Presidential election, 2016

[Eric the Green]

(11-14-2016, 03:56 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(11-14-2016, 02:35 AM)Galen Wrote:

(11-14-2016, 01:24 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(11-14-2016, 12:25 AM)Galen Wrote:

(11-14-2016, 12:18 AM)Warren Dew Wrote: Agreed.

Hey, you're talking to me as if I wasn't an evil boomer!

That is because you are not being an idiot or condescending the way most Boomers are.  You must be one of the exceptions to the rule that I encounter occasionally.   My attitude toward Eric the Obtuse and some others is a product of me not suffering fools gladly.

Plenty of people of all generations are idiots, though boomers may be more insistent about any idiotic positions they hold.

Condescension, yes, though GIs also tended to be condescending.  Specifically, GIs tended to be condescending when taking positions that they knew - or perhaps "knew" - to be true, but when they didn't know the reasons why those positions were true.  Boomers may be condescending even when they do know the reasoning, but just can't be bothered to discuss it.

The GIs on the other hand were generally very competent and so I have fewer problems with their condescension.  When they were wrong is was rare and very spectacular.  In the end GIs tended respond to reality.  I rather liked them in spite of these flaws because of their basic sanity.

I'm curious where you got that impression; that wasn't my experience.  My experience was that GIs understood some things, but failed to understand other things despite their being obvious.  On the whole, they were probably comparably competent on a relative scale as their presidents were.  Johnson, Nixon, and Carter were incompetent to varying degrees; Reagan was exceptionally competent and Kennedy might have been competent had he had more time.  The overall average is probably slightly subpar relative to other generations.

With respect to political leaders, I think the primary difference with boomers was that GI presidents generally tried to improve things for the nation as a whole, even where they failed, and with the possible exception of Johnson; Boomer presidents to date were more interested in improving things for their political party at the cost of political opponents.  But I don't know if you're talking about political leaders or personal acquaintances.

The only difference I see is that the political opposition has been stiffer. Clinton and Obama certainly were interested in improving things for the nation as a whole. They just weren't allowed to because of the nature of the opposing party.

[Bob Butler 54]

Kinser79 Wrote:

I Wrote:

Kinser79 Wrote:The wage gap is a myth.

Well, no.  This is one of the places where we live in different realities.  Your politics does blind you, can render you unable to perceive the real world.  I'm not interested in trying to remove your blinders at this point, though.

Yes, it is a myth.  Since we agree that we live in a mostly-capitalist society now, and since we agree that it is the class interests of those capitalists to maximize profits, it therefore holds that if said capitalist could get away with paying women 75 or 80 or however many cents on the dollar a man earns then the obvious solution would be fire all then men and hire only women.

Any other explanation simply doesn't stand up to Occam's Razor.

On the other hand, if we hold that men and women are different, and because of those differences they make different choices, then it should be self-evident that any differentials in income between men and women are the result of them making different choices.

Here, you are reminding me of your father.  Saying something doesn't make it so.  The Times has not apologized, he did advocate more countries acquire nuclear weapons, but he seems to think by repeating lies over and over reality will shift to fit the lies.  Women don't get equal pay for equal work.  No amount of sophistry, closing your eyes to facts which clash with your world view or repeating lies with persistence and ever increasing volume will change this.

(11-13-2016, 04:58 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: You're making the assumption here that the Democratic Party is the progressive party this time around--the evidence for which is non-existent.

By this line of argument I would contend that the so-called new elites are not a new elite at all but simply a New Money version of the old elite.

You were the one that said the old elites didn't exist anymore, and called out one particular industry as the new elites.  

My own notion of an arrow of progress works far better on issues than political parties.  If one favors giving more wealth to the existing elite ruling class at the expense of the working people, one is conservative on that issue.  In any given S&H crisis, those advocating for continued dominance by the existing ruling elites would be conservative.  This doesn't mean that someone conservative on economic issues can't be progressive on on women's health care or marriage equality.  Not every Republican is conservative on every issue.  Thus, I don't care all that much to assign labels in this case, though on most of the issues we are talking about here, the Republicans do come up as conservative under my definition.

Again, I am not Noah Webster or Humpty Dumpty.  I can't mandate how you use the word.  The side that gets to write the history books is progressive?  There is some sort of truth in that, but I can't judge which party is which by that definition, and won't be able to until after the fact.  I'm more interested in resolving issues that assigning labels.  My definition is focused towards examining problems and suggesting the sort of answers that traditionally have fixed them.  Retroactive labeling after the fact is useless for what I'm trying to do.

I am happier with saying the capitalist class -- the owners of the means of production -- still exist and that the computer folk are a subgroup of the robber barons as a whole.  They will be pushing somewhat different agendas than those invested in oil, armaments, automobiles, or any other industries, but computer industry robber barons are not basically different from other robber barons.

[Odin]

(11-13-2016, 11:45 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(11-13-2016, 10:11 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: In the case of borrowing and taxing the state is taking capital that could be put to work elsewhere and using it it for whatever.  I will grant that not all spending is equal.  A tax cut for the extremely wealthy (and I mean on their take home income, low corporate and capital gains taxes push money into investment and re-investment given a higher personal income tax rate) is a poor way to spend that capital.  The same would be true of a tax cut for the poor.  Or welfare.  Or subsidies for insurance.

Spending that same capital on public infrastructure, either new construction or refurbishing existing infrastructure, while not glamorous has a rate of return much much higher than a mere tax cut or a welfare check.

I agree with much of what you have to say, but I have to disagree on this.  The problem is that government spending is often extremely inefficient, because the government has no profit motive.  Refurbishing failing infrastructure may be done efficiently, but any extra money allocated is still spent, but almost entirely on gold plating or patronage.

Massachusetts is a good example of this.  When Obama passed his infrastructure spending bill, we had a Democrat governor and got more than our share of the money.  Lots of it was spent on unproductive things, like moving curbs in or out by a couple of feet in various places.  Yes, new curbing was involved, but the old curbing was also granite and in fine shape.

There were also bridges and interchanges that needed fixing, but the work was interminable; for six years the return on the investment was negative as traffic lanes remained closed to permit the "work".

Then we got a Republican governor, and the projects that had taken six years to fail to complete all started getting completed in a matter of months.  It's quite clear that they could have been completed with a tenth the money, and the extra money was just spent on unproductive patronage employment.

Tax cuts that would encourage investment in private infrastructure would be far more efficient, if you really wanted infrastructure.

Personally I think there is also, currently, a lot of excess capacity due to lack of consumption, so I think tax cuts for wage earners to boost consumption would also make sense at present.  As the following graph indicates, taking up the slack in the economy - which granted, might involve more than just tax cuts - would make everyone about 10% better off.



But even if you don't believe in keynesian deficits, massive government spending on infrastructure is not the way to go.

Increasing technologically-driven productivity has a depressing effect on both wages and the employment rate, which hurts demand, which depresses economic growth. This is technological unemployment, something noted as early as Marx, and it is only going to get worse over time as automation becomes even more widespread. This has been masked for a century by the increasingly dominance of white collar jobs, but now even many of these jobs are beginning to be automated away, eventually everyone who isn't a super-genius with a graduate degree, or someone who does a highly skilled trade that cannot be automated, will be left jobless.

We as a society have only 2 choices: a universal basic income or complete social breakdown, there are no other alternatives.

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-14-2016, 08:07 AM)Odin Wrote: Increasing technologically-driven productivity has a depressing effect on both wages and the employment rate, which hurts demand, which depresses economic growth. This is technological unemployment, something noted as early as Marx, and it is only going to get worse over time as automation becomes even more widespread. This has been masked for a century by the increasingly dominance of white collar jobs, but now even many of these jobs are beginning to be automated away, eventually everyone who isn't a super-genius with a graduate degree, or someone who does a highly skilled trade that cannot be automated, will be left jobless.

We as a society have only 2 choices: a universal basic income or complete social breakdown, there are no other alternatives.

Do you mean universal minimum basic income, that everyone is assured a living wage?  Or is the minimum to be equal to the maximum, that everyone gets the same wage?

But I agree with the basic premise stated above.  Automation is severely impacting the economy and culture.

I see our having certain sacred cows, notably the 40 hour work week and retirement around age 65.  These are New Deal numbers, suitable for mid 20th level technology and the period's large number of manufacturing jobs.  While these numbers are dated, they are more or less cast in cultural cement.  With the factors you mention above and such sacred cows remaining fixed, there are more people looking for more hours than there are hours available.  Basic supply and demand results in non-living wages for those who do get the jobs.  

I've long wanted someone to crunch numbers to ask how many hours work needs to be done, what set of hours per year and years per career will satisfy this, and what would be the minimum wage have to be to assure that with reduced hours workers can get by.

But rather than increased wage/hour and decreased hours we're going with increased hours and decreased wage per hour.  That seems to me to be the entirely wrong direction if we are going to avoid social breakdown.  Also, lots of folks are pushing for less regulation and government intervention.  Remaking the work week to give most everyone a living wage will require the opposite.

[Anthony '58]

Quote:The lunatics (Boomers and Xers) are running the asylum...

http://www.cnn.com/election/results

2016 Presidential Election Results, By Age:

18-29: Hillary 55%, Trump 37%
30-44: Hillary 50%, Trump 42%
45-64: Trump 53%, Hillary 44%
65 and older: Trump 53%, Hillary 45%

Therefore, but for the smallest of corrections, Baby Busters (born 1958-68) and older went for Trump, while Post Busters (born 1969-81) and younger went for Hillary.

[Warren Dew]

(11-14-2016, 08:05 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I am happier with saying the capitalist class -- the owners of the means of production -- still exist and that the computer folk are a subgroup of the robber barons as a whole.  They will be pushing somewhat different agendas than those invested in oil, armaments, automobiles, or any other industries, but computer industry robber barons are not basically different from other robber barons.

By that definition, the "robber barons" are roughly equally split between the two major parties, so your relevant definition of "progressive" is largely unaligned with political party.

Of course, the elites just before the Civil War included the large plantation owners of the South.  Were they robber barons too?  They were certainly among the elites.  If they fit your definition of "robber baron", the Republicans were never the party of robber barons.

[Anthony '58]

(11-13-2016, 11:45 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

But isn't the "gold standard" of these sort of charts the AmeriTrust chart, which observes the year 1790 as the start of its trend line?

I would post a link to the complete chart if I could find it. Maybe one of you here would have better luck?

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-14-2016, 10:09 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(11-14-2016, 08:05 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I am happier with saying the capitalist class -- the owners of the means of production -- still exist and that the computer folk are a subgroup of the robber barons as a whole.  They will be pushing somewhat different agendas than those invested in oil, armaments, automobiles, or any other industries, but computer industry robber barons are not basically different from other robber barons.

By that definition, the "robber barons" are roughly equally split between the two major parties, so your relevant definition of "progressive" is largely unaligned with political party.

Of course, the elites just before the Civil War included the large plantation owners of the South.  Were they robber barons too?  They were certainly among the elites.  If they fit your definition of "robber baron", the Republicans were never the party of robber barons.

I see the Civil War era featuring a struggle between two sets of elites, the southern plantation and slave owning agricultural elite, and the northern industrial robber barons.

I quite agree that in the modern era there are robber barons supporting both parties. Again, the key is in policies set. Not all robber barons are gung ho for bleeding Main Street dry in order to boost their personal income to new and absurd levels. Some acknowledge that a robust Main Street in the long term is as key to optimizing their wealth and power rather than optimizing the next quarter's dividends.

And then too, not all Democratic politicians are as concerned for a healthy party as they are for gathering 'campaign contributions'. I've said many times the Democratic party is nigh on as guilty of accepting Robber Baron money and for responding to Robber Baron requests as the Republicans. If the regeneracy has not happened and is not close to happening, it is in part because there is no really new elite class that needs to suppress the old elite class. At this point neither party is progressive enough to say a regeneracy is underway.

[Warren Dew]

(11-14-2016, 08:07 AM)Odin Wrote:

(11-13-2016, 11:45 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(11-13-2016, 10:11 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: In the case of borrowing and taxing the state is taking capital that could be put to work elsewhere and using it it for whatever.  I will grant that not all spending is equal.  A tax cut for the extremely wealthy (and I mean on their take home income, low corporate and capital gains taxes push money into investment and re-investment given a higher personal income tax rate) is a poor way to spend that capital.  The same would be true of a tax cut for the poor.  Or welfare.  Or subsidies for insurance.

Spending that same capital on public infrastructure, either new construction or refurbishing existing infrastructure, while not glamorous has a rate of return much much higher than a mere tax cut or a welfare check.

I agree with much of what you have to say, but I have to disagree on this.  The problem is that government spending is often extremely inefficient, because the government has no profit motive.  Refurbishing failing infrastructure may be done efficiently, but any extra money allocated is still spent, but almost entirely on gold plating or patronage.

Massachusetts is a good example of this.  When Obama passed his infrastructure spending bill, we had a Democrat governor and got more than our share of the money.  Lots of it was spent on unproductive things, like moving curbs in or out by a couple of feet in various places.  Yes, new curbing was involved, but the old curbing was also granite and in fine shape.

There were also bridges and interchanges that needed fixing, but the work was interminable; for six years the return on the investment was negative as traffic lanes remained closed to permit the "work".

Then we got a Republican governor, and the projects that had taken six years to fail to complete all started getting completed in a matter of months.  It's quite clear that they could have been completed with a tenth the money, and the extra money was just spent on unproductive patronage employment.

Tax cuts that would encourage investment in private infrastructure would be far more efficient, if you really wanted infrastructure.

Personally I think there is also, currently, a lot of excess capacity due to lack of consumption, so I think tax cuts for wage earners to boost consumption would also make sense at present.  As the following graph indicates, taking up the slack in the economy - which granted, might involve more than just tax cuts - would make everyone about 10% better off.



But even if you don't believe in keynesian deficits, massive government spending on infrastructure is not the way to go.

Increasing technologically-driven productivity has a depressing effect on both wages and the employment rate, which hurts demand, which depresses economic growth. This is technological unemployment, something noted as early as Marx, and it is only going to get worse over time as automation becomes even more widespread. This has been masked for a century by the increasingly dominance of white collar jobs, but now even many of these jobs are beginning to be automated away, eventually everyone who isn't a super-genius with a graduate degree, or someone who does a highly skilled trade that cannot be automated, will be left jobless.

We as a society have only 2 choices: a universal basic income or complete social breakdown, there are no other alternatives.

Unless you think the Singularity happened in 2008, technological productivity cannot have caused the GDP growth gap shown in the graph.

Technological productivity is a legitimate longer term issue, but the time scale for it is decades, not years.  Personally I think that if the labor is there, there will be things people want to use it for, but I'm not in principle opposed to a universal basic income if it's set at a level that's actually affordable, which is a fraction of the levels being bruited about.  Be that as it may, none of that is relevant on the time scale of Trump's first term, let alone the time before the 2018 elections.

[Warren Dew]

(11-14-2016, 10:13 AM)Anthony Wrote:

(11-13-2016, 11:45 PM)Warren Dew Wrote:

But isn't the "gold standard" of these sort of charts the AmeriTrust chart, which observes the year 1790 as the start of its trend line?

I would post a link to the complete chart if I could find it.  Maybe one of you here would have better luck?

Here is one that starts with 1870 that shows essentially the same trend line as above.  It doesn't show anything after 2009, but the data is roughly a diagonal line at about a 45 degree angle from the 2009 data point, which shows the same gap:



I'm not familiar with the Ameritrust chart, but it's hard to see how its trend line could be substantially different.

[Kinser79]

(11-13-2016, 11:52 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-13-2016, 10:11 PM)Kinser79 Wrote:

(11-13-2016, 09:06 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-13-2016, 04:58 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: For some it seems to me that they are locked into their world view and are unwilling to even attempt to look at any issue from more than one angle.

Really?  Ya think?  

Yes I do think.  It also includes you to some extent.  However, unlike many here you recognize values lock where it exists.

Quote:

(11-13-2016, 04:58 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: I will say however that the notion of what is and is not progress is relative.

Do you mean subjective?  That some will think one thing important, others another?  If so, sure.  It seems you do not care if a capitalist class that controls the means of production is collecting extreme amounts of wealth and power to the point that you are now in denial that this class even exists.  I disagree.  Marx described the problem very well, even if his solutions didn't account for human nature.

Whether it is relative or subjective is a matter of semantics.  Semantics I'm not willing to argue over.

I'm not interested in arguing over semantics either, but I'd kind of like to understand what you're saying.  Your original quote made no sense to me.

(11-13-2016, 10:11 PM)Kinser79 Wrote: As to a capitalist class, it not only exists but it also controls the means of production and yes it does accumulate wealth.  That is what capitalists do.  Marx did describe the problems of his day very well but those material conditions are no longer present.  Even so, human nature being what it is, the best possible system is one in which every man has the liberty to exploit whatever opportunity may come his way.  That system does not exist in this country largely thanks to the "New Deal" and an abundance of governmental regulation.  That system is of course capitalism.  Which is the worse economic system possible, besides all the others that have been tried.

I've been trying to work out a simple political forum friendly system for talking about economics.  Might as well give it a shake.  It starts by partitioning the economy into sectors.  I'm using semi familiar labels with a common theme:  Main Street, Wall Street, Easy Street and Pennsylvania Avenue.  Of these, Easy Street and Wall street are so tied together that I won't spend a lot of time differentiating between the two.

Then there are the three ways (feel free to include others) that government action might effect the interactions between the sectors.  Supply Side assumes Wall Street and Easy Street do not have the funds to invest in growth and makes such funds available through tax policy.  Demand Side (such as the infrastructure projects you mentioned) assumes creating working class jobs will improve what's going on on Main Street.  Deficit Spending might be used to gather funds for either Demand or Supply side stimulus, but it shifts problems to later rather than solving them.  Every dime spent servicing the debt is a dime that can't be spent on stimulus.  Also, the interest on the debt is a hidden transfer from Penn Ave to Wall Street.

Tax and spend liberalism and borrow and spend trickle down are two particular configurations of the above.  They are not the only possible such configurations.  I can agree that Tax and Spend as practiced by LBJ and trickle down as practiced by Bush 43 are dead or ought to be dead, though I'm concerned that your father has promised borrow and spend on steroids.

Observations...

Main Street is the goose that lays the golden eggs.  If Main Street is doing well, the other streets can and will successfully leech off of them and do quite well, thank you.  The problems come with too much leeching and an anemic goose.

Dividends do as much or more to redistribute wealth as any government policy.  They move funds from Main Street through Wall Street to Easy Street.  The amount of dividends so shifted is to a great degree controlled by Easy Street.  In short, the capitalist owners of the means of production are in their greed strangling the golden egg laying goose.

Currently, wealth inequality is as large as it has been since the Gilded Age, interest rates are low, and there are no real problems floating a new stock in order to leverage new technology and create new jobs.  Thus, there is absolutely no need for Supply Side stimulus.

Currently the debt is high as a portion of the economy, as high as it has been since the immediate aftermath of World War II.  This is not a proper time for increasing the debt.  I'd very much like to start buying it down.

I'm inclined to agree with you that a some amount of infrastructure investment and other demand side stuff should be considered now.

Neither supply side, demand side or deficit control should be considered alone or as fixed policies.  You have to look at the current state of the economy and use all tools available.  We shouldn't be looking for a year when everything was cool and try the policies that were in place then.  We should look at what the problems are today and what tools are available to fix them.

While I can agree that enough has changed since LBJ's and Bush 43's time that precisely duplicating their tax and spend and trickle down economies and policies is or should be impossible.  This does not mean that the basic relationships between the various economic segments have changed or are apt to go away.  Easy Street -- the capitalist class that owns the means of production -- has too much control over how money flows from Main Street to Easy Street.  Things have changed even more since Marx's time, but that's the core of what he was concerned about, and the problem is anything but solved.

If government acting according to the will of the People isn't the agency to check the excessive influence of Easy Street, what is?  In abstract, the government getting out of Main Street's way and allowing them to do their thing is fine, but someone or something has to check Easy Street's leeching out of Main Street.  Until you can suggest viable means to do this other than government tax policy and regulation, that's where we're going to have to go.

But by all means, suggest another way.  Laissez Faire isn't it.  Unfettered capitalism was a disaster in the Gilded Age.  If you don't believe me, read your Marx.  The Reagan Bush Bush attempts to move back in that direction resulted in disastrous economic problems.  I fear your father is going to repeat their mistake of putting Easy Street above Main Street.

Anyway, that's where I'm at.  I might come back to address some of your other points, but it's getting late...

I will refer to Galen's signature here where he quotes Ludwig Von Mises. "If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action." As such, while I'm not in favor of total laissez faire, there is a need for certain regulations to prevent fraud, abuse, selling of false products, and safety but apart from those few necessary and common sense regulations--many regulations imposed federally are merely tools used by certain industries to limit their own competition.

I believe I've spoken on the issue of regulatory capture before--I know I have done so extensively in regard to vaping.

But let me address your overly simplistic model. You have proposed four different sectors of the economy naming them Main Street, Easy Street, Wall Street, and Pennsylvania Avenue.

I would argue that there is no easy street sector. There is a capitalist class to be sure, but they mostly fall into either the main street sector, or the wall street sector. There simply isn't much in the way of an idle wealthy in this country and never has been (unless you are attempting to portray media celebrities and sports figures as an entire economic sector). The vast majority of those you'd class as being "Easy Street" which includes Daddy either have managed inherited wealth well, or have created their own wealth.

As to the "wall street sector" it exists and services main street or at least in theory does. There are of course a large number of individuals who make their living simply by manipulating bits of paper (or perhaps more accurately now electronic data) on spread sheets on Wall Street.

The simple fact of the matter is this. Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue must both consume a portion of the capital to exist, but it is main street that creates all of the capital to start with. That is created through savings and production. In short people make things from labor and raw materials and thereby increase the aggregate wealth. At most Pennsylvania Avenue can take capital from Main Street and give it to Wall Street or it can take it and give it back to Main Street. Of course how that capital is given back has consequences. And because different choices lead to different outcomes we will see that spending on necessary infrastructure (the Whigs called them "Internal Improvements") will have a different result than passing out a welfare check.

In the former once that infrastructure is built or refurbished, main street gets jobs immediately, but also lowered costs (in refurbished infrastructure) and new avenues for future investment and development (new infrastructure). As such borrowing for such a task results in a net gain in taxes to the treasury and any debts incurred are canceled out.

On the other hand if Pennsylvania Avenue instead buys the poor bread and circuses the money is spent without any future return. So while the GDP may go up because of that activity, it is an economic dead end.

As for something to replace what we currently have....I don't think it needs replacement. I think the over all foundations are sound. What needs to be done is the same thing that is done when one when one remodels a bathroom. (An event I've learned about extensively through my son, he's for all intents and purposes apprenticed with a tile setter now.) The first act is demolition. during the demolition everything except the framing, main plumbing and electrical works is removed and discarded. The next act any and all plumbing and electrical changes that must be made are made, and then finally the finishing work is started.

By and large I would say that what needs to occur before we can even talk about anything new is the removal of all of the old and broken stuff first.

[Kinser79]

(11-14-2016, 08:05 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

Kinser79 Wrote:

I Wrote:

Kinser79 Wrote:The wage gap is a myth.

Well, no.  This is one of the places where we live in different realities.  Your politics does blind you, can render you unable to perceive the real world.  I'm not interested in trying to remove your blinders at this point, though.

Yes, it is a myth.  Since we agree that we live in a mostly-capitalist society now, and since we agree that it is the class interests of those capitalists to maximize profits, it therefore holds that if said capitalist could get away with paying women 75 or 80 or however many cents on the dollar a man earns then the obvious solution would be fire all then men and hire only women.

Any other explanation simply doesn't stand up to Occam's Razor.

On the other hand, if we hold that men and women are different, and because of those differences they make different choices, then it should be self-evident that any differentials in income between men and women are the result of them making different choices.

Here, you are reminding me of your father.  Saying something doesn't make it so.  The Times has not apologized, he did advocate more countries acquire nuclear weapons, but he seems to think by repeating lies over and over reality will shift to fit the lies.  Women don't get equal pay for equal work.  No amount of sophistry, closing your eyes to facts which clash with your world view or repeating lies with persistence and ever increasing volume will change this.

The Times is unlikely to appologize or retract. The Wage Gap Myth is part and parcle of the necessary journalistic virtue signalling that occurs in the press. That being said, when controlled for hours worked, and fields chosen men and women are making the same amount of money in wages. Women do earn less than men, however, that is two fold--first is their biology, women may take several months or even years off to have children and raise a family (men do not), and secondly women are more prone to taking more time off than men.

To conclude that women earn less then men over their lifetime because of any reason other then their own choices is itself sophistry. Institutional sexism as described by the mysandrist landwhales feminists simply does not exist. No serious economist will even touch the topic. To attempt to argue otherwise indicates you are values locked on this matter.

Quote:My own notion of an arrow of progress works far better on issues than political parties.  If one favors giving more wealth to the existing elite ruling class at the expense of the working people, one is conservative on that issue.

Let us suppose we agree on that. And, honestly, Bob, I think we agree far more than we disagree. But let us for a second look at the works of the two parties. Everything from the bank bail outs to attempting to deregulate the economy have been championed by the Establishment politicians of both parties. This has been the case since at least the 1990s. As such I'd say that whether one is progressive or regressive in this 4T cannot be determined by who is and who is not a Republican or a Democrat.

I would counter that the divide is between Nationalist-Populists and Globalist-Corporatists. The old party labels aren't really working right now because the bases of both sides of that divide have not yet settled. That being said, I would say that Trump's election indicates that the GOP will take up the Nationalist-Populist mantle, and leave the Globalist-Corporateist to the Democrats.

I really can't go too far down this path with you without getting into Alex Jones territory and that will make folks' heads explode.

 

Quote:In any given S&H crisis, those advocating for continued dominance by the existing ruling elites would be conservative.  This doesn't mean that someone conservative on economic issues can't be progressive on on women's health care or marriage equality.  Not every Republican is conservative on every issue.  Thus, I don't care all that much to assign labels in this case, though on most of the issues we are talking about here, the Republicans do come up as conservative under my definition.

I think we're in agreement here. My boyfriend and I are both economically conservative--in some cases even reactionary because I advocate the demolition of a lot of the tacky 20th century whatevers so we can have new less tacky 21st century whatevers. I'm using whatever here because I really don't have a good word to describe what I'm trying to say.

As for marriage equality, I favor it though I wish gays wouldn't. I'm in favor of keeping abortion legal--mostly as a public safety measure. And of course I don't oppose all immigration, but I do think that we need to limit it for a time so as to absorb the people already here. America is a nation and as a nation it is a historically constituted group of people with a common language, culture, territory and economic life. I'm in favor not only of legalizing marijuana (which I do enjoy myself) but also legalizing all other recreational drugs as well. The argument being that prohibition allows for unsafe and impure products to get into the hands of those consuming them, and that the lack of common sense regulations as happens in illegal markets means that it is far easier children to acquire them and perhaps become addicted to them.

I'll give an example for the last. My son is 17 and it is far easier for him to buy pot, and for that matter cocaine or heroin, than it is for him to buy e-liquid. He's decided he likes using nicotine so I've pretty much insisted he use the least harmful method of ingesting it apart from snus--which he didn't care for.

Quote:The side that gets to write the history books is progressive?  There is some sort of truth in that, but I can't judge which party is which by that definition, and won't be able to until after the fact.  I'm more interested in resolving issues that assigning labels.  My definition is focused towards examining problems and suggesting the sort of answers that traditionally have fixed them.  Retroactive labeling after the fact is useless for what I'm trying to do.

Essentially. Whatever is progressive, or whomever is progressive during this 4T will be labeled so sometime during the 1T.

Quote:I am happier with saying the capitalist class -- the owners of the means of production -- still exist and that the computer folk are a subgroup of the robber barons as a whole.  They will be pushing somewhat different agendas than those invested in oil, armaments, automobiles, or any other industries, but computer industry robber barons are not basically different from other robber barons.

Then as a consequence then one should see that at least one subset of the "robber barons" are in fact in bed with the Democrats. I'm not so concerned about what party had what position in the 1960s or for that matter the 1890s. I'm concerned about who is with whom now. That is because I realize that Lincoln was right when he described both parties as being like drunken men who are struggling into and out of each other's coats.

[Eric the Green]

(11-14-2016, 02:01 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(11-12-2016, 11:08 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: The National Popular Vote Compact:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_P...te_Compact

This is precisely the reason for having the Electoral College. It allows multiple escape valves.

What has escaped, is democracy. The Electoral College allows a minority party representing the provincial, backward states to govern us. It needs to go, but I don't know whether it ever will. Secession may actually happen first.

[Eric the Green]

(11-14-2016, 02:04 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(11-12-2016, 11:17 PM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(11-12-2016, 08:38 PM)Odin Wrote: The lunatics (Boomers and Xers) are running the asylum...

Do you think when millennials and homelanders "take over" things will be better? I have my doubts. Boomers' own hopes for this in the sixties have been dashed, by the Boomers themselves and the Xers. Things never seem to change in this country; the process of change stopped in 1980 and has not resumed. The USA is sclerotic and shows no sign of changing. I have predicted that this would finally change in the 2020s. Now, it would be a mammoth, wholesale and 180-degree change, as of Tuesday. So, good luck to the USA.

Boomers besides the Blue ones who relish the 60s are as happy right now as a dog with two ____.

Granted, they were duped by Trump after going through years of Obama-Derangement-Syndrome not all that long after the earlier Clinton-Derangement-Syndrome years. But there they all are ... look at the age distribution of the vote!

I don't have figures on the age distribution of the Trump vote, and with so many mail-in and provisional ballots yet to be counted, I doubt such figures are accurate yet. But from what I've heard, millennial whites probably voted for him. We certainly can't be guaranteed that the white millennials will escape the sclerosis of continuous trickle-down Reaganism as they get older. And Xers have always been more conservative, with due allowance for aging. No hope can be placed in them at all.

[Odin]

(11-14-2016, 08:35 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(11-14-2016, 08:07 AM)Odin Wrote: Increasing technologically-driven productivity has a depressing effect on both wages and the employment rate, which hurts demand, which depresses economic growth. This is technological unemployment, something noted as early as Marx, and it is only going to get worse over time as automation becomes even more widespread. This has been masked for a century by the increasingly dominance of white collar jobs, but now even many of these jobs are beginning to be automated away, eventually everyone who isn't a super-genius with a graduate degree, or someone who does a highly skilled trade that cannot be automated, will be left jobless.

We as a society have only 2 choices: a universal basic income or complete social breakdown, there are no other alternatives.

Do you mean universal minimum basic income, that everyone is assured a living wage?  Or is the minimum to be equal to the maximum, that everyone gets the same wage?

But I agree with the basic premise stated above.  Automation is severely impacting the economy and culture.

I see our having certain sacred cows, notably the 40 hour work week and retirement around age 65.  These are New Deal numbers, suitable for mid 20th level technology and the period's large number of manufacturing jobs.  While these numbers are dated, they are more or less cast in cultural cement.  With the factors you mention above and such sacred cows remaining fixed, there are more people looking for more hours than there are hours available.  Basic supply and demand results in non-living wages for those who do get the jobs.  

I've long wanted someone to crunch numbers to ask how many hours work needs to be done, what set of hours per year and years per career will satisfy this, and what would be the minimum wage have to be to assure that with reduced hours workers can get by.

But rather than increased wage/hour and decreased hours we're going with increased hours and decreased wage per hour.  That seems to me to be the entirely wrong direction if we are going to avoid social breakdown.  Also, lots of folks are pushing for less regulation and government intervention.  Remaking the work week to give most everyone a living wage will require the opposite.

Everyone is assured a living wage.

[Eric the Green]

(11-14-2016, 10:09 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(11-14-2016, 08:05 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I am happier with saying the capitalist class -- the owners of the means of production -- still exist and that the computer folk are a subgroup of the robber barons as a whole.  They will be pushing somewhat different agendas than those invested in oil, armaments, automobiles, or any other industries, but computer industry robber barons are not basically different from other robber barons.

By that definition, the "robber barons" are roughly equally split between the two major parties, so your relevant definition of "progressive" is largely unaligned with political party.

Of course, the elites just before the Civil War included the large plantation owners of the South.  Were they robber barons too?  They were certainly among the elites.  If they fit your definition of "robber baron", the Republicans were never the party of robber barons.

The robber barons today are the Republicans. The only issue is which party supports the barons, and which does not? The 5-4 vote on Citizens United makes the case; case closed.

[Eric the Green]

(11-14-2016, 08:07 AM)Odin Wrote: Increasing technologically-driven productivity has a depressing effect on both wages and the employment rate, which hurts demand, which depresses economic growth. This is technological unemployment, something noted as early as Marx, and it is only going to get worse over time as automation becomes even more widespread. This has been masked for a century by the increasingly dominance of white collar jobs, but now even many of these jobs are beginning to be automated away, eventually everyone who isn't a super-genius with a graduate degree, or someone who does a highly skilled trade that cannot be automated, will be left jobless.

We as a society have only 2 choices: a universal basic income or complete social breakdown, there are no other alternatives.

Yes, and complete economic breakdown too.

[Warren Dew]

(11-14-2016, 02:08 PM)taramarie Wrote:

(11-14-2016, 03:56 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(11-14-2016, 02:35 AM)Galen Wrote:

(11-14-2016, 01:24 AM)Warren Dew Wrote:

(11-14-2016, 12:25 AM)Galen Wrote: That is because you are not being an idiot or condescending the way most Boomers are.  You must be one of the exceptions to the rule that I encounter occasionally.   My attitude toward Eric the Obtuse and some others is a product of me not suffering fools gladly.

Plenty of people of all generations are idiots, though boomers may be more insistent about any idiotic positions they hold.

Condescension, yes, though GIs also tended to be condescending.  Specifically, GIs tended to be condescending when taking positions that they knew - or perhaps "knew" - to be true, but when they didn't know the reasons why those positions were true.  Boomers may be condescending even when they do know the reasoning, but just can't be bothered to discuss it.

The GIs on the other hand were generally very competent and so I have fewer problems with their condescension.  When they were wrong is was rare and very spectacular.  In the end GIs tended respond to reality.  I rather liked them in spite of these flaws because of their basic sanity.

I'm curious where you got that impression; that wasn't my experience.  My experience was that GIs understood some things, but failed to understand other things despite their being obvious.  On the whole, they were probably comparably competent on a relative scale as their presidents were.  Johnson, Nixon, and Carter were incompetent to varying degrees; Reagan was exceptionally competent and Kennedy might have been competent had he had more time.  The overall average is probably slightly subpar relative to other generations.

With respect to political leaders, I think the primary difference with boomers was that GI presidents generally tried to improve things for the nation as a whole, even where they failed, and with the possible exception of Johnson; Boomer presidents to date were more interested in improving things for their political party at the cost of political opponents.  But I don't know if you're talking about political leaders or personal acquaintances.

I am curious as to what common things you think GIs did not understand.

I think it was different things for different GIs.

For Nixon, it was that price controls would fail, either through shortages or some other way.

For some GIs I knew, it was that cigarette butts could start fires.  They seemed to believe spontaneous combustion was pretty common and could not have been started by the cigarette butts involved in the situations.

I ran into a lot of other odd and not very consequential examples like the latter when I was a kid, but don't remember most of them now.  Maybe if I dredge some up from memory, I'll post them too.

[Bob Butler 54]

(11-14-2016, 10:32 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: I will refer to Galen's signature here where he quotes Ludwig Von Mises.  "If one rejects laissez faire on account of man's fallibility and moral weakness, one must for the same reason also reject every kind of government action."  As such, while I'm not in favor of total laissez faire, there is a need for certain regulations to prevent fraud, abuse, selling of false products, and safety but apart from those few necessary and common sense regulations--many regulations imposed federally are merely tools used by certain industries to limit their own competition.

I reject Galen's signature line.  Some government policies are better than others.  The existence of bad policies does not imply that all policies are bad.  I don't see the logic at all.

(11-14-2016, 10:32 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: I believe I've spoken on the issue of regulatory capture before--I know I have done so extensively in regard to vaping.

But let me address your overly simplistic model.  You have proposed four different sectors of the economy naming them Main Street, Easy Street, Wall Street, and Pennsylvania Avenue.

I would argue that there is no easy street sector.  There is a capitalist class to be sure, but they mostly fall into either the main street sector, or the wall street sector.  There simply isn't much in the way of an idle wealthy in this country and never has been (unless you are attempting to portray media celebrities and sports figures as an entire economic sector).  The vast majority of those you'd class as being "Easy Street" which includes Daddy either have managed inherited wealth well, or have created their own wealth.  

As to the "wall street sector" it exists and services main street or at least in theory does.  There are of course a large number of individuals who make their living simply by manipulating bits of paper (or perhaps more accurately now electronic data) on spread sheets on Wall Street.

Right now, the interaction between Wall Street and Easy Street aren't key to any points I am making.  If you wish to make the simple model even simpler, sure.  If I ever do want to talk about the interactions between the Robber Barons as individuals and the finance industry, I might use both terms, but I have no reason to insist that you use them.

(11-14-2016, 10:32 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: The simple fact of the matter is this.  Wall Street and Pennsylvania Avenue must both consume a portion of the capital to exist, but it is main street that creates all of the capital to start with.  That is created through savings and production.  In short people make things from labor and raw materials and thereby increase the aggregate wealth.  At most Pennsylvania Avenue can take capital from Main Street and give it to Wall Street or it can take it and give it back to Main Street.  Of course how that capital is given back has consequences.  And because different choices lead to different outcomes we will see that spending on necessary infrastructure (the Whigs called them "Internal Improvements") will have a different result than passing out a welfare check.

In the former once that infrastructure is built or refurbished, main street gets jobs immediately, but also lowered costs (in refurbished infrastructure) and new avenues for future investment and development (new infrastructure).  As such borrowing for such a task results in a net gain in taxes to the treasury and any debts incurred are canceled out.  

On the other hand if Pennsylvania Avenue instead buys the poor bread and circuses the money is spent without any future return.  So while the GDP may go up because of that activity, it is an economic dead end.

There are certainly good and bad ways to do demand side stimulus.  I agree infrastructure repair and development is one of the better, assuming the contracts aren't all awarded to the governor's no good brother in law.  Spending money for the sake of spending money?    No.  Any sort of demand side stuff should definitely be to achieve ends worth achieving, to give solid return.  Is building NFL stadiums with public money good demand side?  Is colonizing Mars good demand side?  Did the pharaohs do good demand side building the pyramids at Giza?  Color me skeptical, especially while the bridges need repair, but lets have the conversations.  Maybe the Obama Library needs to be built as a pyramid?

I'm not going to advocate tax-and-spend with abandon on the scale it was done during the awakening.

(11-14-2016, 10:32 AM)Kinser79 Wrote: As for something to replace what we currently have....I don't think it needs replacement.  I think the over all foundations are sound.  What needs to be done is the same thing that is done when one when one remodels a bathroom.  (An event I've learned about extensively through my son, he's for all intents and purposes apprenticed with a tile setter now.)  The first act is demolition.  during the demolition everything except the framing, main plumbing and electrical works is removed and discarded.  The next act any and all plumbing and electrical changes that must be made are made, and then finally the finishing work is started.

By and large I would say that what needs to occur before we can even talk about anything new is the removal of all of the old and broken stuff first.

I can accept your remodeling metaphor with one caveat.  I would hope your son does not start demolishing until he has a plan for what he is going to build and has all his materials on hand or immediately available.  I put in a new sceptic system last spring.  The guy came in with his crew, made some really big holes in my front yard, called the pre-cast company to say that he's ready for the main tank, only to discover that the truck driver who was to have made the delivery was out that day.  Fortunately, there is more than one pre-cast company in the area.

Easy Street,  the capitalist class owning the means of production, having the power to decide how much of Main Street's capital should move from Main Street to Easy Street, is to me (and to Marx) the core of the problem.  That's where I'd look to tear down the old and the broken.  I've a few daydreams of doing it drastically.  Declare all current stocks worthless.  Declare all the means of production to be owned by the workers.  If such workers want to sell shares of their cooperative to third parties, this is fine, but said third parties do not get to vote their shares, and the tax code for worker stock holders and retirees would be entirely different than the tax code for absentee robber barons.  Call it a marxist revolution without the revolution part.

Now, doing the above overnight, making a whole lot of pieces of paper (or electronic data) financially worthless instantly, would be traumatic to say the least.  This might compare to your son starting one of his renovation projects with a wrecking ball to the foundation.  Most would want a gentler transition.  There are no doubt other ways of going about it.  Still, if a significant effort to diminish the power of Easy Street isn't found, the life's blood of Main Street will continue to be leeched to Easy Street.  The economy will continue to be anemic.

I am not happy hearing your talk of destruction without hearing a lot more about what you intend to destroy and what you intend to replace it with.  The basic problem in most any S&H crisis is almost always to check on the power of the elite class.  You aren't presenting near enough ideas on how you might intend to do this.

S&H noted that the results of a crisis transition is often much greater than the radicals advocating transition anticipate as possible before the transition started.  When the tea was being thrown into Boston Harbor, few were picturing full independence.  When Bleeding Kansas was bleeding, few were anticipating total emancipation.  After this long stagnant unravelling where divided congresses have made any sort of movement in any direction unlikely, it is hard to anticipate a populace fed up and united sufficiently to actually force big time change.  Your father's victory certainly indicates the Republican base is getting that fed up.  The Democrats are fed up as well, though alas not fed up enough to go with Bernie rather than Hillary.  If we could just get everybody fed up by the same things we might get somewhere.

[TnT]

“Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. Let him not laugh too gladly when the water runs through his fingers, nor stand too silent when the setting sun makes red the veld with fire. Let him not be too moved when the birds of his land are singing, nor give too much of his heart to a mountain or valley. For fear will rob him of all if he gives too much.”

~ Alan Paton