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Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting! NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.If you have any questions, comments, concern, or feedback regarding the USPMT, then please use this thread: http://www.teamliquid.net/forum/website-feedback/510156-us-politics-thread |
On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:22 Introvert wrote:
isn't it interesting how when someone says "abolish ICE" we are supposed to k ow that they don't want open borders, but that they just mean "abolish and replace because it's too rotten to be saved." If a conservative says "the EPA is a classic power hungry bureaucracy that likes to crush those too small to fight" the automatic assumption is that one wants no environmental regulations at all. Excellent example of how some people won't even offer someone the benefit of the doubt. Just assume the person on the right is a bad person, and your arguments are much easier!
Now, I suspect that "abolish ICE" is just some good old fashioned dumb hyperbole (not a smart one but whatever). Just like "abolish the EPA" is. There are people who mean these literally, but if you are on the left you stress that "abolish ICE" isnt open borders to most people, but if it's about the EPA you assume that it means "have no regulations whatsoever!" Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach. Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law. Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way. I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating.
Everyone in the Trump administration is a bad person and should be guillotined in prison (I'm being nice).
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United States24579 Posts
I think it's misguided to lump together all members of the Trump administration. At least a portion of the leadership actually understands what's wrong with the administration but is doing a good job in order to help keep the country together.
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The left should be reaching out a lot less than they are. Politics is about winning.
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The left has to reach out more and more to get past the Corporate Dem machine which isn't very welcoming with the left's increasing popular messages.
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On July 05 2018 05:54 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
The left has to reach out more and more to get past the Corporate Dem machine which isn't very welcoming with the left's increasing popular messages.
This! I actually find more open-mindedness with people on the right (well, sometimes at least) than the Clintonites. Or if you are in the UK, Blairites. 
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On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:22 Introvert wrote:
isn't it interesting how when someone says "abolish ICE" we are supposed to k ow that they don't want open borders, but that they just mean "abolish and replace because it's too rotten to be saved." If a conservative says "the EPA is a classic power hungry bureaucracy that likes to crush those too small to fight" the automatic assumption is that one wants no environmental regulations at all. Excellent example of how some people won't even offer someone the benefit of the doubt. Just assume the person on the right is a bad person, and your arguments are much easier!
Now, I suspect that "abolish ICE" is just some good old fashioned dumb hyperbole (not a smart one but whatever). Just like "abolish the EPA" is. There are people who mean these literally, but if you are on the left you stress that "abolish ICE" isnt open borders to most people, but if it's about the EPA you assume that it means "have no regulations whatsoever!" Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach. Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law. Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way. I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating.
I think this is just a human trait. Everyone on both sides loves a strawman. After all, Doug Jones become a radical abortionist with a history of supporting full-birth abortion with one terrible response to a question about specific legislation in front of congress pushing forward the trimester date, and Hillary Clinton became a hater of all Trump supporters because of a quote from a speech specifically about how some Trump supporters have legitimate opinions and grievances we should care about.
Neither side takes the other side uniformly figuratively or literally, but that being the burden of "the left" and "the right" seems odd. Everyone perpetuates it become simplicity and strawmanning are tremendously potent weapons in politics, which the right realized even before the left.
We'd be better off if neither side does it, but it's pretty hard for either side to disarm unilaterally. Especially when the current de facto leader of one side (Trump) will go so far as to completely fabricate things the other side supports.
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On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:22 Introvert wrote:
isn't it interesting how when someone says "abolish ICE" we are supposed to k ow that they don't want open borders, but that they just mean "abolish and replace because it's too rotten to be saved." If a conservative says "the EPA is a classic power hungry bureaucracy that likes to crush those too small to fight" the automatic assumption is that one wants no environmental regulations at all. Excellent example of how some people won't even offer someone the benefit of the doubt. Just assume the person on the right is a bad person, and your arguments are much easier!
Now, I suspect that "abolish ICE" is just some good old fashioned dumb hyperbole (not a smart one but whatever). Just like "abolish the EPA" is. There are people who mean these literally, but if you are on the left you stress that "abolish ICE" isnt open borders to most people, but if it's about the EPA you assume that it means "have no regulations whatsoever!" Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach. Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law. Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way. I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating.
Despite most of this being true when applied to "the left," I don't feel like this is a political phenomenon only limited to one side of the aisle; in fact, I would say that the Republican Party's grande strategy revolves around assuming that the other side is made up of "bad" or "misguided" individuals.
There are not a lot of attempts that I remember (my bad memory might play a part in this, but I'm reasonably comfortable with my statement here) where Republicans reached out to Democrats for an attempt at legislation instead of using brute force and only red votes to pass laws. I would also say that people like Joe Manchin should not be counted as reaching out by Republicans; he changed in response to the views of his constituents, and he always switched without Republican action targeted at him (although, they certainly approve of this shift).
The assumption that "the right" is the victim here is quite concerning, as it allows you to brush off "calls for civility" instead of saying that both sides need to work on their attitudes (our current president is a symptom of this); why was "If you'll be civil, we will too. Stop assuming we're willing to destroy the country to advance the interests of the capital class and we'll start considering what you say and drafting more moderate legislation" not the Republicans' response to this? Essentially, where is your high ground? You created one for yourself, but I see it crumbling away.
In short, I understand the thrust of your argument, but disagree with the statement that this is perpetuated solely by "the left."
Edit: the tea party does make it very difficult to reach out, considering that they have much more of a visible impact on Congress than the "hard leftists."
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On July 05 2018 03:27 screamingpalm wrote:Show nested quote +On July 04 2018 21:06 Leporello wrote:
You're painting a very rosy picture of what was essentially a robbery of the treasury, most notably during the Reagan "boom". You cut the income tax in half, deplete gov't revenue in the process and begin the national debt trend that we're enduring to this day -- well of course you'd better have one hell of a "boom". If Reagan didn't have any "boom", then all we could say is he just burned trillions of dollars and pushed our country towards mountains of debt for nothing. But no, the economy "boomed" for a little while until the free-lunch wore off.
Clinton had the Internet.
Neither of them deserve any credit due to good economic policy. One was disgusting reverse-welfare that put a huge liability onto the backs of future generations, the other was just circumstance of a landmark private innovation.
It's like congratulating someone for taking out a massive loan from a bank without much clue as to how they'll pay it back, while opining that future customers should be so lucky. Well, they won't be so lucky. They're the ones that're unfairly going to have to pay for the previous customer's ignorance.
With Reagan and Clinton -- you're talking about Baby Boomers -- people who received the world on a golden platter. The biggest, strongest, sturdiest middle-class workforce ever. The generation that was given everything, and took it for granted.
They're the reverse of the Greatest Generation, in my opinion. They didn't build the middle-class -- rather, they robbed it into near-extinction, while patting themselves on the back over their "economic booms". And Donald Trump is the last bit of their legacy. A spit in the face of everything the Greatest Generation stood for. Indeed! Democrats still to this day brag about the budget surplus of the "goldilocks economy" not understanding sectoral balances and that needs to net to zero. In other words, the surplus drained savings and created a private debt expansion bubble which led to a nasty recession. Clinton replaced deficit spending by filling the Gap with bank loans and IOU's (and filled his buddies' pockets on Wall Street). A generation that benefitted from progressive policies of FDR, Ike, LBJ... As far as the national debt though, there is far too much fear-mongering over what is essentially safe liquid assets- savings accounts at the fed. Much Ado about nothing and not something that we have to "endure" nor is it a burden. The federal government does not need, nor benefit from revenue.
You can't just dump everything into safe assets and then expect safe assets to still work as if they are safe assets.
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On July 05 2018 06:45 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 03:27 screamingpalm wrote:On July 04 2018 21:06 Leporello wrote:
You're painting a very rosy picture of what was essentially a robbery of the treasury, most notably during the Reagan "boom". You cut the income tax in half, deplete gov't revenue in the process and begin the national debt trend that we're enduring to this day -- well of course you'd better have one hell of a "boom". If Reagan didn't have any "boom", then all we could say is he just burned trillions of dollars and pushed our country towards mountains of debt for nothing. But no, the economy "boomed" for a little while until the free-lunch wore off.
Clinton had the Internet.
Neither of them deserve any credit due to good economic policy. One was disgusting reverse-welfare that put a huge liability onto the backs of future generations, the other was just circumstance of a landmark private innovation.
It's like congratulating someone for taking out a massive loan from a bank without much clue as to how they'll pay it back, while opining that future customers should be so lucky. Well, they won't be so lucky. They're the ones that're unfairly going to have to pay for the previous customer's ignorance.
With Reagan and Clinton -- you're talking about Baby Boomers -- people who received the world on a golden platter. The biggest, strongest, sturdiest middle-class workforce ever. The generation that was given everything, and took it for granted.
They're the reverse of the Greatest Generation, in my opinion. They didn't build the middle-class -- rather, they robbed it into near-extinction, while patting themselves on the back over their "economic booms". And Donald Trump is the last bit of their legacy. A spit in the face of everything the Greatest Generation stood for. Indeed! Democrats still to this day brag about the budget surplus of the "goldilocks economy" not understanding sectoral balances and that needs to net to zero. In other words, the surplus drained savings and created a private debt expansion bubble which led to a nasty recession. Clinton replaced deficit spending by filling the Gap with bank loans and IOU's (and filled his buddies' pockets on Wall Street). A generation that benefitted from progressive policies of FDR, Ike, LBJ... As far as the national debt though, there is far too much fear-mongering over what is essentially safe liquid assets- savings accounts at the fed. Much Ado about nothing and not something that we have to "endure" nor is it a burden. The federal government does not need, nor benefit from revenue. You can't just dump everything into safe assets and then expect safe assets to still work as if they are safe assets.
I wouldn't disagree with you. Most investors don't dump everything into bonds, but contain some to manage risk.
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On July 05 2018 05:56 screamingpalm wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 05:54 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
The left has to reach out more and more to get past the Corporate Dem machine which isn't very welcoming with the left's increasing popular messages. This! I actually find more open-mindedness with people on the right (well, sometimes at least) than the Clintonites. Or if you are in the UK, Blairites.
What you're describing isn't reaching out, it's finding out that they agree with you about some stuff. I have no problem with them adhering to the message.
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On July 05 2018 08:05 Nebuchad wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 05:56 screamingpalm wrote:On July 05 2018 05:54 {CC}StealthBlue wrote:
The left has to reach out more and more to get past the Corporate Dem machine which isn't very welcoming with the left's increasing popular messages. This! I actually find more open-mindedness with people on the right (well, sometimes at least) than the Clintonites. Or if you are in the UK, Blairites. What you're describing isn't reaching out, it's finding out that they agree with you about some stuff. I have no problem with them adhering to the message.
That too, I suppose. Many in the MMT-progressive ranks are former libertarians that learned macroeconomics. :D
Instead, with Democrats, it's like talking to a brick wall and we're dismissed as the pie-in-the-sky loony left etc.
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On July 05 2018 07:11 screamingpalm wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 06:45 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 05 2018 03:27 screamingpalm wrote:On July 04 2018 21:06 Leporello wrote:
You're painting a very rosy picture of what was essentially a robbery of the treasury, most notably during the Reagan "boom". You cut the income tax in half, deplete gov't revenue in the process and begin the national debt trend that we're enduring to this day -- well of course you'd better have one hell of a "boom". If Reagan didn't have any "boom", then all we could say is he just burned trillions of dollars and pushed our country towards mountains of debt for nothing. But no, the economy "boomed" for a little while until the free-lunch wore off.
Clinton had the Internet.
Neither of them deserve any credit due to good economic policy. One was disgusting reverse-welfare that put a huge liability onto the backs of future generations, the other was just circumstance of a landmark private innovation.
It's like congratulating someone for taking out a massive loan from a bank without much clue as to how they'll pay it back, while opining that future customers should be so lucky. Well, they won't be so lucky. They're the ones that're unfairly going to have to pay for the previous customer's ignorance.
With Reagan and Clinton -- you're talking about Baby Boomers -- people who received the world on a golden platter. The biggest, strongest, sturdiest middle-class workforce ever. The generation that was given everything, and took it for granted.
They're the reverse of the Greatest Generation, in my opinion. They didn't build the middle-class -- rather, they robbed it into near-extinction, while patting themselves on the back over their "economic booms". And Donald Trump is the last bit of their legacy. A spit in the face of everything the Greatest Generation stood for. Indeed! Democrats still to this day brag about the budget surplus of the "goldilocks economy" not understanding sectoral balances and that needs to net to zero. In other words, the surplus drained savings and created a private debt expansion bubble which led to a nasty recession. Clinton replaced deficit spending by filling the Gap with bank loans and IOU's (and filled his buddies' pockets on Wall Street). A generation that benefitted from progressive policies of FDR, Ike, LBJ... As far as the national debt though, there is far too much fear-mongering over what is essentially safe liquid assets- savings accounts at the fed. Much Ado about nothing and not something that we have to "endure" nor is it a burden. The federal government does not need, nor benefit from revenue. You can't just dump everything into safe assets and then expect safe assets to still work as if they are safe assets. I wouldn't disagree with you. Most investors don't dump everything into bonds, but contain some to manage risk.
Not talking about portfolio management.
If we're dumping lots of economic risk into treasuries (lots of borrowing) than they cease to be safe assets.
I believe BIS was advocating a few years back for lots of borrowing to make safe assets available, but that was paired with large primary surpluses to maintain safe asset status. That is, not a gov. financing scheme.
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On July 05 2018 05:59 TheTenthDoc wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:22 Introvert wrote:
isn't it interesting how when someone says "abolish ICE" we are supposed to k ow that they don't want open borders, but that they just mean "abolish and replace because it's too rotten to be saved." If a conservative says "the EPA is a classic power hungry bureaucracy that likes to crush those too small to fight" the automatic assumption is that one wants no environmental regulations at all. Excellent example of how some people won't even offer someone the benefit of the doubt. Just assume the person on the right is a bad person, and your arguments are much easier!
Now, I suspect that "abolish ICE" is just some good old fashioned dumb hyperbole (not a smart one but whatever). Just like "abolish the EPA" is. There are people who mean these literally, but if you are on the left you stress that "abolish ICE" isnt open borders to most people, but if it's about the EPA you assume that it means "have no regulations whatsoever!" Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach. Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law. Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way. I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating. I think this is just a human trait. Everyone on both sides loves a strawman. After all, Doug Jones become a radical abortionist with a history of supporting full-birth abortion with one terrible response to a question about specific legislation in front of congress pushing forward the trimester date, and Hillary Clinton became a hater of all Trump supporters because of a quote from a speech specifically about how some Trump supporters have legitimate opinions and grievances we should care about. Neither side takes the other side uniformly figuratively or literally, but that being the burden of "the left" and "the right" seems odd. Everyone perpetuates it become simplicity and strawmanning are tremendously potent weapons in politics, which the right realized even before the left. We'd be better off if neither side does it, but it's pretty hard for either side to disarm unilaterally. Especially when the current de facto leader of one side (Trump) will go so far as to completely fabricate things the other side supports.
There is much to agree to here, but the problem is that the Bad Person assumption has fans in the media and culture. If someone says "you all just want to abolish borders!" you'll be deluged with "no! We just want to get rid of ICE and replace it with a humane agency." And of course the reverse is true with "abolish the EPA." But in that case, you get supposedly serious people telling us how conservatives want to allow Koch Industries to dump millions of gallons of waste upstream from a bunch of frolicking children or whatever.
It isn't even about taking people literally, in the case of the EPA. It's actually much worse than that. What happens is that the EPA is treated as the One True Environmental Agency, and getting rid of it means you want no regulations at all.
And for the record, I don't hold any government agency to be God's gift, as I mentioned to earlier.
On July 05 2018 06:00 Howie_Dewitt wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 04:22 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 23:40 iamthedave wrote:On July 04 2018 23:14 Plansix wrote:On July 04 2018 22:40 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:37 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:31 Introvert wrote:On July 04 2018 22:29 Mercy13 wrote:On July 04 2018 22:22 Introvert wrote:
isn't it interesting how when someone says "abolish ICE" we are supposed to k ow that they don't want open borders, but that they just mean "abolish and replace because it's too rotten to be saved." If a conservative says "the EPA is a classic power hungry bureaucracy that likes to crush those too small to fight" the automatic assumption is that one wants no environmental regulations at all. Excellent example of how some people won't even offer someone the benefit of the doubt. Just assume the person on the right is a bad person, and your arguments are much easier!
Now, I suspect that "abolish ICE" is just some good old fashioned dumb hyperbole (not a smart one but whatever). Just like "abolish the EPA" is. There are people who mean these literally, but if you are on the left you stress that "abolish ICE" isnt open borders to most people, but if it's about the EPA you assume that it means "have no regulations whatsoever!" Conservatives have control of the EPA currently, and they are taking the slash and burn approach rather than putting different regulations in place so I think it’s safe to say what they actually want is the slash and burn approach. Also ICE is a garbage agency and it’s objectively a good idea to abolish it. I don’t support open borders, and abolishing ICE doesn’t mean we will have open boarders, but having open borders would be preferable to an unaccountable secret police force with no regard for the rule of law. Maybe the EPA can't be saved! You literally just did what I was taking about. Maybe you slightly misunderstood me. Maybe I do support getting rid of the EPA, who knows! But the assumption of good intentions only goes one way. I’m confused by your response. Conservatives have the ability right now to remake the EPA into something better. They aren’t doing that. They’re tearing it down without putting anything else in its place. Or do you have examples of new/better regulations the current administration is supporting? I'm not talking about reform, I'm talking about the discussion about abolishing agencies. Maybe the EPA is full of zealots, and the entire agency is rotten! (the ICE parallel). This isn't about reform, though I think that's what most people want, not abolishment. The EPA is filled with scientists set on keeping our natural resources clean and testing them for safety reasons. Water supplies can get toxic agents in them naturally. They are here to collect scientific data and give it to the public free of charge. ICE is an agency that has a single purpose, to round up illegal immigrants and deport them. That attracts a single type of person. They have had a series of scandles that involves high level people stealing the identities of immigrants and knowingly detaining lawful residents, including citizens. 19 officers in ICE wrote a letter to congress calling for ICE be dissolved and replaced. So maybe one of those two is completely rotten to the core? I'm sorry, P6, you're going to need to help me out here. I ran what you said through my American translator plug in and it came out with: The EPA is full of liberal wishy-washy traitors who hate America and want businesses to fail and ICE is full of hard-working American patriots who just want to keep the borders safe and prevent other patriots being raped by Mexicans. Your translator needs an update. But I'll use this post because it's such an excellent distillation of what I'm talking about. I'm not arguing about whether either agency should exist. For the sake of this conversation I intentionally hedged on that! I'm pointing out a phenomenon the right knows well and the left perpetuates where we can take two similar starting points but go nowhere. because everyone on the right is a Bad Person, a statement like "abolish the EPA" is extrapolated to mean "there should be no environmental regulations!" while "abolish ICE" is taken to mean "get rid of the agency and replace it with the Sweet Butterfly Patrol." We aren't arguing the merits, and we can't because the Bad Person assumption is already enforced. And that's exactly what you did! lol. This is why I find discussions about things like "reaching out" or "civility" so hilarious from the left. When your own side is so high on this assumption, what makes you think you were actually exemplars of the virtues you are saying "got us nowhere"? Fascinating. Despite most of this being true when applied to "the left," I don't feel like this is a political phenomenon only limited to one side of the aisle; in fact, I would say that the Republican Party's grande strategy revolves around assuming that the other side is made up of "bad" or "misguided" individuals. There are not a lot of attempts that I remember (my bad memory might play a part in this, but I'm reasonably comfortable with my statement here) where Republicans reached out to Democrats for an attempt at legislation instead of using brute force and only red votes to pass laws. I would also say that people like Joe Manchin should not be counted as reaching out by Republicans; he changed in response to the views of his constituents, and he always switched without Republican action targeted at him (although, they certainly approve of this shift). The assumption that "the right" is the victim here is quite concerning, as it allows you to brush off "calls for civility" instead of saying that both sides need to work on their attitudes (our current president is a symptom of this); why was "If you'll be civil, we will too. Stop assuming we're willing to destroy the country to advance the interests of the capital class and we'll start considering what you say and drafting more moderate legislation" not the Republicans' response to this? Essentially, where is your high ground? You created one for yourself, but I see it crumbling away. In short, I understand the thrust of your argument, but disagree with the statement that this is perpetuated solely by "the left." Edit: the tea party does make it very difficult to reach out, considering that they have much more of a visible impact on Congress than the "hard leftists."
My above reply applies here too. In addition to that, I'm not even counting very obvious political power moves. not supporting something because you how the game is played if you go along with it is actually not terribly offensive to me. It IS utterly absurd when we apply to supposed concentration camps on the border, but for everyday back and forth I don't mind it too much.
+ Show Spoiler +
This is kind of a side note and I'll spoiler it cause I wrote it, but I think it could become thing everyone responds to.
As for civility, I will remind you which party it was that treated Bush and Romney as moral monsters, while every time someone said something slightly untoward to Obama you could find 153534 Republicans tripping over themselves to disassociate from it. I suspect many disagree with me, but to shield myself I will remind the thread of how many times I've criticized Trump and his rhetoric. I just don't think the left, broadly speaking, has a leg to stand on. If they think they were being civil at the time... I can't want to see what they end up doing now.
And the media dominance I referenced above should also be food for thought. When almost the entire "neutral" media is placing the status of bad personhood upon one party, maybe one should be closely reevaluating if you were really as civil and nice as you thought you were.
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On July 05 2018 08:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 07:11 screamingpalm wrote:On July 05 2018 06:45 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 05 2018 03:27 screamingpalm wrote:On July 04 2018 21:06 Leporello wrote:
You're painting a very rosy picture of what was essentially a robbery of the treasury, most notably during the Reagan "boom". You cut the income tax in half, deplete gov't revenue in the process and begin the national debt trend that we're enduring to this day -- well of course you'd better have one hell of a "boom". If Reagan didn't have any "boom", then all we could say is he just burned trillions of dollars and pushed our country towards mountains of debt for nothing. But no, the economy "boomed" for a little while until the free-lunch wore off.
Clinton had the Internet.
Neither of them deserve any credit due to good economic policy. One was disgusting reverse-welfare that put a huge liability onto the backs of future generations, the other was just circumstance of a landmark private innovation.
It's like congratulating someone for taking out a massive loan from a bank without much clue as to how they'll pay it back, while opining that future customers should be so lucky. Well, they won't be so lucky. They're the ones that're unfairly going to have to pay for the previous customer's ignorance.
With Reagan and Clinton -- you're talking about Baby Boomers -- people who received the world on a golden platter. The biggest, strongest, sturdiest middle-class workforce ever. The generation that was given everything, and took it for granted.
They're the reverse of the Greatest Generation, in my opinion. They didn't build the middle-class -- rather, they robbed it into near-extinction, while patting themselves on the back over their "economic booms". And Donald Trump is the last bit of their legacy. A spit in the face of everything the Greatest Generation stood for. Indeed! Democrats still to this day brag about the budget surplus of the "goldilocks economy" not understanding sectoral balances and that needs to net to zero. In other words, the surplus drained savings and created a private debt expansion bubble which led to a nasty recession. Clinton replaced deficit spending by filling the Gap with bank loans and IOU's (and filled his buddies' pockets on Wall Street). A generation that benefitted from progressive policies of FDR, Ike, LBJ... As far as the national debt though, there is far too much fear-mongering over what is essentially safe liquid assets- savings accounts at the fed. Much Ado about nothing and not something that we have to "endure" nor is it a burden. The federal government does not need, nor benefit from revenue. You can't just dump everything into safe assets and then expect safe assets to still work as if they are safe assets. I wouldn't disagree with you. Most investors don't dump everything into bonds, but contain some to manage risk. Not talking about portfolio management. If we're dumping lots of economic risk into treasuries (lots of borrowing) than they cease to be safe assets. I believe BIS was advocating a few years back for lots of borrowing to make safe assets available, but that was paired with large primary surpluses to maintain safe asset status. That is, not a gov. financing scheme.
If the government has unlimited potential to repay whatever is borrowed, doesn't that negate the risk? Genuine question cos my understanding of this sort of thing is v limited
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On July 05 2018 08:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 07:11 screamingpalm wrote:On July 05 2018 06:45 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 05 2018 03:27 screamingpalm wrote:On July 04 2018 21:06 Leporello wrote:
You're painting a very rosy picture of what was essentially a robbery of the treasury, most notably during the Reagan "boom". You cut the income tax in half, deplete gov't revenue in the process and begin the national debt trend that we're enduring to this day -- well of course you'd better have one hell of a "boom". If Reagan didn't have any "boom", then all we could say is he just burned trillions of dollars and pushed our country towards mountains of debt for nothing. But no, the economy "boomed" for a little while until the free-lunch wore off.
Clinton had the Internet.
Neither of them deserve any credit due to good economic policy. One was disgusting reverse-welfare that put a huge liability onto the backs of future generations, the other was just circumstance of a landmark private innovation.
It's like congratulating someone for taking out a massive loan from a bank without much clue as to how they'll pay it back, while opining that future customers should be so lucky. Well, they won't be so lucky. They're the ones that're unfairly going to have to pay for the previous customer's ignorance.
With Reagan and Clinton -- you're talking about Baby Boomers -- people who received the world on a golden platter. The biggest, strongest, sturdiest middle-class workforce ever. The generation that was given everything, and took it for granted.
They're the reverse of the Greatest Generation, in my opinion. They didn't build the middle-class -- rather, they robbed it into near-extinction, while patting themselves on the back over their "economic booms". And Donald Trump is the last bit of their legacy. A spit in the face of everything the Greatest Generation stood for. Indeed! Democrats still to this day brag about the budget surplus of the "goldilocks economy" not understanding sectoral balances and that needs to net to zero. In other words, the surplus drained savings and created a private debt expansion bubble which led to a nasty recession. Clinton replaced deficit spending by filling the Gap with bank loans and IOU's (and filled his buddies' pockets on Wall Street). A generation that benefitted from progressive policies of FDR, Ike, LBJ... As far as the national debt though, there is far too much fear-mongering over what is essentially safe liquid assets- savings accounts at the fed. Much Ado about nothing and not something that we have to "endure" nor is it a burden. The federal government does not need, nor benefit from revenue. You can't just dump everything into safe assets and then expect safe assets to still work as if they are safe assets. I wouldn't disagree with you. Most investors don't dump everything into bonds, but contain some to manage risk. Not talking about portfolio management. If we're dumping lots of economic risk into treasuries (lots of borrowing) than they cease to be safe assets. I believe BIS was advocating a few years back for lots of borrowing to make safe assets available, but that was paired with large primary surpluses to maintain safe asset status. That is, not a gov. financing scheme.
I'd be interested in what you mean by dumping risk into treasuries. As our debt in denominated in our same unit of account, I see no risk involved.
Or from the St. Louis Federal Reserve:
As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational. Moreover, there will always be a market for U.S. government debt at home because the U.S. government has the only means of creating risk-free dollar-denominated assets (by virtue of never facing insolvency and paying interest rates over the inflation rate, e.g., TIPS—Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities).
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On July 05 2018 08:43 kollin wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 08:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 05 2018 07:11 screamingpalm wrote:On July 05 2018 06:45 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 05 2018 03:27 screamingpalm wrote:On July 04 2018 21:06 Leporello wrote:
You're painting a very rosy picture of what was essentially a robbery of the treasury, most notably during the Reagan "boom". You cut the income tax in half, deplete gov't revenue in the process and begin the national debt trend that we're enduring to this day -- well of course you'd better have one hell of a "boom". If Reagan didn't have any "boom", then all we could say is he just burned trillions of dollars and pushed our country towards mountains of debt for nothing. But no, the economy "boomed" for a little while until the free-lunch wore off.
Clinton had the Internet.
Neither of them deserve any credit due to good economic policy. One was disgusting reverse-welfare that put a huge liability onto the backs of future generations, the other was just circumstance of a landmark private innovation.
It's like congratulating someone for taking out a massive loan from a bank without much clue as to how they'll pay it back, while opining that future customers should be so lucky. Well, they won't be so lucky. They're the ones that're unfairly going to have to pay for the previous customer's ignorance.
With Reagan and Clinton -- you're talking about Baby Boomers -- people who received the world on a golden platter. The biggest, strongest, sturdiest middle-class workforce ever. The generation that was given everything, and took it for granted.
They're the reverse of the Greatest Generation, in my opinion. They didn't build the middle-class -- rather, they robbed it into near-extinction, while patting themselves on the back over their "economic booms". And Donald Trump is the last bit of their legacy. A spit in the face of everything the Greatest Generation stood for. Indeed! Democrats still to this day brag about the budget surplus of the "goldilocks economy" not understanding sectoral balances and that needs to net to zero. In other words, the surplus drained savings and created a private debt expansion bubble which led to a nasty recession. Clinton replaced deficit spending by filling the Gap with bank loans and IOU's (and filled his buddies' pockets on Wall Street). A generation that benefitted from progressive policies of FDR, Ike, LBJ... As far as the national debt though, there is far too much fear-mongering over what is essentially safe liquid assets- savings accounts at the fed. Much Ado about nothing and not something that we have to "endure" nor is it a burden. The federal government does not need, nor benefit from revenue. You can't just dump everything into safe assets and then expect safe assets to still work as if they are safe assets. I wouldn't disagree with you. Most investors don't dump everything into bonds, but contain some to manage risk. Not talking about portfolio management. If we're dumping lots of economic risk into treasuries (lots of borrowing) than they cease to be safe assets. I believe BIS was advocating a few years back for lots of borrowing to make safe assets available, but that was paired with large primary surpluses to maintain safe asset status. That is, not a gov. financing scheme. If the government has unlimited potential to repay whatever is borrowed, doesn't that negate the risk? Genuine question cos my understanding of this sort of thing is v limited
Zero repayment risk if that's what you really want, yes. If they US gov wants to repay its debt it can do so. No limits. But there's more risk than repayment risk.
Inflation risk is oft cited, but the government can also tax you in order to repay you (i.e. tax you $100 to repay you $100.. hey, you were repaid).
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On July 05 2018 08:51 screamingpalm wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 08:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 05 2018 07:11 screamingpalm wrote:On July 05 2018 06:45 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On July 05 2018 03:27 screamingpalm wrote:On July 04 2018 21:06 Leporello wrote:
You're painting a very rosy picture of what was essentially a robbery of the treasury, most notably during the Reagan "boom". You cut the income tax in half, deplete gov't revenue in the process and begin the national debt trend that we're enduring to this day -- well of course you'd better have one hell of a "boom". If Reagan didn't have any "boom", then all we could say is he just burned trillions of dollars and pushed our country towards mountains of debt for nothing. But no, the economy "boomed" for a little while until the free-lunch wore off.
Clinton had the Internet.
Neither of them deserve any credit due to good economic policy. One was disgusting reverse-welfare that put a huge liability onto the backs of future generations, the other was just circumstance of a landmark private innovation.
It's like congratulating someone for taking out a massive loan from a bank without much clue as to how they'll pay it back, while opining that future customers should be so lucky. Well, they won't be so lucky. They're the ones that're unfairly going to have to pay for the previous customer's ignorance.
With Reagan and Clinton -- you're talking about Baby Boomers -- people who received the world on a golden platter. The biggest, strongest, sturdiest middle-class workforce ever. The generation that was given everything, and took it for granted.
They're the reverse of the Greatest Generation, in my opinion. They didn't build the middle-class -- rather, they robbed it into near-extinction, while patting themselves on the back over their "economic booms". And Donald Trump is the last bit of their legacy. A spit in the face of everything the Greatest Generation stood for. Indeed! Democrats still to this day brag about the budget surplus of the "goldilocks economy" not understanding sectoral balances and that needs to net to zero. In other words, the surplus drained savings and created a private debt expansion bubble which led to a nasty recession. Clinton replaced deficit spending by filling the Gap with bank loans and IOU's (and filled his buddies' pockets on Wall Street). A generation that benefitted from progressive policies of FDR, Ike, LBJ... As far as the national debt though, there is far too much fear-mongering over what is essentially safe liquid assets- savings accounts at the fed. Much Ado about nothing and not something that we have to "endure" nor is it a burden. The federal government does not need, nor benefit from revenue. You can't just dump everything into safe assets and then expect safe assets to still work as if they are safe assets. I wouldn't disagree with you. Most investors don't dump everything into bonds, but contain some to manage risk. Not talking about portfolio management. If we're dumping lots of economic risk into treasuries (lots of borrowing) than they cease to be safe assets. I believe BIS was advocating a few years back for lots of borrowing to make safe assets available, but that was paired with large primary surpluses to maintain safe asset status. That is, not a gov. financing scheme. I'd be interested in what you mean by dumping risk into treasuries. As our debt in denominated in our same unit of account, I see no risk involved. Or from the St. Louis Federal Reserve: As the sole manufacturer of dollars, whose debt is denominated in dollars, the U.S. government can never become insolvent, i.e., unable to pay its bills. In this sense, the government is not dependent on credit markets to remain operational. Moreover, there will always be a market for U.S. government debt at home because the U.S. government has the only means of creating risk-free dollar-denominated assets (by virtue of never facing insolvency and paying interest rates over the inflation rate, e.g., TIPS—Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities).
Yes, the government can print money or tax in order to meet its obligations. Zero repayment risk. This is true for all countries with their own currency.
This does not mean that the government is detached from the real economy which can only produce a limited amount of goods and services.
People actually have to want the safe assets the government is creating so there's a limit there. If you exceed it, what happens if everyone wants to redeem those safe assets for goods and services?
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Inflation risk is always cited.
I see no reason why parking money at the Fed would affect aggregate demand.
On July 05 2018 09:08 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
People actually have to want the safe assets the government is creating so there's a limit there. If you exceed it, what happens if everyone wants to redeem those safe assets for goods and services?
Yes, now if this happened all at once, it could be an issue. It would need to be offset through taxes or some other drain.
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On July 05 2018 09:12 screamingpalm wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 09:08 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
People actually have to want the safe assets the government is creating so there's a limit there. If you exceed it, what happens if everyone wants to redeem those safe assets for goods and services? Yes, now if this happened all at once, it could be an issue. It would need to be offset through taxes or some other drain.
Isn't preventing this the whole point of taxation? By ensuring some constant demand for money you limit the demand for goods and services because there is always a need to pay tax?
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On July 05 2018 09:21 kollin wrote:Show nested quote +On July 05 2018 09:12 screamingpalm wrote:On July 05 2018 09:08 JonnyBNoHo wrote:
People actually have to want the safe assets the government is creating so there's a limit there. If you exceed it, what happens if everyone wants to redeem those safe assets for goods and services? Yes, now if this happened all at once, it could be an issue. It would need to be offset through taxes or some other drain. Isn't preventing this the whole point of taxation? By ensuring some constant demand for money you limit the demand for goods and services because there is always a need to pay tax?
Yes.
Those are the two main functions of taxes. Create the demand for the currency and regulate inflation/spending power (aka aggregate demand).
There are other tools that can be used as well. When the US economy was running at full capacity during WW2, they sold war bonds to cool it down. For all the fear-mongering about inflation (as in hyperinflation), we have ways to deal with it.
JohnnyB brought up a highly unlikely hypothetical, everyone wouldn't cash out immature bonds all at once and lose the accrued interest. That's ridiculous. If we were to suddenly abolish the national debt one day though...
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EPT
