Vote for Bernie today
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I think this year's election season has essentially rendered every outcome as possible.
RandyForRubio
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Give me a Pearl/Kicky ticket dammit.
Would not work. Kicky would be pursuing policy and I would be eating pizza off of escort's tramp stamps.
I am actually in trial prep right now so I'll talk about the larger post above at a later time.
I don't think that, as a practical matter, Bernie would accept. However, I see where you are going. They might lock up 100% of every person who has ever felt like their job was offshored and turn all of them out.
If Bernie vs. Trump had been a thing I believe we would have seen a potentially never-predicted/never-witnessed double realignment of the parties. Huge swaths of lower income American union-workers may have flocked to Trump. Your Bernie voting block would look nothing like the traditional red/blue map of the US. I think Texas might have imploded and seceded.
Sometimes the extremes meet around the back end on some issues. That would have been a truly special thing to behold.
Every day on the Pearl/Kicky campaign trail:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uWWQVmKOI28
You and I pretty much see eye to eye on every one of these points. The only place I would disagree with you is on the decline of the middle class blathering. Is there any proof this has happened, or that it's even possible to measure such a phenomenon? I keep hearing stagnant wages, stagnant wages, stagnant wages. What a bunch of nonsense -- living standard have continued an upward trajectory for decades. The middle class is expanding if you ask me. Maybe it's that all the rich white guys don't have enough poor below them and feel a little too common instead of the good old days in the 1960's when there was a distinct difference between the property ownership and business class and the working class.
IMO, % of wealth ownership is the only true measure of income distribution. Is there any comprehensive data that accounts for social security as an asset? How has the bottom second quintile faired compared to the 3rd and 4th?
Joe Bagadonuts
Well-Known Member
That would put large percentages of both their core constituencies into anaphylactic shock. It's a great idea!
Seriously, though, given the way things have gone so far I wouldn't be that surprised if it happened, or even if it worked.
Pearl, I only looked into the thread because I saw you had posted.
I know that you and I both know we are smart and educated guys. So it may come as a surprise to you that I love Bernie (or not, I was always a weird lefty). If you don't mind, I'd like to go a little point by point with you.
Yep, you're right. However, that doesn't mean that tax and wage policy hasn't played a role in the decline of the middle class as a share of the population; it just means that dating it to Reagan is wrong. Below is a graph of the effective and nominal minimum wages historically from the 1930s to 2012.
The minimum wage peaked in the late 1960s at an effective rate a little above ten dollars. This also coincides with near historical unemployment lows of 3.4-3.6%.
Unfortunately there's a bit of a tie between two otherwise unrelated issues: those who continually push for lower taxes also tend to push for the abolishment or lowering of the minimum wage. In that sense, I view the Bernie position of a $15 minimum wage as an effective opening bid that might get him a $12 minimum wage. Hillary opens the bid at $12 because, fundamentally, she's actually a conservative.
I also believe there is a strong argument for the provision of increased tax revenues on the backs of the upper 1% (and, BTW, I say this as an individual who stands to pay more taxes in a Sanders administration) and expenditures that increase growth that I will tackle further below.
Narrative plays a large role in politics. However, I don't think the fact that no one has taken action means that there is no link is a particularly valid argument. I'm pretty sure "Congress won't do anything about it, so therefore it isn't real" might be the worst possible argument as it applies to climate change for example. Political problems, almost by definition have particular hurdles that have to be overcome. The hurdle in this instance is overcoming the resistance of the landed elite. It was very difficult to get kings to give up absolute power, but that it took centuries is not evidence that monarchy was a particularly good form of government.
I suspect if you pushed Warren, he would express support for basic income (negative income tax rates) at the low end. Particularly as automation increases. But can you imagine something that would ever be a bigger non-starter for conservatives?
Let me suggest to you my favorite pitch that I developed while watching what happened under the era of real and active sequestration in 2013. There's a dirty secret in this county that Liberals and Conservatives don't like to acknowledge.
The part liberals hate: Our defense budget is strictly necessary for our economy as presently constituted.
The part conservatives hate: The reason our defense budget is necessary is because it is, in effect, the largest jobs program on the planet.
Put simply, way more jobs than anyone realizes depend upon that flow of cash. Engineering firms all but shut up shop during the 2013 sequestration in places like Huntsville, AL and Phoenix, AZ. My own parents moved because the projects that were previously assigned to my father's firm were not renewed by the Department of Defense due to budget cuts. And these are educated people that we want to encourage to have productive jobs in this country.
On the other hand, previous massive government investment creates jobs and externalities in positive and lasting ways. We are still reaping some of the rewards from Roosevelt era programs that created wonderful infrastructure. In the 1960s, 4% of the entire federal budget was dedicated to the space race. NASA employed over 400,000 people and managed to go from nearly nothing to a man on the moon in a decade. If you really think about how astonishing that is, it's simply staggering. Further, the things we learned and developed during that period created a springboard for all kinds of technologies that were not even imaginable in the 1940s. Computing, miniaturization, and materials science lept forward just incredibly rapidly and that technological innovation forms the basis for much of our current wealth. The benefits are both immediate, employing and incentivizing the creation of more trained professionals in the populace, and long-term. It makes everyone richer and gives us all something to believe it that makes it worth it to be American and alive (I'm of the opinion that the lunar lander should be on our $100 bill).
I propose as follows: increased tax revenue from assessments on the wealthy be directly applied, as part of the same bill that raises taxes, to targeted and direct research and development investment in some key areas. Clean energy, space exploration, biotechnology and life sciences, etc etc. A silicon valley approach to expenditure is, in many ways, the cleanest and fastest return on investment we could ever have. And it directly puts people to work. Even if some of those fail, it doesn't really matter. One successful moon shot reaps rewards that are incalculable.
Further, in order to argue that this is good policy doesn't require me to win that this sort of true jobs program would be better than having the private sector spend the same money (although I would take that argument). It only requires me to win that this program would be better than having the top 1% or 0.1% hoard the wealth that they have been accumulating. And I don't think that it's going to take much to prove that hoarding is an inefficient social waste of resources.
TBH: It barely works even if you get a high end graduate degree. My age range has a lot of very indebted doctors and lawyers. For this, I mostly blame US News and World Report, along with no conditional tuition cap as a student loan funding requirement.
The better argument is to displace defense spending with infrastructure and environmental projects such as sustainable energy and desalination. War spending arguably adds zero net long term value to the economy where the alternative projects definitely would. Plus, they tend to be both leading end as well as labor jobs. The nation could benefit a lot from both at this time.
I would be in favor of massive cuts to offense spending. To call the U.S. war machine a defensive force is completely inaccurate. We still carry the weight of a military that can fight two massive wars on two continents simultaneously and beat any known threat. That **** ain't cheap. Let's spend that money at home. We don't even need to raise taxes, just cut the military by more than half. Stop this constantly forward deployed strategy and focus on how to defend North America.
Pull back to formal allies such as Japan, NATO and Australia.
Have NATO members match the 2% GDP commitment by reducing our own contributions.
Focus on Mexico and Cuba. Secure them and America is set by a ring of allies.
Canada to the north, Europe to the east, Mexico to the south, Cuba has the Gulf of Mexico and S. Korea, Japan, Phillipines, Australia, New Zealand and the islands (Guam, Samoa...) to the west. And we could do it for a lot less than we are now.
Reduce projects like the "pain beam".
I'm not advocating for breaking our treaties with our allies, but they do need to be renegotiated. Like you suggest, demand that NATO match their GDP military spending to ours and pull back. We could probably do with 4 aircraft carriers instead of 12. Build a faster, smaller more mobile Navy. The biggest threat to our big ship Navy is lots of little ships and lots of missiles all fired at once. We're not really set up to counter that threat. We'd take a huge hit in a well organized surprise attack. We need to spread out our resources for the counterattack.
fishonjazz
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I'm interested now
You had me at blah blah blah pizza blah blah blah escort tramp stamp
Another solid idea. I agree. Reduce the number of overseas bases. Is another.
Jamezz
Well-Known Member
Lol, I like your style.
Part of what's happened is that some segments of discussion related to economic policy are not sensitive to new information. Free marketering, in particular, seems to attract a very peculiar string of orthodoxy, complete with its own set of holy books and ideas. Part of your descriptions above indicate that you're, in essence, willing to allow experiments to occur that test the theory-crafted guesses as to what the "inevitable effects" of different policy decisions are. That's something that we need to be doing more of, even though it requires accepting that we're going to screw up every once in awhile and make things worse.
All of these things come down to balance. It would also be ludicrous to declare there's no such thing as a minimum wage that's "too high." It's also worth acknowledging that we can try some wacky free market experiments too(currently, we call that experiment Texas).
On the issue of the GOP walking into the trap of defending that there should be no floor when it comes to human misery: I've always been shocked that the Dems haven't actually made real headway into the "Family values" ticket. If I was running on these minimum or living wage issues I'd be telling everyone that we all work hard so that we can provide for our families and we all really treasure spending time with our loved ones. When we force people to work 60-80 hours a week across multiple jobs, or scrounge for every dollar they can get, you really are robbing them of their lives. They don't get to spend that time with their family and then what's the point. I'd be running on the idea that a living wage brings families together.
I have a very complex position on drugs at this point. Fundamentally, I think we're at the point where we have to scrap the entire scheduling system. It's a dual problem where we make many things that are helpful and have low harm profiles much too hard to get and make addictive stuff that kills you too easy to get. In some instances there's little to distinguish the stuff that's totally forbidden, both in effect and abuse potential, from the stuff that can be obtained easily.
The system is just totally broken. I would be seriously looking at repealing and rewriting Controlling Substances Act and it's enabling follow-on criminal and regulatory law in its entirety. There's nothing there worth saving.
The other prong that dovetails with this is rising suicide rates, which are, in some sense, a misery index on our society. Suicide rates are unacceptably high and those most afflicted look a lot like the guys who took over the Oregon wildlife refuge and are currently rabid for Trump: middle-aged,white, and disaffected because they believe that their life is much worse than it should have been. Lots of them are unemployed and don't have a lot of hope that the future will be better.
Where I and conservatives agree is that I think that people are meant to be productive, and in particular I think most people fall into depression when they feel like they aren't contributing anything to anyone. And unfortunately many of the made-up ways that you can pretend-contribute are destructive. See, e.g. taking over a refuge because it's good for America somehow. If addiction and suicide are the symptoms we want to cure, figuring out productive outlets for unhappy people to improve their own lives is the disease we actually need to cure.
We're in 100% agreement. If anyone wants to invest 20 minutes, this NPR segment was very enlightening on the topic. The way in which CEO pay is currently calculated is a terrible unintended consequence.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2016/02/05/465747726/-682-when-ceo-pay-exploded
Essentially fine with me too. My premise is based upon channeling government investment into things that are productively stimulatory. In essence, you'd be giving me more things I want than I asked for.
Red
Well-Known Member
A bit of a detour here. Our military now is not what our military was when we still had the draft:
https://www.tomdispatch.com/post/17...ore,_america's_post-democratic_military/#more
"In the decades since the draft ended in 1973, a strange new military has emerged in the United States. Think of it, if you will, as a post-democratic force that prides itself on its warrior ethos rather than the old-fashioned citizen-soldier ideal. As such, it’s a military increasingly divorced from the people, with a way of life ever more foreign to most Americans (adulatory as they may feel toward its troops). Abroad, it’s now regularly put to purposes foreign to any traditional idea of national defense. In Washington, it has become a force unto itself, following its own priorities, pursuing its own agendas, increasingly unaccountable to either the president or Congress.
Three areas highlight the post-democratic transformation of this military with striking clarity: the blending of military professionals with privatized mercenaries in prosecuting unending “limited” wars; the way senior military commanders are cashing in on retirement; and finally the emergence of U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) as a quasi-missionary imperial force with a presence in at least 135 countries a year (and counting)."
Those pot-head states.