Donald Trump: polls of approval and favorability

[Eric the Green]

(06-22-2017, 06:37 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(06-22-2017, 02:29 AM)Galen Wrote:

(06-21-2017, 04:14 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote: Atlanta reminds me of how the Bay Area was 30 years ago. We had very Left urban cores meanwhile our burbs were solid GOP territory. I can't imagine the GOP did well with the true urban core areas (assuming there were any in that district). BTW, the last time a Democrat won it was the predecessor to Gingrich. Over 40 years ago. The fact that a Millennial Democrat came within a hair's breadth of winning is somewhat of an omen.

Normally with this many special elections at least one or two seats should have flipped to Dims and this was one of the more likely ones.  None of them did and it took a seven times spending advantage and over sampling the polls like the media did last year to get this close.  The Dims still haven't learned anything and my guess is that their latest antics are in fact pissing people off.

I have often said that a fourth turning marks the end of an order and way of looking at things.  My suspicion is that when future history books are written they will say that the election of Trump marked the real end of the Progressive Era.  It looks like the next saeculum will be marked by the destruction of large entities including nation states.

My crystal ball is still hazy.  Yes, a lot of Democrats are portraying the opposition as deplorable and getting people angry.  See my notes to and about Eric.  As long as the Erics of the world are doing their thing, the reds are just going to become more stubborn and ticked off.

On the other hand, a true era ending crisis forming a new status quo requires ideals and a culture the country can get behind.  Large problems need to be solved.  As angry as the reds might get at the way they are being dumped upon, which would be very angry indeed, Trump has to build something sustainable.  Thus far, he hasn't shown the people skills to indicate he can do this.  Then too, the Reagan unraveling memes have been taken well beyond the point of getting constructive return.  Even if Trump had the people skills, the ideas he is selling to get votes are counter productive.

I need to watch the train wreck a bit longer.

That some at least on the red side vote for dupes and creeps just because folks like Eric call them deplorable or whatever, shows abundantly how deplorable they truly are.

[Eric the Green]

(06-22-2017, 06:27 AM)Odin Wrote:

(06-21-2017, 09:26 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:

(06-21-2017, 06:43 AM)Odin Wrote:

(06-21-2017, 02:48 AM)Galen Wrote:

(06-20-2017, 10:36 PM)Eric the Obtuse Wrote: The loss in GA is yet another stunning demo of American ignorance. I am tending toward the David Kaiser view today. America is deciding in favor of gilded age, banana republic status. I don't know where this goes, but it can't be easy any way it goes. Buckle up folks; we're going downhill. Dismemberment of America at this point would be an optimistic scenario.

The Dims spent twenty-three million dollars versus three and a half million from the opposing team and managed to lose the election.  A prime example of what Heinlein called the authoritarian fallacy.  I truly am enjoying watching the libtards go crazy because they can't even contemplate the possibility that people will reject them.

No doubt Alphabet will claim the Russians did it like a character out of Dr. Strangelove.

LOL, you know that Republicans usually win that seat by a huge margin, right? The fact that Ossoff even had a chance in that district doesn't bode well for the GOP. You are truly and utterly deluded.

Galen the clueless, as usual, has none. From what I have heard, the Republicans poured millions into this race, as opposed to mostly small donations to Ossoff.

I must admit, it drives me a bit crazy when people vote for a demon like Handel whom I can't even contemplate anyone voting for. It is a bit disturbing to know that I live in a country, half of which is in the Dark Ages. I am glad Galen enjoys it. It brings me joy to know that there is a bit more joy in the world

Galen has the mind of a 15yo internet troll.

You sure he's that advanced?

[Bob Butler 54]

(06-22-2017, 07:57 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: But is Hayek an authority beyond criticism? No! There are valid alternatives on much that he says. Many find his idea that economic inequality is a desirable end repugnant. Economic growth that ensures great misery fails my humanist values. 

This is close to one hub of the problem. It is logical, rational and tempting to favor economic inequality so long as one is on the rich side of the inequality, and so long as you don't care about those stuck on the low side of the inequality. The latter is a values problem. There is little that one can say to someone who doesn't care that will make him care. Thus, I wouldn't throw about lightly terms like insane, uninformed, or deluded. In many cases, if someone doesn't care about another, they will act to put others a bad place, or often fail to act to get them out of the bad place. They will do so in an informed, rational, prudent and heartless way.

I am concerned that things will get worse. As automation deletes jobs, as there are more people competing for fewer hours, as attacks on the safety nets continue, there will be more and more people hitting the hard floors under where the safety nets used to be. There is currently a brick and mortar retail bubble bursting. More jobs will vanish. I'm suspicious of the restaurant sector. Someday, people might remember how to brew their own coffee and flip their own hamburgers. As the split between rich and poor increases, it will become more difficult for everybody to get enough of a job for a decent sustainable way of life.

I'm not particularly concerned for myself. I spent a good amount of time in the software industry, and have a nest egg that will pull me through anything but a total gonzo collapse. I'm just not eager to see the total gonzo collapse. It could happen if enough people care only about themselves, not enough about a healthy inclusive economy.

[David Horn]

(06-22-2017, 02:29 AM)Galen Wrote: ... I have often said that a fourth turning marks the end of an order and way of looking at things.  My suspicion is that when future history books are written they will say that the election of Trump marked the real end of the Progressive Era.  It looks like the next saeculum will be marked by the destruction of large entities including nation states.

Be careful what you wish for.  As just one example, it's nation states that have nuclear weapons stockpiles, and outside actors that want them for their own purposes.  Unless some alternative arises that can assure survival of the human race, your vision of libertarianism, really anarchy to be brutally honest, will make the Black Plague look benign in comparison.

[Odin]

I just realized the hypocritical hilarity of Galen bitching about people outside of Georgia's 6th district donating money to Ossoff, but doesn't say a peep about a loads of outside money pumped into states like Wisconsin to help Republicans. Republicans were the ones who nationalized American politics, Galen is just mad that the Democrats are catching up with what the Republicans have been doing for years and fighting the Republicans at their own game.

[Odin]

(06-22-2017, 07:57 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:

(06-21-2017, 02:38 PM)has validity only to the David Horn Wrote:

(06-21-2017, 02:18 PM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: ... I grew up blue, and you don’t have to work hard to get me pushing most blue positions.  (Most.  Let’s only briefly mention the Second Amendment.)  However, there are valid, well though out or deeply set in habit alternatives to the blue.  If one labels and thinks of the other guys as stupid, evil, ignorant, insane, brainwashed, etc… it is not the other guys who are ignorant.  There is, on both sides, a willful and deliberate effort to not understand, to remain ignorant, to demonize anyone who conflicts with one’s own culture...

Let me add a quick comment.  We need to be cautious of too much fairness too.  Balancing Position A on equal terms with Position B is fine, as long as both are at least arguable.  If either rests on a bed of fallacious assumptions, then balance actually favors lies over truth by giving those lies unjustified stature.  So yes, let's avoid demonizing people we disagree with, but let's not give a hand wave to bogus ideas either.  If we're fair about calling out the clearly false and only the clearly false, we are less likely to be framed as blind ideologues ourselves.

Although some truth is counter-intuitive, none is contrafactual. Granting equal time to Holocaust denial, young-Earth creationism, or the concepts of a flat or hollow earth as is given to their opposites  is absurd.

It is far easier to see the logical fallacies in people with whom we disagree. Galen heavily trumpets the economic positions of Mises and Hayek as if they  were absolute, unqualified truth. Yes, even I have found Hayek worthy of discussion because he seems to be right on an issue as few others are. Hayek has a good explanation of the cause of a financial panic in the speculative boom that precedes it. Hayek offers historical evidence and a defensible mechanism for his conjecture. (Speculative booms devour and waste capital that might more wisely be invested in something more useful, if less glamorous and not as promising of quick and easy profits in something highly liquid). Hayek's Road to Serfdom offers a proof (to those who want socialism in the sense of government ownership and operation of productive enterprise) that although the idea of capitalist chaos gets better results than a planned economy in allocating resources is counter-intuitive and that the efficacy of central planning is contrafactual.  

But is Hayek an authority beyond criticism? No! There are valid alternatives on much that he says. Many find his idea that economic inequality is a desirable end repugnant. Economic growth that ensures great misery fails my humanist values. 

...Galen falls for the fallacy of authority. Authority has validity only to the value of the results that the alleged authority gets. The garage mechanic may have valid authority on solving problems that my car has, but  I would not ask him advice on questions on the core realities of the universe. But I wouldn't ask Neil DeGrasse Tyson what to do about an engine knock, either. A good auto mechanic can help me keep a car running over 100,000 miles and not have to trade a car in. (Of course, the car needs oil changes, and those are an inexpensive alternative to trading in one car for another).

If I remember correctly Hayek claimed that the establishment of the British NHS would cause the UK to become a totalitarian hell-hole, that of course did not happen. Yet people like Galen still take his hysterical anti-government rantings as gospel truth, which shows how tenuous the grasp on reality adherents of the Austrian School have. If actual facts contradict their axioms and formulas they will simply ignore the facts.

[pbrower2a]

Deplorable? What's wrong with calling a spade a spade?

[Ragnarök_62]

(06-22-2017, 10:41 AM)Eric the Green Wrote: That some at least on the red side vote for dupes and creeps just because folks like Eric call them deplorable or whatever, shows abundantly how deplorable they truly are.

Yes, you have the alt-right set of deplorables, but just as in organic chemistry, there's a left and a right sort.  Deplorables are
chirality .

Here's some left wing deplorables:






Right wing sort.







Yup...  things, they're a getting loopy.

Of course, one can do as Rags does and..

[Galen]

(06-22-2017, 06:37 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(06-22-2017, 02:29 AM)Galen Wrote: Normally with this many special elections at least one or two seats should have flipped to Dims and this was one of the more likely ones.  None of them did and it took a seven times spending advantage and over sampling the polls like the media did last year to get this close.  The Dims still haven't learned anything and my guess is that their latest antics are in fact pissing people off.

I have often said that a fourth turning marks the end of an order and way of looking at things.  My suspicion is that when future history books are written they will say that the election of Trump marked the real end of the Progressive Era.  It looks like the next saeculum will be marked by the destruction of large entities including nation states.

My crystal ball is still hazy.  Yes, a lot of Democrats are portraying the opposition as deplorable and getting people angry.  See my notes to and about Eric.  As long as the Erics of the world are doing their thing, the reds are just going to become more stubborn and ticked off.

It will be interesting how the financial problems in states such and Illinois, which have been run by Dims for decades, play out.  It seems likely that the Dims will be blamed for this.  In the west pretty much every national government is functionally bankrupt.  This is a sign that the nation-state is no longer functioning combined with the general contempt politicians are now held.  I would suggest a little light reading on the subject.

People tend to look at the world in a very linear way.  Eric the Obtuse and Odin expect the centralization trend that started in the early modern period to continue and so believe the world will always be what they have known.  When I see major organizations all exhibit similar signs of failure then it is safe to say that the long term trends are about to change.  Religion as a major organizing force did not last forever and I see no reason that the nation-state, at least at its current scale, to last forever.

What we are seeing now is that the always existing cold war between the tax-payer and tax-consumer is turning hot because the state is running out of loot.  It is only a matter of time before the continual pillaging cause some kind of negative reaction of which I believe we are seeing the leading edge.

[Odin]

(06-23-2017, 02:49 AM)Galen Wrote: In the west pretty much every national government is functionally bankrupt.

What utter nonsense. See, this is a good example of what I was talking about with you Austrian Schoolers only having a tenuous grasp on reality. And you betray your prejudices when you accuse me of "just expecting things to get more centralized". The American Left's preference for federal power comes from our lack of trust in state governments to protect people's rights and to protect people and the environment from being harmed by corporate greed. It comes from practical experience, not some deep ideological position.

[Bob Butler 54]

(06-23-2017, 02:49 AM)Galen Wrote:

(06-22-2017, 06:37 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(06-22-2017, 02:29 AM)Galen Wrote: Normally with this many special elections at least one or two seats should have flipped to Dims and this was one of the more likely ones.  None of them did and it took a seven times spending advantage and over sampling the polls like the media did last year to get this close.  The Dims still haven't learned anything and my guess is that their latest antics are in fact pissing people off.

I have often said that a fourth turning marks the end of an order and way of looking at things.  My suspicion is that when future history books are written they will say that the election of Trump marked the real end of the Progressive Era.  It looks like the next saeculum will be marked by the destruction of large entities including nation states.

My crystal ball is still hazy.  Yes, a lot of Democrats are portraying the opposition as deplorable and getting people angry.  See my notes to and about Eric.  As long as the Erics of the world are doing their thing, the reds are just going to become more stubborn and ticked off.

It will be interesting how the financial problems in states such and Illinois, which have been run by Dims for decades, play out.  It seems likely that the Dims will be blamed for this.  In the west pretty much every national government is functionally bankrupt.  This is a sign that the nation-state is no longer functioning combined with the general contempt politicians are now held.  I would suggest a little light reading on the subject.

People tend to look at the world in a very linear way.  Eric the Obtuse and Odin expect the centralization trend that started in the early modern period to continue and so believe the world will always be what they have known.  When I see major organizations all exhibit similar signs of failure then it is safe to say that the long term trends are about to change.  Religion as a major organizing force did not last forever and I see no reason that the nation-state, at least at its current scale, to last forever.

What we are seeing now is that the always existing cold war between the tax-payer and tax-consumer is turning hot because the state is running out of loot.  It is only a matter of time before the continual pillaging cause some kind of negative reaction of which I believe we are seeing the leading edge.

The above shows a relatively consistent perspective on things.  It is hardly the only perspective on things.  In many was aspects of it seem wrong, very wrong, from other perspectives.  You seem reluctant (obtuse?) to consider or respond to some of these perspectives.

A major aspect of S&H cycle theory is that moods run in cycles, come and go.  Thus, accusing other guys of linear thinking is a common gambit.  For me, in general, a crisis is a time where major problems are coming to a head, when everyone has to work together to put the culture as a whole on solid ground again.  We’re overdue for such a time.  An unraveling is a time of selfishness, a time when the country is seen as relatively well off, a time when you ask not what you can do for your country, you ask what the country can do for you.

For many progressives, the crisis mode of thinking is patriotic and very American.  We work together for the common good in time of need.  Bear any burden, pay any price, support every friend, oppose every foe, yada, yada, yada.  Yes, this does come and go with the cycles.  It can be overdone.  It has been overdone.  If the GIs exemplified the best of this American can do spirit, they pushed too long and saw that spirit collapse on them.  If the cycles are healthy, the time to contribute to common causes will come again.  Still, it is those who have committed to the unraveling ideas, who think the unraveling will continue, that think the unraveling pattern will or ought to be continued indefinitely who are thinking linearly.  Eric and other progressives are thinking that America can be great again.

This cycle's overlong unraveling is centered on a few Republican memes.  Cut taxes, spend big on the military, and cut domestic services.  Some of these ideas do fit well with the tendency of superpowers to fade to ordinary powers.  Superpowers tend to keep trying to be superpowers when the special circumstances that made them superpowers are gone.  They overspend on the military and allow their debt to build up in an unsustainable way.

I tend to agree with your talk of the US being in fading empire mode.  I tend to agree that our position on the world stage will have to fade if we are to compete with other power blocks who tune their cultures toward better economic competition.  I just see the spend more tax less Republican unraveling memes, first pushed by Reagan before the Soviet Union fell, most recently pushed by Trump, as furthering the perhaps inevitable economic collapse due to military overspending typical of fading superpowers.  Something’s got to give.  Either the military has to shrink or national priorities have to shift.  Frankly, I’m ready to see the military fade.

I’m not overly familiar with the financial problems of Illinois and other Midwest states.  I sort of think of Flint Michigan’s water problems as representative.  If you don’t fund government agencies, if there is a mode of thought that government agencies fail, that they never do well, then they will fail.

I don’t know how the blame game will fall out.  Politicians will point fingers.  Voters will exercise their political prejudices as much as they look at who failed in what way.  It is clearer what has to be done.  If there is a necessary service that the people want, they have to pay for it.  If a politician, manager or local government employee doesn’t get his job done, you fire him.  If you want a functional government, you want and need healthy oversight to make sure your tax dollars will be well spent.

The unraveling memes can be taken to far.  If one keeps cutting domestic finding, if one assumes the government cannot do its job well, things fall apart.  Some of us who want to shake unraveling thinking favor giving local agencies what they need to get the job done then holding them accountable to doing their job.

I’m not in the mood to go all partisan on that.  I’ve no desire to see Republicans who don’t believe in government in government, but there is no lack of Democrats sleeping on a government job.  I have no great interest in the blame game, but don’t doubt a great deal of energy will be wasted on it.  I’ve more interest in getting competent motivated people on the job.

[pbrower2a]

(06-23-2017, 02:49 AM)Galen Wrote:

(06-22-2017, 06:37 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(06-22-2017, 02:29 AM)Galen Wrote: Normally with this many special elections at least one or two seats should have flipped to Dims and this was one of the more likely ones.  None of them did and it took a seven times spending advantage and over sampling the polls like the media did last year to get this close.  The Dims still haven't learned anything and my guess is that their latest antics are in fact pissing people off.

I have often said that a fourth turning marks the end of an order and way of looking at things.  My suspicion is that when future history books are written they will say that the election of Trump marked the real end of the Progressive Era.  It looks like the next saeculum will be marked by the destruction of large entities including nation states.

My crystal ball is still hazy.  Yes, a lot of Democrats are portraying the opposition as deplorable and getting people angry.  See my notes to and about Eric.  As long as the Erics of the world are doing their thing, the reds are just going to become more stubborn and ticked off.

It will be interesting how the financial problems in states such and Illinois, which have been run by Dims for decades, play out.  It seems likely that the Dims will be blamed for this.  In the west pretty much every national government is functionally bankrupt.  This is a sign that the nation-state is no longer functioning combined with the general contempt politicians are now held.  I would suggest a little light reading on the subject.

People do not care about the finances of the state so much as they care about their own finances.

It is worth remembering that regard for the definitive political outsider, Donald Judas Trump, is extremely low. But he has no idea of how the government really works. He has the managerial style of a crime boss, and he has no idea of what the Constitution says.

Quote:People tend to look at the world in a very linear way.  Eric ... and Odin expect the centralization trend that started in the early modern period to continue and so believe the world will always be what they have known.  When I see major organizations all exhibit similar signs of failure then it is safe to say that the long term trends are about to change.  Religion as a major organizing force did not last forever and I see no reason that the nation-state, at least at its current scale, to last forever.

It is easier to understand linearity than any curve.  Much of scientific truth is logarithmic or exponential, and there are graphing techniques that can make logarithmic and exponential functions look linear. So it is with economic growth in the take-off stages, as with Japan in much of the 20th century, or with compound interest or the profitability of genuine growth stocks.

Quote:What we are seeing now is that the always existing cold war between the tax-payer and tax-consumer is turning hot because the state is running out of loot.  It is only a matter of time before the continual pillaging cause some kind of negative reaction of which I believe we are seeing the leading edge.

Misinterpretation. If by 'taxpayer' you mean the people who make such high incomes that they can be taxed heavily for normal operations of government, then such people are doing well. Very well. But those high incomes depend upon cartels and trusts... and very low wages.  Note well that much of the economic activity is literally fleecing the poor through dubious services -- like payday loans.

If a society is to have extreme profitability for a few and very low pay for others, then there will be a need for a welfare state. Think of Detroit in the late 1940s and the 1950s. Anyone with a good body and a willingness to do some hard labor could do very well in an automobile plant. Detroit prospered. Workers in the auto plants could afford vacations in which they hunted or fished, buy cottages at the many small lakes of Michigan and have motorboats to get across those lakes or to favorite fishing sites on those lakes. If their kids preferred working smart to working hard, they could easily afford tuition for them at Michigan State or the University of Michigan, depending upon grades and college-board scores. There was little need for a welfare state when one could easily get and hold a well-paying job.

Today I see something very different. The starting wage at a Ford plant in real terms is lower than the $5 a day that Henry Ford offered for work in a plant that produced Model T's -- when it was producing Model T's. (Ford had to pay that much to be able to select the workers that he wanted -- no child labor, and nobody who wanted to simply work a short term and use the pay to buy some farmland). Ford wanted the people who worked in his plant to be able to drive a Ford vehicle.

But in terms of pay, Ford is a 'good' employer in contrast to much else. People must eat, get protection from the elements, wear clothes, and have the means of getting to their jobs. If they cannot get these. Many employers are delighted to get people willing to work cheap out of desperation. But if they are paid badly they must get some help - like subsidized housing and perhaps food aid. (Food aid is practically free to the government because the money spend on food goes promptly back into the economy).  Employment may be seasonal, as with farm labor.

The state is not running out of loot to tax. The people with the loot to tax - people with  large quantities of productive assets (can you say 'Donald Trump'?, people paid very well to treat others very badly, and some high-earning professionals are getting even more. Taxing the cashier at the dollar store, the housekeeper at the motel, or the counter-person at a fast-food place makes little sense. Food, rent, and vehicle insurance are big chunks of that person's income.

I see a pathology in low levels of personal saving. Saving is the first thing that people cut back, and something that they don't do until they can easily meet their basic needs. In the 1950s, working people could save some money. Today people can't. Governments can start taxing people about when they are ready to save. They can also tax the Master Class that really has a stake in the system. They have a huge stake, for in the event of a proletarian revolution they stand to lose everything -- including their lives if they don't simply abandon what property and privilege they have. Even before he made his ludicrous excursion from bad businessman into quack politician, Donald Trump was the classic example of someone who would have been the first to be taken to a wall to be shot by revolutionaries who sought to destroy capitalist privilege and power.

[pbrower2a]

(06-22-2017, 11:01 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(06-22-2017, 07:57 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: But is Hayek an authority beyond criticism? No! There are valid alternatives on much that he says. Many find his idea that economic inequality is a desirable end repugnant. Economic growth that ensures great misery fails my humanist values. 

This is close to one hub of the problem.  It is logical, rational and tempting to favor economic inequality so long as one is on the rich side of the inequality, and so long as you don't care about those stuck on the low side of the inequality.  The latter is a values problem.  There is little that one can say to someone who doesn't care that will make him care.  Thus, I wouldn't throw about lightly terms like insane, uninformed, or deluded.  In many cases, if someone doesn't care about another, they will act to put others a bad place, or often fail to act to get them out of the bad place.  They will do so in an informed, rational, prudent and heartless way.

But not only are they informed, rational, prudent, and heartless -- they are blind to the menace of class warfare. Although Marxist rhetoric does not apply universally to human societies, it can apply to pathological outliers. People can make great sacrifices on behalf of others, but when those others prove useless to them, the people making those sacrifices will quit making those sacrifices or turn on their exploiters. To be sure the exploiters typically see morality as getting away with what one wants. At some point people decide that they can do better without the exploiters.  

Quote:I am concerned that things will get worse.  As automation deletes jobs, as there are more people competing for fewer hours, as attacks on the safety nets continue, there will be more and more people hitting the hard floors under where the safety nets used to be.  There is currently a brick and mortar retail bubble bursting.  More jobs will vanish.  I'm suspicious of the restaurant sector.  Someday, people might remember how to brew their own coffee and flip their own hamburgers.  As the split between rich and poor increases, it will become more difficult for everybody to get enough of  a job for a decent sustainable way of life.

The music, video, and book stores are dying. Yes, we are saturated in trashy novels. Wal*Mart flooded the market with DVDs and is now doing much the same with Blu-Ray, just as it did with VHS pre-recorded video. Whether one really needs to buy compact discs of music is in doubt. What was once a lucrative activity lost its profitability. In tight times I found that meals out of a freezer compartment at a grocery store were adequate substitutes for restaurant meals. The cost is much less.  I might not be a scratch cook, as that requires much more effort than taking something out of a freezer and putting it in the microwave oven and then cleaning up after the cooking. I am tempted to believe that the low-end dining places just above the fast-food restaurants (shall I name names? Bob Evans. Applebee's. Chili's. Chi-Chi's. Ponderosa. Cracker Barrel. Red Lobster. Olive Garden) are extremely vulnerable if the workweek goes from 40 to 30 weeks. There will be little between Panda Express and P.F. Chang.

The economic elites need the safety nets to keep a contingent workforce (as with such agricultural laborers as pickers) available and to keep people from rebelling as they get cold, hungry, and angry. Maybe the elites will offer politicized militias analogous to the Sturmabteilungen, Fascii di Combattimento, Arrow Cross, iron Guard, and the old American standard of the KKK to give meaning to the otherwise-idle angry young men... meaning coming from beating people that they are told to beat. So if someone disputes that the highest purpose in life is to suffer for the landlord or the sweatshop owner... then members of that militia can use the powerful argument of the appeal to force to eliminate critics.  

As a general rule, pay must have some relationship to productivity, lest people goldbrick.

Quote:I'm not particularly concerned for myself.  I spent a good amount of time in the software industry, and have a nest egg that will pull me through anything but a total gonzo collapse.  I'm just not eager to see the total gonzo collapse.  It could happen if enough people care only about themselves, not enough about a healthy inclusive economy.

I have the ultimate backup. I have contemplated that life can be completely devoid of meaning, at which point death is nothing more than the end of one's misery. i see life much like a chess match, and when a win seems impossible one resigns. I am not going to a torture camp or a 'corrective labor' camp. I am not going to an abusive clinic in which I would get a lobotomy. Life is precious, lest death be liberation.

[Galen]

(06-23-2017, 07:43 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(06-23-2017, 02:49 AM)Galen Wrote:

(06-22-2017, 06:37 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote:

(06-22-2017, 02:29 AM)Galen Wrote: Normally with this many special elections at least one or two seats should have flipped to Dims and this was one of the more likely ones.  None of them did and it took a seven times spending advantage and over sampling the polls like the media did last year to get this close.  The Dims still haven't learned anything and my guess is that their latest antics are in fact pissing people off.

I have often said that a fourth turning marks the end of an order and way of looking at things.  My suspicion is that when future history books are written they will say that the election of Trump marked the real end of the Progressive Era.  It looks like the next saeculum will be marked by the destruction of large entities including nation states.

My crystal ball is still hazy.  Yes, a lot of Democrats are portraying the opposition as deplorable and getting people angry.  See my notes to and about Eric.  As long as the Erics of the world are doing their thing, the reds are just going to become more stubborn and ticked off.

It will be interesting how the financial problems in states such and Illinois, which have been run by Dims for decades, play out.  It seems likely that the Dims will be blamed for this.  In the west pretty much every national government is functionally bankrupt.  This is a sign that the nation-state is no longer functioning combined with the general contempt politicians are now held.  I would suggest a little light reading on the subject.

People tend to look at the world in a very linear way.  Eric the Obtuse and Odin expect the centralization trend that started in the early modern period to continue and so believe the world will always be what they have known.  When I see major organizations all exhibit similar signs of failure then it is safe to say that the long term trends are about to change.  Religion as a major organizing force did not last forever and I see no reason that the nation-state, at least at its current scale, to last forever.

What we are seeing now is that the always existing cold war between the tax-payer and tax-consumer is turning hot because the state is running out of loot.  It is only a matter of time before the continual pillaging cause some kind of negative reaction of which I believe we are seeing the leading edge.

The above shows a relatively consistent perspective on things.  It is hardly the only perspective on things.  In many was aspects of it seem wrong, very wrong, from other perspectives.  You seem reluctant (obtuse?) to consider or respond to some of these perspectives.

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.

(06-23-2017, 07:43 AM)Bob Butler 54 Wrote: I tend to agree with your talk of the US being in fading empire mode.  I tend to agree that our position on the world stage will have to fade if we are to compete with other power blocks who tune their cultures toward better economic competition.  I just see the spend more tax less Republican unraveling memes, first pushed by Reagan before the Soviet Union fell, most recently pushed by Trump, as furthering the perhaps inevitable economic collapse due to military overspending typical of fading superpowers.  Something’s got to give.  Either the military has to shrink or national priorities have to shift.  Frankly, I’m ready to see the military fade.

I’m not overly familiar with the financial problems of Illinois and other Midwest states.  I sort of think of Flint Michigan’s water problems as representative.  If you don’t fund government agencies, if there is a mode of thought that government agencies fail, that they never do well, then they will fail.

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.

[pbrower2a]

Ancient Rome went from a critical moment (the Third Servile War for which we know Spartacus as the enemy) in 73 BC to AD 476, beginning during the Republic and ending with Odoacer deposing Marcus Augustulus. That is 579 years from the point at which the Roman polity could have had the economic and social cancer of slavery put to an end -- and Rome enjoying more of a free-enterprise economy open to innovations in commerce and technology. Slavery precluded the rise of a middle class of entrepreneurs and impeded technological innovations. Just imagine ancient Rome with no slaves -- but steam power. Rome comes to encompass the whole of what is now Germany and Poland. Steam power allows the Romans to sail across the Atlantic and around the Horn of Africa.

But I digress. The technology needed for locomotives and steamships isn't much more complicated than what the Romans had. But the Romans had huge resources upon which to draw as their world degraded. We have far more resources to draw down before our social order becomes extinct.

[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.

[Eric the Green]

No, one side is "looking at individual problems, the economy of the area where the problem manifests, and how to solve stuff," and the other is "pushing one size fits all simplistic ideas." That's the choice our country faces in this 4T. Just like in 1860.

Generally speaking, of course

[pbrower2a]

(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.

When will the 4T be serious beyond any denial? When there is no loot. When survival is itself a privilege to be earned. When identity that comes from consumerism is no longer possible. When corruption kills people. Take a kickback and build yourself a swimming pool in a 3T and perhaps nobody notices. Take a kickback in a 4T and build a swimming pool for yourself, and soldiers in the field find themselves opening empty boxes of provisions or ammo -- and being compelled to surrender. 

It's remarkable that you use the Spanish and Ottoman empires as examples and neglect an empire that died about a century ago. I will let you guess which one.

Quote: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.

So long as the government spending facilitates economic growth (expenditures on basic education, highways, sewers, and public health, things are OK; but spending on show projects, subsidies to the well-off, colonial exercises, and wars for profit ravage a treasury.

Some regulations are benign. If people were reliably good there would be no regulation of business to keep people from doing things that hurt their customers. If you are to bet a million to make a billion (as in oil wildcatting), then do the gambling on your own million. There was much gambling through the financial system about fifteen years ago to about ten years ago, and we know how that ended. People who make the big money have to be regulated just to ensure that they pay the taxes that keep the government going. That's before I discuss such things as mind-altering substances, child labor, and pollution.

Quote: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.

Funding of public-employee pensions should be pay-as-you-go. The assumption of any continuation of economic growth that will trivialize fiscal burdens of our time is pure folly. The brick wall that Japan hit in the 1990s is a warning to us all, and that has nothing to do with reckless spending.

[Eric the Green]

(06-26-2017, 08:37 PM)X_4AD_84 Wrote:

(06-26-2017, 06:20 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: No, one side is "looking at individual problems, the economy of the area where the problem manifests, and how to solve stuff," and the other is "pushing one size fits all simplistic ideas." That's the choice our country faces in this 4T. Just like in 1860.

Generally speaking, of course

You are an extreme partisan. The Regeneracy Vibe will drive you bonkers. It will be too sedate for you and it will be nearly impossible to get people to go out and protest.

You are speaking of the 1T. The resistance so far is just what I say my side is. That's the 4T regeneracy vibe already. That's the only regeneracy there can be. It will get a lot less sedate before it's over, believe me. In the 1T, it will be harder to say. It will be quieter than the 2020s, I'm sure, and yet, with Neptune continuing in Aries most of the way, it will be like the Gilded Age, which was conservative in its way, but even so, the waters were still not entirely still after the earthquake. So it will be this time. The 1T will also see some genuine activism (i.e., from MY side) too! And then comes the 2T! Again, my side is the only awakening there can be.

[pbrower2a]

In all but two countries in which Pew has polled in this survey, people have more respect for former President Obama than for you-know-who.  



The good news for Donald Trump; Russia seems to like him much more than it liked Obama. Go figure.

The third-worst decline is in Germany; Donald Trump's ancestry is half German. The rest is Scots, but Scotland is not a sovereign entity yet, so it is still included in the UK. I'm guessing that it is awful.

What should be most scary is the difference in perceptions in South Korea. South Koreans must have thought themselves safer with Obama as President than with Donald Trump. South Koreans probably expected President Obama to travel to Beijing and tell Chinese leadership that they can have North Korea should it invade the South or fire missiles that ravage Seoul or should it fire missiles against the USA that violate Chinese airspace.

Most of the countries in which President Trump has far less trust than did President Obama are not hotbeds of anti-Americanism. But the distinction between America and Trump could get shaky. I can imagine participating in an anti-Trump demonstration in Toronto or Montreal.