A New Story: Politics for the 21st Century

Polling is important.  Polling can tell us where the participants in the current lifestyle consciousness are, and we do have to take it seriously.  But expecting the participants in the current lifestyle to accurately explain WHY they feel they way they do, or WHY they are willing to believe what they do, is truly problematic. This latest article from 538 is convincing and compelling.  The graph showing how people "feel" about the economy, and how it directly correlates with political party and not how the economy is actually performing is likely the most convincing portion of the article.  The thesis is that the root of the Trump support is not due to economic anxiety, but rather to race and partisan politics that grew up in opposition to the Obama presidency. I do not deny that that is the immediate cause.  I do disagree that it is the ultimate cause. Hate must find fertile ground to overcome the messages we see all around us that tell us to love our brother ...

  To the editor:   After having just read “Biden Can Go Bigger and Not “Pay for It” the Old Way, I wanted to write in support of the basic premise of this argument and of the principles of Modern Monetary Theory in general.   While Dr. Kelton’s article had to be short, she makes several points that your readers should know. First, there is a big difference between a currency user (Me, states) and a currency issuer.   She is absolutely correct in saying that we can literally spend dollars, that we issue, on whatever we want.   She is also absolutely correct in that the real concern is not the debt, but inflation.   Decoupling spending policy from tax policy and looking at the potential inflationary effects of each is how we should look at the problem.   It is time that politicians begin asking the right question about spending and taxes: Will it cause inflation?   Will it provide a rising standard of living?   Do we have ...

 https://www.nytimes.com/2021/03/27/business/biden-taxes-business-rich.html Sunday March 28, 2021.  I woke to find this article about the Biden tax plan in the New York Times.  As a recent convert and now devotee of Modern Monetary Theory, reading this article made me want to pull my hair out.  The "Deficit Myths", to use Stephanie Kelton's phrase, jump right off the page.  I did write a comment on the NYT on-line forum, but it seemed to limited.  And the fact is that there is so much in this article that is informative, I decided to write a much longer piece going through it line by line and annotating the issues.    The title: "Under Biden, Democrats are Poised to Raise Taxes on Business and the Rich" Great!  This is clear.  But the problem comes in the sub-heading; "The president’s infrastructure proposals are likely to require trillions of dollars in new tax revenue." Wait what?  Why are we now talking about infrastructure? Why ...

 My comment at WaPo about the push for recurring checks With the cost of poverty annually over 2 trillion (1 trillion for child poverty alone), this is how you "Pay for it". The question, as Modern Monetary theorists suggest, is not how will you pay for it, but will it achieve the goals, in terms of full employment, reducing the massive costs of poverty, both financial and human, and help close the demand gap.  Universal basic income pilot projects show a wide range of benefits, and virtually no drawbacks; aside from how you pay for it.  But if we get better health outcomes, less crime, less imprisonment, better schools b/c students are fed, secure and ready to learn, the long term costs of the UBI pay for itself.  BUT it is long term; it is an investment in the future. Others disagree and would prefer more a more targeted approach, like increasing the the minimum wage and providing a new deal style federal jobs guarantee.  I personally like universa...

I just read about the Republican moderates counter offer of a $600 billion "stimulus".  Here is my almost over the character limit response/comment that I left at the WaPo.  No Deal.  600b is simply not enough to offset the loss of demand.  It will result in the kind of uneven and slow recovery we had in 2009-2011, which is precisely what R's want to happen so they can run their campaigns; at the expense of the American people yet again. So much demand has been lost, that 1.9 tril may be too low. The only impediment to 1.9 tril is inflation and Powell said that a bit of inflation would actually be a good thing.  We do NOT need to worry about paying for it - we are the sole creator of our own currency, can never go insolvent.  So paying for it is NOT the question.  The question is: is it a good idea? Child care tax credit cuts child poverty in half.  YES Essentially universal checks guarantee that everyone who has been hurt by this virus g...

 Another response to Catherine Rampell's attacks on universal direct cash payments. Please explain how it has become "clearer" who has suffered?  Some 50% of Americans have lost income, across all income levels but certainly concentrated among the poor.  But as these comments show, 2019 tax returns will not reflect that.  So yes, in general, it has become clearer, but I disagree that there is a magic wand to decipher who is deserving and who is not.  But making it, say under 150K, like the last round of checks, you only leave out about 10% of the population, so only incur about 10% of the cost.  Not only will people like me, in the top 10%, who have not lost income, use it to pay off debt for schooling, invest in my retirement, give to charities, get work done that we have been putting off, and etc. but I am totally fine with a small extra cost to make sure that no children are left hungry b/c of a virus. Agree, we need to tackle the problem of p...

 I have a feeling I will be writing a bunch of these.  In an article criticizing Ben Sasse for crtiticizing Qanon, Jeff Charles ends with this line. "On the right, we must ensure that this asinine fairy tale doesn’t give the left enough ammo to paint us all as conspiracy lunatics. Still, most of us know that this fringe element by no means represents the conservative movement or the Republican Party." The irony here is that so many articles at redstate do exactly this:  they take the actions of one "leftist" and use it to prove that the left is the "thought police" or whatever the latest attack is.  Just today, there were articles using what is known as the fallacy of composition, which Charles says is unfair: Looks Like We Got Another 'Winner': New 'Squad' Member Opens Her Mouth & PROVES IT   GOP Committed CHEMICAL WARFARE by Not Wearing Masks Says Clueless Elected Official   Ever Had a Hard Time Understanding Someone's Accent? ...

I went to high school with Tucker.  He was an aggressive conservative debater even then.  I specifically remember him attacking me for wearing a "Mutants for Nuclear Power" button when I was a lowly freshman and he was an upperclassman.  Since then I have taken classes in logic, and logical fallacies, studied History in college and taught just about every social studies class at the high school level.  He is very smart, and a good rhetorician, but is still using the same tired fallacies to make his arguments.  While the "illicit transference" fallacy (drawing general conclusion from specific cases) is pretty common, and just because an argument is a fallacy doesn't mean it is not sound, in Tucker's case, he uses them as a tool of propaganda.  See the list of propaganda principles here. Let's start with the problematic argument he made against my button in 1985.  He asked what California would do for electricity if it immediately shut down all nuclear ...

 Please show me your magic wand of "targeting."  This is the 4th article you have published, second from the editorial board against Direct Cash Payments.  And the 4th time that your "targeting" has remained vague at best.  Until you explain exactly how you plan to "target" AND get the relief to people as soon as possible, you are wrong.  Direct cash transfers are the most progressive idea out there, in general. Your arguments: 1. People who don't need it will get it.  Mine: people who DO need it won't unless your "targeting" is 100% efficient. 2. Unemployment benefits would be better.  Mine: that misses a large swath of people, including gig workers and stay at home parents (who are staying at homer to educate their children).  AND it is a drag on employment. 3. It's expensive.  Mine: So is giving everyone a free vaccine which I assume we both support.  At what price is a human life not worthy of being saved.  The tax co...

 There are two versions of reality in America.  I, of course, think I live in the "real" one, and that the right wingers live in a fantasy world of alternate facts, lies, and conspiracies.  Since the insurrection at the Capitol, I have been thinking about nothing else.  As an exercise, I wanted to see how many words I would have to change for a comment from RedState to accurately reflect my own beliefs.  I made 11 changes and changed only 5 words.  Please forgive the grammar, it is not mine. Here is the RedState Version of reality: The Democrat party, their news & social media outlets, far left radical supporters, Antifa, BLM and the political collusion with China in their agenda towards transforming America into what they have been indoctrinating the last generations into, a Socialist single party leadership. They have used every Communist tactic China uses to control what the public see's, hears, believes. The Democrat party, many R...

The Washington Post is a fantastic newspaper but they have a real issue in how they write about direct cash payments specifically and Universal Basic Income in general.  Their latest editorial got a bit right, but so much wrong.  Here is my comment: I absolutely agree that state and local aid is critical; and its lack is likely the reason that the 2008 recession lingered so long.  That needs to be next.  And I agree that that the "targeting" to under 150k a year is also foolish - but I agree because these payments should be universal, and recurring. But to oppose $2,000 stimulus checks is to show that the editorial board of the Washington Post is woefully uneducated about the large and growing body of evidence in support of direct cash payments, still believes that it is possible for the government to quickly and effectively "target aid", still believes that UI benefits do not have a negative drag on unemployment, and finally, and cruelly, that a certain...

Here are my thoughts, and response the this piece in WaPo today. Yes, in terms of what can be done without the do-nothing/obstructionist Republicans in the Senate.  But at the same time, pick a battle in the Congress that you can win to make 2022 a more realistic chance to GAIN seats.  This is the battle for direct cash payments to combat the pandemic and its economic fallout.  82% of voters approve of more rounds of stimulus checks.  Sending three months at $1,000 /month would be the same as the $900 billion proposed.  Do not combine it with anything else.  Make them vote on sending help to people who need it, or not. As much as I am in favor of helping states deal with their budgetary issues, make that a separate fight. Make it universal and therefore fair.  Sell it as essential for small business and families.  Do not take the bait of talking about how to afford it.  Means-test the tax next year, not the benefit this year. Thi...

Here is my reply to this article about the lessons of the 202 election   "I was just discussing this with my 18 year old son. The GOP has better "glue" to generally hold it together. While all Anti (Roe, government, taxes) it serves the purpose of a unifying message, albeit a destructive and angry one.  The Democratic party is a coalition of many interest groups who value their own silo more then winning (at times), and who can get lost in their own ideology. At times the Dems can be dogmatic. At the core, there is little "glue" that holds this coalition together. It is diverse. It is broad. It is also divided.  However, I don't think it is divided on "eventual" priorities; as labor rights, civil rights, social justice, climate change, voting rights seem to be favored by the vast majority of Biden voters. What is divided is the messaging AND a first priority.  A casual glance at the campaigns of the GOP since the time of Nixon ...

David Brooks Op-Ed in the Times today will certainly draw a lot of the kind of comments that I read just now.  While I have no faith in the Republican party to do anything except be obstructionist, it is really important to pick the first battles wisely.  Here is my response. "There are real differences between rejoining the Paris Accord, and ruling by "diktak" as you say. But the point is still essentially valid.  As much as I love Obama, and like the ACA, in hindsight, the central focus should have been on creating more economic equality and opportunity for ALL Americans through extremely popular measure like a $15 minimum wage (which Florida voted for in 2020 61% despite also voting for Trump). However, given that the first priority will certainly be COVID-19 response, policies like the $15 min wage won't help much. And the generous unemployment benefits not only don't reach those that need it, but also have a downward drag on employment.  It is t...

As someone who cares deeply about my country, and democracy as an idea, I certainly feel that we were on the precipice of allowing a minority party, losers of 7/8 popular votes for president, to create an autocratic state.  This new "Republican" party, which does not even have a platform, is following the authoritarian playbook laid out by other authoritarian regimes of the last century.  In addition to denying basic facts, and promoting a non-thing "alternate facts", one of the biggest propaganda tools in the authoritarian playbook is to accuse your opponent of exactly the misdeed you intend to do.   Republicans have been trying to “steal” elections for years through systematic efforts to suppress the African-American vote in particular, and have frankly, been successful in doing so.  This essay will look at one of the right wing propaganda sites, posing as a news site: redstate. There was no fraud in the election of 2020 .  Repeat, no frau...

Joe Biden and Kamala Harris will be the President and Vice President on January 20th, 2021.  This is no small accomplishment.  The United States was on the verge of authoritarianism.  Most evidence shows that countries that are this close often succumb. It IS worth celebrating.    However, the path forward when closely looking at the election results is much more murky.   When all the counting is done, the Biden/Harris ticket will have won north of 77 million votes, over 300 electoral college votes, and carried the national popular vote by 5-6%.  This is a pretty decisive win in this era of extreme partisanship.  Biden/Harris owe their win to voters of color turning out in huge numbers (especially women), new young voters turning out and voting 66% for the ticket, some white blue-collar 2016 Trump supporters flipping, and no small number of more well educated Republicans who voted for Biden/Harris and then Republicans d...

The Kaiser Family Foundation released its annual report on health care costs in the US.  The results are striking.  The average family premium for health care rose above $20,000 per year for the first time.  Single premiums rose to over $7000.  The average out of pocket cost rose above $10,000 per year - this is for people who have insurance.  Employers paid 71% of the cost of these plans, and, obviously, employees paid the rest.  Costs have been going up by an average of 5+% a year.  Despite the fact that fewer claims were filed last year, prices went up 17%.  The current health care system isn’t broken, it’s lying smashed on the rocks at the bottom of a cliff.   One note: I will use the term taxes to mean “money out” of my paycheck.  Thus, the amount I pay in premiums (and that my employer does) are “taxes” in my mind.  An enormous one.  In fact, this “tax” is one of the worst, most regressive taxes ou...

While watching the January Democratic Presidential debate, one of the moderators at 538.com, Nathaniel Rakich, said this: “Twenty years later, and George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld’s arguments for going to war in Iraq are leading off a presidential debate. It just speaks to how consequential that era in American history turned (out to be).” I couldn’t agree more, except that this does not go nearly far enough.  The decision to invade Iraq in 2003 will go down as one of the worst political decisions ever made.  The long term ramifications are certainly being felt now, but will be felt for generations. Let’s review where we were in 2003: The United States had “won” the Cold War, had established itself as the guarantor of safety for sovereign nations during the Gulf War, had refrained from invading Iraq in 1991, had a growing economy, low inflation, low interest rates, low unemployment, a budget surplus, and incredible world-wide good will a...