Impmk2 Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 2 hours ago, felice said: A poll tax? So Bezos pays $10/month and people below the poverty line pay $10/month? Hell no. Even if it's a percentage of the bill rather than a flat fee, it's still grossly regressive, since the poor have to spend a much higher percentage of their income on electricity than the rich. Climate change needs to be addressed urgently, but that's not the way to do it. Which is why then whatever the proposal you then spend the revenue raised on a progressive tax cut to everyone earning under a reasonable threshold, say $80k. The vast majority of the population ends up better off, while still putting in place a clear carbon signal and incentive for energy efficiency. The cost is largely paid by corporations and the well off. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maithanet Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 8 minutes ago, lokisnow said: Pew on the 2020 electorate: boomers and older are dropping from 43% of eligible voters in 2016 to 37% of eligible voters in 2020. boomers and older cast 49% of ballots in 2016, so with that 7 point drop, we can probably assume at least a 3.5 point drop in ballots cast in 2020, so that’s more like 45.5 % of ballots to them. but they may still cast more as the ones that die first are the poorest and least educated and so least likely to vote and there isn’t a 1:1 parallel as some of the percentage drop for boomers and older is due to population growth from gen z becoming voting eligible, not from pure die offs. And since young voters are useless, gen z will be 9 percent of eligible voters but probably 10% or less of those eligible will vote so it’s doubtful they’ll have much impact. there will still be more eligible boomers than millennials, the generations won’t be crossing before this election as previously thought. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/essay/an-early-look-at-the-2020-electorate/ I'm not sure I follow your math there. Boomers and older accounted for 43% of voters in 2016, and cast 49% of votes. If they account for 37% of voters in 2020, I'd expect them to account for approximately 44% of votes (since older voters do vote more, but this group was already pretty old). And while poor turnout of the youngest voters is undoubtedly not going to go away by 2020, the fact that millennials and post-millennials will make up 37% of eligible voters is definitely a good thing for Democrats, given Trump's abysmal polling with that group. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Maithanet Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 Also, here's the Pew study on voter turnout (rather than registered voters), and the key stat is 2016 turnout by age group: Silent Generation - 70% Boomers - 69% Gen X - 63% Millennials - 49% Overall - 61% Now, that is lumping Millennials in their early 30s with kids just out of high school, but my takeaway is that that Millennials and post-millennials are going to be a significant force in the 2020 race, and modestly larger than they were in 2016. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lokisnow Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 1 hour ago, Maithanet said: I'm not sure I follow your math there. Boomers and older accounted for 43% of voters in 2016, and cast 49% of votes. If they account for 37% of voters in 2020, I'd expect them to account for approximately 44% of votes (since older voters do vote more, but this group was already pretty old). And while poor turnout of the youngest voters is undoubtedly not going to go away by 2020, the fact that millennials and post-millennials will make up 37% of eligible voters is definitely a good thing for Democrats, given Trump's abysmal polling with that group. 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Varysblackfyre321 Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 12 hours ago, OldGimletEye said: The fact that these people just want a break from the status quo, but don't really care what form or direction that takes, makes me tend to believe these aren't the most rational group of voters. And I wonder whether it's worth even pursuing them. I'd agree things need to be changed, but just saying I want change and don't care what form that change takes is just bonkers. Meh, I see many of them more selfish than irrational. they say they want change but I see many as just wanting to feel self-righteous and individualistic., Their is to do what makes them feel noble rather than what is the best for the nation. "Who cares if Trump is a fascist, his election will totes piss off the establishment" Its' merely self-gratification. Disgusting. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Anti-Targ Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 7 hours ago, S John said: I think it pays to remember that Trump straight-up lies constantly and this is one reason why I think there probably are a fair number of people who were pro-Bern that ultimately voted for Trump. Anyone remember Trump’s campaign stance on healthcare? We are gonna repeal and replace Obamacare! It will be replaced with something better and cheaper and you are going to love it! He’s also been on record in the past as a supporter of universal healthcare. Trump was really only a hardliner on a couple of issues, the Iran deal, tougher border security, trade. I think most of us here saw Trump for what he was right out of the gate, we knew damn well he didn’t have a secret healthcare plan ‘better’ than Obamacare stashed away in his back pocket. But someone a little more desperate, or a little more naive, or a little less bright, or a little of all of the above might have thought - ‘Eh, what the hell let’s see what he does’. Couple that with Bernie and Trump both preaching protectionism, I can see the crossover. Trump was unspecific about a lot of his policies during the campaign allowing him to seem like he was offering a lot more than what he was, and the ones he was specific about probably weren’t dealbreakers for a lot of people. Anyway, I’m sure there are some disillusioned blue collar white folks who voted for Trump and didn’t get what they wanted out of it. I could see those people coming back. Whether or not that number of people is significant enough to really fuss over, I don’t know. It’s possible that them seeing what the other side has to offer in terms of ‘change’ ought to get them back on board. For anyone who crossed party lines to vote for Trump, I can’t imagine he delivered for too many of them. Speaking as a foreigner, from the perspective of this thread, from a country with a trade deficit with the USA, that exports 80% of the food we produce (we're a population of 4.5 million and we produce food for 30 million) and with pretty much the least protected economy in the world, nationalist protectionism is bullshit whether it comes from the right or the left. People might not like the current form of globalisation, but at the end of the day the ONLY way the world can move forward towards better prosperity for everyone is with an internationally agreed, rules based trading system, with robust, functional and enforcable dispute settlement mechanisms. The main reason we're not a basket case subsistence level ecomony today is because we have the WTO and an at least semi-functional international rules based trading system. And a FTA with China. If Bernie is a tired old protectionist from the left then he should be kicked to the curb regardless of his other policies. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldGimletEye Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 5 minutes ago, The Anti-Targ said: If Bernie is a tired old protectionist from the left then he should be kicked to the curb regardless of his other policies. This is one area I disagree with Bernie on. I surely recognize that some workers have not benefited from open trade and in fact have been harmed by it. But there are better ways to deal with it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Martell Spy Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 Meet the folk hero of Davos: the writer who told the rich to stop dodging taxes “Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion.” https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/1/30/18203911/davos-rutger-bregman-historian-taxes-philanthropy Quote “It feels like I’m at a firefighters conference and no one’s allowed to speak about water, right?” Bregman said. “Just stop talking about philanthropy and start talking about taxes. … We can invite Bono once more, but we’ve got to be talking about taxes. That’s it. Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion.” As if to prove his point, one Davos attendee — Ken Goldman, the former CFO of Yahoo — used the question-and-answer period to denounce Bregman and Winnie Byanyima, the executive director of Oxfam International also on the panel, for a “very one-sided panel,” and demanded that they offer solutions to inequality besides higher taxes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
OldGimletEye Posted January 30, 2019 Share Posted January 30, 2019 11 minutes ago, Martell Spy said: Meet the folk hero of Davos: the writer who told the rich to stop dodging taxes “Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion.” https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/1/30/18203911/davos-rutger-bregman-historian-taxes-philanthropy Man what a buzzkill. The circle jerk at Davos wanted to talk about "multi-stake holder solutions" and such and here comes this guy talking about taxes. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DMC Posted January 31, 2019 Author Share Posted January 31, 2019 3 hours ago, lokisnow said: boomers and older are dropping from 43% of eligible voters in 2016 to 37% of eligible voters in 2020. That is a pretty considerable drop in only 4 years. For comparison's sake, PEW has the percentage of eligible Hispanic voters increasing by only 1.4% in the same time period. I would like to see that finding replicated a few times before I put too much stock in it (although I'm not sure anybody else actually does such estimates). The other important point is that while boomers and the silent generation are decreasing as a share of the eligible electorate overall, the percentage of the electorate over the age of 65 is actually increasing - to an estimated 23% in 2020, the highest figure PEW has ever recorded. So, there will still be more old people voting than ever, and they are disproportionately white compared to the rest of the electorate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Anti-Targ Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 2 hours ago, OldGimletEye said: This is one area I disagree with Bernie on. I surely recognize that some workers have not benefited from open trade and in fact have been harmed by it. But there are better ways to deal with it. The main problem, as I see it, is we have free movement of only 2/3s of the economic system. Capital and goods/services can move freely around the world (kind of, capital is the most freely moving, then (some kinds of) services a bit less, and goods less so again). But there is no free movement of labour outside of national boundaries (or common market boundaries like the EU). That means internationally speaking, capital moves to where the cheap labour is, but labour can't move to where the good jobs are. 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. One sympathises with the concern about the harms of globalisation on the wage slave class of rich countries. But protectionism isn't the solution. Not that even our country that is so reliant on fairly open international trade conditions is free from protectionist idiots on both right and left. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Anti-Targ Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 2 hours ago, Martell Spy said: Meet the folk hero of Davos: the writer who told the rich to stop dodging taxes “Taxes, taxes, taxes. All the rest is bullshit in my opinion.” https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/1/30/18203911/davos-rutger-bregman-historian-taxes-philanthropy 1 hour ago, OldGimletEye said: Man what a buzzkill. The circle jerk at Davos wanted to talk about "multi-stake holder solutions" and such and here comes this guy talking about taxes. 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
lokisnow Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 11 minutes ago, DMC said: That is a pretty considerable drop in only 4 years. For comparison's sake, PEW has the percentage of eligible Hispanic voters increasing by only 1.4% in the same time period. I would like to see that finding replicated a few times before I put too much stock in it (although I'm not sure anybody else actually does such estimates). The other important point is that while boomers and the silent generation are decreasing as a share of the eligible electorate overall, the percentage of the electorate over the age of 65 is actually increasing - to an estimated 23% in 2020, the highest figure PEW has ever recorded. So, there will still be more old people voting than ever, and they are disproportionately white compared to the rest of the electorate. It’s a percentage drop which means it’s also in response to the big influx of generation z voters I think. I doubt the drop will be anywhere near that large for actual voters. The silents are dying at a pretty rapid clip though. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DMC Posted January 31, 2019 Author Share Posted January 31, 2019 Just now, lokisnow said: It’s a percentage drop which means it’s also in response to the big influx of generation z voters I think. Yes, obviously the older generation(s) is going to bare most of the corresponding drop to Gen Z's 6 percent increase - however there should be a slightly more equitable drop off among the older generations, like 1% each for Gen X and Millennials for a 4% drop among boomers/silent. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 3 hours ago, lokisnow said: 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). In 2000, Gore's best demographic were the over 65s. To be honest, I think the real reason is that old people now are too young to be New Deal loyalists in the way old people in 2000 were. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ThinkerX Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 4 hours ago, lokisnow said: Pew on the 2020 electorate: boomers and older are dropping from 43% of eligible voters in 2016 to 37% of eligible voters in 2020. boomers and older cast 49% of ballots in 2016, so with that 7 point drop, we can probably assume at least a 3.5 point drop in ballots cast in 2020, so that’s more like 45.5 % of ballots to them. but they may still cast more as the ones that die first are the poorest and least educated and so least likely to vote and there isn’t a 1:1 parallel as some of the percentage drop for boomers and older is due to population growth from gen z becoming voting eligible, not from pure die offs. And since young voters are useless, gen z will be 9 percent of eligible voters but probably 10% or less of those eligible will vote so it’s doubtful they’ll have much impact. there will still be more eligible boomers than millennials, the generations won’t be crossing before this election as previously thought. http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/essay/an-early-look-at-the-2020-electorate/ No great surprise to me. Most of the folks on my route are 'boomers and older,' and they have been dropping dead at an accelerated pace the past few years. The vast majority of the deceased were conservatives. Gets kind of depressing. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Week Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 Just now, ThinkerX said: The vast majority of the deceased were conservatives. Gets kind of depressing. Cause de celebre for those who have been marginalized and victimized by conservatives since ... well, time immemorial. I would have preferred that they recognize the violence and ignorance of conservatism but ... time heals all wounds or somesuch? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 1 hour ago, The Anti-Targ said: The main problem, as I see it, is we have free movement of only 2/3s of the economic system. Capital and goods/services can move freely around the world (kind of, capital is the most freely moving, then (some kinds of) services a bit less, and goods less so again). But there is no free movement of labour outside of national boundaries (or common market boundaries like the EU). That means internationally speaking, capital moves to where the cheap labour is, but labour can't move to where the good jobs are. 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. 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 send 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). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fragile Bird Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 Good grief. God wanted Trump to be president, says Sarah Sanders. Not my God... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
The Marquis de Leech Posted January 31, 2019 Share Posted January 31, 2019 1 minute ago, Fragile Bird said: Good grief. God wanted Trump to be president, says Sarah Sanders. Not my God... Maybe in the Book of Job sense? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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