Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Kinda sad that so many delicate snowflakes can't handle hearing this sort of thing. Calling these remarks anti-Semitic seems like a mis-use of the term, and an ad hominem effort to delegitimize views one doesn't like.

Also disappointing: Tumblr's porn ban.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Tom Nichols on Twitter

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Really? So a world where stuff you say would get you kicked off TV is sad? Don't you mean scary?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

OK. Could be sad and scary.

I guess I am less worried about than about the effects on the discourse for all of us. I'm sure it's sad for him that he won't be on the TV so much.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

I don't disagree with a lot of what he says, but this shit right here is fucking infuriating: 'This "it's not your fault, the system has it in for you" bullshit pioneered by Bannon and weaponized by Trump is something conservatives castigated liberals for saying to minorities years ago. And rightly so: it deprives people of agency and responsibility.'

TM

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

And by “you” I meant Ty.

But to the point you thought we were talking about, of course we kill people for shit they say. I’d suggest a world where the market sorts it out, but even the clients that pay me usually don’t listen so let’s kill everyone who doesn’t stay in the lines.

Re: Barcelona
 

No. Do you ever get tired of being wrong about Trump being a cause, rather than a symptom? I understand the status quo delivers for you and me, so you'll make any argument in favor of the following, as it allows you to feel like you've done something to help the losers while giving up nothing yourself:

1. Redistribution;
2. Expanded safety nets;
3. Regulation that doesn't harm the economic sectors in which you operate.

Now on to substance... You seem to be advocating for inequality without populism. That can only occur where you "manage" (placate) the underclasses via redistribution and safety nets. That is a system which would deliver for those of us lucky enough to be in the top 20%. It's also Brave New World. No, that's not hyperbole. That's me getting to the classist element of your (and many others here) argument.

You think a society in which the losers take what we decide to give them is acceptable. Don't bristle. You think exactly that.

And to an extent, so do I. I think, "Give them UBI. It's got a nice multiplier, and it'll shut them the hell up."

The difference between you and me is that UBI, as I envision it, doesn't seek to "manage" these people. It allows them dignity. They still technically control their own existence. They retain agency, and freedom.

Your vision would be an expansion of govt programs that would increasingly micro-manage the lives of the underclasses. It would make them increasingly dependent on the whims of false elites like you and me -- people who think we know what ought to be done, but are really quite clueless, and have no appreciation for the law of unintended consequences. (Yes, we both are quite clueless and equally sure of ourselves.)

And now to the most important point: the Trump voter is not rich. I believe the Trump voter had an average income of $65k or $75k. That is a person who is treading water. (Average income in the country is something like $59k, and $50k is so low that people at that level pay no Fed income taxes.)

A person making $65-75k makes enough not to receive transfers via most safety nets, but barely enough to survive in most locales. These people are the pitchfork carrying populists. And they have good reason to be so. The system is built to hook up those of us at the top of the income ladder, and deliver via the safety nets to those at the bottom, but provide nothing for those in the middle treading water.

I understand why you'd see what I wrote as a bromide. You've probably never thought about the working poor in that doughnut hole I just described. You've focused on the destitute and absorbed the false argument that Trump voters are largely well off to affluent. This causes you to think the current populism is just greedy xenophobes.

Any model of the current populism needs to assume that the populists are the working poor, the middle class that is treading water. If you think those people do not have a right to be populist, or that the fact that they are shows a perversion in our society, you have it backwards. It is our perverted economic system - the one you advocate, in which winners take all and then "manage" the collapsing middle class - that is the problem.

If you defend the current status quo, be it under Obama, Bush, or Trump, in which we prop asset prices, hemorrhage jobs via labor arbitrage and automation, and respond to the collapse of the middle class with "let's just kick the can," you are part of the problem. You are the cause of Trump.

I own blame here. For years, I said here and many other places, "Eat your peas, you complainers. Globalization is inevitable, and our middle class has to suck it up until cost of foreign labor approaches ours." That argument assumed that the middle class would not find a voice like Trump or Bernie. Well, I was wrong. They found that voice. And your response, to assert that Trump is problem -- that he caused this populist uprising around the world -- makes the situation all the more problematic.

You cannot fix a problem until you reach consensus on what it is. Today's populism, the fragmentation and nationalism, is our fault. Yours, mine, and everyone else who ignored the losers in a global economy. If this sounds like a bromide to you, it's only because I must keep repeating it as, like the insane, you hear it over and over again and offer the same vacant retorts to it.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

What's inaccurate there? The current "conservatives" (populists) are asserting that the system is rigged against them. And it is. It's rigged for asset holders, and if you're a Trump voter with a $65-75k household income, you don't own adequate assets to to enjoy the appreciation in their value caused by that rigging.

Whether that is the fault of those populists, for not getting skills that allowed them to move further up the ladder, is an argument of degree. Personally, I think the angry, complaining Trump voter owns a decent percentage of his own situation. How much I don't know. But he owns some. As the author noted, he has agency. Everyone has agency.

And for "conservatives" to use the same argument with which they've pilloried Democrats for so many years is a putrid hypocrisy, distilled effectively to: "When you poor Democrats fail, it's entirely because you're lazy. When we Populist Conservatives fail, it's entirely because the system is rigged against us." Right... They can shove all that up their asses until it bleeds into their Eustachian tubes.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Ahhh, the mother of all third rails: Criticizing Israel.

I read his comments. Agreed. There is 000.0% anti-semitism there. Unless you apply the bizarre rule that to argue the Palestinian side is to automatically place yourself with anti-semites. If that's the case, if that political correctness applies, then every news story on the tensions between the Palestinians and Israelis must always take the Israeli side.

I had a professor once who referred to portions of Israel as "Occupied Palestine," out loud. This view was backed up with many solid arguments. One could agree or disagree with them, but one could never dismiss them as inappropriate for debate. They'd beat any 12(b)(6) and provide for an excellent summary judgment battle.

But isn't the aim of our current correctness to succeed in saturating the public with "approved narratives" by avoiding summary judgment, or trial, on these arguments? Isn't the whole point to kill the uncomfortable debates before they can be considered because if considered, the debate might go in a direction that the forces wishing to craft consensus don't want it to go?

Isn't that what's caused people to distrust almost all official sources of information? Amazingly, somehow, as dumb as the common man seems, he retains a strong bullshit detector. He spots the procedural dodge, the argument avoidance.

...If only he'd then decide to think for himself, to examine each issue in greater depth, rather than looking at both sides' bullshit and deciding, "I like Red Bullshit, so I shall join the Red Bullshit Club, and hate the Blue Bullshit Club."

Maybe he has no choice.

On Tumblr, I am too upset to comment. My universe is turned upside down, my faith in man all but destroyed.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

We are at the point where Bibi is throwing in with neo-Nazis in central Europe. Haaretz is apolplectic. My pioneer friends in Israel are telling all their kids to move to America.

England makes some noble efforts with Brexit, and Hungary shutting down a University is an impressive bit of insanity, but I think Israel is the real competition with us for the country-that-has-totally-lost-its-shit prize. Bibi starting a war in the north to distract from his indictment is the future we need to fear here.

Re: Barcelona
 

I'm going to need you to prove that you understand how averages work.

Again, I'm gonna need you to prove that you understand what a median is and how it differs from the mode.

Re: Barcelona
 

Actually, if this is your best reply (and it doesn’t do what you think it does... at all), burden of competence remains with you.

ETA: Average income for non-1% is $50k: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/07/19/inco...ed-states.html

Re: Barcelona
 

Do you think 1%ers voted heavy for Trump? I'm not sure I believe they did.

Re: Barcelona
 

2/3 of Trump voters below $100k. http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/why-trump...ou-might-think

You know any crazy rich folks who voted for Trump? I do. Maybe about 1/6 of the crazy rich folks I know. Most working in Koch Bros type industries.

But fuck all that... Any where in this country, is $75k household income affluent, even well off? Maybe the bowels of Mississippi?

Re: Barcelona
 

Re: Barcelona
 

But Clinton won among the under 100K, so probably 75-80% of voters are in that group.

Re: Barcelona
 

Avg Trump voter: 72k

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/...lass/83972800/

Re: Barcelona
 

Biggest percentage of trump voters are aspirational middle class. Their gripe is that they are getting squeezed. Cost of the American dream is quickly outpacing their income. Borrowing up to their eyeballs to get by.

Re: Barcelona
 

You forgot "white".

In general, Trump voters are a little better off than Clinton voters. But the Demographic characteristics that really distinguish them, where you see a real difference between the two candidates, aren't really income. It's religion, education, color, sex and age - those are all more important than income. Show me a white male evangelical without a college degree, and the odds are very high they are a Trump supporter. Show me a black woman... well, I don't need to go further.

There is this fantasy of the stressed out self- defined middle class middle American Trump supporter that is just total and complete bullshit when you go by the data. If you look at middle class voters as a whole, they split slightly for Clinton. It's the old white dudes who are full of shit, think Jesus loves them but not you, who like to yell at people to get off their lawn and speak english in the grocery who are Trump supporters. The assholes. The morons.

Re: Barcelona
 

Absolutely. But the suggestion Trump voters are largely economically comfortable or even affluent is just silly.

Being a fantasizing moron and struggling are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they often go hand in hand.

Re: Barcelona
 

1 exactly and add in the really smart third party voters, there is more anti-Trump than Trump.

2 these numbers are nonsense. Who would tell an exit poll how much you make?

Re: Barcelona
 

You've written two posts now characterizing the median income Trump voter as the typical Trump voter. Which is not how math works.

And now you've added a citation that further contradicts the point you were trying to make.

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Re: Barcelona
 

Why do we care? We're talking about a tiny slice of voters.

But what I think is that you can't observe that the median income of Trump voters was 40% greater than overall median incomes and take that as evidence that the typical Trump voter had the median income. Because, again, not how math works.

The math is telling us that the mid-point of Trump voter incomes is substantially higher than the mid-point of all incomes, thus the set of Trump voter incomes contains a greater number of higher incomes.

To actually answer your question, I'd guess that group voted for Trump, yes, mostly because I'd guess that group generally votes GOP and didn't not vote for Trump. Perhaps not heavily, though.

Re: Barcelona
 

It's not either/or, and he is absolutely a symptom. Symptom of what, is the question.

1. Definitionally, redistribution is taking money away from you and me to give to your "losers," so it actually *is* giving up something.

2. Expanding safety nets in a way that actually expands the safety nets for "losers" doesn't just *feel* like doing something, it is doing something.

3. On regulation, that's not what I think or what I've said, but if you need to pretend it is so that you can say something stupid and think you are responding to me, knock yourself out.

I think the issue here is that your "losers" are well enough off that they don't benefit from things we think of as redistribution or the safety net (e.g., SSDI), and they don't think of the things they benefit from (home mortgage deduction, defense spending, subsidizing roads over mass transit) as redistribution or a safety net. They see a government that talks about helping people who aren't well off, but isn't helping them, and they want some of that too. They feel entitled to this, so they feel aggrieved.

Instead of pretending that redistribution, the safety net and regulation don't do anything, your better argument is that what the government does in those areas doesn't do much for the concerns of your "losers." That's the issue, right?

No. I wasn't advocating for anything. I was saying that your explanation of Trump & populism as a symptom of inequality doesn't work, because you see lots of places where there is worse inequality and no populism. Your model is underdetermined. I was trying to point to other things that lead to populism (and Trump).

Because you missed the point, I'm just going to omit a lot of what you said next, until you got to....

I'm mostly with you here. Although I think you are missing something important, which is that Trump voters' incomes look better when you compare them to the averages where they live, rather than the country as a whole. Coastal cities and suburbs are doing better, have higher incomes, and do not strongly support Trump. Hardcore Trump voters tend to come from exurbs and rural areas where the average income is lower.

We have an economy that is doing very well for cities with well trained workers. People in the hinterlands feel left out, and worry about their future. You are describing facets of that, but the slogan you keep using, "inequality," is not the right word for what you are trying to describe, in part because the people who feel inequality the most -- the poorest -- don't tend to be Trump fans. His supporters are people in the middle. If you want to explain populism, you need to grapple with that, instead of repeating that populism is a disease, etc.

No, you didn't.

No. eta: That is very much *not* what I said in the post you responded to. I suggested that populism comes when people feel that the major political parties are not speaking to their concerns, and turn somewhere else.

The working poor and the middle class are two different things, and when you use them as synonyms, you unintentionally show that you have some concept of the lower class as being poor people who don't work. Presumably they just laze around, eating Cheetos all day and being poor, and then at night they go off to commit crimes. Seriously, there's this implicit status consciousness to what you say that implies that what defines the people you care about is that they are more deserving than the faceless poor below them. You talk about inequality, but it's very important to the kind of people you talk about that they are more equal than the poor, who don't deserve help. They care about equality for themselves but not for others, which actually is more like a form of inequality than a reaction to it.

If you really think this, how do you explain that Trump lost the popular vote in 2016 and the GOP lost it even worse in 2018? Either there are a lot of people winning in the current economy (in which case it's not winner take all) or there is a lot of false consciousness in blue places.

If I ever say those things, we can talk about them here. Until then, why don't we just stick to what I *am* saying.

Rest assured that I have not said that.

It's a bromide because it says nothing. If it's everyone's fault, it's no one's fault. If you really want to find fault with someone, you need to narrow it down a little.

And please think a little more critically about what you are saying. The economy has been global for a *long* time, and there have always been losers as a result. I just read the Lords of Finance, about the economy in the 1920s (good book, very well written). The UK pegged the pound to gold too high, and as a result industries in the UK got crushed by foreign competitors. Ninety years ago, shipbuilders in Liverpool were losers in the global economy. Foreign capital rushed into the NYSE, and companies like GM and RCA saw massive valuation increases -- which is to say, they raised capital from international investors and used it to hire people in places like Detroit. Those GM workers were winners in the international economy. The economy is always changing, creating new winners and losers. But the populism we have seen in the last ten years is different from the decade before. I'm not saying the global economy has nothing to do with it -- quite the opposite. I'm saying that bromides like "globalization" don't explain much.

Re: Barcelona
 

Honest to god, do you and Sebby have jobs?

Re: Barcelona
 

I can't speak for him, but I am so happy that I do not bill my time by the hour.

Pining for Dole
 

Further to the exchange GGG and I had yesterday about the first President Bush's legacy, this is good.

Re: Barcelona
 

I don’t bill hours (flat fee), and the majority of work I do now is business development and consulting.

I’m hoping to have run off the last of the litigation files by March.

Re: Barcelona
 

The post cites 72k as an average:

“In fact, Silver parsed the data to discover the average Trump voter makes $72,000 per year — a middle-class income solidly above the typical American.”

ETA: Bizarrely, it then states the following:

“As compared with most Americans, Trump’s voters are better off. The median household income of a Trump voter so far in the primaries is about $72,000, based on estimates derived from exit polls and Census Bureau data.”

WTF?

ETA: Median income in US was $50k for 2014, average was $75k. https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/...prodType=table

Median Trump voter is thus right at natl average. We can’t compare median and average, but it’s clear Trump voters are not generally affluent.

Re: Barcelona
 

You find this baffling? Someone from USA Today was imprecise, the ambiguity of which was immediately cleared up in the latter language, which is a quote of Nate Silver, who would not be imprecise in this way, who told you that the "average" in question is median. I mean, income data is pretty much always presented as median, so that should have been your assumption as to which "average" was being referenced, but nonetheless.

Not that it makes any real difference, though, because even if the data was the mathematical mean, it still would not give you sufficient information about the distribution of incomes within the sample to conclude that the mean income is indicative of typical incomes within the group.

Anywho. No one said that Trump's supporters are all affluent. Ty said his support was not among the poorest, which is true. The available data suggests that in relative terms, Trump voters are significantly more affluent overall than the country in general, but yes, that could just be because Trump himself was part of the sample.

As a mere result of population and income distributions, of course he wasn't elected on the back of a lot of rich people's votes. His supporters are undoubtedly mostly middle and upper middle class, both because that's where his message plays and because there's a lot of people those terms apply to.

But GGG ultimately had it right. It's not income or class, its education etc.

Re: Barcelona
 

I'm back to needing you to demonstrate you understand math. Median Trump voter income was $72k. Median US income was $50k. And yet you said that quoted language above.

Re: Barcelona
 

what's education? dumb people voted for trump?

Re: Pining for Dole
 

I wish I could remember the Republican Party the Bush fans now mourn. But I can't.

I grew up in an area where our most prominent politicians were people like J. Gordon Liddy, which for you youngun's is kind of Roger Stone on steriods, and Bill Buckley, who was not just the happy elitist his fans remember but also a deep seated racist and bigot of the first order. The GOP has long held sway among the Trumpers.

Re: Barcelona
 

That was intend as just a reference to what GGG said (quoted below) but I meant college degree:

Re: Barcelona
 

How about Jill Stein voters? the ones I know, 100% have a college degree; some 2 (hi Sebby!).

Re: Barcelona
 

Those are just dumb people.

Re: Barcelona
 

If there is a way to distinguish really dumb college grads, I think you'd cover most 3rd party voters. Maybe IQ test them?

Re: We are all Slave now.
 

Atrios on media bias, another excellent point:

Re: Barcelona
 

you have adder on ignore?