Theodore Lowi called the gap between patrician/secular Republicans and Christianist/*populist Republicans "St. Edmund's Fault." Obviously Republicans have great cohesive skills, but I wonder if we're reaching the point at which the divide starts crippling them.
er, incremental radicalisation, and derailment trolling. but derailment loses welly after the first couple of posts. so this is just the consequences of people thinking that the way to be the candidate is to be the most extreme. it's the red queen's race.
What confuses me most is the huge number of people that don't seem to grasp how birth control works. You have to receive estrogen or progesterone on a regular basis. That means taking a pill everyday, having an IUD that dispenses hormones regularly, etc. People write these arguments like you pop a pill every time you have sex and maybe multiple pills each time you have a new partner, which seems to be how they conclude that women are sluts. See, e.g., the first comment in that thread:
the fact is a woman who NEEDS $1,000 worth of birth control items to prevent her becoming pregnant is - in fact - a "slut", a "slattern"
but I wonder if we're reaching the point at which the divide starts crippling them.
Have you noticed the Republican primary?
Simpler 3 and 5: they are fucking idiots.
Also, on the idiot front, Fluke was primarily talking about a lesbian friend who needed the pill for treatment of PCOS rather than birth control, and couldn't get it covered. So in her specific case, the pill wasn't enabling any slutty, slutty sex at all.
Simpler 3 and 5: they are fucking idiots.
What sluts!
6: Idiots, and probably all dudes.
A more charitable explanation is that such ignorance is the result of abstinence education.
3: I agree with your larger point, but that example sounds more like the person thinks anyonegirl who wants sex enough to pay $1000 must be a slut. That is, it's not the amount of sex, but the strength of her desire.
re: 10.last
I think we know none of these arseholes are practicing abstinence. It's the result of being the sort of self-centred cock that doesn't concern themselves with contraception; leaving that to the little womenfolk.
I'd think the (still very stupid!) argument is that the pill is such a lavishly spendy form of birth control that the only reason somebody would go on it is to have sex literally constantly.
I can't make this out, from the 20th (or so) comment in the linked thread:
I would've started at her claim that Georgetown women spend $1000 a year on contraceptives by quoting the price of generic birth control pills (less than $10 a month)
I've never taken oral contraceptives; what is this $10 "generic birth control pill"? If it exists, is it something that simply doesn't suit any number of women due to side effects and so on? Is the $10 figure applicable only in case one's health insurance does cover birth control, so that if one isn't covered, the full cost is a great deal higher?
Honestly, I can't quite believe that the right wing keeps doubling down on this, but I sure hope they keep doing it.
What happens if the Republicans lose the way I expect them to? If they roundly piss off everyone but the crazy 27%? Chicks won't vote for them; Blacks, Asian-Ams and Latinos won't vote for them; people under 35 won't vote for them (because of Teh Gays). Eventually this will be unsatisfying. What does a party realignment look like?
I mean, do they double down again in 2016? Who could stop a repeat of this? I'd have no problem with a repeat of this, but presumably there is a coalition of fiscally conservative but not insane people who would like to be represented. How would they come to the fore? After the wreckage of this election, what happens?
I suppose it could look like California for a long time, with the supermajority legislative rules meaning that nothing gets done forever.
presumably there is a coalition of fiscally conservative but not insane people who would like to be represented
That's what the Democratic party is for, no?
Dr. Mrs. Instapundit says in the comments:
I find that troubling if I am the only one taking misandry seriously on the internet, I think there are others. However, men do need to take misandry seriously. As I work more on my book and see what is truly happening to men in our country in terms of work, marriage, college etc. it is quite scary. If men don't stand up soon, their rights and daily life will be affected to the point where they will become second class citizens. Perhaps they are already there. We must all fight back against the myriad of laws, culture and politics that gives women rights and men responsibiities. Most important is to fight back againt the men who benefit from this arrangement politically or in the workforce. As long as they benefit, not much will change.There must be consequences to misandry, so far there are few or none.
I must say I am not sure what she's talking about.
This whole time I've been honestly more offended by the jumps in logic than the slut shaming insults. "Paying for birth control" -> "paying for sex" WTF? If I pay for someone's birth control, the return I expect is them no getting pregnant. If I pay for sex, the return I expect is sex. These are just different things.
The same with the idea that bigger birth control bills implies you have having more sex. This is just stupid.
Rush has been trying to say that he regrets his "choice of words" without retracting his political position. No if his political position is just "government health care should not pay for birth control" I have no problem with it. But if his position is "Paying for birth control" -> "paying for sex", he should issue a heart felt apology for the illogic of it.
Democrats are also a fragile coalition, roughly urban nonfinancial and well educated, unions, and ethnic minorities. This fragile coalition wasn't doing so well before Obama, they were listening to the likes of Mark Penn for advice. Possibly they're still not doing well-- Obama was elected as much for being not-McCain as on his merits.
All it will take for the republicans is a strong personality willing to treat religious voters the way the dems treat environmentally motivated voters. It's just luck that there's no Cheney or Rove for this election, I think.
I mean, do they double down again in 2016?
If Romney loses, it'll be because he wasn't a true conservative. Bet on it.
Was also going to write something pretty much identical to 16.
14: That is my experience. My generic BC pills are $10 because of the copay for prescriptions and would cost $26 without a copay. I can't find it now, but Amanda Marcotte had a chart of BC costs and her IUD is $90/month without insurance.
what is this $10 "generic birth control pill"
Yes, you can get generic birth control pills for $5 or $10 a month *if they're covered by your insurance*. Which was, after all, the entire point of Fluke's testimony. But again, the modern Republican Party doesn't much care for facts or logic. They're just like the audience at a Jerry Springer Show. their only interest is in hurling invective at somebody. Anybody, really.
My favorite part is "Limbaugh should have gone on the attack." Because spending a week using your nationally syndicated show to call a law student a whore who should be required to post sex tapes for your masturbatory purposes is just lying there and taking it.
15: The theory is that they'd have to decide to become more centrist -- as Bill Clinton did with his much-vaunted third-way triangulation, marked by the advent of the DLC.
15: They recognize this and have started going hardcore into preventing people from voting, since 2010. That's one of the three issues being prioritized by state legislatures, along with shutting down abortion clinics and outlawing labor unions.
This fragile coalition wasn't doing so well before Obama
Other than putting Nancy Pelosi in the Speaker's chair. And giving Al Gore a majority, after two terms of Clinton. Without 9/11, I think the 2004 election would have come out very differently.
It's been interesting listening to NPR side with the candidate from the Plutocracy over the candidate from the Theocracy. The Republicans have a huge problem finding people who can speak to their base while mollifying Washington. I kind of hoped that Santorum would pull it out so that Washington could no longer pretend the base of the Republican party is something it is not.
OK, you're right about 16. I was trying to express how moderate Republicans think of themselves (in contrast to a traditional tax and spend liberal, and I'd love to see a party that advocated for that).
Can they truly do this again in 2016? No one would use the example of 2012 to stop them? There isn't an "anyone" who could? Are we that lucky?
I know it isn't lucky, because it inflicts a large number of crazy people on our public discourse. But it IS lucky, because they're turning off a whole lot of people, many of them with a lifetime of voting ahead of them.
I'm one of those fiscally conservative but not insane Republicans, and all of this is pushing me to prefer Ron Paul. He's also deeply flawed and has crazy notions about the gold standard, but at least he doesn't think access to birth control is an issue that should be left to the states or that women should die instead of allowing abortions. Although he's also opposed to abortion too, but doesn't seem to want to legislate it.
27.2 -- Gingrich and Santorum are competing to be the presumptive frontrunner for 2016. Who's going to beat them, Haley Barbour?
28 -- Is this right? I thought Paul had no problem at all with states legislating on abortion (and presumably bc).
he doesn't think access to birth control is an issue that should be left to the states
Isn't that exactly what he thinks?
(Not that I mean to speak for you but my interpretation is that) You prefer Ron Paul out of this fucking awful slate of options. If you're a non-insane Republican, how would you feel about a similar slate of options in 2016? One that was as likely to lose as badly, giving a Democrat the incumbent's edge for another eight years.
At some point, don't you want to be represented within your party? What happens in a realignment? How does that play out?
Again, I suppose I should look to my own state for the answer to that, but it has all been obscured by the supermajority requirements in the Legislator. Does that group require an actor/action hero to change the whole dynamic of getting nominated?
I thought BC pills were pretty cheap even without insurance -- around $50 a month or so. That is my memory from an uninsured girlfriend where I shared the cost. That did confuse me about Fluke's testimony.
Comment 3 is right on...I think what we are seeing is a hostility to sexually active women that is so intense it basically destroys reasoning capacity. As usual, Limbaugh's 'slut' insult made propaganda sense for his base even if it did not make rational sense.
In order to "offset the effects of Roe v. Wade", Paul voted in favor of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003. He has described partial birth abortion as a "barbaric procedure".
At the same time, Ron Paul believes that the ninth and tenth amendments to the U.S. Constitution do not grant the federal government any authority to legalize or ban abortion. Instead, it is up to the individual states to prohibit abortion.
http://www.ronpaul.com/on-the-issues/abortion/
30: He may say a lot of things because he's a politician, but he doesn't really care. He's a libertarian and he's a lot more interested in doing things like withdrawing troops overseas.
31: No. Only Santorum thinks that.
17: Yeah, I haven't really been feeling all that oppressed lately.
Have you noticed the Republican primary?
TV antics are cold comfort.
I'll believe it's happening when they have a big unforced error - like losing the presidency or both houses of Congress without economy or incumbency tailwinds.
he doesn't think access to birth control is an issue that should be left to the states or that women should die instead of allowing abortions
This is not true. Paul supports amending the US Constitution to declare fetuses people, so the math regarding when abortion would be acceptable is terribly fuzzy there. As for birth control:
"Paul is saying, in short, that his bill wouldn't actually ban the sale of contraceptives, which would be protected under the Commerce Clause of the Constitution. But that's an extremely unorthodox interpretation of the Commerce Clause, according to several lawyers Mother Jones contacted. The clause typically only deals with whether or not Congress has the ability to regulate interstate business. Paul is correct that the Commerce Clause would prevent a state from banning the importation of birth control pills from another state. But absent a constitutional right to privacy, states could still bar their citizens from buying or selling birth control within the state." (http://motherjones.com/politics/2012/02/ron-paul-birth-control)
27: It isn't lucky for us if they repeat 2012 in 2016, because the chances are very good that they'll win in 2016 regardless: the public is becoming used to a changing of the guard every 8 years. I wouldn't want an extreme-ish Republican in charge in 2016. They'll fight amongst themselves after 2012 about whether they were too moderate (in the figure of Romney), or too conservative for increasing numbers of the general electorate. I imagine a lot of money will move around to support or suddenly fail to support various of the grass-roots organizations.
24: They recognize this and have started going hardcore into preventing people from voting, since 2010.
Gets it right.
32: And Megan said it better. Out of all the Republican candidates, Ron Paul is the best. But not ideal, by any means. I'll probably vote for Obama. If Santorum is the nominee I would actively campaign for Obama, even though I'm not a fan of him either. If Romney is the nominee, it depends on his VP pick.
I liked Huntsman a lot. It's terribly sad that him saying he believed in global warming is a controversial thing. And he was all for civil unions. It's not enough but it's a start.
The interactive map currently isn't functioning, but http://clearhealthcosts.com/faq-the-price-of-birth-control/ showed that uninsured costs of BC in the NYC area range from roughly 40-100 dollars/month.
You don't here the Republicans bragging about their "Big Tent" anymore.
Birth control pill costs vary wildly based on precisely which of many pills you're buying and on your insurance. For example, are you allowed to buy several months at once, or do you have to buy each month one at a time (there's a factor of 3 in cost right there, depending on your insurance company policies). Is it generic? Is it a brand that your insurance company has a deal with? Etc. At some point switching insurance we went from something like $30 every 3 months to $90 every month.
Bad cut-n-paste there. If the map link comes back up, it's a decent gauge.
You don't here the Republicans bragging about their "Big Tent" anymore.
It's more of a Big Top.
a big unforced error - like losing the presidency or both houses of Congress without economy or incumbency tailwinds.
To my eyes, campaigning against contraception is a big unforced error. I can almost understand their reasoning for the rest (although I don't think their reasoning is their real motivation). But this is out of nowhere, and completely at odds with how people live.
[Huntsman] was all for civil unions
And completely goddamned terrible on abortion.
Other than putting Nancy Pelosi in the Speaker's chair.
About 9/11 and 2004; Abu Ghraib and the lack of the weapons and terrorism connection which justified the war initially were all known before the election, though. Why did these points sway so few voters in say IN or PA?
Comparing party discipline between R and D does not make this look like a win to me. She's very effective, usually smart, but was running uphill. IMO her difficulties were due to the same fragmented politics for the Dems as are visible for the Republicans now.
The US is really big, very diverse, and I think partly as a consequence, has very strong rights for minority parties in congress. There are limits to how well a poorly-integrated place can be run.
(Basically, I get the same feeling about campaigning against contraception that I got when I watched my friends buy houses that locked up more than half their monthly income or required a two-hour commute. This cannot be right. I don't know how it will unravel, but this can not hold.)
48 -- A lot of people bought the wartime leader pitch. I think McCain would've beaten Obama in 2004, if somehow Bush had stepped down (not in disgrace, but for health reasons or something). Even with Palin.
Pelosi may not have hit home runs at every at bat, but I'd take her over any of the R possibles any day of any week.
To my eyes, campaigning against contraception is a big unforced error.
No, because it's not a result.
Pelosi has been by far the best Congressional leader of my lifetime.
Pelosi was a friggin' awesome Speaker.
I thought BC pills were pretty cheap even without insurance -- around $50 a month or so.
I was once getting more than the 3 months' worth at a time that my Rx plan allowed me (to take on an extended trip abroad), and the unsubsidized ones for month 4 and beyond were more like $75. You might be able to get cheaper if you went generic, but as has been discussed here before, there can be huge differences in how an individual tolerates different formulations.
Also, $50 a month would have been a whole lot for me through most of my 20s.
40: Out of all the Republican candidates, Ron Paul is the best. But not ideal, by any means. I'll probably vote for Obama.
Thanks for that; I was beginning to wonder whether you were a single-issue voter. Paul is so very far from ideal that he's scant step away from Santorum, though in entirely different directions. I don't know why you're not just a democrat, but I'm not asking.
He may say a lot of things because he's a politician, but he doesn't really care. He's a libertarian and he's a lot more interested in doing things like withdrawing troops overseas.
I predict that after Ron Paul attains the presidency, the policies he prioritizes will turn out to be things on which he agrees with the rest of his party, not withdrawing troops overseas.
I predict that after Ron Paul attains the presidency, the policies he prioritizes will turn out to be things on which he agrees with the rest of his party, not withdrawing troops overseas.
We're going to need those overseas troops here at home for suppressing the bread riots after the post-Paul-election economic collapse.
I'm convinced that Ron Paul has a deal with the GOP leadership where he's allowed to say whatever he wants, just so long as he doesn't actually *do* anything that would interfere in any way with their agenda. And he never does. I do agree that he's close to the only person in DC from either party with any sort of media access that advocates a sane foreign policy.
57: Heh. It is true that I doubt he'll have much success abolishing, what is it? The Depts. of Education, Transportation -- which are they, now? Let's see, it's "eliminating five cabinet departments (Energy, HUD, Commerce, Interior, and Education)"
That's all fine as long as he doesn't try to outlaw birth control.
Just out of interest, what's the industry's rationale for a co-pay on contraception? You're going to take less of it than if it were fully paid for by the insurance? And even if you did, how would that work out better for the insurer? Surely pregnancy and child-rearing works out far, far more expensive for them in the long run.
what's the industry's rationale for a co-pay on contraception?
That they will make $5-10/month on the most commonly prescribed medication in America.
61: I'd assume its a combination of:
1) High corporate discount rates (Only quite high rates of return justify spending money. This is partly offset by managers' tendency to exaggerate their projects' prospects.)
2) People switch insurers, about as often as they switch jobs, so the insurer may not see all the benefit of their cost-saving measure.
3) The marginal buyer (the one who would only buy with no co-pay) is the one for whom birth control is least likely to result in cost savings.
I predict that after Ron Paul attains the presidency
50-foot tall dinosaurs will fly over the Capitol.
Megan, I do think a realignment is possible, though the institutional constraints militating against such a thing are pretty extraordinary at the moment. Still, it now seems likely that Romney will be the nominee and then lose to Obama, which loss will cause the right flank of the craaaaaaaaaaaaazy GOP to freak out and insist that the only reason a Muslim foreigner won was that their party is captive to monied interests (true) rather than bedrock conservative principles (also true). What happens then is anybody's guess.
The problem, as everyone who's been paying attention for the last thirty years knows, is that it's hard to unring all of the bells (and dogs whistes) movement conservatives have been ringing. Still, realignments are very rare. I actually heard an interesting interview with Josh Trevino on this point the other night. We can discuss it over an ice-cold Coke some time.
50-foot tall dinosaurs will fly over the Capitol.
Now that's pr0n change I can believe in.
There ought to be a name for the specific kind of bait-n-switch Ron Paul pulls. You say you are for increasing liberty, but then it turns out that what you mean by "increasing liberty" is transfering power from the federal level to the state level, where the government will actually have less trouble restricting individual liberty.
Maybe the "Neoconfederate bait and switch"?
In any case, what worked for protecting slavery and then Jim Crow will work for restricting abortion, too.
....which loss will cause the right flank of the craaaaaaaaaaaaazy GOP to freak out and insist that the only reason a Muslim foreigner won was that their party is captive to monied interests (true) rather than bedrock conservative principles (also true).
This is why I've been rooting for Santorum. I want bedrock conservative principals run in the general election and soundly get their asses kicked. At which point we could move on (maybe).
With Romney running and probably losing, the "Republicans don't get elected because they aren't conservative enough"meme stays alive and well.
69.last: but if you're a Democrat or to the left of the Democrats, that meme is your friend.
Limbaugh almost certainly knows much more about whores than anyone here, so we should listen to what he has to say. Also, he suspects that all women are whores, so according to his own world view he may be right about Flake, regardless of her behavior. We have to be sensitive to cultural differences.
There ought to be a name for the specific kind of bait-n-switch Ron Paul pulls.
Ron Paul claims to be a libertarian, but he is a states' righter, which is really not the same thing at all. He's fine and dandy with the government restricting liberty, just so long as it isn't the federal government. So sure: he's easily the best candidate in the Republican field. But you'd need a backhoe to set that bar any lower.
Let's face it - Ru Paul has as much chance as getting elected President as Ron Paul.
Moreover, Ru would probably do a better job.
Santorum. I want bedrock conservative principals run in the general election and soundly get their asses kicked. At which point we could move on (maybe).
I doubt it. Losing an election is prima facie evidence that you weren't a real conservative to begin with.
Spike is right. I almost feel sorry for noncrazy conservatives at this point: one suspects that they'd rather the crazies get a clue about changing demographics and sensibilities, but they've dug themselves a big hole here. If I were a moderate Republican, I might even consider promoting Santorum so that the party would learn what a losing proposition extreme cultural conservatism is in the long run.
I had never heard of Dr. Mrs. Instapundit before and am kind of freaked out that someone who could spout this kind of wacko gender analogizing is an expert in forensic psychology and preventing teen violence.
The penultimate sentence of 66.last boggles the mind.
I'm old enough to remember thinking that Reagan was such an extremist reactionary there was no way he could be elected President.
So, I just want Santorum as far away from any chance at the Presidency as possible.
I almost feel sorry for noncrazy conservatives at this point
Almost, but nope. I want a culture war and to the extent that non-crazy conservatives exist, they can pick a side: racists and religious fanatics, or everybody else.
There ought to be a name for the specific kind of bait-n-switch Ron Paul pulls. You say you are for increasing liberty, but then it turns out that what you mean by "increasing liberty" is transfering power from the federal level to the state level, where the government will actually have less trouble restricting individual liberty.
It's actually very unusual, isn't it? Typically libertarians want to transfer power from the federal level to monopolists and other entrenched powerful interests in the private sector.
79 gets it absolutely right. The day of reckoning is coming soon, and the GOP has to be put to the flame. There's no point in half measures at this point.
77: not sane, mind you, but interesting. He's a true believer and now an upstanding member of the conservative moment. He knows a lot and is reasonably articulate (clean? who knows?), so listening to him express his alienation from what's left of the mainstream of the GOP was actually pretty fascinating. There's no doubt that he and his running buddies will be leading the charge to move the party further to the right if/when Romney loses. He was also really interesting on Ron Paul, whom he sees as part of a rump of the anarcho syndicalist movement.
Right, and it looks like they're hastening the process. But then what happens?
They lose a few elections and what?
A new party forms? An old one shakes loose the Ailes/racist/evangelicals, claims the name and starts looking for a photogenic actor or governor who doesn't froth?
I mean, California's entire executive slate is Democratic. They're building quite a bench. I haven't heard a new appealing (not to me, but plausibly to others) R-name in ages. It looks like the way around the supermajority rules is going to be to elect a Democratic supermajority. How would the R's compete? What would make them able to compete? Will it be wings of the Democratic party against each other for a while?
The day of reckoning is coming soon, and the GOP has to be put to the flame.
So optimistic.
Is anyone else as surprised as I am that Unfogged has two Republican commenters?
83: well, Republicans currently control the House and may well take the Senate in the coming election. Which is to say, the GOP may be in huge trouble, but, because of the way that redistricting at the state level and apportionment at the national level work, I don't think there's an analogy to be made to CA.
non-insane Republican
Without wanting to piss off LizS, I wonder if that exists. Frankly the "austerity and fuck the poor and unions" segment of the Republican party is just as destructive, maybe more so, than the we-hate-women-and-gays segment.
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Is tomorrow's solar flare a threat to mobile service? The article only mentions power problems and interference with high-detail GPS as individual-level impacts, but if "interfere with satellites" also has the possibility of interfering with regular voice service, I might need to alert cow-orkers.
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So optimistic.
Actually, it's my natural pessimism doing the talking. I just can't see a way for the GOP to become a sane party again any time soon. George W. Bush and Karl Rove offered Republicans a lifeline with so-called compassionate conservatism and outreach to Chicanos/Latinos, but the firebreathers rejected that overture. Given that, maybe the GOP rights its ship in the coming years. But again, as I said to Megan, because of how redistricting and apportionment work, it's hard to see that happening.
79: I want a culture war and to the extent that non-crazy conservatives exist, they can pick a side
I resist this, and yet you may be right. There's no use pussyfooting around after a certain point. Rush Limbaugh may have done us a service.
In an ideal world, we'd also have it out about the whole government-is-evil theme: it remains true that libertarian sentiments are increasingly attractive to many on both the right and the left. The discourse is so fucking confused on that (on the advisability of federal regulations, say) that people will continue to take refuge in culture wars -- which are kind of easy -- rather than address what I think is a larger issue.
I don't have a good argument for using California as the analogy. I mostly used it because I follow it closely. Although, the demographics here lead the national trend.
Anyway, bad as things are getting here for Republicans, I don't see them reforming themselves. So I don't understand what pulling back from the crazifaction would look like.
I just can't see a way for the GOP to become a sane party again any time soon.
It could happen, but it would mean relegating themselves to permanent minority status and allowing the neo-Confederates and God-botherers to go start their own party. They can't jettison the crazy and still win elections. Even with the nutcases fully energized and turning out in greater force than everybody else, the country's essentially a tie.
So it won't happen.
I don't understand what pulling back from the crazifaction would look like.
Outreach to people of color. The African American community is, relatively speaking, socially conservative. The same is true (though I think, for all of the obvious reasons, it's more complicated) of the Latino/Chicano community. Again, this was the point of compassionate conservatism. But the GOP is a Southern party now, and conservative crackers hate brown people.
86: I disagree with the anti-union fuck-the-poor Republicans as much as I disagree with the loons, but they're substantially less insane. I have to remember that sometimes: I focus on the maniacs running around, and then I have to remember that the sane Republicans are still people I profoundly disagree with.
I do agree that he's close to the only person in DC from either party with any sort of media access that advocates a sane foreign policy.
He doesn't advocate a sane foreign policy. Sure he doesn't want to fight stupid wars, but he also doesn't want the US to provide foreign economic aid, participate in international organizations like the UN, or engage in any kind of multilateral coöperation.
89 repeats the sentiment in 86, Frankly the "austerity and fuck the poor and unions" segment of the Republican party is just as destructive, maybe more so, than the we-hate-women-and-gays segment, only in different words.
I agree that 92 is the long-term electoral winning strategy for the GOP, and Bush II (as a Texan) and Rove understood this. But I want to re-emphasize 86: The non-crazies are just as pernicious, in some ways more so, than the crazies. Mitch Daniels is maybe the leading "non-crazy" Republican and look at what he's been doing in Indiana, including the right to work bill and a bunch of horrible social legislation.
But they're about to lose 2012 in a spectacular way, and there's no reason to think they'll do any better in 2016 if they double-down on the crazy, and eventually, won't that start to get annoying to Republicans?
94: I understand that, but even that strange philosophy is entirely more reasonable than the long-standing bipartisan consensus that we can just drop bombs anywhere in the world we feel like it and then threaten everybody else into compliance.
Did someone say upthread that Republicans may well take the Senate in November? I don't think that's likely, but I admit I don't have the numbers to hand.
97: I think a good chunk of the GOP prefers being in the minority and just throwing procedural wrenches in the works to having actual responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the government. That way they get to have their outrage and eat it too, all the while blaming Eurosocialist elite media something or other.
33. I thought BC pills were pretty cheap even without insurance -- around $50 a month or so.
Yeah, cheap. Nothing quite so awesome as hoping that the gap between when the packet ran out and the paycheck's arrival will be short enough.
100 - Well, that's working for them here. If that's all they want, they're on track.
100: That would be true if "the GOP" meant just politicians. Various corporate and big-business members of the citizenry would, I think, like some actual legislation (of the type that's in their interest) to be passed.
We do know that Obama is pretty business friendly, but he allowed Dodd-Frank to pass, and that is a problem. So I think they would like actual control beyond just monkey-wrenching.
I think a good chunk of the GOP prefers being in the minority and just throwing procedural wrenches in the works to having actual responsibility for the day-to-day operations of the government.
I remember people throwing the same accusation against lefties in the Reagan era. It is probably true of a lot of radicals of all stripes, but that doesn't stop people with similar agendas from actually taking power.
actual legislation (of the type that's in their interest) to be passed
The Democrats are more than happy to do that for them and they know it. The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association is okay with Dodd-Frank.
86: There are plenty of people like me who identify as Republicans because they're fiscally conservative but socially liberal. Or maybe I'd be better off calling myself a Libertarian.
I just don't want any restrictions on abortion, contraception, many drugs, the definition of marriage, etc. And I want the government to stop spending so much damn money. I can't identify as a Democrat because their rhetoric makes it sound as if you should feel bad for being successful and making money.
He doesn't advocate a sane foreign policy. Sure he doesn't want to fight stupid wars, but he also doesn't want the US to provide foreign economic aid, participate in international organizations like the UN, or engage in any kind of multilateral coöperation.
This would still be a big net plus. The overall ration of harm to good the US causes worldwide is about 10 to 1. (I've claimed before that this is actually a pretty decent ratio compared to most empires historically, such as the Spanish or the Roman.)
Foreign aid, in particular, is almost entirely driven by the strategic needs of empire. It goes to Israel, Egypt and Turkey, IRCC. This isn't helping people.
It's probably worth remembering that movement conservatives have explicitly said that they don't mind losing the White House if they control important school boards, etc. Not to mention, again, that the GOP is doing fine when it comes to state and national office holding.
Also. We -- I -- would prefer that disputes over, say, financial or environmental regulation NOT be migrated to within the Democratic party, any more than they have been already. The more the Republican party is marginalized, the more we're looking at a Dem party that just looks like a reproduction of the Dem/Repub split in terms of regulatory rules and so on.
they're fiscally conservative but socially liberal
Those people are known colloquially as Democrats. I'm not trying to come off as condescending (I'm sure I'm succeeding wildly nonetheless), but what you are describing is the actual platform of the Democratic Party.
their rhetoric makes it sound as if you should feel bad for being successful and making money
Like what?
Sorry, 108 to Megan.
And parsi, the numbers aren't hard to find. That said, I don't know that it's likely* -- and Snow's retirement certainly makes it less so -- but it's a distinct possibility that the GOP will take the Senate.
* Actually, I do know that it's too soon to know.
I can't get past the fact that my dad listens to Limbaugh and was probably nodding along to the tale of the slutty slut slut.
The most optimistic short-to-medium-term political outcomes I can imagine would have some rump party representing the crazification 27 percent - probably the Republicans like right now, but maybe the Constitution Party would enjoy huge growth - and they might capture some seats here and there around the state level, but have about as much influence on national politics as Ron Paul does now. 90 percent of the tug-of-war and media coverage would then be between the equivalent of Rockefeller Republicans and Bernie Sanders. I realize that this is really, really unlikely, though.
90
So I don't understand what pulling back from the crazifaction would look like.
Politicians like Huntsman doing better than he did in the primary. (And he was pretty conservative himself in some ways, but he didn't use the right buzzwords.) Politicians like Romney not veering as far to the right as he has, and maybe even making some Sister Souljah moment or something. Olympia Snowe not retiring, or doing it in a very different way if she did.
And I want the government to stop spending so much damn money.
Thing is, that money buys roads, social security, medicare--all sorts of things that people really like.
Also, once you take out spending on the war machine, our government is actually pretty cheap. Taxes are low and a lot less progressive than they have been. And the services we are actually getting from government are pretty minimal right now.
All this to say, I've never quite understood where fiscal conservatives are coming from.
105: The Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association is okay with Dodd-Frank.
Oh. I'm not up to date on who's against it and who's okay with it, so I was speaking blithely and without knowing the details. I thought they were against it.
106.2: on policy grounds, even if your tribal affiliation is Republican, you're a Democrat. That tribal thing can be hard to overcome, though. In the meantime, I hope the cognitive dissonance isn't too painful.
the GOP is doing fine when it comes to state and national office holding.
Not here, they're not, and we're the poster child for what happens when you permanently piss off brown people (Prop 187). Now they're applying the same tactics to women, and I don't get it. (I understand the roots of the misogyny. But I don't get how blatant they're being.)
106: As someone who identified similarly when I was younger and only fully abandoned my last vestiges of identifying Republican when George W. Bush happened, may I very gently suggest that "stop spending so damn much money" and "their rhetoric makes it sound as if you should feel bad for being successful" look more like the last vestiges of the tribal identity you were raised with than considered political positions? Stop spending on what? Exactly what rhetoric?
119: my people call it "counting coup".
OT: I love this video. I am so tired of everyone blaming Obama for oil prices:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzEnKdBAb_o&feature=youtu.be
I don't get how blatant they're being
They know their ship is sinking and they're panicking.
Medicare is unsustainably expensive in its current form as the US ages. SS is expensive, but sustainable. Medicare and/or the economic structure of medical care in the US is going to change, either with sensible policy discussion or without it.
The conversation's moved on, and I liked Pelosi's politics, but she was less effective than her predecessor at enforcing party-line discipline. (Hastert had DeLay as whip, I don't know about internal party structure or how money flows)
110: From an Obama speech: "It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million."
There is so much wrong with that sentence. But the most obvious is that capital gains should be taxed at a lower rate than your regular income. Otherwise why should people risk investing their money?
Over the next 20 years, the Republican party will self-destruct, and it's members will either die off, rant hysterically, or join the Democrats. The Democrats will continue to drift rightward. A new coalition/party will emerge to the left of the Democrats.
But the most obvious is that capital gains should be taxed at a lower rate than your regular income. Otherwise why should people risk investing their money?
Because average gains are massively higher than tucking it in a savings account. Being taxed as regular income on massive earnings would prevent people from seeking the massive earnings?!
Heebie gets it totally right, I suspect.
Otherwise why should people risk investing their money?
Because capital losses are deductible. And there's no such thing as risk-free investing.
129 to everyone and not just Liz. That said, I should just log off and leave you all to it.
Join me, VW! Join me in paying no attention to this thread!
124 may be the wrongest wrong thing ever written on this blog. And I include music threads.
Otherwise why should people risk investing their money?
Because if you have money, there's nothing to do with it except invest it or put it in a shoebox under the bed? There are arguments to be had about the proper rate for capital gains tax, but starting from the premise that if it were taxed as ordinary income investment would stop seems odd.
Heebie gets it totally right, I suspect.
Except for the it's/its thing.
I'll stop. I agree with everyone on the social issues.
Then again, I'm on Team Take Rich People's Shit, and also Team I'm OK With Lower Levels of Growth if Shit is Distributed More Evenly. And also Team Self Described Wealth Creators Should Get the Fuck Over Themselves.
Because capital losses are deductible. And there's no such thing as risk-free investing.
Also the vast majority of people invest no money or a tiny amount. They save their money instead.
Otherwise why should people risk investing their money?
I don't see the logic here. It makes no more sense than 'otherwise, why should people bother to work'. If they're paying capital gains, then they're making money. Not investing it means not making any. The question for me, is why people who are much more 'free market' friendly than me, seem to believe it won't function without government policies aimed at pushing people into certain types of spending and investment behaviour. I'd be fine, however, with indexing long term capital gains.
Otherwise why should people risk investing their money?
Hmm.
$1,000,000 with an average rate of return of 7% and taxed at 15% = [(1,000,000 x .07).85 + 1,000,000] = $1,059,500; that's an income of almost $60k.
$1,000,000 with an average rate of return of 7% and taxed at 30% = [(1,000,000 x .07).85 + 1,000,000] = $1,049,000; that's an income of $49k.
$1,000,000 grown at 0% interest = 1,000,000 x 1.00 = $1,000,000; that's an income of $0
re: 139
I refer the honourable gentleman to comment 6.
I agree with everyone on the social issues.
Honestly, that's the only serious difference left between the parties. Everything else is just rhetorical shading and marginal differences on details. The last three Democratic presidents spent their terms enacting Republican policies that the Republicans only oppose when a Democrat proposes them.
Beaten to the punch several times over and a mathematical typo. Sigh.
124
110: From an Obama speech: "It is wrong that in the United States of America, a teacher or a nurse or a construction worker who earns $50,000 should pay higher tax rates than somebody pulling in $50 million."
There is so much wrong with that sentence.
Sorry to pile on*, but I don't even understand how you interpret that as "you should feel bad for being successful and making money". Even if you feel that progressive taxation could only be justified on the basis of punishing success**, the most that implies is support of a flat tax rate, not a regressive tax rate, right? Why does "you should pay at least the same tax rate" become "you should feel bad"?
* I know I've been a lot ruder to you in the past than I should have, so I figured I'd stay out of this at first. And maybe I still should, but, well, I just don't understand 106 and 124.
** And I don't, and we can talk about that too if you want, but one thing at a time.
135: We overlook that. Heebie's a mathematician, not a grammarian! Geez.
I look forward to the new coalition/party to the left of the Democrats. I don't know how they'll fix Medicare, but it's obviously on the skids, and people who can't cover their own health care costs post-retirement should just die already .... Uh. I mean, I don't know if we have to throw the under-monied under the bus if it means those making 5 times the income they need have to pony up, 'cause the latter would be unfair, and so I dunno, throw grandma under the bus, i guess. Or something. Fucking democrats.
145 was not intended to make sense, by the way.
I almost feel sorry for noncrazy conservatives at this point
Noncrazy conservatives ought to be perfectly comfortable with Obama, even though Obama's positions on war and civil liberties are, in fact, a bit nutty.
Would Heebie's concept involve a period where the electorate is roughly in thirds? Crazifaction right, merge of Reps/Dems, lefter-lefts? That'd be interesting.
No. There'll be a period where the Democrats are the only working party, increasingly not even paying lip-service to leftward ideals. Increasingly appetizing for Republicans.
Well, I think LizS has just discovered how to jolt the commentariat out of its complacent sense that all right-thinking people agree about everything. This is probably a good thing: I kind of miss back when we had more Republicans.
Von has a touching and oddly ahistorical faith in the unwillingness of Americans to empower wildly incompetent rightwing nuts. It appears from 78 that peep and I are from the same generation, and we know better.
We have no way of knowing where the bottom is, and no reason to believe we've already reached it.
Hmmmm. If California is the analogy (and I understand that there are many reasons why it wouldn't be), being the only working party but hindered by a minority Republican set has meant:
still being fucked on budget issues,
still cutting budget services from the poor, but prioritizing environmental issues.
150: I think LizS has drunk the Koolaid, that's all.
I have worked with investors for 60 years and I have yet to see anyone -- not even when capital gains rates were 39.9 percent in 1976-77 -- shy away from a sensible investment because of the tax rate on the potential gain. People invest to make money, and potential taxes have never scared them off.
We have no way of knowing where the bottom is, and no reason to believe we've already reached it.
If you're talking about Republicans going rightward, we do know where the bottom is. They'll mostly all be dead in 50 years, and/or outnumbered by brown people.
Remember the statistical analysis that went "If the demographics in 2004 had been the demographics of 2008, Kerry would have won by the same margin as Obama" ? That. In 2012, 2016, and away!
152: Agreed, hence my optimism comment. I expect rapidly rising gas and energy prices, and a continued decrease in the median wage. My impression is that when a people get poorer, they don't become more compassionate and reasonable.
145, 151: Mathmaker, mathmaker, make me some math.
I am mildly fond of my 'reboot with an actor or action hero' scenario for the Republicans. Someone square-jawed who could walk back the hating, but the grannies love because they've seen him blow up terrorists on-screen.
I don't think they become more compassionate (necessarily) but it is an open question whether they turn the pitchforks on each other or the aristocrats.
159: How'd that Schwarzenegger thing work out?
Well, he and Reagan are my reasons for thinking that 2016 could be anything other than a re-play of 2012.
Kiefer Sutherland is too short to run for president.
Whoa, also not american. Oops.
2016 will also depend on who the Dems run, which could be anybody. There is no obvious Obama successor.
I disagree strongly with 142. The Democratic party (national) is much further to the right on economic and environmental issues than I'd like them to be, but there's still a gulf many, many miles wide between them and the Republicans on those issues. See Daniels, Mitch, as noted above -- Republicans are affirmatively pressing for right to work laws, among other things. It's just dead wrong to claim that the only differences between the two parties is on social issues, and actually misses an enormous amount of the harm caused by the current Republican party.
Republicans are affirmatively pressing for right to work laws
My opinion on the relative worth of Democrats on this may be colored by living in a right-to-work state that has been under the near-continuous control of Democrats my entire life.
The basic problem with Ron Paul is that even if he really is a libertarian rather than a states-righter (I don't know enough to be sure), his economic policy is so terrible that it overwhelms everything else. It's like his main economic policy was that we should switch to watering our crops with Brawndo, because they have electrolytes. At that point, it doesn't even really matter what his other stances are.
167: ...that has been under nearly continuous Democratic control since the late 1800s.
Yeah, but, apostropher, your Democrats are weird. They're spite Democrats, not pro-little-person Democrats.
On the "what will happen?" issue, I think it's worth looking at what happened the two times in American history when a major party has totally collapsed: the Federalists in the 1820s and the Whigs in the 1850s. In the first case the result was that the Democrats became the only party for a while, then they splintered over Jackson's policies and the Whigs emerged as an extremely heterogeneous party ideologically united only by opposition to Jackson. When they in turn collapsed, the anti-slavery faction united with the remnants of various minor parties to form the Republicans, while the pro-slavery faction mostly joined the Democrats.
Obviously this is too small a sample to draw any firm conclusions from, but it should give a sense of some of the possibilities. There are also cases of a major party becoming extremely marginal for a while but not collapsing entirely, most notably the Democrats in the late nineteenth century.
(That summary of the history is massively oversimplified, of course, and parts of it are probably wrong, but it's not like there are any real historians here to correct me or anything.)
They're spite Democrats, not pro-little-person Democrats.
Which kind are Carter, Clinton, and Obama?
On a policy level, that is. I'm sure they like dwarfs as much as the next officeholder.
Well, back before the 70's or so, Southern Democrats really were a different thing -- you can blame stuff in NC on Democratic control for the last few decades, but not before that.
Oh man, I'm being drawn into more of a distinction than I can support.
But I think if you could happily be a Republican except for the War of Northern Aggression, that doesn't make you representative of the national Democrat.
if you could happily be a Republican except for the War of Northern Aggression
Seriously, that's not the dividing line. I can't speak for SC/GA/AL/MS, but practically nobody in NC gives a shit about the Civil War in 2012, any more than they do about the sinking of the USS Maine. The difference between the parties is almost entirely about social issues. But I'll accept that NC politics are not national politics.
I think that in 2016, the money people will anoint someone early, a la Bush in 2000. I also think that the wacko right will become demoralized if they lose this time around, and be less of a factor next time. They'll be able to tell themselves that Romney was no true conservative, but they'll still be stuck with the fact that Obama revealed himself to be a socialist Islamofascist, and yet still got re-elected. It will be hard from them not to feel out of touch with the mainstream of America, even if they're still sure they're right about everything.
Didn't they try to anoint Romney early? I've known he was the money-nominee since last spring.
I find the demographic/craziness-can't-go-on-like-this argument puzzling. It looks awfully persuasive, but I just find the idea that politics is just about to get saner so implausible that I can't buy that it's really going to work.
Well, I don't think it will get that much saner. The Democratic party will get worse and worse. Even though we won't have the Republicans spouting such bejonkers outer space shit, the Democratic party will govern like a solid right government, for the effect of exactly where their compromises land currently. Or right of that.
I don't know what the new party/coalition will look like whatsoever, because I think it will rise up in a Democratic blind spot, come out of youth forces, and come out of future events that aren't predictable.
I'm kind of puzzled by why people (aside from peep and politicalfootball) seem to generally agree with the contention that the Republicans are dooming themselves with these tactics. Do you truly believe Romney, or even Santorum, will get less than, say, 42-43%? McCain got 45.7%; Carter got 41%; even Mondale got 40.7%. Goldwater and McGovern both got around 38%--do you really think we're anywhere near that sort of situation? If so, (A) I think you're very much misreading things, and (B) even then, it was the extreme wings of the party who came to dominate it, even if they later became moderate/corrupt in a fairly predictable fashion.
I agree with LB that we should be grateful to LizSpigot for jolting us out of our complacency: most of us agree that she's mistaken in her expressed view about work and incentives, and have trouble understanding why she feels a personal attack based on the speech soundbite, but that's precisely the point. Very smart people, who are to all appearances reasonable and kind and right-thinking, will, for a variety of different social-psychological reasons, come to identify with Team Red rather than Team Blue; identity rather than argument is what brought most of us to most of our beliefs.
Do you truly believe Romney, or even Santorum, will get less than, say, 42-43%?
I don't know how rapidly the demographics are changing, but if the demographics caused Republicans to tank 3 points from 2004 to 2008, then yes, I would bet on them tanking another three points by 2012.
I also don't know how the demographics play out exactly with electoral college seats. But I think it's forecast-able.
Do you truly believe Romney, or even Santorum, will get less than, say, 42-43%?
No, and I'm starting to believe that Santorum might actually do better in a general election than Romney. But if they're stuck at 45-47%, that's still electoral doom.
I think things will get worse rather than better. As with the immediate post-cold-war period, I think we've missed a crucial chance to make a fundamental shift in our military posture, and that's going to continue to have really ugly effects throughout the polity. Increasingly frequent SWAT raids for non-violent drugs arrests and towns of 17,000 buying tanks with DHS grants and pepper-spraying UCDavis cops are only the most visible aspects of this. It heightens the sense that politics is about friends and enemies, which, yes, is always there, but doesn't always dominate things to such an extent.
Seriously, that's not the dividing line.
Then I take it back. I have no depth and don't follow politics besides California and the national elections. I shouldn't be opining about other regions.
politics is just about to get saner
CA may have already turned that corner. It has been saner since 2010 and could make a big leap this year, if Brown's tax measure goes through or Dems get two likely-looking seats in the Senate to reach 66%. I mean, that'll get them the ability to fight amongst themselves, but we haven't had budget shut-downs and furloughs for a while now. The always-imminent changeover may have happened here.
185:
A lady born under a curse
Used to drive forth each day in a hearse;
From the back she would wail
Through a thickness of veil:
"Things do not get better, but worse."
A party can stay at 45% nationally for generations while still providing plenty of meaningful work for activists, state and local success, and patronage at all three levels.
Apostropher, you're saying NC still has southern democrats, and it's not a civil war legacy?
I think things will get worse rather than better.
On this general note (though not about electoral politics) I liked this comment by Tony Judt in the most recent NYRB (emphasis mine):
I see the present century as one of growing insecurity brought about partly by excessive economic freedom, using the word in a very specific sense, and growing insecurity also brought about by climate change and unpredictable states. We are likely to find ourselves as intellectuals or political philosophers facing a situation in which our chief task is not to imagine better worlds but rather to think how to prevent worse ones. And that's a slightly different sort of situation . . .
x.trapnel has inspired me and I want to try one more time without being so inflammatory. Obama makes this juxtaposition between the hard-working people like nurses and construction workers and the billionaires who sit around collecting money. But then he wants to increase the taxes on families that earn over $250,000 because they're millionaires who need to give back to the nation. So he's grouping people like me in with these lazy billionaires.
And sure, I'm not living paycheck to paycheck; I have a house, I take vacations. But I billed 2400 hour last year and I'm spending $60,000 per year paying back loans that my husband and I took out getting our law degrees, so I don't feel much like a lazy fatcat.
if the demographics caused Republicans to tank 3 points from 2004 to 2008
I'm too lazy to look this up, but I'm pretty sure that's not quite what happened; most of the change was in the demographic composition of the electorate, not the population. In other words: young people and democrats generally turned out more than they usually do (+10million D votes); older people and republicans, not quite so much (-2m Rs). Obviously there was some population-level change, but I think that was much smaller than the voting-subset change.
I liked this comment by Tony Judt in the most recent NYRB
I feel awful saying this, but: will Judt become the Tupic/Biggie of public intellectuals?
I'm not sure I understand the question. All NC Democrats are southern Democrats by definition. And it's a fairly progressive party by southern standards. The NC Democratic Party largely withstood the Republican takeover of the South (until 2010 anyhow, but I think that's reversible). The people who cared about the civil war legacy all went over to the GOP (eg, Jesse Helms, Lauch Faircloth) in the 70s and 80s.
I'm spending $60,000 per year paying back loans that my husband and I took out getting our law degrees
Are you trying to pay them off unusually quickly?
LizS, can I ask you to say which you dislike more?
a) The implication that you are appropriately grouped in with the billionaires;
Or,
b) The implication that you're a slutty slut slut for using contraception.
I don't think you're either, but I'm curious if one bothers you more than the other.
I can't politely respond to anything else in 192, so that irrelevent detail is what I focused on.
193: Oh, good point. I think you're right.
Nevertheless, I think Romney's going to have trouble with turnout again. And if there's one thing that Obama's a genius at, it's campaigning.
So maybe Romney will do better than 42%. But still:
the Republican Party is aging, with the average GOP voter clocking in at 48.3 years old. In 1990, the average Republican was just 44.1 years old, and the share of GOP voters over the age of 50 has grown by 10 points, to 46 percent. The average age of Democrats has remained largely unchanged, at 46.6 years in 2009, and the over-50 share has only increased two points in the same time span, to 44 percent.
Actually, what's weird is that the Republican's were so youthful in 1990. Just 36% over age 50? Average 44 years old?
Yes. We want to pay off all the high-interest educational loans before having children. I'm okay with having the remaining loans at 3-4% interest, but 6-8% is ridiculous.
But then he wants to increase the taxes on families that earn over $250,000 because they're millionaires who need to give back to the nation. So he's grouping people like me in with these lazy billionaires.
I think you're importing the emotional valence there. The idea of raising taxes on families that earn over $250K isn't that they're bad people, it's that they have the money to spare in a way that people who earn less don't. (And of course, if you don't earn much over $250K, he's not trying to raise your taxes much.)
But more generally: tax policy seems like an odd thing to get hurt feelings over. I'm not downplaying feelings generally -- I certainly have political opinions that relate to an impression that there are people out there who don't like my kind. But setting a tax rate just doesn't seem like a personal attack.
And if there's one thing that Obama's a genius at, it's campaigning.
I'm not sure what this means, but somehow I doubt he's going to generate the same sort of enthusiasm on the left this time around. Whereas he's going to generate exactly as much hatred on the right, if not more.
will Judt become the Tupic/Biggie of public intellectuals?
What does that even mean?
But I billed 2400 hour last year and I'm spending $60,000 per year paying back loans that my husband and I took out getting our law degrees, so I don't feel much like a lazy fatcat.
This sounds like an argument for increasing taxes on capital, relative to the status quo, and decreasing taxes on labor.
[FWIW, I'd personally be happy to have a serious conversation about tax policy alternatives with a low volume of outrage. I don't think about the specifics of it that much and I feel like the part of my brain that tries to figure out how the different paths that money can follow interlock doesn't talk much to the part of my brain that has broad summary opinions about public policy, and I'd be happy to try to walk through some of the steps for the purpose of thinking out loud. But I'm also happy to stay out of it if that isn't a productive conversation]
But then he wants to increase the taxes on families that earn over $250,000 because they're millionaires who need to give back to the nation. So he's grouping people like me in with these lazy billionaires.
Formally, repealing the upper-bracket Bush tax cuts would change marginal rates for anyone over $250,000. But the tax impact would be negligible (zero to something in the $100 a year range) until you reached $500,000 a year. And even there wouldn't be very large until you got closer to $1 million a year. I can't remember the exact figures but I think something like 85 percent of the additional tax revenues from the change were raised from families over $1 million a year in annual income.
This is pretty technical and a lot is driven by interactions with the AMT. Arguably the whole thing was badly mesaged and instead of structuring it around 'repealing the Bush tax cuts' or 'going back to Clinton-era tax rates' they just should have redone the tax code a bit and held everyone below $500K or even $1 million harmless to avoid the top 1 percent enlisting the gullible among the top 5 percent in their cause of stealing all our money.
Of course, this is just the income tax part. If we're going to have a rational tax setup in this country people like Liz -- the classic double-six figure lower-upper class couple -- probably will have to pay a couple of dollars extra, even though by far the largest increase in burden will fall on the truly wealthy. Part of the problem is the symbolic identity politics of taxes, so that if I pay EVEN ONE MORE DOLLAR in taxes this represents the government disrespecting my work effort.
198: The slutty, slut part of course. This is why I might still vote for Obama regardless. Seriously, I hate Santorum so much that when I hear him say that America's lack of morality caused the recession and that states should be able to restrict people from using birth control, I become hysterical.
But then he wants to increase the taxes on families that earn over $250,000 because they're millionaires who need to give back to the nation that was the deal that was made when the taxes got cut 12 years ago and revenue has to come from somewhere.
But I billed 2400 hour last year and I'm spending $60,000 per year paying back loans
I'm not lumping you in with billionaires, but there exists a substantial chunk of America that worked more than 2400 hours last year and grossed quite a bit less than $60K.
LB in 202 addressed what I was getting at in 205.3 better than I did.
But then he wants to increase the taxes on families that earn over $250,000 because they're millionaires who need to give back to the nation.
One other comment that's always worth repeating:
Obama (to the frustration of many leftists) only wants to increase taxes on income earned above $250K. So if you earned, say, $300K (after deductions) you would only see taxes go up on $50K of that. If the increase was 3-4% you'd see your taxes go up by $1,500-2,000 (if I'm doing the math right).
I like paying taxes. With them, I buy civilization.
there exists a substantial chunk of America that worked more than 2400 hours last year and grossed quite a bit less than $60K.
Exactly.
Paying back big loans does have a serious psychological effect. I spent eight years paying off law school loans (and some other debt), and moved to a much lower paying job literally the month I made my last payment (and right around the time we no longer needed a nanny). I still get cranky occasionally thinking about what it would have been like to keep even six months or so of that income unencumbered.
will Judt become the Tupac/Biggie of public intellectuals? ... What does that even mean?
Oh, I didn't mean to be obscure; I just meant that I'm seeing (or perhaps more accurately, noticing) his byline a lot more now that he's dead. I was imagining new essays appearing over the next ten years. Though that really happened with Foucault, right? Tons of posthumous lectures/interviews/etc.?
Honestly I'd prefer to just retract the comment.
LizSpigot: since you don't want your taxes to be increased (which, hey, in the abstract neither do I, so), I'm wondering if you could share your ideas for reducing the deficit. What spending should be cut?
212.more: (Not that we weren't living very comfortably then, and just as comfortably now, of course. Still, one always wants more.)
Posthumous lectures? That only works for Stephen Hawking.
But I billed 2400 hour last year and I'm spending $60,000 per year paying back loans that my husband and I took out getting our law degrees, so I don't feel much like a lazy fatcat.
Sounds like capital gains taxes are what should be increased, to better target the lazy fatcats.
We really do need more sane-seeming Republicans around here. Because holy crap do I have a ton of questions for LizSpigot now. But I don't want to be a total attacking jerk, because I like LizSpigot, (although I'm picking my jaw up off the floor right now.)
Anyway I want you to stick around, LS, even though I'm sure you've sensed that you might be called on to defend your Republican positions a wee bit constantly.
Yeah -- while no one's being all that rude, everyone remember that it's very very hard and tiring to be the only person holding up one side of a controversy. I did some of that online in '03 before the war started, and man, did it suck.
And I'm actually okay with my taxes going up if it went towards reducing the deficit and not yet another war. My main issue is with the rhetoric. Although, I also really wish we could fix the tax code so it didn't include all this morality in it because I'm still mad about how much more I have to pay in taxes every year solely because I'm married.
215: We should reduce defense spending by 90% and withdraw all our troops. And reduce the deficit so we don't have to pay the interest. Social security is going to be an issue very soon so I support raising the age for receiving benefits, starting with people who are currently 50.
152: now that we're talking about this thing and not the other thing, I just wanted to note that you've apparently misinterpreted what I was saying. Recapping, I think the GOP is in electoral trouble when it comes to the presidency (which is what Megan was talking about). But I don't think a realignment is likely any time soon. The reason for that is that many movement conservatives aren't especially worried about national politics, that structural issues -- including the mechanisms of apportionment and redistricting -- will keep many House and Senate seats in GOP hands, that I'm not at all convinced that current political trends project much beyond next week in any meaningful way, and that realignments are both difficult and very rare. Again, as I said in 88, I'm quite pessimistic about politics and nearly everything else.
My main issue is with the rhetoric.
Like, the line quoted in 124? Because that really doesn't read like any kind of moral condemnation of people earning in the middle six figures, or even of billionaires, to me.
Oops, now we're back to the other thing, and for all the reasons expressed in 220, I'm outta here again.
Because holy crap do I have a ton of questions for LizSpigot now.
Yeah, me too.
I'll drop out of the conversation for now and just say that I'd be happy to weigh in, but I'm also happy for LizSpigot to signal how much she wants to try to engage with.
there exists a substantial chunk of America that worked more than 2400 hours last year and grossed quite a bit less than $60K.
Local data, my dept. patrols her neighborhood and while I likely was under 2200 hours for the year my W2 read a whopping 43K.
I'm pleased with our new Speaker for Republicans because she proves that I am totally right. They're shooting themselves in the foot by attacking contraception and the ladies in general.
226: if you hadn't spent most of your time flying around the country denying African-American professors their civil liberties, you would have had more time to make real money.
227: I think there's a non-zero chance that the GOP's completely inexplicable decision to let its misogyny freak flag fly is going to cost it a lot in the coming elections at the local, state, and national level. Which would be awesome, so it probably won't happen.
228: Ha, I'm coming to your campus next with bear spray.
For further context to this area, housing costs are nothing like the big coastal markets. This is a hugely desirable east side house near a park and close to downtown. 399K. Seriously, look at the pics. Anyone making 250K plus in this town is doing great.
http://www.utahrealestate.com/1068113
223: It's not a great quote for moral condescension, but it's in the same vein of the us vs. them mentality that I dislike.
226: That's brutal! Do you not quality for overtime?
I don't mind answering questions.
220 sucks. I've written and then deleted three different responses to 221, for fear they'll make me seem like an "attacking jerk". If we're being asked not to argue about things, 224 seems like the right response.
but it's in the same vein of the us vs. them mentality that I dislike
I will back off after this, but seriously -- letting a feeling that there's an 'us versus them' mentality in Democrats' approach to high-income taxpayers affect your political leanings? I could see that being a problem if Democratic politicians were calling for lynchings or something, but any hostility toward high-earners (if it exists at all) is really, really, really subtle.
If Obama were talking like, say, nattarGcM does, while I'd be all for it, I could see a reasonable high-earning person being a little made a little jumpy, and being put off even if you were in substantive policy agreement with the platform. But on the actual rhetoric coming out of the White House? Unless I've missed something really inflammatory, taking it as hostile to high-income workers seems extraordinarily sensitive.
232: Sorry, I didn't mean that everyone should back off and not disagree, just to be conscious of the outnumbering thing and give LizS some breathing room if she needs it.
230: Man, they're asking for a really low price! The kitchen is ugly, but the rest of it is beautifully maintained. It's even in a quiet neighborhood.
I'm not disagreeing with your general point, mind you. I moved from Silicon Valley to Salt Lake City because I wanted to afford a nice house.
I don't mind answering questions.
Okay, then I'll represent the bog-standard left position on two things you mentioned:
I'm still mad about how much more I have to pay in taxes every year solely because I'm married.
This is a natural outgrowth of the desire to have a progressive tax code. If you believe that somebody who earns 100K should pay more than twice as much tax as somebody who earns 50K then you're going to end up with situations where a two-earner household, filing jointly pays more combined than they would if they filed separately. It isn't ideal, but it's easy to see how things would end up that way, and it isn't an attempt to legislate morality (and I really don't know the specifics beyond that).
Social security is going to be an issue very soon so I support raising the age for receiving benefits, starting with people who are currently 50.
The first half of that sentence simply isn't true. Medicare will become a problem soon, but Social Security, by itself, is more or less okay.
The problem with raising the retirement age is that people who earn less money are, on average, (a) more likely to depend on Social Security in their retirement and (b) have a lower average life span. If you cut the number of years that they can get Social Security benefits you lower the value of social security to them a great deal (without saving that much money). The reason why leftists prefer the idea of means-testing social security benefits (which, admittedly, has its own problems) is that they want to keep benefits going to the people who need them most.
231: Okay, I have one: if you don't like "us vs. them" rhetoric, then -- leaving aside the rather dubious extent to which anything Obama has said can really be classified this way -- why would you be a Republican, when that party's entire identity appears to be built around "us vs. them" rhetoric? (For instance, "Real America" vs. "the coastal elites" for instance?)
230: holy crap, that a nice house! Our place is less than half as nice and nearly twice as expensive. But at least we don't have to live near Selfish Sallys like LizSpigot.
This thread has already given me an epiphany on people's experience with the tax code.
The tax code contains some elements that are actually intended as "incentives", and there are other things that are actually intended as "sin taxes", on cigarettes or whatever. This seems good especially from the technocratic point of view, but it has bad side effects.
People start thinking of their interactions with the IRS as consisting largely of "incentives" and "penalties". Especially someone who interacts a lot with a financial planner, whether because you're rich or because you're starting your own business or you just got an inheritance or whatever. The planner earns his money by identifying "tax penalties" and helping you avoid them. "Better avoid having more than 100,000 in this particular column, or you'll get stuck with a penalty." Or even "you'll get slapped with a penalty." Obviously such a "penalty" usually isn't intended as any sort of punishment, but the two p-words have similar connotations.
So when your financial planner tells you about changes in the tax code that make your life harder, you don't say "God damnit, this is getting tough. I can't afford much more of this." You say "What? They're trying to disincentivize me from earning more? That's the opposite of what their priorities should be."
The kitchen is ugly
Man. I've been keeping an eye out for properties around here. City full of beautiful bungalows, and virtually all of them have ugly new kitchens. Honestly, the 90's and 00's were devastating for kitchens.
226: That's brutal!
Here's why people are going to have a rough time with what you're saying. In a lot of people's eyes I'm in a hugely enviable position. My wife barely broke 40K this year as a teacher but we're both not facing any realistic chances of a layoff and we at least are in defined pension systems. Even after refinancing the house and cashing out 40K to redo the roof, exterior, and windows we only owe around 190K on the mortgage.
We are not the face of hardship and we know it. But that's how bad things have gotten in this country. They've already reduced the retirement benefits for current and future hires and we're still getting 1200-1500 apps for every hiring class of 12-20 cops.
There are only two reasons a person might support the current Republican party: stupidity or evil. I used to vote Republican--it was out of stupidity. I wasn't evil, however, so as soon as I figured out what was going on, I stopped. There was a period after that where basically lingering tribal affiliation preventing me from identifying as Democratic, so I indentified as independant (and voted Democratic). Eventually, though, I got over it. (Not that I'm especially happy with the Democratic party, but all my criticism is from the left.)
Politically stupid people are worth engaging with because they can learn things that make them not stupid anymore. Evil people generally aren't worth engaging with. I don't have a great sense yet which side of that line LizSpigot is on, but I'd like to ask enough questions to find out. Her answers so far are not very encouraging.
243, it seems counterintuitive to write such a polite post to someone while referring to her in the third person and repeatedly calling her stupid.
We should reduce defense spending by 90% and withdraw all our troops. And reduce the deficit so we don't have to pay the interest.
Also, I have to say, this doesn't actually sound like a policy goal. This comes across as, "I don't want to take the time to develop a fleshed out opinion on this question. I'm just relying on my prior beliefs, for the moment, and maybe I'll get around to thinking about it at some point." Which is a totally fair position to be in, but is different from, "I've thought about this and here's what I believe."
233: I will find better examples and get back to you, because it's more than the one quote about billionaires.
237: This is why I should perhaps identify more as a Libertarian. Because I don't like the real America vs. coastal elites rhetoric either. Santorum's calling out Obama as being a snob just because he wants people to have more education is ridiculous. We should want people to have more education, especially when it's so crippling to enter the job market with only a hs diploma or a GED.
When Carrie Fisher, clad as a bounty hunter, brings Chewbacca, clad in chains, into Jabba's den of iniquity, she appears to be three feet tall. I know, I know, Chewie is very tall, but still. Also, you should get a thermal detonator for the next time you're negotiating salary, urple. Yes, I'm home with a sick kid. Why do you ask?
244: it seems more counter-intuitive to suggest that voting Democratic represents an important stop on the path to enlightenment.
244: no, my worry is that she isn't stupid. Stupid is the best-case scenario. Also, I don't necessarily mean stupid in a pejorative sense.
249: I've heard tell that your love-making is Kafkaesque.
Honestly, the 90's and 00's were devastating for kitchens.
This is so true.
245: Well, I have more specific ideas about ways we could cut the budget but I should research the issues and present a more nuanced opinion so I'm not so easy to attack.
Why? How could so many kitchens be so tragically butchered and our nation so blind to the loss?
it seems more counter-intuitive to suggest that voting Democratic represents an important stop on the path to enlightenment.
Not "voting Democratic", but "not voting Republican."
253. It was a hard time for all of us. But look at us now! It's springtime in America for kitchens. I recently just ripped out my horrible 90s/00s era kitchen (paneled fake oak cabinets, black/brown granite countertops, horrible fake stone floors). Now it's white and sky blue paint, blue and white tile, and light green linoleum. Our long national nightmare is over.
255: I really want a white kitchen. For fun I like to look at houses in the area and dream about having their kitchens. This one is my favorite: http://www.utahrealestate.com/report/public.single.report/report/photo/listno/1057326
The kitchen is in the sixth photo down on the left.
We are scoping out houses right now and all the kitchens are terrible, new or not-so-new. It's gotten to the point where I don't even know what I think would be nice anymore, except that cleaning my current light-colored linoleum has convinced me that that -- pretty though it is in its ideal state -- isn't it. So, wood floors, I guess, and... something.
You are an inspiration, jms. I can only hope more follow your lead.
But just like I don't understand why the GOP spontaneously decided in the past month to start attacking contraception, I don't understand how so many were led astray by granite countertops.
I love the cooking/bar for eating and hanging out format, but if that's a granite countertop, I'm going to badmouth it too.
Is there something specifically wrong with granite? (We don't have granite.) I know it's expensive. Other problems?
I'm pretty reluctant to identify as a Democrat as well, but I'm registered as one so there's not much getting around it. I guess I'm mostly confused that you perceive such hostility toward the rich and successful coming from a bunch of very rich and successful people.
What are the drawbacks of granite? I have a marble countertop that is nice in that it hides stains and bad in that I will often come across sections that are still sticky after I cleaned it because I can't see the sticky stuff.
257: I'm against stone kitchen floors now because ours looked nice when we moved in but all it takes is one dish to fall to chip the floor and now it looks horrible.
260. I don't hate granite in general, but it's not optimal in most houses. During the dark days alluded to by Megan above, too many homeowners put granite in homes in which it didn't belong. My house is a tiny, bright little 1920s bungalow in the hills east of Los Angeles. For the most part it bore the decades well, but the previous owners turned the kitchen into a dim, stony, horrible cave. I'm so relieved it's fixed.
Granite? Just that it is ugly and dates a kitchen exactly to this era.
I keep trying to tell my Dad not to go with a stone/tile floor in his kitchen. So hard! You drop a glass and there's no hope it won't break. It might bounce on linoleum.
261: ...who spend most of their lives soliciting donations from other rich and successful people.
261: ...who spend most of their lives soliciting donations from other rich and successful people.
264: The hardness can be a real issue. My kitchen leads to three steps to exit from the back and those were tiled with stone too. Both my husband and I nearly broke our feet several times in the first year because the stone slick and when you bang against it, it really hurts.
246.2: Okay, but you should probably be aware that many people take a dim view of Libertarianism for very good reason, and have done for some time. One might suggest that you'd be better off working out some other choice than Republican or Libertarian, but that's up to you.
258: They didn't spontaneously decide to start attacking contraception. They decided to take the next step in trying to kneecap health care reform. This meant arguing that a variety of coverage mandates impinge on individual (in this case religious) liberty. There is actually an interesting discussion to be had there, given that the US tries to strike a balance between individual liberty and a compelling state interest*. The dispute over contraceptive coverage is just the form the argument took in this case, and it was a bad choice on conservatives' parts, obviously, but it's not some bizarro-land unaccountable attack on their part.
*and the former is especially appealing to nascent libertarians who might be won over to the party electorally
Because a bunch of bishops are opposed to contraception.
And then Santorum was all "No, I actually think that women shouldn't use contraception."
And Rush Limbaugh said "And you're a SLUT, SLUT, SLUT if you do use contraception."
This was a terrible path for them, but they went flying down it. Religious liberty got left behind in the dust.
I'm pretty reluctant to identify as a Democrat as well, but I'm registered as one so there's not much getting around it.
Same here.
I keep trying to tell my Dad not to go with a stone/tile floor in his kitchen. So hard! You drop a glass and there's no hope it won't break. It might bounce on linoleum.
Not comfortable to stand around on while you cook, either. Linoleum or wood 4eva.
271: Religious liberty got left behind in the dust.
Party messaging problem. Sigh. What're you gonna do?
One might suggest that you'd be better off working out some other choice than Republican or
Libertarian, but that's up to you.
Anarcho-socialist! That would mean giving up the patent law practice, though, or at least switching to basically defense-side only.
The kitchen of our house has an original wood floor, covered by a layer of old green asbestos tile, covered by linoleum of an uncertain color/pattern, covered by a layer of white tiles, which is our current visible flooring. I'd love someday to unearth the original wood, but I don't even know what that would involve.
Tell your kids there's candy under the asbestos tile and give them little chisels.
275.2: Right. So that would never work.
I am, to my occasional but only mild embarrassment, registered Green. Sometimes that seems wrong, but it doesn't discomfit me on a day to day basis.
Tell your kids there's candy under the asbestos tile and give them little chisels.
I think they'd damage the wood.
I think stuff like gswift's 242 is more likely to change a conflicted person's self-identification than are policy-brief-style arguments. (And regardless, I thought it was very well-put.) But it's really hard to know; I think most identity change comes about as a result of changes in milieu, in who you interact with, and more importantly, how you interact with them. Being surrounded by leftists can turn you leftist, if they're smart and thoughtful and not-particularly-hypocritical; if can turn you rightist, if not.
My kitchen has a 54-year-old stove. It is from the age of unbreakable American appliances. We want to redo the kitchen but I feel like I should be rooting for the stove.
Is the stove working? Is it too ugly to keep?
It is working. It works great. And I think it's charming. But if we redo the kitchen, it would probably make sense to replace the major appliances that are near the end of their lives.
We all saw this article about the suffering financiers, right? It's easy to laugh at some of the folks in the article, but at the same time, it's not unreasonable to want more than 1200 sq feet for a 4-person family, or to want your children not to have to share a room. But when it's much easier to imagine yourself as the folks above you rather than below you on the latter, this very understandable reaction can lead one astray.
But if it's from the era of unbreakable appliances, how sure can you be that it is near the end of its life?
281: I'm sort of fascinated by people who have changed from self-identifying Republican to Democrat (or liberal or so-called liberaltarian). Just how this comes about has to be in part a function of the kind of Republican you are, right? A fiscal conservative -- which can mean different things in its own right -- will be different from a social conservative.
LizS self-describes as a fiscal conservative, and so far that means having certain views about tax policy and the deficit, with not much to say so far about the role of government overall in providing for the general welfare. There seems to be something buried in there about unfettered capitalism; I don't know how all this works out with respect to income inequality.
LizS: what are your views about the challenges posed by increasing income inequality in the US, and what should we do about it?
(I am trying very, very hard to be polite, and I'm coming out horribly stilted.)
it's not unreasonable to want more than 1200 sq feet for a 4-person family
Even here in super-expensive NYC, it is not at all difficult to find a three bedroom place larger than 1200 sqft on the money they're making. The catch is, not in that neighbourhood. They have choices, they can live in a decent sized nice place in a very high end urban location. They can live in a large, super nice place in a decent urban location (aka be gentrifiers), or they can live in large very nice place in a very nice suburban location.
NB the notion that 1200 sqft is tiny for a family of four is very funny to someone who grew up where I did with parents in a similar (inflation and tax adjusted) income situation. Our 900 sqft rent stabilized two bedroom in a standard middle - upper middle class area cost Sfr 1600/mo (c. $1000 back then) in 1980.
Oh my god, you are all so right about the kitchens over the last twenty years. So uniformly ugly. Ours is straight out of this aspirational ugliness period: granite counters, rustic-stone backsplash, terrible cabinets with ugly drawer pulls.
I want to paint the cabinets and replace the backsplash, which is all relatively easy.
But the ugly granite - it seems wrong to replace something that's perfectly functional and kind of expensive. But ugh.
The link in 287 is a much, much better version of exactly the response I wanted to offer earlier in this thread.
NB the notion that 1200 sqft is tiny for a family of four is very funny to someone who grew up where I did with parents in a similar (inflation and tax adjusted) income situation.
Yeah, I take that one back, though I stand by "wanting kids to have separate bedrooms." I grew up in a 1800 sqft house in the suburbs, and that felt super spacious (big living room, separate dining room from kitchen, two office rooms; plus semi-finished basement). Though I guess basements and attics don't count in official square footage, which kind of throws off the comparison.
A better comparison: poking around, I see that the 4.5-BR loft-ish place my then GF and I rented, with others, down around Wall St. has a 24'x62' lot size that it must have come close to filling up, which is 1488; minus stairwell, bathroom, say 1400--although there was the raised half-bedroom thingie, which I guess you'd count as another 100 or so. Anyway, that seemed big enough for five unrelated adults, with separate bedrooms even for me and my GF--so I think they just need to subdivide their space better. I guess.
NB the notion that 1200 sqft is tiny for a family of four is very funny to someone who grew up where I did with parents in a similar (inflation and tax adjusted) income situation.
Yeah, I take that one back, though I stand by "wanting kids to have separate bedrooms." I grew up in a 1800 sqft house in the suburbs, and that felt super spacious (big living room, separate dining room from kitchen, two office rooms; plus semi-finished basement). Though I guess basements and attics don't count in official square footage, which kind of throws off the comparison.
A better comparison: poking around, I see that the 4.5-BR loft-ish place my then GF and I rented, with others, down around Wall St. has a 24'x62' lot size that it must have come close to filling up, which is 1488; minus stairwell, bathroom, say 1400--although there was the raised half-bedroom thingie, which I guess you'd count as another 100 or so. Anyway, that seemed big enough for five unrelated adults, with separate bedrooms even for me and my GF--so I think they just need to subdivide their space better. I guess.
It's always quite striking to be confronted with the cartoon image of the Democratic politician being peddled (and apparently accepted) on the right, in contrast to the actual Democratic office holders like Sen. Baucus and Gov. Schweitzer. Or state sen Williams and state rep. Bennett who represent me. I never accept the word 'left' as applied to me, and it cannot in any reasonable way be applied to any of the people listed above.
I'm represented by 2 Dem city councilmen, a Dem mayor, a Dem county commissioner, a Dem PUC commissioner, Dem state rep and state sen., Dem gov, and 2 Dem US senators. Not a one of them is even close to the stereotype.
My Republican US rep is the biggest idiot in Congress, and fits every stupid stereotype. Funny how that works.
This from the link in 287 made me laugh:
"'Sure, it's an objectively large sum of money,' they say. 'But it is far smaller after I spend it.'"
Thanks, Eggplant.
222: Von, your general well-informed pessimism is duly noted, but your failure to apply that pessimism to the office of the presidency seems like an oversight to me.
In the eight years leading up to 2008, the Republicans were repudiated by reality in the strongest possible fashion, and Obama's victory, while reasonably solid, was only 53%-46%. That's no landslide.
If there's a modest economic dip between now and November, there's no reason to suppose that the election can't be won by whatever ham sandwich the Republicans put up.
And whatever happens to the Republicans, the conservatives are going to continue to dominate all three branches, as they have since 2000.
288: I think we should have safety nets in place and I'm not opposed to welfare, especially for single parents. I don't think the way to reduce the budget is to cut welfare spending, especially since it represents such a small percentage of the budget. However, I'm not in favor of a mandatory cap on how much CEO's make. If a company thinks you're worth $100 million, then so be it.
I think the best way to solve income inequality is to make it easier for people to get an education, and not just at four-year colleges. For example, the government should provide more unsubsidized loan coverage and Stafford loans should be something more reasonable like 4.5%. I realize that this will increase the federal budget, but hopefully it will pay out in the long run because then more people will have higher-paying jobs and, as a result, will pay more taxes into the system.
298.3 gets it right. Until Obama wins, we're definitely counting our dinosaurs in this thread (and I include myself therein). The whole contraception thing, heartening as it is, is essentially one good media cycle.
236: The reason why leftists prefer the idea of means-testing social security benefits
Um, no. Leftists do not favor this.
299.2: I realize that this will increase the federal budget, but hopefully it will pay out in the long run because then more people will have higher-paying jobs and, as a result, will pay more taxes into the system.
Agreed that increasing the federal budget in this way is not a problem.
You realize, though, that salaries for teachers and nurses and firefighters and cops and so on aren't going to go up just because more people have more education, right? People with more education will just choose different careers.
Not actually into caps on how much CEO's make, I am in favor of reversing the Bush tax cuts in toto, treating all income the same, ending the SS income cap, and adding a couple new tax brackets for higher incomes. If a company wishes to pay it's CEO 100 mil, that's fine, but sixty or seventy million of that ends up being paid to the government.
The fact that Liz admires Republicans as "fiscal conservatives" is yet another reminder of how old I am. For the first couple of decades of my life, "fiscal conservative" meant "generally opposed to deficits." That's now what "liberals" believe.
302 cont'd: That is, there will still be many, many jobs that need to be done, and they're crucial to our society's health and welfare: I contend that they're underpaid, and I very much doubt the salaries will increase just because applicants have more credentials under their belts. On the contrary, education, for example, has been, how to say, down-salarying.
Do you see my point? People are being forced to take jobs that do indeed involve significant skills and are very difficult, yet critical, at a lower salary than they deserve.
I'd be interested to know if Liz can find any examples of prominent Democrats calling for income caps.
302: If people are unhappy in those jobs they should get more education and a different job. I thought nurses got paid pretty well. If you take my salary and divide it by the number of hours I work, it's pretty close to the paralegals here. I'm sometimes tempted to become a paralegal and only work 40 hours at their pay. But maybe I sound too much like that Cracked article, saying things like that.
303: I agree with ending the SS income cap.
298: I'll grant you that if the GOP candidate (likely Romney) wins the upcoming election, the GOP's presidential prospects will have improved considerably. Otherwise, I'm just not sure what you're saying or what it has to do with what I said. Way upthread, I noted that it now seems probable that Romney will get the nomination, that he'll lose to Obama, and then that the Republican Party might well rend its garments, gnash its teeth, and seriously consider tacking further to the right (or at least that its right flank will demand such a course in 2016, in which case the GOP will have problems). That said, I do agree that if the economy goes into the shitter between now and November, Obama's going to have a fight on his hands. I'm pretty much certain that I've never said otherwise.
302: If people are unhappy in those jobs they should get more education and a different job.
I'd say this is the first thing you've said that is truly oblivious of reality, but it's the position of the Obama administration as well, so who cares.
Unemployment does exist, though. And did you know, it's actually higher than it used to be? People must have gotten lazier.
Honestly, pf, the last time I was optimistic about politics was going into the 2008 election. And the last time I was ahistorical was, well, I guess it was probably this afternoon. Or maybe it was this evening.
People must have gotten lazier.
I don't think of my lethargy as laziness so much as going Galt.
Dammit! I regret that last comment. Count ten before posting something like that.
All it would take is to change the last sentence to "And that's not because people have gotten lazier, or less willing to further educate themselves." And then it wouldn't be a worthless snide comment.
309: People have not gotten lazier. I know we're in a recession. I've seen so many resumes of people who graduated from law school only a few years after me who are now part of the lost generation. But, in general, unemployment is lower for people with college educations.
http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505123_162-49042066/no-college-degree-jobs-picture-is-bleak/
What do you people suggest for fixing the country? Should the government issue another stimulus in the hopes that it will spur the economy? Should we give everyone middle class and below a huge tax cut hoping that they'll spend the money? Should we charge businesses more taxes as a source of revenue? Should we go back to having the top income tax bracket be 90%?
309: I'm not sure that's the position of the Obama administration, ned. I thought Obama advocated for higher teacher pay and protection of public employee unions -- but admittedly, his Dept. of Education is a little fucked with Race to the Top.
LizS is oblivious, and naive.
313: What do you people suggest for fixing the country? Should the government issue another stimulus in the hopes that it will spur the economy? . . . Should we charge businesses more taxes as a source of revenue? Should we go back to having the top income tax bracket be 90%?
You sound like you're trying to pose this as a series of obviously-ridiculous questions.
What do you people suggest for fixing the country?
Depends what problem we're trying to fix.
Should the government issue another stimulus in the hopes that it will spur the economy? Should we give everyone middle class and below a huge tax cut hoping that they'll spend the money?
These are both versions of the same idea (or rather, the second is a more specific version of the first), and both plausible ways to address the immediate problems with the economy.
Should we charge businesses more taxes as a source of revenue? Should we go back to having the top income tax bracket be 90%?
These, on the other hand, would be attempts to address other, longer-term problems such as the budget deficit or overall income inequality. They wouldn't work to invigorate the economy right now, but they might be worth doing at some point after it speeds up again.
Should the government issue another stimulus in the hopes that it will spur the economy? Should we give everyone middle class and below a huge tax cut hoping that they'll spend the money? Should we charge businesses more taxes as a source of revenue? Should we go back to having the top income tax bracket be 90%?
Another stimulus would be awesome, particularly if it dealt with long-term infrastructural needs. Better still would be building a wayback machine and passing a much larger initial stimulus. Huge tax cuts aren't a good idea for anyone, though it's pretty much a given that the if the poor received them, assuming the poor are paying enough taxes to receive a meaningful cut, the money would get spent. I'm not sure there is much of a middle class any more, so I'll leave that aside. Probably businesses shouldn't have their taxes raised at the moment, unless we want hiring to slow or even stop. Or at least that's what the economists say, and I don't really know enough to challenge that position. And finally, the top bracket doesn't need to return to 90% (but that's an awesome straw argument!). It should, though, go up to a more reasonable level. Couple that with deep cuts to military spending, and I think we're in business!
I think I added enough value to teo's comment that I shouldn't have to pay this place's incredibly regressive pwnage tax.
315: The 90% comment is extreme, but the rest were meant to be restatements of other suggestions I've heard.
You'll have to help me out here, I'm terribly oblivious and naive. And also stupid, but thankfully not in the pejorative sense.
313: God, yes, much more stimulus spending. We should have doubled the amount we put in at first, but now would also be a terrific time for it. Krugzilla has always been basically right on this.
Beyond that, I'm indifferent on business taxes, but it seems to me the rich were still pretty rich back in the Clinton years, when top tax rates were higher. That'd be a nice start, even if we can't go the full Eisenhower yet.
And also stupid, but thankfully not in the pejorative sense.
You mean you're pregnant?
Or, on preview, what Von said in 318. But as long as I'm wishing for a sea of ponies, might as well add universal health care. Hard to see how else to control the cost explosion, and an awful lot of other social problems are linked to the economics of health care. (Who doesn't know someone with a medical bankruptcy story?)
320: the rest were meant to be restatements of other suggestions I've heard.
Okay... so you don't think those suggestions are obviously ridiculous?
324: No, not obviously ridiculous. It doesn't seem like the first stimulus worked very well, but the counter argument is that things would have been much worse if we hadn't had the stimulus at all.
My issue is one of who's being naive. I would say that you're being naive to say that if someone works hard, they'll find a good job, and that if they don't find a good job they can learn a new skill and then find a good job. You might say that I'm naive for giving the benefit of the doubt to people who claim it's not their fault that they can't find a job. I'm sure both are correct more than 0% of the time.
universal health care
You mean single-payer? Or the public option? Or Medicare for all? Yeah, that would likely have long-term salutary economic effects.
233
... I could see that being a problem if Democratic politicians were calling for lynchings or something, but any hostility toward high-earners (if it exists at all) is really, really, really subtle.
This is not true, there is a lot of obvious hostility. All the 99%, 1% stuff for example. And Obama's tax proposals (raise taxes on rich people only) are explicitly hostile to high-earners.
And there is another issue besides policy, the Democratic party is full of people who hate rich people. Sure there are rich Democrats (just like there are gay Republicans) but many rich people will feel unwelcome.
327: I prefer single-payer or universal Medicare, but really, anything but the horrorshow that (1) ties it strongly to employment, and (2) has more or less no effective mechanism for cost controls.
None of the Democrats who hate rich people hold national public office, though. Quite unlike the Republicans who hate gay people.
326: I'm not saying this works for everyone, but striving to educate more people is a better and more optimistic approach then saying they can't find another job and have that be it. What do you do when someone says they can't find another job?
Almost all significant figures in the Dem party are in the top five percent, and I suspect most are either in the top one percent or will be the moment they leave their government posts. Last I checked, most of the Republican party elite wasn't made up of gays and lesbians. Analogy fail.
Woo-hoo! Shearer is here!
It would be foolish for me to say that the Republican party is full of people who hate poor people. That Republican tax proposals are full of measures that are hostile to low-earners. That many poor people will just plain feel unwelcome.
Woo-hoo!
307
If people are unhappy in those jobs they should get more education and a different job ...
This is silly. Many people are too dumb to benefit from additional education. Saying stuff like this just encourages them to take out nondischargable student loans for additional education which is of no benefit to them.
many rich people will feel unwelcome
Yeah, it's totally true that rich people would feel out of place among the Democratic elite, which, as everyone knows, is comprised entirely of Trots, buskers who made their bones at the Seattle WTO protests, and the officers of public employee's unions.
334: Ahahaha! I'm not looking so awful anymore, am I Unfogged?
What do you people suggest for fixing the country?
You're trolling right? Nobody actually wants to hear other people talk.
I really don't think I'm you people, but--
Basically a smaller military and technocratic meddling socially.
Fee-for-service medicine for all is unsustainable with an aging and deluded population that reads about expensive treatments. Single-payer would solve this, but politically not easy. So would attacking the insurers and most extortionate hospitals with fine-grained regulations. Once insurers stop capturing the surplus, the AMA will hopefully cooperate. Most MDs are well-intentioned.
The finance industry is too big and too influential. An implementation of the Volcker rule would go a long way to changing this, but the SEC is not exactly competent or aggressive, so somebody else has to do it.
With those two solved, the US is basically healthy, maybe can design and build better solar materials along with weapons and semiconducters. The chips for the new iPad are made in Austin. By Samsung.
336: if you honestly think that many people here think you're awful, I strongly recommend that you disengage from the discussion. That said, I'd wager big money that nearly everyone here thinks you're wrong but totally redeemable. James, on the other hand, is just a third-tier troll, not even a patch on the TOS, Emerson (who often has really interesting things to say), or McManus.
332
Almost all significant figures in the Dem party are in the top five percent, and I suspect most are either in the top one percent or will be the moment they leave their government posts. Last I checked, most of the Republican party elite wasn't made up of gays and lesbians. Analogy fail.
Being in the top 5% doesn't prevent you from campaigning against rich people anymore than being gay prevents you from campaigning against gay people.
Unwelcome
I am not quite drunk, but this made my eye twitch. Near-universal hostility from others is a baseline, this is what adults should expect, regardless of their income.
Feelings are irrelevant.
The 99%/1% business is completely about the finance industry, which has captured entirely too much of the economy, and managed the resulting responsibility disastrously badly. Nobody wants Steve Jobs' heirs or successors punished, the problem is housing and no macroeconomic policy to provide dent jobs for the spectrum of americans alive now.
I'm not saying this works for everyone, but striving to educate more people is a better and more optimistic approach then saying they can't find another job and have that be it. What do you do when someone says they can't find another job?
If you're the government you can hire them.
339 is exactly what I mean. Weak analogical tea, James. You're banned.
well, not sober either-- s/dent/decent/ in 340
Brave teo will save the day.
Honestly, this is becoming too absurd. LizS, I'm not sure you get that not everyone can have a high-earning job: there aren't enough of those jobs to go around, and there are a ton of jobs that are absolutely essential to the health and wellbeing of our society. It is unsustainable for a society to undergo the kind of income inequality we're experiencing: upper incomes need to come down, and lower incomes need to go up. Sorry. Current income levels rarely have to do with how hard a person has worked. But you're welcome to work as a teacher for a while, at a quarter of your salary, and see whether you agree.
337
...Once insurers stop capturing the surplus, the AMA will hopefully cooperate. Most MDs are well-intentioned.
This is naive. Insurers are not the problem, doctors (and other providers) are the problem. I doubt the AMA will cooperate in cutting their income in half. See here .
344: Do you suggest passing laws to put caps on peoples' salaries? Or taxing the wealthy and giving people in the lower income brackets refunds higher than any money they would have paid in taxes? I'm curious as to how this would work.
346. Volcker rule aggresively implemented would do it.
344
.... Current income levels rarely have to do with how hard a person has worked. ...
How hard you work isn't the sole factor in your income (natural ability, luck and maybe connections also matter a lot) but it does have a lot to do with it.
This has been a nice example of how people use "fiscal conservative" to mean they oppose taxes on the wealthy. They might have some other economic concerns, but that is by far the most salient.
340
The 99%/1% business is completely about the finance industry, ...
This may not be obvious to everyone, particularly to 1% members who are not part of the finance industry.
348. Suck the shit out of my ass you toad. Have you ever tried to get a two-stroke engine to turn over before dawn in the winter? You don't know what work is.
325: No, not obviously ridiculous.
The reason I ask is because Keynesian-style economic policies -- involving heavier taxation of the higher income brackets that can most afford it in order to support government-fuelled economic stimulus that can power growth of the economy -- are the only plausible solution to America's economic dilemma (and were the fuel of the golden age of general American prosperity), but are also precisely the kind of stuff that Libertarians dogmatically hate (favoring instead precisely the kind of unregulated market-worship that created the current financial crisis), and that Obama is talking about in the quote you derided as "us vs. them" politics.
I suggest raising taxes on income over $250k. (Or if that just freaks you out too much, $500k.) Someone here, maybe PGD, would be able to crunch the numbers and see how much that would help in adding to government coffers. I'm also down with raising capital gains rates and eliminating the SS income cap. With that added revenue, we could stop strangling public sector employees. That would be a start.
353 to 346. And people here know more about it than I do.
I kind of like drunk lw. Not sure I've ever seen him this way before.
351: I feel like there's something here, but I can't find it. "Two trolls, one stroke" just isn't doing it for me. Rats.
All the 99%, 1% stuff for example.
The Occupy movement really, really, really ≠ the Democratic Party.
99
Did someone say upthread that Republicans may well take the Senate in November? I don't think that's likely, but I admit I don't have the numbers to hand
Intrade gives then about a 56% chance (about 63% to keep the House, about 39% to win the Presidency).
Cook has 10 Senate races listed as toss-ups.
360: I think this is more useful, as it doesn't have a bunch of information behind a paywall.
I talk to myself because I'm the most interesting person in the room. (Or whatever Jefferson/Shaw/whomever said.)
I suggest raising taxes on income over $250k. (Or if that just freaks you out too much, $500k.)
This is going in the wrong direction. If the idea is to spare the feelings of those who make $250k, start raising taxes at $100k. Then they won't feel singled out.
I talk to myself because I'm the most interesting person in the room.
That's nice, but you still have to pay the tax.
Jesus, do I have to be the commie here you bunch of pansies? Fuck yes I'd limit incomes and I'd raise the marginal rates as well. It's not that hard. Limit salaries to multiples of the lowest paid employee of the organization.
362
This is going in the wrong direction. If the idea is to spare the feelings of those who make $250k, start raising taxes at $100k. Then they won't feel singled out.
Exactly, which is why I favor letting the Bush tax cuts expire in their entirety.
336
... I'm not looking so awful anymore ...
Because you believe you got where you are by hard work (as opposed to natural ability, luck or connections)?
Whereas I believe my success (such as it is) is mostly attributable to natural ability?
Wrong thread
I prefer to think of that thread as having in some sense infiltrated all the others.
My success (such as it is) is largely due to my natural ability, but my natural ability is largely due to luck.
364
... Limit salaries to multiples of the lowest paid employee of the organization.
This would in fact create perverse incentives to outsource all the low paid janitorial jobs and the like (which is happening anyway).
If I was king I'd ban that use of "temps" shit as well.
More realistically, a return to Clinton era tax rates at a minimum, cut the military in half, national health care, and a return to a much higher level of unionization in both private and public sectors. I realize I'm using "realistically" rather loosely here.
Oh, BTW, a missed opportunity in 256: I really want a white kitchen.
RACIST.
(Thanks, I feel better now.)
369
My success (such as it is) is largely due to my natural ability, but my natural ability is largely due to luck.
Sure you can think of it that way if you want. I find it more natural to think of natural ability as a given (as if you change it significantly you are no longer talking about me but about some other person). You could also ask to what extent hard work is just a reflection of inherent personality traits.
371
If I was king I'd ban that use of "temps" shit as well.
Temps are different, outsourced jobs are (or can be) full time, you are just a full time employee of a janitorial services company rather than say IBM.
A funny thread.
LizS, if I might pose 2 questions for you. What exactly, are the areas of disagreement between you and Nancy Pelosi? Between you and Max Baucus?
A number of people you've engaged with above do not consider themselves mainstream Democrats, but consider themselves well left of the Democratic mainstream. There's nothing wrong with this, of course, nothing at all. But when you're thinking about how well the Democrats who appear on your ballot align with your own views on things, it seems to me that paying attention to their positions, and those aligned with them, might be more useful than looking at people who are proudly off in a different space.
By the way, I think the federal spending problem is fairly easily solved. Clinton era tax rates (including on cap gains -- there's no evidence of any kind that the taxes we had on gains back then materially stifled investment [indeed you may have heard tell of investments in certain tech sectors in the 1990s]); move the SS cap up slowly; stop calling law enforcement "war" and engage differently in Yemen and Somalia; cut defense fairly substantially (10-20% maybe, phased in); and let the cycle do the heavy lifting. Oh, and on that latter point, use the opportunity of the cheapest borrowing ever to invest in a whole lot of infrastructure.
I am a registered Republican, and have been for years. I'm ready to take on all comers in argument.
247: Am I the only heterosexual male who didn't like seeing Leia in the metal bikini in Jedi? Leia was the undauntable wisecracking tomboy, not the hyper-sexualized slave girl. (And why is hyper-sexualized slave girl even a thing?) The fact that she strangles Jabba with the chain makes up for it a little bit, but only a little bit.
And why is hyper-sexualized slave girl even a thing?
Next you'll be questioning the whole idea of slavery.
But yeah, I think you are the only one, or damn close to it. I get what you mean about it being out of character, but it's the only part of the trilogy that really even comes close to being titillating, which actually seems kind of odd for a series of movies aimed at least in part at teenage boys.
(It would be kind of awesome if this turned into a Star Wars thread.)
Only a registered Republican (who, I agree with Urple, is by definition either an under-informed moron or a sociopath) could fail to appreciate Leia in that bikini.
And I don't really mean to call LizS an underinformed moron or a sociopath in general. Politics isn't everything.
You'd think that, as a registered Republican, I'd be all over that slave girl thing. After all, Republicans have a well-documented inability to understand the concept of "consent". But like my first-name-sake, I contain multitudes.
Leia in a lamé bikini never really did anything for me either, Walt, including in this most recent viewing of the film. But I do think teo gets it right in 380 re. hotttness in the trilogy: there's slim pickings there, leaving the audience to make a feast of what it can. That said, Padmé has her form-fitting top ripped just so during the battle royale scene in what I think* is Episode II. It's funny to imagine Lucas, the aging perv, directing that scene: "No, you idiot, rip the adolescent Jewess's shirt so that all of her midriff shows. No, her breast shouldn't be exposed! Jesus, do I have to do this myself? Hold still, Natalie. There! That perfectly encapsulates my artistic vision!"
* The first three films run together into a loop of craptacular cheesiness for me. In fact, I try to discourage the younger boy from watching them at all. But alas, he's four years old, and thus Lucas's intellectual equal target demographic. There's only so much I can.
it's the only part of the trilogy that really even comes close to being titillating
Sexist.
Hmm, this from the designer of the costume makes sense, but had never heard it before (maybe its common knowledge among you nerds):
She says the costume was inspired by the work of artist Frank Frazetta. "He really loved (the female) form," she says. "The fact that (Leia's costume is) such a female sensual costume, I think is terrific."And a creepy note re: Lucas:
She recalls that Lucas gave her only general instructions about the scene in Jabba's palace, but clearly wanted something special for the costume. "His eyes started sparkling when we talked about it," says Rodgers.
If you take my salary and divide it by the number of hours I work, it's pretty close to the paralegals here. I'm sometimes tempted to become a paralegal and only work 40 hours at their pay.
I assume what's stopping you is that a paralegal's next step up the ladder is a 3% COLA and an associate's next step is partner? Or...?
387: "His eyes started sparkling when we talked about it," says Rodgers."
Although I would be happy to exile George Lucas to the most unpleasant circles of Hell for all kinds of reasons, this one looks a little circumstantial. How many sparklons on the sparklometer?
377
I am a registered Republican, and have been for years. I'm ready to take on all comers in argument.
So you are the other one. I used to be a registered Republican but my registration lapsed with my move to New Jersey. I checked the box to register in New Jersey when I got my driver's license which certainly seemed convenient but it appears this was because it didn't actually do anything. In any case having voted for Kerry and Obama my Republican allegience is a bit suspect. I will probably choose independent if and when I straighten out my registration.
I resent the implication that it is creepy for an adult man's eyes to sparkle when faced with the prospect of working with a beautiful woman in a bikini.
And also stupid, but thankfully not in the pejorative sense.
I for one haven't yet been convinced that this is true.
391: It is true that I am attributing the sparkle to a baser, more nerdilicious cause, his whole conception of the scene rather than the filming of it with Carrie Fisher. But speaking of which:
The biggest problem with the metal bikini, was that it wasn't metal. ----Not that metal would've been an improvement over what it was actually made of, which was kind of a hard plastic. Whatever it was, it didn't adhere to one's skin. MY skin. My young, soon to be popular, unlucky skin. SO, when I was relaxing leisurely against Jabba the Hutt's gigantic, albeit grotesque stomach, my hard, plastic bikini bottom..........well, it had the tendency to make my now not so private privates quite public. Especially for the actor standing behind Jabba playing Bobba Fett---I believe his name was Jeremy---from where Bobba/Jeremy stood, so straight and tall and severe behind his mask----to put it simply and weirdly, Jeremy could see beyond my yawning, plastic bikini bottoms all the way to Florida.And from the interview in 387: "Most of the crew are men, and they really enjoyed being on the set," Rodgers adds.
LizSpigot in 124: I tried to skim the responses to your comment about capital gains taxes, but I may have missed something. If someone has already made my point, I apologize for repeating it.
A friend of mine who is registered as a Republican and an economist told me once that there's a seminal paper by a legit economist* demonstrating that capital gains taxes should be lower. I haven't read it and am not really competent to evaluate it.
I do know a tiny bit about tax law though, and I know that when there is a big discrepancy in the rates between capital gains and ordinary income, people will find ways to structure transactions to make the income realized be counted as capital gains. People pay lawyers a lot of money to do this, very bright people who could be using their talents elsewhere.
Devoting that much time to analyzing the tax consequences is precisely what motivated St. Ronnie's 1986 tax reform bill.
*My friend is kind of ideologically with somebody like Larry Summers, and he fully supported a strong stimulus. In fact, he struggles when his boss at the Fed asks him to write policy recommendations on what the Fed should do to respond to the economy, since he sees the theory as saying that in a situation like the current one where interest rates are already ridiculously low, the theory says that we should employ fiscal policy to effect change.
Not that there is anything wrong with anything in 393 (or for a 50+-year-old man having at his fingertips beaucoup metal bikini links* and quotes).
*Although the Leia's Metal Bikini site hasn't had any new material for over a year won't be linked here.
394: The argument boils down to the idea that capital -- actual physical capital like factories -- lasts, and labor doesn't. The steps to go from that to why stock market speculators should pay lower taxes is left to the reader.
378: I actually find sudden reversals of power to be very sexy. If I ever became a BDSM guy*, I'd probably really get into tops becoming bottoms and vice versa. Also "the bottom is the top" kind of relationships, like Janice Soprano and that Joe Pesci-ish guy. There're probably a bunch of websites for that.
*Not likely, as Seinfeld pointed out, it seems to involve buying a lot of equipment.
361: (Or whatever Jefferson/Shaw/whomever said.)
It was Gandalf (or, if you prefer, Tolkien):
I was talking aloud to myself. A habit of the old: they choose the wisest person present to speak to
393: It is interesting to think that the Slave Leia costumes people sometimes wear at cons are actually better made than the actual movie costume.
Actually, I bet this winds up being true of a lot of movie-based cosplay outfits.
I do have to say that actual issues get decided in Republican elections. With the Democrats, you have to choose between bland centrist technocrat A who makes populist noises, and bland centrist technocrat B who makes populist noises. I reregistered in 2008 to vote in the Democratic Presidential primary, and I still can't tell you the substantive differences between Obama and Clinton -- if anything, they seem smaller than they did in 2008. When I vote in the Republican party, I'm choosing between two guys who both want to enslave me to the rich. But the one guy really wants to make birth control illegal, while the other guy doesn't give a shit.
I'm choosing between two guys who both want to enslave me to the rich. But the one guy really wants to make birth control illegal, while the other guy doesn't give a shit but will always vote in line with the leadership anyway.
401: You really think it makes no difference whatsoever which Republican candidate became President (if God forbid one of them does)? I'm not even convinced that Romney is better than Santorum across the board, but they are definitely different.
397: "topping from the bottom" is the expression you'd want to be googling. If you fancy that sort of thing with breakfast.
I don't remember thinking there was a substantive difference between Clinton and Obama. Or that if there was, it would matter. In fact, I remember the opposite: thinking that people arguing the minutiae between for example the health plans talked about by one with the health plans talked about by the other were completely missing how Congress was going to be doing the thing in any event.
I still haven't seen a Republican worth voting for on a ballot presented to me. It's a theoretical possibility, though. I don't know, like time travel through worm holes or something.
Friggin' no capital gains taxes on home appreciation means I can't deduct the $60K I'm about to lose on the sale of my house.
I'm surprised that I seem to be the only one who wants to vote in Republican primaries.
I thought Obama's foreign policy noises sounded better than Clinton's, but then Obama went and gave Clinton the State Department, so the point was moot.
406 -- There's enough nose-holding already in the general -- why seek out more?
406
I'm surprised that I seem to be the only one who wants to vote in Republican primaries.
Why do you want to vote in Republican primaries? Even many Republicans are less than thrilled with the choices this time.
376: I went to On the Issues and I disagree with them on several things where they voted the same way, but I disagree with Max Baucus more because he opposes same-sex marriage and supports laws against flag burning. In general I like their positions on social issues and they both vote to fund too many things.
Fee-for-service medicine for all is unsustainable with an aging and deluded population that reads about expensive treatments. Single-payer would solve this, but politically not easy. So would attacking the insurers and most extortionate hospitals with fine-grained regulations.
Single-payer would indeed be the best thing we could do right now, and it would indeed give us some great breathing room to cut costs for a while by brunt of monopsony power - but single-payer has not stopped costs from growing as a percentage of GDP. UK, Canada, France, Japan, even Sweden - all consistently up.
Fee-for-service is a problem, but even single-payer normally just pays providers to do what they see fit, with some budget constraints like in Medicare, but obeying the consensus as new technology is introduced. Nowhere has anyone yet properly tied care to utility, or been willing to make sweeping decisions about how much we want to prolong lifespans (except limitedly with UK's NICE). Single-payer lowers the hurdles in the way of such policy, but it's still an obstacle course. Technology will continue to improve, if hopefully in more utile ways, and we'll still have a strong bias towards intervention. (Populaces in single-payer countries have an aversion to so-called "rationing" too.)
Once insurers stop capturing the surplus, the AMA will hopefully cooperate. Most MDs are well-intentioned.
Well-intentioned but big cultural issues. Sorry, but they really are capturing a good deal of the surplus! (Insurers' profit margins aren't actually whopping; physician salary growth is.) Anything that limits pay, even just its growth, will be taken as an affront, especially by the specialty-heavy AMA. If even today doctors feel under siege (only true for PCPs), adding more rationality to their pay structures is going to be a very hard sell.
And it's not just pay. The way I see it, part of the problem is doctors' status - delivering proper care is going to require them to work in teams and follow guidelines consistently (though there's not enough research now for that), instead of society being deferential and assuming that lots of classroom learning followed by an apprenticeship system makes them like unto gods. But they'll see that as becoming glorified nurses, and it'll be even harder to accomplish than pay-reform.
410 -- What are they voting to fund that you think shouldn't be funded?
There's no reason to suppose that medical care will keep on growing as a share of the economy. Surely a lot of it must be the ageing of the baby boomers.
And if it's a bigger share than it was twenty years ago: so what? It's a valuable industry. It's people buying health for themselves. The problem is that FIRE (finance, insurance, real estate) also spent the last twenty years growing as a share of the economy, and at least general health has improved; financial health, not so much.
413: Yeah. It's funny, discourse about growing costs of medical care usually takes as a basic assumption that they're going to keep growing indefinitely, because expensive new innovations will keep arriving. Not that this is impossible, but cheap new innovations also seem plausible: TB care got both wildly cheaper and more effective when it switched from sanatoriums to antibiotics.
I don't have any reason to confidently expect health care costs to drop in the future, but the belief that new technology will continue to drive them through the roof seems underjustified.
412: Same question. When I think wasteful spending, I think wars, but that seems like an odd thing to blame on Pelosi particularly rather than everyone in Congress equally.
413: There's no reason to suppose that medical care will keep on growing as a share of the economy.
Yes there is. Our appetite for health is infinite, so any gains in efficiency or reductions in cost will just lead to more consumption.
I disagree with Max Baucus more because he opposes same-sex marriage and supports laws against flag burning
Ah, okay, if you disagree with Baucus on those things, it makes a lot of sense that you'd support Republicans. Oh, wait, no, that makes no sense at all.
414 is correct. But my point was slightly different: given that it's not going to keep rising forever, shouldn't we want it to rise a bit if it means that more people are consuming more health care and thus staying healthy longer? Food production is a much smaller share of the economy now than it used to be. Is that a bad thing? No, because it means we can easily afford to feed ourselves. What's the sector of the economy that we think ought to be growing instead of health care and why?
412: Funding for reducing teen pregnancy by education and contraceptives. This is wasted money in a state like Utah where the schools are no longer teaching anything but abstinence. In general, I think the states should be funding education and the federal government should stay out of it. All of the money and effort haven't improved anything. (I'm all for money for low-income kids to receive free school lunches, though). Cash for Clunkers. Foreign aid. Funding for Amtrack. Funding the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
416: Except that you can only buy health in limited amounts. Steve Jobs died of cancer: he couldn't buy his way out of it. And while I'm sure he spent millions on treatment, jets at the ready to get him to transplant hospitals and such, I'm also sure that he didn't spend his fortune down: at some point, he ran out of things to pay for that would do him any good. If I had infinite resources to spend on medical care -- I could have any medical care I wanted by snapping my fingers -- I wouldn't be an iota healthier than I am now, because there's nothing I need along those lines that I haven't already done.
I've been toying with registering republican for a while. In a two party system they're going to be in power roughly half the time anyway, and it's really bad for the country that they're batshit crazy in their current incarnation. So why not vote in R primaries to move things saneward?
419: Wars (and foreign aid, given that it's mostly military aid to allies, not humanitarian aid) are a wash between the parties. Opposing them is great, but it's loony to cite them as a reason to prefer Republicans to Democrats.
Funding for reducing teen pregnancy by education and contraceptives. This is wasted money in a state like Utah where the schools are no longer teaching anything but abstinence.
This is silly. I don't have figures in front of me, but it's absolutely implausible that (a) this costs anything significant on the scale of the federal budget and (b) that it's not cost-effective generally in reduced health care costs for unintended pregnancies (let alone reduced misery). I don't know anything about the Utah situation, but you seem to be saying that the money is being wasted because Utah law prevents it from being used? Do you know any specifics about how it's being wasted, or what it's being spent on, or how much money we're talking about?
it's really bad for the country that they're batshit crazy in their current incarnation
They've been batshit crazy since Nixon, at least. The idea that you're going to nudge them back toward sanity by backing Mitt Romney over Rick Santorum is... questionable. Over half of the party base is religious fanatics and neo-Confederates. Regardless of whether Michelle Bachmann or Jon Huntsman is at the top of the ticket, a Republican in office empowers the loonies. Finding the just-right one that can pull enough "independents" to put the Republican over the top is not decreasing the influence of teh crazy. That was the whole "compassionate conservative" argument for Bush.
Funding for Amtrack.
This is the kind of thing that makes me say, fuck it, this culture war is ON.
(Maybe you're talking about wanting to cut funding for specific corridors you think are poorly thought out or something. But cutting funding for Amtrak in general?)
411. Wait, reasoned analysis?
Sure, the AMA and also MD status and compensation will need to change in ways they don't like and will fight. But there are currently four actors (patient, Medicare, private insurance, MDs), and this recent attempt at insurance reform saw viable defense from that industry. This before getting to seriously suggesting real changes in how care decisions get made. Basically, dealing with insurance first is my flaky tactical idea, a prerequisite in my mind for a more comprehensive solution.
Perhaps incorrectly, I thought that some hospitals were much, much more expensive than others without providing better care; both Atul Gawande and the sensible MDs I talk with (who may not have an overview of large-scale structural issues, I don't know) are optimistic about how different care economics will be after cleaning up worst cases and making care choices from guidelines.
Still a simplification, but I honestly think there's a way to really change the economics without widespread rationing of necessary care.
Funding for Amtrack.
The government fund the shit out of the highway system. Airports too. Why should it not also fund trains?
I realize that the funding is a very small amount, but I'd prefer to cut all those little things to make an overall difference in the budget. I know nothing about how it works in Utah. I'm saying I don't support education for contraceptives or abstinence because everyone fights about it and the federal government shouldn't be funding it.
The government should fund other sources of transportation, especially highways. I just don't support funding trains because Amtrack loses a lot of money and people don't really use it.
http://www.nola.com/business/index.ssf/2011/10/money-losing_amtrak_operated_a.html
420: Right now you can't. But there's not a strong reason to expect that will always be the case.
Eventually we may find a cure for aging. If so, either it will always be expensive, or it will become cheap.
If cheap, health care will become cheap and this problem will go away, to be replaced with newer, better problems.
If expensive, then the rich will spend down their fortunes, and desperately scramble to generate new ones, to keep the clock ticking.
If there is no single cure for aging, it will look a lot like the "expensive" scenario, except that research will also continue to be an important expense, as we find new ways to stave off death for one more day.
I wish so bad there was a functional train system in this country. I have time to haul the kids across the country during vacation, but there are no train routes to anywhere I need to go.
Leaving aside the ways that means testing Social Security would undermine the system, it is such a stupid, overly complicated idea. If people make more money and they get social security on top of that they can just pay more taxes.
There used to be a limit to how much you could earn and not have your social security cut. I remember that my grandfather was structuring his work around that in his late sixties, maybe taking a lot of it as deferred compensation?
421: What 423 said, plus in your current location, the Democratic primary is the election for an awful lot of offices.
I realize that the funding is a very small amount, but I'd prefer to cut all those little things to make an overall difference in the budget.
This really doesn't work: it's like earmarks. You can spend your life cutting million-dollar boondoggles in the federal budget(or things you think you've made a case are boondoggles), and when you're done you haven't changed the budget picture at all. If you're worried about the fiscal health of the government, nitpicking programs is an absurd waste of time: the only things to talk about are taxes, defense, and entitlements.
I'm saying I don't support education for contraceptives or abstinence because everyone fights about it and the federal government shouldn't be funding it.
If you want to back away from contraceptive education because it's too divisive, that's another thing. But based on what you've said about your positions in 3 and 28, I don't think it serves your policy goals well.
especially highways
Especially.
Amtrack loses a lot of money
How much profit do the highways make?
people don't really use it
People use it for a surprisingly high percentage of the trips for which it's available. To the extent people don't use it, that's because its coverage sucks (because it doesn't have nearly enough funding).
As a frequent Amtrak rider, I kinda-sorta agree with LizSpigot here. The long-distance train routes are pretty silly, except as luxury land-cruises. I enjoyed it very much when I rode in a sleeper from Chicago to DC, but there's no reason anyone should have to subsidize that when airplanes work just fine.
Trains are also not all that green when ridership is well below capacity. Buses dominate trains in most of the country, along all dimensions except comfort.
However, I except places like the Northeast Corridor and other short routes, where ridership is quite high and the train is competitive with air travel. I think those types or routes should be allowed to stand on their own feet, instead of being lumped together with an absurd route from New Orleans to Los Angeles. The NEC could probably run at only a mild subsidy, comparable to highway subsidies. (Or maybe even at a profit.)
I know lots of people who take the train up and down the NEC, and it would be ridiculous to say that people don't really use it.
I don't know much about Amtrak on the West Coast, but I would guess it is profitable on the Portland/Seattle/San Francisco corridor.
the belief that new technology will continue to drive them through the roof seems underjustified.
Unfortunately, if 416 continues to be true in a saner future environment rather than merely being an artifact of people seeking care in a defective system, this belief is justified. I know several people who wheedle for the absolute best doctor in a 200 mile radius and every treatment possible out of status anxiety.
It's possible that new cost-effective treatments will become available, but socially, the behavior that makes people seek heroic measures for care is definitely an issue.
I enjoyed it very much when I rode in a sleeper from Chicago to DC, but there's no reason anyone should have to subsidize that when airplanes work just fine.
No, of course not. Certainly there are no government subsidies involved in building airports. Oh, shit, sorry, yes, they're hugely subsidized--basically public money. Nevermind.
I'm sure you probably meant people flying their own private planes to their own private airfields, though, right?
I think it's good to keep train routes around to prepare for the future when air travel is financially impractical again.
The government should fund other sources of transportation, especially highways.
The government (every level of it) spends shitloads of money on highways. They also provide massive subsidies to the airline and maritime shipping industries. None of that infrastructure would be viable without federal money. The amount of money spent maintaining the nation's rail system is minuscule by comparison.
432: moving to a reddish state soon (technically an Obama state, but probably not this round).
438: The thing is, though, that 416 is really misleading as a general statement of how people interact with health care. I have a (not infinite, but very large) appetite for novels, vacations, extremely high quality restaurant meals, and massages: if you make me richer, my spending in those categories is going to go way up. If you make me richer, my spending on health care isn't going to go up a dime this week.
If I were sick, my appetite for health care would be finite and (under many circumstances) well-defined: I'd want everything effective done. "Everything effective" is sometimes going to be cheap and clearly defined, sometimes expensive and clear, and sometimes expensive and unclear. But in a health-care world like the current one, it's nothing like infinite: Steve Jobs is the limiting case.
There's an appetite for wasteful expenditure where 'everything effective' is expensive and unclear. But it's nothing like leisure spending, where people really do want more for the sake of more.
411: Single-payer by itself won't solve all of the cost problems, true, but it will enable harder bargaining over costs with medical device makers and pharmaceutical companies, both of which are large cost drivers. This is a significant side benefit. The other thing that should be done is exploring alternative ways of funding medical innovation, besides just hoping that companies are going to do it for us. They spend some ot it, but not enough and not on items that are real social priorities. (Where are the next-gen antibiotics, for instance?) End-of-life care needs to be rethought entirely in the US, but that's going to require a large attitudinal shift that I'm not holding my breath for.
I'm saying I don't support education for contraceptives or abstinence because everyone fights about it and the federal government shouldn't be funding it.
But if it was a state responsibility, people would fight about it at the state level, wouldn't they? Political beliefs don't line up neatly with state borders.
Amtrack loses a lot of money
Which is why we all aspire to work for those highway companies that are just raking in cash.
440: Yes of course every mode of transportation is subsidized to some extent.
I suspect that on a per-passenger basis the net subsidy is higher for long-distance train travel than long-distance air travel. But my confidence level is low.
Both trains and airplanes benefit from massive infrastructure subsidies, but airlines run at an operating profit, while AMTRAK moves passengers at a loss.
Are you arguing that if they'd received subsidies of identical present value, AMTRAK would be more profitable than air travel?
446: The idea that it's generally preferable to fund things at the state rather than the federal level is a Republican shibboleth. I don't get it myself.
(I don't know enough about Amtrak to have a strong opinion on how it should be run and funded. On the only parts of it I interact with, on the East Coast, it's obviously useful, but arguments for cutting the long haul stuff might be reasonable.)
It's pretty clearly an objectively bad thing that people use airplanes as much as they do. (Especially me.)
444. Steve Jobs declined recommended early surgery. The other interesting tycoon medical care case where details are public is Andy Grove, where both wealth and his ability to make judgements were important.
Without getting too pointed about extrapolating-- you're healthy, have personal trust in the social system you live in rather than seeing it as a monstrous adversary, and do not have status anxiety, at least not manifested that way. All three of these are laudable, but atypical.
444: I agree that we don't, right now, have unlimited appetites for health care. But we do have unlimited appetites for health.
The comparison to entertainment is misleading because new forms of entertainment displace old forms, since we have a time budget of 24 hours in the day.
Whereas if you save the life of someone having a heart attack, that makes them more, not less, likely to spend money in the future on treatments for cancer, osteoporosis, Alzheimer's, hip replacements, etc.
Generally, health care research is about finding new ways to convert money into health. If we get better at cutting costs faster than we get better at treating illnesses, then you're right, and the finite range of options would imply shrinking health care expenses - but I don't think that would be good news at all.
441 gets it right. Also, in practice funding for highways has contributed massively to sprawl and the destruction of our cities.
I don't for a moment believe this, but I've heard it repeated as an article of faith in conservative circles that the gas tax pays for all of federal highway construction. Is there any truth to this?
451: It's pretty clearly an objectively bad thing that people use airplanes travel long distances as much as they do.
1 trip by plane beats 5 trips by any other reasonable method. The most important thing is to reduce distance traveled. This is why local mass transit in general is greener than it seems if you just crunch the numbers: even though per-mile it may not be that much better, it permits higher density.
But generally, nothing in 119 stands up as a reason for preferring Republicans to Democrats if the fiscal health of the government is your big issue: they're all either issues on which the parties are the same or Democrats are preferable, or so picayune that regardless of the merits of the issue, they're just not going to have any significant effect (and when I say so picayune, I mean that combing the budget for things of that magnitude and coming up with lots and lots of them would still be insignificant).
I know no one talks anyone into anything like this, and you're already moving Democratic on social issues, but have you really thought hard about whether your remaining preference for Republicans on economic issues is substantive, or just some remaining tribalism? We've all got tribalism -- while I find the Democrats horrifically disappointing all the time, I still feel affiliation with them that would probably slow me down if there was anyplace preferable to jump to.
The idea that it's generally preferable to fund things at the state rather than the federal level is a Republican shibboleth. I don't get it myself.
State governments are smaller and less attention is paid to them, which makes it easier to funnel money to one's cronies. Republicans love them some cronies.
But in a health-care world like the current one, it's nothing like infinite: Steve Jobs is the limiting case.
I think I'm more in agreement with your general argument than Benquo/lw, but I don't think this part really works. Steve Jobs was likely willing to spend down as much of his fortune as necesasry in order to save his life. So the fact that he only spent however many million he no doubt spent wasn't a demand-side limitation--it was a supply-side constraint. There literally wasn't any other reasonably-likely-to-be-effective care available for him to purchase. (I'm assuming an awful lot I don't really know about his personal end-of-life situation, but I think I'm making the same assumptions you were, so it works for these purposes.)
Benquo/lw's argument as I understand it is that given that there are almost no contraints on the demand side (people generally will always be willing to spend whatever they can for health), continuing technological advances that add to the cost of care would be expected to continue increasing our overall healthcaer expenses. Assuming those technological advances continue indefinitely, our cost increases will also continue indefinitely.
I'm not really sure that argument works (I don't think it does), but the Jobs case seems more like an illustrative example of it than a counterargument.
I don't for a moment believe this, but I've heard it repeated as an article of faith in conservative circles that the gas tax pays for all of federal highway construction. Is there any truth to this?
No, as I recall the proportion of highway funding paid by gas taxes recently dipped below 50%. Its probably related that federal gas taxes haven't gone up since the early 90s.
Yeah, well, in a big country, sometimes you have to make compromises: funding the Empire Builder (for example) in return for support for funding the NEC. I suppose we could go in a more federalist direction.
From the Tax Foundation, I see that Utah has been 49th or 50th in federal moneys received per capita for a number of years. Still getting back for than is paid in, though.
Cost drivers in health spending, estimated per a RWJF lit review:
Aging of the population: 2%.
Changes in third-party payment (insurance): 10-13%.
Personal income growth: 5-23%.
Health sector prices: 11-22%.
Administrative costs: 3-13%.
Defensive medicine and supplier-induced demand: 0%.
Technology-related changes in medical practice: 38-65%.
454: Reason seems to think that the gas tax doesn't pay for all federal highway fund expenditures:
http://reason.com/archives/2011/06/17/the-facts-about-transportation
I don't know if those numbers take into account local expenditures, but I'd bet they don't. Which means that even less of the total is paid for by the gas tax than it looks like.
OTOH they point out that a fair portion of "highway" funds support non-car infrastructure (sidewalks, bike paths, scenic trails).
458: But my point is that there are always are, and for the foreseeable future will be, supply-side constraints.
I don't spend much on health care because there's not much for sale right now that I need. If I could buy rolling back the physical clock to when I was 22, I'd pay a fair whack for that (although, given what is available along those lines in terms of staying fit and so on that people don't spend money on even though they could). But the world is going to have to change a whole lot before an ordinary relationship with health care is "The more money I spend, the more closely I approach being a healthy 22-year-old," which is the sort of situation you'd need to make 'the appetite for health is infinite' be anything like a useful description of the market.
In the world we really do live in now, Steve Jobs' appetite for health care was finite, and so is everyone else's.
If I were sick, my appetite for health care would be finite and (under many circumstances) well-defined: I'd want everything effective done.
Good luck learning what's effective, is the problem. Obviously the universe of what can be done depends on the state of medical R&D; but again, until we link services with value, medical R&D and national income will be the only effective upper limit, which is not a tenable situation.
We see the same phenomena in defense and education, incidentally. Soft-budget-constraint sectors.
It's pretty clearly an objectively bad thing that people use airplanes as much as they do.
I mean environmentally it's a disaster, right? It's a topic I'm reluctant to weigh in on since I come off as "person who doesn't get it because he doesn't fly" but...there's a lot I don't understand. Why people are ruotinely flown across the country or globe for meetings that could be phone calls. Why people get up in arms about the high cost of air travel when OH MY GOD of course it's expensive, you are in a hunk of tin that is FLYING THROUGH THE FUCKING AIR REALLY REALLY FAST.
And don't get me started on the chemtrails. No, I'm kidding.
Yeah that's it. Those bike path boondoggles are sinking us.
456: Yes, I think it's a tribalism in part. Also, I grew up in Massachusetts so the difference between my views and, say, the views of my father and step-mother are so vast that I can't imagine that we could be part of the same party. But then I listen to my husband's southern family speak about their beliefs and I want to run screaming back to the Democrats.
I lost track of that parenthetical, but if you ignore its incoherence, I think you can figure out what it meant.
p.s. Mightn't people use Amtrak more if the service weren't so incredibly shoddy due to it being extremely low priority in this country? Mumble mumble Europe something.
But my point is that there are always are, and for the foreseeable future will be, supply-side constraints.
Sure, but we weren't talking about how much healthcare anyone wants to consume at any one time, we were talking about future health care cost growth rates. The point is that if increasingly expensive treatments keep being developed, there's no reason to think that people won't keep wanting to spend an ever increasing percentage of their income utilizing them.
464: Yeah, I do agree that there are real problems there. I just hate the 'the demand for health care is unbounded' formulation, because you see it everywhere and it seems like such a bad representation of how the demand for health care actually works.
FWIW:
Amtrak generates a surplus on the NEC, basically because it charges exorbitant fares on the Acela and still fills trains.
The short distance trains (less than 750 miles) will, in a couple of years when PRIIA section 209 is fully implemented, all transition to state subsidy. If New York wants trains between NYC and Albany, it'll pay for any losses they incur. Right now Amtrak and the states are negotiating on the formula for apportioning indirect costs and revenues.
The federal operating expense subsidy to Amtrak is approximately twice the subsidy for Essential Air Service which keeps commercial airlines serving a bunch of small mostly rural airports.
But the world is going to have to change a whole lot before an ordinary relationship with health care is "The more money I spend, the more closely I approach being a healthy 22-year-old," which is the sort of situation you'd need to make 'the appetite for health is infinite' be anything like a useful description of the market.
"Infinite" is hyperbole, I agree. What in this world is infinite? More precise would be "not effectively constrained, such that if current trends continue it will take up an enormous chunk of our national income without providing corresponding social value."
The point is that if increasingly expensive treatments keep being developed, there's no reason to think that people won't keep wanting to spend an ever increasing percentage of their income utilizing them.
Sure. But the assumption here is 'increasingly expensive'. Lots of technological improvements in other areas have been things that made things cheaper, not more expensive. Even in health care: like I said about TB. Or polio: you can buy a lot of vaccine for the cost of an iron lung.
If technological improvements in health care are made that deliver real improvements in outcomes at significantly increased cost, then you're right, people will want to spend more money on them. But that's not an inevitable future; it hasn't always worked that way in the past.
467: The way I think of it, the Democrats currently include the conservative, center, and liberal parties in a traditional/sane country, and the Rs are off somewhere else. If you traditionally would have identified as a Rockefeller Republican type -- conservative centrist -- the national D party has more of a place for you than the Republicans I think.
This could change if more Northeastern Republicans are elected. I love me some Elizabeth Warren, but Scott Brown has been fairly effective at steering a comparatively centrist course as a Republican (pro-business but not completely off the rails). If he stays in the Senate he will be the next Olympia Snowe figure. The problem is that the party itself is screwed up so party discipline will lead even R moderates into doing really bad stuff. As in cooperating with the debt ceiling debacle, which was a really dangerous game of chicken and did genuine economic harm.
I don't disagree with 474, I was just trying to explain why your Steve Jobs example didn't really work. I wouldn't have said anything if you hadn't raised the example twice.
The long-distance train routes are pretty silly, except as luxury land-cruises.
On the unnecessary section of track between Denver and Salt Lake City, you get a beautiful view of I-70, one of the most expensive sections of interstate built and seen by some as unnecessary.
It's hard to say how much care-seeking is an artifact of the current system. The most cynical claim is that it's just like vet care, for which growth figures are alarming. I don't think that's quite right, but don't have answers or even a framework for thinking about this.
For pharma and costcutting, my idea is to eliminate proof of efficacy (phase III, which is about 3/4 the cost of clinical trials). Politically impossible, maybe or maybe not acceptable socially, but a solution to the engineering problem. It's what will happen in India and China, I think. It would also open the door to personalized medicine.
There are hundreds of compounds that cure most people affected by some condition, but for an identifiable subpopulation are useless or worse (those that lack a particular cytochrome p450 allele and so metabolize the compound differently most typically). My understanding is that two rounds of phase III would be necessary-- one identify the treatable subpopulation, a second to test the compound. Double the cost of developing a normal drug, so untouchable.
Medical care treats sick people. It dorsn't make you healthy. Not being poor probably does the most to make people healthier. Social determinants of health and all that. Doctors don't have much to do with that.
Uwe Reinhardt is a flexible, kind of leftish economist who is best known for his work on healthcare. He's said basically that spending more would be great if we cured Alzheimer's, but based on his experience he was skeptical.
MA spends more per capita on medical care than any other state. It just means that we get more tests. And people here find out about problems that people in other parts of the country could live to a ripe old age without ever knowing about.
Medical care treats sick people. It dorsn't make you healthy. Not being poor probably does the most to make people healthier. Social determinants of health and all that. Doctors don't have much to do with that.
Uwe Reinhardt is a flexible, kind of leftish economist who is best known for his work on healthcare. He's said basically that spending more would be great if we cured Alzheimer's, but based on his experience he was skeptical.
MA spends more per capita on medical care than any other state. It just means that we get more tests. And people here find out about problems that people in other parts of the country could live to a ripe old age without ever knowing about.
465 -- I'll agree that there are lots and lots of times that face to face is too inefficient to be justified. It is, however, much more effective, because so much human communication is non-verbal and/or informal.
I have a pre-trial conference in a case tomorrow. My co-counsel is flying out from Atlanta today. OK, the substance of the thing could totally be done over the phone, and plenty of judges would do it that way. This judge likes to look the lawyers in the eye, and any lawyer who skips an opportunity to look the judge in the eye may well be making a mistake. And then there's the hanging around with the other lawyers in the courthouse before and after the formal thing. And I'm planning on taking her snowshoeing by moonlight tonight -- which, if she gets asked about it tomorrow, will change the way people think about her. (alum of Alabama as she is).
Phones are fine for brains in vats, or interactions that are the equivalent (and most are).
If technological improvements in health care are made that deliver real improvements in outcomes at significantly increased cost, then you're right, people will want to spend more money on them. But that's not an inevitable future; it hasn't always worked that way in the past.
Good point - but our R&D system is profit-centered too (at the D end), making improvements biased toward being the costly kind. So yes, it doesn't have to work that way, but it probably will continue to for the most part unless we give it a much more public character, such as by pumping a lot more public money into the system and learning how to pay for effectiveness (right now we're barely even paying for safety sometimes).
481: Do you wear headlamps while you snowshoe? Do you get to see any exotic nocturnal animals?
482.last: I hate those stories. My dad got a new hip a year ago, just when all of the hip implant stories started to break. His has been awesome so far -- went from limping around painfully to jogging again. But I keep on waiting for it to explode or something.
We'll take them. Depends on the moonlight -- if it's bright enough, and it was last night when I took the dog out, I don't like to wear a lamp. I don't expect to see any wildlife. Well, it depends on where we go -- I'd like to head up to Lolo Pass, because there will be more snow, and there's some interesting historical stuff to talk about -- but if she's too worn out from the flights, maybe we'll stick closer to town. Anyway, it'd be quite surprising to see a lion or a wolf, although we might well see tracks, pretty much wherever we go.
Both trains and airplanes benefit from massive infrastructure subsidies, but airlines run at an operating profit, while AMTRAK moves passengers at a loss.
"Operating profit" is not the same as "profit". If you add up all the profits made by every US airline from 2010 all the way back to the Wright Brothers, you get a negative number. Airlines were born through subsidies (guaranteed mail carriage business, for example) and they continue to exist because of subsidies and creative use of bankruptcy laws.
Since we're talking about the US's fucking awesome medical system, an anecdote: colon cancer runs in my family so I want to get a colonoscopy. It's covered at 100% since it's a preventive medicine procedure. Unless, that is, they find something and take it out. Then it's surgery, covered at 80% with a $1500 deductable. So I'm fully covered unless I'm sick.
Like LB, I don't understand why some tech isn't cheaper. You ought to be able to get a basic standardized blood test for $5 instead of $200-$1000. Emerson worked in this area and said something like, if you buy supplies from anyone other than the original manufacturer, you void your warranty.
467: Also, I grew up in Massachusetts so the difference between my views and, say, the views of my father and step-mother are so vast that I can't imagine that we could be part of the same party.
This interests me, as someone who also grew up in Mass. with solidly Democratic parents. If it's not too personal, what did/do they believe in or endorse that you find insupportable?
(I'm not going to attack you on this, mind; I'm just curious.)
Also, more people are being treated for chronic diseases now which cost a lot more than a polio vaccine.
I remember reading something about how pharmaceuticals spend their R&D on ongoing treatments for chronic diseases rather than cures, because it's so much more lucrative to have someone take your drug for the rest of their life, than to take it once and be all better.
Then I went to back to bed, because I can't face a world that operates like that.
Here is my recommendation for LizSpigot: Volunteer as a Republican pollwatcher for the 2012 presidential election. That's what finally did it for my mom in 1984, moving her from a tribal Mark Hatfield/John Anderson Republican to a Democrat (where she now seems to be some manner of Mother Jones/Jim Hightower populist). The parade of self-satisfied Repub voters triumphantly voting for Reagan pushed her decisively over the edge.
Since we're talking about the US's fucking awesome medical system, an anecdote: colon cancer runs in my family so I want to get a colonoscopy. It's covered at 100% since it's a preventive medicine procedure. Unless, that is, they find something and take it out. Then it's surgery, covered at 80% with a $1500 deductable. So I'm fully covered unless I'm sick.
Pretty sure I bitched plenty in the archives when a colonoscopy was recommended for me and I was told by everyone that it was fully covered as preventative care until AFTER I'd had the procedure, when it turned out that, whoops, yeah, usually those are just purely preventative, but in your particular case it was being recommended specifically by your doctor to screen for any potential issue (based on medical history, not on any problems that were occurring at the time), so that makes it a diagnostic procedure instead of a purely preventative procedure, so here's your $2300 bill.
I don't think LizSpigot is looking for a cure. She has no reason to.
430: I have time to haul the kids across the country during vacation, but there are no train routes to anywhere I need to go.
Despite the train service being quite minimal*, the fact that you could get Pittsburgh-New York on Amtrak really worked well with three kids. Especially if my wife was traveling with them without me. I t really was one of the highlights of the trip for them, rather than the harried stress of either driving or flying. You just had to put up with my father-in-law giving you untold shit before, during and after your visit about the terrible, awful "waste of time".
*Fun Pittsburgh Train Fact, a for a few decades in the early 20th century, Pittsburgh had three downtown train stations.
494: And yet here I am offering her one.
That is so rude, JP! It's like you think something is wrong!
I kid, obviously.
489: When Obama was elected, my step-mother believed that it would solve everything because we're now this enlightened country. And not in the way that some people say we don't need affirmative action because there can't be any racism anymore with a black president. More like this self congratulatory conclusion that because she gave $5 to the cause, she and Obama have fixed everything.
She also thinks that the elderly should spend all of their assets so that they can be placed in assisted living that is entirely covered by the government. And the government should cover all of her medical bills, although they should be doing it with other peoples' money and not hers so don't raise her taxes.
My father says more reasonable things when she's not around to sputter in shock that someone would disagree with her.
492: I might do that, my husband has been wanted to participate in politics here. I'd probably switch back to being a Democrat two seconds after one of them asked me why I wasn't home with my children.
486: I agree. Although much of that is sunk costs anyhow.
What I'm interested in is whether it makes sense to continue train travel. Operating profit shows that people value the service at least as much as it costs to provide it.
There are plenty of other good reasons to keep a service going, and of course some costs like carbon emissions have not been priced in, but I'd rather have a flawed, approximate measure than none at all.
471: If that's referring to my claim in 416, what I actually said was that the total demand for health is unbounded. Obviously if there's a limit on how much money can be transformed into health, people won't want to spend more than that.
Also, the demand for health care is really two different things: the desire for health (e.g. I would rather not die or be in pain) and the desire for care (e.g. I want to credibly signal my affiliation with other people in my group, or I want them to signal their affiliation with me by paying for costly care).
I was focusing on the former, but the latter is important too, and seems to be a constant. People were paying for medicine long before we knew enough to help more often than hurt.
498.1: That's magical thinking on her part. Some Democrats and some Republicans engage in it in their respective ways. It's good to recognize, for example, that some Republicans seem to think that if we privatize or even eradicate Medicare and SS, and reduce the capital gains tax to zero ... magic society-wide happiness will ensue.
She also thinks that the elderly should spend all of their assets so that they can be placed in assisted living that is entirely covered by the government.
That's something very specific, to do with the way Medicaid works: you may well not have enough personal assets to cover assisted living your own self, but yet you don't qualify for Medicaid coverage unless you reduce your assets. This is indeed a problem, but you know, there's no uncomplicated answer to it. It's not a yes or no question.
I take it you feel in general that government is not an answer, but a problem.
What I'm interested in is whether it makes sense to continue train travel. Operating profit shows that people value the service at least as much as it costs to provide it.
In general I think profitability is a very bad metric for evaluating transportation modes. With a few limited exceptions, transportating people generally tends to be an inherently unprofitable endeavor.
transportating people generally tends to be an inherently unprofitable endeavor.
The molecular reassembly costs alone are staggering.
And I do like the word transportating.
498: This is the same sort of misdiagnosis that I periodically try to talk my father out of. Your problem is not that Democrats are bubbleheads, it's that your stepmother is a bubblehead. But many, many people are bubbleheads, Democrats, Republicans, whatever (especially libertarians).
Tribalism is believing that Those People Suck. Enlightenment is when you realize that it's just that people suck generally.
Transportating is probably an industry term.
Transportating is the generalization of planing and de-planing.
Heh. "Transportating" is in fact a typo rather than a term of art, although I suppose I could have tried to pass it off as one.
I suppose I could have tried to pass it off as one.
We gave you every opportunity, teo. You blew it.
Eh, Alfrek would have showed up at some point and shown me up anyway.
There are certainly plenty of "uses" of it on the internet.
Correct me if I'm wrong, though: LizS is looking for a party that maximizes the interests of people like herself, whether or not that immiserates people unlike herself.
I am sorry to be so blunt, but I can't really figure it out, how this amounts to being a right-thinking person.
I don't mean "right-thinking" in the sense of right-wing.
And I will off, due to argumentativeness.
517: I'm not seeing where she's said anything that would justify that. Most of the actual positions she's stated would fit perfectly well in the Democratic Party. She just has some unfortunate tribal affiliation and a mild susceptibility to the tribal identifiers of what little is left of northeastern Republicanism.
I don't know much about Amtrak on the West Coast, but I would guess it is profitable on the Portland/Seattle/San Francisco corridor.
I haven't seen their budget numbers, but I seriously, seriously doubt this. After the zillion clicks it took to actually the route, thanks to Amtrak's godawful website--and the train doesn't actually go into SF, only to Oakland--I learned that Oakland to Portland is eighteen goddamn hours; Seattle's another 3.5. Now, Portland to Seattle probably makes sense as a train corridor, but I think it's easy to forget just how much space there is north of SF & Sacramento, and south of Eugene, that has basically nobody in it. California's huge, man.
On the general point: my impression is that long-haul air travel isn't much worse, carbon-wise, per passenger-mile, than trains (this seems to back me up); the problem is that air travel tends to involve a shitload of miles. CharleyCarp's example is a good one. One would hope that a judge in the generation currently going to law school would be horrified rather than pleased to see counsel take a cross-country trip just to make eye-contact, but who knows?--if environmentalism and global warming denialism continues to be closely tied to political tribal affiliation, perhaps not.
This is another area where the big structural aspects of the economy come into play. Vacation time, for example--if it were conventional in the US to have one big August vacation, as it seems to be in much of Europe, this might change travel patterns (though it's easy to see how this might cut in the direction of more US-to-Australia trips).
One would hope that a judge in the generation currently going to law school would be horrified rather than pleased to see counsel take a cross-country trip just to make eye-contact, but who knows?--if environmentalism and global warming denialism continues to be closely tied to political tribal affiliation, perhaps not.
But Charley is absolutely right about the point that he's making: the difference between in-person interaction and telephone interaction is huge, especially when the stakes are high. Reducing air travel significantly wouldn't just mean moving more of those interactions to the telephone, it would mean reducing the number of high-stakes interactions between people in different places. That might be a good thing, but it's not something that's going to be driven by the moral views of lawyers or law students.
520: The fact that short range trips are more efficient (0.16 kg of CO2 per passenger mile) than long range trips (0.19) make me think that trains are getting penalize for having low ridership. Otherwise, physically it makes no sense to me that buses could twice as efficient as trains on long trips (0.08).
WRT West Coast rail, I think Southern California would be incredibly well served by shorter distance rail (in part, it already is -- downtown LA to downtown San Diego is, I believe, a very profitable route, and I think MetroLink is successful). The region was basically designed, originally, for rail, has reasonably dense urban cores, and with some aggressive expenditure and a little bit of planned development rail could be great. But that takes money to get going.
I'm less sure that the LA-SF high speed rail (that probably won't be built) is really "worth" the cost, although I would personally love it and benefit from it greatly, and voted for funding it. There's also occasional talk of a LA to Vegas party train, which, why not?
Opposition to raising the marginal tax rate on incomes over $250k amounts to being, at best, a Blue Dog Democrat. Opposition to raising the capital gains tax to its previous level amounts, at best, to the same. Opposition to funding sex and contraception education -- because people fight over it -- and to funding Amtrak 'because it's not profitable' is just plain in thrall to Republican rhetoric.
I guess I'm a little surprised that people seem to think that these positions are perfectly consistent with the Democratic party.
Amtrak California has a few busy routes, especially the route that runs along from San Diego to north of LA. Leaving California, except maybe as far as Reno, is probably a whole lot less busy. Portland-Seattle-Vancouver also runs enough trains/buses to make me think it might be relatively widely used.
I think there's only one train per day in each direction that runs through the entire west coast.
The Capitol Corridor between Sac and the Bay Area is popular and very pretty. It has more-or-less hourly trains now. When gas gets expensive, every seat is taken during commute hours.
I would LOVE high speed rail between Sacramento and LA.
Actually, couldn't Heebie use the Sunset Limited New Orleans-Los Angeles route? Come out and visit us.
525: I believe the conversation was about how Democrats talk about increasing tax rates on high incomes, not whether rate increases are justified. I wouldn't necessarily argue with "in thrall to Republican rhetoric", but that's a different charge than the one you made in 517.1.
We took the train to California once when I was a kid. It was fun.
I would LOVE high speed rail
High-speed rail anywhere would likely increase train ridership substantially. Taking the train from, say, Durham to DC is an 8-hour trip versus a 5-hour drive.
Reducing air travel significantly wouldn't just mean moving more of those interactions to the telephone, it would mean reducing the number of high-stakes interactions between people in different places. That might be a good thing, but it's not something that's going to be driven by the moral views of lawyers or law students.
I think you underestimate how much about even high-stakes interpersonal interaction is embedded within conventions of "this is the proper way to perform our roles," which, yes, does get changed by moral values, among other things. Everyone-expected-to-teleconference is as much an equilibrium, in the relevant sense, as everyone-expected-to-make-face-time, because if the 8 other people in the conference are on screens, and you're knocking on the judge's door to make eye contact, it's not going to feel respectful and higher-bandwidth-enabling but more like an imposition: "what are you doing imposing on my personal space?"
The question is how to transition from one equilibrium to another. In this case, the answer is rather easy, because it's a situation where one class of actor has essentially all the authority, and that class, moreover, is within an explicitly-structured government bureaucracy. If "saving resources through mandating teleconferencing" became an institutionalized priority of the US Federal Court System, I think you'd be surprised ad how much norms of what represents an appropriate level of in-person interaction would shift to accommodate.
(Hell, think of how much less in-person interaction is a factor at all in civil-law country court proceedings.)
Does rail really need to be high-speed to be cars? My impression was that a lot of their delays come from having to cede right of way to freight, and that if they actually owned their tracks they would do better.
I'm not disagreeing with anything anyone's said about California rail; I'm still dubious, however, about the viability of the Sacramento-to-Eugene-and-beyond route.
I am hoping to take a few-week train trip to faraway places at some point in not too many years, but the logistics give me a headache. Amtrak actually has a thing like a Eurrail pass, though factor in the fact that Amtrak is no Eurrail...
The Capitol Corridor between Sac and the Bay Area is popular and very pretty.
Very true; I had a lovely trip up to Davis.
Eurail has only one R. THIS IS SO EMBARRASSING IT BELONGS IN THE OTHER THREAD.
535 -- SF to Seattle is further than NYC to Chicago, so there's no real comparison between a California-Northwest route and Amtrak's Northeast Corridor.
534: In my experience the non-high-speed Northeastern Regional beats cars in the highly congested DC to NY route. (Don't know about NY to Boston.)
520.1: Oops. Probably the Portland-Seattle portion would make sense taken alone, though.
539: that's what I was trying to get at with 520.1.
530: I believe the conversation was about how Democrats talk about increasing tax rates on high incomes, not whether rate increases are justified.
I thought LizS's view was that these proposed rate increases were unjustified. Maybe I'm wrong, or missed something, and she just thought the language itself, as she heard it, was inappropriate.
There's a reason the long distance routes run only once (or less) per day. I've gone east west a few times in coach and the trains have never been empty, with some stretches obviously busier than others.
I think you underestimate how much about even high-stakes interpersonal interaction is embedded within conventions of "this is the proper way to perform our roles," which, yes, does get changed by moral values, among other things. Everyone-expected-to-teleconference is as much an equilibrium, in the relevant sense, as everyone-expected-to-make-face-time, because if the 8 other people in the conference are on screens, and you're knocking on the judge's door to make eye contact, it's not going to feel respectful and higher-bandwidth-enabling but more like an imposition: "what are you doing imposing on my personal space?"
You're missing the point, or making a different one. It's not about what the expectations are, but about the quality of communication that's possible, and it's not limited to the particular sort of hearing that Charley used as an example. Yes, you could change the equilibrium by forcing people to do those interactions over the phone, but doing so would lead to poorer communication and a less effective process. If you permitted people to attend either in person or by phone but prohibited them from flying in, the adaptation wouldn't just be more people dialing in, it would be more clients hiring counsel where the tribunal is located.
More generally, reducing the ability of large, centralized organizations to fly people around would make large, centralized organizations less effective and encourage smaller, less centralized organizations. As noted above, that may be a good thing, but it would be a real change in how we do things.
I don't think LizSpigot is looking for a cure. She has no reason to.
The first step in seeking a cure is admitting you have a problem.
536: I think you might be able to get a combined Canada-US pass.* You could go up to Montreal and the maritimes, then across to western Canada, then loop back through the US. Or vice versa.
*I know there was a Canada pass back in 2003. I went Montreal-Quebec City-Ottawa-Toronto-Vancouver.
DC to Philly Amtrak beats everything. You can get from downtown DC to Midtown Manhattan faster by plane, but I would take the train in preference. Downtown DC to the EDNY courthouse on Cadman Plaza in Brooklyn -- air is faster, but that might be because I don't understand the NY subway system (and the PATH, whatever that is) well enough.
One of my favorite trains to Philly is the late night regional -- train 66 -- because it's always full of young people. Daytime rides in the Acela quiet car are nowhere near as interesting.
543: I think it's necessary to raise taxes on people earning >250k because the government is spending too much money. I just want the raising of taxes to go towards lowering the deficit. There are lots of things in the budget that I support cutting but not programs that help people in trouble such as welfare. I'm especially in favor of all the programs that help underprivileged kids, such as programs to give them medical insurance and free school lunches.
I want to reduce the government's spending on war, fix the issue with unsustainable entitlements (e.g. by raising the age for receiving SS and removing the cap on income taxed for SS), and remove some regulations and the associated cost of enforcing those regulations, such as No Child Left Behind and anything involving relatively harmless drugs like marijuana (but not things like giving the EPA power).
549 -- You're a funny kind of Republican.
Yes, you could change the equilibrium by forcing people to do those interactions over the phone, but doing so would lead to poorer communication and a less effective process.
You're right, I was addressing only the question of the stability, not desirability. I actually think the court example is a nice one, precisely because it highlights the difficulty of disentangling the zero-sum aspects of face-time (you need to make a better rhetorical presentation to the judge than your adversary, part of which involves responding better to real-time cues) from the everyone-benefits aspects (the judge should have the best arguments available presented to them; everyone should have legal counsel that isn't confused about what the judge expects).
Moreover, the fact that different societies do things differently helps us see that a lot of what we take to be necessarily high-stakes interpersonal activity may not be; a legal culture that values impersonal text-centered procedure over oral advocacy may see the kind of high-stakes pre-trial conference CC mentioned as actually an affront to rule of law values. (I'm not saying that's right, but there's an argument there I'm not going to take the space to unpack that's not crazy, either.)
The other area where I've given this a bit of thought is in academic conferences and the brief, large-scale interviews that happen there. My own view is that these are indefensible; the values supposedly served would be much better promoted through other institutional forms, and the current practices persist through a combination of inertia and (as always) those who have the power to change things doing well-enough with how they are. Basically, here, the traditional (thankfully shifting slightly) norm of in-person meet-market interviews, defended on the grounds of the superiority of in-person interaction, both imposes large and unnecessary costs on those least able to bear them (the hordes of applicants); excessively overprivileges certain skills (being charismatic in brief interviews) that few would say are really crucial to the job (charismatic teaching might be, but the two aren't super correlated); and more generally reassures institutions that they're being thorough, while actually absolving them of the responsibility of really looking seriously at the substantive content of more of their applications.
All of which is a long-winded way of getting to my main point, which is that I'm simply rather skeptical about whether in-person meetings are really as effective as is suggested, and do not accept as conclusive evidence the fact that institutions do frequently use them. Institutional practices get selected at least as much for their capacity to satisfy the interests of those who have the most power, as for their overall efficiency. (I'm sure either Cosma or Henry Far/rell has written a very nice brief exposition of what's wrong with the institutional-practices-are-efficient claim, but if so I can't find it.)
I just sent my son off with 7 classmates, driving in two vehicles, 200 miles to watch their school bb team compete in the state tournament. If we had the Hiawatha -- there's a movement to restore the service, which was cut in 1978 -- they could have taken the train.
[Go Knights!]
549: Nixon signed the EPA into being, and it has been an enormously successful program by many measurements. Of the initial pollutants that the EPA was committed to reducing, I think all but one were brought down to relatively safe levels within 20 years. Now, of course, you are looking at a defunded, toothless EPA, which has many, many more subtle pollutants to go after, and which is still cleaning up Superfund sites from 40 or 50 years ago. Mission creep in the extreme, very convenient for any number of vested interests.
549: (but not things like giving the EPA power)
Giving the EPA power over what? or, not what?
I read 549 to say LizSpigot does *not* want to reduce "things like giving the EPA power", which is odd phrasing, but maybe the opposite of how 553 and 554 are reading it? But it's admittedly confusing.
554: Sorry, that wasn't clear. I don't want to group the EPA into areas where we should have deregulation. I want them to have increased power, the health of businesses be damned.
but not programs that help people in trouble such as welfare. . . . (e.g. by raising the age for receiving SS and removing the cap on income taxed for SS),
Considering the fact that, "Just over a third (34 percent) of retirees age 65 and older got 90 percent or more of their retirement income from Social Security in 2008. And the majority of retirees age 65 and older (64 percent) get at least half of their retirement income in the form of a Social Security payment." why do you consider welfare to be a budget priority, and something that shouldn't be cut, while you want to see cuts in Social Security benefits?
I got (justifiably) criticized for being casual in my language in my previous comment about social security but, really, my point was that raising the retirement age would take money out of the hands of people who do, in fact, need that money. Which is why it feels so troubling that you've twice listed that as one of your top ideas for cuts.
I think it's necessary to raise taxes on people earning >250k because the government is spending too much money
When the tax cuts were passed, part of the deal was that they would expire in ten years. It's necessary to raise taxes because *that's the law that was passed*. And everybody got a 2-year reprieve on that already. I'm with Shearer that Congress should just let all of them expire, and start over figuring out which of the original rates should be changed going forward.
However, the promise at the time was that the massive cuts would create enough new jobs to cover the huge revenue drop. This turned out, like the rest of the Republican economic agenda, to be nonsense: 1.1 million fewer jobs at the end of the ten years than when they started. That's not the fault of too much government spending; it's the fault of ponycorn economics.
As part of a comprehensive deal, I wouldn't rule out means testing SS for people between 65 and 70. It's the only cut to SS I'd put on the table at all, and only then as part of a much bigger deal, that probably has to include single payer, since without getting a handle on health expenses, no tinkering with SS will ever be considered enough.
As for moving SS funds to private management -- a favorite of libertarianish folks -- I've got only 3 words: cold dead hands.
560: Because the average age of retirement has increased. I would apply it to people who are currently 50, not people who haven't been budgeting for this issue.
I don't want to group the EPA into areas where we should have deregulation. I want them to have increased power, the health of businesses be damned.
I agree! But on this point alone, you have absolutely 100% no business voting for a Republican in any national election (or, describing yourself as a "libertarian").
563: There has been some good writing on this point: I agree that raising the retirement age looks superficially appealing, but when you break it down demographically, well-paid desk workers are retiring later. People in blue collar jobs are retiring at the same time they ever were -- a working class woman in her late sixties probably isn't healthy enough to keep waitressing full time, and so on. By raising the SS age, you end up impoverishing people who really can't keep working. If you're interested, I'll look for some of the stuff I've read on it.
563 -- A lot of what you save in retirement benefits you're going to pay out in disability benefits.
I like your "50" much better than I like Ryan's "55" but this kind of thing is too politically unstable. 10 years from now, as the first people start getting close to your bright line, and as a bunch of the people above that line who supported the change have aged out of voting, the pressure will be great to move the age again.
566: That is why CC's means testing 65-70 is a possible idea. Reflects that trend somewhat without nailing those who really need SS.
567.2 -- which makes the savings you hope for illusory.
Kind of like the deficit impact of the sunset provisions of the Bush tax cuts. They had to put the sunset in the bill because there was just enough concern about the debt that they needed the math to reflect a reversion to normal tax rates in the 10th year. But everyone knew this was a bait and switch: Republicans began agitating to get rid of the sunset (especially wrt the estate tax, which was eliminated completely only for a single year) as soon as the ink was dry.
Apo and others can point out, correctly, that the sunset was a material part of the deal. A deal with swindlers, though, doesn't mean anything to the swindlers.
569: Yeah, that's not crazy -- I hadn't heard exactly that suggested before.
Actually, I'm feeling pretty bad about my 'let's get all the seniors to wipe themselves out' proposal. A high means test, or none at all.
549 seems like a rough description of Obama's platform. Even on areas where you might disapprove of Obama - say, abuse of civil liberties and aggressive foreign policy - the Republicans seem further from you than Obama.
568: What an effective and sad chart.
Sometimes I think it really is the UMC elderly/soon-to-be-elderly* with their aspirational net-worth-spreadsheets-from-hell who are fucking so much up. Take many of my colleagues for instance ... please. "You are not going to be quite as well off during your retirement as you anticipated. Fucking deal." We need some form of differential inflation to target their entitled asses (mine among them I might add).
*The demographic bubble is going to chew this country/world right up unless the political dialogue and framing is changed.
574: The difference in health in late middle age and old age across class lines is heartbreaking when you have examples you're close to.
You would think the most prosperous civilization in the history of the world could figure out a way to direct its wealth toward enabling people to work less, instead of forcing them to work longer.
568: What an effective and sad chart.
So, an observation, if we can convince you that cutting Social Security isn't a good idea (or, at the very least, isn't a sufficiently good idea to be worth (a) the political fight and (b) the chance that once you try to make a cut it ends up being implemented in a highly sub-optimal way) then the main spending cuts that you've talked about are (1) cutting military spending and (2) cutting drug enforcement / drug war spending (and maybe a side of trying to reduce spending on prisons).
If that's the spending you want to see cut it seems to me that the Democrats, as bad as they are on those issues, are better than the Republicans (yes, the Libertarians may be better than Democrats on that score but there are other reasons not to vote
Charley's version of SS means-testing is much saner, but, without running any numbers, I'd bet it runs into the same problem as any means-testing in a highly unequal society: to save a significant amount of money you have to start hurting a lot of people.
I think there have been two tells in Liz's discussion, and both have involved her frustration with her family/loved ones. Which is say, I'm not even sure it's tribalism so much as family dynamics that are keeping Liz from admitting to herself that she's a pretty mainstream Democrat: in favor of many of the party's positions, actively opposed to others, but mostly just sure that voting for the lesser of two evils is the best that can be done at the moment. At the same time, because playing amateur psychoanalyst over the internet is really silly, I'd note that Liz doesn't like smug Democrats or smug Republicans. Which seems like a good start for a political realignment. Let's stamp out smug!
I also think that Liz is probably pretty smart, but people, even very smart people, invariably sound stupid when they parrot talking points. And people, even geniuses, sound incredibly stupid when they parrot the GOP's talking points.
Pretty sure I'm going to join the Smug Party. It's far superior to the Not Smug Party. They must not realize how much being smug is better.
582 is quite well done. Are you from Davis, CA?
Somebody should write something in the embarrassment thread about how it makes us all feel that Liz would rather identify with Sarah Palin than with us.
Sounds like it's time for a smug tax.
That Sarah Palin speech at the convention in 2008 was a unique experience. I'd been hearing mostly positive things about Sarah Palin over the previous couple of years, from a libertarian point of view and also about how she started requiring more royalties from the drilling companies. Was surprised to see that as soon as she was announced, she was described as a sort of Bachmann/Santorum, not relevant on any other issues. Then the big speech was not about how we need to battle crony capitalism and big government, or about how we must defend Christianity against the infidels - it consisted almost entirely of contempt for, basically, me. Three totally different branches of conservatism!
584: That does it, I'm a Democrat.
Yeah, Palin had a decent reputation, as I recall, towards the end of 2007/start of 2008. Possibly just because the other Alaskan high level politicians were in the news for possible corruption, cronyism, and threats to bite like minks.
Fuck means testing. It plays right into the "giving your money to lazy poor people" Repub campaign against pretty much everything. Everybody pays, everybody collects. If it's going to come up short raise the rate, drop the cap, encourage people to smoke and die younger, whatever.
It was my understanding that means testing SS wouldn't raise a hell of a lot of money in the first place.
I don't get the whole smugness thing upthread; if we -- I, at least -- were smug about all this, I wouldn't be upset about Liz.
Smugness and sanctimoniousness are closely related. A connoisseur from Davis might be able to tell the difference through the screen, but the rest of us probably lump them together.
Smanctimugniousness, they call it.
We already means-test Social Security in a much less administratively burdensome way - a progressively-varying payout as a percentage of old income. Keeping it big for the middle class not only makes people's retirements more secure and dignified (through being non-market-dependent), but is an expression of social solidarity - we all help each other out, not just the poor.
Means-testing got its start, at least, as a long-game chipping-away strategy. The World Bank proposed ideal circa 1995 was a minimum income for the needy, followed by a defined-contribution government system, capped by private, government-regulated voluntary pension plans. No catfood, but implementing the atomistic ideal: practically the difference between liberalism and leftism.
567: That Sarah Palin speech at the convention in 2008 was a unique experience ... Then the big speech was not about how we need to battle crony capitalism and big government, or about how we must defend Christianity against the infidels - it consisted almost entirely of contempt for, basically, me.
This would be the "big speech" which turned out to have been written earlier by McCain staffers for Vice-Presidential-candidate-to-be-named-later and which was then tweaked for gender and had a few "personal" touches added like the "community organizer is like a mayor" line. Right*? By the time she was Governor much less VP candidate she most surely had no more political philosophy than Flem Snopes. Grifters gonna grift.
*The most surreal reactions per usual were from some of the Cable News folks who claimed to be puzzled later when she could not answer simple questions with Katie Couric. Then they had Dustin Hoffman on and gave him shit about not being able to count spilled toothpicks.
442
The government (every level of it) spends shitloads of money on highways. They also provide massive subsidies to the airline and maritime shipping industries. None of that infrastructure would be viable without federal money. The amount of money spent maintaining the nation's rail system is minuscule by comparison.
Government also collects a lot of taxes and fees for motor vehicle travel. While this may not currently cover the costs I believe it easily could without reducing usage much. I think the same is true for air travel. Long distance passenger trains on the other hand would not exist without government subsidies. These subsidies may not be so large in an absolute sense but per passenger mile they are enormous.
420
... If I had infinite resources to spend on medical care -- I could have any medical care I wanted by snapping my fingers -- I wouldn't be an iota healthier than I am now, because there's nothing I need along those lines that I haven't already done.
You sure about that? For example one could imagine a world in which rich people routinely had their urine tested every day. This would presumeably pick up some issues and would not be intrusive if you had infinite money and it was a social norm for the rich.
If you believe the facts in the not long ago reason pieces, if roads and only and just exactly roads (like no sidewalks, no funding anti drunkdriving measures,etc) received gas tax funding, the gas tax would have to go up by about 25-30c per gallon. Folx'd notice JBS, and not in just a small way.
523
The fact that short range trips are more efficient (0.16 kg of CO2 per passenger mile) than long range trips (0.19) make me think that trains are getting penalize for having low ridership. Otherwise, physically it makes no sense to me that buses could twice as efficient as trains on long trips (0.08).
Load factors are probably lower on long distance trains but they also don't pack people as tightly (sleeper cars being an extreme example) as subways or commuter trains. Trains haul along a lot of weight per passenger (in part I have heard because of stringent crash safety requirements).
600
If you believe the facts in the not long ago reason pieces, if roads and only and just exactly roads (like no sidewalks, no funding anti drunkdriving measures,etc) received gas tax funding, the gas tax would have to go up by about 25-30c per gallon. Folx'd notice JBS, and not in just a small way.
That's a trivial subsidy amounting to a penny or two per mile compared to a total cost of perhaps $.50 per mile. Travel would drop a tiny amount but there would be an equilibrium where usage taxes covered costs.
441
I think it's good to keep train routes around to prepare for the future when air travel is financially impractical again.
I don't believe there is a plausible energy price future where mass air travel dies but mass long distance train travel survives.
This is in service of an argument that if you care about individual and national wealth, it is better to support the Democratic Party than the Republican Party.
Bloomberg, which I hope will pass general muster as a business-friendly resource, recently reported that Democratic administrations are very much better for the markets than Republican administrations. And not by a little, but by a lot:
The BGOV Barometer shows that, over the five decades since John F. Kennedy was inaugurated, $1,000 invested in a hypothetical fund that tracks the Standard & Poor's 500 Index (SPX) only when Democrats are in the White House would have been worth $10,920 at the close of trading yesterday.
That's more than nine times the dollar return an investor would have realized from following a similar strategy during Republican administrations. A $1,000 stake invested in a fund that followed the S&P 500 under Republican presidents, starting with Richard Nixon, would have grown to $2,087 on the day George W. Bush left office.
and
Since Kennedy took office, the Democratic S&P fund logged a 992 percent gain, versus 109 percent growth for the opposition party, even though Democrats occupied the White House for 23 years over the period, compared with 28 years of Republican presidential leadership.
The annualized return for 23 years of Democratic administrations is 11 percent, or four times the 2.7 percent annualized return during 28 years of Republican presidencies.
and
The Democratic edge is so large that the party comes out ahead even without counting Bill Clinton (the Democrat with the biggest S&P 500 gain) and George W. Bush (the Republican with the worst market record). A hypothetical $1,000 investment under Democrats excluding Clinton was worth $3,539 versus $3,296 invested under Republicans except Bush.
Adding Dwight Eisenhower to the Republican column doesn't overcome the Democratic advantage, either: $1,000 invested in the S&P 500 in January 1953 would have been worth $4,796 after 36 years under Republican chief executives -- still less than half the $10,920 nest egg accumulated in 23 years under Democrats.
This is in addition to the fact that Democrats are much better at balancing the budget. This analysis is cool because it charts control of each house of Congress and top marginal tax rate along with control of the White House, and does some nifty analysis like comparing deficit over the course of a full term deficit starting in the second year of an administration.
I don't have a compact reference here for tracking the deficit based on proposed versus actual budgets; I believe that in general, when Republicans hold Congress and a Democrat the White House, the proposed budgets from the White House would have been better for deficit management. This is me soliciting someone else to do that bit of homework. :)
But seriously: there's a very long-term trend here, that actually governing Democrats are way better on this stuff than actually governing Republicans. And since we mostly vote for actually existing people, it's worth looking at the record. Nobody who actually cares about sound government finances should support the Republicans.
An aside about Amtrak in the Pacific Northwest: the route from Seattle to Portland is great and in terms of time very competitive with driving...except when it isn't. This is the problem - Amtrak's forced (at least in the Pacific Northwest) to grant right-of-way to freight trains, which can be very long and very slow and prone to stops not previously announced to anyone. So the trip is always subject to variable delay. In the years I regularly took that route, about half my trips were within a few minutes of scheduled arrival time, but the others were late from half an hour up to more than two hours, and this for a three-hour trip.
I don't believe there is a plausible energy price future where mass air travel dies but mass long distance train travel survives.
Electric trains.
Electric trains.
There you go again, frightening the Americans with your crazy science fiction talk. It's like that time you told them it was possible to have a pager built into your phone.
Come, join us. Don't be afraid. It is the next stage of your evolution. In an hour you will be one of us.
Or 90 minutes, if you live anywhere served by Virgin Trains.
606: Ahem, Lionel Northeast Corridor.
610: I know you've got them; I'm just saying that electric trains + clean electricity + really expensive fossil fuel is a possible future where you can have longhaul trains but not longhaul air travel for the masses.
(Unless they want to travel by ELECTRIC ZEPPELIN!! Which would not be much faster than train anyway.)
606 should probably have been 607.
613
Electric trains.
This ignores the fact that long distance electric passenger trains do not currrently exist (for the most part) in the United States making it difficult for them to survive.
Electrification is expensive and requires high volumes to amortize the costs. I don't see it as affordable in a poorer high energy cost future. A drastic reduction in long distance travel seems more likely.
You don't actually know the difference between "oil price" and "energy price", do you?
I had to laugh. I just began reading Walter Tevis' Steps to the Sun and there in the first 10 pages or so, "Everyone traveled by bus or train since you can't run an airplane on coal."
You could if you processed coal to turn it into synthetic aviation fuel using the Fischer-Tropsch process. But then you'd be just the same as the Nazis.
I've always wondered, conspiracy theory-wise, if the airline industry lobbies against highspeed railways.
617: About twenty years ago Southwest successfully lobbied against HSR in Texas (the Texas Triangle: San Antonio, Dallas, Houston).
613: BNSF is known to have looked at the possibility of electrifying their network. Everyone assumes there's some price of diesel which would make it worthwhile.
Nice time was had snowshoeing with the Atlanta lawyer. Moon was large and bright. No wind, so when we stood still is was quiet as a tomb. Saw some elk milling about on the highway just east of Lolo Hot Springs. No lions, or other non-human wildlife though. Not too crowded: saw six people XCing over the course of 90 minutes.
Electric zeppelin sounds cool.
There must be a word which is the equivalent of steampunk but which refers to nostalgia for inter-war tech/aesthetics. I have it quite bad.
Jazzpunk doesn't quite work, does it?
After the William Gibson short story, Gernsbach syndrome?
Ahah,
"Cohen introduced us and explained that Dialta as the prime mover behind the latest Barris-Watford project, an illustrated history of what she
called "American Streamlined Moderne." Cohen called it "raygun Gothic." Their working title was The Airstream Futuropolis: The Tomorrow That Never Was."
I like raygun Gothic.
Electric Zeppelin powered by fuel cells fed by the hydrogen in the envelope?
Wingless airplane mounted on rails, interwar technology. Doing this either with enormous sails or with this cool idea:
http://www.wired.com/autopia/2010/06/downwind-faster-than-the-wind/
Jazzpunk doesn't quite work, does it?
Sounds ejaculatory.
There must be a word which is the equivalent of steampunk but which refers to nostalgia for inter-war tech/aesthetics.
Modernism?
ISTR reading a complete taxonomy of punk which included Atompunk (1950s; the B-36, the NERVA and ORION projects) as well as Steampunk, Cyberpunk and Clockpunk (Leonardo flying machines, "Pasquale's Angel" and so on) and I think that interwar counts as Dieselpunk.
Faded San Francisco art nouveau. She must be an oldie.
Zeppelins are fairly firmly entrenched in the steampunk aesthetic, no? Certainly in popular culture.
I was thinking that there's a lot of steampunk visuals which are really from the interwar period. Driving goggles and leather helmets?
if the airline industry lobbies against highspeed railways.
Southwest is also lobbying against HSR in CA. Part of me thinks we should just give the route to Southwest to operate. Maybe they would like it then.
About twenty years ago Southwest successfully lobbied against HSR in Texas (the Texas Triangle: San Antonio, Dallas, Houston).
Goddamnit. The highways are a fucking mess on that triangle, and a highspeed railway would have been fantastic.
I don't doubt it, but would be interested to read the lobbying details. Any public info?
625: Raygun Gothic is pretty good for the latter part*.
I was thinking Fraktur Dynamo Classic.
Inter-war is too broad what with the advent of Moderne in the mid-20s. A lot happened between the Model T look and the 1937 Dodge look.
640: Jesus Christ. Some friends of mine have been trying to get that nonsensical "dieselpunk" term off of Wikipedia for literally years.
I'm not going to try to find it, but I was arguing above that if California is leading the demographic change, maybe the rest of the country is bottoming out right now. With that in mind, here's an article about how California is trying to increase access to first term abortions.
A survey released this week by the Public Policy Institute of California found 68 percent of adults believe the government should not restrict access to abortion.
"We are a Democratic state, we've got a very substantial bloc of independent voters who tend to be liberal on social issues. And then among Republicans we don't have as strong an orientation around religious social values as we've seen in other states," PPIC President and CEO Mark Baldassare said.
Could just be that California is an outlier. But maybe this is what it could look like if the Republicans drive everyone away, as they did here.
641: I picked it up from Charles Stross.