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Carly Is Out
MouseTheLuckyDog writes: I don't like stories that are not nerd oriented, but given Carly Fiorina's disastrous time as HP's CEO, the second only to Stephen Elop's tenure at Nokia, I think it is appropriate to announce that as of now Carly Fiorina is out of the Presidential race.
I wouldn't necessarily cheer. If all of her supporters (only about 4% in NH, and even less in Iowa) went to the candidate you liked least of the remaining and it was close enough to put them in a position to win, you probably would prefer that she stay in the race. Though it this case it's not like it really matters much as the rest of the Republican candidates are so unappealing I'd rather vote for a self-described Socialist than any of the remaining Republican plonkers. At least Sanders is honest (for a politician anyway), but it remains to be seen if he'll get his party's nomination as the establishment seems bent on backing Clinton.
Perhaps if you, and others who have views like yours, would thoughtfully consider both sides and come to your own conclusions about the merit of specific ideas, you might realize that the political spectrum is very multi-dimensional. The only ones who want it to be a choice between exactly two possibilities are the GOP and Democrats.
For example, I've always leaned conservative and very much tended to vote Republican. From that I know why I don't support minimum wage increases (it causes unemployment increases and reduces incentive to learn the skills required for just-above-minimum-wage positions, while unfairly targeting low-skill labor markets). I would even consider the idea of getting rid of it altogether. But instead of just blowing off the idea completely, I started looking into why people support it. Turns out, I also don't want many people dying of hunger or huge increases in homeless people in the streets and poverty-induced crime. So my current favorite solution is to satisfy both: direct government wealth redistribution from the richest to fund food, shelter, clothing, and other essentials for the poorest, combined with removing the minimum wage in order to increase employment and hence reinstate labor competition.
Not that any of that matters. Too many people like yourself only see black-and-white, unless you are willing to think for yourself.
All my liberal friends think I'm a conservative, all my conservative friends think I'm a liberal.
For example, I've always leaned conservative and very much tended to vote Republican. From that I know why I don't support minimum wage increases (it causes unemployment increases and reduces incentive to learn the skills required for just-above-minimum-wage positions, while unfairly targeting low-skill labor markets). I would even consider the idea of getting rid of it altogether. But instead of just blowing off the idea completely, I started looking into why people support it. Turns out, I also don't want many people dying of hunger or huge increases in homeless people in the streets and poverty-induced crime. So my current favorite solution is to satisfy both: direct government wealth redistribution from the richest to fund food, shelter, clothing, and other essentials for the poorest, combined with removing the minimum wage in order to increase employment and hence reinstate labor competition.
Likewise, I have often felt the minimum wage was a mistake, it implies that the waged listed is "acceptable" because it is "approved".
Without one at all, perhaps people might get more, but it leaves them free to take less if they wish. The problem with such a system is that it works in theory, but not always in the real world where companies have more power than people do.
I've also done some detailed math recently and been surprised to find what raising the wage does to prices. It isn't as bad as the Republicans imply, but not as good as the Democrats promise (big shocker).
So I support two things now:
Raise the minimum wage for people over 18 years old to $15/hr, no exceptions other than a few for disabled workers who otherwise wouldn't have jobs at all. This includes waitstaff at restaurants.
Make the government the "employer of last resort". If you do not have a job, and you are hungry, poof, the government will employ you to do... something... for $10/hr.
That is your incentive to not stay working for the government, you'll make more if you can find a private sector job. Maybe the government can employ you to clean up trash, dig ditches, stack books at the library, etc. If you find a part time job for 20 hours a week at $15/hr, great... you may continue working for the government for the other 20 hours at $10/hr, giving you an incentive to take ANY private work you can find, it won't cost you your existing "welfare" as it does today.
Unemployment would be shortened to 1-3 months max, a short time to find another job, but not the year or more it is in some places now. Right now, we're paying a WHOLE LOT OF PEOPLE to sit at home and do nothing. This is stupid.
I'm happy to provide for those who are hungry, but I do think they should work for it. It doesn't have to be fancy work, or even all that productive, it just has to be something. It is a way of saying, "no worries, we will not let you starve, here is work, here is food (maybe $3/hr of the $10/hr could be paid via food stamps)
his successful campaign is a head-scratcher.
This has happened twice in Australias recent political history with Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer.
It is a direct sign of frustration with mainstream politics.
Most sane Americans know most of their politicians are bought by big business or controlled by a shadow government. Voting for buffoons is like a cry for help. Things aren't bad enough for an outright revolution, so the alternative is to 'stick it to the man' by supporting Trump.
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The establishment backing Clinton in the face of the exact democratic opposite would mean it really should change it's name from the Democrats to Republicans lite (as opposed to Republicans bagger edition). The blatant corruption is on show and it will blow right up in their faces if they keep attempting to force the issue, the corrupt control of politics versus the electorates attempts to recover control of their politics. The corporate controlled DNC "Bent on backing Clinton", 'bent' being a very appropriate word choice. Reality is we win either way.
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
You correctly (although somewhat pejoratively) point out the choice a libertarian has to make in every election. I happen to think fiscal conservatism is at the moment more important than social liberalism, (because the fastest, most effective way to take away people's choices is to take away their fiscal discretion) so I'm going with the Republicans for now. Well, some of them. The ones that are actually fiscally conservative. Next election I might re-register and participate in the other primary, depending on the issues.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Wait, what? We have the highest economic inequality in the last 100 years (and worse, in some ways). The last 40 years have basically been one right center economically conservative president after another (if you look at the math, Clinton did more to contribute to it than either Bush). Who's "choices" will be taken away by moderately raising taxes on those in the very top tax brackets? Trump, for example, says he wants to "make America great again", when if you look at it his definition of great (the economic boom of the 50s-60s) had a top tax bracket of 90%.
If you want a proven fiscal conservative and moderate social liberal, you should be supporting Hillary. None of the Republican candidates have the slightest clue what their back-asswards ideas will do to the US economy (and most people who actually have a clue say they will be disastrous). At least with Hillary you will get more of the same from the last 40 years.
I say that with the opinion that the majority of the country's social issues over the the history of the US have at their root cause economic inequality. Crime rates, educational imbalances/opportunity, racial inequality/bigotry, health care, and obviously significant poverty have been exacerbated by the fact that the top 0.1% has made more money than the bottom 50%. And they are just accumulating it for apparently no reason other than to keep score. The fact is, if you have something to live for and aren't just surviving day to day, you are a lot less likely to risk your life and future committing property crimes. But Republicans seem more willing to pay $50,000 a year to incarcerate a poor person than pay them a living wage (which is less than $50,000).
I wish we could get someone like Sanders in as President, and put the tax brackets back to where they were in 1960, fix the ridiculous capital gains rate, etc. Given the current divisiveness in US politics that probably won't happen. So we're probably still screwed for the foreseeable future...
Except of course that the republican party was the original social democrats of America. The progressive movement was started by the republicans, probably the most progressive president America ever had (and in terms of domestic policy - the closest to Sanders) was Teddy "The Trustbuster" Rooseveldt - a republican.
The republican party only really went far-right in the goldwater years, and the democrats didn't go left -at at least no more than to pass the civil rights act (which I would call centrist at best). By the early 1990s America had two right wing parties - and the democrats was the more rightwing one in policy (if not in rhetoric), Clinton expanded the drug war and racist incarceration laws in ways that Nixon, Reagan and Bush could only have dreamt about. He gutted the welfare system in a way that they would never have dared to !
The progressive voters moved to the democrat party in the 2000s only - and they were a minority. Even in 2008 during the Obama campaign only 23% of Democrats identified as liberal, 47% identified as "moderate" and the remaining small bit as "conservative". That shifted sharply since then. Today 45% or more democrats identify as liberal - and they are finally pulling the supposedly leftwing party towards actual leftwing policies. Bernie is riding that wave - and it may just mean you get another example of one of your strong contenders for best president ever (T. Rooseveldt). The top two competitors for that title would be Lincoln and FDR.
Funny how, as a devoted and hardline liberal - I nevertheless consider two of the best presidents America ever had to have been republicans. But this was before the republican party became literally the exact opposite of everything it was created as.
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