US Politics Mega-thread - Page 839

On February 04 2014 03:17 KwarK wrote:
At no point did I argue that we had a less wasteful alternative to the free market, I merely attacked the idea that the free market is efficient. It's better than a command economies but the forces that drive competition are surplus demand creating profit and surplus supply weeding out the inferior businesses, both of which are waste. It's a waste driven economy.

I'll give a very basic example. There are no shoemakers in my village. Shoes are in demand. As someone able to make shoes I then open a shoemaking shop and sell my shoes for the money equivalent of ten times the labour involved in their production from a properly saturated market (example if a baker bakes one loaf an hour and sells it for cost +$1 then his time is worth $1/hr, I then sell my shoes at cost +$10/hr). The reason I do this is because I want to spend 90% of my time not working, or alternatively hoard 10x as much as I would otherwise have. The force driving my shoe shop is the desire to have 10 other dudes working just to meet my surplus desires, or to spend 90% of my time masturbating instead of working. And that's okay because we get shoes out of it and we needed shoes but don't tell me that it's efficient.

On February 04 2014 04:22 FabledIntegral wrote:
I would also argue that it would fit the definition of "optimal" if there is no practical alternative.

On February 04 2014 03:56 aksfjh wrote:

You seem to be wanting some sort of measure that uses economics to make a point outside the actual realm of economics. Like trying to take the temperature of the distance between two planets, you'll just end up with garbage and numbers that are ultimately meaningless.

On February 04 2014 04:35 nunez wrote:


you would argue that it is optimal if it is trivially optimal? risky...

On February 04 2014 05:26 itsjustatank wrote:
All the GDP statistic is worth measuring is exactly what it stands for: the gross domestic product of a country. Attempting to extrapolate anything else out of that is foolhardy. If you want to measure well-being, you need to construct your own metric, and it shouldn't be GDP.

On February 04 2014 05:24 FabledIntegral wrote:


"optimal: best or most favorable"

If there's no better alternative, it would currently be our most optimal choice. At no point is anyone stating to not seek out an even better system, but it's the best of what we know. I wouldn't say that's a far-fetched argument on my part.

The poor pay more.

According to a report put out this week by the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) of the U.S. Postal Service, about 68 million Americans -- more than a quarter of all households -- have no checking or savings account and are underserved by the banking system. Collectively, these households spent about $89 billion in 2012 on interest and fees for non-bank financial services like payday loans and check cashing, which works out to an average of $2,412 per household. That means the average underserved household spends roughly 10 percent of its annual income on interest and fees -- about the same amount they spend on food.

Think about that: about 10 percent of a family's income just to manage getting checks cashed, bills paid, and, sometimes, a short-term loan to tide them over. That's more than a full month's income just to try to navigate the basics.

The poor pay more, and that's one of the reasons people get trapped at the bottom of the economic ladder.

But it doesn't have to be this way. In the same remarkable report this week, the OIG explored the possibility of the USPS offering basic banking services -- bill paying, check cashing, small loans -- to its customers. With post offices and postal workers already on the ground, USPS could partner with banks to make a critical difference for millions of Americans who don't have basic banking services because there are almost no banks or bank branches in their neighborhoods.

Families rely on financial services more than ever, but those who need them most -- who struggle to make ends meet -- too often must contend with sky-high interest rates and tricks and traps buried in the fine print of their loan products.

This is not a new problem, and policymakers in Washington have long sounded the alarm. Michael Barr -- an assistant secretary of the Treasury under President Obama and law professor at University of Michigan -- has pushed on this issue for years. As Chair of the FDIC, Sheila Bair put in place a Committee on Economic Inclusion to generate ideas for expanding access to lower-cost banking services. (I had the honor of serving as a committee member.) And we've taken some important steps forward. The new Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), for example, is a cop on the beat that is putting in place commonsense rules to protect consumers and ensure that payday lenders are held accountable when they break the law.

There has been momentum in the right direction, but there is so much more work to do to make sure that families have access to affordable and fair financial services.

On February 04 2014 05:37 itsjustatank wrote:
The domestic product of a country cannot necessarily be linked to the well-being of a country's people. You can have a great amount of disorder, violence, unemployment, murder, incarceration, depression, mental health issues, structural poverty, sickness, death, et cetera, and none of these things are measured directly by GDP. All it does it show how big your economy is, not how well it is doing for its people (or even what segments of the economy it benefits).

China is second on GDP but has a large number of people in poverty. Brazil is sixth and has the favelas and other structural problems. Mexico is 14th and has a huge fucking drug war that it cannot manage. The United States is first but we all know things are fucked up here too.

It is a terrible statistic to be attempting to extrapolate well-being out of, all-in-all. Make a new metric if you want to measure well-being, don't appropriate something out of what it is patently not.

Four same-sex couples represented by the American Civil Liberties Union sued Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker (R) and other state top administration officials on Monday, challenging Wisconsin’s seven-year-old ban on gay marriage.

In addition to attempting to overturn the state’s constitutional amendment barring marriage equality, the lawsuit also seeks to repeal Wisconsin’s "marriage evasion" law, which criminalizes leaving the state to “contract a marriage that is prohibited or void” in Wisconsin. Couples violating the marriage evasion statute can be fined up to “$10,000 or imprisoned for not more than 9 months or both.”

“Wisconsin is unique in that sense, and so we think that argument particularly exemplifies the harm or the animus toward same-sex couples in some parts of the country,” John Knight, director of ACLU's LGBT and AIDS Project, told the Washington Blade on Monday.

The couples in the lawsuit are Roy Badger and Garth Wangemann; Charvonne Kemp and Marie Carlson; Judith Trampf and Katharina Heyning; and Virginia Wolf and Carol Schumacher, the lead plaintiffs in the case.

Virginia Wolf et al. v. Scott Walker et al., which was filed by the ACLU, the ACLU of Wisconsin and Mayer Brown LLP, argues that Wisconsin’s gay marriage ban violates the couples’ due process and equal protection rights under the 14th Amendment.

“Wisconsin, a historic leader in marriage equality, maintains one of the most restrictive bans on marriage for same-sex couples in the nation,” the lawsuit reads. “The State deprives same-sex couples of these rights and freedoms for no other reason than their sexual orientation and their sex.”

Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber told newspaper editors last week that the Beaver State needs to get ready for legal weed.

"I hear the drumbeats from Washington and Colorado," Kitzhaber said, The Oregonian reported. "I want to make sure we have a thoughtful regulatory system. The legislature would be the right place to craft that."

A recent poll showed 57 percent of the state's likely 2014 voters support recreational marijuana legalization. Oregon has already decriminalized cannabis and legalized it for medical use.

After a poorly coordinated and widely criticized marijuana legalization effort that failed in 2012, marijuana legalization advocates are now approaching the issue from two sides, both with a ballot initiative and through lobbying state lawmakers for legislative action.

"A majority of Americans support ending marijuana prohibition, and that surely includes a majority of Oregonians," said Mason Tvert, communications director for Marijuana Policy Project, to The Huffington Post. "Voters will surely welcome a well-written law that effectively regulates and taxes marijuana similarly to alcohol."

Voters in Colorado and Washington approved recreational marijuana legalization measures back in 2012 which legalized the possession, use and sale of marijuana to adults 21 and older. The Department of Justice let both states to proceed with the groundbreaking new laws last year, allowing a legal, taxed and regulated marijuana marketplace to take shape. On New Year's Day, the historic first legal recreational marijuana dispensaries opened in Colorado to long lines and tremendous revenue, generating more than $5 million in the first week alone. Washington's pot shops are expected to open later in the year.

On February 04 2014 09:55 KwarK wrote:
No conspiracy theory sites please.

On February 04 2014 09:55 KwarK wrote:
No conspiracy theory sites please.