The Rose Garden and White House happenings: Listening to voters’ concerns

nohero said:

ml1 said:

Smedley said:

Ah, what is a progressive argument without some good virtue signaling. Couldn’t leave that box unchecked. 

Yes, I do believe here in the U.S. we have plenty of government, and generally speaking, our system is better than that of the European countries which have even more government. Life is about tradeoffs, and I’ll take the economic opportunity, decentralized political system and entrepreneurial culture over a few extra years of life expectancy, any day. 

Serious question - have you ever considered moving to a country that is a better fit with your values? The U.S. is far from perfect, and there’s always room for improvement, but overall I think it’s the best country for me. I always wonder why people who are so fundamentally at odds and terminally unhappy with the U.S. system stay here. 

given the context of the discussion, yes it's sad that you couldn't even think of a metric that actually measures well-being and not wealth. The discussion was about how social services are provided. Not about how much wealth we amass. 

"Per capita" isn't the appropriate measure for everything.  If Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and I are in a room, the per capita wealth is astronomical, but that does nothing for my 401k.

that's correct. And even if it was a valid metric for how well everyone is doing economically, it's not particularly relevant to whether social services are being delivered efficiently and effectively.

I can't believe I have to get into the "why do you hate America? why are you so unhappy?" discussion, because it's a really stupid argument. But here goes. A patriotic person who loves his/her country should be willing and eager to criticize it. Only a willfully blind person thinks they live in a perfect country that can't do some things better for its people. The U.S. is a wealthy country. We should be able to look around the world and see what other countries do better than us, bring those practices here, and maybe even make them better. But most people would rather just tell themselves "we're the greatest country on earth!"  "The greatest country EVER!"

I mentioned life expectancy earlier.  According to the World Bank, in 2022, the U.S. is ranked 62nd in the world. Maybe some people think that's fine. But it's indicative of our poor health care system, our high homicide, suicide, and accident rates. It's indicative of overdose deaths, poor maternal and infant mortality rates, terrible fitness and high degree of obesity. 

Pointing that out doesn't mean  I "hate America."  Pointing it out means I think we can and should do better. (And I can't believe this even needs to be said.)

If anything, our high national GDP makes those stats even more shameful. As rich as we are, people in Slovenia or Costa Rica shouldn't have longer lives than we do.

Another grand moment from a grand woman, the Queen…

https://twitter.com/charles_lister/status/1567902180274831362?s=21&t=WPzE1mwf7Totf7mn-euhUA

I'm a bit lost as to what the argument is here. European countries also have charities. Some of those countries still have monarchs, some don't. As far as how dynamic/entrepreneurial different economies are, I actually would agree the US comes ahead there, but if the argument is that the kinds of policies pursued by the US political left will endanger this, I don't buy that. Something like universal health care seems like it would be more likely to help than hinder here, freeing people from being so strictly tied to their employers and so allowing more space for starting their own businesses. Maybe that means healthcare CEOs get smaller paychecks, which I suppose could result in a lower per-capita GDP, but that just suggests per-capita GDP might not be the best metric.

PVW said:

I'm a bit lost as to what the argument is here. European countries also have charities. Some of those countries still have monarchs, some don't. As far as how dynamic/entrepreneurial different economies are, I actually would agree the US comes ahead there, but if the argument is that the kinds of policies pursued by the US political left will endanger this, I don't buy that. Something like universal health care seems like it would be more likely to help than hinder here, freeing people from being so strictly tied to their employers and so allowing more space for starting their own businesses. Maybe that means healthcare CEOs get smaller paychecks, which I suppose could result in a lower per-capita GDP, but that just suggests per-capita GDP might not be the best metric.

the argument (I think), is that the U.S. already has sufficient publicly funding social services, and to have any more generous safety net funding by the government would be a bad thing. I doubt anyone is arguing that charities don't exist in other countries (in fact, the discussion started with the royal family's charitable efforts in the UK).

Just the fact that we don't have any kind of universal health coverage in the U.S., and that we rely an awful lot on privately funded food banks and kitchens to feed people has me convinced that our country isn't doing enough in the public sector to keep people healthy and well. 

Other people think what we've got is fine, even if objectively our country's population is pretty unhealthy and unwell. Would we ever get to a place where we're the healthiest country on earth? Probably not. We'll still want our guns, and still drive fast, and probably still not eat healthy or get any exercise. But maybe we can at least improve our infant mortality numbers, and have fewer hungry people.

ml1 said:

nohero said:

ml1 said:

Smedley said:

Ah, what is a progressive argument without some good virtue signaling. Couldn’t leave that box unchecked. 

Yes, I do believe here in the U.S. we have plenty of government, and generally speaking, our system is better than that of the European countries which have even more government. Life is about tradeoffs, and I’ll take the economic opportunity, decentralized political system and entrepreneurial culture over a few extra years of life expectancy, any day. 

Serious question - have you ever considered moving to a country that is a better fit with your values? The U.S. is far from perfect, and there’s always room for improvement, but overall I think it’s the best country for me. I always wonder why people who are so fundamentally at odds and terminally unhappy with the U.S. system stay here. 

given the context of the discussion, yes it's sad that you couldn't even think of a metric that actually measures well-being and not wealth. The discussion was about how social services are provided. Not about how much wealth we amass. 

"Per capita" isn't the appropriate measure for everything.  If Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and I are in a room, the per capita wealth is astronomical, but that does nothing for my 401k.

that's correct. And even if it was a valid metric for how well everyone is doing economically, it's not particularly relevant to whether social services are being delivered efficiently and effectively.

I can't believe I have to get into the "why do you hate America? why are you so unhappy?" discussion, because it's a really stupid argument. But here goes. A patriotic person who loves his/her country should be willing and eager to criticize it. Only a willfully blind person thinks they live in a perfect country that can't do some things better for its people. The U.S. is a wealthy country. We should be able to look around the world and see what other countries do better than us, bring those practices here, and maybe even make them better. But most people would rather just tell themselves "we're the greatest country on earth!"  "The greatest country EVER!"

I mentioned life expectancy earlier.  According to the World Bank, in 2022, the U.S. is ranked 62nd in the world. Maybe some people think that's fine. But it's indicative of our poor health care system, our high homicide, suicide, and accident rates. It's indicative of overdose deaths, poor maternal and infant mortality rates, terrible fitness and high degree of obesity. 

Pointing that out doesn't mean  I "hate America."  Pointing it out means I think we can and should do better. (And I can't believe this even needs to be said.)

If anything, our high national GDP makes those stats even more shameful. As rich as we are, people in Slovenia or Costa Rica shouldn't have longer lives than we do.

I hardly think we live in a perfect country, in fact I explicitly stated that in this very discussion.  

As the late great economist (and Rutgers grad) Milton Friedman said, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You can't have the social services of Europe and the high economic output of the U.S. - you have to accept less of one or the other. So you saying "see what other countries do better than us and bring those practices here" shows a certain naïveté in my opinion because it's hardly as easy-peasy as you make it sound.  

Ultimately I guess the difference is that I favor incremental change whereas progressives favor radical change. And any radical change that would move us to a Europe-like system also would make this country unrecognizable IMO. Which is why I suggest people who favor radical change should consider just moving to where the change they seek is already in place.  

Smedley said:

As the late great economist (and Rutgers grad) Milton Friedman said, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You can't have the social services of Europe and the high economic output of the U.S. - you have to accept less of one or the other. So you saying "see what other countries do better than us and bring those practices here" shows a certain naïveté in my opinion because it's hardly as easy-peasy as you make it sound.

Everything's a trade-off, but it's easy to fall into the technocratic trap of believing we know what those trade-offs are and we can identify the levers that if you push in one direction will move another lever the other way.

I could, for instance, tell a story that the biggest difference between the US and Europe on economics isn't level of social services at all, but rather level of immigration, with the US's higher levels of immigration and lower barriers to integration of new immigrants being more salient.

Am I right? Who knows -- plenty of evidence for any number of arguments for what the actual levers and trade-offs are. At the very least, I'd say that it's equally naive to say it's obvious that higher social services means trading economic output.

As far as radical vs incremental, that's pretty subjective. I personally think of myself as an incrementalist, but policy goals I support might be called radical by people to my political right, and neoliberal by those to my political left. 

I'm more aligned with Ml1's view here that the indicators of well being in our country -- life expectancy, infant mortality rates, hunger, access to nutrition, etc -- suggest that our current policy approaches are falling short in some important areas and need significant change.

Smedley said:

ml1 said:

nohero said:

ml1 said:

Smedley said:

Ah, what is a progressive argument without some good virtue signaling. Couldn’t leave that box unchecked. 

Yes, I do believe here in the U.S. we have plenty of government, and generally speaking, our system is better than that of the European countries which have even more government. Life is about tradeoffs, and I’ll take the economic opportunity, decentralized political system and entrepreneurial culture over a few extra years of life expectancy, any day. 

Serious question - have you ever considered moving to a country that is a better fit with your values? The U.S. is far from perfect, and there’s always room for improvement, but overall I think it’s the best country for me. I always wonder why people who are so fundamentally at odds and terminally unhappy with the U.S. system stay here. 

given the context of the discussion, yes it's sad that you couldn't even think of a metric that actually measures well-being and not wealth. The discussion was about how social services are provided. Not about how much wealth we amass. 

"Per capita" isn't the appropriate measure for everything.  If Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and I are in a room, the per capita wealth is astronomical, but that does nothing for my 401k.

that's correct. And even if it was a valid metric for how well everyone is doing economically, it's not particularly relevant to whether social services are being delivered efficiently and effectively.

I can't believe I have to get into the "why do you hate America? why are you so unhappy?" discussion, because it's a really stupid argument. But here goes. A patriotic person who loves his/her country should be willing and eager to criticize it. Only a willfully blind person thinks they live in a perfect country that can't do some things better for its people. The U.S. is a wealthy country. We should be able to look around the world and see what other countries do better than us, bring those practices here, and maybe even make them better. But most people would rather just tell themselves "we're the greatest country on earth!"  "The greatest country EVER!"

I mentioned life expectancy earlier.  According to the World Bank, in 2022, the U.S. is ranked 62nd in the world. Maybe some people think that's fine. But it's indicative of our poor health care system, our high homicide, suicide, and accident rates. It's indicative of overdose deaths, poor maternal and infant mortality rates, terrible fitness and high degree of obesity. 

Pointing that out doesn't mean  I "hate America."  Pointing it out means I think we can and should do better. (And I can't believe this even needs to be said.)

If anything, our high national GDP makes those stats even more shameful. As rich as we are, people in Slovenia or Costa Rica shouldn't have longer lives than we do.

I hardly think we live in a perfect country, in fact I explicitly stated that in this very discussion.  

As the late great economist (and Rutgers grad) Milton Friedman said, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You can't have the social services of Europe and the high economic output of the U.S. - you have to accept less of one or the other. So you saying "see what other countries do better than us and bring those practices here" shows a certain naïveté in my opinion because it's hardly as easy-peasy as you make it sound.  

Ultimately I guess the difference is that I favor incremental change whereas progressives favor radical change. And any radical change that would move us to a Europe-like system also would make this country unrecognizable IMO. Which is why I suggest people who favor radical change should consider just moving to where the change they seek is already in place.  

it would be an incremental change to extend Medicare to everyone under age 65. But a lot of people are dead set against that. It would also be an incremental change to raise the federal minimum wage.

It's not radical change for the U.S. to make sure people can afford health care, education and food.  Richard Nixon for jeebus sake proposed universal health coverage.

these things are only difficult because our country assumes them to be difficult.  And a lot of people oppose them reflexively. 

conservatives like yourself see almost any change as "radical" whether it really is or isn't.

PVW said:

Smedley said:

As the late great economist (and Rutgers grad) Milton Friedman said, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You can't have the social services of Europe and the high economic output of the U.S. - you have to accept less of one or the other. So you saying "see what other countries do better than us and bring those practices here" shows a certain naïveté in my opinion because it's hardly as easy-peasy as you make it sound.

Everything's a trade-off, but it's easy to fall into the technocratic trap of believing we know what those trade-offs are and we can identify the levers that if you push in one direction will move another lever the other way.

I could, for instance, tell a story that the biggest difference between the US and Europe on economics isn't level of social services at all, but rather level of immigration, with the US's higher levels of immigration and lower barriers to integration of new immigrants being more salient.

Am I right? Who knows -- plenty of evidence for any number of arguments for what the actual levers and trade-offs are. At the very least, I'd say that it's equally naive to say it's obvious that higher social services means trading economic output.

As far as radical vs incremental, that's pretty subjective. I personally think of myself as an incrementalist, but policy goals I support might be called radical by people to my political right, and neoliberal by those to my political left. 

IMHO, it's a flaw or a fallacy to think of the economy as a thing in and of itself that needs to be maximized. The "economy" such as it is exists to serve the people, not the other way around. Having a high GDP and strong economic growth (again IMHO) is not that important or all that positive if the people in a country don't have comfortable, healthy lives free of stress and worry about how they'll afford a serious illness, or college, or retirement.

and by a lot of measures, the U.S. falls short on giving the maximum number of people a secure and healthy life.

Yes, it could be an incremental change to raise the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr. But you conveniently forget to state what you'd like to see the wage raised to. I'd guess you'd probably say $25 -- economic and labor-market distortions be damned. $7.25 to $25 is not an incremental change.   

Smedley said:

Yes, it could be an incremental change to raise the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr. But you conveniently forget to state what you'd like to see the wage raised to. I'd guess you'd probably say $25 -- economic and labor-market distortions be damned. $7.25 to $25 is not an incremental change.   

So, you don't need anyone else to respond, since you do all sides of these arguments on your own?

Smedley said:

Yes, it could be an incremental change to raise the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr. But you conveniently forget to state what you'd like to see the wage raised to. I'd guess you'd probably say $25 -- economic and labor-market distortions be damned. $7.25 to $25 is not an incremental change.   

Smedley said:

Yes, it could be an incremental change to raise the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hr. But you conveniently forget to state what you'd like to see the wage raised to. I'd guess you'd probably say $25 -- economic and labor-market distortions be damned. $7.25 to $25 is not an incremental change.   

I'd guess you don't mind being wrong from most of your comments.

Actually I'd favor an immediate raise to what the federal minimum was in 1968 (just under $10/hr indexed for inflation), and then over two or three years raised to $15 and indexed to inflation thereafter.  With reassessments every couple of years to determine if it's sufficient for people to subsist on.

incremental.

Well one thing we seem to agree on is that incrementalism is the way, the truth and the light. Even if we disagree on who's an incrementalist and who's not.

This is surprising to me as I thought progressives demanded more robust change than just incrementalism. But it's good to know going forward.   

mtierney said:

ridski said:

You read the National Review, you don’t get to comment.

Why? Afraid to hear “the other side of the story?”

Getting back to college costs and student loans (I have a vested interest in the topic with 7 grands, 2 in school still) how and who pays for college stupidity?

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/oberlin-finally-agrees-to-pay-36-59-million-to-bakery-over-false-racism-accusation/

LOL. "Afraid" of what? It's just a bunch of con artists these days, it's the National Inquirer for MAGA Dummies. 

Smedley said:

Well one thing we seem to agree on is that incrementalism is the way, the truth and the light. Even if we disagree on who's an incrementalist and who's not.

This is surprising to me as I thought progressives demanded more robust change than just incrementalism. But it's good to know going forward.   

maybe it's because you make a lot of assumptions, and don't really pay attention to what people are writing or saying?

Smedley said:

Well one thing we seem to agree on is that incrementalism is the way, the truth and the light. Even if we disagree on who's an incrementalist and who's not.

This is surprising to me as I thought progressives demanded more robust change than just incrementalism. But it's good to know going forward.   

If we're still talking about the minimum wage, I'll repeat that pretty much every actual proposed legislation I've seen raises it over time. Assuming that "lawmakers proposing minimum wage increases" and "progressives" are the same group here, then I'm surprised you're surprised, given the paper trail.

PVW said:

Smedley said:

Well one thing we seem to agree on is that incrementalism is the way, the truth and the light. Even if we disagree on who's an incrementalist and who's not.

This is surprising to me as I thought progressives demanded more robust change than just incrementalism. But it's good to know going forward.   

If we're still talking about the minimum wage, I'll repeat that pretty much every actual proposed legislation I've seen raises it over time. Assuming that "lawmakers proposing minimum wage increases" and "progressives" are the same group here, then I'm surprised you're surprised, given the paper trail.

as far as I'm aware "progressive" is not a synonym for "radical" or "impatient." So I don't know where the idea comes from that progressive and incremental are in opposition to each other.

Smedley said:

ml1 said:

nohero said:

ml1 said:

Smedley said:

Ah, what is a progressive argument without some good virtue signaling. Couldn’t leave that box unchecked. 

Yes, I do believe here in the U.S. we have plenty of government, and generally speaking, our system is better than that of the European countries which have even more government. Life is about tradeoffs, and I’ll take the economic opportunity, decentralized political system and entrepreneurial culture over a few extra years of life expectancy, any day. 

Serious question - have you ever considered moving to a country that is a better fit with your values? The U.S. is far from perfect, and there’s always room for improvement, but overall I think it’s the best country for me. I always wonder why people who are so fundamentally at odds and terminally unhappy with the U.S. system stay here. 

given the context of the discussion, yes it's sad that you couldn't even think of a metric that actually measures well-being and not wealth. The discussion was about how social services are provided. Not about how much wealth we amass. 

"Per capita" isn't the appropriate measure for everything.  If Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and I are in a room, the per capita wealth is astronomical, but that does nothing for my 401k.

that's correct. And even if it was a valid metric for how well everyone is doing economically, it's not particularly relevant to whether social services are being delivered efficiently and effectively.

I can't believe I have to get into the "why do you hate America? why are you so unhappy?" discussion, because it's a really stupid argument. But here goes. A patriotic person who loves his/her country should be willing and eager to criticize it. Only a willfully blind person thinks they live in a perfect country that can't do some things better for its people. The U.S. is a wealthy country. We should be able to look around the world and see what other countries do better than us, bring those practices here, and maybe even make them better. But most people would rather just tell themselves "we're the greatest country on earth!"  "The greatest country EVER!"

I mentioned life expectancy earlier.  According to the World Bank, in 2022, the U.S. is ranked 62nd in the world. Maybe some people think that's fine. But it's indicative of our poor health care system, our high homicide, suicide, and accident rates. It's indicative of overdose deaths, poor maternal and infant mortality rates, terrible fitness and high degree of obesity. 

Pointing that out doesn't mean  I "hate America."  Pointing it out means I think we can and should do better. (And I can't believe this even needs to be said.)

If anything, our high national GDP makes those stats even more shameful. As rich as we are, people in Slovenia or Costa Rica shouldn't have longer lives than we do.

I hardly think we live in a perfect country, in fact I explicitly stated that in this very discussion.  

As the late great economist (and Rutgers grad) Milton Friedman said, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You can't have the social services of Europe and the high economic output of the U.S. - you have to accept less of one or the other. So you saying "see what other countries do better than us and bring those practices here" shows a certain naïveté in my opinion because it's hardly as easy-peasy as you make it sound.  

Ultimately I guess the difference is that I favor incremental change whereas progressives favor radical change. And any radical change that would move us to a Europe-like system also would make this country unrecognizable IMO. Which is why I suggest people who favor radical change should consider just moving to where the change they seek is already in place.  

Did Milton Friedman (another conservative crank) ever calculate how we can somehow afford to spend gazillions of dollars on defense? Or did he just leave that part out?

mtierney said:

ridski said:

You read the National Review, you don’t get to comment.

Why? Afraid to hear “the other side of the story?”

Not afraid.  It's just hard to stomach the deep-seated racism and pervasive anti-intellectualism in service to their white supremacist foundations.

Just today - College Board AP African American Studies Course Teaches Critical Race Theory | National Review

"A new and sweeping effort to infuse leftist radicalism into America’s K–12 curriculum has begun. The College Board — the group that runs the SAT test and the Advanced Placement (AP) program — is pilot-testing an AP African American Studies course. ... [AP African American Studies (APAAS)] clearly proselytizes for a socialist transformation of the United States, although its socialism is heavily inflected by attention to race and ethnicity. Even if there were no laws barring such content, states and local school districts would have every right to block APAAS as antithetical to their educational goals."

When white supremacists talk about critical race theory, what they are really talking about is telling the truth about the treatment of Blacks in America, right?  It's more factual than theoretical.

nohero said:

mtierney said:

ridski said:

You read the National Review, you don’t get to comment.

Why? Afraid to hear “the other side of the story?”

Not afraid.  It's just hard to stomach the deep-seated racism and pervasive anti-intellectualism in service to their white supremacist foundations.

Just today - College Board AP African American Studies Course Teaches Critical Race Theory | National Review

"A new and sweeping effort to infuse leftist radicalism into America’s K–12 curriculum has begun. The College Board — the group that runs the SAT test and the Advanced Placement (AP) program — is pilot-testing an AP African American Studies course. ... [AP African American Studies (APAAS)] clearly proselytizes for a socialist transformation of the United States, although its socialism is heavily inflected by attention to race and ethnicity. Even if there were no laws barring such content, states and local school districts would have every right to block APAAS as antithetical to their educational goals."

Well, that sure was a lot of words.

Lovely coincidence that these article on the history of GDP theory was published on or Sunday. It’s not as you think. 

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-09-11/what-is-gdp-where-does-it-come-from/101413494

ETA: I’ve edited to add in the link for the latest World Happiness Report.

https://worldhappiness.report/ed/2022/   One of the measures includes  a country’s stats on donations and giving.  Note there are biological implications for population happiness and wellbeing, all explained in the document. 
(I’m out for a few hours now, won’t be back until after your midnight)

drummerboy said:

Smedley said:

ml1 said:

nohero said:

ml1 said:

Smedley said:

Ah, what is a progressive argument without some good virtue signaling. Couldn’t leave that box unchecked. 

Yes, I do believe here in the U.S. we have plenty of government, and generally speaking, our system is better than that of the European countries which have even more government. Life is about tradeoffs, and I’ll take the economic opportunity, decentralized political system and entrepreneurial culture over a few extra years of life expectancy, any day. 

Serious question - have you ever considered moving to a country that is a better fit with your values? The U.S. is far from perfect, and there’s always room for improvement, but overall I think it’s the best country for me. I always wonder why people who are so fundamentally at odds and terminally unhappy with the U.S. system stay here. 

given the context of the discussion, yes it's sad that you couldn't even think of a metric that actually measures well-being and not wealth. The discussion was about how social services are provided. Not about how much wealth we amass. 

"Per capita" isn't the appropriate measure for everything.  If Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and I are in a room, the per capita wealth is astronomical, but that does nothing for my 401k.

that's correct. And even if it was a valid metric for how well everyone is doing economically, it's not particularly relevant to whether social services are being delivered efficiently and effectively.

I can't believe I have to get into the "why do you hate America? why are you so unhappy?" discussion, because it's a really stupid argument. But here goes. A patriotic person who loves his/her country should be willing and eager to criticize it. Only a willfully blind person thinks they live in a perfect country that can't do some things better for its people. The U.S. is a wealthy country. We should be able to look around the world and see what other countries do better than us, bring those practices here, and maybe even make them better. But most people would rather just tell themselves "we're the greatest country on earth!"  "The greatest country EVER!"

I mentioned life expectancy earlier.  According to the World Bank, in 2022, the U.S. is ranked 62nd in the world. Maybe some people think that's fine. But it's indicative of our poor health care system, our high homicide, suicide, and accident rates. It's indicative of overdose deaths, poor maternal and infant mortality rates, terrible fitness and high degree of obesity. 

Pointing that out doesn't mean  I "hate America."  Pointing it out means I think we can and should do better. (And I can't believe this even needs to be said.)

If anything, our high national GDP makes those stats even more shameful. As rich as we are, people in Slovenia or Costa Rica shouldn't have longer lives than we do.

I hardly think we live in a perfect country, in fact I explicitly stated that in this very discussion.  

As the late great economist (and Rutgers grad) Milton Friedman said, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You can't have the social services of Europe and the high economic output of the U.S. - you have to accept less of one or the other. So you saying "see what other countries do better than us and bring those practices here" shows a certain naïveté in my opinion because it's hardly as easy-peasy as you make it sound.  

Ultimately I guess the difference is that I favor incremental change whereas progressives favor radical change. And any radical change that would move us to a Europe-like system also would make this country unrecognizable IMO. Which is why I suggest people who favor radical change should consider just moving to where the change they seek is already in place.  

Did Milton Friedman (another conservative crank) ever calculate how we can somehow afford to spend gazillions of dollars on defense? Or did he just leave that part out?

Sure, Martin Feldstein and Milton Friedman have it all wrong. But the loony left Twitter folks you post, they know what’s what!

Smedley said:

drummerboy said:

Smedley said:

ml1 said:

nohero said:

ml1 said:

Smedley said:

Ah, what is a progressive argument without some good virtue signaling. Couldn’t leave that box unchecked. 

Yes, I do believe here in the U.S. we have plenty of government, and generally speaking, our system is better than that of the European countries which have even more government. Life is about tradeoffs, and I’ll take the economic opportunity, decentralized political system and entrepreneurial culture over a few extra years of life expectancy, any day. 

Serious question - have you ever considered moving to a country that is a better fit with your values? The U.S. is far from perfect, and there’s always room for improvement, but overall I think it’s the best country for me. I always wonder why people who are so fundamentally at odds and terminally unhappy with the U.S. system stay here. 

given the context of the discussion, yes it's sad that you couldn't even think of a metric that actually measures well-being and not wealth. The discussion was about how social services are provided. Not about how much wealth we amass. 

"Per capita" isn't the appropriate measure for everything.  If Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, and I are in a room, the per capita wealth is astronomical, but that does nothing for my 401k.

that's correct. And even if it was a valid metric for how well everyone is doing economically, it's not particularly relevant to whether social services are being delivered efficiently and effectively.

I can't believe I have to get into the "why do you hate America? why are you so unhappy?" discussion, because it's a really stupid argument. But here goes. A patriotic person who loves his/her country should be willing and eager to criticize it. Only a willfully blind person thinks they live in a perfect country that can't do some things better for its people. The U.S. is a wealthy country. We should be able to look around the world and see what other countries do better than us, bring those practices here, and maybe even make them better. But most people would rather just tell themselves "we're the greatest country on earth!"  "The greatest country EVER!"

I mentioned life expectancy earlier.  According to the World Bank, in 2022, the U.S. is ranked 62nd in the world. Maybe some people think that's fine. But it's indicative of our poor health care system, our high homicide, suicide, and accident rates. It's indicative of overdose deaths, poor maternal and infant mortality rates, terrible fitness and high degree of obesity. 

Pointing that out doesn't mean  I "hate America."  Pointing it out means I think we can and should do better. (And I can't believe this even needs to be said.)

If anything, our high national GDP makes those stats even more shameful. As rich as we are, people in Slovenia or Costa Rica shouldn't have longer lives than we do.

I hardly think we live in a perfect country, in fact I explicitly stated that in this very discussion.  

As the late great economist (and Rutgers grad) Milton Friedman said, there's no such thing as a free lunch. You can't have the social services of Europe and the high economic output of the U.S. - you have to accept less of one or the other. So you saying "see what other countries do better than us and bring those practices here" shows a certain naïveté in my opinion because it's hardly as easy-peasy as you make it sound.  

Ultimately I guess the difference is that I favor incremental change whereas progressives favor radical change. And any radical change that would move us to a Europe-like system also would make this country unrecognizable IMO. Which is why I suggest people who favor radical change should consider just moving to where the change they seek is already in place.  

Did Milton Friedman (another conservative crank) ever calculate how we can somehow afford to spend gazillions of dollars on defense? Or did he just leave that part out?

Sure, Martin Feldstein and Milton Friedman have it all wrong. But the loony left Twitter folks you post, they know what’s what!

good response!

ml1 said:

PVW said:

Smedley said:

Well one thing we seem to agree on is that incrementalism is the way, the truth and the light. Even if we disagree on who's an incrementalist and who's not.

This is surprising to me as I thought progressives demanded more robust change than just incrementalism. But it's good to know going forward.   

If we're still talking about the minimum wage, I'll repeat that pretty much every actual proposed legislation I've seen raises it over time. Assuming that "lawmakers proposing minimum wage increases" and "progressives" are the same group here, then I'm surprised you're surprised, given the paper trail.

as far as I'm aware "progressive" is not a synonym for "radical" or "impatient." So I don't know where the idea comes from that progressive and incremental are in opposition to each other.

Note this discussion started with the notion that there should be no need/use for private charities because everything should be covered by the government. This to me is a radical notion which I disagree with. You haven't directly stated whether you support this idea but I guess you do because you are disagreeing with me rather than the poster who put forth the idea.   

I think I’ve seen these movies on Netflix…

https://nypost.com/2022/09/12/russian-energy-exec-falls-to-his-death-from-boat/

"no need for private charities" is typical D-boy radical hyperbole.  However, I would hope that we can agree that some private charities such as food banks should not have to be funded by private donations.

Smedley said:

ml1 said:

PVW said:

Smedley said:

Well one thing we seem to agree on is that incrementalism is the way, the truth and the light. Even if we disagree on who's an incrementalist and who's not.

This is surprising to me as I thought progressives demanded more robust change than just incrementalism. But it's good to know going forward.   

If we're still talking about the minimum wage, I'll repeat that pretty much every actual proposed legislation I've seen raises it over time. Assuming that "lawmakers proposing minimum wage increases" and "progressives" are the same group here, then I'm surprised you're surprised, given the paper trail.

as far as I'm aware "progressive" is not a synonym for "radical" or "impatient." So I don't know where the idea comes from that progressive and incremental are in opposition to each other.

Note this discussion started with the notion that there should be no need/use for private charities because everything should be covered by the government. This to me is a radical notion which I disagree with. You haven't directly stated whether you support this idea but I guess you do because you are disagreeing with me rather than the poster who put forth the idea.   

You never responded to my response about how wrong you were with your numbers, or how your interpretation of what I said was kinda brain dead.

tjohn said:

"no need for private charities" is typical D-boy radical hyperbole.  However, I would hope that we can agree that some private charities such as food banks should not have to be funded by private donations.

I'm pretty sure my subsequent posts clarified what I was talking about. Vital needful populations should not be dependent on the vagaries of popular support. Not in a country as wealthy as ours.

Eliminating every charity is obviously a ridiculous goal. But the point remains.