US Politics Thread |OT| THE DARKEST TIMELINE

[Brehvolution]

[benjipwns]

I love that Beck has a chalkboard handy in his studio.

In case anyone here is wondering if that Cruz Vine is dubbed I found the timestamp for GAF the other day: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWeG3UL5zT4#t=27m18s

If food safety regulations precipitated the same amount of violence and incarceration as the war on drugs, I'd want the FDA abolished and cross my fingers that market forces and the incentive for businesses to maintain a good reputation kept the nation's supply of hamburger relatively safe.

I think the countless number of victims with no end in sight but plenty of escalation shows how hard it is to reverse "once you pop, you can't stop."

[Great Rumbler]

"...and in other news, an underground trans fat factory was raided by police earlier today. Two dozen were rounded up in the raid, while another three were killed in an exchange of gunfire as they attempted to resist officers."

[benjipwns]

Trans fats are fine, just don't try to sell raw milk.

[Human Snorenado]

I just helped someone at work the screen name "Galtexpress" brehs

He asked if he could pay in bitcoin and I told him no

[Joe Molotov]

I just helped someone at work the screen name "Galtexpress" brehs

He asked if he could pay in bitcoin and I told him no

I hope you said DogeCoin only.  :xbone

[benjipwns]

[helios]

You're pro-castration, Benji?

[benjipwns]

I'm supposed to hate pigs aren't I? Or has there been some kind of mix-up?

[Brehvolution]

  Don't tell our base

spoiler (click to show/hide)

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/house-passes-doc-fix-voice-vote

The Republican-led House abruptly and unexpectedly passed a Medicare physician payment fix Thursday by an unrecorded voice vote, amid questions about whether the bill had the votes to clear the chamber.

It would avert a 24 percent pay cut to doctors that was set to take effect April 1.

[close]

[Phoenix Dark]

Six million Americans have signed up for private health coverage under Obamacare, multiple administration officials confirmed to TPM.

The latest enrollment milestone was first reported by ThinkProgress. Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius then announced the news.

The news comes several days before Obamacare's open enrollment (mostly) closes on March 31.

The 6 million figure is significant for the White House: The Congressional Budget Office had projected last month that Obamacare would hit 6 million enrollees, revising its projection down from 7 million after HealthCare.gov's disastrous launch.

The number does not account for how many enrollees have paid their first premium, which will formally initiate their coverage.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/livewire/obamacare-6-million-enrollees

https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/449257197277839360

[Great Rumbler]

6 million new Democrat voters.  

[Phoenix Dark]

add the Medicaid enrollees, young adults on their parents' plan, and those who signed up directly through their insurance companies and you have 11-15 million people with coverage through Obamacare.

take healthcare from 11mil people brehs 

[Phoenix Dark]

http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/03/27/funny-thing-happened-on-way-to-ham-sandwich/

[Joe Molotov]

take healthcare from 11mil people brehs 

Challenge accepted.

[Great Rumbler]

(Image removed from quote.)
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/03/27/funny-thing-happened-on-way-to-ham-sandwich/

The hell

[Steve Contra]

(Image removed from quote.)
http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2014/03/27/funny-thing-happened-on-way-to-ham-sandwich/

That poor guy doesn't realize that yes, French cheese is oftentimes in it's own place.  Along with lots, and lots, and lots of food from different countries.

Actually why am I responding to that?  Thats' the dumbest fucking thing I've read in like 2 days.

[benjipwns]

Iowa Senate - Jacobs vs. Braley   Rasmussen Reports   Braley 41, Jacobs 38   Braley +3
Iowa Senate - Ernst vs. Braley   Rasmussen Reports   Braley 40, Ernst 37   Braley +3
Iowa Senate - Whitaker vs. Braley   Rasmussen Reports   Braley 40, Whitaker 36   Braley +4
Iowa Senate - Clovis vs. Braley   Rasmussen Reports   Braley 44, Clovis 31   Braley +13

Todd Akin 2.0 in trouble.

[benjipwns]

http://themissouritorch.com/blog/2014/03/27/sikeston-teacher-tearfully-describes-bullying-intimidation-suffered-opposing-common-core-video/

When you think about bullying in public schools, it’s generally in the context of a bigger kid picking on a smaller kid.  According to Susan Kimball, a kindergarten teacher of 20 years in the Sikeston Public School District, it’s administrators and fellow teachers bullying and intimidating her, all because she opposes Common Core.

At yesterday’s Senate Education Committee hearing, Kimball testified she has suffered from bullying and intimidation since she began speaking out about the controversial standards.

[Great Rumbler]

According to Susan Kimball, a kindergarten teacher of 20 years in the Sikeston Public School District, it’s administrators and fellow teachers bullying and intimidating her, all because she opposes Common Core.

[Brehvolution]

The ONLY problem with common core is Obama signed off on it. My wife doesn't care for it because she feels like she is given a script to read instead of teaching. I tell her that it's because she has a masters degree and knows how to teach. Common core is a crutch for the charter school teachers who don't have the same level of education as she does.

[Great Rumbler]

The person who actually pushed Common Core the most is the super-conservative governor of Oklahoma!

[benjipwns]

I like the idea that the other female teachers are meeting her in the bathroom or waiting after school, while smoking obviously, holding her personal curriculum over her head or scattering it all over the floor/ground as they laugh.

"Why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself? Does baby want her curriculum?"

[Brehvolution]

 

[Rufus]

https://twitter.com/daveweigel/status/449257197277839360

Wtf...

[benjipwns]

Q.
What are the risks from allowing an ever-increasing concentration of wealth and incomes? Is there a point when inequality becomes intolerable? Does history offer any lessons in this regard?

A.
U.S. inequality is now close to the levels of income concentration that prevailed in Europe around 1900-10. History suggests that this kind of inequality level is not only useless for growth, it can also lead to a capture of the political process by a tiny high-income and high-wealth elite.

The ideal solution is a progressive tax on individual net wealth. This will foster wealth mobility and keep concentration under control and under public scrutiny. Of course other institutions and policies can also play an important role: Inflation can reduce the value of public debt

[Human Snorenado]

Ain't wrong tho

[Broseidon]

Abolish private property, yo

[benjipwns]

Significant inflation and chasing your tail trying to suppress wealth creation is going to be real good for the poor.

And this ain't wrong?

Europe around 1900-10. ... it can also lead to a capture of the political process by a tiny high-income and high-wealth elite.

[benjipwns]

Abolishing private property would be a much better idea, then you can get right to having an entrenched political elite that distributes goods only to the politically favorable "masses" instead of trying to nudge nature in the "right" direction.

[Kara]

Another thing that Piketty doesn’t adequately consider is the possibility that inequality, in some of its dimensions, is not rising at all. His book largely focusses on Europe and the United States. At the global level, substantial progress has been made in dragging people out of destitution, and extending their lives. In 1981, according to figures from the World Bank, about two in five members of humanity were forced to subsist on roughly a dollar a day. Today, the figure is down to about one in seven. In the early nineteen-fifties, the average life expectancy in developing countries was forty-two years. By 2010, it had risen to sixty-eight years. “Life is better now than at almost any time in history,” Angus Deaton, a Princeton economist, wrote in his 2013 book, “The Great Escape: Health, Wealth, and the Origins of Inequality.” “More people are richer and fewer people live in dire poverty. Lives are longer and parents no longer routinely watch a quarter of their children die.”

[redacted]

Still, some people would argue that wage stagnation and rising inequality in the developed world are an acceptable price to pay for the benefits experienced by the worst off. Piketty doesn’t really address this question. He glosses over China’s success, during the past three decades, in lifting hundreds of millions of people out of extreme poverty. He spends more time detailing the fact that, during that interval, income inequality has been sharply rising in China, and in other developing countries, too. Yet the global picture may complicate his own account of inequality in the developed West. He doesn’t seriously consider the argument that globalization—and the rise of nations like China and India—is at once holding down wages and pushing up the profitability of capital, boosting inequality at both ends.

Disregard people of color brehs.

[Mandark]

nature

hm

[benjipwns]

The premise here is incorrect.

Why else would you want to tax net wealth if not to try and suppress wealth creation which is what leads to the inequalities in the first place? (Both in a free market and the grossly distorted semi-fascistic market we have today.)

As a side note, how many times do you think you can tax net wealth and still get something back?

Assume the equivalent of a 30% tax on net wealth greater than a billion, Bill Gates had $101 billion in 1999, this fell to $77 billion now and went further down inbetween. But assume a linear decrease in wealth for annual spending/donating/bad investment choices/etc. Gates' remaining wealth would look like this:
2000: $69 billion
2001: $46.6 billion
2002: $30.9 billion
2003: $19.9 billion
2004: $12.3 billion
2005: $6.9 billion
2006: $3.1 billion
2007: $482 million
Can't go further because he falls out of our hypothetical 30% bracket.

That's a $570 billion difference in Gates' assets over those nine years. And the tax has brought in $87 billion*, or $9.7 billion a year on average. (Really less than that from 2002-2007.) So you've bought a couple more bombs to drop on Afghanistan and Iraq by bringing forward the cashing out of the Gates' assets and taxing them. Hooray! Equality!

I couldn't even find the time to waste if we were also tossing in 10+% inflation.

spoiler (click to show/hide)

*Which I actually did vote for, before I voted against it.

[close]

[Mandark]

Choose declining wealth as an exogenous parameter for your model of the rich, brehs.

[benjipwns]

Picking Zuckerberg instead isn't going to change the outcome over time. All eliminating the linear decrease in Gates' wealth would do is extend him falling out of the bracket to 2012 and gain you an extra $10 billion in tax over the first nine years.

And raise the thirteen year tax revenue to a whopping $100 billion. 

I was also granting the good faith to billionaires that they'd actually pay the tax instead of avoiding it and using it to suppress future competition.

[Mandark]

I'm pretty sure if you picked Zuckerberg and did the same thing you did with Gates (assuming a linear change in net worth extrapolated from the 1999 and 2014 data points), then finding the rate for a wealth tax which keeps his total worth static and brings in revenues ad infinitum is just a matter of algebra.

[benjipwns]

I assumed the linear change as a favor to the taxing net wealth side. The reality would have brought in far lower revenues, especially if expanded to billionaires as a whole.

In any case, the point remains. You will run out of net wealth to confiscate at some point.

[Mandark]

Say we pick Zuckerberg, go from the Google Facebook IPO to now.  Linear increase of $5B a year to $28.5B currently.  Set a tax rate of 17% and his net wealth never goes down while providing $5B/year to feed starving orphans from now until the Rapture.  Bingo bango.

[Broseidon]

Wealth should not be confiscated from the wealth-creators. Wealth-creators should get the full value of what they produce.

[benjipwns]

Say we pick Zuckerberg, go from the Google Facebook IPO to now.  Linear increase of $5B a year to $28.5B currently.  Set a tax rate of 17% and his net wealth never goes down while providing $5B/year to feed starving orphans from now until the Rapture.  Bingo bango.

You're going to tax billionaires hoarded wealth less than the working poors wages?
 

[Mandark]

Aw, benj.  You got caught with your thumb on the scale and now you're deflecting.

I'm actually a bit disappointed with someone on the internet.

[benjipwns]

How did I get "caught" at anything?

[Mandark]

You threw together a model whose assumptions and presentation were pretty deliberately picked to give a certain result.  Why assume declining wealth?  Why present the cost to Gates as dollars*years and the benefit to the government as dollars/years?

I know this is some napkin modeling shit and not a paper for publication or anything, but really.

[benjipwns]

Yeah, it was napkin modeling just to pick one well known super rich dude (with fairly clear year to year "net worth" estimations) to illustrate a point that if you actually set the rate to decrease wealth inequality eventually you run out of net wealth to redistribute. I'm not saying your Zuckerberg example isn't a "better" idea in terms of policy but that wouldn't reduce the inequality because he'd still have the billions upon billions in his mattress while the pittance you're redistributing from him won't budge anyone below it very much if at all.

In any case I think wealth taxes + inflating away debt is nowhere close to a viable "solution" because the ultrarich won't pay it, the state won't make them, it'll just set more barriers to entry for lower tier wealth-creators, you won't collect the revenue expected, you will inflict the most pain on those who can't escape it and destroy wealth at all levels in the process. (Plus Karakand's quoted passage.) And that taxing wealth is an instance where you're actually taxing something close to zero sum because returns aren't enough to stabilize against a tax that actually takes a dent out of wealth accumulation. Not to mention that the concept of net wealth/worth is entirely nebulous, until this week did anyone think Occulus was worth $2.4 billion? Will it be in a year? Etc. You can't tax assets only when they're sold as a proxy for taxing net wealth/worth. And allowing the state full power to assess value leads to problems like a lot of people have been facing where their property taxes exceed the market value of their home by three or four times.

At least we can all agree I'm right about his Europe 1900-1910 example/lesson/theory? Right?

Right? 

[Mandark]

Oh yeah, off the bat I don't think a tax on excess wealth is a good idea at all.  Just an absolute mess to enforce, an invitation for all sorts of regulatory capture and all that jazz.  I just think you can make that point without stacking the deck.  My Zuckerberg example wasn't meant to have any value whatsoever as policy, it was just to point out that--if you set up the problem in the way you did--anyone could easily engineer the result they wanted to hear by finagling a couple of the variables involved.

You're skeptical of overreaching empirical studies, I'm outright allergic to representative consumer models.

[Kara]

Wealth should not be confiscated from the wealth-creators. Wealth-creators should get the full value of what they produce.

 

[benjipwns]

The real real real truth is that I did it because I had Gates' peak wealth and this years estimate and didn't want to look up his actual yearly estimates.

Justifying your model backwards theoretically to cover up laziness. 

[benjipwns]

Maybe my timeline of European history is messed up but this:

Europe around 1900-10. ... it can also lead to a capture of the political process by a tiny high-income and high-wealth elite.

Just seems backwards to me. I think the tiny high-income and high-wealth elite had control of the political process in most of Europe for a few years before and during that period rather than obtaining it at the turn of the century thanks to income inequality.

[Mandark]

Well, knowing basically nothing about Europe at that time, my first instinct is to not take him seriously there.  "If we approach a certain threshold on economic factor X, then we will suffer from the sociopolitical effect Y as we can see from example Z, even though it was in a completely different historical context and I'm simplifying anyway."

I mean, there are all sorts of reasons to believe that increased wealth means increased political access/influence/power to one degree or another, but I'm not a fan of "it's just like that one other time!" stories.

Also, he was maybe referring to the wealth and influence of industrialists and bankers around that time, which would have been a shift from the traditional landed gentry?  Again, I know shit about Europe around then, so whatevs.

[Mandark]

GET OUTTA MY HEAD, ESCH

Was gonna make that exact comparison, but didn't want to Google their names and make the post even longer.

[benjipwns]

I just find it strange to refer to nations ruled by kings and princes with mostly irrelevant legislatures as being recently "captured" by a tiny elite.

I would think the the rise of the newer classes towards parity with the "nobles" had more to do with the overthrow of the existing power structure and move towards liberal democracies or in the East, Leninist utopia. But there's two little kerfuffles that might be a factor as well.

But maybe it's just his short answer to the question. Or maybe he just is talking about the UK or whatever. (Which is also weird because the Gladstone Liberals were on the way out in favor of essentially a more Socialist/Labour Liberal Party that enacted all sorts of those things trying to stave off the real Socialist/Labour.)

[Mandark]

Also a fave: QE will turn us into Zimbabwe.

[benjipwns]

Given that inequality is a worldwide phenomenon, Piketty aptly has a worldwide solution for it: a global tax on wealth combined with higher rates of tax on the largest incomes. How much higher? Referring to work that he has done with Saez and Stefanie Stantcheva, of M.I.T., Piketty reports, “According to our estimates, the optimal top tax rate in the developed countries is probably above eighty per cent.” Such a rate applied to incomes greater than five hundred thousand or a million dollars a year “not only would not reduce the growth of the US economy but would in fact distribute the fruits of growth more widely while imposing reasonable limits on economically useless (or even harmful) behavior.”

Piketty is referring here to the occasionally destructive activities of Wall Street traders and investment bankers. His new wealth tax would be like an annual property tax, but it would apply to all forms of wealth. Households would be obliged to declare their net worth to the tax authorities, and they would be taxed upon it. Piketty tentatively suggests a levy of one per cent for households with a net worth of between one million and five million dollars; and two per cent for those worth more than five million. “Or one might prefer a much more steeply progressive tax on large fortunes (for example a rate of 5 to 10 percent on assets above one billion euros),” he adds. A wealth tax would force individuals who often manage to avoid other taxes to pay their fair share; and it would generate information about the distribution of wealth, which is currently opaque. “Some people think that the world’s billionaires have so much money that it would be enough to tax them at a low rate to solve all the world’s problems,” Piketty notes. “Others believe that there are so few billionaires that nothing much would come of taxing them more heavily. . . . In any case, truly democratic debate cannot proceed without reliable statistics.”

Economists can debate whether such a wealth tax would reduce incentives to invest and innovate, or whether it would be punitive enough to make a real dent in inequality. A more immediate problem is that it isn’t going to happen: the nations of the world can’t agree on taxing harmful carbon emissions, let alone taxing the capital of their richest and most powerful citizens. Piketty concedes as much. Still, he says, his proposal provides a standard against which to judge other proposals; it points to the need for other useful reforms, such as improving international banking transparency; and it could be introduced in stages. A good place to begin, he thinks, would be a European wealth tax that would replace the property tax, which “in most countries is tantamount to a wealth tax on the propertied middle class.” But that may be utopian, too. If the European Union moved ahead with Piketty’s proposal, it would produce a rush to tax havens like Switzerland and Luxembourg. Previous efforts to introduce wealth taxes at the national level have run into problems. Spain, for example, adopted a wealth tax in 2012 and abolished it at the start of this year. In Italy, a wealth tax proposed in 2011 never went through. Such difficulties explain why governments still rely on other, admittedly imperfect, tools to tax capital, such as taxes on property, estates, and capital gains.

Oh, a global tax that would tax Americans up to 80% and reduce economic growth and "economically useless" behavior, that's all huh.

[Mandark]

I support those proposals solely on the basis of the inevitable op-eds by rich dudes that are going to come out crying over them.

[Broseidon]

Also a fave: QE will turn us into Zimbabwe.

black racist dictator tho...

[benjipwns]

Was looking at that book on my Kindle to see if it was in the Lending Library (it's not) and it recommended this to me instead:
http://www.amazon.com/The-Tyranny-Experts-Economists-Dictators/dp/0465031250

Over the last century, global poverty has largely been viewed as a technical problem that merely requires the right “expert” solutions. Yet all too often, experts recommend solutions that fix immediate problems without addressing the systemic political factors that created them in the first place. Further, they produce an accidental collusion with “benevolent autocrats,” leaving dictators with yet more power to violate the rights of the poor.

But I'm leaning more towards this:
http://www.amazon.com/Money-Blood-Revolution-Charles-economics-ebook/dp/B00I8KEDO8/

Because it has a hashtag:

Taking readers on a gripping tour of scientific revolution, social upheaval and the secrets of money and debt, this is an unmissable read for anyone curious to understand how the world really works - and the amazing future of economics. #autoshambles

[Kara]

I just find it strange to refer to nations ruled by kings and princes with mostly irrelevant legislatures as being recently "captured" by a tiny elite.

I would think the the rise of the newer classes towards parity with the "nobles" had more to do with the overthrow of the existing power structure and move towards liberal democracies or in the East, Leninist utopia. But there's two little kerfuffles that might be a factor as well.

But maybe it's just his short answer to the question. Or maybe he just is talking about the UK or whatever. (Which is also weird because the Gladstone Liberals were on the way out in favor of essentially a more Socialist/Labour Liberal Party that enacted all sorts of those things trying to stave off the real Socialist/Labour.)

The Third Duma was basically what he described--business and land owners more or less seizing legislative power from competing voices (e.g. the squabbling factions of the RSDLP).

e: I wouldn't call the legislatures of the UK, Third French Republic, German Empire, or Austria-Hungary irrelevant in this time period, either.

[Phoenix Dark]

The last two pages are why people get turned off by politics. We can't discuss economics without first acknowledging the deficit is a problem, and if we don't cut entitlements soon the system will collapse.

[Mandark]

Forget those, benji, this is what you want to read:



That was my favorite book the year I read it, and should be right in your wheelhouse.

[benjipwns]

He's trolling, the deficit isn't the problem, the DEBT IS. And it's all because of Obama's TSA rape scanners.