A thread for Democrats Only
POSTED BY: THGRRI
UPDATED: Thursday, September 17, 2026 09:05
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PAGE 17 of 73
Quote:You're a religious fanatic, SECOND. Your religion is the Democratic Party, and your "satan" is the GOP. Your "testimony" is worth as much as any religious person "testifying" in church. Go testify someplace else.
Signym, I should have testified ..
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:Signym, you have lost your fucking mind as has the typical Texas Trump voter. The exception is the Rich Trump voters. They voted for Trump to get a $1.5 trillion tax cut. That is a completely sane and healthy reason. Selfish, yet sane. As for the reasoning of the non-Rich Trump voters, they have very silly thoughts flying around in their numb skulls:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:You're a religious fanatic, SECOND. Your religion is the Democratic Party, and your "satan" is the GOP. Your "testimony" is worth as much as any religious person "testifying" in church. Go testify someplace else.
Signym, I should have testified ..
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
Signym, I should have testified that Texas Republicans in Harris County would vote for Putin rather than Hillary. Did you know Hillary killed four Americans at Benghazi with her bare hands and bathed in their blood? Ask any Texas Republican. They know for a fact she walked over their corpses. Even Putin as US President would be better than her, despite him being ineligible because he is not a native born American. Obama got elected and you know he was born in Kenya and was less eligible to be President than Putin. Ask a Texas Republican and they will tell you that rock-solid and true fact.
www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/editorials/ct-benghazi-hillary-cli
nton-obama-rhodes-edit-0629-jm-20160628-story.html
The flash cards were for Trump. Don't you remember that he reversed himself on tariffs for the EU? Happened this week, Signym. Trump was turned 180 degrees by Juncker.
www.spiegel.de/international/world/how-the-jean-claude-juncker-won-ove
r-donald-trump-a-1220466.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Democrats agreed more strongly than Republicans did that climate change is a concerning reality. And among climate skeptics there were more Republicans than Democrats. Nevertheless, most Republicans were in basic agreement with most Democrats and independents on this issue.
This raises a question: If Democrats and Republicans agree about climate change, why do they disagree about climate policy?
Republican opposition to climate policy has occurred, in part, because climate policy has been a Democratic issue. As part of our research, we interviewed several retired members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, who stressed this point. Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina, spoke of his opposition in his first several years in Congress: “All I knew was that Al Gore was for it, and therefore I was against it.”
This implies that if the tables were turned — if Republican politicians proposed a climate policy — Republican voters might support it. In our research, that is exactly what we have found.
Our studies suggest that climate policy gridlock is largely about exaggerating disagreement for the sake of disagreement. Our studies revealed a consistent, if somewhat surprising, pattern: Political disagreement was substantially smaller when it came to Republican-backed policies.
In particular, there was very little distance between Republicans and Democrats when evaluating a Republican-proposed carbon tax. This suggests that a carbon tax such as the one proposed by prominent Republicans including James Baker III and Mr. Shultz may hold more promise for bipartisan agreement than we have seen with Democratic policies in the past.
More at www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/republicans-climate-change.h
tml
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Democrats agreed more strongly than Republicans did that climate change is a concerning reality. And among climate skeptics there were more Republicans than Democrats. Nevertheless, most Republicans were in basic agreement with most Democrats and independents on this issue.
This raises a question: If Democrats and Republicans agree about climate change, why do they disagree about climate policy?
Republican opposition to climate policy has occurred, in part, because climate policy has been a Democratic issue. As part of our research, we interviewed several retired members of Congress, both Republicans and Democrats, who stressed this point. Bob Inglis, a former Republican congressman from South Carolina, spoke of his opposition in his first several years in Congress: “All I knew was that Al Gore was for it, and therefore I was against it.”
This implies that if the tables were turned — if Republican politicians proposed a climate policy — Republican voters might support it. In our research, that is exactly what we have found.
Our studies suggest that climate policy gridlock is largely about exaggerating disagreement for the sake of disagreement. Our studies revealed a consistent, if somewhat surprising, pattern: Political disagreement was substantially smaller when it came to Republican-backed policies.
In particular, there was very little distance between Republicans and Democrats when evaluating a Republican-proposed carbon tax. This suggests that a carbon tax such as the one proposed by prominent Republicans including James Baker III and Mr. Shultz may hold more promise for bipartisan agreement than we have seen with Democratic policies in the past.
More at www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/republicans-climate-change.h
tml
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
I agree 100% with the article.
The problem, Second, is that when you read the article, you believed this was only a problem with Republicans.
That's not what the article implies.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:You ignored the fact that Trump told the world there is no such thing as Climate Change. The Trump voters went along, as did the GOP. But Trump is wrong and he will stay wrong as long as it will get him votes from coal miners. And the rest of the Republicans will follow Trump's leadership, right or wrong. Nobody on the Democratic side has that power to make Democrats act as if there is no such thing as Climate Change.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I agree 100% with the article.
The problem, Second, is that when you read the article, you believed this was only a problem with Republicans.
That's not what the article implies.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You ignored the fact that Trump told the world there is no such thing as Climate Change. The Trump voters went along, as did the GOP.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I agree 100% with the article.
The problem, Second, is that when you read the article, you believed this was only a problem with Republicans.
That's not what the article implies.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
I didn't ignore it. Republicans didn't believe (in general) that there is no climate change because Trump said there is no climate change. That's a GOP narrative that spans decades, and to blame this squarely on Trump is disingenuous.
Quote:
But Trump is wrong and he will stay wrong as long as it will get him votes from coal miners.
Okay. What's your point here? This is rule number 1 in "Getting Elected 101". How many non-good things do Democrats do to get votes from Union employees themselves?
Quote:
And the rest of the Republicans will follow Trump's leadership, right or wrong.
Yup. That's generally what most people on either side do when their "leaders" tell them what to think.
Quote:
Nobody on the Democratic side has that power to make Democrats act as if there is no such thing as Climate Change.
Why limit yourself to the single issue of climate change here, unless you're trying to only point out an example that works in favor of your "side"?
Why don't we talk about The Patriarchy, or Systemic Oppression, or the Gender Wage Gap? We could point out a lot of myths that the Democrats create and instill as the Truth in the minds of their ideologues that garner votes.
This isn't exactly new, and it's certainly not a one-sided deal here Second.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:SECOND, your answer make zero sense, and if anyone has lost their mind, it's you.
Signym, you have lost your fucking mind as has the typical Texas Trump voter. The exception is the Rich Trump voters. They voted for Trump to get a $1.5 trillion tax cut. That is a completely sane and healthy reason. Selfish, yet sane. As for the reasoning of the non-Rich Trump voters, they have very silly thoughts flying around in their numb skulls:
Signym, I should have testified that Texas Republicans in Harris County would vote for Putin rather than Hillary. Did you know Hillary killed four Americans at Benghazi with her bare hands and bathed in their blood? Ask any Texas Republican. They know for a fact she walked over their corpses. Even Putin as US President would be better than her, despite him being ineligible because he is not a native born American. Obama got elected and you know he was born in Kenya and was less eligible to be President than Putin. Ask a Texas Republican and they will tell you that rock-solid and true fact.
Step by step ...
Quote:SECOND, I think you know as much about the "typical Texas Trump voter" as you do about me, which is to say ... nothing at all. Despite the fact that I've revealed quite a bit about myself, and posted my reasons for voting for Trump over and over and over ... none of it sinks in. You insist on replying to some cardboard cutout that exists only in your head ("Russian troll"/"deplorable Trump supporter"); therefore, you will excuse me for not trusting your opinion of "Texas voters" any more than I trust your view of me.
Signym, you have lost your fucking mind as has the typical Texas Trump voter.
Quote:I'm not rich. I DID get a tax cut, tho! AND YET... that is NOT the reason I voted for Trump. I wonder... do you even recall what my reasoning is? Or are you still arguing with the voices in your head instead of what I actually posted?
The exception is the Rich Trump voters. They voted for Trump to get a $1.5 trillion tax cut. That is a completely sane and healthy reason. Selfish, yet sane. As for the reasoning of the non-Rich Trump voters, they have very silly thoughts flying around in their numb skulls
Quote:Again, I doubt you know anything about Texas Republicans. I think you have this idee fixe about "the enemy" and nothing ... not even real life or real people... will get in your way.
Signym, I should have testified that Texas Republicans in Harris County would vote for Putin rather than Hillary. Did you know Hillary killed four Americans at Benghazi with her bare hands and bathed in their blood? Ask any Texas Republican. They know for a fact she walked over their corpses. Even Putin as US President would be better than her, despite him being ineligible because he is not a native born American. Obama got elected and you know he was born in Kenya and was less eligible to be President than Putin. Ask a Texas Republican and they will tell you that rock-solid and true fact.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:In 2008, Barack Obama held up change as a beacon, attaching to it another word, a word that channeled everything his young and diverse coalition saw in his rise and their newfound political power: hope. An America that would elect a black man president was an America in which a future was being written that would read thrillingly different from our past.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, your answer make zero sense, and if anyone has lost their mind, it's you.
Step by step ... Again, I doubt you know anything about Texas Republicans. I think you have this idee fixe about "the enemy" and nothing ... not even real life or real people... will get in your way.
In 2016, Donald Trump wielded that same sense of change as a threat; he was the revanchist voice of those who yearned to make America the way it was before, to make it great again. That was the impulse that connected the wall to keep Mexicans out, the ban to keep Muslims away, the birtherism meant to prove Obama couldn’t possibly be a legitimate president. An America that would elect Donald Trump president was an America in which a future was being written that could read thrillingly similar to our past.
This is the core cleavage of our politics, and it reflects the fundamental reality of our era: America is changing, and fast. According to the Census Bureau, 2013 marked the first year that a majority of US infants under the age of 1 were nonwhite. The announcement, made during the second term of the nation’s first African-American president, was not a surprise. Demographers had been predicting such a tipping point for years, and they foresaw more to come.
Obama found that leadership in this era requires delivering for diverse coalitions, and taking sides in charged cultural battles, and thus becoming part of the very conflict you’re trying to calm. The cycle of unity giving way to conflict, of hope about the future activating fear about the present, is likely to continue. And as long as much of the country feels threatened by the changes they see, there will be a continuing, and perhaps growing, market for politicians like Trump.
More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/30/17505406/trump-obama-race-po
litics-immigration
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:Signym, your reasoning has zero importance beyond your skull. Now for someone whose reasoning is important:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I wonder... do you even recall what my reasoning is?
Trump's Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh is, to put it bluntly, an anti-worker radical, opposed to every effort to protect working families from fraud and mistreatment.
The most spectacular example is his opinion that Sea World owed no liability for a killer whale attack that killed one of its workers, because she should have known the risks. He has declared the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which helps control the financial fraud against working families that played a major role in the 2008 crisis, unconstitutional. He’s taken an extremely expansive view of the rights of business to suppress union organizing.
This is all, by the way, the opposite of populism. The public strongly supports worker protections. The ongoing campaign to take them away is an act of conservative elites, people who have made their careers by carrying water for business interests, and is being implemented in effect by stealth under the noses of voters who thought Trump was on their side.
And this betrayal matters much more for workers than, say, Trump’s trade bluster. There’s growing evidence that wage stagnation in America – the very stagnation that angers Trump voters — isn’t being driven by impersonal forces like technological change; to an important extent it’s the result of political changes that have weakened workers’ bargaining power. If Trump manages to install Kavanaugh, he’ll help institutionalize these anti-worker policies for decades to come.
More at www.nytimes.com/2018/07/30/opinion/trumps-supreme-betrayal.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:And yours is even LESS important, because all YOU do is spin fever-dreams based on nothing.
Signym, your reasoning has zero importance beyond your skull. Now for someone whose reasoning is important:
Quote:And you think that Hillary's pro-"free trade" stance would be any better??? At least the Supreme Court is within OUR reach, as opposed to the trade tribunals you voted for, and the anti-worker "free trade" that you constantly push.
Trump's Supreme Court nominee Kavanaugh is, to put it bluntly, an anti-worker radical, opposed to every effort to protect working families from fraud and mistreatment.
What a tool. Do you really expect us to believe that you're "pro-worker"? My god, you're stupider than a Texas Republican.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
NOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Quote:Facts count. Beliefs? Opinions? Those are like assholes, almost everyone has them and most stink.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
What a tool. Do you really expect us to believe that you're "pro-worker"? My god, you're stupider than a Texas Republican.
Here are some ugly facts about Americans, particularly so-called "Democrats", facts explaining how American politics got so wacko.
An actual test by political scientist Ryan Enos of what seeing more diversity in our everyday surroundings does to our political opinions:
I sent Spanish speakers to randomly selected train stations in towns around Boston to simply catch the train and ride like any other passenger. I focused on stations in white suburbs. The intent was to create the impression, by subtle manipulation, that the Latino population in these segregated towns was increasing.
Before and after sending these Spanish speakers to the train platforms, I surveyed passengers on the platforms about their attitudes about immigration. After being exposed to the Spanish speakers on their metro lines for just three days, attitudes on these questions moved sharply rightward: The mostly liberal Democratic passengers had come to endorse immigration policies — including deportation of children of undocumented immigrants — similar to those endorsed by Trump in his campaign.
Experimental exposure to reminders that America is diversifying pushes whites toward more conservative policy opinions and more support of the Republican Party. What happens when it is not an experiment?
Enos goes on to note that his findings match what we saw in 2016: The biggest gains Donald Trump made over Mitt Romney’s performance “were in the places where the Latino population had grown most quickly. ... For example, Luzerne County, adjacent to Scranton, Pennsylvania, had experienced an almost 600 percent growth in its Latino population between 2000 and 2014, and, after decades of voting Democrat in presidential elections, gave Trump 12 percentage points more votes than it had given to Romney in 2012.”
More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/30/17505406/trump-obama-race-po
litics-immigration
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Do you have a topical reply?
THUGGER admits it's not about RUSSIA !!! and is, in fact, a witch hunt. "Trump better be innocent of any wrong doing, anywhere, anytime."
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SECOND, you have spent your entire posting time here grabbing anything that came into reach ... opinions, speculation, lies, distortions, irrelevancies, cartoons, and maybe even a few facts here and there ... grabbing them with both hands as fast as you possibly can and and furiously flinging them against a wall just to see what sticks.
Now, at THIS point I have no idea what sort of mental malfunction or ethical lapse causes you to do that, but as a result you don't care whether you're posting truth or fiction; you don't care about Americans or American workers or anything to do with America. Because you don't care whether you post truth or not, almost everything you post is just so much shit, and it sure isn't worth wading thru.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:Signym, why not accuse me of being from Satan? Why not go all the way to crazy town? I know you want to. Signym, I understand how your little mind works because I have seen it before. Back 50 years ago, I use to see the same stubborn rejection of all evidence about the theory of evolution. The Kingdom Hall I went to was very certain that Evolution was False. Any data that made it into the newspapers was from Satan. Years have passed and my mother's religion got less strident and more subtle, but it still teaches that Evolution is False and God Created All Life.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, you have spent your entire posting time here grabbing anything that came into reach ... opinions, speculation, lies, distortions, irrelevancies, cartoons, and maybe even a few facts here and there ... grabbing them with both hands as fast as you possibly can and and furiously flinging them against a wall just to see what sticks.
Now, at THIS point I have no idea what sort of mental malfunction or ethical lapse causes you to do that, but as a result you don't care whether you're posting truth or fiction; you don't care about Americans or American workers or anything to do with America. Because you don't care whether you post truth or not, almost everything you post is just so much shit, and it sure isn't worth wading thru.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
www.jw.org/en/publications/books/origin-of-life-5-questions/evolution-
or-creation-student-dilemma/
Now for a Fact that Signym will either outright reject or twist into meaninglessness:
In their forthcoming book, political scientists J. Sides, M. Tesler, and L. Vavreck analyze reams of data and show that racial resentment activated economic anxiety, rather than the other way around:
Before Obama’s presidency, how Americans felt about black people did not much affect their perceptions of the economy. But when the exact same people were re-interviewed in July 2012, racial resentment was a powerful predictor of economic perceptions: the greater someone’s level of racial resentment, the worse they believed the economy was doing.
This is unnerving data, as we tend to imagine the economy as a rare subject on which objective facts, rather than group conflicts, drive opinions. Sadly, no. Sides, Tesler, and Vavreck analyzed polling on economic sentiment and found that “Republicans in the highest income quintile, those making more than $100,000 per year, were actually slightly less satisfied than Democrats in the lowest income quintile, those making less than $20,000 per year.”
More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/30/17505406/trump-obama-race-po
litics-immigration
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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In his 2012 campaign, Obama won merely 39 percent of the white vote — a smaller share than loser Michael Dukakis had commanded in 1988. White voters who felt they were losing a historical hold on power were reacting against Obama. For the bulk of American history, you couldn’t win the presidency without winning a majority of the white vote — usually an overwhelming majority. The election of an African-American president leading a multiracial coalition made the transition stark and threatening. There’s a reason why, when the Russians wanted to sow division in the American election, they focused their social media trolling on America’s racial divisions.
This is the crucial context for Trump’s rise, and it’s why Trump is not an invader in the Republican Party. In a field of Republicans who were trying to change the party to appeal to a rising Hispanic electorate, Trump was alone in speaking to Republican voters who didn’t want the party to remake itself, who wanted to be told that a Mexico wall could be built and things could go back to the way they were. Trump met the party where it was rather than trying to change it. He was hunting where the ducks were.
Generations of scholars have taken African-American and Hispanic and Asian identity seriously but assumed there was no such thing as white identity. The conventional wisdom was that “because of their numerical majority and political dominance, whites do not, by and large, possess their own sense of racial identification, and they do not feel consciously compelled to protect some sense of group interest.”
Political scientist Ashley Jardina proved in a series of experiments that this was wrong. White political identity is “conditional.” It emerges in some periods and is absent in others. The periods it emerges in are periods like this one.
“When the dominant status of whites relative to racial and ethnic minorities is secure and unchallenged, white identity likely remains dormant,” Jardina writes. “When whites perceive their group’s dominant status is threatened or their group is unfairly disadvantaged, however, their racial identity may become salient and politically relevant.”
You’ll notice the language Jardina uses is careful and probabilistic. “Racial identity may become salient,” not will become salient. Jardina took pains to emphasize that none of this is inevitable. “There are a lot of incentives for elites across the political spectrum to try and stoke identity in the first place,” Jardina said. “Donald Trump has done a great job on this.” Then she added, a bit ruefully, “My dissertation reads sort of like a playbook [for Trump’s campaign].”
More at www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/30/17505406/trump-obama-race-po
litics-immigration
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The Trump administration is considering a tax cut for the wealthiest Americans through a change that would not need approval from Congress, officials said, a move that would follow a package of tax cuts last year that also benefited the super-rich.
The Treasury Department is studying whether to allow investment income, known as capital gains, to be adjusted for inflation in a way that shields more of it from taxation. Most capital gains are paid by wealthier Americans, who disproportionately hold large portfolios of investments.
But the use of executive power on such a significant change to the tax law would be highly unusual and could be vulnerable to a legal challenge.
More at www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/trump-tax-cut-superrich-bill
ions-us-president-wealthy-washington-a8470736.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:Because that would be baseless and stupid, and UNLIKE YOU I actually try to post my own view of the world as consistent with reality as I can be.
SECOND, you have spent your entire posting time here grabbing anything that came into reach ... opinions, speculation, lies, distortions, irrelevancies, cartoons, and maybe even a few facts here and there ... grabbing them with both hands as fast as you possibly can and and furiously flinging them against a wall just to see what sticks.
Now, at THIS point I have no idea what sort of mental malfunction or ethical lapse causes you to do that, but as a result you don't care whether you're posting truth or fiction; you don't care about Americans or American workers or anything to do with America. Because you don't care whether you post truth or not, almost everything you post is just so much shit, and it sure isn't worth wading thru.- SIGNY
Signym, why not accuse me of being from Satan? - SECOND
You, OTOH, are are the lookout for ANYthing negative about Trump, and you splatter the board with SECONDHAND opinion, speculation, and accusation about things as diverse as Trump's haircolor, hand size, appetite for burgers, "RUSSIAN!!!" connections etc, all the while pretending to "care" about American women, American workers, American security etc when your own posts* demonstrate that you don't give a rat's ass about anybody but yourself. I don't know why you have such a hard-on for Trump but it has completely warped your mind.
*BTW, I think the reason why you rarely post your own opinions is because every time you do, you get in trouble. That deep deep hatred and disdain that you feel for anyone who isn't as "rich" and "successful" as you just comes oozing out. You've expanded your circle of hate from Texas Republicans to include all Republicans, anyone who voted for Trump, anyone who criticizes your warped POV, to anyone who isn't in the top 1%. If you want, I can find those quotes of yours, but I have one all set up - in red- below.
Quote:It is a book, not a "fact". Just like Piketty's book Capital is a book, not a "fact". The mere fact that someone wrote a book doesn't mean that we should automatically accept its contents, right?
Now for a Fact that Signym will either outright reject or twist into meaninglessness:
In their forthcoming book, political scientists J. Sides, M. Tesler, and L. Vavreck analyze reams of data and show that racial resentment activated economic anxiety, rather than the other way around:
Quote:Seriously??? In the field of economics as currently practiced, objective facts are rarely to be found.
This is unnerving data, as we tend to imagine the economy as a rare subject on which objective facts, rather than group conflicts, drive opinions.
Quote:So, the authors assume that Republicans=racists, Democrats=non-racists, and THEN go on to link economic dissatisfaction with (presumed) racism?
“Republicans in the highest income quintile, those making more than $100,000 per year, were actually slightly less satisfied than Democrats in the lowest income quintile, those making less than $20,000 per year.”
Do the authors go on to ask WHY the respondents were dissatisfied? Were they dissatisfied with their PERSONAL situation, or were they dissatisfied with Obama's policy direction? It's like those questions that I get from the DNC about whether I agree or not with their policies. It's possible that I agree with the general direction but that I think they don't go far enough. Now, does that mean I agree, or disagree? How does that fit into the "strongly satisfied to strongly dissatisfied" or "strongly agree to strongly disagree" format? And what conclusions can I possibly draw from polls which ask such equivocal questions?
It's a stupid article about a stupid book, as far as I can tell. Just like most of your
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Quote:One chart that shows how much worse income inequality is in America than Europe
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
It's a stupid article about a stupid book, as far as I can tell. Just like most of your stupid secondhand posts which seek to MAKE A POINT instead of analyzing events.
You've made such a mission of posting such stupid, biased, baseless articles that at this point you discredit anything that you post.
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
The income share of the poorest half of Americans is declining while the richest have grabbed more. In Europe, it’s not happening. Different political choices equals different results.
www.vox.com/2018/7/29/17627134/income-inequality-chart
Here is another article that fails to analyze to Signym's satisfaction. Signym has very high expectations that nobody can satisfy. If the article had done what Signym wants, it would say that GOP policy was the cause. But then Signym would accuse all the different writers of all the different sources of being biased against the GOP sponsored policies going back 40 years. Signym would point out that when even one Democrat votes for a GOP policy the entire policy must be the Democrats' fault as much as the GOP's. Signym has a knack to make every issue as clear as mud.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Patriotic Millionaires is a group of about 200 wealthy Americans who advocate for less income inequality and against the concentration of wealth. It’s a bipartisan group, but it’s opposed to a central Republican idea: that benefits for the wealthy will eventually “trickle down” to the rest. That’s the thinking behind the 2017 tax cut bill, which reduced the corporate tax rate to 21 percent from 35 percent and disproportionately benefits businesses and the wealthy.
The group first came together in 2010 to oppose the extension of Bush-era tax cuts for millionaires. Since then, it’s expanded its focus beyond taxes to also include issues such as the minimum wage and campaign finance reform.
The candidates it backs have to be running against an incumbent who voted for the Republican tax cuts, and they’ve got to be able to talk about taxes in a way that doesn’t put voters to sleep.
“It’s like situational narcolepsy; the minute you start talking about the tax code, you’ve lost your audience,” said Erica Payne, a progressive strategist and president of the Patriotic Millionaires, the group making the endorsements. “We’re looking for people who recognize the grand-scale theft that just happened and are looking to be aggressive fighters against that.”
The group is bipartisan and would therefore theoretically be willing to back a Republican who voted against the tax bill — there are 12 such Republicans. I also asked if they were willing to back a democratic socialist candidate, to which Payne, the group’s president, replied that they will consider endorsing any candidate who is running against one of the lawmakers who voted to support the bill. “This tax bill is such a complete abomination that anybody who voted for it should be hurled from office,” she said.
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/31/17634016/patriotic-millionai
res-2018-tax-cuts
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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So, let's see SECOND ...
The share of elite income rose sharply under Calvin Coolidge, R (1823-1929)
Fell drastically under Herbert Hoover, R (1929-1933) at the start of the Great Depression
Rose under FDR, D (1933-1938)
And fell unevenly to a minimum (1938-1979) through the following Presidents
FDR, D (1933-1945)
Truman, D (1945-1853)
Eisenhower, R (1953-1961)
JFK, D (1961-1963)
Johnson, D (1963, 1969)
Nixon, R (1969-1974)
Ford, R (1975-1977)
After that, it began to rise sharply (1979) under
Carter, D ( 1977-1981)
Stabilized (1986-1994) under
Reagan. R (1981-1989)
HW Bush (1989-1993)
Rose SHARPLY (1994-2001) under
Bill Clinton, D (1993-2001)
Fell again (2001-2002) under
GWB, R
Before rising to an all-time high (about 2007) under
GWB, R
And crashing (2008), still under
GWB, R (2001-2009)
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Nice graph, Signym. But it wouldn't be U-shaped (it would bent down into an L-shaped) if the Feds had kept taxing the hell out of capital gains. Or taxed at the same rate as wages. But Trump wants to lower the capital gains tax even more by a clever accounting trick involving indexing for inflation, without a vote by Congress. It is a trick that can lower the tax to 0%, if you play it right. If you are really clever, you could even have capital gains, but declare that because of inflation you actually lost money, and the Feds would refund previously paid taxes to you. The Democrats say “everyone knows this must be done by legislation.”
www.marketwatch.com/story/heres-who-wins-and-loses-if-capital-gains-ar
e-indexed-to-inflation-2018-07-31
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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SECOND, I challenge you to find a pattern that correlates with "Democrat" and "Republican" Presidents. Instead of your constant biased screeching, maybe we can talk reality for a change, like... what CAUSED the GINI index to rise steadily since about 1980? 
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Why can’t Trump back down on tariffs? Because his other populist promises are broken, he has to keep this one.
Trump’s presidency is floated on jobs and economic growth, and trade wars can be bad for both. So why not just drop the mercantilism and let the good times roll? The GOP’s senators generally have a better grasp of facts than the occupant of the White House, but the president often has a better grasp of politics. And the political truth is that Trump probably needs his tariffs, needs his trade war, to have any chance of re-election — precisely because it’s the only remaining economic issue where he’s stuck to his campaign promises and hasn’t just deferred to traditional Republican priorities.
Because Trump’s infrastructure plan never materialized and his tax cut was a great whopping favor to corporate interests and his Obamacare replacement effort was a misbegotten flop — the swing voters he needs to hold the Midwest are now drifting away. Because Trump naturally alienates women and can’t make a gesture of outreach to blacks or Hispanics without stepping on it with bigotry the next day, tariffs are his only path back to the White House. He can’t let Trump voters in Michigan and Pennsylvania and Ohio go Democratic or stay home.
Free-trade Republican Senators have every right to reject the Trumpian tariffs. But their whingeing would be easier to take if they hadn’t discouraged Trump from every other attempt to make good on his populist pledges. He knows better than they do how he got elected; if protectionism is the only promise he can keep, it’s no surprise he’s keeping it.
So the fact that Trump’s tariffs are generally unpopular, even in Midwestern states, doesn’t matter politically nearly as much as their potential appeal to the blue-collar swing voters that he needs if he’s going to be re-elected. And the tariff’s cost, for now, can be swallowed up by general economic growth or dealt with via cynical payoffs to farmers. If the general economic growth itself goes away, well, then Trump isn’t getting re-elected anyway.
www.nytimes.com/2018/07/28/opinion/sunday/trump-tariffs.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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So, SECOND, as predicted ... when you fail with one argument you just grab a different handful of shit to fling at the wall?
That's why you discredit everything you post. It's crystal clear that you don't even care if you can demonstrate [with evidence] the underpinnings of the pointless screeching that you bring here, you just want to screech.
Some day, when I have a lot more time than I do now, I should list all of the arguments that you've abandoned, just in this thread alone. There must be a couple dozen by now, especially if I count the ones that you burp up over and over and over ...
In the meantime, I've developed a theory for why you behave the way that you do ... It goes like this: You made it big. You're the first one in your (nonwhite) family to become filthy stinking rich. YOU know it's not fair, and you feel like a class and race traitor. But you can's stop it. The rewards of being filthy stinking rich are just to great to give up, plus you've got the process down-pat. So you're desperate for someone else... ANYone else .... to rein in your behavior and take away some of that wealth that you feel, in your deepest self, is truly ill-gotten. The hate that you project on everyone else is merely a reflection of the hate that you feel for yourself.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:I challenge you to find a time when the GOP didn't have a strong hand in guiding the Federal Government, except in the years immediately after GOP President Hoover did what he could to destroy America.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, I challenge you to find a pattern that correlated with "Democrat" and "Republican" Presidents.
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
For awhile there the GOP was a minority party because the voters remembered very clearly what problems Hoover refused to solve. The GOP still had enough power to delay Roosevelt for two years from declaring war against Germany. After Pearl Harbor, the GOP spread rumors that Roosevelt let it happen on purpose so that he could declare war against the wishes of the peace-loving GOP.
If Democrats and Roosevelt wanted something, the GOP was opposed. Voters tend to forget that and start assuming that both political parties are lazy and worthless. The GOP encourages that assumption, which allows them to regain 100% control for about 50% of the time. The rest of the time the GOP has 40 to 60% control of the Federal Government. The GOP is never powerless, unlike in Parliamentary governments, where the opposition's power can be reduced to O% until the next election. I guess if didn't occur to James Madison when he was writing the Constitution that the opposition might deliberately sabotage Congress so that they could get back into power quicker. I guess Madison assumed the electorate would always be limited to only 10% of the population, the smarter, richer ones, who could understand when the opposition is engaged in sabotage. www.history.org/foundation/journal/spring07/elections.cfm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pearl_Harbor_advance-knowledge_conspirac
y_theory#Ten_official_U.S._inquiries
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Van Jones prezents u good perspectiv on conservativ voterz:
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com
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Quote:Signym, I called you a lying sack of shit many times. Other people have called you a Russian troll. That could be true, but more likely you are just a crazy American. Do you really think anybody who holds you as contemptible will argue with you to change your mind? This is not a debating class where points are rewarded toward a final grade. And I am waiting for you and 1kiki to follow through on your threats to sue me. Trump made threats many times, then forgot 'em. Did you learn it from him?
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So, SECOND, as predicted ... when you fail with one argument you just grab a different handful of shit to fling at the wall?
That's why you discredit everything you post. It's crystal clear that you don't even care if you can demonstrate [with evidence] the underpinnings of the pointless screeching that you bring here, you just want to screech.
Some day, when I have a lot more time than I do now, I should list all of the arguments that you've abandoned, just in this thread alone. There must be a couple dozen by now, especially if I count the ones that you burp up over and over and over ...
In the meantime, I've developed a theory for why you behave the way that you do ... It goes like this: You made it big. You're the first one in your (nonwhite) family to become filthy stinking rich. YOU know it's not fair, and you feel like a class and race traitor. But you can's stop it. The rewards of being filthy stinking rich are just to great to give up, plus you've got the process down-pat. So you're desperate for someone else... ANYone else .... to rein in your behavior and take away some of that wealth that you feel, in your deepest self, is truly ill-gotten. The hate that you project on everyone else is merely a reflection of the hate that you feel for yourself.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-22-times-trump-has-threatened
-to-sue-someone-during-this-campaign/
www.cheatsheet.com/money-career/times-donald-trump-made-ridiculous-thr
eats-sue.html/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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You seem to be doing a one-man gish-gallop. Is that something you learned from Trump? The kind of incoherent, inaccurate ranting you claim he does? And gosh, you easily post three or four posts for every one that Signy posts. Does Signy threaten your sense of control for you to fall apart like that?
"The Gish gallop is a technique used during debating that focuses on overwhelming one's opponent with as many arguments as possible, without regard for accuracy or strength of the arguments" ,,, or relevance.
THUGGER admits it's not about RUSSIA !!! and is, in fact, a witch hunt. "Trump better be innocent of any wrong doing, anywhere, anytime."
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Quote:Yes, and you are wrong. I don't lie.
Signym, I called you a lying sack of shit many times.
Quote:... they are also wrong. I'm not Russian, and I'm less of a troll than they are.
Other people have called you a Russian troll. That could be true, but...
Quote:They don't think I'M "contemptible" because they ... like you ... have a cardboard cutout in their heads that they're arguing with; after all this time they STILL don't respond accurately to my posts and clearly don't know what I think or why.
... more likely you are just a crazy American. Do you really think anybody who holds you as contemptible
Quote:THEIR problem ... and it's THEIR problem, not mine ... is lack of listening. Because they want to ARGUE, not converse. I'm more than ready to discuss; I believe I have listened enough where I could respond tho their points, if they would bother to support/ discuss them.
... will argue with you to change your mind?
I find it revealing that so many people here simply cannot provide a sustained, logical, evidence-based rationale for why they feel/think the way they do. I've had my mind changed on quite a few things because of discussions with other people. If you-all could give me some sound reasons WHY you feel the way that you do, I'd certainly take it into consideration. But I'm not about to have my mind changed by being browbeaten and bullied, You guys are going to have to do some intellectual WORK to accomplish that!.
Quote:It is, however, a DISCUSSION BOARD. One where people, unfortunately, feel compelled to get in tribal fights and fling poo with both hands.
This is not a debating class where points are rewarded toward a final grade.
Quote:You will not know the hour nor the day.
And I am waiting for you and 1kiki to follow through on your threats to sue me. Trump made threats many times, then forgot 'em. Did you learn it from him?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:My Mother, a Jehovah's Witness, would say the same to me about Armageddon, that it would arrive completely unexpected, and unless I changed my wicked ways before then I would not be saved. After telling me that for about 61 of my 66 years, she died. I look forward to Judgment Day and learning which side won. Democrats? Or Republicans?
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:You will not know the hour nor the day.
And I am waiting for you and 1kiki to follow through on your threats to sue me. Trump made threats many times, then forgot 'em. Did you learn it from him?
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
In a recent interview, Steve Bannon declared that “The Republican college-educated woman is done. They’re gone. They were going anyway at some point in time. Trump triggers them.”
The Washington Post’s Philip Bump decided to check this out, and it turns out that Bannon is right:
College-educated white women support Democrats by a net of nearly 50 points. And it shows no signs of bouncing back and forth. The more they see and hear of Trump, the more they hate him. Thanks to Trump, college-educated white women would apparently be pretty happy to see the Republican Party annihilated and replaced with something else.
Trump has had the same effect, but a bit smaller, on every other demographic group too, wiping out most of the Republican Party’s gains made during the Obama era.
More at www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/08/quote-of-the-day-college-educat
ed-republican-women-are-extinct/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:I know six. Not all "republicans" but all Trump-voters. Four are trained in the sciences, one a regional manager, and one a professional translator. Curiously, only two are "white", and four are nonwhite immigrants. Go figure! One is devoutly Christian, one is socially Christian, one is lapsed Buddhist, and the remainder seem fairly agnostic.
“The Republican college-educated woman is done. They’re gone. They were going anyway at some point in time. Trump triggers them.”
But this is southern California, and their issue is ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION, among other things.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:
Originally posted by JO753:
Van Jones prezents u good perspectiv on conservativ voterz:
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com
I don't have time to watch the whole thing right now, but I will finish this video after work.
5 minutes in and Van Jones seems to get it.
I've seen several things by Van since election night that has changed my initial opinion of him since his "White Lash" comment when Trump won. I've got a lot of respect for him. He is not a static character like most other 24 hour commentators, and he seems to have grown quite a bit since then.
It's a pity that there aren't more people on the News like Van that are self aware and are aware of the state of their own party. Instead of doubling down on all the things that got Trump elected in the first place like almost everybody else has done since then, Van Jones is taking a moment to step back and ask himself "what are we doing wrong?"
Thanks for sharing the video J0. I hope that everybody here takes 15 minutes out of their lives to watch it.
I'll have more to say when I finish it.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Yes, and you are wrong. I don't lie.
Signym, I called you a lying sack of shit many times.
You subscribed to the biggest, longest lie ever told on this forum, so I guess bonus lying points for denying it.
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:They don't think I'M "contemptible" because they ... like you ... have a cardboard cutout in their heads that they're arguing with; after all this time they STILL don't respond accurately to my posts and clearly don't know what I think or why.
... more likely you are just a crazy American. Do you really think anybody who holds you as contemptible
Thanks for the thumbnail description of why Libel won't fly in a forum setting. We don't know who you are, you are some "cardboard cutout" as you say. In fact, when "you" first started posting legal threats I thought your husband had taken over your account. It's occurred to me a few times when you lose your sh*t that maybe someone else is at the keyboard.
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:THEIR problem ... and it's THEIR problem, not mine ... is lack of listening. Because they want to ARGUE, not converse. I'm more than ready to discuss; I believe I have listened enough where I could respond tho their points, if they would bother to support/ discuss them.
^ Ok, that's just drop dead funny. Years of data show you have no interest in "discussing." If anything, the failure rate of "discussing" anything with you just increases the probability that you are only here to agitate. I'm at 99.8% fwiw.
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I find it revealing that so many people here simply cannot provide a sustained, logical, evidence-based rationale for why they feel/think the way they do. I've had my mind changed on quite a few things because of discussions with other people. If you-all could give me some sound reasons WHY you feel the way that you do, I'd certainly take it into consideration. But I'm not about to have my mind changed by being browbeaten and bullied, You guys are going to have to do some intellectual WORK to accomplish that!.
It should be very telling why no one wants to discuss with you! Why don't you get it?
Quote:
Originally posted by SIGNYM: It is, however, a DISCUSSION BOARD. One where people, unfortunately, feel compelled to get in tribal fights and fling poo with both hands.
You are right! I love discussing various topics with the honest people on this board.
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The Federal government does not have cures for chronic problems because Democracies are not capable of sustained, disciplined efforts over decades. What kind of problems? Maybe Poverty. Maybe a shortage of good jobs at high pay and an overabundance of bad jobs at poor pay?
I’ve got a newspaper’s example of another problem that Democracies can’t solve:
In the late 1970s, a small group of philosophers, economists and political scientists began to debate, largely among themselves, whether a human solution to global warming was even possible. They did not trouble themselves about the details of warming, taking the worst-case scenario as a given. They asked instead whether humankind, when presented with this particular existential crisis, was willing to prevent it. We worry about the future. But how much, exactly?
The answer, as any economist could tell you, is very little. Economics, the science of assigning value to human behavior, prices the future at a discount; the farther out you project, the cheaper the consequences. This makes the climate problem the perfect economic disaster. The Yale economist William D. Nordhaus, a member of Jimmy Carter’s Council of Economic Advisers, argued in the 1970s that the most appropriate remedy was a global carbon tax. But that required an international agreement, which Nordhaus didn’t think was likely. Michael Glantz, a political scientist who was at the National Center for Atmospheric Research at the time, argued in 1979 that democratic societies are constitutionally incapable of dealing with the climate problem. The competition for resources means that no single crisis can ever command the public interest for long, yet climate change requires sustained, disciplined efforts over decades. And the German physicist-philosopher Klaus Meyer-Abich argued that any global agreement would inevitably favor the most minimal action. Adaptation, Meyer-Abich concluded, “seems to be the most rational political option.” It is the option that we have pursued, consciously or not, ever since.
These theories share a common principle: that human beings, whether in global organizations, democracies, industries, political parties or as individuals, are incapable of sacrificing present convenience to forestall a penalty imposed on future generations. When I asked John Sununu about his part in this history — whether he considered himself personally responsible for killing the best chance at an effective global-warming treaty — his response echoed Meyer-Abich. “It couldn’t have happened,” he told me, “because, frankly, the leaders in the world at that time were at a stage where they were all looking how to seem like they were supporting the policy without having to make hard commitments that would cost their nations serious resources.” He added, “Frankly, that’s about where we are today.”
More at www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/08/01/magazine/climate-change-losing-
earth.html
Why do I think Democracies fail to solve chronic problems? Because a majority needs to agree and continue to agree for years and years on how to solve a “Problem”. Let’s not describe the “Problem”. Imagine your worst problem is the “Problem”.
Here is the key to unlock the secret to failure in Democracies. The majority do not suffer from your “Problem” and don’t care to solve it for you and don’t want to pay for your government solution. Corporations and dictatorships never have this kind of trouble from too many people who don’t care. Instead, they fail because of the bad judgment of the CEO and the dictator.
The ones that Do Care often cannot agree on what to do. The result is the Don’t Care people win in a Democracy. Maybe the Don’t Care have a temporary setback, but eventually, if the problem can’t be solved quickly, the Don’t Care people get their way in a Democracy because Don’t Care is the true majority. The result? Chronic problems not solved.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Ambiguity is a political opportunity for disadvantaged, regular folks who feel that no one else is championing their interests. Trump’s ambiguity helps us understand his campaign’s appeal to such diverse constituents as stockbrokers, evangelicals, Obama swing voters, and white nationalists. Each of these groups came to view the ambiguous candidate as their best bet and hoped that by joining in, they could influence the agenda to serve their needs.
But here’s the rub. While ambiguity can be effective for building a movement or a base of supporters, it is far less effective for governing. Ambiguous ideas and symbols can cast a broad net, but decisive actions, such as enacting policies, rarely do. This is the paradox of ambiguity for movements and leaders who trade in it: When they shift from talk to action, from protest to governance, they cannot as readily accommodate the same diversity of meanings. They become more defined.
In the Trump phenomenon, the definition of Trumpism seems pretty clearly underway. Trump voters have expressed concern about his positions on affordable health care, international trade, and other basic areas of policy affecting their daily lives and ways of making a living.
What’s most apparent is that the people who supported the Trump campaign should not be dismissed as delusional fools who were beguiled by vague promises. Such a judgment underestimates people. Rather we should look at these supporters as opportunists, cunningly taking advantage of ambiguity’s interpretive spaces as a chance to insert their own voice and vision, even if imperfectly. Seen through such a lens, movements and campaigns — and the people who support them — look very different from how they’re usually portrayed.
And this leads us to an inevitable conclusion: When another politician follows Trump’s example of ambiguity, people are likely to take notice. They will believe they are being presented with better opportunities to be heard and represented. They’ll try their luck with whoever or whatever seems to give them an opening. And the candidate who tells the biggest and best story, even when mostly lies, can probably win.
More at https://attentiontotheunseen.com/2018/08/01/why-political-ambiguity-ap
peals-to-the-masses/#more-2545
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:What "lie" is that??? I'll bet you can even describe that "lie" that I'm supposed to be guilty of, your thinking is so fuzzy!!
Signym, I called you a lying sack of shit many times. - SECOND
Yes, and you are wrong. I don't lie.-SIGNY
You subscribed to the biggest, longest lie ever told on this forum, so I guess bonus lying points for denying it.- GSTRING
Quote:Bullshit. Maybe you should do some research and ... yanno... talk to a lawyer before you opine so erroneously.
... more likely you are just a crazy American. Do you really think anybody who holds you as contemptible - SECOND
They don't think I'M "contemptible" because they ... like you ... have a cardboard cutout in their heads that they're arguing with; after all this time they STILL don't respond accurately to my posts and clearly don't know what I think or why. - SIGNY
Thanks for the thumbnail description of why Libel won't fly in a forum setting.- GSTRING
Quote:But that hasn't stopped you from calling me a "Russian troll" time and time again, has it? Don't you realize that you just ADMITTED to libel? What a tool.
We don't know who you are, you are some "cardboard cutout" as you say.- GSTRING
Quote:Good grief. My husband has NEVER "taken over" my account. He has never posted here, under my avatar or any other. Apparently, you're willing to be just as screwed up with this as you are with everything else. But thanks for defaming hubby as well! That just adds to the fun!
In fact, when "you" first started posting legal threats I thought your husband had taken over your account.- GSTRING
Quote:You're wrong.
It's occurred to me a few times when you lose your sh*t that maybe someone else is at the keyboard.
Quote:Oh, you mean 99,8% trolling?
THEIR problem ... and it's THEIR problem, not mine ... is lack of listening. Because they want to ARGUE, not converse. I'm more than ready to discuss; I believe I have listened enough where I could respond tho their points, if they would bother to support/ discuss them. - SIGNY
Ok, that's just drop dead funny. Years of data show you have no interest in "discussing." If anything, the failure rate of "discussing" anything with you just increases the probability that you are only here to agitate. I'm at 99.8% fwiw. -GSTRING
Quote:YOU (collectively)- GSTRING, THUGR, SECOND, WISHY, REAVERFAN, and JO ... don't want to discuss anything. What you want is to shout into an echo-chamber and get instant agreement and support back for your opinions.
I find it revealing that so many people here simply cannot provide a sustained, logical, evidence-based rationale for why they feel/think the way they do. I've had my mind changed on quite a few things because of discussions with other people. If you-all could give me some sound reasons WHY you feel the way that you do, I'd certainly take it into consideration. But I'm not about to have my mind changed by being browbeaten and bullied, You guys are going to have to do some intellectual WORK to accomplish that!.- SIGNY
It should be very telling why no one wants to discuss with you! Why don't you get it? - GSTRING
Quote:Bullshit. You spend at least 90% of your posts trolling and attacking other people, when you don't get the mutual stroking that you expect. It's actually DIFFICULT to find a clearly-stated opinion under your ID, and near-impossible to find any evidence attached to one.
It is, however, a DISCUSSION BOARD. One where people, unfortunately, feel compelled to get in tribal fights and fling poo with both hands.- SIGNY
You are right! I love discussing various topics with the honest people on this board.- GSTRING
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
"The Gish gallop is a technique used during debating that focuses on overwhelming one's opponent with as many arguments as possible, without regard for accuracy or strength of the arguments" or relevance.
xanks! I'v encountered it many timez, but didnt no there wuz a name for it.
Gish gallop!
----------------------------
DUZ XaT SEM RiT TQ YQ? - Jubal Early
http://www.7532020.com
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Quote:I liked this video immensely. Van Jones did an excellent job expressing the values of the conservative voter.
Originally posted by JO753:
Van Jones prezents u good perspectiv on conservativ voterz:
But I noticed the same trend just recently on NPR: "Suddenly" the liberal media is espousing greater understanding of their fellow American conservatives. The cynic in me thinks .... the liberal MSM is entirely "curated" to produce a desired outcome* ... when [some] liberals and NPR "suddenly" discover "respect" for their fellow American conservatives, I think that SOMEbody in the DNC has looked at the polls and had a butt-puckering moment. Like the thought suddenly occurred to them ...
Maybe pounding on the heads of half of America is just alienating a lot of people and won't get us the votes we need!
I'd like to be wrong, but I think that this newfound fellow-feeling on the part of previously intolerant liberal media will probably disappear right after November 6, 2018, no matter what the outcome of the election.
*That doesn't mean that other media is any less "curated", it's just that liberal media is ALSO curated, and isn't "the truth".
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Trump is making Medicare-for-all inevitable. A market-based solution can’t work if Republicans won’t let it.
Medicare-for-all — a government-run insurance program that everyone is either covered by or at least eligible for — is unequivocally the future of progressive health care policy.
That’s in part thanks to the Trump administration, which, having failed to repeal the Affordable Care Act, has undertaken a nearly unprecedented campaign of regulatory malfeasance that aims to prevent it from functioning and minimize the number of people on whom it bestows comprehensive health coverage.
True, there are many unanswered questions about what “Medicare-for-all” really means, how much it would really cost, how you would finance it, and, critically, how you would transition from point A to point B while restructuring the healthcare system. But whether the Democratic Party should pursue it is no longer in doubt.
In America, a workable system needs to be able to survive the regular alternation of parties in power. The lesson of the Trump era is that the Obamacare approach can’t do that. It’ll take a big, dumb program that just keeps trundling along unless Congress actually repeals it — like how Social Security checks keep going out no matter who’s president.
More at www.vox.com/2018/8/3/17641560/medicare-for-all-trump
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Oh yeah, SECOND ... one MORE point about that book you seem so enamored of ...
Quote:Not only did they fail to as WHY high-income Republicans were slightly less satisfied than low-income Democrats (which the authors then immediately and- apparently without evidence- tag to "racism") they failed to make another fundamental comparison: How did high-income DEMOCRAT satisfaction compare to low-income Democrat satisfaction?
“Republicans in the highest income quintile, those making more than $100,000 per year, were actually slightly less satisfied than Democrats in the lowest income quintile, those making less than $20,000 per year.”
Either the book is completely fucked, or the book review is. In any case, sorry I missed this obvious flaw the first time around.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:The full quote goes something like this:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Oh yeah, SECOND ... one MORE point about that book you seem so enamored of ...Quote:Not only did they fail to as WHY high-income Republicans were slightly less satisfied than low-income Democrats (which the authors then immediately and- apparently without evidence- tag to "racism") they failed to make another fundamental comparison: How did high-income DEMOCRAT satisfaction compare to low-income Democrat satisfaction?
“Republicans in the highest income quintile, those making more than $100,000 per year, were actually slightly less satisfied than Democrats in the lowest income quintile, those making less than $20,000 per year.”
Either the book is completely fucked, or the book review is. In any case, sorry I missed this obvious flaw the first time around.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
This is unnerving data, as we tend to imagine the economy as a rare subject on which objective facts, rather than group conflicts, drive opinions. Sadly, no. Sides, Tesler, and Vavreck analyzed polling on economic sentiment and found that “Republicans in the highest income quintile, those making more than $100,000 per year, were actually slightly less satisfied than Democrats in the lowest income quintile, those making less than $20,000 per year.”
This was borne out in the election’s aftermath. Trump’s election led to a remarkable 80-point jump in economic confidence among Republicans, and a 37-point fall among Democrats.
There is even a graph that goes with it, but go here to see it:
www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/30/17505406/trump-obama-race-po
litics-immigration
The graph illustrates that political partisans are not sane about economy. When they are happy with their new Republican President, they think the economy is doing good. When sad, the economy is bad. I will give you hint about reality: the economy does NOT change as your mood changes. It is crazy for Republicans to think the economy changes based on the chemical imbalances inside Republicans’ heads. The Democrats have a little of that craziness, too.
Signym plays the role of Bester and second’s role is Kaylee in the script for Out of Gas:
KAYLEE
Ain't nothing wrong with your grav boot. Grav boot's just fine.
(to Mal)
Hello.
She drops down again, out of view. Mal glances at Bester. Bester's a bit flustered.
BESTER
(to Mal)
She doesn't... that's not what...
(to Kaylee)
No it ain't!
KAYLEE
(reappearing)
Sure it is. Grav boot ain't your trouble. I seen the trouble plain as day when I was down there on my back before. Your reg couple's bad.
BESTER
(clueless)
The... red... what?
KAYLEE
Reg couple. Right here. See?
BESTER No.
KAYLEE This.
(then)
I'm pointin' right at it. She rolls her eyes, sighs, reaches in, breaks off a part of the engine.
BESTER Hey!
KAYLEE Here.
That scene ends with Bester/Signym being fired for incompetence, for not understanding even the simplest things, for not knowing you don't know what you are doing :
BESTER Mal. Whaddya need two mechanics for?
MAL I really don't.
If it was left to Bester, Serenity would never fly again, but Mal fixed Bester. Sadly, there is no Mal here at fireflyfans.net to fix Signym.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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My mood is wonderful compared to where I was 2 years ago, Second.
I said the economy and job outlook in America was terrible back then, and I still say it is now.
I'm going to go ahead and attribute my sanity to the fact that I'm neither a Republican or a Democrat, pat myself on the back, and get ready for my low income part time job that I actually enjoy more than almost every job I've ever had in the past.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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SECOND, I read the article. It's just more identity politics, as far as I can tell. The relevant part of the article .... which you seem to want me to focus on, is this
Quote:
The best evidence we have suggests this gets the relationship largely backward. In their forthcoming book Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America, political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck analyze reams of data and show that racial resentment activated economic anxiety, rather than the other way around:
Before Obama’s presidency, how Americans felt about black people did not much affect their perceptions of the economy. After Obama, this changed. In December 2007, racial resentment — which captures whether Americans think deficiencies in black culture are the main reason for racial inequality — was not related to whites’ perceptions of whether the economy was getting better or worse, after accounting for partisanship and ideology. But when these exact same people were re-interviewed in July 2012, racial resentment was a powerful predictor of economic perceptions: the greater someone’s level of racial resentment, the worse they believed the economy was doing.
What the authors found was (they said) a CORRELATION. "racial resentment = economic dissatisfaction"
But SOMETHING HAPPENED between 2007 (when people were first interviewed) and 2012, when they were re-interviewed. What was it?? Think hard, I know you can figure it out.
And, as we all know ... correlation is not causation.
There are a whole bunch of factors that might be tied together that lump "racial resentment" in with "economic dissatisfaction". For example, it's possible that poor rural whites or whites in manufacturing jobs ... who might be somewhat more racist than average, were hit PARTICULARLY hard by the Great Collapse.
Now, what the authors needed to do ... and perhaps they did and the article never mentions is ... is what is called a "multivariate analysis" in which the effect of different factors are teased out from each other.
There really wasn't enough detail in the article to be supportive of the points the author was making; it just seemed like so much blah-blah-blah of regurgitated suppositions. Maybe there's a real point in there somewhere but I couldn't find it. It seemed like the intent of the article was to make white people feel guilty for being white, or something.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Thanks, SECOND, for talking about real things while the Russian trolls deflect.
Someone has to do it. I'm just too tired, most of the time.
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Quote:Signym, you are bullshiting at great length about what you don't comprehend. You definitely are Bester.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, I read the article. It's just more identity politics, as far as I can tell. The relevant part of the article .... which you seem to want me to focus on, is thisQuote:
The best evidence we have suggests this gets the relationship largely backward. In their forthcoming book Identity Crisis: The 2016 Presidential Campaign and the Battle for the Meaning of America, political scientists John Sides, Michael Tesler, and Lynn Vavreck analyze reams of data and show that racial resentment activated economic anxiety, rather than the other way around:
Before Obama’s presidency, how Americans felt about black people did not much affect their perceptions of the economy. After Obama, this changed. In December 2007, racial resentment — which captures whether Americans think deficiencies in black culture are the main reason for racial inequality — was not related to whites’ perceptions of whether the economy was getting better or worse, after accounting for partisanship and ideology. But when these exact same people were re-interviewed in July 2012, racial resentment was a powerful predictor of economic perceptions: the greater someone’s level of racial resentment, the worse they believed the economy was doing.
What the authors found was (they said) a CORRELATION. "racial resentment = economic dissatisfaction"
But SOMETHING HAPPENED between 2007 (when people were first interviewed) and 2012, when they were re-interviewed. What was it?? Think hard, I know you can figure it out.
And, as we all know ... correlation is not causation.
There are a whole bunch of factors that might be tied together that lump "racial resentment" in with "economic dissatisfaction". For example, it's possible that poor rural whites or whites in manufacturing jobs ... who might be somewhat more racist than average, were hit PARTICULARLY hard by the Great Collapse.
Now, what the authors needed to do ... and perhaps they did and the article never mentions is ... is what is called a "multivariate analysis" in which the effect of different factors are teased out from each other.
There really wasn't enough detail in the article to be supportive of the points the author was making; it just seemed like so much blah-blah-blah of regurgitated suppositions. Maybe there's a real point in there somewhere but I couldn't find it. It seemed like the intent of the article was to make white people feel guilty for being white, or something.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
Signym, for a reason I quoted from the Firefly script “Out of Gas” about Mal meeting Kaylee for the first time and replacing Bester. Our real world is afflicted with people like semi-competent Bester (or Signym). Even Mal was fooled into believing Bester was a genius mechanic. Bester believed in himself, but he could not get Serenity to fly.
Bester and Kaylee argued about what was wrong with Serenity. If Kaylee’s correct diagnosis and repair had required hours of work, that argument would have gone on indefinitely, with Bester blocking Kaylee, just exactly like arguments do here at fireflyfan.net or in our world. Since it was a TV show, in 30 seconds Kaylee got Serenity running again, but only because Mal helped by stopping Bester from interfering.
There will be Bester vs Kaylee arguments until the end of time and Mal won’t intuitively know who is the better mechanic for his ship. In the same episode, there was a problem even Kaylee couldn’t fix, disappointing Mal. In American politics there might
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Quote:Uh huh.
Signym, you are bullshiting at great length about what you don't comprehend. You definitely are Bester.
The article makes a number of claims
Quote:only if you ASSUME that people's politics are based on their skin color. As if we don't ALL have an interest in meaningful jobs at living wages, safe homes and neighborhoods, a durable economy sustainable into the future, a meritocracy for those who can work and support for those who can't ... this is just identity politics gone wild.
This is the core cleavage of our politics, and it reflects the fundamental reality of our era: America is changing, and fast
Quote:Well, "a majority" here ... no matter how defined ... doesn't HAVE dominance. YOU YOURSELF SAID that we live in an economy where the lords and lordlings have control. Painting "a majority" as having "dominance" is simply forwarding the myth that we have meaningful control over our collective future ... which we don't, and we WON'T, unless we can get off this identity politics track and pay attention to who's REALLY in control. This article is simply diverting attention from the people who have REAL dominance ... the 0.01%.
I spent months talking with politicians, social psychologists, and political scientists about what happens in moments like this one, moments when a majority feels its dominance beginning to fail.
Quote:The author ... who says "As we navigate these sensitivities, we can do so with more or less care" spends an ENTIRE ARTICLE winding up those very sensitivities through CONTINUED reference (directly and indirectly) to LOSS OF WHITE PRIVILEGE, which is destined to make many white readers feel threatened and uncomfortable.
Schiffhauer published a fascinating paper called “Racial attitudes in response to thoughts of White privilege.” They found that priming white college students to think about the concept of white privilege led them to express more racial resentment in subsequent surveys. The simplest way to activate someone’s identity is to threaten it, to tell them they don’t truly deserve what they have, to make them consider that it might be taken away.
The author's dedication to identity politics as a wedge to drive Americans further and further apart is right from YOUR playbook, SECOND. You're CONSTANTLY flogging identity politics here. You WANT people to be squabbling over trivialities.
That way, you can do as you please. You said so yourself.
And that was probably the most honest thing that you ever posted.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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I thought this was a particularly apt description of identity politics
Quote:
At the time of writing there are apparently over 70 different gender options in the West, not to mention numerous sexualities - the traditional LGBT acronym has thus far grown to LGBTQQIP2SAA. Adding race to the mix results in an even greater number of possible permutations or identities. Each subgroup has its own ideology. Precious time is spent fighting against those deemed less oppressed and telling them to ‘check their privilege’ as the ever-changing pecking order of the ‘Oppression Olympics’ plays out. The rules to this sport are as fluid as the identities taking part. One of the latest dilemmas affecting the identity politics movement is the issue of whether men transitioning to women deserve recognition and acceptance or 'whether trans women aren’t women and are apparently “raping” lesbians'.
The ideology of identity politics asserts that the straight white male is at the apex of the privilege pyramid, responsible for the oppression of all other groups. His original sin condemns him to everlasting shame. While it is true that straight white men (as a group) have faced less obstacles than females, non-straight men or ethnic minorities, the majority of straight white men, past and present, also struggle to survive from paycheck to paycheck and are not personally involved in the oppression of any other group. While most of the world’s wealthiest individuals are Caucasian males, millions of white men exist who are both poor and powerless
Yes, this really is a "divide and conquer" strategy by the elite. Now we can ALL squabble amongst ourselves as to who was the greater victim, and who should feel the most guilt. Does a gay male with AIDS, abused as a child by his mother belong on a higher rung of victim-hood than a Hispanic lesbian female with a supportive family?
I hope you can see how this train of thought devolves into meaninglessness.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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You're dealing with Q SECOND. Nothing but deniers of facts and promoters of conspiracies. Nuts and Russian trolls SECOND, nuts and Russian trolls.
T 
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Quote:Oh, good grief.
You're dealing with Q SECOND
Do you really think ANYone buys your tripe? I can't decide whether to feel annoyed or flattered, but either way, I'm not Q.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:Q, you say? I had to look that one up: 'We Are Q': New Conspiracy Cult That Sends Cryptic Clues To Save America
Originally posted by THG:
You're dealing with Q SECOND. Nothing but deniers of facts and promoters of conspiracies. Nuts and Russian trolls SECOND, nuts and Russian trolls.
T
To believers, Q is a pseudonym for a well-placed U.S. government agent who is posting online distress messages and bits of intel, known as "bread crumbs," in an effort to save the country - and Trump - from hostile forces within the government.
More at www.ndtv.com/world-news/we-are-q-new-conspiracy-cult-that-sends-crypti
c-messages-to-save-america-1893816
I think Signym is more of a run-of-the-mill denialist: Denialism: what drives people to reject the truth
At root, denial and denialism are simply a subset of the many ways humans have developed to use language to deceive others and themselves. Denial can be as simple as refusing to accept that someone else is speaking truthfully.
There are multiple kinds of denialists: from those who are sceptical of all established knowledge, to those who challenge one type of knowledge; from those who actively contribute to the creation of denialist scholarship, to those who quietly consume it; from those who burn with certainty, to those who are privately sceptical about their scepticism. What they all have in common is a particular type of desire. This desire – for something not to be true – is the driver of denialism.
Denialism is more than just another manifestation of the humdrum intricacies of our deceptions and self-deceptions. It represents the transformation of the everyday practice of denial into a whole new way of seeing the world. Denial is furtive and routine; denialism is combative and extraordinary. Denial hides from old truth, denialism builds a new truth.
In democratic societies at least, denialism cannot be beaten legally, or through debunking, or through attempts to discredit its proponents. That’s because, for denialists, the existence of denialism is itself a triumph. Central to denialism is an argument that “the truth” has been suppressed by its enemies. To continue to exist is a heroic act, a victory for the truth only the denialist knows.
More at www.theguardian.com/news/2018/aug/03/denialism-what-drives-people-to-r
eject-the-truth
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Why Presidents have less control over the economy than you think they do.
More at www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2018-07-29/what-economists-still-don-t
-get-about-2008-crisis
All of these papers have one thing in common — they use debt to predict recessions years in advance. That fits with the emerging post-crisis wisdom that problems in credit markets are the source of both financial crashes and the ensuing economic slowdowns.
Gennaioli and Shleifer explain these patterns by turning to their own preferred theory of human irrationality — the theory of extrapolative expectations. Basically, this theory holds that when asset prices rise — home values, stocks and so on — without a break, investors start to believe that this trend represents a new normal. They pile into the asset, pumping up the price even more, and seeming to confirm the idea that the trend will never end. But when the extrapolators’ money runs out, reality sets in and a crash ensues. Gennaioli, Shleifer, and their coauthors have been only one of several teams of researchers to investigate this idea and its implications in recent years.
When extrapolative expectations are combined with an inherently fragile financial system, a predictable cycle of booms and busts is the result. At some point during good economic times, irrational exuberance takes hold, pushing stock prices, house values, or both into the stratosphere. When they inevitably come down, banks collapse, taking the rest of the economy with them.
This story, if it became the standard model of the business cycle, would represent a true revolution in macroeconomics. It discards two pillars of recent macroeconomic thought — rational expectations, and shock-driven unpredictable recessions. It would represent a triumph for Minsky’s ideas, and for those outside the academy who have long urged macroeconomists to pay more attention to debt markets and human psychology. And if the code of booms and busts can finally be cracked, there may be ways for central banks, regulators or other policy makers to head off crises before they begin, instead of cleaning up afterward.
So far, Gennaioli and Shleifer’s story isn’t close to achieving dominance in macro. But of all the ideas being put forth in the field, this seems like the most interesting to watch.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Trump says Don Jr. wanted dirt on Clinton from Russian lawyer
Donald Trump acknowledged Sunday that his oldest son was trying to dig up dirt on Hillary Clinton when he met a woman linked to the Kremlin in 2016 — an attempt to re-cast the Trump Tower meeting as an innocuous part of campaigning as the president gets energized about hitting the trail again this year.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/05/trump-donald-junior-clinton-
russia-764357
T
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For decades the right has tried to shout down any attempt to sand down some of the rough edges of capitalism, whether through health guarantees, income supports, or anything else, by yelling “socialism.” Sooner or later people were bound to say that if any attempt to make our system less harsh is socialism, well, they’re socialists.
The truth is that there are hardly any people in the U.S. who want the government to seize the means of production, or even the economy’s commanding heights. What they want is social democracy – the kinds of basic guarantees of health care, protection against poverty, etc., that almost every other advanced country provides. The GOP is opposed.
Denmark, where tax receipts are 46 percent of GDP compared with 26 percent in the U.S., is arguably the most social-democratic country in the world. According to conservative doctrine, the combination of high taxes and aid to “takers” must really destroy incentives both to create jobs and to take them in any case. So Denmark must suffer from mass unemployment, right? The GOP is wrong.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=kM3v
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=kM3O
Denmark runs a welfare state beyond the wildest dreams of U.S. progressives and still has a highly successful economy.
More at www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/opinion/notes-on-a-butter-republic.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Trump says Don Jr. wanted dirt on Clinton from Russian lawyer
Donald Trump acknowledged Sunday that his oldest son was trying to dig up dirt on Hillary Clinton when he met a woman linked to the Kremlin in 2016 — an attempt to re-cast the Trump Tower meeting as an innocuous part of campaigning as the president gets energized about hitting the trail again this year.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/05/trump-donald-junior-clinton-
russia-764357
T
Isn't that story over a year old now?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
For decades the right has tried to shout down any attempt to sand down some of the rough edges of capitalism, whether through health guarantees, income supports, or anything else, by yelling “socialism.” Sooner or later people were bound to say that if any attempt to make our system less harsh is socialism, well, they’re socialists.
The truth is that there are hardly any people in the U.S. who want the government to seize the means of production, or even the economy’s commanding heights. What they want is social democracy – the kinds of basic guarantees of health care, protection against poverty, etc., that almost every other advanced country provides. The GOP is opposed.
Denmark, where tax receipts are 46 percent of GDP compared with 26 percent in the U.S., is arguably the most social-democratic country in the world. According to conservative doctrine, the combination of high taxes and aid to “takers” must really destroy incentives both to create jobs and to take them in any case. So Denmark must suffer from mass unemployment, right? The GOP is wrong.
Denmark runs a welfare state beyond the wildest dreams of U.S. progressives and still has a highly successful economy.
More at www.nytimes.com/2018/08/05/opinion/notes-on-a-butter-republic.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
If I paid 46% of my income to taxes instead of what I currently do, I'd be homeless.
I'll pay 15% for Social Security and Medicare (Yes, you absolutely do count the half the company pays for you). I'll pay 10% on roughly 4k income Federal tax, so about 3% more. 5% on almost every dime to the state. About 10% of my income will pay my property taxes, and since I'm looking at spending about 80% of what I make this year another 7.5% is going to sales taxes.
Oh... silly me.
I'm already going to be paying 40.5% of my income to taxes this year.
And I make signifigantly less than the Federal Poverty level for a single person.
Sucks to be me, huh?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:There is poverty in Denmark, but far less than in America. Unless you learned to speak Danish, you would be poor there, too, 6ixStringJack.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
If I paid 46% of my income to taxes instead of what I currently do, I'd be homeless.
I'll pay 15% for Social Security and Medicare (Yes, you absolutely do count the half the company pays for you). I'll pay 10% on roughly 4k income Federal tax, so about 3% more. 5% on almost every dime to the state. About 10% of my income will pay my property taxes, and since I'm looking at spending about 80% of what I make this year another 7.5% is going to sales taxes.
Oh... silly me.
I'm already going to be paying 40.5% of my income to taxes this year.
And I make signifigantly less than the Federal Poverty level for a single person.
Sucks to be me, huh?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
www.demos.org/blog/10/20/15/united-states-vs-denmark-17-charts
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:There is poverty in Denmark, but far less than in America. Unless you learned to speak Danish, you would be poor there, too, 6ixStringJack.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
If I paid 46% of my income to taxes instead of what I currently do, I'd be homeless.
I'll pay 15% for Social Security and Medicare (Yes, you absolutely do count the half the company pays for you). I'll pay 10% on roughly 4k income Federal tax, so about 3% more. 5% on almost every dime to the state. About 10% of my income will pay my property taxes, and since I'm looking at spending about 80% of what I make this year another 7.5% is going to sales taxes.
Oh... silly me.
I'm already going to be paying 40.5% of my income to taxes this year.
And I make signifigantly less than the Federal Poverty level for a single person.
Sucks to be me, huh?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
www.demos.org/blog/10/20/15/united-states-vs-denmark-17-charts
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
I'm not poor.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Trump says Don Jr. wanted dirt on Clinton from Russian lawyer
Donald Trump acknowledged Sunday that his oldest son was trying to dig up dirt on Hillary Clinton when he met a woman linked to the Kremlin in 2016 — an attempt to re-cast the Trump Tower meeting as an innocuous part of campaigning as the president gets energized about hitting the trail again this year.
https://www.politico.com/story/2018/08/05/trump-donald-junior-clinton-
russia-764357
T
Isn't that story over a year old now?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Here you go dummy. How is it you could be in thread after thread giving opinions on whats going on with Trump and still be so clueless? We've been debating the collusion ( conspiracy ) of the Trump administration and the russians since before the election with you and others, and still you act or remain clueless about the facts.
Because you're a moron let me spell it out for you. Trump admits to collusion, collusion, collusion...tick tock dummy
T
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Quote:a second quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
And I make signifigantly less than the Federal Poverty level for a single person.
Sucks to be me, huh?
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Quote:You are confusing me, 6ixStringJack. You say "I'm not poor" and you also say "And I make signifigantly less than the Federal Poverty level for a single person. Sucks to be me, huh?" Maybe the word "signifigantly" with two g's (your spelling, not mine) means something different than the alternative word significantly with one g?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I'm not poor.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
6ixStringJack, it might be time to decide if you are a member of the political party for poor people or the political party for rich people. Or are you in the political party of independent people? I don't know the name of that party. I don't think it exists.
This is probably as good a place as any to say that the Democratic party is extremely different from the Republican party. I know it is to the advantage of Russia to claim both parties are equal failures, but I believe that is absolutely false. Russia wants indecision, gridlock or random chaos in American government. One party really is superior to the other. Decide one way or the other. And there is no third way.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:a second quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
And I make signifigantly less than the Federal Poverty level for a single person.
Sucks to be me, huh?
Do Right, Be Right. :)Quote:You are confusing me, 6ixStringJack. You say "I'm not poor" and you also say "And I make signifigantly less than the Federal Poverty level for a single person. Sucks to be me, huh?" Maybe the word "signifigantly" with two g's (your spelling, not mine) means something different than the alternative word significantly with one g?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I'm not poor.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
6ixStringJack, it might be time to decide if you are a member of the political party for poor people or the political party for rich people. Or are you in the political party of independent people? I don't know the name of that party. I don't think it exists.
This is probably as good a place as any to say that the Democratic party is extremely different from the Republican party. I know it is to the advantage of Russia to claim both parties are equal failures, but I believe that is absolutely false. Russia wants indecision, gridlock or random chaos in American government. One party really is superior to the other. Decide one way or the other. And there is no third way.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
Both sides suck. Neither is superior to the other. I don't have to decide anything. And if you're going to play the Russian card and call all people who believe the truth that both sides suck Russians, I'm going to choose whatever side your not on every time.
Think about that when Trump gets re-elected in 2020.
And no. I'm not poor. Just because I'm currently making below the poverty level doesn't make me poor. I have no mortgage, I have zero debt, I've got an 822 credit score with easy access to 5 times my current yearly wages in credit, I've got over a year of wages that are in liquid funds and I'll bank at least 20% of my income this year even after paying for some major purchases that need paying.
Most Americans can't even put $400 together for an emergency, and most Americans make more money than me.
I'm not rich, but I'm certainly not poor.
There's a whole world of grey in the middle, Second. You need to stop looking at everything in only Black or White.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Oops! Thanos, you monster! You destroyed this comment!
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Quote:Did you see Avengers Infinity War? We need Thanos to create two Earths. In one, the Democrats rule America. In the other, the Republicans. Then Thanos compares results and destroys one or the other Earth.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
Both sides suck. Neither is superior to the other. I don't have to decide anything. And if you're going to play the Russian card and call all people who believe the truth that both sides suck Russians, I'm going to choose whatever side your not on every time.
Think about that when Trump gets re-elected in 2020.
There's a whole world of grey in the middle, Second. You need to stop looking at everything in only Black or White.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Republicans say there is no such thing as Global Warming. The Democrats say the opposite. Trump does what he can to increase CO2 by lower fuel mileage and raising coal mining employment. Thanos will have to run the experiment in real time on the two Earths to determine who is wronger, Democrats or Republicans. From the article "Domino-effect of climate events could push Earth into a ‘hothouse’ state":
Quote:www.theguardian.com/environment/2018/aug/06/domino-effect-of-climate-e
“I do hope we are wrong, but as scientists we have a responsibility to explore whether this is real. We need to know now. It’s so urgent. This is one of the most existential questions in science.”
vents-could-push-earth-into-a-hothouse-state
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Did you see Avengers Infinity War?
Nope. Not into Hollywood schlock, and I go out of my way not to support any of them. I'd say that's one of the reasons I'm not poor, but truth be told I could have watched it for quite a while on KODI for free and still I can't be bothered with it.
Quote:
We need Thanos to create two Earths. In one, the Democrats rule America. In the other, the Republicans. Then Thanos compares results and destroys one or the other Earth.
Thanos won't take any of my calls. Maybe you 1%'ers might have better luck reaching him.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:So, you don't care that Trump is working as hard as he can to burn the Earth, with him operating under the assumption that CO2 can't possibly do what scientists suspect it can. Do you care that Trump is also working to repeat the crash of 2008, which affected you? It was a great opportunity for me to buy stocks cheap, half price sale, but maybe it was bad for your job history, leaving years-long gaps in your employment.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
Did you see Avengers Infinity War?
Nope. Not into Hollywood schlock, and I go out of my way not to support any of them. I'd say that's one of the reasons I'm not poor, but truth be told I could have watched it for quite a while on KODI for free and still I can't be bothered with it.Quote:
We need Thanos to create two Earths. In one, the Democrats rule America. In the other, the Republicans. Then Thanos compares results and destroys one or the other Earth.
Thanos won't take any of my calls. Maybe you 1%'ers might have better luck reaching him.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Trump is assuming that none of the safeguards added to prevent another 2008 crash are necessary. He is working as fast as he can to remove all the safeties that might slowdown profitability. If there is another crash, Trump will do what Bush did, rescue the banks and rich with Federal money. 6ixStringJack doesn't need rescue. He can look after himself so I don't expect him to care about another crash.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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lol
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:You should laugh. The stock market drops, followed by you becoming unemployed. The rich appear to become poorer, too, but the smart ones have cash to buy the cheap stocks that crashed. The smart ones end up richer than before the crash, once the market recovers in a few years. And what about the unemployed and you? After years of not working, they are poorer and will stay poorer for life because of stock market crashes. The beauty of the system engineered by the GOP is that crashes are profit opportunities available only to the rich. And crashes keep wages low, which is also great news for the rich employers. It is a win-win for the rich and a lose-lose for you.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
lol
Do Right, Be Right. :)
http://time.com/money/4947363/warren-buffett-stock-market-indicator/
www.marketwatch.com/story/warren-buffetts-growing-cash-pile-and-the-bi
g-read-in-for-investors-2018-08-06?mod=MW_story_top_stories
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:No.
You should laugh.
We should change the rules of the game that even make this possible,
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:Of course I care. But there is life after Trump, who will only be on office 4 or 8 years, while this problem has been going on for over 50 years under Dems and Repubs alike.
So, you don't care that Trump is working as hard as he can to burn the Earth, with him operating under the assumption that CO2 can't possibly do what scientists suspect it can.
Quote:Not really. The ONLY TIMES in recent history, under both Dems and Repubs, when the elite's fraction of wealth actually went down was during crashes. I certainly posted enough of that for you to look at. The elite, under Dems and Repubs, have been using The Fed's cheap money ... money that only the elite have access to ... to rob everyone even further.
Do you care that Trump is also working to repeat the crash of 2008, which affected you? It was a great opportunity for me to buy stocks cheap, half price sale, but maybe it was bad for your job history, leaving years-long gaps in your employment.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:"Over 50 years under Dems and Repubs alike." Signym, do you remember old what's-his-name? I can't even recall. I know you forgot. Oh, it's Al Gore, the famous Democrat! I checked, he is alive. He talked about the greenhouse gas effect, global warming, blah-blah-blah and all the Republicans said it does not exist. Bush's brother, governor of Florida, made sure Gore did not get to act against global warming. As a fact, the entire GOP made sure Obama did not get to act against global warming. Trump increases coal burning and decreases vehicle fuel economy, so we know where Trump is on CO2. Signym, there are two sides on CO2. The Repubs are on one side, the Democrats on the other, but you flat out lied with your "Over 50 years under Dems and Repubs alike."
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Of course I care. But there is life after Trump, who will only be on office 4 or 8 years, while this problem has been going on for over 50 years under Dems and Repubs alike.
So, you don't care that Trump is working as hard as he can to burn the Earth, with him operating under the assumption that CO2 can't possibly do what scientists suspect it can.
Syria announced during United Nations climate talks on Tuesday that it would sign the Paris agreement on climate change. The move, which comes on the heels of Nicaragua signing the accord last month, will leave the United States as the only country that has rejected the global pact.
www.nytimes.com/2017/11/07/climate/syria-joins-paris-agreement.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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The GOP is dismantling the regulatory system for banks and markets. That would be a bad move. Paul Romer, Economist:
Did you get a chance to look at this looting paper? This is a couple of crises ago. In effect, what [economist George Akerlof and I] showed is that seemingly small weaknesses in your regulatory system can open up enormous risks, and enormous opportunities for private profit. So what it tells you is that under-regulating or mis-regulating is much more dangerous than people generally accept. So I think most economists think of this as kind of, “We’re on the top of a smooth hill. Even if you’ve got it kind of, sort of, right in terms of regulation, you’re fine. A little deviation one side or the other, it won’t really matter.” We were trying to say, “No. It’s like a cliff. You go a little bit over the cliff, in terms of what you allow with your regulatory system, you’re gonna get really terrible outcomes.”
Everybody disliked that paper. After the financial crisis, some people, including Larry Summers, told me they now saw that the looting story captured the reality in a way that they hadn’t recognized before. This is what worries me, people are kind of heading back to the pre-crisis worldview. Regulation is never perfect. You can always kind of complain about imperfections. But I think the kind of weakening, at the behest of the industry, that we’re going through right now should be generating a lot more academic concern than it is generating at the moment. There’s a complacency that’s setting back in. There’s a tolerance now for, oh, maybe let’s err a little bit on the side of under-regulating. You know, how much harm could it cause?
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/08/america-10-years-after-th
e-financial-crisis.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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SECOND I'm reading the article that you linked, and like the OTHER article that you linked ("The Browning of America") I'm asking myself ...What the fuck is the author ON???
He paints an America, both before and after, that lives only in his imagination. I'll be more specific when I'm done, but this article is going to be tough going, because his premise is already fucked up.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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I'm reading thru your link but fail to see how it is related to the comment by Romer. It's just sort of a picture of America, "before and after" but doesn't have anything specific about regulatory weakness in it. Did you possibly post the wrong link? If so, can you please post the correct link?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:It is the right link because it is linking the crash of 2008 to loosening of regulations on lenders. The lenders were withholding information about how bad the loans actually were that they were making, then profitably reselling to other financial institutions, thus screwing the buyers and everyone who was hurt by the resulting crash when the truth became known.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
I'm reading thru your link but fail to see how it is related to the comment by Romer. It's just sort of a picture of America, "before and after" but doesn't have anything specific about regulatory weakness in it. Did you possibly post the wrong link? If so, can you please post the correct link?
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
By the way, Paul Romer was talking about the "looting" paper which he wrote with economist George Akerlof. George got the Nobel Prize in Economics for pointing out the mechanisms that governments can use to stop Capitalists from "looting" the economy. He is the author of a landmark study on the role of asymmetric information in the market for "lemon" used cars. His research broke with established economic theory in illustrating how markets malfunction when buyers and sellers — as seen in used car markets — operate under different information. The work has had far-reaching applications in such diverse areas as health insurance, financial markets and employment contracts. There is more, Signym, but you won't be able to figure it out. You are not just pretending to be stupid in order to get me to waste my time explaining it to you.
www.berkeley.edu/news/features/2001/nobel/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Omarosa may have secretly taped White House conversations:
Former Trump staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman might have secretly recorded private conversations in the White House out of fear for special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, The New York Daily News reported Friday
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/369689-omarosa-may-have-sec
retly-taped-white-house-conversations-report
T
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Omarosa may have secretly taped White House conversations:
Former Trump staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman might have secretly recorded private conversations in the White House out of fear for special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, The New York Daily News reported Friday
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/369689-omarosa-may-have-sec
retly-taped-white-house-conversations-report
T
"May have", huh?
Probably shouldn't report on it unless you know for a fact.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Omarosa may have secretly taped White House conversations:
Former Trump staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman might have secretly recorded private conversations in the White House out of fear for special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, The New York Daily News reported Friday
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/369689-omarosa-may-have-sec
retly-taped-white-house-conversations-report
T
Quote:
"May have", huh?
Probably shouldn't report on it unless you know for a fact.
Hey dummy. Read or follow the link. The Hill is the one who wrote the story. And since they are not a fake news outlet it's worth mentioning here.
T
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Quote:
Originally posted by THG:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Omarosa may have secretly taped White House conversations:
Former Trump staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman might have secretly recorded private conversations in the White House out of fear for special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, The New York Daily News reported Friday
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/369689-omarosa-may-have-sec
retly-taped-white-house-conversations-report
T
Quote:
"May have", huh?
Probably shouldn't report on it unless you know for a fact.
Hey dummy. Read or follow the link. The Hill is the one who wrote the story. And since they are not a fake news outlet it's worth mentioning here.
T
I didn't say it was fake news. I said it was "no news".
How irresponsible is it to say that something "may be true" rather than wait to see if it is true just to sell a few papers or subscriptions?
lol...
"Dummy" again? Why don't you pick up a thesaurus, son? Surely you can come up with a better insult than that.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:Signym, that was from page one, Monday, October 9, 2017. A book has been written since then:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:Well, then you're religious about your politics because (for you) it's a matter of belief and not fact.
Signym, you started with the Democrats are as bad as the Republicans. I don't believe that is true.Quote:Wrong. BOTH Dems and Repubs engage together in creating a Punch-and-Judy show for the masses. But while they're performing .... whatever it is that they're performing ... the oligarchs (the REAL persons in power) get to decide where manufacturing goes, what our tax rates will be, what monetary policy the central banks will follow and whether "austerity" will be visited on the populace, how much our pockets will be picked by TPTB, and where we will go to war. The Dems have not slowed down this process one jot.
Politics is entertainment for the masses and Democrats are the equivalent of documentary makers, while Republicans make the equivalent of Hollywood's summer movies.
Tailspin: The People and Forces Behind America's Fifty-Year Fall
www.amazon.com/Tailspin-Americas-Fifty-Year-Fall-Fighting/dp/152473163
3/
Excellent books and scholarly treatises have been written about the likeliest suspects: the growth of income inequality, the polarization and paralysis of American democracy, the dominance of political money, or the recklessness that precipitated the financial crash of 2008–9 and the ensuing failure to hold anyone accountable. The story of America’s breakdown is about all of that, and more. And there is a theme that threads through and ties together all of these subplots: The most talented, driven Americans chased the American dream—and won it for themselves. Then, in a way unprecedented in history, they were able to consolidate their winnings, outsmart and co-opt the government that might have reined them in, and pull up the ladder so more could not share in their success or challenge their primacy.
By continuing to get better at what they do, by knocking away the guardrails limiting their winnings, by aggressively engineering changes in the political landscape, and by dint of the often unanticipated consequences of the breakthroughs they pulled off in legal rights, financial engineering, digital technology, political strategy, and so many other areas, they created a nation of moats that protected them from accountability and from the damage their triumphs caused in the larger community. Most of the time, our elected and appointed representatives were no match for these overachievers. As a result of their savvy, their drive, and their resources, America all but abandoned its most ambitious and proudest ideal: the never perfect, always debated, and perpetually sought-after balance between the energizing inequality of achievement in a competitive economy and the liberating, community-binding equality of power promised by democracy. In a battle that began a half century ago, the achievers won.
The result is a new, divided America. On one side are the protected few—the winners—who don’t need government for much and even have a stake in sabotaging the government’s responsibility to all of its citizens. For them, the new, broken America works fine, at least in the short term. On the other side are the unprotected many, who rely on government, as they always have, to protect and preserve their way of life and maybe even improve it. That divide is the essence of America’s tailspin. The protected overmatched, overran, and paralyzed the government.
Signym was that too abstract? It didn't point the accusing finger at the GOP. The blame is placed vaguely on "government" in order to not offend Republican book purchasers. Here is a solid example of how government works in practice when the Republicans are in charge:
https://goo.gl/2D21kZ
Under Obama, the for-profit college DeVry University agreed to pay $100 million to settle a lawsuit with the Federal Trade
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Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by THG:Quote:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by THG:
Omarosa may have secretly taped White House conversations:
Former Trump staffer Omarosa Manigault Newman might have secretly recorded private conversations in the White House out of fear for special counsel Robert Mueller’s probe, The New York Daily News reported Friday
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/369689-omarosa-may-have-sec
retly-taped-white-house-conversations-report
TQuote:
"May have", huh?
Probably shouldn't report on it unless you know for a fact.
Hey dummy. Read or follow the link. The Hill is the one who wrote the story. And since they are not a fake news outlet it's worth mentioning here.
T
I didn't say it was fake news. I said it was "no news".
How irresponsible is it to say that something "may be true" rather than wait to see if it is true just to sell a few papers or subscriptions?
lol...
"Dummy" again? Why don't you pick up a thesaurus, son? Surely you can come up with a better insult than that.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
Trump pardoned Sheriff Joe Arpaio. Joe said that if Trump asked, he would return the favor. It hasn’t happened yet, but it is news:
Sacha Baron Cohen tricked disgraced former sheriff Joe Arpaio into saying he'd take a blow job from President Trump.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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SECOND, with all due respect, I have to point out that not only do you put words in MY mouth, you put words in the mouths of authors who (a) clearly don't mean what YOU say they mean and (b) aren't even here to defend themselves. Specifically ....
Quote:Even just the little snippet that you quoted* ...
It didn't point the accusing finger at the GOP. The blame is placed vaguely on "government" in order to not offend Republican book purchasers.
Quote:That part about "failure to hold anyone accountable"? That happened specifically under OBAMA, son. IF the author hadn't intended to blame Democrats SPECIFICALLY for their part in this cluster-fuck, he would have left that part out.
... the growth of income inequality, the polarization and paralysis of American democracy, the dominance of political money, or the recklessness that precipitated the financial crash of 2008–9 and the ensuing failure to hold anyone accountable.
*BTW, it would be extremely helpful if you indicated where you're quoting someone else, and where you're writing for yourself. You DO know how to use the quotation function, right?
Now, let's go back to my contention AND the data behind it
Quote:
BOTH Dems and Repubs engage together in creating a Punch-and-Judy show for the masses. But while they're performing .... whatever it is that they're performing ... the oligarchs (the REAL persons in power) get to decide where manufacturing goes, what our tax rates will be, what monetary policy the central banks will follow and whether "austerity" will be visited on the populace, how much our pockets will be picked by TPTB, and where we will go to war. The Dems have not slowed down this process one jot.
Let me repeat that: The Dems have not slowed down this process one jot.
You can point to small "DEM" examples like Obama busting small for-profit colleges, but what happened to the BANKS?
Something similar happened under Reagan it was called the Savings & Loan Crisis. And during the Savings & Loan debacle of 1985-1995 (Reagan) there were
Quote:https://billmoyers.com/2013/09/17/hundreds-of-wall-street-execs-went-t
over 30,000 criminal referrals ... over 1,000 felony convictions in cases designated as “major” by the Department of Justice .... [with] a list of ... the 100 worst fraud schemes. They involved roughly 300 savings and loans and 600 individuals, and virtually all of those people were prosecuted. We had a 90 percent conviction rate, which is the greatest success against elite white-collar crime (in terms of prosecution) in history.
o-prison-during-the-last-fraud-fueled-bank-crisis/
Now, what happened to the banks under OBAMA? He continued the process, begun under GWB, of disgorging TRILLIONS of dollars into bank coffers to make them whole. But no arrests were made of high-level Wall Street bankers, even though they were selling financial products that even THEY knew were full of shit.(= fraud) The only prosecution that I recall was of Angelo Mozilo, at Countrywide, a nonbank lender. Instead, Obama engineered a $25 billion settlement with the banks - less than a slap on the wrist considering the trillions of dollars that the government disgorged - which our [then] fearless leader Kamala Harris signed on to. After that, I never voted for Kamala again.
Lanny Breuer, the person under Obama responsible for prosecuting bankers for fraud, not only refused to prosecute the architects of the 2008 debacle, he also refused to prosecute HSBC for money-laundering in an unrelated case. (Very similar to refusing to prosecute Hillary).
Quote:
In response to the DOJ's excuse-making that these criminal cases are too hard to win, numerous experts - Senators, top Hill staffers, former DOJ prosecutors - emphasized the key point: Obama officials never even tried. ... Jeff Connaughton, wrote a book in 2011 - "The Payoff: Why Wall Street Always Wins" - devoted t
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Quote:You'll like this better since it blames Hillary and oligopolistic firms. "America is an oligarchy" - Signym:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, with all due respect, I have to point out that . . .
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy
The Democrats first step is to tell a clear and accurate story of what has gone wrong in the country economically, something they utterly failed to do in 2016. With Barack Obama still president, Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton, felt compelled to tell voters that they should feel good about the economic progress of the previous eight years, even though, as they knew, wages had barely budged.
Into that vacuum stepped Donald Trump, who had a simpler story: Average Americans were suffering from long-term downward mobility because elites and Washington had abandoned them to the depredations of immigrants and China, and he would put things right. The particulars were wrong, and dishonest, but the overall portrait of generational decline hit home for much of the country.
In 2019 and 2020, the burden of defending the status quo will be reversed. That will give Democrats an opportunity to finally take the lead on telling the story of the deeper trends that actually explain the past two decades of wage stagnation. The most important part of that story is the concentration of corporate power. With more and more industries controlled by fewer and fewer big firms, corporate managers face little pressure to raise wages, since many workers, especially in rural America, have nowhere else to go. Combine that with the continuing decline of unions, the erosion of the real value of the minimum wage, and the spread of employment contracts with anti-worker provisions—like mandatory arbitration and noncompete clauses—and you have an economy in which workers have little or no bargaining power. A growing chorus of economists now thinks that this phenomenon—more than trade, and certainly more than immigration—is the best explanation for why real wages aren’t rising even after nine years of economic expansion, near-record-low unemployment, and record corporate profits.
But most Americans don’t know any of this, because their leaders haven’t bothered to tell them. They may have seen firsthand the number of potential employers in their hometown shrink because of corporate mergers, or they may have been turned down for a raise even though their company is making huge profits. They may have tried to expand their small business, only to be blocked by market barriers erected by larger corporations. But most folks perceive such setbacks as private tragedies. They don’t know that millions of fellow citizens are suffering them, too. Nor do they understand that their plight is not some inevitable result of “the market.” Rather, it is the consequence of choices made in Washington—especially the decision, beginning in the Reagan administration, to abandon tough antitrust enforcement and instead green-light wave after wave of corporate mergers and anticompetitive practices to the point where a handful of oligopolistic firms have enormous power not only over markets but also, through their lobbying and campaign cash, over the machinery of government itself. Finally, they don’t know that these conditions can be changed—that, in fact, the American economy produced broad-based prosperity for much of the twentieth century with strict rules that made markets more competitive.
The advantage of centering policy debate around this narrative is that it’s both true and new. It counters the GOP’s scapegoating of immigrants and foreigners, and it allows Democrats to transcend their tired role as advocates of increased welfare spending.
More at https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-august-2018/winning-is-not
-enough/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pag
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:You'll like this better since it blames Hillary and oligopolistic firms. "America is an oligarchy" - Signym:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
SECOND, with all due respect, I have to point out that . . .
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy
The Democrats first step is to tell a clear and accurate story of what has gone wrong in the country economically, something they utterly failed to do in 2016. With Barack Obama still president, Democrats, especially Hillary Clinton, felt compelled to tell voters that they should feel good about the economic progress of the previous eight years, even though, as they knew, wages had barely budged.
Into that vacuum stepped Donald Trump, who had a simpler story: Average Americans were suffering from long-term downward mobility because elites and Washington had abandoned them to the depredations of immigrants and China, and he would put things right. The particulars were wrong, and dishonest, but the overall portrait of generational decline hit home for much of the country.
In 2019 and 2020, the burden of defending the status quo will be reversed. That will give Democrats an opportunity to finally take the lead on telling the story of the deeper trends that actually explain the past two decades of wage stagnation. The most important part of that story is the concentration of corporate power. With more and more industries controlled by fewer and fewer big firms, corporate managers face little pressure to raise wages, since many workers, especially in rural America, have nowhere else to go. Combine that with the continuing decline of unions, the erosion of the real value of the minimum wage, and the spread of employment contracts with anti-worker provisions—like mandatory arbitration and noncompete clauses—and you have an economy in which workers have little or no bargaining power. A growing chorus of economists now thinks that this phenomenon—more than trade, and certainly more than immigration—is the best explanation for why real wages aren’t rising even after nine years of economic expansion, near-record-low unemployment, and record corporate profits.
But most Americans don’t know any of this, because their leaders haven’t bothered to tell them. They may have seen firsthand the number of potential employers in their hometown shrink because of corporate mergers, or they may have been turned down for a raise even though their company is making huge profits. They may have tried to expand their small business, only to be blocked by market barriers erected by larger corporations. But most folks perceive such setbacks as private tragedies. They don’t know that millions of fellow citizens are suffering them, too. Nor do they understand that their plight is not some inevitable result of “the market.” Rather, it is the consequence of choices made in Washington—especially the decision, beginning in the Reagan administration, to abandon tough antitrust enforcement and instead green-light wave after wave of corporate mergers and anticompetitive practices to the point where a handful of oligopolistic firms have enormous power not only over markets but also, through their lobbying and campaign cash, over the machinery of government itself. Finally, they don’t know that these conditions can be changed—that, in fact, the American economy produced broad-based prosperity for much of the twentieth century with strict rules that made markets more competitive.
The advantage of centering policy debate around this narrative is that it’s both true and new. It counters the GOP’s scapegoating of immigrants and foreigners, and it allows Democrats to transcend their tired role as advocates of increased welfare spending.
More at https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-august-2018/winning-is-not
-enough/
The Joss Whedon script for Sereni
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Quote:I really appreciate how SECOND's favorite articles make breathless leaps into unsubstantiated declarations! (not)
Into that vacuum stepped Donald Trump, who had a simpler story: Average Americans were suffering from long-term downward mobility because elites and Washington had abandoned them to the depredations of immigrants and China, and he would put things right. The particulars were wrong, and dishonest ...
SECOND, please follow this link. I can't just copy the "image location" here (because it isn't just an image, it's an interactive chart), but this is the FRED's chart of "all employees manufacturing" 1940-2017. The chart also shows the recessions as gray vertical bars.
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/MANEMP
Now, if you look at THE DATA you will see that the biggest jump in manufacturing occurs April 1939 to Jan 1944, which makes sense because that was the war effort. It drops significantly (by about 3 million jobs) in the short recession after peace was declared in 1945, but continues to rise in uneven sawtooth fashion (slower rises and quick drops during each recession) until it reaches an absolute peak in Aug 1979. After that, it drops during the recession of 1981 but plateaus and holds more-or-less steady until ...
If you look at the chart carefully, you'll see that EVERY SINGLE drop in manufacturing employment occurred DURING a RECESSION, but immediately popped back up again (sometimes to a higher value and sometimes to a lower one) as soon as the recession was over, with two exceptions. The first occurred in towards the end of 1990, which was kind of a gentle "sag" in the chart, not too significant, with a loss of about a half-million jobs (out of about 17.5 million). The next one, which was VERY significant, occurred late 2000 to late 2007, with a loss of about 3.5 million jobs. The was a third loss of about 2.5 million jobs beginning late 2007 (The beginning of the Great Recession) but like most other job losses, this one appears to show some recovery as soon as the recession is technically over, even tho it also results in a net loss of 1 million jobs. (Overall, a net loss of about 7 million jobs from peak-to-present.)
So there are some general trends one can see, but one of the BIG ones was the permanent loss of manufacturing jobs beginning in late 2000, which began during a recession but never recovered after the recession was over ... a structural change, as opposed to a financial one.
Any thoughts as to what happened in late 2001-early 2002, when manufacturing should have been recovering?
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:Many have complained about the decline of the manufacturing sector in the United States. As this graph shows, how recently this decline started depends on what you look at. If you look at the number of people employed in that sector, the decline started only a decade ago. If you look at the share of manufacturing in total employment, the steady decline has been ongoing for decades.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
So there are some general trends one can see, but one of the BIG ones was the permanent loss of manufacturing jobs beginning in late 2000, which began during a recession but never recovered after the recession was over ... a structural change, as opposed to a financial one.
Any thoughts as to what happened in late 2001-early 2002, when manufacturing should have been recovering?
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=ws8
For a nice overview of the evolution of employment in the manufacturing sector, see this article in the Journal of Economic Perspectives. https://ideas.repec.org/a/aea/jecper/v28y2014i1p3-26.html
Quote:If you dig into that paper, they tell you the obvious:
Abstract
The development of the US manufacturing sector over the last half-century displays two striking and somewhat contradictory features: 1) the growth of real output in the US manufacturing sector, measured by real value added, has equaled or exceeded that of total GDP, keeping the manufacturing share of the economy constant in price-adjusted terms; and 2) there is a long-standing decline in the share of total employment attributable to manufacturing. The persistence of these trends seems inconsistent with stories of a recent or sudden crisis in the US manufacturing sector. After all, as recently as 2010, the United States had the world's largest manufacturing sector measured by its valued-added, and while it has now been surpassed by China, the United States remains a very large manufacturer. On the other hand, there are some potential causes for concern. First, though manufacturing's output share of GDP has remained stable over 50 years, and manufacturing retains a reputation as a sector of rapid productivity improvements, this is largely due to the spectacular performance of one subsector of manufacturing: computers and electronics. Second, recently there has been a large drop in the absolute level of manufacturing employment that many find alarming. Third, the US manufacturing sector runs an enormous trade deficit, equaling $460 billion in 2012, which is also very concentrated in trade with Asia. Finally, we consider the future evolution of the manufacturing sector and its importance for the US economy. Many of the largest US corporations continue to shift their production facilities overseas. It is important to understand why the United States is not perceived to be an attractive base for their production.
Quote:Reducing the trade deficit to zero would increase manufacturing employment by, maybe, 25%. Since manufacturing employment is around 13 million, call it 4 million mor
Even though Edwards and Lawrence (2013) argue that trade does not explain the post-2000 drop in manufacturing employment, they do show that the trade deficit does have a large jobs component, and its elimination would raise manufacturing employment by about 25 percent. During the boom years, Americans were relatively indifferent to the consequences of large trade deficits, but in the future, the United States cannot afford ongoing trade deficits of 3 percent and more of its GDP. Because of the domination of manufacturing in tradables, much of any adjustment will have to be concentrated in that sector. We now turn to a discussion of the future of US manufacturing and policies that would assist in reducing manufacturing trade deficits.
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Quote:I'm cutting 'n' pasting. Probably none of the good ideas will come to pass, but these do explain why things go wrong:
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
I'm not sure if you artfully removed the things that Mr. Glastris says in his article that you know would get opposition here, or if you removed what you actually didn't agree with.
Nowhere is distrust of government more of a dilemma for Democrats than in their abiding crusade to achieve universal health care. The political challenge of any such plan is to convince voters, the vast majority of whom already have insurance, either through their employers or Medicare, to accept some risk of disruption so that other people can have it too. Clinton and Obama both pushed universal health care legislation in their first two years in office, and both efforts caused the Democrats to be crushed in the next midterms. Americans hate disruption.
Democrats are again gearing up to another futile fight for universal health care. This time, many are rallying around a single-payer system in which all Americans, including the 150 million who now have private insurance, would be covered under a government plan. Whether you agree with single-payer or not, it is the most disruptive way to achieve universal coverage short of full nationalization. It’s almost the perfect example of a policy you don’t push in a low-trust-in-government environment unless you don’t mind losing the next election. To the extent that Democrats might want to risk disrupting the health care system, (and pissing off millions of voters) they should instead address the rapidly rising cost of private insurance. That is the biggest emergency in health care right now, and it’s the one that directly affects the lives of the great majority of voters.
That doesn’t mean Democrats can’t advance the cause of universal coverage. But they would be wise, for instance, to champion a “Medicare buy-in” option for people between fifty-five and sixty-five years old, or go even further with what journalist Steven Waldman calls a “universal public option”: give every individual who lacks health insurance the choice (and subsidies if they need it) to buy into Medicare, Medicaid, or the VA. The beauty of these ideas is twofold. First, they build on existing government programs that voters already know and (mostly) trust. Second, they empower individuals, not the government, to make the choice with their own money.
That second feature, not coincidentally, ought to be a guiding principle of other big new ideas Democrats want to push. Obviously to me, the GOP will be opposed to all this. That's why all will fail.
More at https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/july-august-2018/winning-is-not
-enough/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:A significant number of jobs!
Reducing the trade deficit to zero would increase manufacturing employment by, maybe, 25%. Since manufacturing employment is around 13 million, call it 4 million more jobs.
Quote:As opposed to paying unemployment and other government benefits.
What that will cost in higher prices for the manufactured goods, the paper does not say, but all 333 million Americans will be paying to employ an extra 4 million.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:Paul Krugman warned to not get carried away with over-estimating the cost of a Trumpian trade war. He wasn't willing to risk his reputation by giving a dollar value. The closest he would go is a formula:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:Quote:A significant number of jobs!
Reducing the trade deficit to zero would increase manufacturing employment by, maybe, 25%. Since manufacturing employment is around 13 million, call it 4 million more jobs.Quote:As opposed to paying unemployment and other government benefits.
What that will cost in higher prices for the manufactured goods, the paper does not say, but all 333 million Americans will be paying to employ an extra 4 million.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy
Quote:www.nytimes.com/2018/08/10/opinion/supply-chains-and-trade-war-very-wo
Real income loss = 0.5*tariff rate*reduction in imports
This formula suggests only moderate costs even from a major trade war. Suppose that worldwide tariff were to rise to 40 percent, and world trade were to fall by 15 percent of world GDP, a 50% reduction. Even so, world real income would fall only 3 percent.
nkish.html
When he plugged numbers in, the result was 3% loss of real income.
When I plug numbers in for America, 3% of $21 trillion US GDP is $630 billion. If we end up at a full-out trade war, that is a lot of money per year for creating 4 million extra manufacturing jobs. But it's only $158,000 per job per year. Is it a bargain? Depends on if it is your job.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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"3% loss of real income" doesn't equal loss from total GDP.
You're comparing apples to blue. If you want to calculated the cost of the extra jobs, I suggest you calculate 3% of total US income.
THUGGER admits it's not about RUSSIA !!! and is, in fact, a witch hunt. "Trump better be innocent of any wrong doing, anywhere, anytime."
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
"3% loss of real income" doesn't equal loss from total GDP.
You're comparing apples to blue. If you want to calculated the cost of the extra jobs, I suggest you calculate 3% of total US income.
THUGGER admits it's not about RUSSIA !!! and is, in fact, a witch hunt. "Trump better be innocent of any wrong doing, anywhere, anytime."
Personal income was $17 trillion in 2017. www.statista.com/statistics/216756/us-personal-income/
Corporate profits for the first quarter of 2018 were $2 trillion. https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/corporate-profits
Seems to me that $21 trillion is a little on the low side for an estimate of real income for, say, 2019. The trade war, once it starts, doesn't end exactly on Dec 31, 2018.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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If you can find where Krugman got his figures then you'll know what his '3% of real income' meant. And not to harp, but 'profits' aren't 'income' either. Though what businesses consider 'income' is subject to interpretation. "The real issue is what goes into that income number. ...About the best you can do is try to compare apples to apples — from one quarter to the next, or one company to another. But even that takes a bit of digging." nbcnews 'Income' for families and individuals is much easier to determine, since we have fewer categories for exclusion.
THUGGER admits it's not about RUSSIA !!! and is, in fact, a witch hunt. "Trump better be innocent of any wrong doing, anywhere, anytime."
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Quote:Based on? Dartboard guess?
Paul Krugman warned to not get carried away with over-estimating the cost of a Trumpian trade war. He wasn't willing to risk his reputation by giving a dollar value. The closest he would go is a formula ...
Quote:Whereas it costs $71,000 per year to incarcerate someone; approximately $60,000 for four years of "free" tuition (board and supplies extra!) at a state university; and about $650 billion (per year) or about 2% of real GDP per year in various Federal "welfare" programs (SNAP "food stamps", CHIP, EITC, SSI etc).
But it's only $158,000 per job per year.
*****
Aside from "jobs", re-instating manufacturing at home would have a beneficial effect on our national economic and financial security. It would eliminate our dependence on other nations including potential competitors/ enemies for "goods", improve our balance of trade, and bolster the value of the dollar which- right now - is resting on nothing but hot air.
It would reduce crime and drug dependence at home, and provide people with a well-founded sense of security and meaning. (That is why I'm always talking about MEANINGFUL jobs ... not McJobs.)
We do not "need" to be "competing" in the international labor market nor do we "need" to be adopting automation ... THOSE efforts are all for the benefit of the corporation. We need to be asking ourselves ... Is our economy run for the benefit of the people? Or are people run for the benefit of the wealthy? It is a CHOICE, not an inevitability.
-----------
Pity would be no more,
If we did not MAKE men poor - William Blake
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy http://www.fireflyfans.net/mthread.aspx?tid=57876
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Quote:
Originally posted by 1kiki:
If you can find where Krugman got his figures then you'll know what his '3% of real income' meant. And not to harp, but 'profits' aren't 'income' either. Though what businesses consider 'income' is subject to interpretation. "The real issue is what goes into that income number. ...About the best you can do is try to compare apples to apples — from one quarter to the next, or one company to another. But even that takes a bit of digging." nbcnews 'Income' for families and individuals is much easier to determine, since we have fewer categories for exclusion.
THUGGER admits it's not about RUSSIA !!! and is, in fact, a witch hunt. "Trump better be innocent of any wrong doing, anywhere, anytime."
Krugman used GDP, not "real income" in June and he explained it with a diagram at www.nytimes.com/2018/06/17/opinion/thinking-about-a-trade-war-very-won
kish.html
Quote:Not that the following will change anybody's mind, from the same place:
I’ve always ended up being really sorry when I let my political feelings override what my economic analysis says. And simple trade models, while they do say that trade wars are bad, don’t say that they’re catastrophic.
To do this right, we should use one of those computable general equilibrium models I mentioned above. These suggest substantial but not huge losses – 2 or 3 percent of GDP. What I’d like to do is offer a bit of intuition about why those losses aren’t bigger, then explain why a trade war would nonetheless be highly disruptive.
To do this, I’ll exploit a dirty little secret of trade theory: while ultimately stories about trade have to be general equilibrium, that is, they must make sure that you’ve kept track of all markets simultaneously, trade policy analysis using partial equilibrium – ordinary supply and demand – usually gets you more or less the right answer.
Quote:
The U.S. currently exports about 12 percent of GDP. Not all of that is domestic value added, because some components are imported. But there’s still a lot of the economy, maybe 9 or 10 percent, engaged in production for foreign markets. And if we have the kind of trade war I’ve been envisaging, something like 70 percent of that part of the economy – say, 9 or 10 million workers – will have to start doing something else. And there would be a multiplier effect on many communities now built around export industries, which would lose service jobs too.
. . .
O.K., there’s no certainty that any of this will happen. In fact, I still find it hard to believe that we’re really going to go down this path. But I also don’t have any plausible stories about what’s going to make Trump stop, or induce other big players to give in to his demands.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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It’s a good thing America's foreign debts are in domestic dollars, not foreign currency.
Here’s the script: start with a country that, for whatever reason, became a favorite of foreign lenders, and experienced a large inflow of foreign capital over a number of years. Crucially, the debt thus incurred is denominated in foreign currency, not domestic (which is why the U.S., also a recipient of large inflows in the past, isn’t similarly vulnerable – we borrow in dollars.)
At some point, however, the party comes to an end. It doesn’t matter much what causes a “sudden stop” in foreign lending: it could be domestic events, like appointing your son-in-law to oversee economic policy, it could be a rise in U.S. interest rates, it could be a crisis in another country investors see as being similar to you.
Whatever the shock, the crucial thing is that foreign debt has made your economy vulnerable to a death spiral. Loss of confidence causes your currency to drop; this makes it harder to repay debts in foreign currency; this hurts the real economy and further reduces confidence, leading to a further decline in your currency; and so on in The Loop of Doom.
The result is that foreign debt explodes as a share of GDP. Indonesia came into the 90s financial crisis with foreign debt less than 60 percent of GDP, roughly comparable to Turkey early this year. By 1998 a plunging rupiah had sent that debt to almost 170 percent of GDP.
How does such a crisis end? If there is no effective policy response, what happens is that the currency drops and debt measured in domestic currency balloons until everyone who can go bankrupt, does. At that point the weak currency fuels an export boom, and the economy starts a recovery built around huge trade surpluses. (This may come as a surprise to Donald Trump, who appears to be levying punitive tariffs on Turkey as punishment for its weak currency.)
Is there any way to short-circuit this Doom Loop? Yes, but it’s tricky. http://web.mit.edu/krugman/www/MINICRIS.htm You need a government that is both flexible and responsible, not to mention technically competent enough to implement special measures and honest enough to carry out that implementation without massive corruption.
That, unfortunately, doesn’t sound like Erdogan’s Turkey. Of course, it doesn’t sound like Trump’s America, either. So it’s a good thing our debts are in dollars.
More at www.nytimes.com/2018/08/11/opinion/partying-like-its-1998.html
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:
At some point, however, the party comes to an end. It doesn’t matter much what causes a “sudden stop” in foreign lending: it could be domestic events, like appointing your son-in-law to oversee economic policy
Yep. That or quantitative easing. Doesn't matter which.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:6ixStringJack, policy recommendations for future crises ought to flow from our best analytical shot, not from ideological preconceptions. But who among Trump voters/defenders can really do actual economic analysis rather than lazily depend on their own GOP approved brand of highly imaginative preconceptions?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
At some point, however, the party comes to an end. It doesn’t matter much what causes a “sudden stop” in foreign lending: it could be domestic events, like appointing your son-in-law to oversee economic policy
Yep. That or quantitative easing. Doesn't matter which.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:So, how does this not apply to the US dollar???
Originally posted by second:
It’s a good thing America's foreign debts are in domestic dollars, not foreign currency.
Here’s the script: start with a country that, for whatever reason, became a favorite of foreign lenders, and experienced a large inflow of foreign capital over a number of years. Crucially, the debt thus incurred is denominated in foreign currency, not domestic (which is why the U.S., also a recipient of large inflows in the past, isn’t similarly vulnerable – we borrow in dollars.)
At some point, however, the party comes to an end. It doesn’t matter much what causes a “sudden stop” in foreign lending: it could be domestic events, like appointing your son-in-law to oversee economic policy, it could be a rise in U.S. interest rates, it could be a crisis in another country investors see as being similar to you.
Whatever the shock, the crucial thing is that foreign debt has made your economy vulnerable to a death spiral. Loss of confidence causes your currency to drop; this makes it harder to repay debts in foreign currency; this hurts the real economy and further reduces confidence, leading to a further decline in your currency; and so on in The Loop of Doom.
The mind just boggles on your rock-solid (but erroneous) assumption that the USA will always be a welcome currency and debt. You imagine that other nations would have to sell their currencies in order to buy dollars to repay their debts; a future in which foreign nations unload Treasuries and refuse dollars just doesn't compute with you. But there is one thing that has always held true: All "universal" currencies come to an end sooner or later.
And there are ALREADY several nations which are not only de-dollarizing but are also moving off the SWIFT, and that includes China, which has built an entire alternate financial structure with the goal of replacing the dollar, at least in their non-USA transactions.
The fact that the USA is awash in debt isn't necessarily a big standout from other nations, since the Central-Bank-debt model has been the basis for western financial arrangements for decades, if not centuries.
*****
EDITED TO ADD ...
The question is: what would make US dollars, or US Treasuries, unacceptable for world trade or world investment?
The two need to be considered separately, because although they're related, they're controlled in different ways and serve different functions. I THINK that the fundamental attraction to US Treasuries is that they are a USD-denominated investment. In other words, the fundamental driver is the US dollar as a trade and reserve currency. HOWEVER, Treasuries themselves also have a "value" outside of the fact they can serve as a convenient repository for excess USD: having to do with interest rates etc.
*****
So, what are the "legs" that hold up the value of the American dollar and the American Treasury, and how do they compare to other nations?
AMERICAN TREASURIES
It is no secret that all governments sell their bonds (debts/ promises to pay) into foreign markets, and that foreign buyers buy these bonds to diversify their holdings. Foreign banks and foreign investors also hold many foreign currencies If we were to look at "which nation owes who what?" we should examine "foreign" holdings of each nation to see where their currencies and debt instruments are located. Well, this is a new area for me, but I did a "quick" scan of Japanese Bonds and British Gilts. Although the Japanese government is famously awash in debt, approximately 90% (of roughly $10 trillion as USD) of government bonds are held within Japan. So Japan owes foreigners roughly a trillion dollars-worth of yen. https://asia.nikkei.com/Markets/Capital-Markets/Foreigners-holding-nea
rly-10-of-Japanese-government-bonds
And although Britain is widely considered to be "the banking capital of the world", I estimate (from the bar chart) that less than 30% of $
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:6ixStringJack, policy recommendations for future crises ought to flow from our best analytical shot, not from ideological preconceptions. But who among Trump voters/defenders can really do actual economic analysis rather than lazily depend on their own GOP approved brand of highly imaginative preconceptions?
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:Quote:
Originally posted by second:
At some point, however, the party comes to an end. It doesn’t matter much what causes a “sudden stop” in foreign lending: it could be domestic events, like appointing your son-in-law to oversee economic policy
Yep. That or quantitative easing. Doesn't matter which.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
And who among Democrats could do the same?
You should probably notice a pattern here, Second. I rarely disagree with your take on the GOP. My only issue with you is that you're foolish enough to believe the Democrats are somehow any better.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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Quote:It is not about better. Which is better? Chocolate or Vanilla? It is about personal preference. Your choice is either a chocolate cone or a vanilla ice cream cone or the very rare cone that got dropped on the floor and they give it to you for free because it tastes like grit or dirt.
Originally posted by 6IXSTRINGJACK:
And who among Democrats could do the same?
You should probably notice a pattern here, Second. I rarely disagree with your take on the GOP. My only issue with you is that you're foolish enough to believe the Democrats are somehow any better.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
In America there is only two political flavors, call them R and D. I checked on how many third party office-holders (neither R or D) are in America, today. It is 24. Out of 100,000 elected positions. Your choice, should you decide to make one, is really either R or D. And I am sure R is very different from D. What is your preference? Or would you rather neither vote nor eat an ice cream cone at this time?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_party_officeholders_in_the_United_
States
Personally, my preference to avoid the GOP is like dogs ought to avoid chocolate.
https://xkcd.com/1706/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:I am from Texas and we ain't taking any petroyuan for our natural gas or crude. China will pay in U.S. dollars or else we are not selling to them. Obviously the day will come when Texas reservoirs run dry, but until then no petroyuan, only dollars.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2013/10/25/future-of-the-doll
ar-as-world-reserve-currency/#76a78362e065
The ONE THING that has propelled the dollar into reserve status is the USD as the PETRODOLLAR. Since 1973 until recently, oil sellers have universally agreed to accept only US dollars for oil; thus, you could ALWAYS get something of value for the dollar, even if it wasn't from the USA directly! However, China is working mightily hard to replace the petrodollar with the gold-backed petroyuan, at least for its own oil purchases, and since China is the largest oil importer it has considerable say in what happens in the oil market.
Well, I have to stop this on-the-fly research and analysis for now. There still needs to be an accounting of the derivatives market and the BIS.
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I am from Texas and we ain't taking any petroyuan for our natural gas or crude. China will pay in U.S. dollars or else we are not selling to them. Obviously the day will come when Texas reservoirs run dry, but until then no petroyuan, only dollars.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
https://www.forbes.com/sites/billconerly/2013/10/25/future-of-the-doll
ar-as-world-reserve-currency/#76a78362e065
The ONE THING that has propelled the dollar into reserve status is the USD as the PETRODOLLAR. Since 1973 until recently, oil sellers have universally agreed to accept only US dollars for oil; thus, you could ALWAYS get something of value for the dollar, even if it wasn't from the USA directly! However, China is working mightily hard to replace the petrodollar with the gold-backed petroyuan, at least for its own oil purchases, and since China is the largest oil importer it has considerable say in what happens in the oil market.
Well, I have to stop this on-the-fly research and analysis for now. There still needs to be an accounting of the derivatives market and the BIS.
"The messy American environment, where most people don't agree, is perfect for people like me. I CAN DO AS I PLEASE." - SECOND
America is an oligarchy
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at www.mediafire.com/folder/1uwh75oa407q8/Firefly
lol... You sure you took an economics class before you went into business?
The upside about your requirements is that I'm sure if you asked for Billions in US Dollars for flood relief in Houston when that time comes they'll just go ahead and send you a few Trillion.
I'm sure China will be more than happy to accommodate you as well, since they'll be using USD as toilet paper.
Do Right, Be Right. :)
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