EPTI called this way back when the whole thing started just after the election. GOP is in a horrible lose lose situation. they either piss off their base and cave and lose the house or piss off the moderates of america and lose the house for 6 years.
US Politics Mega-thread - Page 46
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Sermokala
United States13735 Posts
I called this way back when the whole thing started just after the election. GOP is in a horrible lose lose situation. they either piss off their base and cave and lose the house or piss off the moderates of america and lose the house for 6 years. | ||
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jdseemoreglass
United States3773 Posts
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On December 19 2012 00:55 farvacola wrote: No, what is straight up bs is that our economy can falter and face immense struggle while the top income bracket only becomes richer. Look at it this way. These past 5-10 years, even if one figures in a heavy dose of social safety net abuse, the middle and lower classes have weathered the bulk of economic hardship, whether that take the form of job loss, home loss, or loan difficulty. Meanwhile, corporate profits have, in many industries, never been better, and the concentration of wealth at the top has only become more substantial. Tangent to the diminishing marginal utility of income, the rich have insulated themselves from the ups and downs of the market in a way that the less wealthy simply cannot. My point is that a system that distributes hardship with such inequality amongst the poor and dwindling middle class simply requires redistribution. There is no other way via our current dynamic. I'm pretty sure the rich haven't insulated themselves. Their wealth and income took a large plunge during the recession and recovered with the market. On the other hand middle class wealth hasn't recovered because the big market the middle class is invested in (housing) hasn't recovered. To your bigger point about redistribution, I'd like to see a greater emphasis on helping the poor earn more on their own. Redistribution can help but you'll never close the inequality gap if you use the redistribution to create a poverty trap. | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
if you want to help the poor, stop trying to cut basic services and provide quality early childhood education. having contraceptives more available would also help matters greatly. | ||
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farvacola
United States18818 Posts
On December 19 2012 02:09 JonnyBNoHo wrote: I'm pretty sure the rich haven't insulated themselves. Their wealth and income took a large plunge during the recession and recovered with the market. On the other hand middle class wealth hasn't recovered because the big market the middle class is invested in (housing) hasn't recovered. To your bigger point about redistribution, I'd like to see a greater emphasis on helping the poor earn more on their own. Redistribution can help but you'll never close the inequality gap if you use the redistribution to create a poverty trap. As to your first point, I suppose my use of the word insulate was a tad misleading, so I'll clarify. I don't mean to suggest that the rich are totally isolated from the rest of us, simply that, by virtue of what capital agglomeration in our current system allows for, they are compelled to play by fundamentally different financial rules, rules that only apply to those with a certain degree of wealth. Those at the top certainly did feel some of the pains of the economic downturn, but that the security of the rich comes before all else in the pursuit of national economic stability strikes me as incredibly wrong. We are continuously told to have faith in job makers when they have made it abundantly clear that they've no faith in us, and something in regards to this dynamic must change, and I'm not in favor of it catering to those whom the system already caters to. As to your bit on redistribution, I know you won't find me disagreeing; the issue is inevitably one of priority and order of operations. Many conservatives seem to think that the path to encouraging economically responsible behavior requires cuts and forced austerity through a lessening of the provision of the social safety net. I instead think that a reworking of the education system stands at the crux of this all, and no, I do not think that that includes voucher programs  | ||
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On December 19 2012 02:25 farvacola wrote: As to your first point, I suppose my use of the word insulate was a tad misleading, so I'll clarify. I don't mean to suggest that the rich are totally isolated from the rest of us, simply that, by virtue of what capital agglomeration in our current system allows for, they are compelled to play by fundamentally different financial rules, rules that only apply to those with a certain degree of wealth. Those at the top certainly did feel some of the pains of the economic downturn, but that the security of the rich comes before all else in the pursuit of national economic stability strikes me as incredibly wrong. We are continuously told to have faith in job makers when they have made it abundantly clear that they've no faith in us, and something in regards to this dynamic must change, and I'm not in favor of it catering to those whom the system already caters to. As to your bit on redistribution, I know you won't find me disagreeing; the issue is inevitably one of priority and order of operations. Many conservatives seem to think that the path to encouraging economically responsible behavior requires cuts and forced austerity through a lessening of the provision of the social safety net. I instead think that a reworking of the education system stands at the crux of this all, and no, I do not think that that includes voucher programs To your first point, I agree that the security of the rich shouldn't come before national interests, but I don't see how that exists so I'm not sure why you brought it up. Moving on to safety nets, the US has an very generous system that few actually take advantage of. According to the CBO most only take advantage of one program when they are eligible for many and if everyone took advantage of every entitlement we'd have a hard time paying for everything. Moreover, the current system also plays a role in exacerbating the poverty trap - people who earn more take home less due to poor design. So yes, the safety net in many cases should be cut and reformed because it will ultimately mean a better life for more people. Obviously the devil is in the detail with that statement and so your real life mileage may vary. As for school vouchers - what's the alternative? How do you fix a failed school in the current system? Organizational change is extremely difficult in the best of circumstances. Given how hard it is for administrators to purge bad personnel I can only think that fixing a failed school would be even harder. | ||
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farvacola
United States18818 Posts
On December 19 2012 03:16 JonnyBNoHo wrote: To your first point, I agree that the security of the rich shouldn't come before national interests, but I don't see how that exists so I'm not sure why you brought it up. Moving on to safety nets, the US has an very generous system that few actually take advantage of. According to the CBO most only take advantage of one program when they are eligible for many and if everyone took advantage of every entitlement we'd have a hard time paying for everything. Moreover, the current system also plays a role in exacerbating the poverty trap - people who earn more take home less due to poor design. So yes, the safety net in many cases should be cut and reformed because it will ultimately mean a better life for more people. Obviously the devil is in the detail with that statement and so your real life mileage may vary. As for school vouchers - what's the alternative? How do you fix a failed school in the current system? Organizational change is extremely difficult in the best of circumstances. Given how hard it is for administrators to purge bad personnel I can only think that fixing a failed school would be even harder. My point in regards to the treatment of the rich is an indictment of our present order of economic operations; our current economic system requires that the rich feel recovery before and in many cases in lieu of the middle and lower class, and I believe this phenomena must change in the future. That there were market quarters in 2010 in which corporations posted landmark profits alongside sweeping labor reductions and rising national unemployment is evidence in my eyes that lionizing corporate self-interest as the gatekeeper to economic stability simply will not work, not with the pressures of globalization becoming ever more realized. I'm not invested in the current social safety net beyond its necessity insofar as the care for the marginalized is concerned; I definitely think that there exists a fair bit of room for optimization that does not require a pulling out of the rug from beneath those who are least able to deal. That last bit is really important, and is what separates the positive looks into reforming government programs and the negative ones. What I mean to say is that your addition of "and reformed" to the declaration that we cut entitlement programs puts you amongst a very select group of moderate Republicans, but I know you already know that And I know I'm betraying a fair bit of my liberal heritage on this last point, but I sincerely believe that a revision of union culture within education is the lynchpin for educational progress here in the United States. While we certainly must not get rid of them, union activity in many parts of the country contributes to what I like to call "distributive educational inequality", which in this case tends to manifest itself as an improper agglomeration of funding directed towards union interests. The tendency for relative teacher union strength to signpost concentrations of public education funding is troubling, but this phenomena is not exclusive to unions. Indeed, the very same thing is encouraged by voucher programs, as good schools/districts receive distended amounts of funding while the poorer performing schools are simply left to languish. It is here that it makes sense to mention the idiosyncratic nature of education and how this specificity renders traditional exhortations of "the invisible hand of the marketplace" utterly useless. Keeping in mind the concept of "distributive educational inequality", education requires particular acknowledgements, geography and access being perhaps two of the most important. It should go without saying that the education of our youth ought not be relegated to the Darwinian notion of market competition as it pertains to the nature of success and inadequacy; sure the failed schools administration deserves the burden of that failure, but the children surely do not. More importantly, those least able to take advantage of what voucher programs offer, the ones effectively left behind as their friends with parents who can drive them to a different school leave, are no less deserving of a proper education, and yet the voucher system effectively robs them of that very thing as funding is diverted away. Look at it this way. Metropolitan areas are already suffering from an increased disparity between quality of life in the suburbs and the city, and voucher programs only feed into that disparity. We cannot just say "let the bad schools fail" when that amounts to a total dismissal of urban and poor demographics, demographics unable to manipulate their own educational market entry and consequently left in the dust. | ||
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oneofthem
Cayman Islands24199 Posts
it's a less extreme form of the caste system. and let's not forget what that can produce in the outcast. when you wonder why blacks are such bad people, wonder why gypsys are bad people too. is it beyond redemption? no. but it is beyond politics probably. | ||
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coverpunch
United States2093 Posts
On December 19 2012 04:14 oneofthem wrote: social segregation is never talked about in american politics, but it's one of the most profound and distinctive elements of american life. the concepts of 'bad neighborhood' etc are ubiquitous in conversation and thought, but rarely do people realize that this kind of talk condemns entire segments of the population as undesirable. it's a less extreme form of the caste system. and let's not forget what that can produce in the outcast. when you wonder why blacks are such bad people, wonder why gypsys are bad people too. is it beyond redemption? no. but it is beyond politics probably. Untrue, trying to fight this is the whole basis of trying to expand credit and home ownership to the poor so that they can also benefit from the growth of the nation. And I'm very doubtful that this is unique to the US. London has Kensington and then it has east London. Seoul has Gangnam and then it has the slums on the outskirts of the city. Tokyo has Omotesando and then it has Sanya. I'm not denying that the US has a problem, but social segregation is not the root of America's distinct problems. Everyone is trying to deal with it but nobody has found a good answer in the 21st century yet. | ||
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aksfjh
United States4853 Posts
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HunterX11
United States1048 Posts
On December 19 2012 06:23 coverpunch wrote: Untrue, trying to fight this is the whole basis of trying to expand credit and home ownership to the poor so that they can also benefit from the growth of the nation. And I'm very doubtful that this is unique to the US. London has Kensington and then it has east London. Seoul has Gangnam and then it has the slums on the outskirts of the city. Tokyo has Omotesando and then it has Sanya. I'm not denying that the US has a problem, but social segregation is not the root of America's distinct problems. Everyone is trying to deal with it but nobody has found a good answer in the 21st century yet. Increased home ownership per se doesn't necessarily have anything to do with reducing segregation. And economic and racial segregation is a singularly large phenomenon in the U.S. compared to the rest of the developed world, with the racial component rivaling even many highly segregated developing countries. I would argue that the ability to otherize the less fortunate is a huge part of America's particular failure to build a modern liberal democracy. | ||
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farvacola
United States18818 Posts
On December 19 2012 07:41 aksfjh wrote: I'd be more ok with the dissolution of union power if there were better laws that benefited workers. Minimum wage laws have been tremendously behind economic growth and inflation for about 20 years now, there's no framework that guarantees benefits or wages, and there are still a number of labor laws that are worked around with loopholes, like contract worker agreements. Workers have given up a lot in 30 years, to the point that getting a job isn't much better than living off government assistant. The solution would be to make jobs more desirable, not to make government assistance more miserable. Well, I don't think "dissolution" will ever be the answer to the union question; the framework organized labor put in place is pretty legitimate when it comes to spurring effective change, as you point out, and I think at least some manifestation of that ought to remain. Instead, we ought to look specifically at some of the unhealthy dynamics that have taken root in unionized public education and address them, with the recent teacher's strike in Chicago showing just how difficult this sort of thing can and will be. The problem is inevitably the "how", as the current political environment makes any sort of pragmatic approach towards redefining the unions place in education untenable. If it is a Republican idea, it likely defangs unions almost entirely, which is simply an unreasonable approach. If it is a Democrat with the idea, well, it isn't, because Democrats saying virtually anything against the unions is like Republicans speaking out against the NRA; the very utterance would likely be political suicide. That being said, I think that if anything positive on this front is to come to be, it will come from the Democratic side of the equation; the Republican ideology of education privatization just doesn't mesh with the sort of pragmatic, even-tempered approach that the union situation requires. I'd enjoy being surprised by Moderate Republicans though. On December 19 2012 07:55 HunterX11 wrote: Increased home ownership per se doesn't necessarily have anything to do with reducing segregation. And economic and racial segregation is a singularly large phenomenon in the U.S. compared to the rest of the developed world, with the racial component rivaling even many highly segregated developing countries. I would argue that the ability to otherize the less fortunate is a huge part of America's particular failure to build a modern liberal democracy. Yes, I think there is a lot of sense behind lending the US narrative of social and class segregation some idiosyncrasy in interpretation; the unique combination of racial diversity (loosely speaking, unlike most of Asia), constitutional republicanism (which is, in a sense , a looser brand than most in Europe), and perhaps most importantly, geographic area and variation warrants a different sort of analysis than other nations. We've got tons of different people in an enormous country with a system of laws that allows for a great degree of relative difference, and I think this understanding figures heavily into historical and contemporary trends in social and class segregation. | ||
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jdseemoreglass
United States3773 Posts
guarantees benefits or wages It is really a great thing that capitalism has been such a resounding success that we can talk about things like "guaranteed benefits or wages" or even a "guaranteed subsistence or standard of living" when nothing in life has been guaranteed for most of human history. Let's just be careful with this apparent excess, that we don't go and kill the goose that laid the golden egg in the first place. | ||
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Sub40APM
6336 Posts
On December 19 2012 01:56 Sermokala wrote: The same thing happened in the 90s when newt Gingrich took over congress with the republican revolution. Clinton masterfully played the republicans into a horrible spot and blamed them for all the problems. Obama can and will probably do the same to great effect. With no strong leader and a wildly unpopular gop its going to be an easy win in 2016 for Clinton. I called this way back when the whole thing started just after the election. GOP is in a horrible lose lose situation. they either piss off their base and cave and lose the house or piss off the moderates of america and lose the house for 6 years. Just like he outmaneuvered the Republicans in 2009 by giving in a ton of concessions on his healthplan, enabling the Democrats to take the House? Sorry, but Obama the electioneer and Obama the president are like two completely different guys. The way this is going to go down is, automatic tax raise/spending cuts go up and because Obama at the last moment moved over towards Bohner he muddies the water on what he stood for and gets slammed in '14 for cutting social security and raising taxes. If Obama wanted to force the GOP to cut its own throat he should have stuck with his original position: the election was a mandate to save SS/Medicare and I am going to do it by closing some loopholes, going back to the Clinton taxes and cutting defense while the GOP keeps looking intransigent. | ||
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HunterX11
United States1048 Posts
On December 19 2012 09:58 jdseemoreglass wrote: It is really a great thing that capitalism has been such a resounding success that we can talk about things like "guaranteed benefits or wages" or even a "guaranteed subsistence or standard of living" when nothing in life has been guaranteed for most of human history. Let's just be careful with this apparent excess, that we don't go and kill the goose that laid the golden egg in the first place. Such guarantees are generally motivated more by a desire to protect the system than out of spite for the system. It isn't as though Bismarck for example was some bleeding heart. Or look at how the American savior of capitalism, FDR, was in some ways the most progressive president (while of course being militantly opposed to the radical left in his time). Also an argument about such guarantees being an excess in a country like America is pretty weird considering how many less wealthy countries get by with more generous guarantees. | ||
Souma
2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
On December 19 2012 03:16 JonnyBNoHo wrote: As for school vouchers - what's the alternative? How do you fix a failed school in the current system? Organizational change is extremely difficult in the best of circumstances. Given how hard it is for administrators to purge bad personnel I can only think that fixing a failed school would be even harder. By realizing that it may not be the school that's failing the students? To give an example, in my city we can pick any public school in the district to go to. Naturally, people tend to pick the better schools (which are unsurprisingly located in the more affluent parts of the city). You'd think this would solve education for most students. However, that's generally not the case. The high school that I went to used to be a pretty good school. But by the time I got there, it was full of kids who just didn't give a crap. Parenting is the biggest problem facing schools at the moment, and the biggest problems facing parents are generally socioeconomic obstacles/the results of a vicious cycle thereof. Catch my drift? To give a picture of how low the school had fallen, our test scores were low enough to relegate us to the threat of No Child Left Behind (though in the end I believe we managed to overcome that barrier, barely). The teachers, coaches, and other faculty were all amazing and supportive (at least, all the ones I had and knew), but the problems facing the entire school (might I add that the students outnumbered staff by a significant margin) were really out of their control. | ||
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Danglars
United States12133 Posts
On December 19 2012 01:56 Sermokala wrote: The same thing happened in the 90s when newt Gingrich took over congress with the republican revolution. Clinton masterfully played the republicans into a horrible spot and blamed them for all the problems. Obama can and will probably do the same to great effect. With no strong leader and a wildly unpopular gop its going to be an easy win in 2016 for Clinton. I called this way back when the whole thing started just after the election. GOP is in a horrible lose lose situation. they either piss off their base and cave and lose the house or piss off the moderates of america and lose the house for 6 years. Or, read differently, Gingrich's "Contract with America," successfully swept Democratic control of the House for the first time since 1954, and forced Clinton to sign it into law after vetoing it two times. Clinton would go on to claim credit for the helpful reforms both fiscally and for the success of the program itself. The Republicans played themselves into the hole by running the moderate Dole to oppose Clinton and needed little encouragement from the master speech-giver. It is no small thing that Mitt Romney lurched to the right after trying to appease everybody in order to win the primaries. His passage of Massachusetts "Romneycare" forever cemented his identity as a moderate by action, and only his business experience being a saving grace in the age of candidates being forever the politician. I am puzzled at how a "wildly unpopular GOP" captured 47.3% of the popular vote and was only 4-5 swing states away from eventually becoming President Romney. Twenty-sixteen will see the economy still hampered by Obama-era policies, and I hope the GOP is not still hampered by the RINO spirit that possessed the Bush years. | ||
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JonnyBNoHo
United States6277 Posts
On December 19 2012 03:58 farvacola wrote: Look at it this way. Metropolitan areas are already suffering from an increased disparity between quality of life in the suburbs and the city, and voucher programs only feed into that disparity. We cannot just say "let the bad schools fail" when that amounts to a total dismissal of urban and poor demographics, demographics unable to manipulate their own educational market entry and consequently left in the dust. If the bad school fails (goes away) that means students went to better schools or new (and again, better) schools were founded locally to take their place. So I don't see a problem here. Yes there's a risk that the system will suffer a botched execution but that's the risk with any reform or improvement effort. If you want change (and we all do) then at some point we have to take the risk that we'll only make things worse. I mean I understand the concern you are bringing up but as far as I know countries that have voucher systems (like Sweden) haven't suffered the ill effects you have described. So it seems like a concern over the execution of a voucher system rather than a concern over the voucher system itself. On December 19 2012 10:37 Souma wrote: By realizing that it may not be the school that's failing the students? To give an example, in my city we can pick any public school in the district to go to. Naturally, people tend to pick the better schools (which are unsurprisingly located in the more affluent parts of the city). You'd think this would solve education for most students. However, that's generally not the case. The high school that I went to used to be a pretty good school. But by the time I got there, it was full of kids who just didn't give a crap. Parenting is the biggest problem facing schools at the moment, and the biggest problems facing parents are generally socioeconomic obstacles/the results of a vicious cycle thereof. Catch my drift? To give a picture of how low the school had fallen, our test scores were low enough to relegate us to the threat of No Child Left Behind (though in the end I believe we managed to overcome that barrier, barely). The teachers, coaches, and other faculty were all amazing and supportive (at least, all the ones I had and knew), but the problems facing the entire school (might I add that the students outnumbered staff by a significant margin) were really out of their control. If the student culture is an "I don't give a crap" one then it becomes all the more difficult to affect change. That sounds like all the better reason to let the bad schools be replaced. | ||
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BlueBird.
United States3889 Posts
On December 19 2012 13:59 JonnyBNoHo wrote: If the bad school fails (goes away) that means students went to better schools or new (and again, better) schools were founded locally to take their place. So I don't see a problem here. Yes there's a risk that the system will suffer a botched execution but that's the risk with any reform or improvement effort. If you want change (and we all do) then at some point we have to take the risk that we'll only make things worse. I mean I understand the concern you are bringing up but as far as I know countries that have voucher systems (like Sweden) haven't suffered the ill effects you have described. So it seems like a concern over the execution of a voucher system rather than a concern over the voucher system itself. If the student culture is an "I don't give a crap" one then it becomes all the more difficult to affect change. That sounds like all the better reason to let the bad schools be replaced. You've argued these same points before, but what happens in theory is that the "best" schools become swamped and can't take care of that many students, spreading their attention and making them a "bad" school over time, and then the parents who can afford to send their children to the new best school send them to the new best school and that school becomes swamped etc how do you solve this issue, classroom overcrowding is not a joke, one on one time with the teacher is essential for some students, sure some students don't need it or can teach themselves with the book etc. At some point there is a cut off for how many students the school can handle, they only have so much space/room, only so many teachers, and how do you decide who does/doesn't get in with their voucher, everyone in the school zoning area gets in, so outside of the zoning area how do you decide who gets in when you have 1000 spots, and 10000 students applying? Are we going to start deciding who gets in to elementary schools like we decide who gets in to colleges, based on academic achievements in kindergarten? Since all students can use a voucher in your system, that means you need to provide for a bus for students travelling far distances to get to the best schools, this costs gas, puts more miles and wear and tear on the bus fleet, meaning more repair costs, pay the bus drivers more for longer hours.. This means higher taxes, since it's unfair to charge more for the bus for students travelling long distances for obvious reasons. You can't treat schools as you treat businesses, you can't just let the strong schools survive, and the weak schools fail.(also the fact the best schools are in the most wealthy areas is kind of a hint its not always the school at fault here, parents with money have more time to be involved with their students lives, it's hard for a single mom with 2 jobs to come home and help tommy with his homework) . In some places, like Clark County, the schools get money based on property taxes. That means that schools in a richer area get more money(so hey a new baseball field, or brand new computers, or hey everyone lets go to Hawaii or Italy on a field trip)m since the property is worth more in that area, compare that to a school on the other side of the town that can't afford paper for the kids to write on. I know not all school districts/counties use property taxes to determine the school budget but it's pretty dumb. .We have invested money and time in to bad schools, and their faculty are not all clueless teachers and lazy administrators(although there are a lot of those) no matter what their test scores might say, their are good people in there, as well as the bad. There are awful, horrible, lazy, dumb freaking teachers at "great top of the line" schools, I've met some, I've been taught by some, I've worked with some, I have seen "bad"/"awful"/"worst in the county" schools work their asses off trying to keep their test scores up or move up a few percent because if they didn't they would all be fired, they worked one on one with the kids, put in unpaid overtime, talked to parents, tried to communicate, tried to get parents involved, learned a second language just so they could understand what their student was trying to tell them. That particular school was an elementary school, and 85 percent of the students did not have english as a first language, and did not speak english at home. It's not rocket science why their test scores were so low, but they were held to the same standards under NCLB as any other elementary school. We also expected mentally challenged kids too perform at the same level as their peers without challenges, making it so schools tried to get rid of their handicapped kids since it brought their test scores down. How messed up is that. Basically their is a underlying problem with schools, and I don't feel like your voucher problem would solve any of them, we need to isolate the problem, and go after it, making a voucher system doesn't seem to solve any problems with our education system, and I have yet to see a good argument for it, or what it would actually solve. | ||
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Souma
2nd Worst City in CA8938 Posts
On December 19 2012 13:59 JonnyBNoHo wrote: If the student culture is an "I don't give a crap" one then it becomes all the more difficult to affect change. That sounds like all the better reason to let the bad schools be replaced. It's generally not the school's fault that students are undisciplined and it's not the school's place to discipline. You can't just move all these students to another school and think that everything will work out, which is what I was trying to portray with my example. My school was a good school. It turned into a bad school. It wasn't the fault of the school, it happened because they started letting every kid choose their school. Society needs to step up as long as the disciplinary measures afforded to schools are limited. | ||
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