Jeez... You go on as if Libs were the ones who elected Trump & a lootocratic GOP Congress.
Well we know Trump isn't going to change for the better, so that leave the Democratic candidate as the relevant value for whether our next election is an improvement over the IMHO worst ever choice in 2016.. I'm guessing the Dems won't press their luck with a super leftist candidate because they will prioritize beating Trump over policy purity. Someone like a Tim Kaine, Joe Biden, Amy Klobuchar would seem like the second coming of Winston Churchill next to Trump. Even Corey Booker would probably be a winnable candidate although the margins would probably be closer than the earlier set. All bets are off if the Dems nominate someone who will seem like they too want to completely upend the political order rather than establish the pre-Trump norms, someone like Elizabeth Warren or a retread like Jerry Brown. And god help them if they nominate Hillary again, I don't think any party is that stupid.
Jeez... You go on as if Libs were the ones who elected Trump & a lootocratic GOP Congress.
Stand by for the lecture about agitprop, how great an administrator hillary is, that the republicans were just too stupid to vote for hillary, etc, etc. I know his post by heart. It's the same drivel every time.WTF are you talking about? Because it's certainly not about what you quoted of mine talking about the relative election prospects of Dem candidates in 2020.
As for your completely random observation, the contribution of libs in electing Trump was selecting Clinton as your candidate realizing her liabilities and approval rating gap would make her a questionable candidate in the general election. Clinton was probably the only candidate Democrats could have run who would have lost to Trump. Hell, you could have run O'Malley and he probably would have beat Trump and the dude got like 5 votes in the Dem primaries.
The Democratic party is clearly partially to blame for 64 million Republican voters voting for the obviously worst candidate in US history.WTF are you talking about? Because it's certainly not about what you quoted of mine talking about the relative election prospects of Dem candidates in 2020.
As for your completely random observation, the contribution of libs in electing Trump was selecting Clinton as your candidate realizing her liabilities and approval rating gap would make her a questionable candidate in the general election. Clinton was probably the only candidate Democrats could have run who would have lost to Trump. Hell, you could have run O'Malley and he probably would have beat Trump and the dude got like 5 votes in the Dem primaries.
The Democratic party is clearly partially to blame for 64 million Republican voters voting for the obviously worst candidate in US history.
Tired of winning, indeed.
Keep on keepin' on.
Tired of winning, indeed.Evidently so did a bunch of Democrats especially in key states like Wisconsin and Michigan. But that's OK you can just use the "no true scotsman" fallacy and say they must not have been "real" Democrats to have voted for him.
Tired of winning, indeed.
Yes, the Republican party is terrible, but HRC was denigrated for 30+ years straight and lost a close election in the Electoral College, an archaic and clearly-dysfunctional system.I guess Democrats like you wouldn't know what the feeling of 'tired of winning' was like lately, eh? How much it must hurt to know you fucked up by running Clinton and screwing up the easiest layup election in decades? Donald Trump was like the caricature of an easy opponent and yet you blew it. I mean Trump is an epic fail himself yet Dems were even more epicly fail-er still.
The entire premise is ridiculous as most of the population side with neither party, but a more centrist or independent.since the republican and democrat parties are agreeing less and less on everything, i can see in the not-too-distant future a time in which US citizens may want to split into completely separate countries.
what do you think the pros and cons of such a move might be?
some pros i can think of:
- people will get to live with only people who agree with them
- they will be able to see if their ideology is really better than the other one
some cons i can think of:
- many people will have to move and might not want to
It’s not “condemning liberalism” but rather disputing it’s the primary causal factor for making “most economically successful” countries. Heck it doesn’t even appear to be a uniformly present characteristic of them. You have extremely “successful” and illiberal countries like Saudi Arabia and liberal governments that are near failed states. It’s a sophism passed off as a self-evident truth like “democracy is the best form of government” without any real explanation or thought why that would be so, then simply pointing to the U.S. and EU and saying “See that’s why democracy is the best!”
What seems more reasonable to say is that political liberalism is a typical byproduct of successful nations and not its cause. It’s a luxury good like environmentalism that to execute successfully requires numerous preconditions to exist like rule of law, civil society, low corruption, high social cohesion, etc. Otherwise “liberalism” and high levels of social welfare are just the cover story for a new brand of lootocracy like China or Venezuela.
Might be true that liberalism is a consequence of economic development and not its cause. Haven't got the time/energy to think about that right now. I'm just generally very pessimistic about all of it though.
But I don't know that anyone would call contemporary China 'liberal'. Its levels of 'social welfare' are way, way lower than they used to be. I've known Chinese people who were amazed at how socialist Europe was, pointing out it's not like that back home these days (also met a die-hard far-left citizen of the PRC in the US who admitted he knew far more leftists there than he had ever done back home). To me China has ended up weirdly similar to Pinochet's Chile, by a radically different route. It's not terrifically socially-liberal either.
Of course it's still not a settled issue there, there's an obvious anxiety among their elites at what might happen if/when too many get left behind by the removal of the 'iron rice bowl'.
Venezuela is a good example of Jhhnn type thinking which is more about just trying to inflict pain upon the wealthy for their supposed sins and exploitation (and the policies implemented typically do jack-squat to actually improve the lives of the poor instead of just enriching the governmental ruling class and its preferred cronies).
Screw this. The Republican party will be destroyed and we'll get the whole country. Look at Ukraine. It was evenly split. Then when push came to shove it broke hard against the corrupt Putin puppet party.
The New Deal & post WW2 America were examples of Jhhnn type thinking.
So you want to reduce government spending as a percentage of GDP from the current 20% plus to the FDR New Deal era norm of single digits and peak of ~10% or so? And reduce entitlement spending back to the post WW2 days before Medicare and when spending was less than 2% of GDP compared to over 6% now? Sounds great to me! We definitely should do that, it would indeed have a hugely positive impact on our nation.
I believe you'e pulling numbers out of your ass while ignoring the massive shift of income to the tippy top that we've experienced from Reaganomics. Govt spending wasn't nearly so important when working people got a bigger piece of the pie from the get-go.
Glenn your charts contradict what you said previously in that current federal expenditures as a percent of GDP are approximately the same as in the post WW2 period. Or were you just mad that those expenditures are now more for making citizens' lives better as opposed to blowing things up? It's frankly bizarre if you would prefer the latter.
You seem to think that everyone else views public policy in the same spite-based way that you do where the goal is to hurt the people you don't like. They don't, because...well... that's weird. Higher levels of social spending have been tremendously effective in improving the lives of people not only in the US, but worldwide. That may not be what you want to hear, but it's the truth. If anything I would think you would be happy to know that spending isn't wasted but something tells me learning that will just enrage you further.
I said that federal expenditures on entitlement programs were lower in the post WW2 age than now. You have confused that with total government spending which was skewed higher to defense, infrastructure (e.g. the interstate highway system), and other non-entitlement spending back then. Or perhaps you're incorrect again and misunderstood me to point out that total spending is higher now than during the FDR/New Deal period.
Either way your POV seems to be directly contradictory to Jhhnn who thinks that things were far better in the post WW2/New Deal era than they are currently. Your side should get its shit together and collectively decide what you think "success" is and whether it's better now or then.
Did you not read my post? I directly addressed that, saying that the alternative was that you were angry expenditures were now skewed towards improving people's lives instead of blowing things up.
Why should what Jhhnn thinks in any way affect what I think? We should continue to increase social spending and decrease defense spending, paying for it with increased taxes on people with the lowest marginal utility from their money. Common sense, really.
I don't grasp how you think life for the middle class was better 50 years ago than today. That is insane.Let’s see, the quality of life, future expectations, and most other factors were better for the average middle class person back then. While other considerations like average education level, racial integration, and other factors have improved since. Seems like life should be better for the average middle class person yet that doesnt seem to be so. I guess it couldn’t possibly be that exploding social welfare spending is actually making things worse for the average middle class person not better, could it? Nope more social welfare spending is always better, just ask Greece eh?
Middle class is probably less off when compared to the ultra rich now vs then, but overall standard of living has risen across the board. Food's better, travel's better, we're safer, etc. Now yes, the middle class was sacrificed a bit to help the lower class (mostly to keep 'em from dying in the streets) but that's mostly because that's the only place the money could come from.Let’s see, the quality of life, future expectations, and most other factors were better for the average middle class person back then. While other considerations like average education level, racial integration, and other factors have improved since. Seems like life should be better for the average middle class person yet that doesnt seem to be so. I guess it couldn’t possibly be that exploding social welfare spending is actually making things worse for the average middle class person not better, could it? Nope more social welfare spending is always better, just ask Greece eh?
I don't grasp how you think life for the middle class was better 50 years ago than today. That is insane.
Look at the ability to buy a TV, or surf the internet, or have access to healthcare or a college education. I'm not sure where you get the idea that it seems not as good today. Perhaps because today the middle class is more inclusive? I don't really get it.