Don Zeko:
Political parties do lots of things simultaneously. If we’re going to talk about how Dems have no policy or don’t care about the working class, we need to talk about how bailing out Detroit...
Detroit was bailed out by the GOP (they control both Michigan's governor and the government)
, making health care more affordable for poor people,
Everyone can not subsidise everyone. The working class sees their own healthcare insurance go up and understands they're the ones subsidising the poor.
...just generally delivering eight years of declining unemployment and eventually wage gains etc. don’t count.
The economy is something they are giving you "credit" for, except "blame" might be a better word. It's been 8 years, is it Obama's economy yet or are we still supposed to blame Bush?
If you want to pay for Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid (etc), growth is a big problem. The alternative to growth is serious entitlement "reform".
Which results in *less* employment, not more.
The Luddite fallacy is the simple observation that new technology does not lead to higher overall unemployment in the economy. New technology doesn’t destroy jobs – it only changes the composition of jobs in the economy.
This link details exactly what you're saying... and why you're wrong.
I can’t figure out whether you’re 100% in the bag for him, or Jaybirding your disdain for him in a slightly less obvious way.
I voted for Johnson rather than accept Kodos or Kang. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRdNOQcfp-8
But I'm also anti-hysteria and anti-hype. A fair amount of the criticism leveled against Trump strikes me as election year straw man stuff. Trump, to his discredit, seems to like the attention generated by that sort of thing but whatever.
IMHO we're looking at the following:
Trump Strengths: Experienced at management, leadership, showmanship, business, and making money. Has worked with people across all political groups. Pragmatic.
Trump Weaknesses: Erratic(?). Narcissistic. Old. Has put little effort into political thinking. Never held office. No military experience. No legal experience. Takes office with anti-free trade and anti-illegal-immigration promises.
Trump Misc: Loves his money more than his wives. Has switched political parties multiple times. Apparently has little political ideology, could have run as a Dem if the situation were different. HRC went to one of the Trump family weddings.
Trump as a reasonable guy: Daughter and some grandchildren are Jewish. He endorsed gay marriage yesterday on 60 minutes. Every GOP President gets branded as Hitler by the Dems so this isn't the first time we've seen this.
First of all, the reason we know that is that *she disclosed that*,
The New York Times broke that story.
And, again, I’m finding it amazing that all these people who attacked Hillary Clinton by *literally pouring over her entire financial history and finding stuff they think is dodgy* seem to think there’s no problem with Trump keeping his finances *completely and utterly secret*.
HRC's "entire financial history" is managing to earn hundreds of millions of dollars working for the gov on a salary not even slightly close to that, while openly mixing her personal/professional business/responsibilities.
As for Trump, although I think it's a problem, I also think that what the Dems did with Romney made the whole thing moot. You burned Romney for just showing his finances, even though there was nothing there. Trump's finances is at least 1000x times as complex so could be far more easily misrepresented. The political damage he took from hiding them was a lot less than for showing them.
Since you're going to scream "wolf (bad finances)" no matter what he does or says, regardless of what the facts are, there's no point in listening to you on this issue. Especially since you've applied a very different standard for HRC.
no one’s ever figured out anything that anyone might have been trying to bribe Bill to do.
Wiki has been sanitized (again) on this issue, but every now and then they go over Tyson Food's business in front of Bill.
the CEO of Tyson Food supported Bill opponent in reelection.
True, but that was years later.
Your premise is that someone was part of a thing a thing at his brokerage that he literally sued brokerage for doing to him.
We're talking about her, not him. While she was getting crazy results, he was posting losses, which makes it somewhat absurd that he's the master giving advise while she was the student. He couldn't follow his own advise?
The facts are these: HRC was able to consistently trade at the top or bottom of the daily market(!), make shockingly good profits with shorts in a rising market(!), and was using money which if it'd gone the other way would have destroyed her husband's political career(!). That office was "giving" people favourable trades after the fact during the exact time she did her thing.
And faced with those facts, you and I reach opposite conclusions... which is fine, but keep in mind just how high a bar you're creating for believing in corruption and misconduct.
The idea itself comes from the Heritage Foundation, and was a Mitt Romney initiative.
Obama got all those Dem votes with proposals from the right wing? Seriously? And he didn't get any right wing votes at all? After he figured out he wasn't getting any GOP votes he didn't move to the left? And other people have pointed out that the GOP didn't propose anything?
Here's a link from March of 2010 (i.e. before it was known politicians would be voted out of office for supporting Obamacare) http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704117304575138071192342664
The Dems passed the most left wing bill they could, unless the GOP was willing to support "the public option" there was no point in them trying to contribute.
Is this the part where you claim the GOP was all mean and nasty to Obama, and it was their fault and not his?
My expectation is we're going to see the Dems be all mean and nasty to Trump... and then we'll see. He'll either be so thin-skinned that he can't do anything, or he'll figure out a way to work with them (or around them) and show the Presidency is hard and shouldn't be someone's first real job.
So we can expect complete neglect, predictable scandals and screw-ups, then sacking the people involved and waiting for the next round to start again? It’s going to be a long four years.
Perhaps. But I'd prefer that over the current "no firings" over the IRS trying to suppress free speech, and Rummy kept his job long after it became apparent he was bungling the war effort.
Again, this is just hand waving until you have a concrete proposal.
Add a ten year review with a default elimination unless we can prove they're worth the expense, rather than a default "someone somewhere at sometime must have found it ok".
One of our problems is with creeping regulation as every generation of politicians needs to "do something" to prove their worth. Sunset would give the current group something to do.
...how does the $10K number by itself mean that businesses are over regulated? Just the number and a gut feeling? How do we detangle this aggregate into something useful for analysis?
First of all, $10k seems like a lot when median household income is roughly $50 and personal income is less than that. Yes, that's a gut-check (I'd call it a sanity check), but it's still fair to ask how much value we get.
As for "analysis", that word implies looking at what we're getting, and how much it's costing, and ideally we'd then let individuals decide whether these "services" are really necessary for their health and whether they value them to this degree.
There are a ton of regulations in place, and some of them might even be there for good reason.
Exactly, "a ton". Every grain of rice on the donkey's back can be there for a good reason, but their collective weight can still be a problem. It's basically impossible for people like you and me to know what the law is, so... we can't create jobs? Or do we just do so and hope we don't run afoul of the gov?
Here's a different way to frame this, these regulations add roughly $10k in costs to our employment (assuming non-manufacturing). I've been abused by my management several times over the years (stealing my $401k money certainly counts), but I've never had a year (much less all years collectively) where that $10k wouldn't have served me better in my pocket. IMHO my ability and willingness to quit and get a different job puts an upper limit on how bad things can get, and provides more motivation to my employer not to do things which would result in me quitting.
As the problem is ‘People losing their sources of income due to automation and overseas production’, perhaps the solution is merely for people to have a *replacement* source of income.
Universal Guaranteed income?
I'd really like to see how that works somewhere else before we try it large scale here, and it'd have to replace several important/popular programs, but I'm not opposed.
Well this just fills me with hope for the next four years.
If you want hope, Trump fired his campaign manager several times during the run. That's a key skill for a President, think of what this country had to go through in order to get Rummy fired by Bush.
They were mentioned a lot when the ACA was being discussed. But of course at the time (and afterwards) the GOP has refused absolutely to propose anything at al, to replace the status quo ante or the ACA.
The GOP understood they were frozen out of the ACA discussion at the start.
This was a once-in-a-generation chance for the Left to give America socialised medicine, and the discussion was between the Left and the far Left. I can not picture Obama standing up to the far Left to make the GOP included. From his point of view he was right, and making nice with the GOP was actually a bad idea for multiple reasons.
Not only was the GOP wrong, but they knew themselves that they were wrong and were just against socialised medicine for narrow selfish reasons. The ACA was going to work, it was crafted by the greatest minds, it was going to reduce medical costs, expand coverage, encourage growth, and be popular with the public. Why should the GOP get any credit, or have any input? Their role was to be the villains of the piece for opposing this for the last 50+ years.
It wasn't until the Dems realised it wasn't going to be popular that they looked for a vote or three, and by then the GOP realised it was a train wreck. If the ACA was popular with the public they would have backed off, and if it had worked as advertised it would be popular.
In Michigan a generation ago the Dems, as a joke, submitted a bill to the governor ending school funding (with nothing replacing it). The idea was to show up the governor for having submitted no ideas on what to do instead of what they currently had. Instead he signed it, and with no funding at all for schools, all sides were forced to sit down and come up with something reasonable. Nothing concentrates minds like a noose.
Hopefully if the ACA is blown up we'll see something like that... but we'll see.
Are you suggesting Gore wasn't trying to count the Dem ballots differently? The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that he couldn't do that.
Seven justices (the five Justice majority plus Breyer and Souter) agreed that there was an Equal Protection Clause violation in using different standards of counting in different counties.[30] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore#Decision
IMHO they should have stopped there, but that's a different issue.
By Trump rules, it shouldn’t create any additional expenditures, say, paying the person you hire.
If the person in question wants to work for nothing, why should the government have the power to say "no"?
My mom worked in the church office for nothing (it's called 'volunteering'). I've worked for less than nothing (partner in a company losing money).
I've worked for less than what I deserved just to get experience. Opportunity knocks at work, it was stunningly useful to be at work and get those skills.
it seems like the Democrats are getting sternly lectured for not pretending that they’re going to bring back those jobs that aren’t going to come back.
My problem with the Dems on this issue is they tend to believe that job creation is a privilege given to employers, not a right. Creating a job shouldn't require a team of lawyers and accountants, it shouldn't be larded up with mandates and fees, and you shouldn't have to prove x/y/z.
We as a society should want creating a job to be the First thing an employer wants to try for fixing a problem, not the last. That means creating that job should be really easy and risk free.
Ideally we want lots of employers competing for employees, so much so that demand/supply increases the income going to employees.
? Almost all assassinations in the US have been the result of lone-lunatics. Excluding those, we basically have nothing; Lincoln and MLK stand out as exceptions but needing to reach that far back proves the point.
“Simplify the tax code” is just another form of “waste, fraud and abuse”. It’s a magic talisman, a simple solution to complex problems. Might as well add in tiger-protecting rocks.
Reagan actually did it, worked decently well too.
And while "simple" it's actually really hard. There's a lot of vested interests here, including Congress, who don't want this problem fixed.
But that logic also applies to libertarian changes to the status quo as much as it does to anyone else’s. You can’t just assume that you can make this change to things then it will naturally work out awesome.
This is like saying that just because we increase demand, decrease supply, and impose price controls, we don't *know* that we'll have shortages.
That's True, but all outcomes are not equally likely, shortages is the way to bet.
We're having problems with growth, and we're looking at growth choking policies, which were created by self interested parties to benefit them at the expense of everyone else... the way to bet is that these policies are in fact causing problems, and should be reevaluated for just how expensive they are.
And how come he regularly engages in cheap/obvious fraud like Trump University?
For the same reason Walmart/Target end up in trouble for selling things they shouldn't or not letting employees take toilet breaks. Similarly I don't hold Obama responsible every time a federal cop/solider commits rape or murder.
Trump is both a franchise and upper-management. He's never going to meet everyone who works for him, he's never going to understand every idea that is claimed to be "his". After you hit a certain company size, it's expected that you're going to have problems and not every idea is going to work out. It's even expected that you're going to be sued for misbehaviour done by you. Scale matters, a lot.
One of the most predictive people in all of this has been Scott Adams, who has been dissecting Trump's moves from the start, explaining why/what/how Trump was advancing, and predicting his eventual victory. Knowing how the magician does his magic is informative and takes a lot of the mystery away.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.
On “Jack Move II”
1st, you just narrowed the topic to SS alone and that's very different than paying for all of our promises.
2nd, What? Politicians long since retired or dead made the promise, therefore it should be possible to raise taxes high enough to pay for it?
Then what? Increasing GDP is the best (and perhaps only) way to pay for our various promises.
On “A One Party Nation”
Very much agreed.
"
I'm a numbers guy, and the numbers have been 10 years without 3% growth, i.e. awful.
http://cdn.cnsnews.com/10_straight_years-gdp_growth-chart.jpg
"
Detroit was bailed out by the GOP (they control both Michigan's governor and the government)
Everyone can not subsidise everyone. The working class sees their own healthcare insurance go up and understands they're the ones subsidising the poor.
The economy is something they are giving you "credit" for, except "blame" might be a better word. It's been 8 years, is it Obama's economy yet or are we still supposed to blame Bush?
On “Jack Move II”
If you want to pay for Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid (etc), growth is a big problem. The alternative to growth is serious entitlement "reform".
The Luddite fallacy is the simple observation that new technology does not lead to higher overall unemployment in the economy. New technology doesn’t destroy jobs – it only changes the composition of jobs in the economy.
This link details exactly what you're saying... and why you're wrong.
http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6717/economics/the-luddite-fallacy/
On “The Scorecard”
I voted for Johnson rather than accept Kodos or Kang. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRdNOQcfp-8
But I'm also anti-hysteria and anti-hype. A fair amount of the criticism leveled against Trump strikes me as election year straw man stuff. Trump, to his discredit, seems to like the attention generated by that sort of thing but whatever.
IMHO we're looking at the following:
Trump Strengths: Experienced at management, leadership, showmanship, business, and making money. Has worked with people across all political groups. Pragmatic.
Trump Weaknesses: Erratic(?). Narcissistic. Old. Has put little effort into political thinking. Never held office. No military experience. No legal experience. Takes office with anti-free trade and anti-illegal-immigration promises.
Trump Misc: Loves his money more than his wives. Has switched political parties multiple times. Apparently has little political ideology, could have run as a Dem if the situation were different. HRC went to one of the Trump family weddings.
Trump as a reasonable guy: Daughter and some grandchildren are Jewish. He endorsed gay marriage yesterday on 60 minutes. Every GOP President gets branded as Hitler by the Dems so this isn't the first time we've seen this.
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/153172272041/how-to-break-an-illusion
On “Jack Move II”
It's probably not a good idea to ask bureaucrats to figure out if their own job is necessary, and if their job needs to be expanded or whatever.
On “The Scorecard”
The New York Times broke that story.
HRC's "entire financial history" is managing to earn hundreds of millions of dollars working for the gov on a salary not even slightly close to that, while openly mixing her personal/professional business/responsibilities.
As for Trump, although I think it's a problem, I also think that what the Dems did with Romney made the whole thing moot. You burned Romney for just showing his finances, even though there was nothing there. Trump's finances is at least 1000x times as complex so could be far more easily misrepresented. The political damage he took from hiding them was a lot less than for showing them.
Since you're going to scream "wolf (bad finances)" no matter what he does or says, regardless of what the facts are, there's no point in listening to you on this issue. Especially since you've applied a very different standard for HRC.
Wiki has been sanitized (again) on this issue, but every now and then they go over Tyson Food's business in front of Bill.
True, but that was years later.
We're talking about her, not him. While she was getting crazy results, he was posting losses, which makes it somewhat absurd that he's the master giving advise while she was the student. He couldn't follow his own advise?
The facts are these: HRC was able to consistently trade at the top or bottom of the daily market(!), make shockingly good profits with shorts in a rising market(!), and was using money which if it'd gone the other way would have destroyed her husband's political career(!). That office was "giving" people favourable trades after the fact during the exact time she did her thing.
And faced with those facts, you and I reach opposite conclusions... which is fine, but keep in mind just how high a bar you're creating for believing in corruption and misconduct.
On “Jack Move II”
Obama got all those Dem votes with proposals from the right wing? Seriously? And he didn't get any right wing votes at all? After he figured out he wasn't getting any GOP votes he didn't move to the left? And other people have pointed out that the GOP didn't propose anything?
Here's a link from March of 2010 (i.e. before it was known politicians would be voted out of office for supporting Obamacare) http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052748704117304575138071192342664
The Dems passed the most left wing bill they could, unless the GOP was willing to support "the public option" there was no point in them trying to contribute.
"
Is this the part where you claim the GOP was all mean and nasty to Obama, and it was their fault and not his?
My expectation is we're going to see the Dems be all mean and nasty to Trump... and then we'll see. He'll either be so thin-skinned that he can't do anything, or he'll figure out a way to work with them (or around them) and show the Presidency is hard and shouldn't be someone's first real job.
On “The Scorecard”
Perhaps. But I'd prefer that over the current "no firings" over the IRS trying to suppress free speech, and Rummy kept his job long after it became apparent he was bungling the war effort.
On “Jack Move II”
Add a ten year review with a default elimination unless we can prove they're worth the expense, rather than a default "someone somewhere at sometime must have found it ok".
One of our problems is with creeping regulation as every generation of politicians needs to "do something" to prove their worth. Sunset would give the current group something to do.
First of all, $10k seems like a lot when median household income is roughly $50 and personal income is less than that. Yes, that's a gut-check (I'd call it a sanity check), but it's still fair to ask how much value we get.
As for "analysis", that word implies looking at what we're getting, and how much it's costing, and ideally we'd then let individuals decide whether these "services" are really necessary for their health and whether they value them to this degree.
"
Exactly, "a ton". Every grain of rice on the donkey's back can be there for a good reason, but their collective weight can still be a problem. It's basically impossible for people like you and me to know what the law is, so... we can't create jobs? Or do we just do so and hope we don't run afoul of the gov?
Here's a different way to frame this, these regulations add roughly $10k in costs to our employment (assuming non-manufacturing). I've been abused by my management several times over the years (stealing my $401k money certainly counts), but I've never had a year (much less all years collectively) where that $10k wouldn't have served me better in my pocket. IMHO my ability and willingness to quit and get a different job puts an upper limit on how bad things can get, and provides more motivation to my employer not to do things which would result in me quitting.
http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/oct/30/ben-carson/cnbc-debate-ben-carson-cites-high-cost-regulations/
"
Universal Guaranteed income?
I'd really like to see how that works somewhere else before we try it large scale here, and it'd have to replace several important/popular programs, but I'm not opposed.
On “The Scorecard”
If you want hope, Trump fired his campaign manager several times during the run. That's a key skill for a President, think of what this country had to go through in order to get Rummy fired by Bush.
On “Jack Move II”
The GOP understood they were frozen out of the ACA discussion at the start.
This was a once-in-a-generation chance for the Left to give America socialised medicine, and the discussion was between the Left and the far Left. I can not picture Obama standing up to the far Left to make the GOP included. From his point of view he was right, and making nice with the GOP was actually a bad idea for multiple reasons.
Not only was the GOP wrong, but they knew themselves that they were wrong and were just against socialised medicine for narrow selfish reasons. The ACA was going to work, it was crafted by the greatest minds, it was going to reduce medical costs, expand coverage, encourage growth, and be popular with the public. Why should the GOP get any credit, or have any input? Their role was to be the villains of the piece for opposing this for the last 50+ years.
It wasn't until the Dems realised it wasn't going to be popular that they looked for a vote or three, and by then the GOP realised it was a train wreck. If the ACA was popular with the public they would have backed off, and if it had worked as advertised it would be popular.
In Michigan a generation ago the Dems, as a joke, submitted a bill to the governor ending school funding (with nothing replacing it). The idea was to show up the governor for having submitted no ideas on what to do instead of what they currently had. Instead he signed it, and with no funding at all for schools, all sides were forced to sit down and come up with something reasonable. Nothing concentrates minds like a noose.
Hopefully if the ACA is blown up we'll see something like that... but we'll see.
On “The Scorecard”
Are you suggesting Gore wasn't trying to count the Dem ballots differently? The Supreme Court ruled 7-2 that he couldn't do that.
Seven justices (the five Justice majority plus Breyer and Souter) agreed that there was an Equal Protection Clause violation in using different standards of counting in different counties.[30] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bush_v._Gore#Decision
IMHO they should have stopped there, but that's a different issue.
On “Jack Move II”
Or alternatively we would get rid of the things which hobble growth.
Unfortunately I see no sign that Trump has any idea what to do about growth, or even that it's a problem.
On “Stephen Bush: Would Bernie Sanders have done better against Donald Trump?”
You'd prefer Poland (which also had empty store shelves)?
On “Jack Move II”
If the person in question wants to work for nothing, why should the government have the power to say "no"?
My mom worked in the church office for nothing (it's called 'volunteering'). I've worked for less than nothing (partner in a company losing money).
I've worked for less than what I deserved just to get experience. Opportunity knocks at work, it was stunningly useful to be at work and get those skills.
"
My problem with the Dems on this issue is they tend to believe that job creation is a privilege given to employers, not a right. Creating a job shouldn't require a team of lawyers and accountants, it shouldn't be larded up with mandates and fees, and you shouldn't have to prove x/y/z.
We as a society should want creating a job to be the First thing an employer wants to try for fixing a problem, not the last. That means creating that job should be really easy and risk free.
Ideally we want lots of employers competing for employees, so much so that demand/supply increases the income going to employees.
On “The Scorecard”
? Almost all assassinations in the US have been the result of lone-lunatics. Excluding those, we basically have nothing; Lincoln and MLK stand out as exceptions but needing to reach that far back proves the point.
On “Jack Move II”
Reagan actually did it, worked decently well too.
And while "simple" it's actually really hard. There's a lot of vested interests here, including Congress, who don't want this problem fixed.
"
This is like saying that just because we increase demand, decrease supply, and impose price controls, we don't *know* that we'll have shortages.
That's True, but all outcomes are not equally likely, shortages is the way to bet.
We're having problems with growth, and we're looking at growth choking policies, which were created by self interested parties to benefit them at the expense of everyone else... the way to bet is that these policies are in fact causing problems, and should be reevaluated for just how expensive they are.
On “The Scorecard”
For the same reason Walmart/Target end up in trouble for selling things they shouldn't or not letting employees take toilet breaks. Similarly I don't hold Obama responsible every time a federal cop/solider commits rape or murder.
Trump is both a franchise and upper-management. He's never going to meet everyone who works for him, he's never going to understand every idea that is claimed to be "his". After you hit a certain company size, it's expected that you're going to have problems and not every idea is going to work out. It's even expected that you're going to be sued for misbehaviour done by you. Scale matters, a lot.
One of the most predictive people in all of this has been Scott Adams, who has been dissecting Trump's moves from the start, explaining why/what/how Trump was advancing, and predicting his eventual victory. Knowing how the magician does his magic is informative and takes a lot of the mystery away.
*Comment archive for non-registered commenters assembled by email address as provided.