Donald Trump: polls of approval and favorability

[Bob Butler 54]

(06-24-2017, 10:08 PM)Galen Wrote: I have considered many different scenarios but the US has a very rigid set of interests who will never give up any of the loot not to mention any special privileges they have gotten.  When this happens the system goes on until it breaks.  This breakdown is a long term process which in the case of Rome was a century or so but once they got to the point of debasing the silver denarius only a drastic reduction of their welfare-warfare state would have saved them.  The Spanish and Ottoman empires similar process took place and they never made the decisions that would have saved them.  I expect the US to continue down its current path until that is no longer possible...

It is not just military spending but the overall spending of government that causes the problems.  There is also the small problem of the ever increasing regulations that strangle economic growth.  All these things were present to a much greater degree in the Soviet Union which caused them to go down in seventy-five years.  This is a matter of economics and not belief.

The problems in Illinois are a consequence of overspending and unfunded liabilities such as public employee pensions.  This is problem all states have and will eventually manifest in all of them in the fullness of time.  I expect as this happens more then the promises of government will be seen as worthless.

I wouldn't say there is one set of special interests.  The system at a high level is conflicted between Republican alliance with the capitalist ruling class, creating tension with Democratic interest in the people and the nation.  This conflict has been diluted somewhat as more Democratic politicians accept money from capitalist interests.

Regulation is one aspect of this conflict.  If something goes bad big time, Democratic habit and instinct is to pass a regulation to prevent the bad thing from happening again.  The Republican pro capitalist bias is to increase profits.  If a regulation requires extra effort to prevent bad things from happening, they don't want to pay for the extra effort.  In many ways this is healthy conflict of interest, with both arguments having merit and the true balance being found somewhere in the middle.  Is enforcing the avoidance of one particular type of problem worth the effort that it takes?  The answer is sometimes.

But it becomes a matter of belief, not economics, when a partisan goes nuts claiming regulation is always good, or regulation is always bad, rather than looking at the situation case by case and looking at things with an open mind.

De-funding critical government services in another place where belief and doctrine can over ride common sense.  If there is a constant push to cut taxes, the job doesn't get done.  The pressure to cut services results in poor services.  I'm not endorsing blank checks and big spending solving all.  The New Deal through Great Society notion of solving all problems with high taxes and throwing lots of cash at every problem at once was overdone.  Much of the opposition to tax and spend liberalism can be understood, but this opposition was taken beyond a reasonable point of return.  Much of what made America great was destroyed by cutting taxes and defunding the greatness.  The peak of America's greatness was the peak of tax and spend.

I am also aware that any party in power for too long is apt to get corrupt and lazy.  Still, if cutting income as a policy is sustained for decades, the ability to govern decently can an has been undercut.  Flint's water problem is a typical example.  You get what you pay for, and this can include poisoned water.

And that's part of the dynamic of partisan extremism.  Both sides will come to endorse and embrace opposing simplistic beliefs.  The other side pushes simplistic blind doctrine, while one's own side perceives it's self as advocating common sense.  Doesn't matter which side one is on, but that's the perception that justifies simplistic emotional stupid partisanship.  From my perspective, both sides at this point are pushing one size fits all simplistic ideas rather than looking at individual problems, the economy of the area where the problem manifests, and how to solve stuff.