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Edited by Mrph1 on Nov 30th 2023 at 11:03:59 AM
@ Fighteer:
Or the hard left, either, particularly of the Marxist-Leninist-Trotskite crowd. There's a reason why there are so many splits amongst their number. Then again, are they making a comeback in the US, as they are in the UK?
It isn't. As Silas mentioned, the anti-Nuclear, anti-drone (anti-aircraft?) and I think anti-war crowds are the same.
Keep Rolling OnBenajamin Dixon speaks against Paul Krugman. Yes, it's feelies vs feelies, but if I have to choose feelies, this guy has much better feelies. Because these are feelies that aren't claiming to be analysis, like Krugman's do.
And before someone tries to summon the "He's another blind Sanders loyalist"(because I know someone will try to paint all of us as reactionary radical leftwingers again), he questioned the entire Democratic strategy in the "Black vote pandering" video, Sanders included(though he IS a supporter, like Krugman is a Clinton supporter).
edited 19th Feb '16 9:21:54 AM by Luminosity
Out of curiosity why is everyone so convinced that the Dems can't possibly win the house? There are competitive House seats out there, the Republicans are having more incumbents stand down then the Dems and the Dems did actually get more votes in 2012. Yes taking the House wouldn't be easy, but is the Dems gaining 30 seats that impossible?
“And the Bunny nails it!” ~ Gabrael “If the UN can get through a day without everyone strangling everyone else so can we.” ~ CyranPer Piketty, a wealth tax is pretty much the only thing that will fix inequality in an environment where returns on capital are likely to be higher than economic growth by significant margins in the future. The math is pretty simple: if the rate of return on your asset is higher than the rate at which the economy as a whole is growing, that means that you're taking more of the pie and growing richer at someone else's expense, in the aggregate. So that means that not only does income from wealth need to be taxed better, but the wealth itself needs to be taxed at a fairly low rate, to knock off some of the difference between rate of return and the rate of growth (rate of return is around 4-5%, growth in developed countries is 1-3, so a total-asset wealth tax of 1-2% of a person's net worth per year is enough to make sure that they'll still grow their fortune, but grow it at a rate that's closer to the growth of everyone else's income).
The Economist on Sanders: A vote for what?
That is true. Corbyn over here a far more left-wing than Sanders — I bet he's never worked with actual Communists, unlike Corbyn.
Expanding Social Security means a further big tax rise for those making more than $250,000. Income-tax rates would become more steeply progressive, too. Totting up all the levies, the top marginal rate of federal tax—which would be levied on households earning more than $10m—would rise to about 67%. (Adding in state taxes would take it higher still.)
That is not without precedent: in the 1970s, the top rate was around 70%. This would probably dent growth, and it is at the high end of estimates of the rate which maximises revenue. Taxes might have to go higher still. Mr Sanders plans to tax capital gains as ordinary income. High earners can decide whether or not to sell assets, making this tax easy to dodge. Partly because of this, the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, an advocacy group, reckons Mr Sanders has highballed his revenue estimates by $3 trillion over a decade.
Mr Sanders knows that soaking the rich can get him only so far. He is also banking on health-care costs tumbling. Health spending per person is two-and-a-half times the average for the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries. The immense bargaining power of a government buyer could help to control waste. Medicare, government-funded health insurance for the over-65s, already provides care at a lower cost than private insurers. Mr Sanders predicts $6.3 trillion of savings over a decade.
That looks like wishful thinking. A costing of Mr Sanders’s plans by Kenneth Thorpe of Emory University, using more conservative assumptions, found that the plan was underfunded by nearly $1.1 trillion (or 6% of GDP) per year. If Mr Thorpe is right, higher taxes will be required to make the sums add up. In 2014 Mr Sanders’ own state, Vermont, abandoned a plan for a single-payer system on the basis that the required tax rises would be too great.
Getting health-care costs down is easier than it sounds. Mr Sanders hopes to save a bucketload on administration. But 20% of health spending flows to doctors, nurses and the like. A study published in Health Affairs, a journal, in June 2015 found that the average nurse earns about 40% more, and the average doctor about 50% more, than comparably educated and experienced people in other fields. To bring costs down to British or Canadian levels, these salaries would have to fall. Half a million Americans work in the private health-insurance industry, which would shrink or disappear if Mr Sanders had his way. His plan is “radical in a way that no legislation has ever been”, argues Henry Aaron of Brookings, a think-tank.
Mr Sanders has bold plans for monetary policy and banking, too. He supports a movement headed by Rand Paul, an erstwhile Republican runner, to get politicians more involved in decisions on interest rates, because he thinks Fed policy is too tight. To loosen it, he would bar the Fed from raising rates when unemployment is above 4%.
Mr Sanders’ plans tend to suffer from a fallacy of composition. Although the average American might not mind paying higher taxes instead of a health-insurance premium, some—such as firms that do not provide health insurance—would face big losses. With such concentrated costs, Mr Sanders’s plans would have no chance of making it past Congress, even an improbably friendly one.
edited 19th Feb '16 10:33:32 AM by Greenmantle
Keep Rolling OnI'm just going to butt in to express my astonishment that we can post more than one video in a single post now.
Oh God! Natural light!A) The Republicans have sufficiently remapped enough districts throughout America using the 2010 Census Data to build ideological fortress districts where there's a large number of Republicans outweighing Democrats, and shoving Democrats into their own districts.
B) The DNC is very. Very. Very. Very. Very. Very lazy, and is more focused on the coronation of Hillary than they are about legislative party health. If it wasn't for Scalia biting the big one, they might of half assed the Senate, and may still do so. The current DNC gains most of its power by focusing on the presidency, instead of allowing rivals to their preferred presidential candidate to grow. Which is why we have such a lack of Democratic rising stars: The DNC half-assed things to not let them grow.
The problem with these condemnations, according to former JEC Executive Director James Galbraith, is that none of the economists involved in the fracas actually crunched any numbers to show why Friedman's study was supposedly such a sham. Galbraith now teaches economics at the University of Texas at Austin.
"You write that you have applied rigor to your analyses of economic proposals by Democrats and Republicans," Galbraith wrote in a letter to Krueger, Romer, Goolsbee and Tyson. "On reading this sentence I looked to the bottom of the page, to find a reference or link to your rigorous review of Professor Friedman's study. I found nothing there."
Friedman, who is a political supporter of Hillary Clinton, had projected a 5.3 percent economic growth rate under Sanders' platform. That rate is high relative to the current figure of about 2.4 percent, but Galbraith said it is clear from the paper that Friedman reached the figure by relying on "standard impact assumptions and forecasting methods."
"It is not fair or honest to claim that Professor Friedman's methods are extreme," Galbraith added. "Nor is it fair or honest to imply that you have given Professor Friedman's paper a rigorous review. You have not."
"What you have done, is to light a fire under Paul Krugman, who is now using his high perch to airily dismiss the Friedman paper as 'nonsense.' Paul is an immensely powerful figure, and many people rely on him for careful assessments. It seems clear that he has made no such assessment in this case. Instead, Paul relies on you to impugn an economist with far less reach, whose work is far more careful, in point of fact, than your casual dismissal of it."
The Fight Between Bernie Sanders And Hillary Clinton Is Officially Super Ugly
edited 19th Feb '16 11:40:29 AM by SolipsistOwl
Well, if we're gonna get technical, Kenneth Thrope did criticize Sanders plan with numbers, but no one, even other economists criticizing the plan, has backed those numbers up or provided alternative repeatedly provable numbers. It's all "feelies" at this point.
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If that's what you call super ugly I'm wondering what you consider polite. Because that statement is some of the most polite disagreement I have ever seen. I mean, really, just having an argument over something doesn't mean it's gotten "ugly".
In any event, I'd say economists are the ones we want discussing these things, because it's the only reason I'm getting anything resembling a coherent picture about any of this. Kind of wish they had a "for dummies" version though because once they get into the math and such I start involuntarily checking out and have to read a sentence a few times to understand it.
edited 19th Feb '16 11:48:06 AM by AceofSpades
Headlines have always been clickbait. That is literally the purpose of a headline. Even physical newspapers that don't have "clicks" have a different person writing the headline than the article.
Articles are journalism, headlines are marketing.
edited 19th Feb '16 11:51:57 AM by TobiasDrake
My Tumblr. Currently side-by-side liveblogging Digimon Adventure, sub vs dub.I don't think the DNC will half-ass the Senate. What the DNC's problem is that if they don't think a race can be won, then they'll ignore it completely, leaving lower-level people to decide for themselves whether they want to tough it out or not. The Senate in 2016 is fairly easy pickings, with dead ducks like Ron Johnson or Pat Toomey up for reelection.
“Sen. Sanders accepts Clinton’s challenge. He will release all of the transcripts of all of his Wall Street speeches. That’s easy. The fact is, there weren’t any. Bernie gave no speeches to Wall Street firms,” spokesman Michael Briggs said in a statement. “He wasn’t paid anything while Secretary Clinton made millions, including $675,000 for three paid speeches to Goldman Sachs.”
“So now we hope Secretary Clinton keeps her word and releases the transcripts of her speeches. We hope she agrees that the American people deserve to know what she told Wall Street behind closed doors,” he continued.
Sanders challenges Clinton to release Wall Street speech transcripts

Pretty much what I've been trying to say, repeatedly. Yet apparently this makes me a katana-wielding Sanders obsessivist. Really, I'd carry a saber instead...
edited 19th Feb '16 8:41:15 AM by Luminosity