American Politics

[Goatscrot]

I read the first one earlier today. The best part, which I agree with, is this. The writer is a moderate Democrat.

People like the red model more than the blue model. The fastest-growing states by population are mostly governed by Republicans, including Florida, Texas, Idaho and Montana. The fastest-shrinking or -stagnating states are mostly governed by Democrats, including New York, Illinois, California, Pennsylvania and Hawaii. The red model gives you low housing costs, lower taxes and business vitality. The blue model gives you high housing costs, high taxes and high inequality.

Democrats want to expand the welfare state so that our social insurance system would look more like Europe's. But Europe is economically stagnant and falling behind. In 2021, households in the European Union enjoyed, on average, only 61 percent of the disposable income Americans enjoyed. By this measure, rich European countries like Norway are behind poor American states like Mississippi. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, large European corporations invested 60 percent less than American corporations in 2022 and grew at two-thirds the pace. For a decade, Europe has been falling behind on capital development, research and development, and productivity growth. Even the vaunted German economy has basically flatlined since 2018.

Many American voters might envy the long European vacations, but they want economic dynamism more. For years voters in swing states had been telling pollsters that the economy and inflation were their top issues. They looked around the country and concluded that the Republican approach seemed better at generating dynamism and growth, or at least better than Harris's pitch for and defense of Bidenomics.

I'd disagree with you here. The majority prefer the blue model. The only reason the Republicans stand a chance is the electoral college. Without it they would have to change their platform significantly. The majority of the United States population does not favor Christian nationalism. And when you look at job creation it has been significantly better under democratic presidents this century.
Economic growth is not the end all of endos and one of the reasons Europe has a problem, if not the biggest reason, is there aging demographic, which except for immigration would be affecting the United States as well.

[EihTooms]

I read the first one earlier today. The best part, which I agree with, is this. The writer is a moderate Democrat.

People like the red model more than the blue model. The fastest-growing states by population are mostly governed by Republicans, including Florida, Texas, Idaho and Montana. The fastest-shrinking or -stagnating states are mostly governed by Democrats, including New York, Illinois, California, Pennsylvania and Hawaii. The red model gives you low housing costs, lower taxes and business vitality. The blue model gives you high housing costs, high taxes and high inequality.

Democrats want to expand the welfare state so that our social insurance system would look more like Europe's. But Europe is economically stagnant and falling behind. In 2021, households in the European Union enjoyed, on average, only 61 percent of the disposable income Americans enjoyed. By this measure, rich European countries like Norway are behind poor American states like Mississippi. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, large European corporations invested 60 percent less than American corporations in 2022 and grew at two-thirds the pace. For a decade, Europe has been falling behind on capital development, research and development, and productivity growth. Even the vaunted German economy has basically flatlined since 2018.

Many American voters might envy the long European vacations, but they want economic dynamism more. For years voters in swing states had been telling pollsters that the economy and inflation were their top issues. They looked around the country and concluded that the Republican approach seemed better at generating dynamism and growth, or at least better than Harris's pitch for and defense of Bidenomics.

Red state economies are surging under Biden. Here's why.
Red states make up an overwhelming majority of top performers, ABC found.

https://abcnews.go.com/Business/red-...y?id=107222293

Instead, they added, the dynamic owes in large part to the appeal of warm weather states for workers and businesses, as well as the combination of company-friendly state policies and Democrat-leaning cities that attract young, educated workers.

At its two-year anniversary, the bipartisan infrastructure law continues to rebuild all of America.

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/a...ll-of-america/

For example, the share of all awards slightly favors Republican-leaning states by both the presidential election measure (46%) and in-state political composition (43%).

Now, who is going to tell those Red State Wingers that, as has been the case with virtually every Great Dem Economic Recovery from a Great Repub Crash and Great Repub Depression / Recession, Biden's recovery measures favored Red States and the Wingers who live in them? Because, of course, those are the states that are ALWAYS damaged most by those Great Repub Crashes and Great Repub Depressions / Recessions.

LOL. Will it be the Red State Winger Congressman or Senator who didn't support the emergency aid but is happy to show up for the ribbon cuttings like he had anything whatsoever to do with them? LOL.

[Tiny 12]

Timeline: Threats and stalemate one year after Trump last met North Korea's Kim.
June 26, 2020

https://www.reuters.com/article/worl...idUSKBN23X09P/

I forget. Was Joe Biden president in June 2020?

Maybe Kim's launches went "way, way down" later in 2020 at the height of Trump's Pandemic. If so, perhaps a Million American Deaths is a tad more "Ass-Kissing" to please our stated enemies than a Love-Sick so-called potus ought to engage in.

Sorry, I read the link below below sometime ago, but forgot what exactly what it said. You're right, they were still testing short range missiles, which I figured was just business as usual. But the long range missile tests stopped after the announcement of the meeting with Kim in March, 2018. No ICBM's, capable of hitting the USA Mainland, were launched after the meeting, until 3/16/2022.

Here's a time line for missiles identified in the link with ranges over 1,000 km, being medium and long range ballistic missiles, from 1/1/2017 to 12/31/2022. I could have gone on into 2023 and 2024 but I'm lazy.

Only one was launched between the announcement of the Singapore meeting and the end of Trump's term, on 10/2/2019, and while it was a medium range missile, it only flew 450 kilometers.

If you want to duplicate what I did you'll need to google some of the names of the rockets.

2/11/2017.
3/6/2017.
4/4/2017.
4/28/2017.
5/13/2017.
5/21/2017.
7/4/2017.
7/28/2017.
9/15/2017.
11/28/2017.
10/2/2019.
9/11/2021.
1/5/2022.
1/10/2022.
1/25/2022.
1/30/2022.
3/5/2022.
3/16/2022.
3/24/2022.
5/25/2022.
10/4/2022.
10/12/2022.
11/3/2022.
11/18/2022.
12/18/2022.

An interesting bit of trivia from this exercise. North Korea tested its first Intercontinental Ballistic Missile, capable of hitting most of the United States, on July 4, 2017. Do you think that's a coincidence, July 4? That's a rhetorical question.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_o..._missile_tests

BTW, about Lichtman, I believe I read somewhere he changed his story to say he was forecasting electoral votes instead of the popular vote after 2016, and none of his "Keys to the Whitehouse" target states. Feel free to research if you wish, not something I want to spend time on.

[SubCmdr]

War is good for business:

Putin was going to move until Ukraine no matter what. The question is what type of resistance would he face. There had been an ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine for years.

IMPLIED UPSIDE OVER SEPT. 3 CLOSE

General Dynamics Corp. (ticker: GD) 16.9%.

Northrop Grumman Corp. (NOC) 13.2%.

TransDigm Group Inc. (TDG) 18.1%.

Howmet Aerospace Inc. (HWM) 23.6%.

Curtiss-Wright Corp. (CW) 10.2%.

Embraer SA (ERJ) 21.9%.

Joby Aviation Inc. (JOBY) 103.2%.

I out of principle I do not buy defense stocks. But you cannot argue with those performance numbers. Plus many of them pay dividends.

[EihTooms]

Correct!

I like your thinking, on MMT and good administrative economic policies that matter!

Hey, I'm still waiting for the self-appointed ISG Repub economists, to tell me how, 50:1 million jobs created by Dems, since 1989 and the other 100 years of job creation have come with Democrats having been in at the helm of the American economy, here: http://www.internationalsexguide.nl/...=1#post2939183

So when it comes to matters of the economy, I'm NOT buying the Repub mantra and fallacy of "...we know best when it comes to the economy..." bullshit.

Those same self-appointed ISG Repub economists, like Elvis 2008, have been telling us and droning on, like dogs in heat, for almost four (4) years now, about how the markets, the economy, the job numbers, all are going into a recession type crush and how "the economy has been performing so very badly, even worse than when Trump was...blah, blah, blah". Basically, just parroting the latest QAnon/MAGA Foxy Muse economic, talking points.

Which we all know, the great Biden economy of almost four (4) solid years of growth, has proven them wrong.

A Dog's Ass:

So to be clear, I've always reminded Elvis 2008, of the following:

• "Even the sun shines up a dog's ass some days". But in YOUR case, you've been calling for a market crash and economic recession, for almost the last 4 years now. And you've been WRONG every time! So the sun hasn't exactly shone much up your ass for four (4) years.
  
  But I'm sure, if you say it long enough and often enough...that sun will surely shine some day! (...kkkk!)

MMT:

I too, like the MMT model, and I'm happy to see that Biden has adopted MMT, and has the record to prove it. So it does appear to be working IMHO and proving there's merit to the theory, despite its Republican detractors.

Now lets be crystal clear, markets go on cycles and runs, but ultimately are forced to follow the prevailing business cycles. And as such Elvis 2008, my very well get his market crash and/or economic recession. As it is all part of the business cycle.

No doubt, wherein, you'll get all the economic doomsayers, crawl out from their rocks and say "...told you so".

What they often fail to realize, is that when this happens, they better thank their lucky stars, if a Dem administration, happens to be at the helm, to weather the storm. Because if it isn't and it's the Repubs, their abysmal record, shows them only creating 1 million jobs in the last 35 years.

Economic Mansplaining:

So while the self-appointed ISG Repub economists, twist themselves into pretzels, rabbiting on about "economic mansplaining", most rational, common sense economists, meaning your average American, should be able to figure out such easy, "kitchen table" economic math, as to whose economic polices are REALLY WORKING.

You know, given that proven 50:1 million jobs created by Dems since 1989 figure and my proven 100,000,000: 37,000,0000 jobs created by Dems over the past 100 years you alluded to here, it occurs to me President Clinton and I have unfairly grossly understated true Dem Jobs Creation numbers and overstated true Repub jobs destruction numbers.

We both neglected to factor in the typical overhang of continued jobs creation for the following months or year after a Repub takes over from a Dem until that incoming Repub gets his way on policy and stewardship adjustment as well as the continued jobs destruction for the following months or year after a Dem takes over from a Repub and before that incoming Dem gets his way on policy and stewardship adjustment.

So the understandable and unavoidable months of continued jobs destruction or weak jobs creation after the incoming Dem takes over from the outgoing Repub as in Hoover to FDR, Eisenhower to JFK, Nixon / Ford to Carter, Bush1 to Clinton, Bush2 to Obama and Trump to Biden at least until those incoming Dems got their first Great Dem Recovery Legislation passed and heading into the system should not be counted against that incoming Dem. Even though it is unfairly counted against them in the typical historical data overview.

By the same token, the months or year of continued jobs creation after an incoming Repub takes over from an outgoing Dem at least until that incoming Repub gets his first economic "stimulus" legislation passed and headed into the system should not be unjustifiably credited to the incoming Repub. Even though it is unjustifiably credit to them in the typical historical data overview.

Therefore, taking that unforgivable oversight and reality into account, and admittedly I have not done the full research on it to know more exact figures, it would not be an unrealistic assertion to suggest an estimate that Dem policy and stewardship is responsible for perhaps 130,000,000 of the jobs created since 1925 while Repub policy and stewardship has been responsible for a likely far too generous estimate of 7,000,000 of them..

[Tiny 12]

In your dreams but by all means please vote for her & let us know how that works out

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/o...on-harris.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/06/o...p-victory.html

https://www.nationalreview.com/corne...ng-out-of-gas/

I read the first one earlier today. The best part, which I agree with, is this. The writer is a moderate Democrat.

People like the red model more than the blue model. The fastest-growing states by population are mostly governed by Republicans, including Florida, Texas, Idaho and Montana. The fastest-shrinking or -stagnating states are mostly governed by Democrats, including New York, Illinois, California, Pennsylvania and Hawaii. The red model gives you low housing costs, lower taxes and business vitality. The blue model gives you high housing costs, high taxes and high inequality.

Democrats want to expand the welfare state so that our social insurance system would look more like Europe's. But Europe is economically stagnant and falling behind. In 2021, households in the European Union enjoyed, on average, only 61 percent of the disposable income Americans enjoyed. By this measure, rich European countries like Norway are behind poor American states like Mississippi. According to the McKinsey Global Institute, large European corporations invested 60 percent less than American corporations in 2022 and grew at two-thirds the pace. For a decade, Europe has been falling behind on capital development, research and development, and productivity growth. Even the vaunted German economy has basically flatlined since 2018.

Many American voters might envy the long European vacations, but they want economic dynamism more. For years voters in swing states had been telling pollsters that the economy and inflation were their top issues. They looked around the country and concluded that the Republican approach seemed better at generating dynamism and growth, or at least better than Harris's pitch for and defense of Bidenomics.

[Tiny 12]

Whenever I see the no free lunch blurb I think of Dr Kelton's quote, "The government can give everybody a pony as long as it can make enough ponies. ".

LOL! Touche.

[Goatscrot]

If you take a look at North Korean missile launches after Trump's rapprochement with Kim, you'll see they went way, way down, then rebounded when Biden came to office. Kissing ass works, especially when it's the President of the United States doing the ass kissing. I don't think Russia would have moved into Ukraine if Trump had been president. If it started to, I bet Trump would have done what Bernie Sanders wanted to do.

https://jacobin.com/2022/07/bernie-s...e-russia-putin

Putin was going to move until Ukraine no matter what. The question is what type of resistance would he face. There had been an ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine for years.

[Goatscrot]

Interesting. I know that Treasury Secretary Yellen would disagree with your belief that Biden has adopted MMT. And suspect Goatscrot would disagree. But you're right on the same page with economists Art Laffer and Stephen Moore.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidenom...nding-ccadee9c

And the average American likes Trumponomics a lot more than Bidenomics.

https://www.realclearpolling.com/pol...issues/economy

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep...nomy-6182.html

So the "most rational, common sense economists," as you put it, disapproved of Biden's handling of the economy by a 20% margin. And they approved of Trump's performance by an 8% margin.

That said, Trump's come up with some ideas on the economy lately that don't make much sense. But Harris seems intent on matching or exceeding every stupid proposal he makes.

When it comes to mmt the American government has used deficit spending for decades. MMT is simply an explanation of how fiat currencies work.

And when it comes to polls I'm not sure real clear politics is one of our more middle of the road ones is they tend to lean quite far to the right.

[Goatscrot]

You're right, I'm debating with one hand tied behind my back without reading her book. Yes, sanctions probably were a factor in inflation in Zimbabwe and Venezuela.

I've followed a number of developing country economies through the years. Countries that continually run government budget deficits and run up national debt and set interest rates at low levels have problems. That's true of developed countries too. The only exception that comes to mind is Japan, and that may be because of the declining population. And its massive run up in the national debt hasn't been accompanied by good economic performance.

So what would the MMT proponents do differently? Two things that I'm aware of. First, they would only have governments borrowing in their own currency. And that's admittedly true of Japan, but not true of the other examples I've thrown out. I don't know if your example, Weimar Germany, borrowed in foreign currencies, but it certainly had a lot of foreign debt.

Second, they would jack up taxes to reduce demand.

Intuitively, I don't think this would work well. At some point people would get antsy about the debt and start moving to gold, crypto, stock, real estate, etc. , and abandon government debt. Interest rates go up, which makes it difficult for the private sector to raise capital. Or perhaps the central bank keeps rates at low levels, which results in high inflation. Foreign exchange controls are enacted to prevent money from leaving the country.

But that and $5 will buy you a cup of coffee at Starbucks. I need to take a look at the book and come back with you.

I actually am a believer in supply side economics. There's a correlation among developed countries between lower government revenues / expenditures and GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power. The countries with smaller government as a % of GDP, like the USA, Switzerland, Singapore and Ireland, outperform the ones with larger government. That doesn't mean that there's no place for the Keynesians. I hope Tooms doesn't read this, but I'd give FDR the edge over Herbert Hoover in his willingness to pump lots of money into the economy when it needed it. And I think that's what we have had in recent years, without MMT, and we've even gone overboard at times, like with the American Rescue Plan and other excessive spending legislated during 2021/2022. The Fed has a dual mandate to maximize employment and minimize inflation, and our politicians are not shy at all at using fiscal stimulus. We've been at full employment since 2018, except when COVID intervened.

Jacking up taxes to reduce demand is really an emergency step. Spending to increase production and ensuring full employment is the key.

When we look at Venezuela how much was invested in infrastructure, job creation, developing new marketable technologies, etc? Absolutely none. It was all stolen by an incredibly corrupt government.

[Goatscrot]

I just pulled M2 (money supply) for Venezuela. It's astounding! It was up 2,051,768% from 1/1/2019 to 9/30/2021. Then the government rejiggered the numbers so that it no longer calculates M2, but rather the "Money Supply of the New Expression Currency. ".

I walked through the museum of the central bank of the Argentina some years ago and was astounded that decade after decade they weren't able to get inflation under control. This created real problems for people. My love interest at the time had an ice cream truck, and had to go to the supplier twice a day for milk and the like so her money wouldn't lose a lot of its value before she sold the product.

This is what intuitively worries me about MMT. In the pursuit of full employment, are the politicians and their appointees in the Fed really going to screw things up? All Argentina had to do was what Volcker did. Raise interest rates, keep them higher than inflation, induce a serious recession and in a few years the country would be in good shape again. But they wouldn't do it.

Now MMT may be different, given a couple of the considerations I threw out in my reply to Goatscrot. But I suspect there's no free lunch.



This deserves emphasis. The elite don't suffer from high inflation. They find ways around it, through investments and sending their money to bank accounts in other countries and the like. It's the workingman who gets screwed. In Venezuela, if you were in with Chavez or Maduro, you got access to dollars at the official forex rate and then could sell them for bolivares at the black market rate. That's a great business!

Whenever I see the no free lunch blurb I think of Dr Kelton's quote, "The government can give everybody a pony as long as it can make enough ponies. ".

[Tiny 12]

I too, like the MMT model, and I'm happy to see that Biden has adopted MMT, and has the record to prove it. So it does appear to be working IMHO and proving there's merit to the theory, despite its Republican detractors.

Interesting. I know that Treasury Secretary Yellen would disagree with your belief that Biden has adopted MMT. And suspect Goatscrot would disagree. But you're right on the same page with economists Art Laffer and Stephen Moore.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bidenom...nding-ccadee9c

So while the self-appointed ISG Repub economists, twist themselves into pretzels, rabbiting on about "economic mansplaining", most rational, common sense economists, meaning your average American, should be able to figure out such easy, "kitchen table" economic math, as to whose economic polices are REALLY WORKING.

And the average American likes Trumponomics a lot more than Bidenomics.

https://www.realclearpolling.com/pol...issues/economy

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/ep...nomy-6182.html

So the "most rational, common sense economists," as you put it, disapproved of Biden's handling of the economy by a 20% margin. And they approved of Trump's performance by an 8% margin.

That said, Trump's come up with some ideas on the economy lately that don't make much sense. But Harris seems intent on matching or exceeding every stupid proposal he makes.

[SubCmdr]

MMT sounds like some bullshit the Plutocracy of the United States of America came up with.

Stack Sats!

[MarquisdeSade1]

I don't believe Democrats are bigger warmongers than Republicans. My views are much closer to Progressives than, say, Lyndsey Graham's. That was a satirical post to highlight a spurious correlation.

As to the "Trump Pandemic," maybe we better throw in the towel, because you're not going to change my mind and vice versa.

You're starting to sound like the MAGA crowd. American institutions would prevent Trump or anyone else from stealing a presidential election. Harris will probably win but Lichtman's no more clairvoyant than you or me. He was wrong about the popular vote in 2016.

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/04/o...on-harris.html

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/09/06/o...p-victory.html

https://www.nationalreview.com/corne...ng-out-of-gas/

[Spidy]

And again mmt does not advocate for an endless source of dollars. That is a myth. And speaking of you really should read the deficit myth. The problems we have in the United States are a result of poor fiscal policy.

Correct!

One of your points is correct and any mmt economist would agree with you. You cannot inject currency into the system if supply cannot keep up. Which is exactly what happened during covid. But of course now that supply has caught up, well except for companies who are artificially keeping their supplies low in order to drive prices higher, inflation should be coming down, but it's not simply because of corporate greed. Doesn't help that so many sectors in the United States are controlled by a few corporate giants, but that's the end result of corporate capitalism.

If you put more money into a system and that money is directed at employment in the production of more goods, you do not have inflation. You are forgetting the key element of inflation and that is scarcity. You mentioned wanting demand to go down? Why in the world would you want that? Do you want demand to increase and supply to increase.

Another tenant of mmt is keeping interest rates at their natural level which is zero. Additionally there is absolutely no need for the government to sell bonds if it doesn't want to.

The government doesn't spend your money. It never does. Well your state and local governments do because they are not currency issuers, their currency users. When Congress passes a bill that money is appropriated and it goes on the balance sheets, and when it is taxed back it comes off the balance sheets, it doesn't go into a pot to get spent again. That's a myth.

I like your thinking, on MMT and good administrative economic policies that matter!

Hey, I'm still waiting for the self-appointed ISG Repub economists, to tell me how, 50:1 million jobs created by Dems, since 1989 and the other 100 years of job creation have come with Democrats having been in at the helm of the American economy, here: http://www.internationalsexguide.nl/...=1#post2939183

So when it comes to matters of the economy, I'm NOT buying the Repub mantra and fallacy of "...we know best when it comes to the economy..." bullshit.

Those same self-appointed ISG Repub economists, like Elvis 2008, have been telling us and droning on, like dogs in heat, for almost four (4) years now, about how the markets, the economy, the job numbers, all are going into a recession type crush and how "the economy has been performing so very badly, even worse than when Trump was...blah, blah, blah". Basically, just parroting the latest QAnon/MAGA Foxy Muse economic, talking points.

Which we all know, the great Biden economy of almost four (4) solid years of growth, has proven them wrong.

A Dog's Ass:

So to be clear, I've always reminded Elvis 2008, of the following:

• "Even the sun shines up a dog's ass some days". But in YOUR case, you've been calling for a market crash and economic recession, for almost the last 4 years now. And you've been WRONG every time! So the sun hasn't exactly shone much up your ass for four (4) years.
  
  But I'm sure, if you say it long enough and often enough...that sun will surely shine some day! (...kkkk!)

MMT:

I too, like the MMT model, and I'm happy to see that Biden has adopted MMT, and has the record to prove it. So it does appear to be working IMHO and proving there's merit to the theory, despite its Republican detractors.

Now lets be crystal clear, markets go on cycles and runs, but ultimately are forced to follow the prevailing business cycles. And as such Elvis 2008, my very well get his market crash and/or economic recession. As it is all part of the business cycle.

No doubt, wherein, you'll get all the economic doomsayers, crawl out from their rocks and say "...told you so".

What they often fail to realize, is that when this happens, they better thank their lucky stars, if a Dem administration, happens to be at the helm, to weather the storm. Because if it isn't and it's the Repubs, their abysmal record, shows them only creating 1 million jobs in the last 35 years.

Economic Mansplaining:

So while the self-appointed ISG Repub economists, twist themselves into pretzels, rabbiting on about "economic mansplaining", most rational, common sense economists, meaning your average American, should be able to figure out such easy, "kitchen table" economic math, as to whose economic polices are REALLY WORKING.