US Politics: Out in the Cold

[The Anti-Targ]

4 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Bingo. And while we're at it, unrestricted free movement of capital is very adept at punishing governments that get too uppity (hence the generally overlooked Leftist support for Brexit).

On the Protectionism/Free Trade thing, I am actually a bit ambivalent (apart from agricultural subsidies, which screw the Third World). Recall that classical Comparative Advantage dictates that New Zealand do nothing but sent milk powder to China - and, well, being a dairy farm with a country attached has its downsides (not everyone or everything is suited to working for Fonterra).

Does that mean leftists are fool enough to believe Brexit will change that?

We only became a big unsustainable (in some places) dairy farm because coarse wool prices went to shit and haven't recovered, and probably never will. But regardless of what we're producing on the land, whatever it is we're going to produce far more than what we need. So we will always need fairly open world trade conditions to prosper. But better than fairly open, is open and fair. 

[DMC]

8 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Maybe in the Book of Job sense?

Or Book of Revelation.

[The Marquis de Leech]

36 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Does that mean leftists are fool enough to believe Brexit will change that?

Not in itself. The point is that a future left-wing UK government can do more left-wing stuff outside the EU than inside it.

We only became a big unsustainable (in some places) dairy farm because coarse wool prices went to shit and haven't recovered, and probably never will. But regardless of what we're producing on the land, whatever it is we're going to produce far more than what we need. So we will always need fairly open world trade conditions to prosper. But better than fairly open, is open and fair.

Oh, we'll always be exporting meat, wool, and dairy. But the cold logic of pure Free Trade is that we do nothing but those things (basically, we use the proceeds earned from dairy and tourism to import everything else). That level of specialisation has its downsides. 

[The Anti-Targ]

11 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Good grief.

God wanted Trump to be president, says Sarah Sanders.

Not my God...

That's the problem with people of little minds. If God doesn't want something to happen, it won't happen. But if a thing happens the most that can be said is that from God's perspective it wasn't an important enough thing in which to intervene. If God wants us to think we have free will, then He will mostly not intervene in our decisions, including or especially our bad decisions (individually or collectively).

At one level, though, you can argue that it was God's will that Trump be president, since He didn't see fit to prevent it. The question is how much blame do you put on God for not stopping people from making bad decisions? Or do you blame God for making the alleged pinnacle of His creation turn out to be such dumbasses?

[The Anti-Targ]

1 minute ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Not in itself. The point is that a future left-wing UK government can do more left-wing stuff outside the EU than inside it.

 

 

Seems a bit zero sum really. Because a future right-wing govt can do more right-wing things outside the EU than inside. I'm inclined to think less about the beneficial things my side could do and more about the harmful things the other side could do.

[Fragile Bird]

38 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said:

That's the problem with people of little minds. If God doesn't want something to happen, it won't happen. But if a thing happens the most that can be said is that from God's perspective it wasn't an important enough thing in which to intervene. If God wants us to think we have free will, then He will mostly not intervene in our decisions, including or especially our bad decisions (individually or collectively).

At one level, though, you can argue that it was God's will that Trump be president, since He didn't see fit to prevent it. The question is how much blame do you put on God for not stopping people from making bad decisions? Or do you blame God for making the alleged pinnacle of His creation turn out to be such dumbasses?

Lol, God has absolutely nothing to do with it. Zero.

[Varysblackfyre321]

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/427254-new-poll-shows-speaker-pelosis-approval-rating-down-during-government

You think this will be less likely to go through a shut down again? Also it  seems the fiasco didn't even hurt Trump with non-white Hispanics that much. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/29/trump-hispanic-support-poll-2020-1136373

[DMC]

Harris and Booker jostle for backing of CBC members

Quote

Clyburn, the highest-ranking African-American in Congress, is a power player in all-important South Carolina. He said support from CBC members will be important in his state “because our primary will be the first chance to see how you do among African-American voters.”

“I’ve talked to Booker and I’ve talked to Kamala,” Clyburn said.

Though neither Harris nor Booker has formally sought his endorsement, Clyburn admitted the presidential race is going full tilt inside the CBC.

“I know who’s for Biden, who’s for Booker, who’s for [Harris],” said Clyburn, though he declined to offer details. Clyburn confirmed Biden is courting CBC members as well.

Don't tease us like that Jim!

[OldGimletEye]

6 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

 

 

To the question from the Yahoo guy in the quote: doesn't MMT kind of deal with it?

Firstly, govts can spend what is necessary to pay for the essential things: education, health, housing without raising taxes. And they can also ensure a minimum household income, also without raising taxes. That will help with the low end of inequality. The to deal with the high end of inequality, you tax the richest for re-distributive purposes, but if a rich person / people / company does it's own redistribution all the way to the bottom, then they aren't taxed.

Here is how I think about MMT.

Supposing institutionally we didn't have distinction between moneytary creation authority, The FED, and fiscal spending authority, Congress. Let's say it was all rolled into one institution, congress. 

And let's say somebody under this institutional arrangement forgets to sacrifice a goat. People get nervous. Since the private market can't really produce safe assets, or at least produce them sufficiently, people hoard the only safe asset around: money.  Prices and expectations of prices either adjust to restore full employment or they don't. Real world experience suggest they don't.  Congress then decides to print money and then spend it. That works. Aggregate demand expands, people get hired, and there is no inflation: but only to a point. Eventually, resources bind, and Congress will have decrease spending or raise taxes if cares about anchoring inflation expectations.

The point here is I don't see MMT offering much more than traditional Keynesian analysis.

Also, should we separate monetary creation authority from fiscal authority. I think yes. I think I wouldn't trust congress to have the additional responsibility of maintaining inflation expectations.

I'm a Keynesian. I don't think there is an automatic self correcting mechanism that restores full employment (principally because financial markets are not complete, nor is their complete participation in those markets as is suggested in your basic Arrow-Debreu economy). Or maybe there is, but it seemingly takes a long time, and in the process does a lot of permanent damage in the process. Lack of full employment is always been a significant societal problem that hits the "average joe" hard, both financially and emotionally (people actually seem happier when they have decent work. And here I agree a bit with Ronald Reagan, that one of the best social programs is a job, though obviously I'd go about achieving it differently). As Joan Robinson put it, the only thing worse than being exploited is being unexploited.

But, I don't really use Keynesian ideas necessarily to sell important social insurance programs. Take universal healthcare. The reason I think there should be significant government involvement in something like healthcare is because the market for healthcare isn't like the market for wheat. The standard model of a purely competitive market doesn't really apply. Largely because of informational problems. The standard theory of the consumer has the completeness axiom. It says that a consumer can rank bundles of goods. I don't think that is necessarily true when it comes to healthcare, given that it complex. Sure, most people can rank whether they want to buy Justin Beiber Albums or New Kids on the Block. But when it comes to healthcare people likely are not that good at ranking healthcare bundles of goods, not if they are interested in getting the most effective treatments. This is one of the reasons I think conservative plans for healthcare are usually pretty suspect. Throw in things like patents, significant barriers to entry to practice medicine, and adverse selection and the whole idea of the healthcare market working like a market in a standard competitive model becomes extremely suspect.

And plus I'm just both morally and ethically appalled by the fact that some people in a wealthy nation can't even get a decent level of access to healthcare. So I support a high level government involvement in healthcare, even if it means raising everyone's taxes to pay for it. I think most people would be better off under such a system.

Could we use MMT theory to finance healthcare. Well maybe, but then it would seem to me that we would have less fiscal capacity to pay for other things.

One of the problems I have with MMT theory with regard to something like healthcare is it ignores significant problems on the supply side of the market. And I do believe we have those particular issues in the United States, hence the reasons we pay more for our healthcare, having little to show for it. I believe in universal healthcare, but any plan to achieve it needs to address the supply side of the market. It seems to me that MMT theory suggest we don't have to worry about that stuff. I think we do.

And to be clear, I don't mean to come off as a complete deficit scold. I think we can largely hold a fairly large debt/GDP ratio just fine. But, to the extent MMT theory suggest we never have to worry about it, well I disagree.

[OldGimletEye]

5 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Not quite sure how to deal with that, since even with peaceful open borders (i.e. we/you aren't importing / exporting rapists, murderers and drug dealers), it seems the outcome of open labour borders would be the cheapening of labour in the high wage markets, and no corresponding increase in wages in low wage markets.

Supposing that there was fixed stock of capital. And further suppose that immigrant labor was completely subsitutable for native labor. Under that arrangement, then basic neoclassical theory would suggest that immigration would lower natives wages.

But in the real world, the stock of capital isn't fixed, nor is immigrant labor completely substitutable for native labor it would seem for the most part. And this is the reason, I do believe that most studies that have examined this issue find only a relatively small impact on native wages. Does that make me completely open borders. Well no, as there is always a bit on of uncertainty when you forecast out of sample. But, I do think there is a strong case that here in the United State's at least, we could actually raise the legal level of immigration. 

[ants]

On 1/29/2019 at 8:39 PM, Varysblackfyre321 said:

They(white workers) are the demographic Democrats need to flip if they’re going to win the presidency. It makes little sense for a lot of democrats to be touting Harris’ appeal among Hispanics and blacks as reason she’s a strong candidate given its unlikely most of the people of color who will vote in the next election will go for Trump. The white workers that voted for Obama need to be won back if the democrats want to win.

My move would be to run on an increase in social security payments. Say it’s funded by reversing the Trump tax cuts. Older and working non-college whites would be the biggest winners, which is the demographic Dems want to capture. 

[Ser Reptitious]

23 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

There really isn't an argument here. You said I was making up that there people on the far left who won't vote for anyone but Bernie and see anyone other candidate as terrible . I pointed to some videos showing just that. Also I hoped you'd take the video of Biden responding to the BernieorBust movement as evidence as it being a real thing. Like I'm assuming you've at least heard of it. It was a big worry in 2015, among democrats, and I don't see any reason to have less worry over a break coming over Sanders' eventual defeat in 2019.

Just out of curiosity, I noticed that you used 2015 repeatedly in reference to the past presidential election, and now you are also talking about 2019 as the next one? Is it just a repeated typo or are you misremembering when these elections take place? It's 2016 and 2020. 

[Gorn]

7 hours ago, The Anti-Targ said:

Not quite sure how to deal with that, since even with peaceful open borders (i.e. we/you aren't importing / exporting rapists, murderers and drug dealers), it seems the outcome of open labour borders would be the cheapening of labour in the high wage markets, and no corresponding increase in wages in low wage markets. And I don't think that's a particularly desirable outcome. It could be that significantly improving the prosperity of low wage economies so that there are fewer low cost labour market for capital to run off to exploit might be the better move than opening up to free movement of labour.

As someone from a "cheap labour" country with high unemployment, I can definitely tell you that this is not true. Once EU countries made it easier for people to emigrate to work in the EU, there was a sharp increase of wages for skilled jobs, and a significant improvement in working conditions.

You don't have to take my word for it, check at the statistics for the new EU members from Eastern Europe. For example, Poland had an average 5.2% yearly wage growth from 2006 to 2018 (with a record 13,16% growth from 2007 to 2017), and that's with the effects of the global economic crisis.

[The Anti-Targ]

25 minutes ago, Gorn said:

As someone from a "cheap labour" country with high unemployment, I can definitely tell you that this is not true. Once EU countries made it easier for people to emigrate to work in the EU, there was a sharp increase of wages for skilled jobs, and a significant improvement in working conditions.

You don't have to take my word for it, check at the statistics for the new EU members from Eastern Europe. For example, Poland had an average 5.2% yearly wage growth from 2006 to 2018 (with a record 13,16% growth from 2007 to 2017), and that's with the effects of the global economic crisis.

That's a slightly different situation since you're in the EU and thus fully integrated into the wider EU market. When it's, say, The Philippines as the low wage market and the USA or EU as the high wage market there isn't he same integration.

[Gorn]

1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said:

That's a slightly different situation since you're in the EU and thus fully integrated into the wider EU market. When it's, say, The Philippines as the low wage market and the USA or EU as the high wage market there isn't he same integration.

It's not really that different. If, say 10% of engineers from the Philippines emigrate to USA, the 90% who remain in the Philippines will be in more demand, and will be able to demand higher salaries.

[Maithanet]

15 hours ago, lokisnow said:

Because mortality tracks to race, wealth and education and voting behavior tracks to race, wealth and education. Therefore increased dying as a generation ages out results in a higher percentage of of the cohort voting because the people who are dying are firstly and disproportionately the nonvoters (non white, poorer and uneducated)

since being a democrat also tracks to race, wealth and education it also explains a fair amount of why old people are always voting republican (because the non white poor and uneducated doing most of the dying weren’t republicans to begin with).

so even as they drop as a percentage of the electorate, their vote share will not drop as much and the republican vote share from them will also increase.

But that assumes that these factors were not in place in 2016.  They were.  This would only significantly impact the election is some change between 2016 and 2020 meant that wealthy older people lived longer than they did previously.

All this is kind of beside the point, generally the Silent Generation is the one that shows improvement for Democrats, because that group votes fairly conservative.  Boomers are more of a mixed bag, I remember last time this issue came up someone posted that early boomers (1946-53) were more or less evenly split politically, whereas later boomers were more conservative.  But the Silent Generation is declining from ~14% to 9% of the voting pool in the past four years, and that is definitely good news for electing Democrats. 

[DMC]

Trump says Congressional GOP "wasting their time" on border security talks

Quote

After weeks of downplaying the stark image of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border – and saying it could be a less obtrusive "barrier" like a "steel slat fence" – Trump said Thursday he is returning to his original formulation.

The new approach popped up a day after the first meeting of a bipartisan committee of 17 lawmakers on a new border security plan, the key feature of last week's agreement to reopen the government until Feb. 15  following a record-setting shutdown that lasted 35 days.

Coupled with the news the White House is finalizing the details of a national emergency declaration, it would appear Trump is signaling to the GOP leadership that the negotiations are purely theatre (shocker I know).  Seems clear any deal struck by the conference committee - which it appears there's a decent chance the GOP secures significantly more border funding than before the shutdown, and that could even include some earmarked for "barriers - will be rejected by Trump as he's already decided on the emergency declaration.  For now, of course.

[Larry of the Lawn]

11 hours ago, Varysblackfyre321 said:

https://thehill.com/opinion/campaign/427254-new-poll-shows-speaker-pelosis-approval-rating-down-during-government

You think this will be less likely to go through a shut down again? Also it  seems the fiasco didn't even hurt Trump with non-white Hispanics that much. https://www.politico.com/story/2019/01/29/trump-hispanic-support-poll-2020-1136373

Do you even read the links you post?  And just out of curiosity, are you from or do you live in the US?

[A wilding]

14 hours ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

Not in itself. The point is that a future left-wing UK government can do more left-wing stuff outside the EU than inside it.

Wildly off topic here, but a future left-wing post Brexit UK government can only do things if it has money to do them. Which means it needs to attract global capital.

As a smaller unit than the EU, the UK's bargaining power on regulatory framework, wages and the like will be correspondingly reduced. So assuming it is not going to go the Singapore route, the country will be poorer and thus less able to afford the welfare state.

[DMC]

30 minutes ago, larrytheimp said:

Do you even read the links you post?  And just out of curiosity, are you from or do you live in the US?

I'm still curious what "You think this will be less likely to go through a shut down again?" even means as a question.