U.S. Politics: The Ideas of Mueller

[Mlle. Zabzie]

8 hours ago, Ormond said:

Just ran across the latest data from Pew on partisan leanings of Americans. Numbers identifying with the Democrats have increased a bit.

This data does break out the "Some college" people separately from "high school grad or less" on the one hand and "four year college grad" on the other. Note that in terms of Republican party identification the White "some college" people are closer to the high school grads only than they are to the college grads: % of Whites that are Republicans or leaners is now 58% for high school or less, 55% for "some college", 46% for "four year degree", and 37% for "post-grad experience."

Note that in the entire population the %'s of four year degree people who are Republicans-and-leaners vs. Democrats-and-leaners has exactly reversed between 1994 and 2017: 54% Republican and 39% Democrat in 1994, vs. 39% Republican and 54% Democrat in 2017.

www.people-press.org/2018/03/20/1-trends-in-party-affiliation-among-demographic-groups/

That seems like too big a shift to me to be primarily explained by older college educated Republicans dying off. I think it shows, contrary to what I often see, that many people do actually change their partisan leaning over the course of their lifetime. I think a lot of college educated people (like myself) were Republicans in their youth and have now shifted to Democratic leaners, while among blue collar voters a lot have made the opposite change.

 

8 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

I started out life as a center righty (though never as extreme as today's crop of conservatives) and got more liberal as I got older, to the point I self identify as being a liberal, even if conservative sorts of people say I shouldn't. So yes it does happen.

Of course I often hear old Republican guys always claiming that they started out life as liberals and got more conservative as they saw how the "real" world works, to which I usually laugh, snicker, and snort at. Given their usual attachment to conservative fairy tales, I doubt it.

I also think that the parties have significantly shifted over the past lifetime or so.  That is, the Republican Party of the 1980s is a very different elephant from the pachyderm that we see today (that's not to say that with hindsight you can't see the seeds of what they would become going back to the 60s - you can - but that wasn't necessarily the lived experience).  And frankly, the Democrats were asses then and asses now - but for different reasons.  I also started life out life as a center righty too.  And if I'm honest, I probably haven't moved that much to the left, but the Republican party has moved SO far to the right that I am beyond uncomfortable with it and our venn diagrams don't really overlap.  I am not comfortable with the Progressive wing of the Democratic party - there is a lot of magical thinking going on over there.  But overall, I'm way more confident that the Democratic party will do a good job with my individual liberties and my livelihood than the Republican party at this point.  And I'm not sure I've changed that much.  I just look more liberal because I remained sane.

[OldGimletEye]

3 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

 

I also think that the parties have significantly shifted over the past lifetime or so.  That is, the Republican Party of the 1980s is a very different elephant from the pachyderm that we see today (that's not to say that with hindsight you can't see the seeds of what they would become going back to the 60s - you can - but that wasn't necessarily the lived experience).  

There is a lot of truth to this, I think. In the in 1980s people like Larry McDonald were still in the Democratic Party. And he was about as right as you could get, being a card carrying member of the John Birch Society.

And you still had, I think, some of the old school upper crust North East Yankee Republicans like Dubya’s father. Yeah, they were generally pro business, probably didn’t love labor unions that much or FDR’s New Deal Legacy, but they were generally reasonable, weren’t looking to go back to the 1890s, and were fairly socially liberal. And frankly these guys, I think, became as much as targets for the conservative movement as old New Deal Democratic liberals were.

The transformation or complete realignment of the parties really hadn’t been completed in the 1980s, I don’t think.

[Yukle]

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

 

I also think that the parties have significantly shifted over the past lifetime or so.  That is, the Republican Party of the 1980s is a very different elephant from the pachyderm that we see today (that's not to say that with hindsight you can't see the seeds of what they would become going back to the 60s - you can - but that wasn't necessarily the lived experience).  And frankly, the Democrats were asses then and asses now - but for different reasons.  I also started life out life as a center righty too.  And if I'm honest, I probably haven't moved that much to the left, but the Republican party has moved SO far to the right that I am beyond uncomfortable with it and our venn diagrams don't really overlap.  I am not comfortable with the Progressive wing of the Democratic party - there is a lot of magical thinking going on over there.  But overall, I'm way more confident that the Democratic party will do a good job with my individual liberties and my livelihood than the Republican party at this point.  And I'm not sure I've changed that much.  I just look more liberal because I remained sane.

The thing I always find fascinating is that America thinks it has a left-wing. To the rest of the world, it looks like two right-wing parties whose ideologies often oppose each other, but who are both still right-wing.

[all swedes are racist]

2 minutes ago, Yukle said:

The thing I always find fascinating is that America thinks it has a left-wing. To the rest of the world, it looks like two right-wing parties whose ideologies often oppose each other, but who are both still right-wing.

nailed it

[OldGimletEye]

1 hour ago, Yukle said:

The thing I always find fascinating is that America thinks it has a left-wing. To the rest of the world, it looks like two right-wing parties whose ideologies often oppose each other, but who are both still right-wing.

This is a good point. By American standards, I guess I'm part of the "far left". The truth of the matter is I'm really more like a welfare state, keynesian with socially liberal inclinations. In other places it would probably make me center left or even rather centrist.

[ThinkerX]

1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said:

There is a lot of truth to this, I think. In the in 1980s people like Larry McDonald were still in the Democratic Party. And he was about as right as you could get, being a card carrying member of the John Birch Society.

And you still had, I think, some of the old school upper crust North East Yankee Republicans like Dubya’s father. Yeah, they were generally pro business, probably didn’t love labor unions that much or FDR’s New Legacy, but they were generally reasonable, weren’t looking to go back to the 1890s, and were fairly socially liberal. And frankly these guys, I think, became as much as targets for the conservative movement as old New Deal Democratic liberals were.

The transformation or complete realignment of the parties really hadn’t been completed in the 1980s, I don’t think.

Perhaps not all of the old line R's are extinct.  Been meaning to run this one by you for a while now.

 

A few months ago, we had a runoff election for Borough Mayor (County Mayor to most of you).  This area being what it is, there was no question, period, that we were going to end up with a conservative in charge.  Only question was 'how conservative?'  Contest came down between the slightly liberal yet somewhat sleazy Car Dealership Gal (CDG) and the more conservative straight arrow Natural Gas Guy (NGG).  To his credit, NGG kept his end of natural gas costs on the low side, though they still went up because of factors not under his control (NG suppliers).

NGG won the runoff election.

A major campaign issue was the Borough deficit - on the order of a few million bucks.  Not devastating, but not good.  CDG wanted to punt the issue (or at least was evasive about it); while NGG wanted to bring his expertise to the problem.  NGG basically advocated a reorganization of the Borough - consolidate offices, that sort of thing, plus he pointed out they owned enough surplus crap to rival a big box store and a bunch of property that could be sold off no sweat (foreclosures and 'odd deals' for want of a better term). 

 

Also up were three initiatives: one that sought to basically criminalize pot at the local level, one seeking bonds to replace the HVAC system in the Borough Building, and another pertaining to expansion of a school.  CDG supported all three measures; NGG opposed them.  All three lost.

 

NGG pointed out that while he didn't care for pot himself, it (the retail stores) did put people to work and brought in some tax revenue.  The HVAC thing - well, the supporters wanted the 'Cadillac' version, costing millions of dollars.  NGG decided that while the system needed work, it didn't need that much work - last I heard, it was now an in-office budget item (boiler and some electronics) checking in at around 120K. 

 

Now - make no mistake about it - NGG is a conservative, prone to rants about overlarge government and family values.  But, based on his acts so far, does he count as a 'Conservative Clown' to Old Gimlet Eye?  Or is he one of the old line fiscal conservatives?     

[Yukle]

This is the bit that could get Trump unstuck (hopefully):

Quote

Anderson Cooper: Are you saying that can be seen as a contribution to benefit a campaign?

Trevor Potter: I am. it's a $130,000 in-kind contribution by Cohen to the Trump campaign, which is about $126,500 above what he's allowed to give. And if he does this on behalf of his client, the candidate, that is a coordinated, illegal, in-kind contribution by Cohen for the purpose of influencing the election, of benefiting the candidate by keeping this secret.

Full text of the interview (and a video of it) found here.

[Fragile Bird]

Damn it, I forgot to pvr 60 minutes.I'm sure the interview is available everywhere.

 

[Mlle. Zabzie]

16 minutes ago, ThinkerX said:

Perhaps not all of the old line R's are extinct.  Been meaning to run this one by you for a while now.

 

A few months ago, we had a runoff election for Borough Mayor (County Mayor to most of you).  This area being what it is, there was no question, period, that we were going to end up with a conservative in charge.  Only question was 'how conservative?'  Contest came down between the slightly liberal yet somewhat sleazy Car Dealership Gal (CDG) and the more conservative straight arrow Natural Gas Guy (NGG).  To his credit, NGG kept his end of natural gas costs on the low side, though they still went up because of factors not under his control (NG suppliers).

NGG won the runoff election.

A major campaign issue was the Borough deficit - on the order of a few million bucks.  Not devastating, but not good.  CDG wanted to punt the issue (or at least was evasive about it); while NGG wanted to bring his expertise to the problem.  NGG basically advocated a reorganization of the Borough - consolidate offices, that sort of thing, plus he pointed out they owned enough surplus crap to rival a big box store and a bunch of property that could be sold off no sweat (foreclosures and 'odd deals' for want of a better term). 

 

Also up were three initiatives: one that sought to basically criminalize pot at the local level, one seeking bonds to replace the HVAC system in the Borough Building, and another pertaining to expansion of a school.  CDG supported all three measures; NGG opposed them.  All three lost.

 

NGG pointed out that while he didn't care for pot himself, it (the retail stores) did put people to work and brought in some tax revenue.  The HVAC thing - well, the supporters wanted the 'Cadillac' version, costing millions of dollars.  NGG decided that while the system needed work, it didn't need that much work - last I heard, it was now an in-office budget item (boiler and some electronics) checking in at around 120K. 

 

Now - make no mistake about it - NGG is a conservative, prone to rants about overlarge government and family values.  But, based on his acts so far, does he count as a 'Conservative Clown' to Old Gimlet Eye?  Or is he one of the old line fiscal conservatives?     

Here’s the thing. Um like a lifetime ago (I am old) I was proud to work for Senator John Warner. I am still proud that I worked for him. He could not exist in today’s Republican Party. So I think most of them are gone. Maybe you have an exception there but doubt it. It’s also hard to look at the history of the parties. The solid South went Democrat for 4 generations for a not very flattering reason. So neither party has real moral high ground. (The party of Lincoln and Grant and TR is not today’s Republican Party, but nor is the Democratic Party the party of Jackson and Wilson). And the party orientations of Europe do not translate neatly over here. They don’t. Comparing the right and left in Europe to the US is like comparing apples to  Carrots - it only scans because as humans we look for connections. 

[OldGimletEye]

1 hour ago, ThinkerX said:

Perhaps not all of the old line R's are extinct.  Been meaning to run this one by you for a while now.

 

A few months ago, we had a runoff election for Borough Mayor (County Mayor to most of you).  This area being what it is, there was no question, period, that we were going to end up with a conservative in charge.  Only question was 'how conservative?'  Contest came down between the slightly liberal yet somewhat sleazy Car Dealership Gal (CDG) and the more conservative straight arrow Natural Gas Guy (NGG).  To his credit, NGG kept his end of natural gas costs on the low side, though they still went up because of factors not under his control (NG suppliers).

NGG won the runoff election.

A major campaign issue was the Borough deficit - on the order of a few million bucks.  Not devastating, but not good.  CDG wanted to punt the issue (or at least was evasive about it); while NGG wanted to bring his expertise to the problem.  NGG basically advocated a reorganization of the Borough - consolidate offices, that sort of thing, plus he pointed out they owned enough surplus crap to rival a big box store and a bunch of property that could be sold off no sweat (foreclosures and 'odd deals' for want of a better term). 

 

Also up were three initiatives: one that sought to basically criminalize pot at the local level, one seeking bonds to replace the HVAC system in the Borough Building, and another pertaining to expansion of a school.  CDG supported all three measures; NGG opposed them.  All three lost.

 

NGG pointed out that while he didn't care for pot himself, it (the retail stores) did put people to work and brought in some tax revenue.  The HVAC thing - well, the supporters wanted the 'Cadillac' version, costing millions of dollars.  NGG decided that while the system needed work, it didn't need that much work - last I heard, it was now an in-office budget item (boiler and some electronics) checking in at around 120K. 

 

Now - make no mistake about it - NGG is a conservative, prone to rants about overlarge government and family values.  But, based on his acts so far, does he count as a 'Conservative Clown' to Old Gimlet Eye?  Or is he one of the old line fiscal conservatives?     

Okay before I give an answer let me clarify, my beef with so called Republican fiscal rectitude is:

1. They are just not that good at it. They talk about being good at it, but when their guy gets in office, they end up stinking at it. Remember, that Barack Obama is the first Democratic President since Harry Truman where the Debt/GDP ratio did not fall and for good reasons.

2. When your in a liquidity trap situation, which we were in for too long, then spend the money. You’re not really showing much fiscal rectitude by not spending when your in a liquidity trap, particularly when you start thinking of deteriorating labor skills because people remained unemployed and because investments are not being made.

3. Using fiscal rectitude as excuse to get rid of programs you don’t like because they are too socialisticiyish for your taste. If you don’t like things like Social Security cause you consider  it to socialist, then come out and say that, but don’t throw up a bunch of smoke about fiscal deficits to cover your tracks.

4. Often saying things like, “Did ya know we have 20 trillion dollars of debt!” That number means nothing. And using it is highly misleading. The proper number is debt/GDP ratio.

That said, I don’t believe every spending program is a good idea. Or that we should spend on money on just anything. Trump’s ridiculous border wall being a good example. Nor do I think we can completely ignore some of the future debt issues the US has. These matters will have to be resolved. I’d hope it would be done by primarily getting a handle on the US overpriced healthcare system and fixing the Republican corporate tax bill so that it is at least revenue neutral.

Now with regard to the Borough owing a few million dollars. It’s hard for me to comment without knowing how the deficits came about, whether they were the result of spending on bullshit or were the result of spending on necessary public goods. If the deficit came about because of spending on bullshit, then the reorganization plan might be okay.

On the pot issue, I agree with the NGG guy. I’m in favor of de criminalizing it, though I’m not a user.

On the school issue. I don’t have a comment because I don’t know enough facts to comment. But, I’m supportive of public education, so I would probably disagree.

On the HVAC issue, if NGG guy's facts are accurate, I’d probably agree.

I’d say based on his acts NGG is not being a conservative clown, as far as I can tell. But, I would say that making broad and vague claims about “overlarge government” and comments about “family values” (which usually is a slam against people that aren’t heterosexual or single mothers) gets him close to clown territory. 

[White Walker Texas Ranger]

Also local, fixing potholes, politics has a different flavor from the national kind. Even if they bring up national culture wars in the campaign.

[Shryke]

2 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Here’s the thing. Um like a lifetime ago (I am old) I was proud to work for Senator John Warner. I am still proud that I worked for him. He could not exist in today’s Republican Party. So I think most of them are gone. Maybe you have an exception there but doubt it. It’s also hard to look at the history of the parties. The solid South went Democrat for 4 generations for a not very flattering reason. So neither party has real moral high ground. (The party of Lincoln and Grant and TR is not today’s Republican Party, but nor is the Democratic Party the party of Jackson and Wilson). And the party orientations of Europe do not translate neatly over here. They don’t. Comparing the right and left in Europe to the US is like comparing apples to  Carrots - it only scans because as humans we look for connections. 

One party represents the white supremacists now and the other doesn't. That's the moral high ground. Sure, they were part of the Democratic party before but, as you mention up-thread, parties change over time.

Since at least the 60s the Republican party has openly courted white supremacist voters. The current incarnation of the party is simply the natural end result of that process.

And I mean, shit, the Republican party of the 1980s is the party of Iran-Contra. Or Nixon.

[The Marquis de Leech]

2 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

Here’s the thing. Um like a lifetime ago (I am old) I was proud to work for Senator John Warner. I am still proud that I worked for him. He could not exist in today’s Republican Party. So I think most of them are gone. Maybe you have an exception there but doubt it. It’s also hard to look at the history of the parties. The solid South went Democrat for 4 generations for a not very flattering reason. So neither party has real moral high ground. (The party of Lincoln and Grant and TR is not today’s Republican Party, but nor is the Democratic Party the party of Jackson and Wilson). And the party orientations of Europe do not translate neatly over here. They don’t. Comparing the right and left in Europe to the US is like comparing apples to  Carrots - it only scans because as humans we look for connections. 

Every US Democratic President since Franklin Roosevelt would recognise the modern party - and even Wilson, as mind-bogglingly racist as he was, would recognise its economics. You would have to go back to Grover Cleveland for something truly alien, and the last Democratic Presidential candidate to actually accommodate the white supremacists was Adlai Stevenson in 1956 (a purely political consideration: he had little time for them otherwise).

Republicans...the Reagan who actually governed (rather than the Reagan of canonisation) would struggle to exist in the current Republican Party.

[Jace, Extat]

20 minutes ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Every US Democratic President since Franklin Roosevelt would recognise the modern party - and even Wilson, as mind-bogglingly racist as he was, would recognise its economics. You would have to go back to Grover Cleveland for something truly alien, and the last Democratic Presidential candidate to actually accommodate the white supremacists was Adlai Stevenson in 1956 (a purely political consideration: he had little time for them otherwise).

Republicans...the Reagan who actually governed (rather than the Reagan of canonisation) would struggle to exist in the current Republican Party.

If it please you, I would sooner not associate Wilson to any form of the modern Democratic party. That war profiteering piece of shit would be Reagan reincarnated in the current Republican party.

[The Marquis de Leech]

4 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

If it please you, I would sooner not associate Wilson to any form of the modern Democratic party. That war profiteering piece of shit would be Reagan reincarnated in the current Republican party.

No-one wants Wilson. The Left hate his racism (and have a much greater hero in the form of FDR anyway), the Right hate his economics, and everyone hates Versailles.

[OldGimletEye]

Interesting article about intended investment plans of firms due to the corporate tax cut.

http://macroblog.typepad.com/macroblog/2018/03/what-are-businesses-saying-about-tax-reform-now.html

Quote

In a recent macroblog post, we shared some results of a joint national survey that is an ongoing collaboration between the Atlanta Fed, Nick Bloom of Stanford University, and Steve Davis of the University of Chicago, and Jose Barrero of Stanford University. (By the way, we're planning on calling this work the "Survey of Business Executives," or SBE.).

In mid-November, we posed this question to our panel of firms:

If passed in its current form, how would the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act affect your capital expenditures in 2018?

 

Quote

At the time, we (and perhaps others) were a little surprised to find that roughly two-thirds of respondents indicated that tax reform hasn't enticed them into changing their investment plans for 2018. Our initial interpretation was that the lack of an investment response by firms made it unlikely that we'd see a sharp acceleration in output growth in 2018.

Another interpretation of those results might be that firms were unwilling to speculate on how they'd respond to legislation that was not yet set in stone. Now that the ink has been dry on the bill for a while, we decided to ask again.

In our February survey—which was in the field from February 12 through February 23—we asked firms, "How has the recently enacted Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) led you to revise your plans for capital expenditures in 2018?" The results shown below—restricted to the 218 firms that responded in both November 2017 and February 2018—suggest that, if anything, these firms have revised down their expectations for this year:

 

Quote

You may be thinking that perhaps firms had already set their capital expenditure plans for 2018, so asking about changes in firms' 2018 plans isn't too revealing—which is why we asked them about their 2019 plans as well. The results (showing all 272 responses in February) are not statistically different from their 2018 response. Roughly three-quarters of firms don't plan to change their capital expenditure plans in 2019 as a result of the TCJA:

Of course, its worth noting this about intended plans. We still haven't seen any actual impressive investment yet.

A further comment if I may conservative sorts of people:

Start off with the Euler Consumption Equation. Lets do a simple two period version of it, something like:

U’(C1) = B(1+R)U’(C2), where U’ is the marginal utility of consumption, B time preference, and R the  interest rate.

This little ol’ equation is about the heart of every current DSGE model you will see. The only problem is that real world data contradicts it. When interest rates are high, people should reduce their first period consumption and save more. But that is not what happens, in the real world, lower current consumption does not correspond to higher interest rates.

When Paul Volcker jacks up interest rates in the 1980s, people spend and borrow less, that doesn’t cause firms to say, “golly lets sell our debt (to finance investments) at rock bottom prices cause a future consumption boom cometh our way.”

Er, uh, um what is going on here conservative sorts of people?

Imagine Robinson Caruso gets to whatever island he gets stranded on. Lets say, he finds X amount of cocanuts and he knows he is going to live for only two periods. He starts thinking about his intermporal  optimization problem. In short he’s got to figure out, how much he wants to consume in the first period, how much he wants to save and invest in the second period, and lets say he has to spend time planting the cocanuts in the second period, so how much he wants to work.

His problem looks something like:

U(C1) + B[U(C2) – U(l2) ]

subject to:

C1 + p2C2 = X + w(2)l2

And you know conservative sorts of people there are three markets in this simple Robinson Caruso economy, which are the current cocanut market, the future cocanut market, and the labor market producing capital goods (saving and planting cocanuts, not used for current consumption).

Z1(1: w(2), P(2))
Z2(p2:1, w(2))
Z3(w2:p2,1)

where Z1, Z2, Z3 are excess demand functions and Z1 + Z2 + Z3 = 0 (well actually you need only two of the three to clear and the other one clears by Walras’ Law).

In this set up, all three markets clear. This is Walrasianism.

But does something trouble you conservative sorts of people? Something seem a little fishy? Assuming that Caruso, follows his optimization problem, all these markets clear in logical time, not historical time. Caruso’s “savings” automatically becomes “investment”. His saving plans are automatically coordinated with his investment plans by virtue of the fact he is communicating with himself.

In the real world, prices and quantities adjust in historical time, not logical time. In the real world Robinson Carusoe the owner of the firm doesn’t talk to Robinson Carusoe the consumer. If Caruso the consumer saves more, Caruso the business owner of a cocanut producing firm has no idea whether Caruso the consumer had any plans to buy more in the next period. If he did, then it would make sense for Caruso the cocanut firm owner to go out and rent capital.  But since Caruso the firm owner doesn’t exactly know Caruso the consumer actual plans, he can only guess what Caruso might do based on Caruso’s actual buying behavior.

If I stop going to my barber, the barber doesn’t say, “well OGE must intending to buy more future haircuts, so I better ramp up investment so I can put out more future haircuts”.

If firm start to see their inventories pile up, they are likely to change their expectations of future sales downward, and then try to adjust their quantities and prices. However, quantities are often likely to adjust first before prices and that is when the markets are in disequilibrium. Empirically it would seem expected future sales matter more to firm investment decisions than the cost of capital.

And of course conservative sorts of people it’s why chapter 14 of the GT is one of my favorite chapters because Keynes made the point, “I can’t tell you anything about what the interest rate does, until I know what the nominal flow of spending does.”

If conservative sorts of people haven’t caught on, I’m a disequilibrium Keynesian. And when you think in disequilibrium you don’t sit around with your thumb up your ass, like Casey Mulligan, wondering why there is high unemployment and then having to invent “structural” fairy tales.

Here’s the point conservative sorts of people:

I’m very very leery of corporate tax models that assume continual market clearing and assume corporate planning horizons act over a very very long time, which would make dropping the the cost of capital, ie corporate tax cuts look very very powerful, cough, cough, Chamely-Judd.

So when I read that firms haven’t exactly gone hog wild buying up investment goods or really don’t have plans too in the future because of corporate tax cuts, I’m really not surprised.

[Matrim Fox Cauthon]

6 hours ago, Pony Queen Jace said:

If it please you, I would sooner not associate Wilson to any form of the modern Democratic party. That war profiteering piece of shit would be Reagan reincarnated in the current Republican party.

Historically, that describes a number of Democratic presidents, sadly.

[Fez]

10 hours ago, Yukle said:

The thing I always find fascinating is that America thinks it has a left-wing. To the rest of the world, it looks like two right-wing parties whose ideologies often oppose each other, but who are both still right-wing.

That's not really true though. It used to be somewhat, but only really on economic issues. You should take a closer look at the right-wing is calling for in most democracies these days though; to call the Democratic party a part of that is the same nonsense as the "both parties are the same" tripe that some Americans go for.

Beyond that, on numerous social issues the Democratic party fits right in to the western left-wing political spectrum. And on some issues, such as abortion and gay marriage rights, the Democratic party supported them earlier and stronger than pretty much all the left-wing parties capable of winning elections.

[OldGimletEye]

1 hour ago, Fez said:

That's not really true though. It used to be somewhat, but only really on economic issues. You should take a closer look at the right-wing is calling for in most democracies these days though; to call the Democratic party a part of that is the same nonsense as the "both parties are the same" tripe that some Americans go for.

Beyond that, on numerous social issues the Democratic party fits right in to the western left-wing political spectrum. And on some issues, such as abortion and gay marriage rights, the Democratic party supported them earlier and stronger than pretty much all the left-wing parties capable of winning elections.

One thing I’ll add. Fact is most Americans like a bit o’ socialism. But whatever you do, don’t call it socialism. And whatever you do, obfuscate that you’re doing socialism. And I think the entire result ends up being that our spending and our programs are not efficiently designed as they could be. They probably could be improved if we were just a little more up front, that many of us actually like a bit of socialism.

Our healthcare system has been doing socialism for a long time, it’s just we like to hide it with a tax expenditure so we can say,”we’re not doing socialism! It’s tax cuts!” And of course, we end up with a variety of tax expenditures to hide the socialism.

Or another example. I’m not a real fan of how our GSE’s are structured. It would probably be a lot simpler, efficient, and desirable, just to give a equity grant to young and low income home buyers, than the government to guarantee the debt. But, the optics of doing that might look a little too socialist for some people’s taste.
 

[Ice Queen]

12 hours ago, Yukle said:

The thing I always find fascinating is that America thinks it has a left-wing. To the rest of the world, it looks like two right-wing parties whose ideologies often oppose each other, but who are both still right-wing.

Which is why Bernie, who would probably be mainstream in any other country, is labeled a radical communist by the right.