US Politics: I Say a Little Prayer for You!

[DMC]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

Given the sheer incompetence in the execution of a design that is already beyond what the most corrupt dictator would dare to do, I doubt they'll be allowed to vote first next time.

Uh, hyperbole much?  Maybe not, you're right, the most corrupt dictators always hold 50 primary contests, and in the first one they would NEVER dream of giving a disproportionate advantage of a whole, like, THREE delegates to a certain candidate.  My stars, the very notion gives me the vapors...

[GrimTuesday]

18 minutes ago, DMC said:

Uh, hyperbole much?  Maybe not, you're right, the most corrupt dictators always hold 50 primary contests, and in the first one they would NEVER dream of giving a disproportionate advantage of a whole, like, THREE delegates to a certain candidate.  My stars, the very notion gives me the vapors...

It's not about the delegates, it is about narrative. It is the difference between saying that you tied, and that you won. Sure, you could say that a tie is just as good as a win for an outsider running against opponents who have a much higher profile that you, but you're not actually a winner. The right wing of the party seems to be dipping their toes into the water of backing Pete now that Biden is slipping in the polls, and they have an interest in blocking Bernie.

At this point, I'm fine calling what happened in Iowa a massive blunder, and not an act of malice against one candidate, but the way that the DNC is handling this reeks of political malpractice. There are some 90 errors that are known to exist, and in a close race like this they could make a huge difference. Coupled with Team Pete trying to minimize the weight of the satellite caucus', which were primarily attended by minority and working class populations and went overwhelmingly for Bernie because basically no other candidates bothered to get people to go, all give the impression that the DNC is putting it's hand on the scale.

[DMC]

1 hour ago, GrimTuesday said:

It's not about the delegates, it is about narrative.

The narrative waived so long to Iowa last Tuesday.  Nobody cares about the delegate count anymore except insanely involved junkies or supporters that want to whine.

1 hour ago, GrimTuesday said:

There are some 90 errors that are known to exist, and in a close race like this they could make a huge difference.

No, the delegate count will not make a huge difference.  If you wanna gripe about the lack of momentum Bernie - and Buttigieg - could have received if the results were actually competently reported last Monday night, fine and fair.  But that complaint hasn't changed since.

[OldGimletEye]

10 hours ago, Rhom said:

The problem is that higher education is paid for with Monopoly money.  None of it is real.  I’ll never forget sitting in a discussion in 1997 where an administrator from my college talked about becoming a “laptop campus.”  Every incoming student would be issued a laptop.  When asked how they would pay for that, the answer was “Financial aide will adjust your compensate.”  Me being naive and on a full academic scholarship thought this was a good idea until a fraternity brother sitting next to me who was attending on student loans pointed out that he’d be paying for an out of date laptop for thirty years.  The incredible inflation of the cost of college is directly tied to the well meaning attempt by the government to extend loans to students who realistically have no way of repaying them.  When the board of regents meets and wants to raise tuition 10%, well why the hell not?  There aren’t any students who can’t “afford” that.

(And don’t get me started on the near luxury condos that pass for dorms on state college campuses that I have toured this year with my step daughter.)

By and large, I’m against the concept of forgiveness writ large.  If you decided to take $130k to get an elementary ed degree from a private school... that’s on you.  However, the fact that I do place direct blame on government practices for getting us here does make me sympathetic to the idea that the government may need to resolve it as well.

This might come as a shock, but the competitive market of labor model you learned in econ 101 is bullshit. The fact is there are barriers to entry to the labor market, a college education being one of them. And where there are barriers to entry, some government involvement is justified.

Also loans are not "monopoly money", unless you think corporations are obtaining "monopoly money" to pay for capital investments by issuing bonds or equity. The Net Present Value of the investment may not justify taking the loan, depending on the return your looking for. There are good reasons to think that a college education or education in general has positive returns. I'm not sure what the term "monopoly money" means here unless the idea is to pay for everything upfront in gold bullion.

Also it's behind well known for quite a while that neither the growth of capital nor labor can explain economic growth. The key element seems to be idea generation. That's what Romer won a nobel prize for. Accordingly, having an educated public would seem to be in our collective interest.

Also, I'll point out that not everyone has a computer growing up. In my case, college was my first exposure on how to use them. Granted I'm older, when computer ownership was less common, but no so old that computer ownership was uncommon in upper middle class households. Also I too got to college on a scholarship. Not because I had any particularly great skill set or was particularly smart, I just happened to be pretty good at running down and tackling people. So I kind of got a college education on a fluke. A fluke that ended up having a positive outcome for me. I'm of the general opinion that the people of this country shouldn't have to rely on flukes to have shot at a decent life.

That said, having to spend 130K to be competitive on the job market is ridiculous. So finding ways to contain cost is necessary. And I am open to alternatives to the traditional 4 year degree.

 

[OldGimletEye]

One of the problems with libertarian types is they often see themselves as steely-eyed realist, while everyone is doing "feels before reals", evidently.

But, the fact of the matter libertarians often get over emotional about the "free market".

And what I'm going to say here isn't just some stuff I pulled out of Marx, but stuff you'll find in any decent advanced micro textbook.

Libertarian types often believe that education serves mainly as a signaling device. And I believe there is some truth to that. But that argument pre-supposes that there are informational problems in the labor market. And if there are informational problems in the labor market, then the purely competitive model doesn't really apply.

In a nutshell you can't have it both ways. You can't sit there and say that education serves mainly as a signal that let's employers know about someone's basic abilities and then other hand argue that minimum wage laws are destined to have bad outcomes using a purely competitive model of the labor market. You're going to have to make up your mind and commit to one model or the other.I guess the fact that libertarian types don't see the contradiction in these two sets of arguments is because they are putting "feelings before facts".

Also, the purely competitive model pre-supposes very few barriers to entry. And in many labor markets, there are significant barriers to entry.

 

[Mauvka]

4 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Also loans are not "monopoly money", unless you think corporations are obtaining "monopoly money" to pay for capital investments by issuing bonds or equity. The Net Present Value of the investment may not justify taking the loan, depending on the return your looking for. There are good reasons to think that a college education or education in general has positive returns. I'm not sure what the term "monopoly money" means here unless the idea is to pay for everything upfront in gold bullion.

What makes  student loans "monopoly money" is that the market (by which I mean the schools and the lenders) get to issue as much of those loans as they want, without bearing on whether the borrowers will be able to pay back on the loan. With student loans we acknowledge that everyone should have access to higher education, then saddle people with costs that most families cannot actually afford to pay out of pocket. You'd be hard-pressed to accumulate 100k in mortgage loans, car loans, or credit cards without having to demonstrate some sort of ability to generate significant income. But you can accumulate a 6-figure non-dischargeable student loan without ever having a job, or putting up any kind of collateral.  As rational market actors, colleges can double their tuition over 10 years because the balance of those loans isn't actually linked to anything real in the market. 

The risk of bankruptcy and defaults puts a market check on other kinds of loans, and that's why they're not "monopoly money" in the same way.  The credit card won't give you a 50k credit line, when you only make 12k in income, and it will charge you enough in interest every month that for whatever balance you carry, you're paying the cost of that loan in real time.  A mortgage is linked to the value of a house, which can be resold to someone else who will pay that cost if you default on the loan.  But because students loans aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy, and the 18-year old who took out those loans may not even have learned what an "interest rate" is during their high school education, there's very little reality check on what the value of that loan should be. 

Frankly, I wish I would see more talk about allowing students loans to be discharged in bankruptcy as a cost check on the whole system.  I think Warren has mentioned this, but I haven't heard as much from the other candidates.  There is no justifiable reason for college tuition to cost as much as it does, and the loans policy is absolutely responsible for how quickly those costs have skyrocketed.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

15 minutes ago, Mauvka said:

What makes  student loans "monopoly money" is that the market (by which I mean the schools and the lenders) get to issue as much of those loans as they want, without bearing on whether the borrowers will be able to pay back on the loan. With student loans we acknowledge that everyone should have access to higher education, then saddle people with costs that most families cannot actually afford to pay out of pocket. You'd be hard-pressed to accumulate 100k in mortgage loans, car loans, or credit cards without having to demonstrate some sort of ability to generate significant income. But you can accumulate a 6-figure non-dischargeable student loan without ever having a job, or putting up any kind of collateral.  As rational market actors, colleges can double their tuition over 10 years because the balance of those loans isn't actually linked to anything real in the market. 

The risk of bankruptcy and defaults puts a market check on other kinds of loans, and that's why they're not "monopoly money" in the same way.  The credit card won't give you a 50k credit line, when you only make 12k in income, and it will charge you enough in interest every month that for whatever balance you carry, you're paying the cost of that loan in real time.  A mortgage is linked to the value of a house, which can be resold to someone else who will pay that cost if you default on the loan.  But because students loans aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy, and the 18-year old who took out those loans may not even have learned what an "interest rate" is during their high school education, there's very little reality check on what the value of that loan should be. 

Frankly, I wish I would see more talk about allowing students loans to be discharged in bankruptcy as a cost check on the whole system.  I think Warren has mentioned this, but I haven't heard as much from the other candidates.  There is no justifiable reason for college tuition to cost as much as it does, and the loans policy is absolutely responsible for how quickly those costs have skyrocketed.

I’m also curious as to why there has been no move to reduce or control the cost of college tuition.  The only move we hear about is turning bachelor’s degrees into “High School part II”.  

Why no move to control or even reduce the skyrocketing cost of college tuitions?

[OldGimletEye]

40 minutes ago, Mauvka said:

What makes  student loans "monopoly money" is that the market (by which I mean the schools and the lenders) get to issue as much of those loans as they want, without bearing on whether the borrowers will be able to pay back on the loan. With student loans we acknowledge that everyone should have access to higher education, then saddle people with costs that most families cannot actually afford to pay out of pocket. You'd be hard-pressed to accumulate 100k in mortgage loans, car loans, or credit cards without having to demonstrate some sort of ability to generate significant income. But you can accumulate a 6-figure non-dischargeable student loan without ever having a job, or putting up any kind of collateral.  As rational market actors, colleges can double their tuition over 10 years because the balance of those loans isn't actually linked to anything real in the market. 

The risk of bankruptcy and defaults puts a market check on other kinds of loans, and that's why they're not "monopoly money" in the same way.  The credit card won't give you a 50k credit line, when you only make 12k in income, and it will charge you enough in interest every month that for whatever balance you carry, you're paying the cost of that loan in real time.  A mortgage is linked to the value of a house, which can be resold to someone else who will pay that cost if you default on the loan.  But because students loans aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy, and the 18-year old who took out those loans may not even have learned what an "interest rate" is during their high school education, there's very little reality check on what the value of that loan should be. 

Frankly, I wish I would see more talk about allowing students loans to be discharged in bankruptcy as a cost check on the whole system.  I think Warren has mentioned this, but I haven't heard as much from the other candidates.  There is no justifiable reason for college tuition to cost as much as it does, and the loans policy is absolutely responsible for how quickly those costs have skyrocketed.

No it makes it a bad loan. It doesn't make into some kind of mystical "monopoly money".  Was the GFC due to too much "monopoly money" or bad loans?

The fact is that there is always going to be inherent risk to student loans that you won't find in other lending markets where this collateral or financial information to asses the risk of the loan.The reason is that the student's main asset (for most students at least) is his lifetime income. Also there can be an informational problem in the student lending markets because banks don't know how hard students will work and so forth. And since most students can't post collateral this means the cost of obtaining a loan is more expensive than what would be the case if informational problems did not exist.

Non of this would be such a problem if there weren't often significant barriers to entry in labor markets. But there are.

I'm not against in attempting reforms to bring down student debt levels. They are too high. But, there does need to be talk about how to reform the educations system on the supply side. And of course, I'm against any type of libertarian fantasy that there is no economic case for government involvement in higher education.

[Mauvka]

1 minute ago, OldGimletEye said:

No it makes it a bad loan. It doesn't make into some kind of mystical "monopoly money".

Perhaps it's an argument in semantics.  We used legislation to create bad loans that would never exist except for the bankruptcy provision. Calling a legislative loophole that disassociates the risk and value of a loan from its ticket price "monopoly money" brings focus to an inherent problem with how college tuition is being priced and financed. 

Quote

The fact is that there is always going to be inherent risk to student loans that you won't find in other lending markets. The reason is that the student's main asset (for most students at least) is his lifetime income.

I agree that this is an inherent problem with using a loan system to pay for education, when trying to also bring education access to individuals with low income. I wish we would recognize that the entire premise of leveraging an individual's lifetime income as collateral for their education is reminiscent of how in the 18th century people would enter into indentured servitude contracts to pay for passage to come to America. 

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

20 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

No it makes it a bad loan. It doesn't make into some kind of mystical "monopoly money".  Was the GFC due to too much "monopoly money" or bad loans?

The fact is that there is always going to be inherent risk to student loans that you won't find in other lending markets where this collateral or financial information to asses the risk of the loan.The reason is that the student's main asset (for most students at least) is his lifetime income. Also there can be an informational problem in the student lending markets because banks don't know how hard students will work and so forth. And since most students can't post collateral this means the cost of obtaining a loan is more expensive than what would be the case if informational problems did not exist.

Non of this would be such a problem if there weren't often significant barriers to entry in labor markets. But there are.

I'm not against in attempting reforms to bring down student debt levels. They are too high. But, there does need to be talk about how to reform the educations system on the supply side. And of course, I'm against any type of libertarian fantasy that there is no economic case for government involvement in higher education.

I’m curious why there is so little being said or done about the insanely high cost of higher education today.  What I paid for a bachelor’s degree in total is what many py for a year in a state school.  I graduated from undergrad in 1993.

That is nuts and unjustifiable, in my earnest opinion.

[OldGimletEye]

7 minutes ago, Mauvka said:

I agree that this is an inherent problem with using a loan system to pay for education, when trying to also bring education access to individuals with low income. I wish we would recognize that the entire premise of leveraging an individual's lifetime income as collateral for their education is reminiscent of how in the 18th century people would enter into indentured servitude contracts to pay for passage to come to America. 

Since our current systems does impose cost, it maybe wiser to give outright grants of money rather than loans.

But even if we have a grant based system, we still need to find a way to contain the costs.

[OldGimletEye]

Just now, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

I’m curious why there is so little being said or done about the insanely high cost of higher education today.  What I paid for a bachelor’s degree in total is what many py for a year in a state school.  I graduated from undergrad in 1993.

That is nuts and unjustifiable, in my earnest opinion.

Scott I agree. As I noted, the real cost education have been rising since the 1970s. And we do need to find ways to bend the supply curve. While I think its vital everyone has the opportunity to get a good education, we could be more efficient about it.

[Darryk]

Political scientist Rachel Bitecofer believes there is actually no such thing as a swing voter; the majority of the electorate have made up their mind before the election, and the thing which really determines election outcomes is who turns up to vote: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/06/rachel-bitecofer-profile-election-forecasting-new-theory-108944

Anyone think she's onto something?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

24 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Political scientist Rachel Bitecofer believes there is actually no such thing as a swing voter; the majority of the electorate have made up their mind before the election, and the thing which really determines election outcomes is who turns up to vote: https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2020/02/06/rachel-bitecofer-profile-election-forecasting-new-theory-108944

Anyone think she's onto something?

That same article was discussed up thread.

[DMC]

25 minutes ago, Darryk said:

Anyone think she's onto something?

Like Scot said, it was discussed at the beginning of this thread - see here.

[Darryk]

20 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

That same article was discussed up thread.

 

18 minutes ago, DMC said:

Like Scot said, it was discussed at the beginning of this thread - see here.

Oops, my bad!

[Mr. Chatywin et al.]

On 2/7/2020 at 10:49 PM, Ormond said:

Wow, I am sorry but I profoundly disagree. I do not see where this is "illogical" or "a joke" at all. 

MInimizing the potential for violence always seems logical to me.  I do not see how forcing him out a bit more slowly through cutting off water, etc., is at all the same thing as sending a message that "this sort of thing" is going to be allowed.  

If Trump is defeated and refuses to leave office, there’s a damn good chance there’s already a lot of violence occurring. Removing him would be essential to ending that.

[DMC]

I have an irrational distrust of polls taken after Iowa but before NH based on flashbacks to 2008.  That being said, the polling for NH appears very consistent right now (one huge caveat - and a rational reason to be so suspicious of such polls - there's still a very large percentage that's undecided).  Sanders in a solid first, Buttigieg in a solid second, then Warren/Biden/Klobuchar hovering around the low teens.  If something close to that result holds, Biden has SC to lean on, but what about Warren?  If she doesn't confound expectations tomorrow night, I'm starting to think it's quite possible she drops out in a week or so.  And I would not be surprised if she endorses Bernie while doing so.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

5 minutes ago, Tywin et al. said:

If Trump is defeated and refuses to leave office, there’s a damn good chance there’s already a lot of violence occurring. Removing him would be essential to ending that.

I think Ormond is correct to look at the individualized circumstances before action is taken.  If violence hasn't arrisen in the wake of Trump refusing to accept his electoral defeat, or demanding a third term, using non-violent methods to remove him from the White House may be essential to prevent further violence in the wake of his expulsion from the White House.  

That said, I agree with you that it is likely that violence is already occuring if he's refusing to leave the White House.

[Larry of the Lawn]

We've been hearing a lot of how Warren and Sanders are splitting the progressive vote, but I wonder how accurate that is.  Like, how many Warren supporters have Sanders as their second or even third choice?