Has the regeneracy arrived?

[pbrower2a]

(08-05-2016, 10:24 AM)-- Kinser79 Wrote:

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Quote:That being said, I would say that a regeneracy is noted by a recognition that the status quo is not working, and cannot be made to work by tinkering around the edges.  Obama has pretty much proved that.

Obama tried to be the New FDR, but this time the super-rich had not been so ruined that they couldn't buy some political support. That is the difference between putting an end to the economic meltdown in the equivalent of early 1931/early 2009 and late 1932/late 2010. The super-rich had themselves a little Tea Party and invited some angry old people.

Strangely the plans to address the economic crisis were not implemented by the Obama administration.  Rather they were implemented in late 2008 by the Bush Administration.  Furthermore Obama went with it because he knew that if he allowed the total collapse of the economy he knew the Democrats would never be elected again for a generation.  Timing is everything when the Establishment of the two parties are nearly indistinguishable.

In September 2008 America practically experienced much of the same effects of a political coup. The Secretary of the Treasury, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, and the Chairman of the Securities Exchange Commission told Congress and the Administration exactly how economic policy was to be done. I would not be surprised to find that the financial triumvirate had a short discussion with the Joint Chiefs of Staff first.

Nobody wanted a replay of the full nastiness of the economic meltdown that brought the mass ruin that the three-year meltdown of the world economy (and after a year or so the meltdowns were beginning to look similar)... the President was practically clueless, and his practically-certain successor was willing to do anything to stop the destruction. Barack Obama seems to know his history quite well, and he certainly understood the causes and effects of the meltdown of 1929-1932 as anyone who did not live through it. By 2008 such understanding was rarely the result of first-hand knowledge (one had to be born about 1924 or so to even have a child's knowledge of the Great Stock Market Crash of 1929, which meant being a late-wave GI or older).

Stopping such a meltdown in its tracks was also a concern of national security, especially if one considered the greatest threat ever to American democracy -- the rise of the closest thing to an Antichrist who ever lived.


The blue and gray curves coincide after about a year and are practically indistinguishable for about a half year. The performance of securities markets after a year and a half (after late 2007 and late 1929), generally a good proxy for economic reality, suggest that at equivalent times (early spring in 1931 and early spring 2009), economic performance was very similar.

Of course there is always some lag between political action and economic results. America acted very differently in late 2008 than in late 1930. This


is one consequence of such inaction in 1930 or so. A further image would be all too predictable on my part.

Let me get personal about those consequences: you have identified yourself as black and homosexual. Neither was good for survival in a Nazi world. Neither is having a conscience. Even if I have many cultural ties to Germany I could have easily ended up on the wrong side of the demonic leadership of Germany in the 1930s and early 1940s. We need remind ourselves that many of the victims of the Holocaust were very German in culture. 

A hint: there is nothing wrong with the German people between 1933 and 1945 that Judaism would not have solved. Another hint: fascists do not thrive in countries in which democratic institutions are beyond assault.  

Quote:Since that time Obama had a 2 year honeymoon period where he could have implemented anything he wanted.  He didn't instead he implemented Obamacare which is a give away to the Health Insurance Companies.  In short rather than spending his political capital on doing something, he spent it instead trying to capture an industry for the Democratic Party through implementing a giant regulatory clusterfuck/corporate-welfare program which is so complex as to be incredibly prone to regulatory capture.

If one is in one's late 50s or early 60s and not getting a big subsidy and not getting a high income, employer-subsidized insurance, or government-reimbursed health insurance, one might contemplate emigration. When medical insurance is more costly than payments on a new Mercedes-Benz auromobile, one has a problem. Dropping the age of eligibility for Medicare to age 50, which Hillary Clinton might try to do, would solve even the economic problem of age discrimination which throws away the talents of people in their 50s and 60s, often when they are at their peask of competence in their fields.

I have my idea of how to fund such a reduction in the Medicare age: increase the Medicare tax slightly and impose what I call "abuser fees" -- heavy taxes on alcohol  content in beverages and especially cancerweed products (tobacco use of any kind, and heavy drinking both cause great increases in costs of medical care), federal taxes on fines for moving violations (bad driving imposes great costs of medical care) and child abuse/neglect, marijuana (with presumable legalization that reflects the reality of its mass use), and some increase in the fuel taxes for motor-vehicle fuel. Want to subsidize good behavior? Then impose 'negative' taxes on health-club memberships (fitness is a good thing) and even pet care (people with pet dogs and cats are statistically healthier than people without them).

Oh, yes -- tax the Hell out of pollution as an excise tax. Let people pay the real cost of buying stuff that implies destruction of the environment.

Taxing bad behavior and rewarding good behavior would seem rational enough.

Quote:Strangely if you go and take a look at Main Street America, you'll notice that there hasn't been a recovery.  Things are just as bad as they were in '08.  Of course that would require you leaving your house, and since you don't do that PBR your utter lack of just the evidence of your eyes is not surprising.

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Quote:On the Republican side you are seeing an alignment behind Trump on the issues of Nationalism, Protectionism and Isolationism.  On the Dems you have "Obama's Third Term" and "More of the Same" or at least that is how HRC is running at the moment (it will of course backfire because you don't get this much anger in the electorate if "4 more years" and "More of the Same" could work).  Remember Sanders may not have a chance at getting the nomination but he's set the Dems on fire too.

With Donald Trump you get a muddle on economics and foreign affairs -- and scapegoating instead of problem-solving.

Completely not true.  Trump's solutions are perhaps so simple you can't wrap your head around them.  

1.  Fix the trade.  Deindustrialization happens in countries that allow it to happen.  By accepting trade deals that favor foreign countries over our own we may end up with cheaper goods now but at the expense of jobs and business start ups in the future.

De-industrialization may imply economic progress so profound that people no need to buy an ever-rising amount of material stuff to be happy. Our electronic goodies are becoming dirt-cheap. Have you priced a 32" flat-screen television lately? Have you priced a low-end Android-powered tablet? A Blue-Ray disc player? If you have in-house Wi-Fi, then you have some very good and very inexpensive entertainment available.  

Quote:2.  Limit immigration.  Since I know you went to a university at some time, I know that you are clearly miseducated about how economics works.  If you get increases in supply of a commodity (in this case labor power) and there is only so much demand for that commodity (IE by implementing anti-business policies) then the price of that commodity must as a consequence fall.  And this is only the economic side of the problem and doesn't even address the fact that culture is something one is born into and not something that can be learned in a few years.  If you were suddenly transported to China or Saudi Arabia you might learn Chinese or Arabic in a few years but I highly doubt you'd ever yourself feel Chinese or Arab.


Your non-argument is false.  The fact is that you simply don't like the solutions he's offered.

Much of the immigration to America involves people from the Americas, people who often assimilate easily into what we have long thought as the American way of Life. If anything, Hispanic life has begun to assimilate much of what has been the 'Anglo' way of life through intermarriage.

...If I had to emigrate because I ran afoul of an authoritarian or totalitarian political order in America, then there would be some countries in which I could most easily fit in.

I don't watch much network television, but I did watch the opening ceremonies of the 2016 Olympic Games. Guess what national contingent of athletes looked most like the Brazilian contingent?
 


Reputedly, the extreme south of Brazil looks much like the American Midwest in culture and economics.  

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Quote:In short as I've said elsewhere what I'm seeing is a realignment of the Parties and they won't fall on the left-right axis for much longer.  The economic conditions that gave rise to that in the MillSaec are passing away.  Rather we'll see alignment on the libertarian and authoritarian axis.

Maybe Eric the Green has some other idea of how to make that prediction.

Eric has proven himself repeatedly to be a complete moron. I have little interests in his ideas that lead him to his prediction because they always ultimately boil down to some sort of astrology or other equally mystical mumbo-jumbo.  As such I expect his prediction to be garbage just simply out of the GIGO principle.

You missed the joke. You also missed that the Left-Right divide may not so much disappear as redefine itself. Many of our predictions of the future involve some wishful thinking. I'd like to see much less of the dangerous polarization in American life. I'd also like to see the tendency toward economic inequality  reversed. I'd like a more rational political life and lesser reliance upon private debt as a metaphoric chain. The exploitative creditor loves deflation because it makes the pound of flesh easier to extract in the event of failure to pay -- and makes the debtor more helpless while debt becomes more valuable to a creditor. A debtor welcomes inflation for lessening his burden and giving more opportunities to pay off debt.

One of the more usual divides between Left and Right has been that creditors are generally on the Right (thi9nk of antebellum planters) and debtors on the Left (think of sharecroppers). Think also of the 1950s, when the typical worker was a net creditor because he had a bank balance and savings bonds, but no credit cards. The small-scale creditor still has an interest in economic opportunity because he is making more money off his work than off interest.

I have my prediction that progress will be back to the 1950s in much of the style of life, with a public that distrusts debt, prefers to pay as it goes, and even insists that education be inexpensive enough to be a pay-as-you-go proposition.

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Quote:It is my view that following this election the GOP will become, however, begrudgingly the party of social libertarianism and of nationalism, protectionism and isolationism, and that further this will be the basis of building the new order.  Otherwise, we will end up in the terminal stages of empire and an implosion sometime around the next 2T.

 
Bunk. Too many contradictions.

Not an argument.  Trump has been clear on his views dating back to the 1980s.  Contradictions are only apparent to those who seem to have the memory span of a goldfish.
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In the 1980s practically nobody took his politics seriously. Now we are compelled to look at his political values.

I want to see a return to rationality in politics.