 29, 30, 30, 29, because 28, 29 and 30 are close together (reported increments at truncated percentages).

That is, effective income rate is pretty flat overall across federal and state and local taxes, because regressive state sales taxes on the poor and regressive local property taxes on the rich counter both federal and state progressive income tax effects. And the general international reader will not be made aware of that phenomenon in a federal republic such as the U.S. without a chart of net tax incidence including federal, state and local taxes.

The ITEP chart including federal, state and local taxes is more nearly comprehensive than federal income tax charts alone which show huge regression in the top 20% tax levels in the case of your TCP income tax incidence chart, -- which I believe is misleading as a single source of taxation information in the U.S. for the summary article. Did you find an alternative to the ITEP chart to post here? If so, would you be so kind to do so for the sake of the discussion? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 03:53, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

I guess you missed all the stuff about ITEP's accuracy being dramatically disputed by multiple sources. If you don't understand at this point that the contradiction is in the internals, so it doesn't matter that the TPC and CBO are federal only (it's still apples to apples with the ITEP federal component), then I don't know how else to walk you through it. I even linked to an alternative overall taxation chart by the Tax Foundation after you made the same request earlier that clearly illustrated these concepts by combining ITEP state/local numbers with TPC federal numbers, showing a very different slope, and explicitly criticizing ITEP's methodology. The text already discusses the more regressive nature of state/local taxes, which change neither the fact that overall US taxation is progressive (per even the ITEP outlier's wording) or that it's more progressive than European systems (the difference is even starker when heavily regressive European consumption taxes are compared with US sales taxes). The findings are robust enough that precision isn't necessary to make the general observation. The section currently has no chart, so there's no danger of readers being misled by one either way. We shouldn't add a hotly disputed, partisan chart just for the sake of having a chart. VictorD7 (talk) 19:45, 15 December 2013 (UTC)

I noticed that ITEP is used as a source in the combined federal, state and local tax incidence for the link you gave me. Okay, agreed to no chart at this time. Simpler is better in the summary article. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 09:52, 16 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't like incidence graphs that try to combine sales taxes and income taxes, because sales taxes are often misrepresented as being overly regressive (which is what is happening here). Partisan sources often consider savings as untaxed income as they try to measure for a single year, instead of tax deferred (they'll spend it during retirement, in a couple years when a child goes to college, or donate it). They distort the definition of measuring incidence by calculating the tax on something other than its tax base - mathematically invalid. As if any money saved is instantly tax free forever, making any measure of that tax burden completely false. Another one, are commercial property taxes born by the property owner, the renter / consumer, or split? Then you got the fact that your combining 50 different tax structures (some that have no income tax, some that have no sales tax, different corporate tax rates) with different exemptions on each into a single graph. It would certainly be nice to have a single graph that just "summed it up" but any such attempt will include lots of assumptions and manipulation - difficult to do fairly. Morphh ^(talk) 14:14, 21 December 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

AP survey

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

---

Ref.: Yen, Hope (28 July 2013). 80 Percent Of U.S. Adults Face Near-Poverty, Unemployment: Survey. Associated Press and Huffington Post Retrieved July 28, 2013. EllenCT (talk) 00:07, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Should the statement "Four out of five U.S. adults struggle with joblessness, near-poverty or reliance on welfare for at least parts of their lives" be added to the Income, poverty, and wealth section? Is it adequately precise or too vague of a statement?

• Oppose adding based on my arguments above. Cadiomals (talk) 13:30, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose as a hopelessly vague and pointless lumping together of categories that's solely designed for emotive impact and mood setting. VictorD7 (talk) 21:41, 1 December 2013 (UTC)
• Support per the original Associated Press sources. EllenCT (talk) 00:07, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
• Support. Pass a Method talk 20:39, 2 December 2013 (UTC)
• Oppose until a scholarly source is found to put the information into a larger context...good argument for a safety-net society, though. And the U.S. practice obviously more nearly approaches the European welfare state model than many suspect, even in the midst of a fierce national cult of individualism and reliance on family first. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 07:03, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

How do you feel about "While racial and ethnic minorities are more likely to live in poverty, race disparities in the poverty rate have narrowed substantially since the 1970s, census data show. Economic insecurity among whites also is more pervasive than is shown in the government's poverty data, engulfing more than 76 percent of white adults by the time they turn 60, according to a new economic gauge being published next year by the Oxford University Press"[7] then? EllenCT (talk) 03:56, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

There will be no more non-summary details added to those sections, that's it; Income, poverty, and wealth is at its peak in terms of detail. If it isn't already there you can add such information to articles like Income inequality in the United States, Poverty in the United States or even Race in the United States. But it has no place here. And if all you're going to say is that such details are "crucial" and "central to debates in election cycles" don't even bother responding. Cadiomals (talk) 04:13, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

• Support; if the source backs up the material I find it to be relevant. -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 18:26, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

The following is copy-pasted from my response to Ellen so you don't have to look for it, as to why this piece of information is useless:

"That statement is vague. It's the same as saying 95% of people have had either a headache or breast cancer at some point in their lives, or that 90% of Americans own either a car or an airplane. 80% of Americans deal with joblessness and low-income at some point in their lives? I'm surprised it isn't 95% percent. It is no surprise that most Americans have likely been jobless at some point if they are laid off or look for a new one; that is typical of almost every country. And who hasn't been low-income at some point in early adulthood, when one is still in an internship or entry-level job? Very few readers are going to check the source for clarification. The statement conveys nothing of educational value to the reader, except for furthering the biased tone in the section you wish to convey: that Americans somehow experience undue hardship relative to other countries."

This statement does not express any truly relevant facts. Cadiomals (talk) 04:06, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

The facts are relevant because they prove governmental assistance is not universally and permanently disabling as opponents sometimes argue. We just need a scholarly source in context of the fact that assistance is overwhelmingly of short duration. The outlier long duration "culture of dependency", the problematic 15%, can often be addressed with literacy education and trade education as has been found effective in various state programs. Scholarly context is what is required for the WP article. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 12:53, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

I just have a problem with the way the statement is worded. Saying that 80% of Americans have either been reliant on welfare or unemployed at some point in their lives is like saying 80% of Americans have either had breast cancer or the common cold at some point in their lives. Can't you see how useless such a statement would be? A scholarly source could provide less vague and more specific information as opposed to sensationalist news reports. Cadiomals (talk) 13:01, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose excessive detail for this specific article. Any arguments on the merits are irrelevant as far as I am concerned. If this information has merit as claimed, it would be perfectly appropriate in a different article (not saying it does, though, I have not evaluated it as such) but it simply is too esoteric for this overview article --Jayron32 18:26, 9 December 2013 (UTC)
• Comment. The direct quotation is almost certainly political propaganda. Lies, damned lies, and Mark Twain. 99% of adult americans at some point in their lives have murdered their spouses with an assault rifle, stolen from their neighbors with a sawed-off shotgun, or watched television on which the gun debate sometimes comes up -- ban guns today! 99% of americans, at some point in their lives, have been unemployed for nine consecutive months -- counting newborns! 99% of americans believe the moon landing was a hoax, or the twin towers were a federal plot, or that someone who borrows a writing utensil from them may never return it to them -- you just don't realize how deep the conspiracy goes!

  This POV-pushing *in* the sources themselves is inherently a problem, of course; Reliable Sources are *not* required to be NPOV, themselves. So the question is, since wikipedia *is* required to be — or at least strive to be — neutral, is there a way to make use of the HuffPo data, which is illuminating for the readership, without pushing the HuffPo POV on the readership? In other words, does the "relative to other countries" additional data exist that Cadiomals mentioned? If so, then maybe a relative-to-other-countries-chart would be useful, especially if we have historical data, showing the trend over time. Maybe 80% is good compared to other countries. Maybe the triplet-category is a new-fangled yet highly-explanatory statistical mechanism invented by some brilliant sociology PhD, and HuffPo is just reporting one portion of the research team's groundbreaking new results.

  But I suspect that no such datasets for other countries, let alone historical, exist... and if so, that itself indicates the x-or-y-or-z nature of the cobbled-together summary was intended to advance an agenda. Now, even if the the quote itself is still worthy of being included in wikipedia somewheres... perhaps Ariana Huffington#Political Positions? 74.192.84.101 (talk) 16:19, 10 December 2013 (UTC)

• Oppose adding Host of reasons this doesn't belong in this article. Tone is not encyclopedic. Lumps together a number of different facts in a way that ends up being POV and, without elaboration, isn't very informative. To explain in detail would not be appropriate for this overview article. Note: Here from WP:FRS Haven't previously been involved with this article. Federalist51 (talk) 18:59, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Corporate tax incidence text

Endless toing and froing with no real consensus either way. --Mdann52talk to me! 13:27, 13 January 2014 (UTC)
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
Is "U.S. taxation is generally progressive, especially the federal income taxes, but the incidence of corporate income tax has been a matter of considerable ongoing controversy for decades." preferable to "U.S. taxation is generally progressive, especially the federal income taxes, and is among the most progressive in the developed world."? EllenCT (talk) 00:59, 2 December 2013 (UTC) The former is preferable because it is more accurate and compliant with the WP:NPOV policy, in that order. The latter is cherrypicked puffery unsupported by the most reliable sources. EllenCT (talk) 00:59, 2 December 2013 (UTC) Actually the latter, long standing version you've altered without prior discussion is undisputed and less poorly written than your new sentence. We might be able to reach an agreement on including corporate incidence material, but shoving it into the first sentence renders it confusing at best and gives undue emphasis to a small portion of taxation that has no bearing on overall US tax progressivity vis a vis other developed nations, or on whether overall US taxation is progressive (even your own outlier far left CTJ source concedes it's "progressive"). You haven't even bothered to construct an argument for your misleading edit's legitimacy. VictorD7 (talk) 01:19, 2 December 2013 (UTC) This element of the discussion relates to the tax incidence chart above which shows a nearly flat tax rate if state and localities property and sales taxes are included for income segments. National policy is progressive, local and state are regressive, by and large. Comparisons across central governments and federal governments are difficult without aggregating national and local taxes together. Also, when something does go to narrative, limit reference notes to two, and expand the notes to include multiple sources, as a matter of WP style. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 07:13, 3 December 2013 (UTC) Look closer. Even the inaccurate, far left lobbyist graph you're referring to doesn't show anything close to a "flat tax". The entire right half only covers the top 10%. As proved above, its federal component also dramatically understates rates for high earners compared to the TPC and CBO. Here's yet another critique of the ITEP chart by the Tax Foundation. They give a far different overall tax incidence chart at the bottom. None of that directly relates to this discussion though, because Ellen hasn't shown that the discrepancy is due to corporate tax differences, and even if it was, the findings about the US having a more progressive overall tax system (not just federal) are extremely robust. Europe has an outright regressive tax system that relies heavily on consumption taxes. As the Northwestern U. study and media sources explain, even their income tax structure is more regressive than America's, and their consumption taxes are more regressive than our sales taxes (which feature various exemptions). Of course other countries have corporate taxes too, rendering the corporate incidence question pointless to this issue, and they're only a small percentage of taxation anyway. Please read the sources. They're actually quite clear and decisive. The partial flattening caused by state/local taxes is already described in the text. There's no reason to overstate it with a hotly disputed, unverifiable chart from a partisan lobbyist. VictorD7 (talk) 20:12, 3 December 2013 (UTC) VictorD7, could you please explain the terminology you use. If non-partisan groups like ITEP are "far left", what superlatives do you use for social democrats, democratic socialists, communists, trotskyists, maoists and anarchists? Are anarchists "far far far far far far far left?" TFD (talk) 21:43, 3 December 2013 (UTC) It's not "non-partisan". It even has a liberal lobbying arm called Citizens for Tax Justice. Forget the labels though. The pertinent issue is that its numbers are dramatically contradicted by multiple reliable sources. Isn't that supposed to matter? VictorD7 (talk) 22:17, 3 December 2013 (UTC) I agree the contradiction is dramatic. But you have already admitted that corporate tax is borne by consumers, so by your own definition the sources which do not attribute corporate tax incidence to anyone but the owners and corporate employees are not reliable. And while you have found "multiple" such sources, they are not peer reviewed, because the peer reviewed literature attributes corporate tax incidence in the way you said it should be attributed. Until you resolve this contradiction, you have no path to competent editing on the topic. EllenCT (talk) 04:09, 4 December 2013 (UTC) Your lies are tedious, Ellen. I said no such thing. You're conflating tax incidence with economic ripple effects. Even your own ITEP/CTJ spokesman said investors pay corporate taxes. I posted the quote for you from the ITEP website. Maybe they also attribute some to consumers (what about labor?), and maybe they don't (you don't know and haven't been able to find anything concrete), but corporate taxation wouldn't account for the large contradiction anyway. You haven't cited anything from "peer reviewed literature" because the links in question don't help your case and have nothing to do with this discussion. The TPC and CBO are far more mainstream, cited, and reliable than an uncorroborated, outlier ITEP chart. VictorD7 (talk) 04:41, 4 December 2013 (UTC) So now you are saying corporations don't pass on tax increases to their customers? EllenCT (talk) 16:31, 4 December 2013 (UTC) Those are economic ripple effects (and to labor, and to other businesses, just like income and all taxes; we shouldn't cherry-pick), not tax incidence. VictorD7 (talk) 18:56, 4 December 2013 (UTC) Would you please answer the question: What proportion of corporate taxes do you believe are borne by consumers? EllenCT (talk) 05:07, 7 December 2013 (UTC) If one defines "borne" as tax incidence, then 0%. Of course what matters is what the sources do. Now stop dodging and finally answer my question: Precisely how much, if any, corporate tax does ITEP attribute to the top 1%? The CBO and TPC both provide that answer. Can you? If not, then your whole fixation on corporate incidence is a red herring. VictorD7 (talk) 00:24, 8 December 2013 (UTC) That isn't what tax incidence means at all, and you know it. I am asking in the sense that you meant when you said, "I tend to agree with you that corporate income taxes are passed on to consumers." Musgrave et al. (1951) derived 45.5% by observing which parameters of economic models best fit actual outcomes, which is the same method the ITEP uses today, as does the U.S. Treasury's Office of Tax Analysis, which says: "A naïve view of the incidence of the corporate tax is that shareholders bear the burden of the tax through lower after-tax rates of return. This naïve view ignores the possibility that the tax will be shifted onto consumers through higher prices, workers through lower wages ... or other types of capital as capital shifts out of the corporate sector in response to the lower after-tax return offered by corporations. To move beyond this naïve view, a model of economic behavior is necessary to guide predictions about how the burden of the corporate income tax will be distributed. Much of the literature on corporate tax incidence has focused on building such models and, depending on the assumptions, these models have generated a wide range of predictions."[8] Modern simulations and empirical derivations (see Table 1 on page 17 here) say that consumers bear from 57% to 75% of corporations' tax. The only sources which claim 0% are the few which you've cherry-picked. So what do you really believe, Victor? How much corporate tax is passed on to consumers? I've answered your question, now you answer mine. EllenCT (talk) 03:46, 8 December 2013 (UTC) You know that people can lie by ripping a line from context or misrepresenting something, like your recent "Nazi" edit summary did. Here's the rest of my quote (again), per your own link: I tend to agree with you that corporate income taxes are passed on to consumers and others, but then I think other taxes are at least partially passed on in various ways too, as I illustrated earlier with my income tax hike on the rich guy comments. That said, if one is going to develop effective tax rate incidence charts, then corporate taxes should be imputed to the owners, since they're the ones most directly paying them. That's because there's no way to precisely account for the largely hidden economic ripple effects of corporate or other tax types, as your own Treasury source indicates. You failed to answer my question. For example, this TPC analysis attributes a corporate rate of 6% to the top 1%. What does ITEP attribute? I already answered your question about consumers (0%), so answer mine. You're obfuscating. Why are you citing a 1951 paper that has nothing to do with any modern outfits or graphs being discussed, when you haven't even posted proof of how ITEP attributes corporate incidence? Here's a quote I've posted before from ITEP's own site: "All taxes have to be paid by somebody at some point," says Steve Wamhoff, legislative director at Citizens for Tax Justice, the liberal lobbying arm of the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a research group. "The corporate tax is paid by the owners of corporate stock and business assets." I'm not cherry-picking. The TPC and CBO are the two most prominent tax incidence outfits out there, whether you like how they attribute corporate incidence or not. ITEP is a third, less prominent tax incidence outfit that produces outlier results. Since we've established that you don't even know how ITEP attributes corporate incidence, and that it wouldn't account for the discrepancy with reliable sources no matter how they distributed it, this corporate incidence tangent is a red herring. It's amusing seeing you pretend you believe that corporate taxes are regressive, even quoting a Bush administration paper, when we both know you'd oppose slashing or eliminating the corporate tax, just as ITEP would (unless I missed some anti-corporate tax activism on their part). You're willing to say stuff you don't believe just for the short term goal of making taxes appear less progressive than they really are, in hopes of fueling support for tax hikes (income, capital gains, probably even corporate). You're not even cherry-picking, you're desperately grabbing at straws. VictorD7 (talk) 07:22, 8 December 2013 (UTC) Update - Searching on ITEP's website for "corporate taxes" yielded this page by CTJ, their liberal lobbying arm and your graph source. Here are the best parts: "Third, the corporate income tax is ultimately borne by shareholders and therefore is a very progressive tax..."; "Corporate leaders sometimes assert that corporate income taxes are really borne by workers or consumers. But virtually all tax experts, including those at the Congressional Budget Office, the Congressional Research Service and the Treasury Department, have concluded that the owners of stock and other capital ultimately pay most corporate taxes." How about that? VictorD7 (talk) 07:50, 8 December 2013 (UTC) "America has one of the lowest corporate income taxes of any developed country, but you wouldn’t know it given the hysteria of corporate lobbying outfits like the Business Roundtable. They say that because Japan lowered its corporate tax rate by a few percentage points on April 1, the U.S. now has the most burdensome corporate tax in the world. The problem with this argument is that large, profitable U.S. corporations only pay about half of the 35 percent corporate tax rate on average, and most U.S. multinational corporations actually pay higher taxes in other countries. So the large majority of Americans who tell pollsters that they want U.S. corporations to pay more in taxes are onto something. Large Profitable Corporations Paying 18.5 Percent on Average, Some Pay Nothing Citizens for Tax Justice recently examined 280 Fortune 500 companies that were profitable each year from 2008 through 2010, and found that their average effective U.S. tax rate was just 18.5 percent over that three-year period.[1] In other words, their effective tax rate, which is simply the percentage of U.S. profits paid in federal corporate income taxes, is only about half the statutory federal corporate tax rate of 35 percent, thanks to the many tax loopholes these companies enjoy. Thirty of the corporations (including GE, Boeing, Wells Fargo and others) paid nothing in federal corporate income taxes over the 2008-2010 period. You might think that these companies simply had some unusual circumstances during the years we examined, but we find similar tax dodging when we look at previous years and the new data for 2011. For example, GE’s effective tax rate for the 2002-2011 period (the percentage of U.S. profits it paid in federal corporate income taxes over that decade) was just 1.8 percent.[2] Boeing’s effective federal tax rate over those ten years was negative 6.5 percent, (meaning the IRS is actually boosting Boeing’s profits rather than collecting a share of them).[3]" -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 20:13, 8 December 2013 (UTC) I'm not sure what the point of that stuff is, but it underscores what I've already proved with quotes above about CTJ supporting corporate taxation, and viewing it as progressive. For the record, the US not only has the highest nominal corporate tax rate, but one of the highest effective ones. ([9],[10]) VictorD7 (talk) 22:15, 8 December 2013 (UTC) No more blogs, please! If Huffington Post is an unreliable source, there's no real reason the Tax Foundation's blog is more reliable. Rwenonah (talk) 22:23, 8 December 2013 (UTC) The Tax Foundation is a think tank, and I only posted this to respond to quotes from the lobbying outfit (CTJ) cited above, but don't worry, it's an irrelevant tangent. I'm glad to see you're not high on the Huffington Post as a source though, since it's currently used as a source multiple times in the Income section. VictorD7 (talk) 22:32, 8 December 2013 (UTC) This is so pathetic! Here we go again with the walls of text and filibustering. As long as there is this kind of arguing going on about these charts, they will not be added, as they are not needed in this summary article. There are other issues in this article and we need to move on. People visit this article to get a general overview of the country. As of right now the tax chart (which is currently tied in terms of support/opposition) and the 1% chart (majority opposition) will not be added to this article when it comes off protection, and I will do anything I can to stop anyone who tries. It would be a huge shame if this article is locked yet again and indefinitely, as there are many innocent editors who actually want to make constructive, non-politically motivated contributions to it. If readers wish for detailed coverage of things like taxation they will go to the appropriate main articles like Taxation in the United States, where those graphs and plenty of others already exist. Not here. Bottom line, it's high time for us to move on to other things. Cadiomals (talk) 04:05, 9 December 2013 (UTC) Huffington Post is really used as a source? Seriously? Rwenonah (talk) 20:42, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Discussion

We should wait at least a couple of days at least until several opinions pile-up before deciding whether or not to add the specific pieces of information, and there ought to be an over two-thirds majority. Any consensus gathered should be and will be respected. Cadiomals (talk) 13:24, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Why not a week? EllenCT (talk) 23:20, 1 December 2013 (UTC)

Well, I said at least a couple of days so a week is fine.

Thank you. EllenCT (talk) 00:07, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

Consensus is mixed at best, so let's accept Legobot's month. 180.158.95.3 (talk) 06:43, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I have submitted a request for full page protection of the article for a few days until this issue is resolved in a civil manner to prevent further edit warring. Cadiomals (talk) 00:55, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't consider accusations of edit warring civil. I am happy to wait a week, as long as other editors understand that you tried to revert more than you included in your RFC. EllenCT (talk) 01:08, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

"Accusations" of edit-warring when there have been several reverts over the past 24 hours, including ones made by you? The concept of an RFC for consensus also seems to have completely gone past your head as you still chose to restore your changes anyway. That's not how it works. Keep in mind that you are the one who sparked all this by making many sudden changes after two weeks of article stability, and the article's edit history testifies to this, so there can be no disputing that fact. I will admit I inadvertently reverted more than I intended and VictorD7 was of no help, but SomeDifferentStuff's restoration should more than suffice for now. No more changes ought to be made to the article until we have several other users contributing their opinion on the above issues, it's as simple as that. Have some patience, and if others agree with you, it will manifest itself here. Cadiomals (talk) 01:13, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

No significant, undiscussed changes should have been allowed. The remaining ones have lowered article quality and consensus should have been sought for them one at a time. Flooding the page with multiple simultaneous edits renders meaningful Talk Page discussion difficult at best and tends to dissuade most observers from participating. VictorD7 (talk) 01:52, 2 December 2013 (UTC)

• Query.

on income-inequality. The housing image should stay and a graph should be displayed, --- as is allotted to other sections. Can the "Dual image" convention be used to pair both graphs side by side -- right justified iaw WP:ACCESS for visually impaired? The general reader will know to click on the image to enlarge it were they concerned to read each graph in greater detail than the format allows, supporting narrative provides the context. The two graphs together show two distinct aspects of the same reality, and the two graphs together I would support. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 06:39, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

At this point it would be a lot of images to cram into that significantly shortened section. If the two graphs were to be placed side by side, both would have to be small enough not to squeeze the text next to it, basically forcing the reader to click the image to clearly see it. Another problem is that the 1% graph is significantly taller than the median income graph. I believe we should keep the housing image and choose one of the two graphs; any more seems like cramming too much into one section. And don't you think illustrating the same phenomena with two images is redundant? Cadiomals (talk) 10:41, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

They do not illustrate the same phenomenon, although they are related. Which is more than one can say for the photograph of a ranch house subdivision and anything unique to the U.S. EllenCT (talk) 11:09, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I took the liberty of making a trial run of the two images above. I am surprised at how poor the resolution is, but I thought it was worth a try. Other editor reaction? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 20:34, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I like it, but I would prefer the data plotted on the same x-axis with different y-axes. What program can produce .svg charts directly? EllenCT (talk) 01:36, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Historical marginal income tax rates for the lowest and highest income earners in the United States, not including capital gains.

I wish there was some way to combine this one. EllenCT (talk) 21:15, 20 December 2013 (UTC)

• RfC comment Don't know about how good the graphs are, but I can say the tract house picture is so bland and uninformative that one might as well link to a random picture. ^walk victor falk ^talk 10:49, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Is that not the point, the blandness of a majority of the population which is in suburbia tract housing, large square footage for the common man, better constructed than Latin American shanty towns, but nevertheless built with balloon framing, plywood and drywall instead of better European materials of stone, lathe and plaster, --- roofs that last only 20 years, not the 200 years of thatch or slate? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:36, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

You might think it's bland but it isn't uninformative because it is a fairly good representation of how the majority of suburban middle-class Americans live and a portrayal of the average standard of living in the country. The sprawling, uniform suburban style shown here is also fairly unique to Northern America, as Europe is more densely packed. More important than this though is that it is a long standing image that not everyone agrees on removing, and that Ellen had planned on replacing with yet another redundant graph which gives undue weight to representing inequality. The dual graph above might be more tolerable. Cadiomals (talk) 12:07, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Why do you say that inequality is over-weighted in the article, given [11]? EllenCT (talk) 05:13, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

As it currently is, I think inequality has just enough weight in the article and in this section in particular. You were planning on replacing a long-standing photo with yet another graph, which some obviously did not agree with. Like I said, the dual image above might be a compromise, though many still disagree with how the info in the 1% graph is presented. Also, the article you linked to, while interesting and informative, ultimately has no relevance when determining what is sufficient for a summary article which is meant to have a limit on details. I don't know how many more times you have to be reminded this article is not and will never be your soapbox. Cadiomals (talk) 07:24, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

There is a way that all three graphs can be combined, because the categories are shared along with the y-axes. There is no support for trying to trick people in to believing that taxes are more progressive than they are or that the top 1% of income earners have gained less than they have. Elucidating those points in the face of an active effort to obscure them is hardly soapboxing. And it's right to show how the difference is offset by incomes failing to keep pace with productivity. Why aren't you going after the source of inaccuracy instead of the people who want to improve the article? EllenCT (talk) 15:08, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

(edit conflict) This picture does not represent the characteristics of sprawling American suburbia particularly well. At first glance, it could be from anywhere in the western world. Also, the habitat of a particular segment of the population is not illustrative of "Income, poverty, and wealth" in the US in general. ^walk victor falk ^talk 05:33, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Housing is an indicator of income, poverty and wealth. The image is typical of where a majority of the population resides in every region of the country in the U.S. And while there may be such places somewhere else in the western world such as France or Belgium, I did not see any such places in my brief visits there observing by plane, train, bus or taxi. Is it true that a majority of French now live in tract housing in suburban Paris, Cherbourg and Marseille, or is tract housing in fact distinctively American for a majority in every region only in the U.S. in their millions? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:13, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Agreed on all points; this image is an accurate indicator of the general standard of living of the majority of the population and fairly unique to North America, though the bottom line remains that it is long standing by years and there are people against its removal. No one ever argued over it until Ellen proposed its replacement with an even more contentious image. If people really thought it was a useless image I imagine it would have been replaced long ago. Cadiomals (talk) 11:53, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

"It's been there for years" sounds like a rather weak argument. If people can't agree upon an image of certain minimum quality, then there should be no image. And saying "it would have been replaced long ago", after first saying "it can't be replaced for it's been there for so long" strikes as a... rather circular argument. ^walk victor falk ^talk 12:09, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Insert @ victor falk. Okay, the image of tract housing in suburbia is uniquely typical of where a majority of the population live for the U.S. as a whole and for a majority within every region of the U.S., -- it is typical in a way distributed in the millions, which is found in few other countries, though perhaps some provinces of Canada? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 13:01, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

The arguments for why the image is effective and ought to stay (beyond just being long standing) are already here, so don't just ignore them. And an image that is long-standing in a highly visible article that is always evolving could be interpreted as implicit approval of its value to the article. Ellen has been the only one raising hell about issues that have already been settled. We should actually be sticking to the subject of whether the image she wants to replace it with is agreed on, and so far it doesn't have widespread approval. Cadiomals (talk) 12:53, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

I still object to the graph on the right, since its use of data for only parts of the American population is both confusing and seems to be clearly trying to present a POV.Rwenonah (talk) 17:16, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

I like the housing picture but object to both the above charts as inappropriate POV and shoddy construction in the income breakdown case. The current graph erroneously implies that income should necessarily correlate precisely with productivity (apples and oranges), cherry-picks a potentially aberrational starting place where this is depicted as having been the case for a few years, and makes no mention of the impact of technological progress or globalization, the obvious factors likely driving the recent divergence if it in fact exists (I haven't seen anyone verify EPI's claims). It's based on a single section sentence that was only added ex post facto as a flimsy excuse for adding the graph by an editor who had spent weeks trying to add the graph first back when the section didn't even mention the word "productivity". As bad as that is, the new proposed income breakdown chart is even worse for reasons I and others have already laid out. Adding both of them would be abysmal. Both graphs are essentially niche, political talking points. Why not something more neutral, like showing a breakdown of income by age over the course of an average individual American's life? Not that the SUBsection needs more than a single image anyway. Of course amid all the "inequality" increase talk, there's currently no mention of the nation's changing labor force demographics, due to things like the influx of millions of low skilled illegal immigrants in recent decades or women entering the work force in huge numbers from the 1980s onward. The historical comparison omits the fact that the top 1%'s share was at its record low point in the 1970s it chose to start its comparison in, that said share is largely driven by the stock market, and that the top 1%'s share more often than not increases during economic growth periods while sharply declining during economic downturns, raising questions about its significance. VictorD7 (talk) 00:38, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

I support both graphs. The 1% material carries significant weight as the 1% has been widely reported on and the "Productivity and Real Median Family Income Growth" is significant in terms of economics as it shows a pronounced divergence beginning around 1979. In other words, as an example according to the graph, if a family built 2 bicycles a week and was paid $50 in 1979, they built 6 bicycles a week in 2011 and made only a little more income. Have a look at the graph. This is highly relevant in terms of economics and has been studied. The tract housing photo isn't real interesting but many Americans live in this type of housing so I don't have a significant objection to it. -- Somedifferentstuff (talk) 19:13, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

You're assuming the same "family" was making bikes in 1979 and 2011, and at roughly the same income level, ignoring that the individuals making up each quintile have changed over the years, as has the manufacturing process. If the process is more mechanized now, then one would expect greater productivity with labor being cheaper per unit, greatly benefiting consumers. There's no reason to assume income and productivity would or should necessarily mirror each other indefinitely. VictorD7 (talk) 22:26, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

• This entire discussion misses the forest for the trees here. This article is meant to be an overview article on the country in question, and ALL of these items represents a level of detail which is not normally expected in an overview article such as this. No one is arguing per se that Wikipedia shouldn't cover these topics at all, just that this article may not be the appropriate place for them. By putting such detail into this article, it throws off the balance by presenting far too much detail in an article of this type. It's WP:UNDUE purely because this specific article can't be long enough to present a complete picture of these highly detailed subtopics, so by presenting single surveys, or studies or whatever in this article, it puts the perspective of THOSE specific surveys into too much prominence. Those surveys can be covered in more appropriate detail in other articles at Wikipedia. They just don't belong here. --Jayron32 04:27, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Non-constructive back-and-forth

This is exactly what I've been saying this whole time, and most editors agree. But there are one or two people here who absolutely insist on turning this article into their political soapbox (most likely wanting to take advantage of its high visibility), and cannot distinguish between info appropriate for this summary article and details more fit for main articles. Just a month ago, this article was even more saturated with excessive detail and has seen a net improvement since then when much of it was removed, but the fight against the editor(s) who initially opposed their removal continues, and people like myself are forced to stay vigilant so details aren't gradually re-added. Cadiomals (talk) 04:49, 9 December 2013 (UTC) For versions of "most" which are currently less than 50%. Again, counteracting a disinformation campaign is not soapboxing; it is the opposite of soapboxing. EllenCT (talk) 08:02, 9 December 2013 (UTC) Income inequality isn't just a distinguishing characteristic of the United States, there is evidence that it is affecting the U.S. more than anywhere else, and the U.S. in turn is dragging the whole world down because it's the largest economy. So, I see this as a conflict between WP:COMPREHENSIVE for salient facts and WP:SUMMARY for irrelevant details. Has anyone presented evidence that income inequality is not a distinguishing characteristic of the United States, or that it is worse in any other OECD country, or that it isn't affecting the entire world economy? EllenCT (talk) 08:02, 9 December 2013 (UTC) Income inequality is higher in the OECD countries of Mexico, Chile, and Turkey, and even higher in many non-OECD countries, while growing inequality is a problem that plagues almost all countries. So it is far from a distinguishing characteristic, you just like to constantly compare the US to the EU. But once again, that's besides the point. Income, poverty, and wealth as well as a few other sections have reached their peak in terms of appropriate detail. All important summary facts in I, P, and W are already covered, including over a paragraph's worth of info on inequality and an image, all of which cover the growing divide and provides statistics on wealth distribution in appropriate summary style. You seem to have poor judgment when it comes to distinguishing between salient and excessive details as you initially opposed all removals of content under the argument that all of it was crucial for this article, until consensus proved to be overwhelmingly against you. So it should be no surprise that we ought to be wary of any more additions you try to make. If you want to write a treatise on why income inequality is ruining this country feel free to try that in Income inequality in the United States. Not here. Cadiomals (talk) 12:26, 9 December 2013 (UTC) Are you comparing the pre-tax US Gini index to the Gini index of the other countries after tax transfers? Why do you think I compare the US to the EU, constantly or otherwise? Why do you constantly call my attempts to clean up after the editor who can't decide whether corporations pass their taxes on to their customers immature? If you were mature, you would be helping instead of postulating that the only way to return to good article status is the frozen imposition of the status quo and censorship of the most controversial issues in recent national political debates. See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil isn't the creed of a mature editor. EllenCT (talk) 14:08, 10 December 2013 (UTC) Stop lying about corporate incidence and other stuff, Ellen. Your own source refuted you. This has been about cleaning up your messes. VictorD7 (talk) 19:15, 10 December 2013 (UTC) I'm not lying, I'm citing the peer reviewed literature reviews (Table 1, page 17, 57-75%.) At this rate, you might find your fifth non-peer reviewed source saying customers bear 0% of corporate taxes by the end of February. Why some editors see your amateur hour garbage as worthy counterpoint to careful simulations and empirical studies is beyond me. But I'm not worried because you've already said you think corporations pass their taxes on to consumers, so all I have to do is point out the endless stream of falsehoods you produce while you willingly harbor the contradiction. EllenCT (talk) 06:13, 11 December 2013 (UTC) I wonder if all could agree to taxing all income alike, zero-10% corporate tax, zero tax on profits reinvested or increasing employee wages, and 50% rate on all profit taken in stock speculation, that is from stock sold within 18 months of purchase? Oh, well, maybe not, that is not sourced to any top-300 think tank, but let's stop calling one another liars. It hurts my ears. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 09:14, 11 December 2013 (UTC) You've been caught in numerous lies, from your infamous covert edit attempt under the misleading "Nazi" edit summary to your repeatedly debunked claims about my position on corporate incidence. In this case your pertinent dishonesty is pretending that "corporate incidence" accounts for the massive discrepancy between your graph and multiple reliable sources, when your own graph source (the non-peer reviewed source you've been fighting so hard to include) explicitly states that it attributes the "very progressive" tax to shareholders, just as the CBO and other sources do, and that "corporate leaders" who argue otherwise are incorrect. Even the TPC paper you just linked to examines investor versus labor incidence (not "consumers" as you've been previously arguing), surveys what few empirical studies exist on the topic (which disagree with each other), and concludes that "This analysis has shown that the corporate tax remains a generally progressive aspect of the tax code, regardless of the incidence assumption....Furthermore because the corporate income tax is small relative to other tax sources, assumptions about corporate tax incidence have little effect on the overall progressivity of the tax code." BTW, that same TPC attributes 100% of corporate incidence to investors. You've presented no tax incidence charts that don't attribute most or all to investors. Since you've been here I and others have had to repeatedly explain basic concepts to you, correct your atrocious reading comprehension, tolerate your trolling, and unravel your blizzards of drivel. You're all soapboxing enthusiasm, but you're not educated and/or bright enough to grasp the issues you preach on. You wrecked the article, and it's taken a lot of work to clean up your messes. VictorD7 (talk) 19:33, 11 December 2013 (UTC) Can we cease this pointless back and forth for now please? You guys seem to be oblivious to the fact that you've been going around in circles recycling the same things this whole time, which is why if this article were left to you guys it would not move forward at all. Like the old saying, if you have nothing new and constructive to add at this point, don't bother saying anything at all. Time to move on. Cadiomals (talk) 21:00, 11 December 2013 (UTC) I'm not oblivious to that. If the article was left to Ellen and any other individual (including you) it wouldn't improve. I agree about it being long past time to move on, but if she continues to post falsehoods I'll continue to refute them, lest casual readers be misled by unchallenged BS. There's already been too much of that in recent weeks. VictorD7 (talk) 21:09, 11 December 2013 (UTC) You seem to not care that she has been posting the same "falsehoods" and you have been posting the same "refutations" about the tax stuff every time it's brought up. Also, audacious but more than true, I single-handedly catalyzed the clean-up of much of this article. Before, you and others were just piling on more and more excessive detail. Sorry, but your idea of "improving" the article was heaping on more biased information which you believed would counteract other already excessive and biased information, instead of subtracting it per WP:SS. Even though you agreed with most of my goals, you were unable to see the real underlying problems on your own, otherwise you would have acted on them long before. Few of your 240 edits to this article (more than most others) have been subtractions of excessive information, so I'm doubtful that this article would have truly "improved" if left to you. That's all I have to say before I start going around in circles again myself. Cadiomals (talk) 23:15, 11 December 2013 (UTC) If not for the noise generated by me standing up to this crap, Ellen and her cohorts would have run roughshod over this article, bloating it into a totally one sided propaganda platform stuffed with countless low quality edits, with you off whistling contently somewhere and occasionally making minor lede tweaks. So stuff your attitude. I should be accepting your gratitude. WP:NPOV and article quality matter too, not just length. My goal was to resist what was happening and slow it down long enough to cultivate opposition, getting as many observers to finally get off the bench as possible. I successfully drew you in. You admitted to not even reading most of Ellen's recent edits closely and sure as hell aren't qualified to judge mine (especially without specifics), but at least you served your purpose in helping to stop what was happening. Just keep your glasses on when commenting. Make sure your vague claptrap and self righteous posturing are pointed in the proper direction. VictorD7 (talk) 23:50, 11 December 2013 (UTC) You have one of the highest number of edits here at 240; instead of piling on more excessive biased information to counteract other excessive biased info, you could have simply removed it under WP:SS and WP:UNDUE. I agree that your ruckus drew my attention, but is that really something to be proud of, when everything I did is everything you could have done yourself? Like arranging an RFC for outside editors to comment on the bloating and pov of certain sections and thus gathering definitive consensus. Instead you chose to label everyone who disagrees with you a leftist liberal socialist, a great way to make people more receptive to your concerns. In short, you could have done everything yourself in a better, more civilized way, and it wouldn't have taken until November for many problems to be fixed, by me. I won't be replying to this discussion anymore lest I hypocritically draw myself into the pointless back-and-forth too, and I'll go ahead and collapse it also because it's nonconstructive. Cadiomals (talk) 01:11, 12 December 2013 (UTC) More blind nonsense from you. Yeah I've got a lot of edits here. So? That was sort of my point. I wish I hadn't had to do your work for you. And no, I tried removing inappropriate material, only to be repeatedly reverted by the same 2-4 posters who were simply bypassing the Talk Page process. Where the hell were you then? Where were you when I was gone for a whole month and griffin was spamming low quality edits on an almost daily basis the whole time? No one was paying attention. There needed to be someone other me involved, and the first such poster ended up being you. Don't kid yourself, without my support your streamlining effort would have crashed and burned. I had to directly support your edits multiple times, RFC notwithstanding. The article needed involved, extended participation, not just driveby TP commentary. And no, I didn't label "everyone who disagrees" with me a "leftist liberal socialist". That's an idiotic thing for you to say. I accurately labeled a few diehards causing this mess "leftist", because they are, but more importantly they weren't good faith editors receptive to reason, as you discovered and pointed out yourself, so it didn't matter what they were called. Finally, all my edits, even my counterpoints, were perfectly legitimate items that improved the article. You haven't articulated any specific problems with them. That's more of the vague, posturing claptrap you keep spouting but can't back up the way I can when I critique something. In fact I checked out the 2008 version on the day it received "good" standing, and noticed that, despite being much shorter, it actually contained many of the same items I've either personally added (or apparently re-added) over the last year or suggested adding (e.g. cancer survival rates, uninsurance breakdown, defense spending/GDP to balance the contrived SIPRI presentation, etc.). There were some bad things too, but overall the article was better then than now, and certainly than it was in early 2012. You did help on balance, but things would have gone a lot smoother if you had actually paid attention to the details, at least after you got involved. If you or others had done so earlier, I wouldn't have had to create an account in the first place, much less go to all this effort over the past couple of months. You're welcome. VictorD7 (talk) 01:48, 12 December 2013 (UTC) Jayron may have misunderstood my effort at lightening up the Victor-Ellen show as soapbox of my own. My point was I object to name calling, and especially the repeated use of "lie" for "mistaken" or "misunderstands" -- name calling shows a lack of WP: ASSUME GOOD FAITH. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 12:23, 13 December 2013 (UTC) I don't use such language lightly, but in this case it's apt. Bad faith has been repeatedly demonstrated over an extended period of time. Ellen's "mistakes" have been repeatedly corrected in ways she refuses to respond to, only for her to repeat them elsewhere. That many of these "mistakes" are false claims about me, and that she's prone to suggesting admin sanctions like banning me when she becomes frustrated that I'm an impediment to her agenda (like today in her section below), make a swift and clear response all the more important. VictorD7 (talk) 19:50, 13 December 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

Teen declines in reading, math and science

PISA scores released today are very disappointing. U.S. 15 year-olds dropped from 25th to 31st internationally in math, 20th to 24th in science, and 11th to 21st in reading since 2009. How should the article reflect this? EllenCT (talk) 10:53, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Why should it? We have subsidiary articles for minutiae like this. I'm not aware (I could be wrong) of any other country article that touts how smart or dumb its students are. We don't need to include every possible thing about the U.S. in this. --Golbez (talk) 13:35, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I don't think it's minutiae, I think it's central to the future economic and social viability of the nation. EllenCT (talk) 14:10, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

At the absolute most, I suppose the article could note the rankings as they are, and not make any note of the shift. That's how you could do it - simply say "According to one study, students in the U.S. rank 31st in math etc etc". No further commentary is needed unless it can be conclusively tied to a particular policy. --Golbez (talk) 16:27, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

Hard to gauge comparisons. Many nations split student populations to study Algebra at age 14, tracking college bound for Algebra classes, and dropping those destined for trade school, whereas many U.S. states require Algebra for an unmodified high school diploma for all students, regardless of academic potential. Poor states are included in U.S. statistics, poor Chinese provinces in the west and north are not formally included in official "national" tallies. U.S. engineers used to score lower than British right out of college, then higher five years later because of the continuing education from an "education for life" work ethic to stay current in their field. I'd like to see something of academic scholarship in a controlled study, rather than merely reposting AP headlines. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:59, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

After the sentence in the Education section "The US spends more on education per student than any nation in the world" we could add "Despite this, American students tend to lag behind other OECD countries on international measures of mathematics, science and reading proficiency" and attach the sources. That is the absolute most I would be willing to support in mentioning this. International comparisons of educational achievements are already debatable topics, as TheVirginiaHistorian articulated. Cadiomals (talk) 01:43, 4 December 2013 (UTC)

Here is a link to the report. I think we should mention how U.S. students rank internationally. However, I think that any commentary should be left to other articles. This is not a new story btw. Educational achievement in other countries has been improving since WW2 to the extent that they are catching up with or exceeding the U.S. TFD (talk) 20:23, 3 December 2013 (UTC)

I agree with the replies above and ask that the recommended edit be made. EllenCT (talk) 10:13, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

The template asks for a complete and specific description. Please state the specific phrase you want added to the article. --Golbez (talk) 13:14, 6 December 2013 (UTC)

Not done for now: Agreed - we need the exact text you want included, complete with references, and the exact text you want it replaced with. Please reactivate the {{edit protected}} template when you have an agreement on the exact wording to be used. Best — Mr. Stradivarius ^{♪ talk ♪} 01:13, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Golbez, why do you think the change in ranking is less noteworthy than the absolute rank? The absolute rank will change over time, but the drop from 11th to 21st in reading among OECD countries from 2009 to 2013 will remain true without needing to be updated to maintain accuracy. EllenCT (talk) 05:05, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Because it says nothing as to whether or not it was because the U.S. got worse, or the rest of the world simply got better. --Golbez (talk) 05:11, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

Fair enough. Which facts from [12] do you think are most appropriate to include? EllenCT (talk) 05:15, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

And to add to my previous comment, it also doesn't include the degree. Let's say the U.S. dropped ten spots, but the distance between the top and bottom of those ten spots was smaller than the distance to the next spot down. In other words, a very tiny improvement could cause a massive change in ranking. I'm not saying that's the case here; I'm saying, it's a potential interpretation without all the data, and we aren't going to give all the data here. --Golbez (talk) 05:20, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

"Which facts ... do you think are most appropriate to include?" – Read my response above. That is the absolute most I think is appropriate to add to the Education section. Also read Virginia's response. We cannot go too deeply into a single set of data by a single organization, especially since there are factors involved that make it debatable. Cadiomals (talk) 07:07, 7 December 2013 (UTC)

I think we should state the basic facts. "According to ............. in 2012, U.S. 15 year-olds ranked 31st in math, 24th in science, etc. Somedifferentstuff (talk) 02:39, 8 December 2013 (UTC)

Why mention just one stat from one organization when there are other organizations with similar stats? If we made a more general statement it could better encompass a broader range of sources. Besides, the stats the OECD came up with are already debatable given that methods, selection, and education systems vary amongst different countries. For example, the educational achievement in Shanghai is not representative of China as a whole, especially its less developed provinces which are not tested. Meanwhile, the US tests all students and gives free secondary education to all, while many countries require you be accepted to such schools. A more general statement could potentially allow us to provide more sources. Cadiomals (talk) 12:44, 9 December 2013 (UTC)

Proposal

I propose including the U.S. results as both relative and absolute scores, in that order, and also noting the changes in public school class sizes over the past several decades. Perhaps with a graph. EllenCT (talk) 01:24, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

1-2 sentences max on US international education rankings? Sure why not. I had already expressed my agreement with that. Noting changes in public school class sizes? A random detail with zero relevance to this article. Perhaps with a graph? Not enough room. Cadiomals (talk) 09:22, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Why do you call the change in class sizes random and irrelevant? EllenCT (talk) 03:08, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

And let's get the proposal wording here first for feedback before you actually add it to the article. VictorD7 (talk) 09:55, 29 December 2013 (UTC)

Class size is key, the literature shows best at 1:15-18 in high school -- teacher to pupil in the classroom, excluding administrators, bus drivers and cafeteria staff. The richest prep schools with tuitions higher than private university could teach in amphitheaters or in classes of five, but they teach in classes of 15-18 for best results with the best students. Federal law caps special ed classes at 9-12. Class sizes are not random and irrelevant, they are key to understanding the context of the educational setting, -- an indicator of the seriousness with which a society takes the enterprise. Class size twice the recommended size would indicate a society only about half serious. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 06:41, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

That's all well and good, I agree that class size is important, and such info would do fine in Education in the United States, but the question continues to be whether it is a level of detail appropriate for this article alone. I actually took the time just now to visit the the Education sections of several good and featured country articles and found absolutely no details on class size within any of them. Surprisingly a few of those featured articles don't even have dedicated Education sections, which I found odd because I thought that would be one of the essential sections. See for yourself. As such I think it is safe to say that details on class size are simply not salient enough to merit inclusion in this article, though they are welcome in any article dedicated to US education. The continued clean-up and tightening of this article (which you have so far contributed greatly to) to conform to at least Good standards involves such judgment. Cadiomals (talk) 07:52, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Okay, concur, Education in the United States it should be. Ellen has mentioned before the importance of touching on major items important in American political campaigns today. Looking at other country articles could be an alternate guideline for including material. But then, looking at other republics such as France, the lede includes French citizen islanders apart from metropolitan France, with fundamental constitutional protections and representation in the National Assembly in the French national tradition . . . I'll wait. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 08:49, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

You are absolutely right about class sizes, which have far more to do with the economic viability of the nation than e.g. sports, which gets a huge section. If you were to include information about the increase from about 20 to 30 since the 50's, what would you say and which sources would you use? It is far better to make the improvement you know is best and then compromise from the moral high ground than capitulate to the demands of deletionists and whitewashers up front. EllenCT (talk) 22:37, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Well, we are trying to shorten the country article 'United States' within the general framework of other country articles. But I know you are right to emphasize class size as a key metric and I know it should be the subject of a sourced section at 'Education in the United States', maybe in the curriculum subsection. As it is now there is only one reference to class size discussing public v. private schools. That is the article most in need of augmentation on the class-size subject.

Unfortunately I've given away my educational library at retirement for the use of my colleagues and I miss institutional subscription base for research. But journal publications out of education departments at Harvard, UVA and William and Mary support class size data for high schools that I referred to over the past ten years. The numbers are replicated and without much variance. A librarian should be able to connect you to a source online with a current meta-data study. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 01:25, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I am well aware of the meta-analyses on the subject of the past decades. Sadly, it takes more than secondary peer reviewed sources to improve this article, it takes the resolve and confidence of those who would expose the truth in the face of politically motivated attempts by the rich to hide it from the poor who stand to benefit. EllenCT (talk) 03:29, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Yep, that’s why including “native-born American” islanders (U.S. Census, p.1, n.1) in the lede is important, --- it will not harm the domestic sugar cartel enabled by the Insular Cases one bit. We know by U.S. Code 28 U.S.C. § 3002, “State” in U.S. statutory law “means any of the several States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the Commonwealth of the Northern Marianas, or any territory or possession of the United States. And we know from the political science scholar Bartholomew Sparrow, the US has always had territories… “At present, the US includes the Caribbean and Pacific territories, [DC] and of course the fifty states.” (Levinson and Sparrow, 2005, p.232). But somehow WP cannot say, "The U.S. federal republic includes 50 states, DC and five populated territories.[n]" There are no counter-sources, but I must wait. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:13, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

Better textual descriptions of economic inequality

Currently, all the article says about income inequality is "The rise in the share of total annual income received by the top 1 percent, which has more than doubled from 9 percent in 1976 to 20 percent in 2011, has had a significant impact on income inequality,[358] leaving the United States with one of the widest income distributions among OECD nations.[359][360]", citing sources from 2013, 2005, and 2007, respectively. I propose updating and expanding that with summaries of:

1. "Changes in capital gains and dividends were the largest contributor to the increase in the overall income inequality. Taxes were less progressive in 2006 than in 1996, and consequently, tax policy also contributed to the increase in income inequality between 1996 and 2006. But overall income inequality would likely have increased even in the absence of tax policy changes." --Hungerford, Thomas L. (December 29, 2011). Changes in the Distribution of Income Among Tax Filers Between 1996 and 2006: The Role of Labor Income, Capital Income, and Tax Policy (Report 7-5700/R42131). Washington, D.C.: Congressional Research Service. Retrieved 1 January 2014.
2. "The average increase in real income reported by the bottom 90 percent of earners in 2011, compared with 1966, if measured at one inch, would extend almost five miles for the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent." --Johnston, David Cay (February 25, 2013). "Income Inequality: 1 Inch to 5 Miles". TaxAnalysts.com. Retrieved 1 January 2014.
3. "Single black and Hispanic women have a median wealth of $100 and $120 respectively; the median for single white women is $41,500." --Lifting as We Climb: Women of Color, Wealth, and America’s Future (PDF). Oakland, California: Insight Center for Community Economic Development. Spring 2010. Retrieved 1 January 2014.

I understand that space is tight in such a large article, but some or all of these would inform readers more accurately about the true economic condition of the US than what we have now, and therefore would be well worth hundreds of extra bytes. This is the most important issue facing the U.S. according to a recent economics Nobel winner. EllenCT (talk) 14:21, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

Removed patronizing personal attacks without discussion of improving the quoted excerpt
The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it.
First I read #1 and thought, here we go again. Then I read #2 and now I think you must be joking. At this point I'm having a very hard time taking you seriously or assuming your suggestions are in good faith. Can you take this stuff to Talk:Income inequality in the United States and leave us alone here at Talk:United States, please? The bottom line is the Income, poverty, and wealth section is probably going to be tightened further in the future (and possibly renamed). What we have on income inequality now is a perfectly concise summary. If readers want to learn more about it they will read dedicated sources or WP articles, and that's that. Please stop keeping us on these issues when most of us want to move on. Look at the most recent RFC and you will see you have already been shot down on your past suggestions. The only thing I would possibly support is a brief mention that income tends to be divided along racial lines, which I think should displace your stupid retirement savings sentences. Otherwise, no matter how important you say they are, this is not the right article for your kind of proposals and I'm wondering when, if ever, you will realize that. Another user brought this up and I completely agree: almost all your edits are tendentious. Cadiomals (talk) 18:26, 1 January 2014 (UTC)

I did make a suggestion. It's called not adding the first two because they are inappropriate for this article, and probably adding something along the lines of the third one; except instead of focusing on women it should be a brief mention of race in general, and if added it should displace your pointless and out-of-place stats on retirement savings. Also, I don't make such accusations lightly, but given your history (not just in this article) it would be quite difficult at this point not to label your edits and suggestions as tendentious. It's the same every time you bring this topic up, and it's really been enough. Sorry if you don't like this clear reality pointed out for other editors to be wary of. Cadiomals (talk) 06:37, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

Why omit women? Why do you disagree, with Forbes of all sources, about the impacts of the retirement savings crisis? You were saying that you don't think editors should be warned about other editors' abuses, but somehow my persistence against someone trying to use non-peer reviewed sources which contradict the peer reviewed secondary sources to push his political point of view is wearing you out? If you don't want me to complain about such editing abuses, then why are you complaining about my attempt to present an accurate representation of the economy? In what universe would pointing out inaccurate POV pushing be better than making improvements? I simply do not understand your reasoning. EllenCT (talk) 12:32, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

This article is very large in scope, so if you want to include points about differences in wealth by race, wouldn't it be better to broaden it slightly? I think it's appropriate to point out that racial disparities, but focusing on women is missing part of the bigger point. There's a lot of literature out there on income and wealth gaps by race.Mattnad (talk) 17:31, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree, we need slightly more text on this. But there are some concern trolls pretending to want more accuracy but continuously resorting to attacks who are backing up the people willing to try to cherry pick from less reliable sources. EllenCT (talk) 03:52, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

When did I ever say I "don't think editors should be warned about other editors' abuses"? Please quote me directly on that, otherwise it's a fallacy. Your complaints about VictorD7 were inappropriate for this Talk page and I advised you to contact an admin or take it somewhere more appropriate instead, and you did, didn't you? And you ended up shooting yourself in the foot by exposing your own history of abuses. I also never said to omit women, I said to include the general population by race, men and women, which is more broad and neutral. I don't understand your reasoning either, because after being shot down repeatedly by consensus you keep coming back with the same kinds of suggestions, which have not been considered by the majority of editors to be improvements to this article. Most others would have taken the hint by now. If all you're going to do is build straw men and repeat your usual "arguments" I won't be replying to you anymore on this thread. Cadiomals (talk) 18:18, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

You personally and repeatedly removed my warnings about VictorD7's continual attempt to cherry pick non-peer reviewed sources against my peer reviewed WP:SECONDARY sources. If your complaints about how you don't have enough patience to deal with that are appropriate, then why weren't my original warnings? You are welcome to enumerate whatever "history of abuses" you think I have on my talk page, but otherwise you should remove or at least strike such personal attacks. Should you wish to actually discuss the topic at hand to try to improve the article, then please let me know why you think describing the plight of minorities in general would be better or worse than describing the plight of minority women. EllenCT (talk) 03:52, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

For the record, Ellen's claims about me and that topic are completely false, and were systematically debunked by me and other editors on the Talk Page she linked to earlier. Far from cherry-picking, I used every source available, including the ones she linked, to refute her position. Even those who share her politics don't agree with her. I would appreciate it if she stopped invoking my name in this ad hominem diversion from substance. VictorD7 (talk) 06:14, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

VictorD7 has still been unable to find a single peer-reviewed source agreeing with his newfound belief that corporations pass 0% of their taxes to their customers, and now he doesn't want his name associated with the fact that the several sources he did find saying so were all not peer reviewed. I will not shut up about this until an apology makes it to my talk page along with the answers to the 11 questions that VictorD7 still refuses to answer. EllenCT (talk) 06:33, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Please stop peddling falsehoods, Ellen, particularly off topic ones. ([13]) I won't hold my breath waiting for your apology, or for you to find a single source supporting your claims about "consumers". VictorD7 (talk) 08:39, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Replacing your savings segment with a sentence breaking down median income by race (not necessarily in the same place) might be acceptable (though it'd mean this article is really selective about the racial breakdowns it includes and omits), though it should be sourced by a relatively neutral reference like the Census. I oppose adding the gender breakdown. That's a partisan talking point and if we added a nominal breakdown we'd need to add contextual info like this study showing that the "wage gap" almost entirely disappears when variables like qualifications, hours worked, and children are controlled for. Bloating the article further with new point/counterpoint stuff would probably be going in the wrong direction. I certainly oppose convoluted, cherry-picked presentations of niche demographics. I'll also note that wealth is a shakier measurement than income (because it's harder to measure), and we'd need to verify your last source's claims anyway. It's from a liberal advocacy group that lobbies for racially discriminatory finance legislation in favor of "people of color" and is so unnotable that it apparently has no Wikipedia article. That my perusal of its website found most its links busted wasn't encouraging. VictorD7 (talk) 06:14, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I am interested in the opinions of those who do not use non-peer reviewed sources to try to push their political opinions into articles, and therefore I disregard VictorD7's opinions. EllenCT (talk) 06:33, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

So based on your logic I should disregard all your future proposals and opinions in the future streamlining of this article? It is ironic that you would accuse someone else of "trying to push their political opinions" when, unlike you, Victor has not proposed or wrongfully attempted any insertions of content for the past two months, while you have tried at every turn, forcing a number of RfC's that have all turned out against you. I would prefer non-tendentious editors who actually know what kind of content is appropriate for this summary article, so I ought to ignore and disregard Ellen's opinions, except that would be unfair and against Wikipedia's behavioral guidelines.

Also in response to your above reply, describing inequalities with minorities rather than just minority women would be infinitely better because it is inclusive, covers the topic more broadly and may actually be appropriate for this article, not to mention a mountain of well-known reliable sources already exist for such a subject, rather than the more obscure ones you've chosen to cherry-pick. Cadiomals (talk) 08:28, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

What is your specific proposal for improvement? EllenCT (talk) 02:59, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

edit. Independence and expansion - part 1.

edit. Independence and expansion - part 1 - the first two paragraphs. Proposal:

The American Revolution was the first successful colonial war of independence against a European power. Americans had developed an ideology of "republicanism" that held government rested on the will of the people as expressed in their local legislatures. They demanded their rights as Englishmen, “no taxation without representation”. The British insisted on administering the empire through Parliament, and the conflict escalated into the American Revolutionary War.[74] The Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence, on July 4, 1776, proclaiming that humanity is created equal in their inalienable rights. That date is now celebrated annually as America's Independence Day. In 1777, the Articles of Confederation established a weak government that operated until 1789.[76]

Britain recognized the independence of the United States following their defeat at Yorktown.[77] In the peace treaty of 1783, American sovereignty was recognized from the Atlantic coast west to the Mississippi River. Nationalists led the Philadelphia Convention of 1787 in writing the United States Constitution, and it was ratified in state conventions in 1788. The federal government was reorganized into three branches for their checks and balances in 1789. The Bill of Rights, forbidding federal restriction of personal freedoms and guaranteeing a range of legal protections, was adopted in 1791.[78]

end proposal for the first two paragraphs. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 09:28, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

That looks good to me so far. Should there be something about checks and balance of power, possibly tacked onto the "three branches" sentence? It may not be vital since it's mentioned lower in the Gov. section, but then so is the Bill of Rights, and the Montesquieuesque concern was a major force at the Constitutional Convention, so it wouldn't be inappropriate to mention here. VictorD7 (talk) 18:42, 2 January 2014 (UTC)

insert. done, with "... government was reorganized into three branches for their checks and balances in 1789." TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 07:58, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

"...proclaiming that people are created equal," without quotes, please! EllenCT (talk) 01:29, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Insert. okay, "...proclaiming humanity is created equal in (their)(its) inalienable rights", without quotes or quoting either phrase. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 07:33, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually I prefer using the actual quoted words if we're saying what they were "proclaiming", but maybe it's not a huge deal either way. Should we spend a few words mentioning what those inalienable rights are though? Most notably life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness? Or would that be frivolous space consumption? VictorD7 (talk) 19:14, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm very conscious here at 'United States' for this history section to be very abbreviated, not drifting into territory better treated in History of the United States, so I wrote out all references to presidents by name, for instance, not because they are not important, but only because the main points can be covered without naming them per se. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:20, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

You should explain how your proposal differs from what is already there and why the changes should be made. Incidentally, if you do not use quotes, then you should use modern spelling, viz., "inalienable." I doubt that the term "nationalist" would be applicable, and the current reading that talks of the "ideology of republicanism" is questionable. TFD (talk) 05:20, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

The proposal is shorter because the article is too long. "Nationalist" is sourced by the original contributor, that's how they are characterized in the literature in Wood, Maier and elsewhere, and you offer no sources for an alternative. Wikipedia explains "ideology of republicanism" more fully for you at the subsidiary article linked there in blue at "ideology of republicanism" in the proposal, i.e. Republicanism in the United States. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 07:33, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

The source uses the word "nationalist" in a non-standard way to mean people who wanted a national government. Wood saw republicanism as only one of two ideologies - the other one was liberalism. We need to be careful in phrasing. TFD (talk) 08:27, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Wood says the national government was "created" in the 1790s (2011, p.255) and the Anti-Federalists claimed with some justification that they were the real federalists. Instead of parsing which group were the 'real' federalists here, as we are constrained by an encyclopedic style, we should use the standard way of referring to --- those who innovate and impose a national government ---, as the "nationalists", just as we find both a) in common usage by a general readership and b) in the literature. You have not offered a source to justify altering the standard meaning of 'nationalist' in the existing text. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 14:04, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Is it okay if you added a quick mention of George Washington being unanimously elected the first president in 1788 at the end of the second paragraph? I don't think it would hurt as he of course left a major influence on how govt was conducted and set many precedents as first president, one of many being the two term tradition, which should maybe be mentioned. Cadiomals (talk) 22:00, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

My instinct is to agree with Cadiomals about mentioning Washington, since he explains the name of the capital and a state and was crucial to nation's formation and development in many ways (it'd be bizarre for this article not to mention him at all), but I'm curious to see how TVH's entire History draft unfolds without presidential mention first. I suppose we could revisit the Washington issue later. VictorD7 (talk) 19:31, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

I'd agree if one were to be mentioned, Washington would be the one, indispensable man, as Flexner put it. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 09:09, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

edit. Independence and expansion - part 2.

edit 'Independence and expansion, paragraphs 3 and 4 into one. proposal:

Although the federal government criminalized the international slave trade in 1808,[79] after 1820 cultivation of the highly profitable cotton crop exploded in the Deep South, and along with it the slave population.[82] The Second Great Awakening, beginning about 1800, converted millions to evangelical Protestantism. In the North it energized multiple social reform movements, including abolitionism, [83] in the South, Methodists and Baptists proselytized among slave populations.[Heinemann 2007 p.197] Americans' eagerness to expand westward prompted a long series of Indian Wars.[84] The Louisiana Purchase of French-claimed territory in 1803 almost doubled the nation's size.[85] The War of 1812, declared against Britain over various grievances and fought to a draw, strengthened U.S. nationalism.[86] A series of U.S. military incursions into Florida led Spain to cede it and other Gulf Coast territory in 1819.[87]

end proposal. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 07:47, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Looks good so far. Do you remember the text of the War of 1812 segment we had a several editor consensus for that vanished mysteriously at some point? Might be a good opportunity to tweak the current sentence by removing a definitive statement that the result was a "draw", since there's disagreement. Many sources vaguely call it a draw, but some call it a British victory and some call it an American victory. I believe the old consensus sentence described the war's impact while avoiding one of those pat designations. Just a suggestion. VictorD7 (talk) 19:16, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

There is a scholarly consensus the war was a draw. Rwenonah (talk) 19:45, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

The scholarship is as I described it: many (probably most) "draw", and some saying either the British or Americans won. We aren't required to use such language; scholars say many things about the war currently not included in this article. I'm not sure how scholarly the word "draw" even is. VictorD7 (talk) 19:53, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

True. You're probably right its better to just stay away from the term. Rwenonah (talk) 19:55, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Regardless, the war did more than simply "strengthen nationalism". It stabilized borders, saw US territorial acquisition at Mobile, spurred the development of a standing, high quality professional military (at least the officer level), compelled Britain and other global nations to take the US seriously as a sovereign nation, and broke the power of Britain's Amerindian allies, clearing the way for westward expansion. Some (not all) of that was mentioned in the aforementioned old consensus version. VictorD7 (talk) 20:06, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

The war brought about every USG demand, principally the respect of US citizens on land and sea and recognition of its sovereign territory. The kidnapping of US citizens at sea with and without British accents ceased, including free whites and blacks. National citizenship is changeable. Peace came after defeating British invasions in the north and in the south and Wellington refused the American theater command. Britain relinquished their demands requiring Maine (plus) be ceded to Canada, free navigation of the Mississippi, and an independent Native buffer-state between the Ohio River and the Great Lakes to limit any US expansion along the Canadian border west of Ohio. UK finally withdrew from its forts on US soil since the 1783 Treaty of Paris, and ended its military aid to Native Nation allies.

On the other hand, Article Ten forges an alliance between UK and US to end the international slave trade, and bilateral peace commissions are set up to guarantee Canadian borders so as to end the threat of US invasion. The British sneak attack on New Orleans launched during peace negotiations failed to secure its free navigation of the Mississippi through the port of New Orleans (see Gibraltar for an example of how this would have worked out for the Americans had there been a British victory).

--- However let's stay with "a draw" for now, and walk through the entire section once to shorten it, then return to open debate on the great issues of American history later. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 20:42, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

One historian said "The war was a draw, but the United States won the negotiations".Rwenonah (talk) 20:44, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

Save the minor issue of the War of 1812 and the question I raised about G. Washington above, both parts look pretty good. All major points covered. I assume there will be a part 3 with the rest of the paragraphs. Cadiomals (talk) 21:51, 3 January 2014 (UTC)

As a first draft revision, I wrote out the named presidential references, all of them, although I know high school history teachers prepping students for the Advanced Placement tests emphasize Presidents as a way to organize chronology in the essays. I just did not think them essential in this summary encyclopedic overview of U.S. history here, versus the History of the United States, which is a different article. Part 3 appears below. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 10:54, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

Edit. Independence and expansion - part 3.

edit independence and expansion. part 3. proposal:

From 1820 to 1850, Jacksonian democracy began a set of reforms which included wider male suffrage, and it led to the rise of the Second Party System of Democrats and Whigs as the dominant parties from 1828 to 1854. The Trail of Tears in the 1830s exemplified the Indian removal policy that moved Indians into the west to their own reservations. The U.S. annexed the Republic of Texas in 1845 during a period of expansionist Manifest Destiny.[88] The 1846 Oregon Treaty with Britain led to U.S. control of the present-day American Northwest.[89] Victory in the Mexican-American War resulted in the 1848 Mexican Cession of California and much of the present-day American Southwest.[90]

The California Gold Rush of 1848–49 spurred western migration and the creation of additional western states.[91] After the American Civil War, new intercontinental railways made relocation easier for settlers, expanded internal trade and increased conflicts with Native Americans.[92] Over a half-century, the loss of the buffalo was an existential blow to many Plains Indians cultures.[93] In 1869, a new Peace Policy sought to protect Native-Americans from abuses, avoid further warfare, and secure their eventual U.S. citizenship.[94]

end proposal. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 10:30, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

"Wars of extermination" can easily be misinterpreted by a modern reader out of context. If we're replacing direct quotes from the Declaration of Independence, we should probably replace that colorful quote too with language more accurately describing the policy shift. VictorD7 (talk) 19:38, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

That is why Ulysses S. Grant's phrasing is in quotes. Would you prefer a more modern term like genocide? TFD (talk)

You mean the word that was overwhelmingly rejected by consensus here a few months ago? Nah, I'd prefer non loaded, non emotive, coherent language. And yeah, I mentioned the quotes. The deleted Declaration of Independence quotes were quotes too. VictorD7 (talk) 22:30, 4 January 2014 (UTC)

How about 'reversed the previous costly policy of wars to extermination, intending to civilize' without quotes? see revised proposal. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 00:18, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

The problem is "policy" and "extermination", since it wasn't US policy to exterminate the Amerindians, and the Grant quote was obviously hyperbole describing something he didn't want to happen in the future (a few years earlier he had laid out the Peace Policy: [14]) "To" is still problematic because Amerindian non-combatant deaths at the hands of the US military were actually quite small. Legislation to at least nominally protect Indians from white abuses long predated Grant, as did pro-assimilation sentiment, but the new "peace policy" was primarily an attempt to strengthen the largely dysfunctional and sometimes corrupt Indian relations infrastructure (e.g. more robust reservation system; replacing appointed administrative political cronies with more sincere Christian outfits), and a key shift in actual policy was to treat them as wards of the government rather than independent nations (complete with discarding the chaotic treaty process), with an eye toward "civilizing" them in the American fashion. All this was intended to minimize or eliminate future wars. How about something like this? In 1869, a new Peace Policy sought to protect Native-Americans from abuses and avoid further warfare, intending to civilize and eventually give them U.S. citizenship.[94] Or maybe the sentence should focus on the key shift from independent nations to government wards. Here's an alternative proposal: In 1869 a new Peace Policy sought to reduce warfare by treating Amerindians as federal government wards rather than independent nations, civilizing them, and eventually giving them U.S. citizenship.[94] Regardless, the current wording is misleading and should change.VictorD7 (talk) 03:44, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I took a variation of your first alternative. 'In 1869 a new Peace Policy sought to protect Native-Americans from abuses, avoid further warfare, and secure their eventual U.S. citizenship.' TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 08:04, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Thanks. VictorD7 (talk) 09:10, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Align images 'right'

I have aligned the only 'left' image to the 'right' in accordance with WP:ACCESS.

It allows access to those readers with sight disabilities, including those who are legally blind in classroom settings. Computer screen enhancers magnify text in WP articles in such a way that it can be readily followed only with all images aligned to the right margin.

For articles using the WP:ACCESS convention, the student can actively participate in group projects and in-class research available through few other formats. It is good thing at Wikipedia. Without it they are unnecessarily handicapped a) in topic searches to locate material and b) in reading speed for text comprehension, both of which are essential for real-time classroom participation with fully sighted peers. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 09:06, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

This alignment right for images necessarily places a limit for illustrations in sections of very short text. But the general rule is to align images with text, that the encyclopedia be primarily text unless the article is explicitly a gallery of images.

Alignment right makes impossible the "ears" layout of an image on each side of a center gutter of text, makes impossible left-right slalom of images with text snaking down the page --- regardless of however crafty that might appear on the browser of the composing editor. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 07:13, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Added facts deleted

At B. Fairbaim’s “added facts” edit to the article, I deleted the lengthy and undiscussed paraphrase of British convict labor found elsewhere in History of the United States at British Colonization.

It is not useful for the history section in this United States country article to mirror subsidiary history articles piecemeal in their detail. Convicts working a term until freed were a form of indentured labor encompassed in the reference found in the existing text. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 15:08, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I also reverted his Columbus "discovery" deletion for the reason given in my edit summary. It's not that I oppose his alternative wording per se, but I don't want a fallacious argument (Columbus supposedly not discovering America) to set in and possibly influence future decisions. VictorD7 (talk) 19:02, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree that the added info on British convicts is irrelevant to the overall "big picture" focus of the section. However, in terms of Columbus' "discovery" of the New World, that can and will be interpreted in different ways by our readers. For example, most of them know that Asiatic Paleo-indians were the first humans to set foot in the Americas, while many of them may even know that the Norse were the first Europeans to encounter North America; Columbus "discovered" it for Western Europe but many readers may not think of it that way at first. I can see them raising such objections on this Talk page in the future, so I think "first voyage" is the most neutral and clear-cut wording to prevent any potential confusion. Cadiomals (talk) 01:23, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

We might say 'indentures and convicts' -- were the editor to collegially join the Talk page for a discussion, especially considering Georgia's unique beginnings, but convicts are a small percentage overall, and otherwise not worth inclusion at this summary level. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 07:18, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

As I indicated, I can live with the wording. But hopefully those people understand why we bother mentioning Columbus at all, because I guarantee that in this age of dumbed down curricula and deemphasis on history many don't. Addressing the opening words' own purpose in the section was one advantage of using the completely accurate "discovery". VictorD7 (talk) 03:23, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Tag at demographics.religion

At 'demographics.religion', the tag reads, This section's factual accuracy may be compromised due to out-of-date information. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please update this article to reflect recent events or newly available information. (March 2013).

This seems to be no more than a drive-by disruptive speculation, with no discussion here of the promised new data. Without the advertised discussion of the current sources available, I'll remove the tag. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 15:34, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually the religious demographics info has been of concern to me because the data has not been updated since 2007, 7 years ago; there is even one statistic from as far back as 2002, and as many know America's religious demographics are not static. If someone could find a more updated source (preferably from the same one, Pew) it would be better. If not we will have to wait till newer info is released. Cadiomals (talk) 17:42, 5 January 2014 (UTC)

Therefore the tag can be removed until there is more up-to-date information.

We are reporting the best information to our knowledge at this time, there is no annual report to my knowledge, I have seen Time use seven-year old data for a religious article, and when the less frequent religious demographic studies are taken, we will post them as editors with this area of interest make their contributions.

Or the tag is an invitation for an editor with the interest to make a more current contribution? Tag or no tag? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 08:47, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Talking About Languages

I was looking at the language chart that said that about 80 percent of Americans spoke English. I have to wonder whether I'm reading that wrong, because in the way im reading it theres no way it's 80 percent, it's more like 99 percent honestly. Even as a 1st language that seems off... Themane2 (talk) 02:00, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

It's referring to Language Spoken at Home, which is the standard proxy the Census uses to describe language preference. It doesn't preclude also speaking other languages. There's probably no data on how many Americans don't know a word of English; more likely you'd find surveys measuring English proficiency, which is probably another way of saying level of educational attainment. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 02:34, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

In terms of number of legal residents who can speak English, it probably is 99%, but 80% is the percent of people who speak English as a first language and only speak it at home. The remaining 20% are people who have other first languages, not people who speak other languages but don't know English. Cadiomals (talk) 02:49, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, except first language is not the same as Language Spoken at Home. The cited sources don't say anything about first language; that's a different set of statistics. My mother in law's first language is not English but everyone in her house speaks mostly English at home. --Dennis Bratland (talk) 03:56, 6 January 2014 (UTC)

Geography

The U.S. is in a geographic sense, the 50 States, the District of Columbia and outlying areas, iaw the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, Title 48, Chapter 2. Also, outlying areas includes U.S. commonwealths (2), territories (3) and minor outlying islands (9). Puerto Rico is a commonwealth. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.183.224.2 (talk) 16:54, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

True. The Supreme Court said in Insular Cases, courts could not incorporate territories politically into the U.S., and now a First District Court and Appeals Court said Congress had by the twenty-first century for Puerto Rico. The District of Columbia (DC), Puerto Rico, Northern Marianas, U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam and American Samoa have mutually agreed with Congress to citizenship broader than than held by the territory of Hawaii or the Territory of Alaska, self government in three branches, and territorial representation in Congress. All but American Samoa have organic statutes making them organically part of the U.S. by law.

However, three editors here say that once the Supreme Court labels islanders "savage", their great-grand children cannot be recognized as a part of the U.S. until that same court which gave us Plessy v. Ferguson reverses itself and proclaims them no longer savages. This, even though the Court said only Congress makes citizens, and the holding of the Insular Cases was only that a discriminatory tax regime could be established to ensure domestic sugar oligopoly, nothing about islander citizenship, only that the Court could not make them citizens.

There is an uninhabited Pacific island of coconuts which are no longer harvested as a plantation free of the protective sugar tariffs, and so deemed "incorporated" relative to the discriminatory tax regime. But I once argued that the four millions U.S. citizens represented in Congress should be included in the WP article for the United States, and got walls of text without sources opposing, although I showed primary and secondary USG sources in law as well as scholarship from legal, political science and historical scholarship to include islanders in the modern U.S. of the twenty-first century.

The three editors lost in a dispute resolution to exclude islanders last year, but an administrator asserted that since he had allowed the inclusion of islanders in the U.S., he could overturn the dispute resolution and wiki-cecede them from the U.S. on his own authority. Since the first sentence addresses the federal republic, it should read, "The United States is a federal republic consisting of 50 states, a federal district and five territories represented in Congress." But the subject is moot for now until the attention of an alternate administrator. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:52, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

"However, three editors here say that once the Supreme Court labels islanders "savage", their great-grand children cannot be recognized as a part of the U.S. until that same court which gave us Plessy v. Ferguson reverses itself and proclaims them no longer savages." OK, so you have no interest in coming to a consensus, merely insulting your fellow editors (if not their persons then their intelligence) because you disagree with them. (also, that same court also gave us Brown v. Board of Education, but no, go straight for the racism angle, because that's how we do things here apparently) --Golbez (talk) 20:08, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

insert. "Race angle" is a red herring. The three editors insist on their unsourced interpretation of Insular Cases, regardless of subsequent Congressional legislation, Presidential executive orders and federal judicial acknowledgement of Congressional political incorporation of islanders who are citizens, self governing, and represented in Congress.

There is no insult on my part. The editors chose the grounds of their original research based on the Insular Cases --- which characterize islanders as "savages" to justify withholding citizenship until Congress acted, that was their only grounds --- But that is a history irrelevant to this article lead. My point is now Congress has acted, and so the Insular Cases are superseded, despite the WP resistance by unreconstructed editors here. There are no sources to deny including islanders in the U.S. federal republic for this article as it related to the modern U.S. Excluding them is the insult. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 07:24, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Many countries in the world have outlying territories, and that is to be elaborated on in Political divisions, not detailed outright in the lead. Cadiomals (talk) 20:44, 7 January 2014 (UTC)

Agreed, although State Department reports American Samoa is the only "outlying territory" of the 'big five'. Countries which have outlying territories without representation in their national legislature exclude those territories as in U.K. and its U.K. Virgin Islands. Those with outlying territories WITH representation in their national legislature include those territories, as in France and the United States.

But the U.S. article in WP does not. There are no sources to exclude U.S. citizen islanders from the lead, --- only reference by original research to Insular Cases by the Supreme Court a century ago, which since have been superseded by Congressional law and islander referendum -- since the 1990s. In that way the article lead is more out of date than the religion section. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 07:24, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

IP, I do not know what you mean by "in a geographic sense." Under U.S. constitutional law and international law, the territories are outside the U.S., but subject to it. The U.S. Supreme Court has decided that the 5th or 14th amendments are the only parts of the U.S. constitution that apply to territories held by the U.S., including Guantanamo Bay, and the U.S. Congress may and does apply federal statutes to them. TFD (talk) 07:44, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

"Geographic sense" means the places of the United States. Guantanamo is not included. It has been U.S. practice for two hundred years to extend essential protections to territories, but some privileges inherent in states are denied to territories until statehood. Federal statutes apply to both states and territories by law, that is an unexceptional observation as all are in the federal republic, part of the U.S. --- "outside the U.S., but subject to it" refers to the states in free association with the U.S., i.e., the Marshall Islands, Micronesia and Palau.

As usual, an IP editor who would contribute has a source, U.S. Code, Title 48, Ch. 2, and TFD has none to deny the international legitimacy of the USG, and administrators will decide. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 08:16, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

Was there a point to the IP's original post here? Looking at the current text for the lead of this article, I see the United States is a federal republic consisting of 50 states, 16 territories, and a federal district. How is that in any way discordant with U.S. Code of Federal Regulations, Title 48, Chapter 2? older ≠ wiser 13:43, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

The edit that added that has been reverted. --Golbez (talk) 20:05, 8 January 2014 (UTC)

That edit is consistent with the IP source. CMD reverted it claiming there was no discussion here, and without a source himself. An administrator chose to oversee no source blanking without discussion here to overrule a sourced contribution discussed at Talk.

So we have Seqqis, IP and TVH support the sourced change, older-wiser makes no objection, and no one else opposes, unless you count TFD disruption implying Puerto Rico status is equivalent to Guantanamo, which is clearly fringe. Administrator Golbez observes islanders are excluded from the lead without discussion.

The lead which now excludes four millions who are territorial islanders and --- a) mutually U.S. citizens with three-branch self-government and territorial representation in Congress, and b) enjoying all fundamental protections and more privileges than 20th century territories of Alaska and Hawaii ---, is an unsourced insult from the fringe. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:02, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree with the decision to delete mention of the U.S Virgin Islands from the lead. However, Puerto RIco should probably be put back due to its huge population particularly in relation to some of the states, it for example has a population that is exponentially larger than Alaska. If we want to delete something from the lead it probably should be the mention of the nine unpopulated territories. Also, this sentence in the third paragraph could also go: " The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power." On a related topic, the political divisions sub-section is a mess. It currently weirdly equates the District of Columbia with a tiny unpopulated territory in the Pacific. I'm surprised no one has noticed. I'm going to delete that right now. It also gives a tiny amount of info about the political status of the populated territories. But oddly makes no mention of the political status of D.C. The positioning of the map also looks kind of weird with its huge blank spots on both sides.Lance Friedman (talk) 22:37, 9 January 2014 (UTC)

Alaska and Hawaii are only mentioned by name because they are the parts of the U.S., except Palmyra, that are not contiguous to the rest of the country. California, and many other states, are exponentially larger in population than Alaska, but are not mentioned in the lead. I do not see why we should mention Puerto Rico just because it is the most populous overseas territory any more than we should mention California because it is the most populous state. I think Palmyra should be mentioned in the article because it is part of the U.S., according to the U.S. government. TFD (talk) 00:56, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Palmyra should be noted in the article, as should all the territories; it should not, however, be noted in the intro. Even if it is part of the country, it's an exceptionally trivial part. --Golbez (talk) 07:48, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

DC is constitutionally alike the 'big five' territories in its territorial representation in Congress. But DC is considered part of the U.S. federal republic everywhere except in outdated Encyclopedia Britannicas. There DC is lumped into the same section as overseas territories because constitutionally it is not a state in the United States. Britain does not acknowledge its own overseas territories in Parliament, so Britannica does not recognize U.S. territories as a part of the U.S. though they were represented in Congress.

But British practice should not govern the U.S. article, U.S. practice should. See. U.K. Virgin Islands without representation in Parliament, a governor appointed by the Queen, and without citizenship until recently, versus U.S. Virgin Islands with territorial delegate in Congress, a popularly elected governor, and with U.S. citizenship. DC and the "five territories represented in Congress" deserve mention in the lede. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 09:52, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

A sidenote on Britannica, it has been an American-controlled encyclopaedia for over a century, and is designed for American audiences. CMD (talk) 15:14, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Unlike an outdated edition of Britannica, the source says the U.S. is more than the 50 states. Since 21st century DC and the 'big five' territories are the same in that they are not states, but alike --- in U.S. citizenship, fundamental constitutional protections, three-branch self-government, and territorial representation in Congress, --- so they should have like treatment in the lede as included in the U.S. "federal republic". TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 17:53, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

,

Does anyone have any specific proposals? I'll put one out there. There is no need to specifically mention trivial unpopulated U.S, territories in the lead. I propose the 4th sentence in the first paragraph be tweaked to read the following: "The country also has five populated U.S. Te territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean of which Puerto Rico is the most populous.Lance Friedman (talk) 18:26, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

When mention Puerto Rico, but not California, or any of the states that have larger populations? It seems like too much detail for the lead. I agree that Puerto Rico is the only territory that receives significant attention, but even then it's not as high profile as say India was in the British Empire. TFD (talk) 18:44, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

insert. India was never represented in Parliament as Puerto Rico is in Congress. Direct representation of citizens in the U.S. territorial tradition of two-hundred years is not the same as imperial rule of subjects by Britain. Seven times over fifty years only 3% Puerto Ricans vote for independence from the U.S., whereas India sought and gained independence from British empire shortly after WWII.

All U.S. citizens represented in Congress in the modern era should be represented in the lede as belonging to the U.S. There is no legitimate grounds for excluding them in the 21st century, so TFD has no source to counter the IP reference to modern U.S Code at the beginning of this thread. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:53, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually I don't think it would be a bad idea to add a single sentence to the lead that mentions the gigantic population differentials between the states such as: "Among the states California has the largest population at 38,332,521, more than 10% of the U.S. population and Wyoming has the smallest population at 582,655, a population smaller than both Puerto RIco and the District of Columbia." The huge population differential between the states is far more notable than a lot of the stuff that is currently in the lead such as info about unpopulated territories.Lance Friedman (talk) 20:38, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

There is not "a lot of the stuff that is currently in the lead such as info about unpopulated territories." The lead merely says, "The country also has five populated and nine unpopulated territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean." I would rather cut that back to say, "The country also has overseas territories in the Pacific and the Caribbean." TFD (talk) 06:35, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

American Samoa is the last “overseas territory” of the U.S. according to the U.S. sate department. TFD edit for conciseness would be inaccurate. Making no distinction by populated islanders is confounding U.S. citizens with coconuts in as fringe a way as the previous assertion that Puerto Rican commonwealth status is equivalent to Guantanamos orange jump suits.

TFD confounds states and territories. Mention Puerto Rico as a territory because it is constitutionally different from states, but larger than 20 states, and represented in Congress. Then add a note to note the four others represented in Congress and the nine uninhabited -- footnoting maintains conciseness in the narrative and accuracy in WP. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:22, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

The U.S. state department does not say American Samoa is the "last "overseas territory" of the U.S." Instead, under "Certificates of Non Citizen Nationality", it refers to the INA 1952.[15] The INA, Section 101 Definitions, says, "As used in this Act- (29) The term "outlying possessions of the United States" means American Samoa and Swains Island." TFD (talk) 20:14, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Very well, your proposed edit would be technically in error as well as fringe conflating a) uninhabited territories of coconuts and b) inhabited territories of U.S. citizens.

Citizens just like those in DC that is mentioned. Islanders in the 'big five' are a) mutually in the U.S. by local constitutional convention and referendum, b) with fundamental constitutional protections under federal courts, c) under three-branch local self-government, and d) territorial representation in Congress consistently following national practice of two hundred years.

And now some would exclude islander citizens from the U.S. federal republic in the lede because, ... unstated, unsourced POV in the face of IP reference in U.S. Code.

Three millions Puerto Rican U.S. citizens who voted in referendum again in 2012 with an 80% turnout to belong to the U.S. --- 3% voted for independence---, they amount to more than 20 states, the Puerto Rican legislature has applied for statehood. --- And they are not worthy of mention in the lede because, ... unstated, unsourced POV. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:48, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

History draft

I know y'all are passionate about this topic, but I hope it doesn't distract from or derail the unfolding of the History draft. VictorD7 (talk) 17:51, 11 January 2014 (UTC)

Which section did you want to address first? Should one or more existing sections be combined going forward? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:51, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Unlike the settlements subsections section and the other history sub-sections that have been shortened. The rest of the sections in the history section are not overly long. I would be opposed to deleting material in the rest of the history sub-sections if the reasoning for the deletion is simply to make them smaller. The only remaining size issue in the history section is that there are too many graphics in the section resulting in the 911 now awkwardly being in the geography section. I am going to delete the mayflower compact pic in an attempt to at least partially rectify this issue. Anyone looking at the overall United States article can see that the section that is currently most screwed up is the demographics section. Attention needs to be focused on that section. Some of the graphics in the section need to be deleted and there is no reason to give such a confusing and overdetailed racial break-ground of the country in the population sub-section. The current name of the subsection is not accurate. As currently written it is more a race and ethnicity subsection not a population sub- section.Lance Friedman (talk) 16:49, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually the Mayflower Compact picture has no influence on the positioning of the 9/11 picture, at least not on my computer where it has always been in the Contemporary history section. I don't know what the resolution is on your computer but no matter how much I zoom in it stays in that section. I think the only way to solve your problem is to get rid of one of the pictures in the section above it, either the cold war or civil rights image as they are the only ones that could push down the 9/11 image. It would be unusual for there to be at least one image in every section except the Settlements one. Cadiomals (talk) 17:28, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

Also, I agree that the Demographics section needs clean-up, but I also think at least one more History section needs trimming of some excess detail that doesn't fit into the big picture we are trying to paint in History. The last paragraphs in the Cold War and Civil Rights section devolve into a listing of major events under each of the last several presidents, and I'm pretty sure that falls under WP:RECENTISM. The father of this country, George Washington, is not mentioned once in the article but the last several presidents are as a result of recentism bias. We need to remove mention of specific non-pivotal events under each president and reorganize it to paint the Big Picture of the overall impact of the Cold War instead. Cadiomals (talk) 17:44, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

On my computer deleting the Mayflower pic moved the 911 pic up causing a portion of it to now be in the contemp. era subsection. Though as you point out, the main problem is that as currently positioned the two pics in the subsection above contemp. era do not fit into that subsection. Deleting one of the two pics from the article would probably be too controversial. Probably the Kerry pic in the foreign relations section should be deleted and replaced with the Reagan/Gorby pic or the two pics in the civil rights/cold war subsection simply turned into a double image. I'm open to more changes in the history section, but a lot of the remaining sections in the history section are pretty tight. Some actually might actually require modest expansion. I think the civil rights/cold war section actually needs an additional sentence mentioning the end of America's second longest war in 1975. As currently written it misleadingly makes it look like the Vietnam war ended in the 1960'sLance Friedman (talk) 18:15, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

insert. Mechanically, I think {{clear}} at the end of a sentence keeps the image above it from pushing down the page into following text. I'll give it a try. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 06:27, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

TVH, I thought you were doing the entire section, especially given your comments about dementioning the presidents. What would be the point of removing mention of the most important presidents but retaining the awful current format where all the recent ones are listed? Every remaining History section needs serious work. There are also still some outstanding quality/accuracy issues that need addressing as we proceed. Length isn't the only concern here.VictorD7 (talk) 18:33, 12 January 2014 (UTC)

The following paragraph shows the recentism I am talking about. It includes an arbitrary listing of major events under the past several presidents. Changes in taxation and spending, recessions, and scandals have happened countless times through American history and I don't view them as big picture details. The paragraph needs restructuring to mention the broader impact of the Cold War and its aftermath, as well as the rise of tensions in the Middle East that continue to affect us today.

In the 1970s, the American economy was hurt by two major energy shocks. The Nixon Administration restored normal relations with China and oversaw the beginning of a period of generally eased relations with the Soviet Union. As a result of the Watergate scandal, in 1974 Nixon became the first U.S. president to resign, to avoid being impeached on charges including obstruction of justice and abuse of power. The Carter Administration of the late 1970s was marked by the Iran hostage crisis, stagflation, and an increase of tensions with the Soviet Union following the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan. The election of Ronald Reagan as president in 1980 heralded a rightward shift in American politics,[122][123][124][125] reflected in major changes in taxation and spending priorities.[126] His second term in office brought both the Iran–Contra scandal and significant diplomatic progress with the Soviet Union.[127] The subsequent Soviet collapse ended the Cold War.[128][129][130] [131][132]

Agreed. A link to List of Presidents of the United States ought to be enough to assist readers with a presidential bent. And impeachments and scandals belong in History of the United States article rather than in this country article.

What is the practice for the 'See also' section? Does it reiterate the "Main article" and "See also" sign posts found throughout the article? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 06:36, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Religion pie chart needs updating

I updated the text in the body to the the most recent Pew Forum survey from 2012 (which is necessary because it showed notable trends), but so far the pie chart does not match because it still shows data from 2007. Someone who knows how to do these graphics should tweak it. However, since this recent survey did not expand on "other religions" (such as Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, etc) and only treated them as a broad category the "Other religions" portion of the chart may need to be expanded just to cover those. Cadiomals (talk) 20:40, 10 January 2014 (UTC)

Edit ‘civil war and reconstruction era’.

'Civil War and Reconstruction era', proposed edit:

From the beginning, inherent divisions over slavery between the North and the South in American society ultimately led to the American Civil War.[93] Initially states entering the Union alternated slave and free, keeping a sectional balance in the Senate, while free states outstripped slave states in population and in the House of Representatives. But with additional western territory and more free-soil states, tensions between slave and free states mounted with arguments over federalism and disposition of the territories, whether and how to expand or restrict slavery.[94] Beginning in December 1860, conventions in thirteen states declared secession, then formed the Confederate States of America, and the U.S. federal government maintained secession was illegal.[96]

The ensuing war was at first for Union, then after 1863 as casualties mounted, a second war aim became abolition of slavery. Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution ensured freedom for the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves,[97] made them citizens, and gave them voting rights. These Amendments lead to a substantial increase in federal power.[98] aimed at reintegrating and rebuilding the Southern states while ensuring the rights of the newly freed slaves.[100], but following the Reconstruction Era, throughout the South Jim Crow laws soon disenfranchised many African Americans.[100]‪

end proposal. This is now short enough to merge logically an abbreviated 'industrialization' section. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 07:07, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I Understand the need to mention broad themes, but the history section should not be stripped of hard facts. The civil war was by the far the bloodiest in American history: [[16]] The number of people killed as a result of the war needs to stay in the section and it should probably be added for emphasis that the number of deaths caused by the civil war was larger than all of our other wars combined. I'm pretty much against all of these proposed changes to this section. The section is already small and the proposed changes just make it even smaller and unnecessarily vague. My biggest problem with the proposed changes is that they do not even fix the worst inaccuracies of the current section. It is a gross understatement to simply say: "Jim Crow laws soon disenfranchised many African Americans" African Americans didn't merely lose the right to vote, Jim Crow laws discriminated against them on virtually every level and those laws were not even the worst aspects of southern life after the civil war. The section needs to mention that white supremacy was kept in force through violent tactics, most notably lynching - (unsigned) Lance Friedman

Before these latest proposals I was thinking about merging these sections too, but since that's apparently already been rejected (see below), this might be a good time to reconsider presidential dementioning. It's difficult to discuss the Civil War without mentioning Lincoln (though possible, as this proposal shows), and he's widely regarded as a giant in US history. I suspect cadiomals and I would have reinserted Washington at the end of this process anyway, possibly as a lone exception. If we aren't merging the sections, maybe this one should be expanded back a little to include Lincoln, especially since "Jacksonian Democracy" is still mentioned in the earlier Expansion section. We could limit overall presidential mentions to two, Washington and Lincoln (two and half counting the semi-Jackson reference), or maybe four for chronological balance, including FDR and Reagan since they're widely seen as the most important presidents of the 20th Century. The frivolous individual mentions (Joseph McCarthy, Gloria Steinem, most recent presidents, etc.) should be removed either way, but we can mention 2-4 salient presidents without ruining what we're trying to accomplish with this streamlining. VictorD7 (talk) 22:06, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

@VictorD7. That balance makes a kind of sense, we mention presidents Washington, Lincoln, FDR and Reagan.

Much closer than fifty years, and we are not talking history from historical scholars, it's current events from political scientists. So we have good historical context through LBJ or Nixon, then start to lose it with the moderns. Reagan will be controversial, but maybe the juxtaposition with the end of the Soviet Union will be enough to carry him into the summary by name. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 10:06, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

insert - I thought we had agreed to retain the Lincoln mention. Did you change your mind, or are you planning to reinsert that later? VictorD7 (talk) 19:35, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

@ Lance Friedman. Worse than the terrorist KKK still monitored by the FBI, --- the harder fact is that in the post-civil war years, the "White Leagues" carried out a program of assassination, killing school teachers of African-Americans and members of the Republican Party down to caucus attendees, black, and white if they did not leave when ordered. See Foner's Reconstruction:America's unfinished revolution: 1863-1877. But that hard fact does not relate directly to this article on contemporary U.S., because no party has its members systematically assassinated by night riders carrying lists of victims in the modern era. The subjection of African-Americans in the century 1863-1963 is encompassed by the proposal link Black Codes as discussed in detail there for the purposes of the summary here in a country article. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 10:06, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Saying the white league was worse is not a good reason for deleting all mention of the terror tactics that were used to put white supremacists back in power and keep them in power for a hundred years This section needs to have links to such topics as lynchings and the nadir of american race relations . Also, i see no effort has been made to correct the gross understatement that suggests jim crow laws merely resulted in many african americans losing their right to vote. This section still needs additional changesLance Friedman (talk) 17:20, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

You're engaging in cherry-picked hyperbole. Whites took power because they were the majority. People can reach more in depth info about mistreatment of minorities and other important historical details through embedded links. Remember this is a very broad historical summary. VictorD7 (talk) 19:26, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Victor, as usual you need to check your facts. African-Americans made up the majority of the population in several states.. In other states they came close to a majority and there were significant numbers of non-African-American people who for a variety of reasons were willing to vote for fair-minded politicians who favored African-American equality. Also, white-supremacists didn't simply take and hold power in all the southern states, they monopolized it using unconstitutional laws and terroristic violence to discriminate against African Americans in virtually every level of life.Lance Friedman (talk) 19:43, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Friedman, you're wrong as usual. Blacks were a majority in two Confederate states (MI and SC), and I was talking long term, as you presumably were. In the short run it was often whites who were disenfranchised per Reconstruction (why black Republicans were representing southern states in the US Congress). The black vote was ultimately reduced through discrimination, which the text mentions, but the people you call "white supremacists" would have assumed power whether any lynchings took place or not, whites becoming the majority even in the two states I mentioned. A majority of lynching victims were white until 1886, with the record high year being 1892 with 230 total lynchings (for all reasons). By the 20th Century they fell to a few dozen a year, and sharply declined starting in the 1920s until petering out to almost none after 1950. VictorD7 (talk) 20:24, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

Victor, lets go back to what U originally said "whites took power because they were the majority" Now U R changing what U said to say U meant over the "long term" they were the majority. You are again simply wrong. In Mississippi African Americans made up the majority of the population from 1860 to 1930 - 70 years. In South Carolina African Americans were more than 50% of the population from 1860 to 1920 - 60 years. In Louisiana African Americans were 50% of the populations from 1860 to 1890 - 30 years. These are short time spans in your mind??? In other Southern states African Americans were very close to being the majority of the population. If you have any interest in accuracy here is a link to the stats: Historical racial and ethnic demographics of the United States Also, what do you mean when you say: "but the people you call "white supremacists" It is just me calling them white supremacists? R U trying to argue that the people supporting lynchings, various bombings of "undesirables": Harry T. Moore, mountains of discriminatory laws/regulations, and umpteen other terrorist murders and maimings were not white supremacists???Lance Friedman (talk) 00:37, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

insert - Friedman, I was responding to your comment about "keep(ing) them in power for a hundred years". You even mentioned the "black nadir", which is usually associated with the early 20th Century. You're the one trying to shift the topic back and forth, not me. You also claimed "several" states had black majorities (LA was really too close to decisively call, and skewed by a high mulatto count with nuanced social ramifications, including black slave owners). You're wrong on every level. Most southern states had white majorities (all of them eventually would), and those majorities tended to grow over time. Either way, let's not pretend they would have had black supremacy if not for lynchings. As terrible as it was, lynching was a small percentage of murders, and racially motivated lynching a smaller subset still. And I wasn't making any commentary about the description "white supremacists", though I'm generally careful about categorical descriptions by niche ideological aspect across broad swathes of time and space. The bottom line is that we already link to Jim Crow discrimination, with that page containing further links. With so much important history on other topics left totally unmentioned, we don't have space in this brief summary to dwell too long on the details of black mistreatment in various states. VictorD7 (talk) 17:58, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

So, Lance, your difficulty in characterizing the country as Jim Crow is that Jim Crow was essentially segregation in all areas of life, not just disenfranchisement and that was widespread, --- but the supportive regime of Klansman terrorism in 'Civil War and Reconstruction' was both intermittent and restricted to the deep South, not characteristic of the entire country. Disenfranchisement is key because as soon as blacks could vote in Alabama, most Sheriffs elected there were African-American. And they ended the practice of lawmen looking the other way at Klan activities.

On the other hand, during the 'Industrial Age' the Second Klan had its greatest numbers in Indiana and Ohio in the 1920s. Did you want to work in a link to Ethnic violence, or the Klu Klux Klan articles? At some level, since modern scholars now combine treatment of Civil War and Reconstruction, due to continued violence of the eras, or due to the intention of integrating the freedman into economy, politics and society --- it would be easier to expand on the KKK if the sections were combined into 'Civil War and industrialism'.

It would be easier if we combine the sections since the KKK growth in the North came directly from the first Great Migration of African-Americans 1910-1930 out of the South into northern industrial cities. And as you seem intent on including a fuller treatment of the KKK, we can best do that if we address 1870-1930 including both north and south in a consolidated section. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 12:47, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

TVH, could you answer the inserted question I asked you above about presidential mentions, please? VictorD7 (talk) 18:07, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

I like mentioning four presidents: Washington, Lincoln, FDR and Reagan, and four population totals at 70 year intervals 1790, 1860, 1930 and 2000. Did you want to take these overview elements? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 18:46, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Yes, I strongly support. Though I'm flexible on the precise years for population (if people would prefer to shift them around), and I do want to retain the current colonial era mention. VictorD7 (talk) 19:59, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

'aftermath proposal'

Virginia Historian, The fact that organized activities of the KKK fluxuated and varied from state to state does not mean that it should not be mentioned in a section about reconstruction. I am also aware that there were lots of other violent white supremacists organizations such as the white league, the red shirts, the White Citizens' Council the Mississippi Plan along with many others. We are obviously not going to mentions all of these groups in the article, But, in a subsection about reconstruction we should at the very least mention one of the these groups.

Regarding your idea of merging this section with another, I think a better solution to your valid concern is to slightly expand the title of the subsection to something like "Civil War, Reconstruction , and Racism in the United States" or "Civil War, Reconstruction, and its Aftermath" or "Civil War, Reconstruction and the Nadir of American race relations. I'm open to other suggestions.

Also, we need to mention at least some of the violent tactics that were used to further white supremacist goals. The subsection needs a sentence like this: "In the years following the civil war Lynching in the United States became a notorious tactic used by many white supremacists to intimidate, punish, and terrorize people who were perceived as threatening or violating various traditions and laws." The link to bleeding kansas should also be put back in the subsection. If anyone thinks these small changes will make the history section too big, i'll point out that in the earlier history subsections there is still a ton of dubious and/or trivial material that is not more important and in many cases less important than my proposed additions. For example we mention the1846 Oregon Treaty (even though it was the Treaty of Washington (1871) that finally settled the border dispute with the UK) Do we really need mention either treaty at all? We have weird sentences saying the Indians taught the colonists how to fish and hunt? (As if fishing and hunting was something unknown in Europe during the colonial time period?) Do we really need that in the history subsection?. We also mentions tons of obscure religious revivals and awakenings. My major point is --- if we have room for all of that, we also have room for the small additions that I have proposed.

Finally changes need to be made to the wording of some of the sentences in the subsection. Do we really think that it is correct to say a peoples "freedom" was "ensured" by various amendments when they were actually deprived of virtually every fundamental right from voting in elections to public bathroom usage. The sentence on the amendments "ensuring freedom" needs to be changed to something more appropriate such as the amendments "ended legalized slavery in the United States""Lance Friedman (talk) 20:26, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Where I concur. Lets use "Civil War, Reconstruction, and its Aftermath" for a working title -- the promise to the freedman was not fulfilled in this era. Try out your “In the years following…” sentence. Bleeding Kansas is noteworthy, should go back in, --- the Northern representatives voted together for the first time as a bloc, Democratic, Free Soil, Republican, Anti-Mason, what have you --- to deny Buchanan’s push for a slave-soil Kansas statehood --- due to the manifest ballot box terrorism. Should keep 1846 Oregon Treaty since that opens the flood of immigrants, --- the Treaty of Washington is housekeeping after the fact, pretty much following the generally agreed to latitude established to the eastward, Polk's blustering notwithstanding.

Let’s drop the hunting and fishing reference in colonial, though there should still a reference to inter-cultural cooperation, especially on the frontier, even as the frontier moved. The First and Second Great Awakenings were major social movements, larger than socialism or anarchism that we should also keep in 'Industrialization'. The freedom, citizenship, and voting were “guaranteed” as a promissory note in the amendments, but not "ensured" through enforcement, thus --- the check bounced at the time, as implied by the words of MLK in his “I have a dream” speech. Would you take a turn at the sections along these lines that you have suggested? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 22:40, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Mentioning specific groups is a frivolous and undue level of detail for this summary article, and I oppose Friedman's lynching sentence. If we mention the crimes you suggest, what about other crimes throughout American history? What about the huge murder rate spike in the mid to late 20th Century across the entire nation? Focusing on regional, racially motivated crimes of a certain period looks like soapbox cherry-picking. The Civil War itself is barely mentioned, so we shouldn't devote too much time to the preface or aftermath. The "freedom" clause occurs in the context of specifically mentioning slavery, is accurate, and is entirely appropriate. It's not like the 13th Amendment didn't have teeth. Slavery ended suddenly and stayed ended. The various religious awakenings were major societal/cultural movements that impacted more people (including blacks) than anti-black discrimination did, and have to remain. VictorD7 (talk) 23:14, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Victor, The murder rate is discussed in other areas of the article, we don't need to repetitively mention such a contemporary issue in the history section. Also, the europeans who came to the United States brought with them their various religious views. The impact of "revivals" and "awakenings" that periodically occurred is being overstated in this article. We definitely don't need to have repetitive sentences with repetitive links in this article. For example do we really need to have links to the same modern evangelism page in both the history section and the religion section? TheSalem Witch Trials probably had more influence on American thinking than these repetitive religious revivals sentences and links.Lance Friedman (talk) 19:37, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Virginia Historian, do you want to write a draft for the subsection, or should I, or would somebody else like to?

How about something like, draft #2 -- this is the last sentence of "Civil War, Reconstruction and aftermath" ?

In the years following the civil war lynching became a notorious tactic used by white supremacists to terrorize violators of Jim Crow and racial segregation, both North and South. National reaction to the extemists led to criminalizing lynching as a federal offense following anti-lynching crusading during the Progressive Era.

---end proposal. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 21:29, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

I strongly oppose this proposal for reasons laid out below. I'll ask you to try and remember the big picture. Lynching was one of many tragic episodes in history, and this section is being written at such a broad level of summary that singling it out not only for mention but with multiple sentences is extreme undue emphasis. Lynching was only a sliver of anti-black discrimination (one directly impacting a tiny percentage of the population), a topic which is already summarized more appropriately with the broad Jim Crow description and link. Perhaps we can expand that sentence if necessary, but adding two new sentences focusing on lynching would be ridiculous, and certainly not conducive to a stable article. Are we going to discuss some or all of the topics I listed below too? If not why not? VictorD7 (talk) 21:53, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Other violent episodes aren't discussed, Friedman, like the crime wave of the 1920s-1930s (led to the development of a robust FBI), the New York Draft Riots (where mobs of Irish immigrants and other Democrats roamed around murdering every black person they came across as an anti-Lincoln protest), for that matter race or other types of riots in general, the larger lynching picture (mostly white victims from the 1700s to the 1880s), the serial killer phenomenon, the ongoing inner city gang war issue, etc.. There's certainly no racial crime rate breakdown, or mention of the fact that blacks commit a majority of murders despite only being around 13% of the population. Such a mention will ultimately be necessary in the Crime section for context unless the current racial incarceration breakdown is deleted (as it should be), but by your logic why not add it to the History section? Then there are other important historical developments currently excluded, like the rise of the electronic mass media and its impact on culture, the rise of the US as a scientific/technological superpower by at least the late 19th Century (mentioned in the Science section, but not discussed in detail there or at all in History), the great migration from the northeast to the south and west in recent decades for economic opportunity (actually probably should be discussed somewhere), the rise of trial lawyers and the impact of tort abuse on both vendors and consumers (just look at all the silly tags products feel they have to have now; e.g. "Don't touch flame!"). Frankly the rise of sports as a prominent feature of daily American cultural life (for all races) in the 20th Century (which in turn has had a major ongoing influence on the rest of the world) is of more historical import than racially motivated lynching. The Sports section doesn't discuss this from an historical perspective. The bottom line is that this a very brief summary--for the most part specific major battles aren't even mentioned--so this is not the proper forum to indulge a selective fixation on regional, low level violence of a certain type in a certain period, or to turn the section into a New Left narrative. Your attempt to equate the sequence of religious awakenings that heavily shaped American culture in distinctive, persistent ways with the Salem witch trials is absurd, though one could almost make as strong an argument for including the latter as for your proposal.VictorD7 (talk) 21:53, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Lance, I'm working real hard to agree with you on your 'aftermath paragraph', then you want to toss in something about the Salem Witch Trials equal to the Great Awakenings? The Salem Witch Trials were unique in American colonial history for their slaughter even for New England, and without parallel either in Middle Colonies or in the South, -- but witch trials and burning at the stake were common among Europeans at the time. Frederick Turner wrote something about the value of human life on the frontier; self-destructive practices were not generally extended here, and women certainly attained greater status. I think there are a couple of cases in Virginia of dunking 'witches' to near drowning, a few Baptist preachers had ears cut off in Virginia instead of burning at the stake as in Europe.

On the other hand, social historians credit the First Great Awakening with self-government and breakaway from established churches as precursor to the American Revolution. The Second Great Awakening is credited with fueling the Abolitionist Movement in the 'burned over' district of New York state and then Civil War. The number of witches burned at the stake does not compare with the significance of the Great Awakenings on the American Revolution or the American Civil War in this general summary history of the United States.The religious intolerance of the Salem Witch Trials was not typical of colonial regimes, or of national practice; what was typical was rather something of more religious toleration and freedom compared to European practice of the time, for Early Colonial 1600-1700, or Late Colonial 1700-1775, or Revolution and Early Nation 1775-1830. Stay focused on 'aftermath'. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 22:40, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Victor, the promise of the three Civil War/Reconstruction Amendments was not fulfilled. Some kind of short explanation needs to be made as to how the promise is not kept in this section to set the stage for the 1960s Civil Rights movement. There is a consideration for narrative flow for one kind of violence, lynching, and its resolution in national anti-lynching law, but I do not agree that that narrow consideration opens the door for a flood of episodic accounts of 'violence in America' as discussed in Richard M. Brown's Strain of Violence: Historical Studies of American Violence and Vigilantism or others. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 22:52, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

The problem is that the coverage proposed isn't narrow, though the topic is. I linked to the historical stats showing that lynchings of all kinds of any race only totaled a couple of hundred in the peak year, and a few dozen per year in the 20th Century until dwindling down to the single digits by the 1930s and vanishing soon after. The low level nature of this violence would be misrepresented by prose granting it space on par with the actual fighting in WW2 and the Civil War, easily misleading readers. The entire Korean War, in which 36,500 Americans died, is summed up by the single sentence: American troops fought Communist Chinese and North Korean forces in the Korean War of 1950–53, and that's pre-streamlining. Longer US historical surveys than this one don't mention lynching. There are plenty of directions we could take the narrative, and most of my hypothetical examples impacted more people (proportionally, not just absolutely) than lynching did. I agree with you about the importance of both capturing the broad nature of anti-black discrimination and setting up the Civil Rights movement (and in fact we may need to add to or alter that commentary to reflect the fact that civil rights legislative efforts long predated the 1960s, with a rich history from the 1860s to anti-lynching measures pushed in the 1920s to the Eisenhower signed Civil Rights Act of 1957 and beyond; an ultimately passed civil rights bill on adoption being part of the 1994 Republican Contract With America; though we apparently don't have room for details), but I think that's already accomplished with your earlier proposal on Jim Crow laws and disenfranchisement. Lynching was an infinitesimal proportion of the black experience, even the discrimination experience. Indeed it had already ended long before the 1960s version of the civil rights movement. While the Jim Crow article broadly describes systematic black discrimination, it's telling that the word "lynchings" only appears once on the page (though with a further link). This proposal would dedicate more space to black lynching in the US article than currently exists in the Jim Crow article. Is there a reason why the Jim Crow language doesn't adequately set the stage for the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s? I also agree with you that the promise of the three Amendments wasn't immediately realized, but that seems to already be covered by Friedman's addition of the word "technically" to the voting rights portion, deletion of the word "equal" qualifying "citizens", and the Jim Crow/disenfranchisement sentence. If that sentence is truly insufficient maybe we could expand it to something appropriately broad like: "But following the Reconstruction Era, throughout the South Jim Crow laws soon disenfranchised many African Americans, and blacks faced systemic discrimination in various ways in both the North and South.[97]"...or something along those lines.VictorD7 (talk) 02:21, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

That just might 'answer the mail'. I concur with a Draft #4: "But following the Reconstruction Era, throughout the South Jim Crow laws soon disenfranchised many African Americans, and blacks faced systemic discrimination including some forms of terrorism in both the North and South.[97]". That includes Lance's link to 'Lynching in the United States' as one of the kinds of terrorism. Lance? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:37, 19 January 2014 (UTC)

I just went ahead and wrote up a proposed draft for the subsection. Feel free to make changes or give input.Lance Friedman (talk) 23:16, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution ended legal enslavment of the nearly four million African Americans who had been slaves, made them citizens, and promised them voting rights. The war and its resolution led to a substantial increase in federal power aimed at reintegrating and rebuilding the Southern states as well as fostering equality before the law. But following the Reconstruction Era, throughout the South Jim Crow laws soon deprived most African Americans and some poor whites of voting rights and throughout the United States Africans Americans faced systemic discrimination. In addition, lynching became one of several violent tactics sometimes used by white supremacists to terrorize and intimidate perceived violaters of racial segregation and racist ideas in both the North and South.Lance Friedman (talk) 23:16, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I like the balance, it may be too long. I like the balance. Maybe the last sentence shortened and lynching balanced by anti-lynching:

...and throughout the United States Africans-Americans faced systemic discrimination.[5] Lynching was one of several extralegal tactics used to enforce racial segregation.[6] but its terror gave rise to a national Anti-lynching movement.

While that mentions lynching as an important part of the landscape in the aftermath of Reconstruction and during industrialization, it references the counter of self-help mobilization by African-American leaders such as Ida B. Wells and their national political alliance with Progressives to address the issue when local majorities are destructive of minority rights. Victor? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:09, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

I was willing to support your Draft #4 as a compromise, but this new proposal isn't substantially different from the earlier Draft #2 I explained my opposition to in the paragraphs above. At this detail level lynching is irrelevant and mentioning it at all is undue emphasis that will mislead low information readers about its nature and scope, particularly when the broader phenomenon of vigilantes lynching criminals since colonial times isn't mentioned at all. By contrast, general anti-black discrimination is relevant at this summary level, though already adequately covered by the Jim Crow sentence. The whole point of me adding the "systemic discrimination" segment to that sentence was to replace "lynching" with something more appropriate, addressing implied concerns that the explicit "disenfranchisement" mention was too narrow, despite the Jim Crow link covering other types of discrimination (including a link to the lynching article). Even your shortened version here would blow up what's currently a single sentence of 106 characters into a paragraph sized inclusion of almost 400 characters, half of which focuses on lynching. That's moving in the wrong direction on multiple fronts. For the record, the last time this article received a "good" rating in a status review the segment only read: "The resolution of the disputed 1876 presidential election by the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction; Jim Crow laws soon disenfranchised many African Americans." That's it. That article version had its own flaws and shouldn't be our sacrosanct guide by any means, but it's worth noting given all the expressed concern over restoring "good" status.

If we're going to mention lynching I like your addition of the anti-lynching movement, but I have to yet to see a rational argument why we're singling out a tiny sliver of discrimination for expanded discussion rather than much broader and more historically important elements like housing discrimination or legally forced public segregation (e.g. schools). The point of using terms like "Jim Crow" or "systemic discrimination" is that they're summary umbrellas encapsulating the narrower issues. The new proposal would be like retaining the current, very vague Korean War sentence and following it with a long sentence about the Battle of Heartbreak Ridge, blowing apart proper contextual perspective. It wouldn't require a cynic to suggest that "lynching" is being selected here for its sensationalism and emotive impact, in hopes of shaping the worldview and mindsets of the low information readers I mentioned before. What's next? Adding the mass school shooting phenomenon to the Contemporary section? And are we going to describe the course of black lynching history, how it sharply declined in the 1920s and effectively ended before the 1960s era civil rights movement, or are we just tossing it out there like a bomb and leaving it?

Side note - the Anti-lynching movement article is very brief, about the size of a short subsection here, and needs expansion. Perhaps the most prominent champion of anti-lynching legislation was President Calvin Coolidge, hardly a "progressive". Woodrow Wilson, the president most iconically associated with the "progressive" movement, had a far different record on civil rights.

I can support the changes Friedman proposed to the earlier sentences, but can we replace "African American" with "black"? Isn't it time to mature beyond the former? I don't mind keeping the link, but the wording is confusing from an accuracy standpoint since the freed slaves weren't widely viewed as citizens (aka "Americans") until the 14th Amendment. The same section uses "white", and stylistic concerns aside, it'd save space, which is ostensibly one of this project's chief goals. Also, as a slight tweak, how about saying...Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution prohibited slavery, made the nearly four million blacks who had been slaves U.S. citizens,[20] and promised them voting rights. Along with all the appropriate links. VictorD7 (talk) 00:11, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Hi Victor, I noticed you reverted the changes that I put in place. I implemented them because Virginia Historian seemed supportive of many of the changes and you seemed to have lost interest in the discussion. Let us know what you think needs to be changed in the proposed draft.Lance Friedman (talk) 23:31, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Friedman, you left for four days after TVH and I agreed on language, and then you suddenly return, drop a proposal, and edit it into the article a few hours later, ignoring TVH's commentary on it to boot? On top of that you claim to believe I had lost interest in the discussion? I figured TVH was waiting to hear from you, since he had ended by asking for you by name. I was wondering if you had lost interest. Please refrain from making unilateral, knowingly contentious edits to sections currently under discussion. VictorD7 (talk) 00:25, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Ok, well I guess we can agree on the following change: Following the Union victory in 1865, three amendments to the U.S. Constitution prohibited slavery, made the nearly four million people who had been slaves U.S. citizens,[20] and promised them voting rights." I only made one small change from what Victor wanted. Instead of fighting over whether African American or black is the better word. I assume Victor will not have any problem with us just calling the former slaves people? Assuming no one objects, I will implement these changes Saturday afternoon.

Victor, regarding the end of the paragraph, please do not exaggerate. I did not "blow up" a single sentence into a paragraph. I did not add a paragraph to the subsection. I am simply proposing we add one sentence and slightly expand a sentence that is already in the subsection. All this is in an article that is filled with tons of less important trivia. There is currently a whole paragraph in the food section that has no sources and is trivial in nature. It is the second paragraph in the food section. If nobody objects, I will delete it tomorrow. That will more than offset the addition of these tiny additions to this subsection.

Also, It is simply wrong to say the panoply of violence committed by white supremacists among which lynching was the most notorious was an "infinitesimal proportion" or a "tiny sliver of discrimination" More than 5,000 people were lynched in the United States after the Civil War. That is more than the Americans killed in the Spanish/American and more than the Americans killed in the 911 terrorist attacks. The impact of the lynchings went far beyond the thousands of victims that were murdered. The intentionally well publicized "events" were designed to intimidate and threaten an exponentially larger group of people. Also, the Tuskegee Institute stats are widely considered to be an undercount because they used very strict guidelines when they documented cases. Their numbers do not even include lynchings from the most violent years following the Civil War because the Institute was not founded until 1881. Their stats also do not include people who were murdered in events such as the Colfax massacre, or bombings: Harry T. Moore, or horrible maimings: Isaac Woodard and various other kinds of violent and illegal activities that were used to establish and underpin white supremacy. These crimes were often committed by sheriffs, members of the police, and even Governors. It was routine that the people committing these crimes were never prosecuted or convicted. Virtually all of this state sanctioned violence was designed to punish both black and white people who were perceived as threatening or not properly respecting white supremacist beliefs. We obviously cannot add all of these things to the article, but at the very least we need to mention the most notorious tactics white supremacists used to maintain their "way of life."

Victor, I just have to add that a lot of your reasons for opposing these small additions are just plain silly. We have whole sections in this article devoted to science and mass media. These small changes do not mean we need to add more info about those topics AND does any fair-minded person believe the changes require us to add info about tort reform and I'm quoting you Victor: "the silly tags products feel they have to have now" ????????? That is supposed to be as important, or more important than the thousands of people who were were violently lynched and the exponentially larger number of people threatened and intimidated by such violence????????? Also, Virginia Historian has already told you and I agree with him that adding this small addition does not mean the history section or the rest of the article will be flooded with episodic accounts of violence such as and I am quoting you again "the serial killer phenomenon" or what you describe as "the mass school shooting phenomenon" Please stop repeatedly rehashing these arguments over and over again after people have already explained why they disagree with what you believe. It often seems like you can rarely win an argument on the merits and instead you just try to exhaust people by endlessly throwing out a repetitive stream of red herring arguments.Lance Friedman (talk) 10:48, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Victor, let's stay focused on Civil War, Reconstruction and aftermath. It is true that lynching "sharply declined in the 1920s and effectively ended before the 1960s era civil rights movement." But it was significant in the period under discussion. No, I do not want to "just toss it out there like a bomb and leaving."

That's why I want to provide some sort of closure in the Civil War and Reconstruction section as a transition into Industrialism, before opening the section on industrialism, or maybe this is another reason for combining the two sections into "Civil War, Reconstruction and Industrialism". Lynching led to anti-lynching movement and progressive era national criminalization of lynching.

Politicians like Wilson and Coolidge picked out pieces and parts of reform movements to garner widespread support for their campaigns and programs, none were 'purists' or 'captive' of such a diverse movement subject to so many regional variations. (Some scholars note southern progressive suffragettes were against black women voting in their state reform successes.)

But, the excesses leading to widespread lynching led to a national reaction against it, and we should not mention one -- as important as it was once then, -- without mentioning the successful reaction against lynching which persists to this day. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 12:57, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I agree with VictorD7 that there is no need to mention lynching in such detail. We could simply have an umbrella sentence about extralegal tactics used by white supremacists. We could even just merge that into the preceding sentence, producing something along the lines of " and throughout the United States African Americans faced systematic discrimination, including violent tactics such as lynching which targeted perceived violators of racial segregation." Rwenonah (talk) 15:49, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Rwenonah, I am not sure what you mean when you say "such detail" you basicly just seemed to propose what I wrote. The only thing that you seemed to eliminate was the mention of racist beliefs. I am open to changes but I think just mentioning racial segregation without mention the racist beliefs underpinning that segregation makes the sentence rather weak and unnecessarily vague. We have already eliminated all mention of the [[klu klux klan} in the subsection without replacing it with links to the White League and Red Shirts (Southern United States) groups that were key to white supremacists coming to power in the south. The subsection is not overly detailed. It is actually seriously lacking in key details compared to the rest of the United States article.

Virginia Historian, I think it might be a little difficult to provide much positive closure in this particular subsection. That will probably have to wait for the civil rights era subsection. As you point out the reasons for the decline in lynching are complex. One of the major reasons for the decline is that racists simply shifted to more covert violent tactics such as bombings and shootings as groups like the NAACP increasingly began publicizing lynchings in ways that did not benefit white supremacists. I know we would all like to put a sunny/pleasant face on this subsection, but it just isn't possible if we are interested in accuracy.Lance Friedman (talk) 17:07, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

Friedman, you got almost everything wrong again. Not only did I not "exaggerate" the proposed bloat, I gave the actual character counts involved, and even that was referring to TVH's shorter (and superior) version, not your absurd one that's been rejected by multiple editors. Our detail level here is controlled by pertinent comparison, which is with the rest of the History section, not the freaking food section (you should also refrain from any unilateral removals on that for now as it merits its own discussion), or the economy info box, or any other oranges you want to compare to the apples. This is a history section, not a history article.

Your "sunny face" accusation is trite BS. By your logic you're trying to put a "sunny face" on the Korean War by not mentioning the Battle of Heartbreak Ridge ((3,700 US casualties; 25,000 NK/Chinese casualties), or any other specific battles in history, some much bloodier. The Tuskegee Institute counts a total of 4743 lynching victims over an 87 year period. Those are victims of all races in all parts of the country for all reasons (which often included accusations of serious crimes). Tuskegee lumped people of Mexican and Chinese descent together with "whites", and there was lynching for various reasons from the west coast to the northeast from the late 18th Century through the early 20th. During the period Tuskegee covered there were typically 40-70 a year. Over the last decade alone (2003-2012) there have been at least 159,476 murders. Even during the late 19th Century, when the population was smaller, lynchings were a tiny percentage of murders.

I agree that racially motivated lynching's sociopolitical nature gives it elevated historical importance, but enough to warrant singling out for special mention in a summary of this brief scope? In Los Angeles alone over 5,750 people were killed by gang violence in the 2000s, a phenomenon with massive sociological ramifications for the larger inner city populations throughout the nation. Even 19th Century lynchings often included sociopolitical motives and impact other than the anti-black post Civil War violence being discussed here, and yet there's no proposal to include any of that in the article. You complain about a few thousand black lynching victims not being singled out for special mention, but millions of blacks were forced into segregated schools for an even longer period of time, and yes, that was a more historically important phenomenon than lynching because it covered so much of the population. Sure, it would be covered by the broad "discrimination" mention, but so would the far rarer phenomenon of lynching, especially if we added TVH's suggested "including some forms of terrorism" segment in the language he and I agreed to before you disappeared for a few days. Tort abuse (I cited tags as an illustrative example of its impact) is also more historically important than lynchings because it's had a dramatic economic impact and has altered the way virtually all Americans live their daily lives, including by threatening to kill entire industries. Perhaps you're trying to put a sunny face on trial lawyers. Regardless, simply claiming that we don't need to add this other stuff isn't an argument against adding it.

The Spanish American War is more important to a summary history of the US than lynching because it represented government action on behalf of the nation as a whole, changed the face of entire future nations like Cuba and the Philippines, and altered the USA's standing in the world. Al Qaeda terrorism is more important than lynching because of its larger geopolitical impact, because it's terrorizing the entire population, because terrorists are pursuing and will likely one day acquire NBC weapons, and because it's not just about body count anyway, but the destruction of key national infrastructure (the nation itself). Many of the other items I mentioned, like the rise of mass media and its impact on culture, are far more important than lynching, but not covered at all in this brief summary section.

Friedman, you have no idea how to construct an argument, much less judge one. Between us I'm the only one arguing on the merits, and no one has presented a rational counter so far. Your argument amounts to repeatedly saying "it's important". You see things as an ad hoc list of issues, and have no grasp of how to examine a topic (like history) with perspective. I understand that not everyone has the same level of acumen and knowledge, but you could have at least tried to explain why you think lynching is more important to the history of black discrimination than school segregation (for example), and more important to the US than the other things I've laid out. Is it more important to the black demographic than the stunning rise in out of wedlock births and single parent homes in recent decades, blacks' strong embrace of Christianity in the 19th Century, and their achievements in the 20th Century? It's telling that the African American page doesn't mention the word "lynch" in any variation once, though there are a few vague references to "violence". That's because there's a lot more to postbellum black American history than lynching. You would have the United States country article focus more on lynching than the African American article does. For other Wiki perspective I'll note that the Germany article only spends two sentences on the Holocaust, the deliberate extermination of 11 million civilians (many its own citizens) by the government, one of the most impactful events of the 20th Century. Country summary article history sections aren't the proper forum for adding cherry-picked details about random items you feel are important because you read a book about it recently or some such garbage.

You also failed to explain why you object to changing "African American" to "black" when I explained how the latter is less problematic from a slave to citizen perspective, and a space saver. You simply indicated opposition to "black" by proposing "people" instead. No, Friedman, the racial aspect is important so I would rather use "African American" than "people" there, if you're truly opposed to just using "black" for some bizarre reason.

Oh and Friedman, please look up the word "exponentially", or at least stop using it, because you clearly have no idea what it means. You would have benefited greatly from some math classes.

TheVirginiaHistorian, the point of my Coolidge/Wilson commentary was really just that "progressive" sometimes becomes an overly broad label, and that not every reform movement should be chiefly identified with that tag, even if many progressives supported it. My "bomb" comment was mostly rhetorical, since I'm assuming we won't be tracing lynching to its conclusion in the early to mid 20th Century, or probably revisiting it all in later periods given space concerns. I've been waiting for a rational argument in favor of discussing racial lynching in this summary section. It appears none will be forthcoming, but, all the above said, in the interest of moving this process forward I'll be willing to go along with your wording on the sentences in question, with the caveat that I'd like to change "and throughout the United States Africans-Americans faced systemic discrimination" back to "and in both the North and South Africans-Americans faced systemic discrimination" (or "blacks", if you agree that it's silly to say "African Americans" three times in one paragraph), given the Civil War era context. I don't want readers to maybe assume "throughout the US" really means the greater south and (largely still unsettled) west, with maybe parts of the lower Midwest, when some of the most checkered racial history in this country belongs to cities like New York and Boston. I reserve the right to revisit this issue at a later date, and I'll say that I'm less optimistic than I was about this project's chances for success if this pattern continues, where an editor who can barely read and write is repeatedly and energetically trying to pull each period into a New Left narrative. VictorD7 (talk) 01:40, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

edit break

Agree with TheVirginiaHistorian and VictorD7: Also, I'm seeing a lot of devisive language creep into this conversation and onto the page. Victor, thanks for cleaning that up. i.e."white supremacist" is 20th century hyper-speak activist language. We need to keep this sort of sophomoric prose out of the encyclopedia. It comes off highly presentist, academically naive and overlooks much. Back in the day virtually everyone harbored feelings of preference about their own race. This still continues to this day in most countries around the world. Even many blacks who resented mulattos, regarding them as those with 'tainted' blood, thought they were better -- or "superior" if you prefer. Indians by and large were also "racist" and highly territorial, or "xenophobic", if you prefer 20th century phraseology. re:Lynchings. Is this an appropriate topic for the Independence and expansion section? While these certainly did occur they were mostly isolated, so let's not try to give the impression that independence and expansion went hand in hand with lynchings. Besides, lynchings of blacks was mostly a post Civil War affair, so this really doesn't fit in with the topic of Independence and expansion. The country had long since been independent after the Civil War. Let's try to keep the discussion and any edits made to the page accurate, objective and neutral. -- Gwillhickers 19:18, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

So, we are looking at the concluding statement in “Civil War and Reconstruction”, considering Lance and Victor, Rwenonah and Gwhillhickers points of view and my giving up any mention at this point, of the resolution ending lynching by black leadership in a national anti-lynching campaign which is embraced by the Progressives for a successful conclusion, --- the consensus is, ---,

"But following the Reconstruction Era, throughout the South Jim Crow laws soon disenfranchised many African Americans. Blacks and whites faced systemic discrimination and extralegal violence to enforce segregation both North and South, including some forms of terrorism singling out African Americans.[97]"

The issue has been how to treat violence by men trained to violence during the period of exceptional violence following a civil war. Violence needs to be addressed even in this summary, not to say cursory treatment. We have placed the worst of it, linked inside "terrorism" in a subordinate clause so as not to over emphasize it, and omitting the White Leagues and the Red Shirts, but lynching is still in there, as the consensus --general agreement-- warrants. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:02, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually I said I could go along with your most recent proposal including the lynching and anti-lynching link:

...Lynching was one of several extralegal tactics used to enforce racial segregation.[6] but its terror gave rise to a national Anti-lynching movement.'

Have other editors specifically opposed that shortened version? It's not perfect, but better than most of the alternatives. While I also said earlier I could support the "terrorism" version (draft #4), that was a compromise too and still amounts to throwing out the aforementioned bomb (albeit a vaguer one) and leaving it there. Your newest version piles up new stuff: "extralegal violence" and "terrorism", which is arguably redundant in this context or at least worthy of consolidation.VictorD7 (talk) 18:44, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

Did you want a try at consolidation without losing the element of violence which others deem so crucial to fairly representing this Reconstruction and aftermath era? I am fine with either, or close to

A. ..."Lynching was one of several extralegal tactics used to enforce racial segregation.[6] but its terror gave rise to a national Anti-lynching movement.", or

B. ..."Blacks and whites faced systemic discrimination to enforce segregation both North and South, including some forms of terrorism singling out African Americans.".

I appreciate your effort to accommodate to a general agreement -- consensus-- on this difficult point. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:12, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

I could live either with of those for now, in the interest of advancing this process. I probably prefer A, since if we're going to mention the violence and/or link to a lynching article we should at least mention the response to said violence (whether explicitly saying "lynching" in the text or not). Links aside, B is superior as a summary historical statement at this detail level, since lynching per se isn't given undue weight. However, it suffers from the unresolved "tossed bomb" flaw. Also, if we go with that version "singling out African Americans" is probably superfluous. There's no reason the sentence couldn't end at "terrorism" (if not sooner). Which do you prefer? PS - a third alternative might be to use B and tack on a clause like "..terrorism, sparking national movements against the abuses." That way we'd also be setting the stage for the broader civil rights movement (which long predated the 1960s), at least in the text. VictorD7 (talk) 20:07, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

So let's call this C, and it's the one I prefer: "Blacks and whites faced systemic discrimination to enforce segregation in both the North and South, including some forms of terrorism, sparking national movements against the abuses."

Thoughts?

I concur. I think that your C serves all angles the best. It's about the same word count, but thanks for including "sparking national movements", since Ida B. Wells and others were activists in the aftermath of Reconstruction. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 21:11, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

The sentence needs something more at the beginning so that it fits in better with the previous sentence and ends the subsection, the word white also needs a qualifier, & I don't think we even need the words "to enforce" How about the following: "'Over the subsequent decades in both the north and south, blacks and some whites faced systemic discrimination including segregation and some forms of terrorism, sparking national movements against these abuses." I'll also add the yale article as a cite. Does anyone have a problem with those changes? Also, does anyone have any problem if I change the second from the last sentence to this: But following the Reconstruction Era, throughout the South Jim Crow laws soon deprived voting rights to virtually all African Americans and some poor whites. I think deprived voting rights is clearer and more easier to understand than the word disenfranchisement and I think it important to mention that some poor whites were also deprived of voting rights. Any problems with these minor changes?Lance Friedman (talk) 22:01, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

@ Lance: Concur. I think it'll do. Though white voter numbers are cut in half at the Underwood Constitution in Virginia. Integrated Farmers Alliances fail throughout the South due to outside disruption enforcing segregation beyond the reach of the law. It's hard to convey that sort of nuance here concisely. I concur with your changes. Thank you for your efforts at general agreement - consensus - in this process. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 11:18, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

It would have to be "deprived virtually all African Americans and some poor whites of voting rights.", not the grammatically incorrect version Lance proposed. Rwenonah (talk) 13:32, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

@ Rwenonah. I like it, looks like we are all on board for a general agreement - consensus. All please stick around for the next section. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 16:24, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm fine with qualifying "white" in the terrorism sentence, but I prefer "effectively disenfranchised most blacks and some poor whites" to "deprived voting rights to virtually all African Americans and some poor whites" (or the grammatically correct version). "Disenfranchised" is more encyclopedic and should be clear to most readers (and quickly educational for kids who don't already know who click on the link). "Effectively" is important for accuracy because they weren't officially stripped of voting rights, but through a combination of typically population wide measures that disproportionately burdened the illiterate and poor, and readers might be misled otherwise. Plus this version saves space. What's the Yale article? Is there a link? VictorD7 (talk) 18:52, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Mentioning poor whites seems in order. However, is "terrorism" the best word we can use? Terrorism suggests bombs, hijackings and beheadings. Esp after 911 that word has taken on more of a specific meaning along those lines. And linking this to Lynching suggests this was the common practice, where as I understand it, lynchings, though sensational and horrible, were relatively uncommon, compared to the average violence and plain ol' murder. Also, must we say extralegal violence? I think it's more than generally understood that violence is illegal. Here is how I would suggest the closing statement read:

Blacks and poor whites faced systemic discrimination and extralegal violence to enforce segregation
both North and South, often involving the murder of various African Americans.

-- Gwillhickers (talk) 19:20, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

I have similar concerns, except that not all terrorism is lethal (certainly not in this case), and at least "extralegal" differentiates it from legally sanctioned government violence. VictorD7 (talk) 19:26, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

While all terrorism is not necessarily lethal it's generally considered as such because most of it indeed has involved murder, or its attempt. Also, using the term 'extralegal' suggests there was legally sanctioned violence to distinguish from, so unless there was, officially, we shouldn't use it, imo. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 20:18, 26 January 2014 (UTC)

Actually the "extralegal" segment has already been dropped. Maybe instead of "some forms of terrorism" we can say "occasional vigilante violence". That way the total segment would read:

But following the Reconstruction Era, throughout the South Jim Crow laws soon effectively disenfranchised most blacks and some poor whites. Over the subsequent decades, in both the north and south blacks and some whites faced systemic discrimination, including segregation and occasional vigilante violence, sparking national movements against these abuses.

How's that look? VictorD7 (talk) 00:28, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

I rendered that as the following, for a last, last, last last try:

"But following the Reconstruction Era, throughout the South Jim Crow laws soon effectively disenfranchised most blacks and some poor whites. Over the subsequent decades, in both the north and south blacks and some whites faced systemic discrimination, including segregation and occasional vigilante violence, sparking national movements against these abuses."

Maintaining the link at "disenfranchisement" for those unfamiliar with the word, and linking vigilante violence to lynching to maintain the consensus.

Gwhillickers, there was plenty of legal violence, most notably against strikes in the post reconstruction era, by police, militias, and army. Pinkerton armed forces were hired to protect property, so their excessive force was still classified as legal by the right. Extralegal violence of the lynching kind was done without the cover of official sanction found in a posse or militia call up, though they too could, did perpetrate racial atrocities. It may be that the current language has been stripped of another useful word, "terrorism", but the literature in American historiography has not yet abandoned it to mean exclusively modern applications. But I will yield on another point, we all have.

My interest remains, collaboratively writing a couple of history sections in a country article. I would be surprised if there were another round of each participant tweeking the sentence in turn, --- but then, I am easily surprised. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 08:42, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

If one little subsection (which in reality the vast majority of visitors will not bother to read) and sentence can cause such needless arguing and nitpicking, now I just feel as though we can only maintain a decent level of quality, as users who obsess over precise semantics and unsubstantial fine detail which most visitors won't even notice will make the goal of reaching GA a long arduous process that will seem less worthwhile. I don't know how anyone who doesn't have OCD would engage in days of debate over the inclusion of one little sentence on lynching/race crimes that ultimately has no impact. It does not bode well in terms of the successful major streamlining that the rest of this long article really needs. How can we efficiently continue this process without obsessively dragging out small unsubstantial issues? In the coming days I will be making whatever streamlining edits I can in the rest of the article that seem unlikely to be disputed. Cadiomals (talk) 10:26, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

There should be no problem with keeping the anti-lynching link in there too. I just left the links out last time because I was in a hurry and focused on the text. Go ahead and make the edit and then let's see where we are in terms of anyone complaining. VictorD7 (talk) 16:23, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Upon further consideration, using the term 'extralegal' seems appropriate, given the activities of Police, militia, Pinkerton, et al. I was thinking in terms of civilian/mob violence only. -- Gwillhickers (talk) 19:40, 27 January 2014 (UTC)

Now on to the Industrialization section. We should also be thinking about how and when we're going to go back and put the agreed on presidential mentions in. VictorD7 (talk) 18:10, 29 January 2014 (UTC)

edit. Industrialization

Edit 'Industrialization' section. proposal:

In the North, urbanization and an unprecedented influx of immigrants from Southern and Eastern Europe supplied a surplus of labor for the country's industrialization and transformed its culture.[102] Immigration policies were Eurocentric by restricting Asians from immigration and naturalization beginning in 1882.[103] National infrastructure including telegraph and transcontinental railroads spurred economic growth, greater settlement and development of the American Old West. The end of the Indian Wars further expanded acreage under mechanical cultivation increasing surpluses for international markets. Mainland expansion was completed by the Alaska Purchase from Russia in 1867. In 1898 the U.S. entered the world stage with important sugar production and strategic facilities acquired in Hawaii, then Puerto Rico, Guam and the Philippines were ceded by Spain in the same year following the Spanish American War.

The emergence of many prominent industrialists at the end of the 19th century gave rise to the Gilded Age when the U.S. economy became the world's largest. It was a period of extravagant affluence, worker injury and concentrations of monopolistic power that led to the rise of Populism, Socialism, and Anarchism in the U.S.[105] This period eventually ended with the beginning of the Progressive Era, a period of significant reforms in many societal areas, including alcohol prohibition, women's suffrage, regulatory protection for the public, greater antitrust measures to ensure competition and attention to living conditions for the working classes.

end proposal. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 08:06, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I think it is worthwhile to leave in the sentence on immigration being Eurocentric and barring Chinese. This is fairly notable as the US has always struggled with how and to what extent it should accommodate its many immigrants. Cadiomals (talk) 09:40, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Worthwhile it is. Eurocentric policy against Asian immigration and naturalization is replaced with its source. I hope no one believes the 1882 statute is still in force; the WP U.S. lede should not make it seem so. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 13:17, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

--- Aside. Still, no source obtains for WP U.S. lede policy, blanking those who have chosen to be naturalized as U.S. citizens in Pacific island territories of Northern Marianas, Guam and American Samoa. I will await another editor's initiative before resuming the discussion. But the question remains, What could be the unsourced POV behind it, why do islander referendum, legislatures and constitutional conventions not count at WP --- so that they are excluded in the lede in this 21st century article though sourced by U.S. Code in force ---, not even in a footnote? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 13:17, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

This subsection just like the civil war subsection is already very small. I do not think removing hard facts such as "In 1914 alone, 35,000 workers died in industrial accidents and 700,000 were injured" improves the section. Also, deleting the last armed conflict of the Indian Wars is not an improvement and why have you made this strange language change regarding Hawai? Why has Hawai gone from being "overthrown in a coup" to being vaguely "acquired"??? This kind of language change somehow makes the subsection more concise?Lance Friedman (talk) 16:41, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Why include that strangely specific sentence on immigration policy when the section doesn't discuss it otherwise? Are we going to add exposition on immigration policy shifts at various other points in history? VictorD7 (talk) 21:36, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Propose combining 'Civil War and Reconstruction' with 'Industrialization' under a new heading, Civil War and industrialization. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 14:53, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm against merging the sections. They are two distinct subjects that are pivotal in understanding American history and only marginally related. They should not be scrubbed of hard facts and unpleasantness and then mashed together.Lance Friedman (talk) 16:41, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Agree with Lance Friedman. What are the reasons for these changes? TFD (talk) 16:57, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

It started with the Native American, Settlement, and Expansion sections being too detailed relative to the rest of the History section and also written in such a style that it read like a middle school textbook. The rest of the History sections were/are not as dire, but I raised my issue with how the Cold War section was structured and TVH went ahead and did condensed versions of the other sections. As these are not unilateral changes controlled by Virginia alone, you guys are free to add your input about what info you think should be kept in or how you think things should be worded. Also, I think it's fine to keep Civil War and Industrialization as separate sections even if they are shortened, as they are quite distinct aspects of US history (though they overlapped). Overall, our ultimate purpose is in reclaiming and doing a major clean-up of this article by going through all the sections one by one and making sure everything is well-balanced, so it becomes worthy of at least Good status again. Cadiomals (talk) 18:15, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

Two sections it shall remain, although 'settlement and expansion' could be broken into two were we addressing a history article, but we are not, so I thought it economical to combine sections as we can for this survey summary, inasmuch as Civil War, Reconstruction and Industrialization overlap chronologically.

"Worker injury" is more concise than "In 1914 alone, 35,000 workers died in industrial accidents and 700,000 were injured". Who says 1914 is representative of the period 1860-1920? Is Worker's Compensation to be addressed here or in the economic safety net? Too much detail for here.

This section is not to compete with History of the United States in hard facts of detail. In any case, it should not be revealing facts not salient enough to cover there. Likewise at the first Hawaiian coup, Queen "Lilli" Liliuokalani successfully petitioned the Democratic President Cleveland to restore her throne, at the second coup she unsuccessfully petitioned the Republican McKinley. The palace guard was British-trained and surely a match for the off-loaded Marines in the event, had it come down to fighting. --- But "Hawaii was acquired" is more concise for this summary survey.

I agree with Cadiomals, the first few sections were marred by triumphalism, the last few sections by presentism. I want to shorten the too-long article, and for a modern country article it seems to me the first place to start is with the lengthy "history" section which is treated in much more elaboration and detail in History of the United States. This subsection is not to replicate that feature article. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 19:39, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

The purpose is streamlining what consensus determined was an overly long section in an overly long article, addressing quality concerns, and coherence. I'd ask Friedman not to make erroneous assumptions about TVH's motives, though the former should examine his own since a desire to add "unpleasantness" isn't any more legitimate than a desire to "scrub" it (and one man's "unpleasantness" isn't necessarily another's, as issues like abortion, tort law, affluence, single parenthood, business regulation, and certain wars illustrate, so that's an unhelpful characterization anyway). Here TVH mostly just consolidated a few sentences. And being a "hard fact" doesn't automatically merit inclusion in a brief summary section. There are countless "hard facts" we could add. VictorD7 (talk) 21:25, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

The last paragraph needs rewriting for neutrality. "Gilded Age" is propagandistic language and its presence here is frivolous, though I'm fine with linking to that page since it includes lots of useful facts. The entire last paragraph is sourced only by Howard Zinn's book. As the GA page observes, wages and living standards increased dramatically during that period, which isn't mentioned here. Our focus should be on the dramatic economic development, which saw the US become the world's largest economy (another salient fact worth mentioning), benefiting consumers and workers as well as "industrialists", rather than just regurgitating political protest signs. We should mention that there was a rise in industrialists and in movements like socialism, progressivism, etc., but not use Wikipedia's voice to state that one caused the other. Revolutions and reform movements have often started among relatively well off classes and people (see the French Revolution, or the recent student heavy US Occupy Wall Street crowd), and it's easy to argue that late 19th Century workers were better off than previous generations had been. I support removing the "fact" about worker injuries since there was no historical context (earlier or later era numbers to compare it to), but if we're to retain mention of "worker injury" here at all (which certainly existed in the grueling farm work of the previous several millennia), it should be in the context of saying that reform movements arose to address x, y, and z (injury, monopoly, etc.), rather than accepting the premise that x, y, and z caused the reform movements to arise. That may seem like a subtle nuance but it's an important one for the sake of neutrality. Frankly the final sentence already seems to handle all that adequately, so the earlier segment may be unnecessary. Here's a potential alternative:

Rapid economic development at the end of the 19th century produced many prominent industrialists and the U.S. economy became the world's largest. The period also saw the rise of the rise of Populist, Socialist, and Anarchist movements. This period eventually ended with the beginning of the Progressive Era, which saw significant reforms in many societal areas, including women's suffrage, alcohol prohibition, regulation of consumer goods, greater antitrust measures to ensure competition, and attention to worker conditions. VictorD7 (talk) 21:25, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I added the temperance mention which was a huge deal at the time and ultimately resulted in the 18th Amendment. VictorD7 (talk) 21:25, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't see how mentioning the "Gilded Age" is "propagandistic" at all, as it is a very commonly used word in academia that encapsulates the affluence that was built on top of terrible working conditions and widespread corruption, alongside the overall increase in wages and eventual increase in living standards. We should not just say that certain movements arose (such as socialist and progressive movements) without clarifying the events and conditions that spurred them. It is universally accepted that the Progressive Era was spurred by the widespread corruption and exploitation that existed at the time. Shying away from mentioning the dark sides of industrialization is not helpful to the reader at all. Cadiomals (talk) 21:55, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

The rest of your post underscores the propaganda I mentioned. Most of what you said is BS (speaking of grade school text books...). Regardless, that type of opinionated description is POV language. Neutrality, remember? It's also unnecessary. If we're no longer quoting the Declaration of Independence, we certainly don't need to include a colorful literary quote used for political effect. BTW, do you have an answer for my question above about the cherry-picked immigration policy sentence? VictorD7 (talk) 22:15, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

I don't know where you get off calling well-documented facts BS/propaganda when there is extensive primary evidence documenting the tough conditions for many laborers and immigrants at the time alongside the overall increase in wages. It would take no more than one or two sentences to mention the circumstances driving change in those times to clarify for the readers, and I would agree with adding mention of rapid economic development and population growth and adding "reform movements arose to address x, y, and z" rather just saying "reform movements arose". If you're just going to "call BS" on salient and well-documented facts because you don't like seeing capitalism portrayed as anything other than good, I will just wait on input and consensus from others. As for the immigration sentence, I'm not married to it. Cadiomals (talk) 01:06, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

I called BS on your characterization--"terrible"; "affluence..built on..widespread corruption"; etc.--not on the actual fact you repeated about wages simultaneously going up in what was America's greatest period of economic development. The first was mostly myth perpetrated by leftist historians for much of the 20th Century because they had an ideological interest in promoting the perception of need for expansive government economic interventionism. Sure there was corruption, but that was true before and since. Jackson started the spoils system, and the opportunity for corruption and abuse has grown with government's size. Heck, Obama's IRS was caught red handed suppressing conservative groups, the administration opted to investigate itself (the old special prosecutor law was allowed to expire), and it recently came out that the woman in charge of the investigation (whose identity had been a secret) has made numerous separate campaign donations to him, so no one's shocked by a lack of indictments or interviews of victims despite a key figure already having pled the Fifth. Corruption never went away. Worker conditions back then may seem "terrible" by the standards of our time, but that would be true of earlier times too, and whether the improvements since owe more to government regulation or free market response is highly debatable. Regardless, "terrible" is an opinion. Even if every academic agrees with the sentiment it's still inappropriate POV for our purposes.

Just because a protest movement arises at a particular time doesn't necessarily mean we should make assumptions about its causality. A rise in wages might "spur" the creation of a movement, if it's accompanied by higher expectations and more leisure time for certain people than previously existed (more free time for agitation). That doesn't mean things are really worse than they had been before. The French Revolution largely started among the elite classes and France had one of the most well off populations in Europe anyway. The "99%ers" camped out in New York a couple of years ago were themselves among the world's top 1%. My point is that true causality can be debated, and we shouldn't necessarily equate it with whatever the group's stated purpose is (no matter how sincere). However, as I said, I'm fine with stating said purposes, as long as we phrase it that way (e.g. "campaigned for higher wages" and/or "wanted improved worker safety") rather than as cause or by embracing their political arguments at face value in Wikipedia's voice.

And shelve your bias accusations. I sometimes state my political views on the Talk Page to illustrate points but I'm the one editing for neutrality here. You're the one defending the insertion of pure political opinion. Is that because you're determined to make capitalism look bad? We've been removing details, but the text should still be factual rather than opinionated. VictorD7 (talk) 19:20, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

One fact we should consider adding is total population, possibly around the turn of the 20th Century (give or take a couple of decades), as a rough guide for scale since the section doesn't mention population after the "2.1 million" on the Revolution's eve. VictorD7 (talk) 23:02, 13 January 2014 (UTC)

The point of editing for conciseness, saving some few hundreds of characters each section, is meant to be neutral without altering the substance of the pre-existing text, hence almost all citations remain in place.

I like the addition of Prohibition because a) women’s movements noticed men beat their wives under the influence, so it should stop, and b) worker’s movements noticed drinking a quart of beer (that's how it was bottled) at noon on the farm as a habit --- cost the loss of a hand in machinery in the factory, and c) Evangelicals thought the stuff should be shelved til the Second Coming or be damned.

“Gilded Age” coined by Mark Twain, is a pretty standard reference, found in American historiography in chapter headings and book titles. Again, links to key concepts such as "Gilded Age" incorporate hard facts that do not lend themselves to a summary account.

Total populations might be limited to four mentions akin to our rationing to a limit of four presidents. At the first census 1790, the Civil War 1860, the end of the Third (?) Wave of immigration 1930(?), and at the millennium 2000? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 10:34, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

Yeah, I remember my textbooks as a little kid having a chapter called "The Guilded Age". I'm hoping more recent books have matured beyond that, but either way it's POV, and delivered with sensationalistic literary flair at that. One thing cadiomals got right above is that the phrase essentially means things were "terrible" for most people. That the facts seem counter to that is beside the point. Virtually everyone of all political stripes, including most history writers, would agree with the statement "Hitler perpetrated great evil", but that doesn't mean the sentence is appropriate for his bio in Wiki's voice (though a similar sentence near the end uses quotes and is attributed). Should we toss in a "robber barons" reference too? Because my textbooks also had that claptrap, and some academics still use the once popular but equally stupid phrase. That said, again, I am fine with retaining a link to the page for the reasons you state, but we frequently alter link titles in the text here for contextual appropriateness and I'm still waiting for someone to make an affirmative argument for keeping the literary POV "guilded age". If we can alter the wording of the Declaration of Independence, why stay wedded to Twain's direct quote? VictorD7 (talk) 19:20, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

And I support your four points proposal. VictorD7 (talk) 19:24, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

I think I would agree to your revision to "economic development" -- can we get a third editor to sign on? My original intent was to simply edit for conciseness, with minor tweeks for completeness or balance. "Gilded Age" seems to have its aficionados, I left it in.

I note that you used the link to "Guilded Age" in the phrase "Rapid economic development at the end of the 19th century", so at some level you have already offered a collegial compromise, a link to the 'hard facts', but using language in the narrative which is actually more descriptive for the general reader -- for those who were not raised on the "Gilded Age"-chapter-heading textbooks. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 10:01, 15 January 2014 (UTC)

Virginahistorian, I think you should have posted a second draft of your disputed civil war/reconstruction era changes before instituting your major alteration of that important section Please do not make major revisions to the industrialization section without first posting a second draft of your disputed proposals on this talk page. Unless you are for example correcting inaccuracies, there is no rush to make these changes and unlike the previous history subsections these sections are not overly long. I'd also like to add that lack of current coverage or mention in the mediocre History of the United States article is not good reasoning for not mentioning something in this article. Both articles need improvement. Both articles need a mix of broad themes and important facts. The history section of this article should not become a smaller/vaguer duplicate of that mediocre article. One final word about recentism, throughout its history the U.S. has grown in physical size and has grown exponentially larger in population. Taking that into account the later subsections of the history section are kind of smallish and they earlier subsections are probably still too big.Lance Friedman (talk) 19:30, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

But early generations had a disproportionate impact on shaping the culture, laws, and society, so it'd be a fallacy to assume a period where the population happens to be larger merits more coverage in the history section. By that logic world historians would mostly just focus on the present and recent past, and would have to switch jobs and become reporters. Regarding sectional quality, the later sections are worse than the early ones were (except for the chaotically constructed NA contact section). The Cold War/Civil Rights section and Contemporary Era sections are especially messes. Currently the article doesn't mention George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, or Abraham Lincoln, but does mention Joseph McCarthy, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, and Malcolm X. That's an untenable situation that needs rectifying. VictorD7 (talk) 19:41, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

• Please note that the term should be spelt, in links, "Gilded Age" or "Guilded age", not "Guilded Age". Creating a link to the last links to a twenty-first century fantasy comic, which could result in some strange mix-ups.Rwenonah (talk) 20:43, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

• Ha Ha, that's what I get for typing too fast while multi-tasking. I'll note that I had spelled it correctly in my other comments above though, and in all my links. VictorD7 (talk) 20:58, 16 January 2014 (UTC)

@Lance Friedman. The Civil War edit had your input, your input was preserved in the extended quote as you wished, and placed at the end of the section as a summary conclusion of the entire section. You did not dispute that emphasis, I took you at your word and incorporated it. The estimate of loss in our source is underestimated, but the object is to edit for conciseness without making any substantial changes. One may say 'and aftermath' because one need not merely parrot the source in a near plagiaristic paraphrase, and these estimates are just that, approximations in time and space.

What now? The proposal is more concise without leaving out any editor's objection. The section is important, it is important that it be well written with all editor imput. The proposal did not alter the assessment that the Civil War Amendments, or Reconstruction Amendments, belonged in the Civil War section. Modern Historians such ad Eric Foner date reconstruction from 1863, hence the title of his 1988 volume, Reconstruction: America's unfinished revolution: 1863-1877. He treats the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments there in a narrative rooted in the Civil War, which is commonly done in American hisoriography.

But you chose to edit the Amendments without discussion. Please do not edit this important section without discussion on this page, --- while telling me not to do what you are doing, --- when I am not doing it. That is a kind of WP page disruption. To what common purpose? TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 06:31, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Virginia Historian, As you well know, I have been discussing these edits in the relevant section above this one. And unlike your edits, my recent edits have been relatively minor. Unless someone choses to dispute an edit, this talk page obviously doesn't need to be clogged up with discussion of an edit.Lance Friedman (talk) 11:32, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

Your revision notes are longer than your discussion here, and your edit reversions are a sign that they were too abbreviated to be persuasive. Use this space instead for discussion. See another effort at accommodating you above relative to your interest in the KKK. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 12:59, 17 January 2014 (UTC)

50 States

I came to this page because I couldn't remember some of the New England States. This article does not have a list of all 50 States however. The closest existing thing is United_States#Geography.2C_climate.2C_and_environment. I propose to change/append that section to show all 50 States in an appended version of U.S._state#Map or U.S._state#List_of_states. Possible addition of regional groupings such as 'New England' and 'Bible Belt' to reflect differing attitudes in those areas. Another option would be a truncated version of Physiographic_Regions_of_the_United_States, as it might serve the same purpose to highlight regional differences. nachtkap 9:19, 14 January 2014(UTC)

Sorry but none of your suggestions are appropriate for this summary article. The United States article is supposed to give a broad overview of the different aspects of the nation without providing overly specific info such as a listing of all the states. However, the info you seek exists in main articles dedicated to those specific topics, many of which are linked in this article.

• For a listing of all US states, see U.S state or List of states and territories of the United States
• For info on the New England states, see the link.
• For info on the Bible Belt states, see the link.

Cadiomals (talk) 09:38, 14 January 2014 (UTC)

So an actual list of the 50 United States is inappropriate? Why exactly? EllenCT (talk) 03:01, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

It's already in there under United States#Political divisions, "Main articles: Political divisions of the United States, U.S. state, Territories of the United States, and List of states and territories of the United States". TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 08:55, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Because it unnecessarily takes up room. --Golbez (talk) 18:21, 18 January 2014 (UTC)

Agree with TVH and Gbz' to a point. How about a collapsible box, just below the U.S. map, with the States listed in alphabetical order with the date of statehood for each, listed in two or three columns? Pages that are directly related should have a certain amount of contextual overlap where the very basic information is concerned.
In any case, is the term New England States an official group of states that e.g.falls under some distinguishing political grouping, or is it a figurative term that pertains to this original colonial area? In any case it would seem the section in question should at least mention it (I just added a link to the New England page) as we did have a reader coming to 'this' page to find out about that. Be nice if we could give him/her something more than a pat on the back with advice to go fishing some where else. The map on this page makes no such distinction -- this being 'the' U.S.A. page. -- Gwillhickers 16:39, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

Nit-picking!

Can someone change the pertinent footnote to "Indeed, World War II ushered in the zenith of U.S. power (in relative terms) ...". In absolute terms, the Americans didn't, for example, yet have thermonukes in 1945. 86.176.100.80 (talk) 22:21, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

Relative power is the only reasonable metric. I see no reason to specify. --Golbez (talk) 22:41, 20 January 2014 (UTC)

All power is relative, the phrase "(in relative terms)" is superfluous here. The U.S. reaches the zenith of its power relative to how it judges itself powerful in unused stocks of armament relative to other nations' stocks of unused weaponry. Using parentheses is generally a sign of bad encyclopedic style. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 10:42, 21 January 2014 (UTC)

It says "ushered in", it did not say its zenith was reached in 1945. Presumably it was reached sometime after. TFD (talk) 00:14, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

State/Statehood list

Upon further review, the U.S. page here makes no reference to statehood, other than to mention it in passing a couple of times. Apparently if a reader wanted to see an overview of statehood dates he/she would have to go to the individual state pages, one at a time, fifty of them, to gather that information. Seems this would be an appropriate place for a state/statehood list, again, in a collapsible box if room is an issue. There exists a list of states on a different page but it includes a lot of other additional information, (i.e. population, capital city, largest city, area in sq miles, etc etc) not appropriate for this page. Seem this page would do well with a simple list of states and statehood dates, as this is the United 'States' page. -- Gwillhickers 17:46, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

I went ahead and made a template containing a collapsible box with a list of states and statehood dates and placed it under the map of the USA. Seems to work there. Please let a few people comment first if anyone has the mind to take the axe to it. Hope it meets with everyone's approval. Thanx. -- Gwillhickers 19:26, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

It is possible to make the bar (and the box in general) narrower, preferably so it is similar to the width of the map above it? When you open the template there is a lot of space between the two columns so I don't think this would be impossible. Cadiomals (talk) 22:47, 22 January 2014 (UTC)

The bar/box automatically adjusts to the size of your window, so if you have a narrower window the bar will be shorter. I have a wide screen monitor, but when I'm viewing/editing Wikipedia I use a separate and narrower window because I don't like to turn my head back and forth when I'm reading. The states are listed with two columns instead of three so they won't crowd the window should it be a smaller width, esp on smaller computer screens like they have in public libraries. The map is a fixed size. The only way to make it larger or smaller is to adjust the px size or tweak your own settings. -- Gwillhickers 02:00, 23 January 2014 (UTC)

Hey, Gwillhickers, you're a history guy. We've finally gotten around to redoing the History section, mostly streamlining but also addressing quality/accuracy concerns, and I think the process would benefit from your participation if you're interested. VictorD7 (talk) 00:29, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I'm sort of involved in other areas, but I'll drop in from time to time and offer my 2c to the talk page and perhaps make corrections to the article should the language start to become exaggerated, erroneous and/or take on the form of veiled hate speech, etc. -- Gwillhickers 19:42, 24 January 2014 (UTC)

I'd appreciate it. VictorD7 (talk) 02:12, 25 January 2014 (UTC)

One small change needs to to be made to the Cold War and Civil Rights era subsection

The groups opposing the civil rights movement were not white nationalist groups they were white supremacist groups. If no one objects, I'll go ahead and make this change.Lance Friedman (talk) 20:00, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

There's quite a few more changes needed than just that, but I'm sure we'll get to it eventually. Though I personally don't see much difference between the two. White supremacists believed in the supremacy of the white race while desiring either a fully white nation or a segregated nation fully ruled by whites. I prefer using "white supremacist" too since it's the more common term but it's the least of the issues so we won't get hung up on it. Cadiomals (talk) 20:35, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

There were white nationalist groups that aligned with black separatist groups, on account of their mutual desire for segregation. This does not, however, mean that white nationalist groups were in any way supportive of the civil rights movement. Therefore, I don't believe the change should be made unless sources can be provided. --Jleon (talk) 22:06, 30 January 2014 (UTC)

Jeon, can you provide some sources for what you are saying about the white supremacists during the time period that we are talking about? You may be confused about the time period that we are talking about which is the 1950's and 1960's. The KKK, white citizens councils, and elected officials who supported white supremacy during this time period had little, probably no contact with any sort of black separatist groups. Cadiomals, while white supremacists and white nationalists have similarities, they also have significant differences. The white supremacists of this time period particularly those among the elite very much did NOT want a fully white nation or even real separation. They very much wanted to have lots of African Americans to provide cheap menial labor. White supremacists often even thought very fondly of the Africans Americans who were cleaning their floors or cooking their dinner, as long as they remained in that kind of servile role. I am going to go ahead and switch terms tomorrow I agree with you that there a quite a few additional changes that need to be made to the article. I am going to go ahead delete references to "black nationalists such as the Black Panther Party" These groups were not simply fringe groups in the United States, they were tiny fringe groups even inside the African-American community. They also did not gain any kind of significant electoral power anywhere. The black party wasn't even founded until 1966. Cadiomas, I will delete them tomorrow if you agree with me. It is also inaccurate to describe Malcolm X as a black nationalist. He denounced black separatists. I have more mixed feelings about having him in the article. I think W. E. B. Dubois probably had much greater historical impact than Malcolm X. This is an unrelated topic. but I would also like to delete the trivial unsourced second paragraph in the food section. If you agree with me on that, I will also delete that paragraph.Lance Friedman (talk) 00:04, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

I didn't care much about your initial proposed change and was leaning toward letting it go, but now that you're expanding it I'll say that I oppose all these changes. We're going to be rewriting the section before long anyway. Better to wait until then. I'm not sure we need to mention any of these groups on any side in the 1960s, and maybe none or almost none of the individuals, but we can discuss that later. VictorD7 (talk) 04:55, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Lets stay on topic, the changes that I am proposing need to be made for reasons of accuracy. Is anyone here trying to argue that white supremacist is not the most accurate word to describe the people supporting Jim Crowe, the KKK, white citizens councils and similar things? unsigned Lance Friedman

White supremacists did indeed support "Jim Crow, the KKK, white citizens councils and similar things", but segregation in some areas had broader support --- versus --- the vigilante activity of the KKK, white citizens councils, which were more certainly white supremacist. --- But "supremacist" is better than "nationalist" for the Reconstruction-aftermath period, its just not inclusive enough for the segregation-Jim Crow aspect --- were we to return to this section to rehash it. --- if we are not deleting the term altogether. TheVirginiaHistorian (talk) 08:38, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Agreed. I was thinking something simple, broad, and to the point like "segregationist" would be be better in that context, if we end up having such a description at all. VictorD7 (talk) 18:11, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

Victor, what do you think was the ideology motivating Segregationists? Are you saying they were not white supremacists? Segregationist was of course the prefered euphemism that the more respectable racists liked to use to describe themselves on camera in public. It conjures up the myth that they were only supporting a simple little system of separate but equal opportunities for everyone. We have already gone over this issue in the reconstruction era subsection. Saying the civil rights workers like MLK were simply fighting against segregation is a gross understatement of the racial discrimination and violence occurring at this time. If anything we should mention one of the infamous crimes of the time that motivated activists and presidents to do more for African American equality. For example, the Christmas day bombing that killed Harry T. Moore and his wife. Or the gouging out of the eyes of Isaac Woodard by a southern sheriff, that crime inspired Harry Truman to act on widespread discrimination in the U.S. military. We already watered down the reconstruction era by deleting all mention of the KKK or any of the other violent white supremacist group that were key in returning white supremacists to power. We are also incorrectly calling the state sanctioned terrorism that occurred in the south "vigilantism." (As if the perps of these crimes were not routinely being committed by and/or shielded by white supremacist state officials from sheriffs to judges to governors?) Victor, do you think that is all made up nonsense? Virginia Historian, I have no problem with broadening the description of the people who were supporting discrimination. For example, if you want we can call them racists and white supremacistsLance Friedman (talk) 22:18, 31 January 2014 (UTC)

It'd be more efficient and less problematic to avoid speculating on such motives and simply describe positions in NPOV language. Believe it or not, many people actually believed the "equal" part of separate but equal, especially if they didn't interact much with blacks, while others just wanted separation but didn't care about equality or supremacy per se. That's irrelevant to this article though. As for "vigilantism", the murders in question (which weren't just in the south), were illegal (even in the south), and were typically carried out by private individuals regardless of whether law enforcement tried very hard to punish the perpetrators. But let's not start that back up again right after we've finished extensive debate on the segment. Time to move on. As for your latest proposal, the thrust of this project will be removing undue detail, not adding mentions of specific crime victims in a section that doesn't mention Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Frederick Douglass, Thomas Edison, Babe Ruth, George Washington Carver, Henry Ford, etc.. It's about context and perspective. VictorD7 (talk) 01:04, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

VIctor, you are being a little hypocritical. You and other editors have already said that you are planning to add various people to the subsection. Also, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison are already in the science & tech section. We don't need to repetitively mention them again in the history section. Regarding you rather inane assertion that it is just "speculation" as to what motivated people who supported discriminatory policies, most of the leading Southern Governors and Senators of the time quite openly praised white supremacy and routinely made racist statements on record. If you like I can provide multiple quotes. They were also very often members of the white citizens councils which we have already acknowledged were white supremacist groups. It is simply dishonest and silly for anyone to argue that racism and white supremacy were not the main motivators behind the panoply of discriminatory policies and violence of the time period. A short sentence about Isaac Woodard would be a good addition to this civil rights era subsection for the reasons I stated above. Lance Friedman (talk) 22:46, 1 February 2014 (UTC)

Friedman, your drivel missed the point. Motivation isn't our concern for this topic at this detail level. Unless your "multiple" anecdotal examples can magically prove what all segregation supporters thought and felt (and really even if they could), it's best to go with a broader, more straightforward, more accurate, less POV description. If we mention them at all. The "various people" we agreed to add to the History section are four salient presidents, particularly George Washington. You're trying to get people mentioned who are only notable for being murder victims. You're not exhibiting a reasonable perspective. I'm also starting to wonder if your goal is simply to derail this process, since you've already admitted you oppose the consensus for streamlining the later History subsections. Regardless, finishing the Industrialization section is next on the agenda. Let's not skip ahead. VictorD7 (talk) 18:39, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

The leading elected officials supporting these discriminatory practices as a matter of routine described themselves as white supremacists, belonged to white supremacist groups, and repeatedly said grossly racist things on the record. Also, a myriad of critically acclaimed mainstream sources describe them as racist and white supremacists. I am still wondering why you never state what you think was motivating the supporters of this pervasive and violent discrimination? Just because you don't know or don't want to say is not a good reason to make this subsection more vague and less accurate. Regarding Isaac Woodard, I am guessing that you did not even bother to read the wiki article that you so vehemently want to forbid from mentioning. He was not murdered, he was an African American veteran who had his eyes gouged out by southern sheriffs who were never punished in anyway. Also, I am not simply wanting to add it because it was a terrible crime. Multiple sources say that this horrific crime inspired President Truman and many other people to do more to fight the panoply of discriminatory practices that were victimizing African Africans Lance Friedman (talk) 19:14, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 February 2014

Start the request at 0915(UTC) Mac and hurricanes (talk) 02:33, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Semi-protected edit request on 2 February 2014

Start time: 0915(UTC). Mac and hurricanes (talk) 02:35, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Not done: I'm afraid that I can't understand your request; please be more specific about what needs to be changed. LittleMountain5 04:39, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

Request in Military

The very last sentence in the Military section reads "Approximately 90,000 U.S. troops were serving in Afghanistan in April 2012;[298] by November 8, 2013 2,285 had been killed during the War in Afghanistan." I may be confused but I believe 8, 2013 2,285 is a typo or mistake of some sort. I'm not sure exactly what went wrong so don't know how to change it. Thanks. --Jacksoncw (talk) 18:52, 2 February 2014 (UTC)

I just realised I was actually confused. It's early in the morning and I read the sentence totally wrong. My appologies; this section can be closed. However I believe the date and the number of people killed might be switched around so it isn't confused by anyone else. --Jacksoncw (talk) 18:53, 2 February 2014 (UTC)