***Official Political Discussion Thread***

[RustyShackleford]

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/22/us/politics/cnn-town-hall-highlights.html

Ok found it and yeah Harris said she would use executive order to enforce gun checks, Klobuchar embarrassed herself by pulling a Jeb, Bernie said something controversial, BAE Warren killed it, and Booty had to answer why he fired a police chief for investigating racism.

Warrens loan forgiveness was a issue brought up. She is changing the conversation.

I know you don't mean any malice behind it but mods already warned us not to make any jokes about Pete's name than evolve butt or booty or anything like that because it is in poor taste given he is gay.

 

[IATT]

His son recently died and he said he could not emotionally keep it together to campaign.

Then Obama told him that Hillary machine was gonna be hard to beat and given his emotional state he decided against it.

I mean yea.. but someone in his circle had to give him the al gore speech

 

[Wargames]

I know you don't mean any malice behind it but mods already warned us not to make any jokes about Pete's name than evolve butt or booty or anything like that because it is in poor taste given he is gay.

Ok thanks for the warning. I didn’t know and his name is “difficult”. I’m gonna call him Mayor Pete because his name is a bit much to type on a phone

 

[dwalk31]

Would it not be impossible or best inadequate to define progress (or any conclusion really) based on a simplified statement of fact, which is "unemployment declined, people pay less in taxes"?
In other words, doesn't an informed conclusion demand a broader examination of that simplified argument? Such as the inclusion of other factors, none of which you seemed to take into account.
This post has nothing to do with agreeing or disagreeing with your conclusion, my point is your post should not contain a conclusion in the first place.

I don't think it would be fair to draw a conclusion one way or the other based on such singular and narrow-minded thinking.

Let me illustrate an example to irrefutably prove my point.
In May 2012, the governor of Kansas signed HB 2117, which was a sweeping tax cut plan.
I think it would be fair to say that because of this law, Kansas residents were paying less in taxes.

Now let's look at unemployment.
Remember Governor Brownback's signed the tax cut bill in May 2012.

Source: Department of Labor
First we start with the Kansas unemployment rates in 2011.
We see that 2011 ends with an unemployment rate of 6.3% in December 2011. A decrease of 0.5% between January and December 2011.

In 2012, we see see that the unemployment percentage remained faily stagnant for most of 2012, with a sudden fairly significant decline after July. July had actually seen an increase from the previous month. The year ends with an unemployment rate of 5.4%. The latter half of 2012 resulted in a decrease of 0.7% between January and December 2012.

In fact in 2013, we see a gradual declining of the unemployment rate, down to 4.9% by the end of the year. That's 0.5% less than December 2012.
The unemployment rate remained stagnant or increased up until August, and then decreased back to another improvement from the last year.

In 2014, unemployment goes down to 4.8% in the first month but then remains mostly stagnant up until August. The following months however end with a significant decrease, with an unemployment rate of 4.2% in December. That's a 0.7% improvement upon December 2013.

It would be fair to say that in this examination, unemployment went down, and people are having to pay less taxes due to Governor Brownback's tax cuts.
This example thus meets the criteria you laid out to draw the conclusion of progress.
After all, the unemployment rate went down and people were paying less taxes.
Note that this example in no way tries to argue that something like a lowering unemployment rate etc. isn't a good thing.


Given what you know now of Kansas, would you still conclude the above as "progress", knowing what you know now of HB 2117's impact?
The answer is no, you wouldn't, because this time you'd have taken into account the factor of the mechanism behind the tax cuts. In Kansas' case, the result of those tax cuts was an absolute catatrophe to the state and its residents.

I am not an economist. My view is based on a layman's perspective of economic growth. Also known as your average voter. For most people, low unemployment and lower taxes feels like progress. From what I remember of statistics, you can explain numbers in a manner of different ways and point to the types of jobs, and who received the greatest tax cuts to say that it was not and is not as good as promised. Or say that it doesn't account for people choosing not to work, low-paying jobs, etc. That is fair. But, based on my layman's perspective, it feels like progress. It is interesting you refrained from opining on whether you agreed that progress has been made as it relates to the economy. Do you? Historically, people look at the jobs report as a gauge. Do you think it is unfair to use it for guidance on economic progress? Unemployment is at 3.8 percent.

As always, on matters of the economy I will defer to Rusty.

 

[iamdef]

Like clockwork

 

[boris]

That deflection.

 

[dacomeup]

 

[dwalk31]

Career criminal? The characterizations are just ridiculous at this point.

 

[IATT]

 

[gry60]

Bro i didnt say you have evangelical social issues I said you are just like them focusing on social issues instead of concrete programs that will feed, heal and educate whites and minorities.
You need to improve your reading comprehension.

Im defending Bernie because your only attack against him is that he isnt more like Malcolm X

Let's remember that Jim Crow was the most prevalent at a time when kids could buy mustangs and pay tuition on a McDonalds part-time salary.

Let's also remember that when deindustrialization started, it was in major cities, where Blacks had moved from the South and where most were working in the blue collar industries that got shut down. Meanwhile, the factories in the suburbs have been kept alive.

You can draw a straight line from the end of reconstruction to urban gangs. All it takes is an understanding of the economic history of this country, the forces that shaped it, and the effects of deliberate policies.

When you do put everything together, you will understand that social programs and discrimination are not exclusive, and you will understand why people are wary of Bernie's colorblindness.

 

[Belgium]

I am not an economist. My view is based on a layman's perspective of economic growth. Also known as your average voter. For most people, low unemployment and lower taxes feels like progress. From what I remember of statistics, you can explain numbers in a manner of different ways and point to the types of jobs, and who received the greatest tax cuts to say that it was not and is not as good as promised. Or say that it doesn't account for people choosing not to work, low-paying jobs, etc. That is fair. But, based on my layman's perspective, it feels like progress. It is interesting you refrained from opining on whether you agreed that progress has been made as it relates to the economy. Do you? Historically, people look at the jobs report as a gauge. Do you think it is unfair to use it for guidance on economic progress? Unemployment is at 3.8 percent.

As always, on matters of the economy I will defer to Rusty.

I refrained from opining on that because it was irrelevant to the point I was making. What something "feels" like is irrelevant in a factual examination, as is drawing conclusions based on just one or two indicators out of many.
I don't think you, or anyone else for that matter, should shy away from discussing economics because you don't happen to have a degree in it. There are boundaries to that of course, but one can learn a lot from examining how certain economic theories were applied in the past.
I will answer your questions at the bottom.

Hence why I brought up the Kansas example. From an isolated point of view, the declining unemployment and in the state and its residents having to pay less taxes looks to be a good thing.
A closer look at the HB 2117 tax cut law however paints a very different picture. Much like every other time someone tried to take trickle-down economics way too far, the result was economic devastation after a slight stimulus at first.
As in every other such case, the Kansas GOP proclaimed the tax cuts would pay for themselves. Unsurprisingly, it didn't. It does not take an economist to know that would be the outcome, all it requires is a history book.
Eventually, Kansas' republican-controlled legislature reversed Brownback's tax cuts in a damage control effort. Furthermore, they voted to raise taxes, overriding Brownback's veto to do so.

If you looked at the unemployment rates in the first few years since the passing of HB 2117, like I did in my example, they give the impression that things were going pretty good.
Presumably the Kansas residents were happy that they were paying less taxes as a result. Looking at those two factors might paint a picture of progress, but the subsequent devastation was set in motion to moment HB 2117 was signed into law.

Kansas did not see the kind of growth Brownback and his supporters wanted to see. In fact growth turned rather sluggish. The level of growth did not even outperform Kansas' own growth in previous years (source: Brookings Institute, Dept. of Labor), nor did it outperform its neighbor states or the national economic growth. The Kansas experiment even failed to provide any significant stimulus in the immediate aftermath of the signing of the law.
At the same time, the revenue gained from taxes drastically shrunk as a result of the tax cuts. What do you get with a sluggish economy and massive revenue shrinking? Ballooning deficits.
What do you get when budget deficits spiral out of control? Drastic budget cuts. Who is primarily affected by those cuts? The people living there, often the poorest.

Anyone willing to examine previous applications of supply-side economics and their aftermath would have known the end result of Brownback's tax cuts in Kansas.
A conclusion on the economy based on just 2 factors like declining unemployment and people paying less taxes is by default uninformed. Your reasoning would have concluded Kansas was progressing in the first ~2 years after the passing of HB 2117, but that law only resulted in a massive setback for the state and its residents.

None of the above requires an economics degree, as mentioned before it only requires being able to look at past history and read.



As for your questions, as mentioned earlier I refrained from opining because I felt it was irrelevant to the argument I was making.
If you're asking for my opinion on the US economy, I would agree that it has improved for now (I don't think that's debatable) but I am primarily concerned about the economic theory applied by the WH and Republicans in Congress. It uses the same basis as the Kansas experiment, Reagan's cuts, ...

For that reason, I am more concerned about the next few years. Economic forecasts, including from the Congressional Budget Office, project the US economy trending downwards from 2018. My bank has advised me of a downwards trend as well. In no particular order, they cited the impact of the continuing trade war, fading stimulus effect and decreased business investment.
As expected, the economy did not hit the highs projected by the WH, and now the economy is projected to slow down from 2018. Obviously the WH's claim of "tax cuts will pay for themselves" is never going to happen either. We can see that the US' budget deficit is already seeing record increases due to shrinking federal revenue combined with big spending projects.
If it follows the pattern of every other time this kind of implementation of supply-side economics has occurred in the US, eventually the process will have to be undone and hiking taxes back up will be required to combat the ballooning deficit issue resulting from the drastic decrease in federal revenue and growth not living up to its expectations. So I'm not comfortable calling it progress. Improvement yes, at least for now.
If something provides short term improvement but it ends in a major setback not much later, I can't really call it progress. Progress to me implies a sustained improvement that you can build on.

I don't believe tax cuts are inherently bad or anything, but there is a time and place for them and debunked premises like "the tax cuts will pay for themselves" should not be part of it.

As for your second question, of course I don't think it's unfair to use job reports as guidance for economic progress. That's a silly question.
Job reports are one of many factors, one that should not be ignored but it also shoudn't be the sole guidance. What would be unfair is using just one or two factors as guidance, not the act itself of using job reports as part of your guidance.

 

[Belgium]

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump...ly-with-dem-subpoena-over-security-clearances
White House Orders Official Not to Comply With Dem Subpoena Over Security Clearances
Donald Trump is going all out to thwart House Democrats’ investigations into the murkier aspects of his presidency. On Monday, he sued the House Oversight Committee chairman in a desperate attempt to prevent a subpoena of his financial records, and now the White House has ordered a top security official not to comply with a House subpoena demanding an interview.

Carl Kline, who was in charge of the security-clearance process and now works at the Defense Department, was instructed late Monday to not appear at Tuesday’s interview, claiming that Democrats were looking for access to confidential information, CNN reports. (The Daily Beast has also seen the emails confirming the order.)

House Oversight Committee Chairman Elijah Cummings previously said he could seek to hold Kline in contempt of Congress if he failed to appear for the interview. Michael Purpura, deputy counsel to Trump, said the subpoena “unconstitutionally encroaches on fundamental Executive Branch interests.” Kline’s attorney said his client would listen to his employer. Kline reportedly approved Jared Kushner’s security clearance despite several red flags raised by career officials.

 

[Wargames]

Career criminal? The characterizations are just ridiculous at this point.

Maybe he got him confused with his daddy.

Though to also be fair he’s done a whole lot of crimes in the last 3 years. So he’s had a short but effective criminal career

 

[boris]

Career criminal? The characterizations are just ridiculous at this point.

What you choose to address is very telling.

 

[gry60]

With this whole college debt discussion going on I’m starting to realize something through conversations at work. There are some people who oppose free college and debt cancellation out of resentment. These guys at work spoke of college debt as a check for the new generation of liberals

If you feel salty about that (like I do - gotta be honest), ask Warren if those who paid it off can get our interest back (and get it taxed as extra income); the salty folks who don't want to see that debt cancelled also don't realize that they are crippling the very people who will buy their houses and spend more in their businesses if they had that economic freedom. That's before we even touch the moral argument against charging insane interest on developing the human capital of this nation.

 

[champcruthik]

 

[IATT]

 

[IATT]

 

[RustyShackleford]

If you feel salty about that (like I do - gotta be honest), ask Warren if those who paid it off can get our interest back (and get it taxed as extra income); the salty folks who don't want to see that debt cancelled also don't realize that they are crippling the very people who will buy their houses and spend more in their businesses if they had that economic freedom. That's before we even touch the moral argument against charging insane interest on developing the human capital of this nation.

I paid back damn near 40k in loans, plus an extra 10k for my sister. I can't even lie, even though I support this plan wholeheartedly a single salty tear gonna roll down my cheek if it passes.

My girl has like 60k is loans left to pay, so she just became Warren's biggest fan.

Also I have noticed a ton of my liberal friends being against this because they are extra salty and feel if they had to pay theirs off, it is not fair other people get theirs written off. While I empathize I gotta break it down to them how good this will be for the economy. One of my homies that works at a car dealership and he paid off a ton of loans was vehemently against this when I talked to him last night. When I told dude "what did you think millennials with an extra $300-500 dollars in their pocket every month will spend that money on". His reaction...

Dude got wet at the thought of all dem extra whips he might sell.

 

[boris]

 

[RustyShackleford]

I gotta stop thinking about this because I am getting a little extra salty at all the things I sacrificed to pay off dem loans. I sold my car and started riding the bus to work for like 9 months

Imagine catching the bus to work at 6am in the morning, and you might be late because IG celebrity Welvin Da Great just stumbled on the bus and is asking g if the driver got change for a $20.

I'm late for my meetings with VPs because this dude is zooted out his mind...

Nah, Liz gonna have to give me at least a $20 Shoppers gift card or something.

 

[frenchbreadbuilds]

gry60 and RustyShackleford you guys touch on the exact reason why trickle down economics don’t work, and why it’s more effective to empower the bottom 90% as opposed to the top 10% if your true goal is sustained economic growth. The vast majority of consumers are the 90%, and are far more reliant in consuming goods than the 10%.

This paper is pretty technical but it does a good of what happens during times when the bottom 90% of earners experiences tax relief vs the top 10%.

The conclusion of the paper summarizes the point well.


“This paper quantifies the importance of the distribution of tax changes for their overall impact on economic activity. I construct a new data series of tax changes by income group from tax return data. I use this series and variation from the income distribution across states and federal tax shocks to estimate the effects of tax changes for different groups. I find that the stimulative effects of income tax cuts are largely driven by tax cuts for the bottom 90% and that the empirical link between employment growth and tax changes for the top 10% is weak to negligible over a business cycle frequency. These effects are not confounded by changes in progressive spending, state trends, or prior economic conditions. The effects seem to come from labor supply responses as well as increased consumption and investment.
These results are important for characterizing central equity-efficiency tradeoffs in tax policy. If policy makers aim to increase economic activity in the short to medium run, this paper strongly suggests that tax cuts for top-income earners will be less effective than tax cuts for
lower-income earners. While it is possible that tax cuts for top-income earners have sizable long-run impacts through different channels such as human capital investment, firm creation, or innovation,much more compelling evidence on these channels is needed to support top- income tax cuts on efficiency grounds, especially given the magnitude of resources devoted to these tax policy changes. Overall, the results not only suggest some skepticism for “trickle down” economics, but they also provide evidence that supply-side tax policies should do more to consider the relative efficacy of tax cuts targeted lower in the income distribution. Finally, as a note of caution, the estimates in this paper come from modest changes in tax rates that have been executed in the post-war period; using these estimates to evaluate the likely impacts of large tax changes on high-income earners requires extrapolation beyond the observed variation in the data.”

https://www.nber.org/papers/w21035.pdf

 

[dacomeup]

 

[dwalk31]

I refrained from opining on that because it was irrelevant to the point I was making. What something "feels" like is irrelevant in a factual examination, as is drawing conclusions based on just one or two indicators out of many.
I don't think you, or anyone else for that matter, should shy away from discussing economics because you don't happen to have a degree in it. There are boundaries to that of course, but one can learn a lot from examining how certain economic theories were applied in the past.
I will answer your questions at the bottom.

Hence why I brought up the Kansas example. From an isolated point of view, the declining unemployment and in the state and its residents having to pay less taxes looks to be a good thing.
A closer look at the HB 2117 tax cut law however paints a very different picture. Much like every other time someone tried to take trickle-down economics way too far, the result was economic devastation after a slight stimulus at first.
As in every other such case, the Kansas GOP proclaimed the tax cuts would pay for themselves. Unsurprisingly, it didn't. It does not take an economist to know that would be the outcome, all it requires is a history book.
Eventually, Kansas' republican-controlled legislature reversed Brownback's tax cuts in a damage control effort. Furthermore, they voted to raise taxes, overriding Brownback's veto to do so.

If you looked at the unemployment rates in the first few years since the passing of HB 2117, like I did in my example, they give the impression that things were going pretty good.
Presumably the Kansas residents were happy that they were paying less taxes as a result. Looking at those two factors might paint a picture of progress, but the subsequent devastation was set in motion to moment HB 2117 was signed into law.

Kansas did not see the kind of growth Brownback and his supporters wanted to see. In fact growth turned rather sluggish. The level of growth did not even outperform Kansas' own growth in previous years (source: Brookings Institute, Dept. of Labor), nor did it outperform its neighbor states or the national economic growth. The Kansas experiment even failed to provide any significant stimulus in the immediate aftermath of the signing of the law.
At the same time, the revenue gained from taxes drastically shrunk as a result of the tax cuts. What do you get with a sluggish economy and massive revenue shrinking? Ballooning deficits.
What do you get when budget deficits spiral out of control? Drastic budget cuts. Who is primarily affected by those cuts? The people living there, often the poorest.

Anyone willing to examine previous applications of supply-side economics and their aftermath would have known the end result of Brownback's tax cuts in Kansas.
A conclusion on the economy based on just 2 factors like declining unemployment and people paying less taxes is by default uninformed. Your reasoning would have concluded Kansas was progressing in the first ~2 years after the passing of HB 2117, but that law only resulted in a massive setback for the state and its residents.

None of the above requires an economics degree, as mentioned before it only requires being able to look at past history and read.



As for your questions, as mentioned earlier I refrained from opining because I felt it was irrelevant to the argument I was making.
If you're asking for my opinion on the US economy, I would agree that it has improved for now (I don't think that's debatable) but I am primarily concerned about the economic theory applied by the WH and Republicans in Congress. It uses the same basis as the Kansas experiment, Reagan's cuts, ...

For that reason, I am more concerned about the next few years. Economic forecasts, including from the Congressional Budget Office, project the US economy trending downwards from 2018. My bank has advised me of a downwards trend as well. In no particular order, they cited the impact of the continuing trade war, fading stimulus effect and decreased business investment.
As expected, the economy did not hit the highs projected by the WH, and now the economy is projected to slow down from 2018. Obviously the WH's claim of "tax cuts will pay for themselves" is never going to happen either. We can see that the US' budget deficit is already seeing record increases due to shrinking federal revenue combined with big spending projects.
If it follows the pattern of every other time this kind of implementation of supply-side economics has occurred in the US, eventually the process will have to be undone and hiking taxes back up will be required to combat the ballooning deficit issue resulting from the drastic decrease in federal revenue and growth not living up to its expectations. So I'm not comfortable calling it progress. Improvement yes, at least for now.
If something provides short term improvement but it ends in a major setback not much later, I can't really call it progress. Progress to me implies a sustained improvement that you can build on.

I don't believe tax cuts are inherently bad or anything, but there is a time and place for them and debunked premises like "the tax cuts will pay for themselves" should not be part of it.

As for your second question, of course I don't think it's unfair to use job reports as guidance for economic progress. That's a silly question.
Job reports are one of many factors, one that should not be ignored but it also shoudn't be the sole guidance. What would be unfair is using just one or two factors as guidance, not the act itself of using job reports as part of your guidance.

It seems, and correct me if I am incorrect, that you disagree with my principle conclusion that the US economy has progressed under this administration. And you would instead use the word improved? That's fine, I am okay with saying improved instead of progressed.

 

[jking0821]

Paid off over 100k in loans and i am all for forgiving them. I know how much that would have changed my life at the time and how much it truly handicapped me when i came out of college and lived at home for free and was paying $1,150 per month to Sallie Mae on my $33k per year salary