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US Politics: Speak Into the Microwave


Fragile Bird

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In more ways than one (Snow Job in Washington). Changed the title,  I could not get that comment out of my mind. :P
Carry on.

Oh....one thing.  I have not looked at the Trumpcare bill, but John Oliver says six pages of it are dedicated to giving the power to states to be able to strip health care from someone benefitting from the act if they win the lottery.  Because, you know, damn those welfare bums who buy lottery tickets.

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Speaking of snow: I just want to mention that I can't put aside the thought that our chancellor cancelled her visit to the US mostly because she's terrified of getting snowed in together with Trump. Then I imagined how that would look like. Oh my god, the pictures in my head...

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RepublicanCare really is bad. Shocker.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/03/obamacare-uninsured-white-house-236019

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A White House analysis of the GOP plan to repeal and replace Obamacare shows even steeper coverage losses than the projections by the Congressional Budget Office, according to a document viewed by POLITICO on Monday.

Now conservative sorts of people, did you really think the US had the best healthcare system in the world?

http://www.moneyandbanking.com/commentary/2017/3/12/improving-us-healthcare-and-coverage

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Before getting to the details of our proposal, we begin with striking evidence of the inefficiency of the U.S. health care system. The following chart (from OurWorldInData.org) displays life expectancy at birth on the vertical axis against real health expenditure per capita on the horizontal axis. The point is that the U.S. line in red lies well below the cost-performance frontier established by a range of advanced economies (and some emerging economies, too). Put differently, the United States spends more per person but gets less for its money.

Life Expectancy and Health Expenditure per capita, 1970-2014

And conservative sorts of people, did you really think the healthcare market was like the market in you saw in your econ 101 textboooks?

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So, what is to be done? Starting with basic principles, it is essential to understand why it is extremely difficult to fashion a predominantly market-based solution for health care that provides universal coverage. As with any form of insurance, health insurance is plagued by adverse selection and moral hazard.

......

We could go on with additional examples that highlight the challenges inherent in designing a purely competitive market solution to the problem of providing health care: large hospitals have power to set prices in local markets; patents give pharmaceutical firms monopolies; licensing requirements, professional societies and health sciences schools restrict the number of providers; providers and insurers price services not outcomes; and products of health services are increasingly bundled and complex. Yet, facing these exact same challenges, other countries have succeeded in doing better. So, the bottom line is clear: compared to other advanced economies, U.S. health care costs more, is less effective at boosting longevity, and limits access.

Now, we're gonna teach those wimmizes a lesson.

And if they mess up on their email, we're gonna, gonna, give their job to a baboon.

http://www.nber.org/papers/w23242#fromrss

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We examine gender discrimination in the financial advisory industry. We study a less salient mechanism for discrimination, firm discipline following missteps. There are substantial differences in the punishment of misconduct across genders. Although both female and male advisers are disciplined for misconduct, female advisers are punished more severely. Following an incidence of misconduct, female advisers are 20% more likely to lose their jobs, and 30% less likely to find new jobs relative to male advisers. Females face harsher punishment despite engaging in less costly misconduct and despite a lower propensity towards repeat offenses. Evidence suggests that the observed behavior is not driven by productivity differences across advisers. Rather, we find supporting evidence for taste-based discrimination. For females, a disproportionate share of misconduct complaints is initiated by the firm, instead of customers or regulators. Moreover, there is significant heterogeneity among firms. Firms with a greater percentage of male executives/owners at a given branch, tend to punish female advisers more severely following misconduct, and also tend to hire fewer female advisers with past record of misconduct.

 

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Maybe Trump will be remembered as a “true conservative”, after all, with him and his people cranking out nutty old conspiracy theories faster than a knife fight in a phone booth.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-trump-administration-dons-a-tinfoil-hat/2017/03/13/597d65d0-082a-11e7-93dc-00f9bdd74ed1_story.html?

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Time to trade in those red #MAGA caps, Trumpkins. If you want your headgear to fit in with the latest White House fashions, invest in some tinfoil.

From top to bottom, this administration has been infested with conspiracy theorists. Most appear to be true believers. Take Stephen K. Bannon and his anxieties about the “deep state,” or the recently ousted Michael Flynn and his propagation of suggestions that Hillary Clinton was tied to a child sex ring run out of a D.C. pizza parlor.

Others, such as Kellyanne Conway, appear to just be paranoiacs for pay.

Maybe we ought to change Party O' Bizness to Party O' Nutty Conspiracy Theories.

https://www.ft.com/content/2914c7fd-90dc-3ee2-80d7-7fec3ad40a87

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When the FOMC tightened policy from 2004-06, none of these outcomes followed the large rise in US short-term rates. In February 2005, Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan made his famous remark about a “conundrum” in the American bond market. He found it puzzling that long term bond yields were declining in a period during which the FOMC had just raised short-term rates by 150 basis points. The fall in the dollar and the rise in equities during the tightening phase also seemed counter-intuitive to many investors.

Now some conservative sorts of people have alleged that the FED's interest rate policy helped to fuel the housing boom. Now, its a claim I'm a bit sympathetic too, but conservative sorts of people would like to also maintain, it would seem to me, that people are able to price assets correctly using forward looking expectations (you know, the market always gets it right!!!!). If people use rational expectations to price assets, then it isn't clear to me why what the FED does should matter.

But, I'll leave it to conservative sorts of people to explain that one.

Anyway, the FED kept rates too low for too long and that helped to fuel the housing crises story may not be quite right. As there is evidence that it was the compression of term premiums that was the real cause. And that was because of lots of foreign capital inflows. And financial crises can be funny like that. Like Prussia probably thought getting a huge gold payment from France, after defeating it in the Franco-Prussian war, was a really good idea, until the huge gold inflows likely caused a boom and bust cycle. They can often hit you unexpectedly out of nowhere.

Anyway, in looking, at the FED policy, and how it's affecting potential bubbles, it may be important to look what term premiums are doing.

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Responses for last thread's replies, sorry for the delay:

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[From @Nasty LongRider]  Maybe, but they were experienced pols who would know what they were facing.  They would know going in who the opposition is and who their allies were.  Not mention experience with the process of changing laws and working the politics of it and how to get thinks done.

Apparently, Pres Orange Thingie didn't have a fucking clue doesn't quite understand the process.  See the difference?

I do indeed - that was the basis for me raising the comparison to FDR and LBJ in the first place.

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[From @Commodore]  I'm always amused at the goldilocks redistricting standard. 

If we don't have majority minority districts, that's racist. But if they are too concentrated, that's also racist.  

The real problem is the majority minority requirement, which is inherently offensive. Districts should be color blind. 

While it's true justices on both sides mentioned the normative desirability for majority-minority districts in the Shaw decision, I'm not aware of the existence of any goldilocks standard.  In no way are states/legislatures required to redistrict towards majority-minority divisions in any way (as previously mentioned, the entire point of the case is do prevent such types of gerrymandering) - they're only disallowed from manipulating the districts to deliberately avoid majority-minority districts.  More specifically, the Gingles conditions for how the court has approached Section 2 of the VRA still requires any minority vote to be "compact," a (albeit ill-defined) test that the district is geographically "natural."

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2 hours ago, Tywin et al. said:

Man, it's really funny watching these Republican Congressmen try and defend Ryancare. Call it Operation Access Freedom! 

Really, call it TrumpCare. This is a strategic point. If you want Trump to be sunk by this, you have to associate him with it at every single possible turn. 

And he supports it openly, so it shouldn't be hard. It's  TrumpCare.

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16 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Really, call it TrumpCare. This is a strategic point. If you want Trump to be sunk by this, you have to associate him with it at every single possible turn. 

And he supports it openly, so it shouldn't be hard. It's  TrumpCare.

Seriously.  Trump is a guy who wants his name on everything.  If this passes, it will probably be the biggest legislative accomplishment of his presidency.  And yet he doesn't want his name on it?  Sorry, thems the breaks. 

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21 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

And he supports it openly, so it shouldn't be hard. It's  TrumpCare.

Can we call it TrumpicanCare? I certainly wouldn't want the Republican Party, along with Trump, to miss out on the "credit" for this healthcare "plan".

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If Trump fails, so do the Republicans.

If Ryan fails, Ryan fails.

If RepublicanCare fails, it won't change a thing because it won't change republicans.

By calling it TrumpCare you allow people who voted for Trump and Republicans to save a bit of face and potentially convert to other causes. By attacking their identity via RepublicanCare you're picking a fight that will make them hunker down more. 

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Just now, supernintendo chalmers said:

how about TryanCare... like "if we can hand massive windfalls to wealthy, why even try an' care about those dirty dying poors?"

Really, this is just too much tryhard stuff. Keep it simple. This is TrumpCare. 24 million people losing their coverage is TrumpCare. Old people spending about $9k every year on coverage out of their 18k yearly income when they had spent $1700 previously is TrumpCare. Pregnancy not being covered is TrumpCare.

This should be the message by the press, by the pundits, by everyone - make Trump own this. Make people as confused about what the AHCA is compared to TrumpCare as they were ObamaCare and the ACA. 

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Ah, who thought that Republican Healthcare would be so complicated entertaining, when you watch it from a safe distance and a place with public healthcare. But you kinda have to give them credit, turning a healthcare into a tax shelter for the super rich, that was something I did not see coming. Add to that, Cruz comparing ACA mandate to being required to drive around in a Maserati makes so much more sense in that context.

 

On a completely different note. Am I the only one, who has to think of the old SNL character of Mr. Peepers (aka Monkeyboy) when he sees a picture of Paul Ryan?

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39 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Really, call it TrumpCare. This is a strategic point. If you want Trump to be sunk by this, you have to associate him with it at every single possible turn. 

And he supports it openly, so it shouldn't be hard. It's  TrumpCare.

Does it really matter all that much? The bill isn't going to become law, and on the off chance that it does, people will still associate all the negative outcomes with Trump. In my opinion, the best possible outcome for Democrats is for the bill to fail and for Trump to distance himself from it and throw Ryan under the bus. This will exacerbate Republican infighting and hurt them both legislatively and at the polls. 

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13 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

Does it really matter all that much? The bill isn't going to become law, and on the off chance that it does, people will still associate all the negative outcomes with Trump.

No, I agree with Kalbear on this. Some Republican voters refrained from signing up for ObamaCare, not because they didn't need it, but simply because of the name.

One and a half year from now, believe it or not, a lot of people will have forgotten the details of who rolled out what and why. Especially given the extremely high frequency of hot topics that this administration generates. And especially if the bill fails and fades into the background soon. But if it officially becomes TrumpCare, Dems will have a much easier time using it for campaigning next year.

13 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

This will exacerbate Republican infighting and hurt them both legislatively and at the polls. 

Speaking of polls, the fallout against Trump is definitely happening now. Gallup is showing him well on course for a new low in his young presidency, and OH SHIT, even Rasmussen agrees. If this is just the beginning, we could see some serious cockblocking from Congress soon. Of course, it can also be a temporary thing until Trump hits the campaign trail and Van Jones swoons like a little girl over Führers mad teleprompter skills again. Or until the administration stirs up a new offensive against an imaginary enemy.

But one can hope that this is some lasting damage.

 

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30 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

If Trump fails, so do the Republicans.

If Ryan fails, Ryan fails.

If RepublicanCare fails, it won't change a thing because it won't change republicans.

By calling it TrumpCare you allow people who voted for Trump and Republicans to save a bit of face and potentially convert to other causes. By attacking their identity via RepublicanCare you're picking a fight that will make them hunker down more. 

That's a pity.

A pity we have to be so cautious in delivering a decisive blow to the Republican Party, along with the orange swamp thing.

When the orange one fails, Republicans will be like, "we we're just walking down the street and Trump showed up and we were like 'what are you doing here Donald Trump!'" They will deny all responsibility for creating the frickin orange monster.

That's what they did with Dubya.

 I don't like letting them slip out of the trap they've gotten themselves into without taking the political beating they deserve.

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19 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

Really, this is just too much tryhard stuff. Keep it simple. This is TrumpCare. 24 million people losing their coverage is TrumpCare. Old people spending about $9k every year on coverage out of their 18k yearly income when they had spent $1700 previously is TrumpCare. Pregnancy not being covered is TrumpCare.

This should be the message by the press, by the pundits, by everyone - make Trump own this. Make people as confused about what the AHCA is compared to TrumpCare as they were ObamaCare and the ACA. 

I agree with your emphasis on directing responsibility attribution squarely towards Trump.  Guilt-by-labeling is something the GOP has always been infinitely better at - death tax, pro-life, Patriot Act...

The fact somebody like Trump does NOT want his name on it should be all the indication one needs to do so!

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