US Politics: Testing, Testing, T... Te.. Testing

[Guest]

3 minutes ago, DMC said:

Well, what will have changed is the presumptive nominee of the party died.  That's a pretty big change.  The establishment would be looking at two options:  a floor fight after your presumptive nominee already died, or Sanders as the nominee.  The latter is plainly the path of least resistance, which is generally what you're looking for at such a time of upheaval.

The vitriol displayed towards Sanders when he was viewed as the frontrunner gives me zero confidence in your assessment.

[GrimTuesday]

1 hour ago, DMC said:

Means testing of the wealthy generally polls pretty well.  This political argument you're making doesn't really have any historical merit.  Social safety net programs generally become very popular once implemented.  The right isn't going to all of a sudden be able to use means testing as a cudgel to gut a program that's still incredibly popular - in the case of, say, Social Security.

Of course it polls well, punching the elites in the face always polls well, and yet every time we try to trot out some means tested program, it is criticized for going to far or being too radical. The fear with means testing isn't that it is going to used a cudgel so much as a lever used to start the bolder rolling towards privatization or funding deprivation.

Social Security is not means tested, and that is part of the reason that it has endured for so long. Means testing Social security has actually been the main point of attack from the Republicans because they know that that is the first step in their wet dream of privatizing it and Medicare (which also is not means tested). It is because everyone get this benefit that it is so untouchable. The fact that food stamps and other programs like to help the poor are means tested (inherently) makes them incredibly vulnerable to attack and they have been stripped away bit by bit or left to wither on the vine instead of improved and built upon. Shit, Public School are constantly under attack from the right and those are both not means test and objectively good.

1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

I totally disagree. The experience we have in Canada is once they got rolling, the Conservatives tailored every fucking thing to put checks and tax credits into the pockets of their wealthier supporters. Tax credits for piano lessons, ffs? Children living in poverty aren’t taking piano lessons. The Liberals, once they got into government, put cash into the hands of the parents of children and helped lift hundreds of thousands of children out of poverty. The Conservatives sent a $100 a month to every family, no matter how rich they were. Universality sounds good but it’s bullshit.

Yeah, you example with the Conservatives is not a very good one. That bit about piano lessons is not an example of a program that is universal so much as one that appears universal but in practice disproportional helps one class. That is the aim of a universal program but in reverse. The family who makes millions of dollars a year is not going to notice an extra grand a month, but for that person who is struggling that is a world of difference. Of course, the second you start putting an upper limit on who gets a benefit, suddenly people are being excluded and humans are wired to see that as unfair. So if we a program that gives 1000 to people making up to 30,000 a year, anyone making a single cent over 30k a year doesn't get that extra money. obviously that means the person who is making 32,000, who has an extra $160 a month and probably isn't doing that much better than a person making 30,000 isn't getting that benefit. Sure you can argue that the person who is sitting above the threshold is objectively better off than the person making less than the threshold, and that in theory the threshold would be set at the point where the person who is just over won't notice the difference, but humans also don't like when someone else gets something they don't, and that is how you start to build that resentment.

In the scenario I have laid out, the funds that would be going to millionaires and billionaires is 5.6% of the total cost, and frankly, if that makes an appreciable difference to the lives of 70% (up to 99k) of people, and maybe just a minor or negligible difference in the live of the remaining 24% (100k-999k) I am good with that.

[Kalbear]

"Ban On Large Gatherings Unlikely To Affect Tulsi Gabbard Rallies"

[Martell Spy]

This crisis calls for massive government intervention: here's how to do it
The state should step in as payer of last resort for businesses facing shutdown as coronavirus hits them hard

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/mar/17/governments-crisis-coronavirus-business

Quote

 

There is, however, a radical and targeted solution to the specific causes of the coronavirus global recession: governments should step in as payers of last resort, which means they would cover wage and maintenance costs for businesses facing shutdown. In the context of this pandemic, we need a new form of social insurance, one that directly helps both workers and businesses.

So, how does this work in practice? The drop in demand caused by social distancing measures, and a following decrease in output and therefore GDP, is expected to be short, probably for a few months. Governments cannot undo this direct output loss, but they can prevent a very sharp but short recession becoming a long-lasting depression.

Absent government actions, and many businesses and workers do not have enough liquidity to weather dramatic shortfalls in demand causing mass redundancies. Keeping businesses alive through this crisis and making sure workers continue to receive their wages is essential.

The most direct way to provide this insurance is to have governments act as payers of last resort, so that hibernating businesses can keep paying their workers (known in economic terms as idle workers) instead of laying them off, and can keep paying their necessary bills such as rent, utilities and interest instead of going bankrupt.

In practice, in the US, the unemployment insurance system is already up and running, making it possible to compute and deliver compensation to idle workers. Workers should immediately start receiving special unemployment insurance benefits so they are no longer a cost to their employers – even though they stay formally employed – and no re-hiring process is needed once they can come back to work.

 

 

[DMC]

9 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

The vitriol displayed towards Sanders when he was viewed as the frontrunner gives me zero confidence in your assessment.

The vitriol displayed is in the bubble of cable news and I suppose social media.  Only 8% of Biden voters said they wouldn't support Sanders as the nominee.  While that may make him a substantially weaker general election candidate than Biden - which is why the establishment rallied around him - that doesn't exactly express "vitriol."  The officeholding elites know it'd be political suicide to deny Sanders the nomination in the even of Biden's death.

11 minutes ago, GrimTuesday said:

yet every time we try to trot out some means tested program, it is criticized for going to far or being too radical. The fear with means testing isn't that it is going to used a cudgel so much as a lever used to start the bolder rolling towards privatization or funding deprivation.

As you mention later, means testing for SS is habitually criticized by those on the left, not on the right, so I don't get your first point here.  As for the bolded, that's pretty much exactly what I was saying it wouldn't do.  The only tangible example the counterargument is based on is welfare, and that's fundamentally different.  Welfare inherently only goes to the poor, and the right was able to demonize it through racializing it - see Gilens 1999.  Means testing SS would still mean the overwhelming majority of the population still receives the same benefits.  It's simply not a valid comparison.

[Guest]

16 minutes ago, DMC said:

The vitriol displayed is in the bubble of cable news and I suppose social media.  Only 8% of Biden voters said they wouldn't support Sanders as the nominee.  While that may make him a substantially weaker general election candidate than Biden - which is why the establishment rallied around him - that doesn't exactly express "vitriol."  The officeholding elites know it'd be political suicide to deny Sanders the nomination in the even of Biden's death.

I'll forego the irony of pointing out that it's rather convenient that "vitriol" limited to cable news and social media isn't "real vitriol", right up to the point where that fake vitriol can conveniently be tied around the neck of every Sanders supporter, but it doesn't mean anything in any other context. Or rather, I won't forego it, because that's the type of bullshit that the party keeps shoveling out.

And the officeholding elites were telling us two weeks ago that nominating Sanders would be suicide. They'll have seen the light? Or is it more likely that they'll try to turn to a "safe" alternative like Klobuchar or Warren? My money is on the latter.

[DMC]

2 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

I'll forego the irony of pointing out that it's rather convenient that "vitriol" limited to cable news and social media isn't "real vitriol", right up to the point where that fake vitriol can conveniently be tied around the neck of every Sanders supporter, but it doesn't mean anything in any other context. Or rather, I won't forego it, because that's the type of bullshit that the party keeps shoveling out.

I think that whole thing's overblown and, yes, largely in the twitter-sphere.  So, agreed.

3 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

And the officeholding elites were telling us two weeks ago that nominating Sanders would be suicide. They'll have seen the light? Or is it more likely that they'll try to turn to a "safe" alternative like Klobuchar or Warren? My money is on the latter.

Endorsing Biden isn't saying nominating Sanders would be suicide.  Cite me an officeholding elite that said that.  What they said, at least from what I can remember from two weeks ago, is that Sanders at the top of the ticket would harm down-ballot races and make it significantly less likely to retake the White House.  Both of which I agree with.  In the case of Biden dying though - especially from covid - that will almost assuredly mean the new Dem nominee is gonna lose anyway, so at that point you're just trying to stop the bleeding.

[GrimTuesday]

10 minutes ago, DMC said:

As you mention later, means testing for SS is habitually criticized by those on the left, not on the right, so I don't get your first point here.  As for the bolded, that's pretty much exactly what I was saying it wouldn't do.  The only tangible example the counterargument is based on is welfare, and that's fundamentally different.  Welfare inherently only goes to the poor, and the right was able to demonize it through racializing it - see Gilens 1999.  Means testing SS would still mean the overwhelming majority of the population still receives the same benefits.  It's simply not a valid comparison.

Sorry, should have been more clear with the first bit, I wasn't talking about means testing for SS in that part, I was talking about means tested plans in general.

As for your response to the bolded bit in my post, I (obviously) disagree on that. We've been seeing Republicans work to push means testing into existing social programs as a way of weakening them, maybe not significantly at first, but as time goes by and they refuse to recalculate the test used to determine eligibility, few people will fell the (positive) effects of that program. At that point, as the positive effect of those policies becomes less pronounced, suddenly  it doesn't seem as big a deal that these programs go away. They then can take further steps to strip the meat out of these programs, selling it off to corporations.

Obviously it is not the same in terms of means testing, but this is exactly what happened with large scale union membership, you disempower the union, the union members don't feel the positive effects of being a member, become less invested in the union and it eventually makes it easier to bust the union.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, GrimTuesday said:

Obviously it is not the same in terms of means testing, but this is exactly what happened with large scale union membership, you disempower the union, the union members don't feel the positive effects of being a member, become less invested in the union and it eventually makes it easier to bust the union.

They gutted unions by coming up with laws that were designed to gut unions but also popular within their states.  This tactic has failed with Social Security, numerous times.  As for Medicare?  I tend to agree with you that means testing for the wealthy would be a bad idea there.  So, I was pretty much just talking about SS.  Because the rest of the national social safety net programs in this country aren't really universal in the first place.

[Guest]

5 minutes ago, DMC said:

I think that whole thing's overblown and, yes, largely in the twitter-sphere.  So, agreed.

Sorry no, this is bullshit. The point, which no one seems willing to address, is that the platform reach for people like Chuck Todd, Chris Matthews, James Carville and others is orders of magnitude higher than places like Chapo Trap House, or toxic Sanders supporter #1362. 

Yet Sanders is inextricably linked with his worst supporters, the aforementioned media amplifies and boosts the anti-Sanders signal, and everyone pretends like there's not a massive double standard.

[DMC]

19 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Sorry no, this is bullshit. The point, which no one seems willing to address, is that the platform reach for people like Chuck Todd, Chris Matthews, James Carville and others is orders of magnitude higher than places like Chapo Trap House, or toxic Sanders supporter #1362. 

Yet Sanders is inextricably linked with his worst supporters, the aforementioned media amplifies and boosts the anti-Sanders signal, and everyone pretends like there's not a massive double standard.

Uh, dude, take yes for an answer.  I'm saying I agree the whole "Bernie Bros" shit is overblown as well.  Do Todd, Mathews, Carville have a bigger platform?  Sure.  But also their "vitriol" is not comparative to the type of hatred seen on the twitter-sphere anyway.  Maybe Carville is similarly off-kilter, but his primary thesis was that nominating Bernie would be stupid, not attacking Bernie's policy prescriptions specifically (or even, frankly, Bernie's personal deficiencies which I have whined about on here frequently).  He made that clear multiple times in the Vox interview.  As for Mathews and Todd, no, one very stupid and offensive comment each does not compare to the twitter-sphere either.

 

[The Marquis de Leech]

36 minutes ago, Triskele said:

Can anyone make the case that while we're facing tough economic headwinds we still have a chance it'll be less painful than the Great Recession 2008/2009 crash?   The floor is yours. 

We honestly don't know. And that's the problem. I mean, a scenario where a vaccine is developed pretty soon, or where it becomes clear that the mortality rate is much lower than feared? 

[Guest]

7 minutes ago, DMC said:

Uh, dude, take yes for an answer.  I'm saying I agree the whole "Bernie Bros" shit is overblown as well.  Do Todd, Mathews, Carville have a bigger platform?  Sure.  But also their "vitriol" is not comparative to the type of hatred seen on the twitter-sphere anyway.  Maybe Carville is similarly off-kilter, but his primary thesis was that nominating Bernie would be stupid, not attacking Bernie's policy prescriptions specifically (or even, frankly, Bernie's personal deficiencies which I have whined about on here frequently).  He made that clear multiple times in the Vox interview.  As for Mathews and Todd, no, one very stupid and offensive comment each does not compare to the twitter-sphere either.

 

Except you're not saying yes, other than that the Bernie Bro stuff is overblown, but not how every single other campaign and the media weaponized that narrative against him, while also managing to lump every single one of his supporters in with the Bernie Bro bullshit.

And none of that was just "one comment". If I bothered to look I could pull up dozens of videos of each of them making the same argument over and over. And you're a numbers guy, and the data shows that coverage of Sanders has invariably been more negative than any of his primary opponents, and you're trying to say that has no effect? Not buying it.

[DMC]

1 minute ago, The Great Unwashed said:

Except you're not saying yes, other than that the Bernie Bro stuff is overblown, but not how every single other campaign and the media weaponized that narrative against him, while also managing to lump every single one of his supporters in with the Bernie Bro bullshit.

Like I said from the start, if you think that that "weaponization" is why Sanders is thoroughly losing, then you're simply living in the cable news and twitter-sphere bubble.  Cable news might have more influence than social media, but the latter is certainly catching up, and either way, neither impacts the overall electorate - or even the primary electorate - nearly as much as you are portraying here.

4 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

If I bothered to look I could pull up dozens of videos of each of them making the same argument over and over. And you're a numbers guy, and the data shows that coverage of Sanders has invariably been more negative than any of his primary opponents, and you're trying to say that has no effect? Not buying it.

"Negative campaign coverage" on television or even reputable online sources is operationalized far differently than the type of speech being transmitted through social media.  Did MSNBC have overtly critical coverage of Sanders and focused far too much on his chances, or more accurately lack thereof, in the general election?  Yep.  But the language used there - other than those isolated comments - is an entirely different metric than what people are talking about when they employ content analysis to gauge the level of "vitriol" on social media.

[Guest]

49 minutes ago, Triskele said:

Can anyone make the case that while we're facing tough economic headwinds we still have a chance it'll be less painful than the Great Recession 2008/2009 crash?   The floor is yours. 

I can't. 

It took me 8 years to recover from the GFC. I had to live out of my car for 6 months during the height of the crisis. I worked at a dead-end job for 9 years where employees were treated like garbage because there were no other options. And I'm using recovery loosely, in the sense that I have a positive net worth (or did before the market tanked), and I usually have a little money left over at the end of the month.

And I'm freaking the fuck out. I can't go through that again, but it's increasingly looking like that's what is going to happen. About half of my group of friends and acquaintances have already been laid off. No one had any savings and everyone's in debt. At least the last time, some people had some kind of cushion.

[OldGimletEye]

3 hours ago, Triskele said:

Can anyone make the case that while we're facing tough economic headwinds we still have a chance it'll be less painful than the Great Recession 2008/2009 crash?   The floor is yours. 

Here is a  couple of charts that is one bright spot. Household debt isn't nearly as bad as it was prior to the 2008. The combination of high levels of debt and plunging asset prices (for most people, their major asset is their home) led to what some called a "balance sheet recession" as households suddenly found themselves with a negative net worth. They cut back spending to repair their broken balance sheet.

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=lLpr (Household Debt/GDP)

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=lLpv (Household Debt/Disposable Income)

And frankly, Republicans are always going to team Republican. Since their guy is in office, maybe they won't act like such idiots. 

And just maybe the "inflation is just around the corner" crowd will realize their massive fuck up in the last go-around (even though they publicly won't admit they fucked up), so there will be no more dumb letters sent to the FED.

 

 

[OldGimletEye]

5 minutes ago, The Great Unwashed said:

It took me 8 years to recover from the GFC.

Yeah, the GFC might have only officially last for 1.5-2.0 years, but for a lot of people its effects were much,much longer. And people talk about the great recovery thereafter, but the fact is it only looks "great" relative to the depths of the GFC.

[GrimTuesday]

Speaking of the GFC I saw this tweet a few days ago that is incredibly depressing and also summarizes how we got to this point in terms of how politics has changed..

 

[ants]

3 hours ago, GrimTuesday said:

Of course it polls well, punching the elites in the face always polls well, and yet every time we try to trot out some means tested program, it is criticized for going to far or being too radical. The fear with means testing isn't that it is going to used a cudgel so much as a lever used to start the bolder rolling towards privatization or funding deprivation.

Social Security is not means tested, and that is part of the reason that it has endured for so long. Means testing Social security has actually been the main point of attack from the Republicans because they know that that is the first step in their wet dream of privatizing it and Medicare (which also is not means tested). It is because everyone get this benefit that it is so untouchable. The fact that food stamps and other programs like to help the poor are means tested (inherently) makes them incredibly vulnerable to attack and they have been stripped away bit by bit or left to wither on the vine instead of improved and built upon. Shit, Public School are constantly under attack from the right and those are both not means test and objectively good.

Yeah, you example with the Conservatives is not a very good one. That bit about piano lessons is not an example of a program that is universal so much as one that appears universal but in practice disproportional helps one class. That is the aim of a universal program but in reverse. The family who makes millions of dollars a year is not going to notice an extra grand a month, but for that person who is struggling that is a world of difference. Of course, the second you start putting an upper limit on who gets a benefit, suddenly people are being excluded and humans are wired to see that as unfair. So if we a program that gives 1000 to people making up to 30,000 a year, anyone making a single cent over 30k a year doesn't get that extra money. obviously that means the person who is making 32,000, who has an extra $160 a month and probably isn't doing that much better than a person making 30,000 isn't getting that benefit. Sure you can argue that the person who is sitting above the threshold is objectively better off than the person making less than the threshold, and that in theory the threshold would be set at the point where the person who is just over won't notice the difference, but humans also don't like when someone else gets something they don't, and that is how you start to build that resentment.

In the scenario I have laid out, the funds that would be going to millionaires and billionaires is 5.6% of the total cost, and frankly, if that makes an appreciable difference to the lives of 70% (up to 99k) of people, and maybe just a minor or negligible difference in the live of the remaining 24% (100k-999k) I am good with that.

Agreed.  Additionally, it can create quite crippling marginal tax at lower levels, where someone moves up a tax bracket and loses benefits.  Not a problem when moving from $150k to $151k.  A big impact when moving from $30k to $31k.  

Universal programs are also a lot cheaper to run.  Sure, you give a bit more out at the top, but you gain a bit in administration.  The benefits GrimTuesay lists out more than justify it.  

You also avoid distorting effects.  In Australia you can get a whole heap of pension aged benefits if your income/assets is low enough, with your house not counting.  Of course, this just incentivises people to stuff their money into their house as an asset, leave out other assets, and other shenanigans to get below the cut-off.  This creates its own distortions in behaviour that you don't really want out of your policy.  

[karaddin]

3 hours ago, Triskele said:

Just speaking from the actuarial fiend standpoint, Bernie is likelier to die, right?  

Have either of them been smokers? If that's a difference then I'd put the ex smoker as more likely to fall victim to covid-19.

Biden strikes me as someone who would have, but that's not actually based in anything. If talking unrelated to covid-19 then I'd assume you're right yeah.