I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I've been anti-corporate state for a long time.

Just to connect two different things you're saying, whatever concern you have about privity (with another private company being required by the government), there's no apparent reason why that concern should goes away if you can opt out of the market entirely. So you should care just as passionately that the government forces you to buy auto insurance from a private company instead of nationalizing that industry and providing it itself with no compelled privity.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

And your ass ain't talking its way out of this shit."

https://seekingalpha.com/article/406...pension-crisis

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

And your ass ain't talking its way out of this shit."

https://seekingalpha.com/article/406...pension-crisis

I think think tanks like AEI ought to keep track of their record on prognostications.

Theory: the more ideologically hide-bound the think tank, the less reliable their projections.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

And your ass ain't talking its way out of this shit."

https://seekingalpha.com/article/406...pension-crisis

An April 2016 Moody’s analysis pegged the total 75-year unfunded liability for all state and local pension plans at $3.5 trillion

That's 19% of 2016 GDP over 75 years. It's an issue, but not the apocalypse some are selling you.

Basically, well-managed municipalities (generally blue) will figure out how to pay for it while those expecting poorly-managed (generally red) to cover them will be screwed unless we get a Dem controlled future Congress to kick in.

And, of course, immigration would help but we're going the wrong way there.

[Hank Chinaski]

As to today's "buy American" executive order, I simply want to recount a very bad time from my past. Ronald Reagan signed a similar measure. I was new to Commerce, and attended a "Welcome to Commerce dept" mixer twice: once for me, and then a few months later for the woman who became the Missus. Back then drinking Cali wine was no picnic, but that's no problem now. No, the real on going nightmare is that we then, and they now, had to eat American "caviar."

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Adder

That's 19% of 2016 GDP over 75 years. It's an issue, but not the apocalypse some are selling you.

Basically, well-managed municipalities (generally blue) will figure out how to pay for it while those expecting poorly-managed (generally red) to cover them will be screwed unless we get a Dem controlled future Congress to kick in.

And, of course, immigration would help but we're going the wrong way there.

Scroll down to "Public Playground." http://www.mauldineconomics.com/fron...aring-pensions

I agree, however, that this will be a location-based crisis. It's going to be pretty wild because we'll see municipalities bordering each other facing highly disparate futures. The family a few blocks away could be subject to staggering property tax increases, while you see none. Be interesting how this impacts property values at the municipal and state levels.

Also, in most of the Mid Atlantic at least, there is no more room to increase property taxes. This is proven by the fact that these states have for many years now relaxed laws on gaming and casinos in an effort to raise revenue. That's typically something states only engage in when they have no other sources of revenue.

There's also a considerable political debate in Mid Atlantic states about enhance sales and personal income taxes to relax property taxes. That's not indicative of a climate, or capacity, to absorb property tax increases needed to fund pension shortfalls.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Tyrone Slothrop

Just to connect two different things you're saying, whatever concern you have about privity (with another private company being required by the government), there's no apparent reason why that concern should goes away if you can opt out of the market entirely. So you should care just as passionately that the government forces you to buy auto insurance from a private company instead of nationalizing that industry and providing it itself with no compelled privity.

It's that exact inability to opt out that creates the forced privity. If one can opt out, he has not been forced into anything.

I'm not concerned for the guy who complains that he must buy auto insurance in order to drive. If he doesn't like that, he can download Uber, or take the bus. The guy being told he must buy a certain form of expansive health care plan, simply because he's alive and has the means to do so, has no choice. He's being told he must contract with private entities.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

I think think tanks like AEI ought to keep track of their record on prognostications.

Theory: the more ideologically hide-bound the think tank, the less reliable their projections.

Re shooting the messenger, an empirical analysis of a recent, lurid example: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/o...talk.html?_r=0

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Scroll down to "Public Playground." http://www.mauldineconomics.com/fron...aring-pensions

Why?

But since I did, let's take a look at some of this:

When we have a significant bear market during the next recession (that is not an if but rather a when), that $6 trillion figure will balloon to double that amount or more.

This is fun. Take an unsourced, high-end estimate of today's number (btw, that's still only 30ish% of today's GDP, and presumably must be a long-term projection) and then project a future bear market onto it without considering the offsetting future bull market. Economics!

Nationwide, state and municipal spending has risen from $730 billion in 1990 to $2.4 trillion in 2015. And yet the amount of money used to fund pensions has risen only a fraction of the amount that other spending has.

Why are we assuming a relationship between total spending and pension spending? How is that comparison even relevant?

Also, a very big chunk of that spending increase is inflation, why not control for it? Right, because we're not even attempting rational analysis, this is hype mode.

Those pension-funding levels are going to be further eroded during the next recession because more and more cities and states are increasing their equity exposure, and low interest rates are not helping matters.

A more sober way of stating this is: of course pension liabilities look bad in a persistent super-low interest rate environment. because they're traditional heavily invested in fixed income assets. They'll look better if we ever get to more "normal" interest rates (may not be any time soon) and/or if pension funds manage to get better returns from equities. And again, it's super weird to only focus on the downside risk of equities without considering the upside too.

It’s hard to imagine good outcomes here. Retirees want what their contracts promised, but the money just isn’t there. Governments have little recourse but to raise taxes, but the taxpayers aren’t captives. Higher property taxes will make them move elsewhere. Higher sales taxes will make them shop elsewhere.

I'm pretty sure we have empirical evidence that this isn't true, in that relatively high tax municipalities aren't having trouble finding residents or shoppers. Regardless, if this is a problem everywhere, everywhere will have to have higher taxes.

I don't think the local fallout will be as interesting as you think. There will be some jostling among adjacent suburbs, maybe, but high-tax cities will still be high-tax cities with lots of other reasons people will want to be there.

[Adder]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

If he doesn't like that, he can download Uber, or take the bus.

Your auto insurance tyranny is forcing people to do business with a private ride-sharing corporation! Worse yet, some bus companies are corporations too!

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Re shooting the messenger, an empirical analysis of a recent, lurid example: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/o...talk.html?_r=0

Murray is the ultimate example of the way Ivies engage in affirmative action to benefit white conservative academics. People have been explaining logic 101 to him for forty years, and he still ignores it whenever he has the opportunity to spew racist or sexist bile. Every school has one of these, a conservative academic who does total shit work but who they keep around because he is high profile and lets them say they have a conservative. Every school has one, I should say, Harvard keeps one or two in every school.

Conservatives should hate this. This, combined with the anti-intellectual fervor of places like Fox, is part of why there is so little quality conservative scholarship these days - I mean, where is the Milton Friedman or Bill Buckley of the current generation? Instead there is "public intellectual" (god I hate that phrase) Bill O'Reilly and Harvard Professor (he always leads with the Harvard) Charles Murray, spewing illogical bile.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

It's that exact inability to opt out that creates the forced privity. If one can opt out, he has not been forced into anything.

I'm not concerned for the guy who complains that he must buy auto insurance in order to drive. If he doesn't like that, he can download Uber, or take the bus. The guy being told he must buy a certain form of expansive health care plan, simply because he's alive and has the means to do so, has no choice. He's being told he must contract with private entities.

Uber is like Juicero, but for cars.

[sebastian_dangerfield]

Originally Posted by Greedy,Greedy,Greedy

Murray is the ultimate example of the way Ivies engage in affirmative action to benefit white conservative academics. People have been explaining logic 101 to him for forty years, and he still ignores it whenever he has the opportunity to spew racist or sexist bile. Every school has one of these, a conservative academic who does total shit work but who they keep around because he is high profile and lets them say they have a conservative. Every school has one, I should say, Harvard keeps one or two in every school.

Conservatives should hate this. This, combined with the anti-intellectual fervor of places like Fox, is part of why there is so little quality conservative scholarship these days - I mean, where is the Milton Friedman or Bill Buckley of the current generation? Instead there is "public intellectual" (god I hate that phrase) Bill O'Reilly and Harvard Professor (he always leads with the Harvard) Charles Murray, spewing illogical bile.

I don't know or much care about the argument he offered to underpin The Bell Curve. There's no reason to read that book, as one can ascertain from simply meeting enough people the notion any certain group is natively smarter or dumber than another is a preposterous generalization. We're in agreement his "controversial" argument there is actually just sensationalist tripe.

I think the reason we see no more Buckleys is because we've moved from a society of discourse to one of advocacy. Everyone has an opinion he's clamoring to spout, and the attention span of the audience is akin to that of gnats. Buckley and Vidal would get .0000043% in ratings today. "TL;DW!"

Buckley harrumphed a lot, but he allowed a guy with contrary point to get in his licks, and he'd acknowledge where someone found a flaw in his argument. That shit ain't happening anymore because nobody gives a fuck about discourse. Nobody wants a back and forth where they have to adjust their points. People want to advocate. The dumb fucks don't realize - the only way you make an argument bulletproof is to allow the other side to batter it, and to drop the parts of it which opponents prove to be flawed.

And the only way to shut up a guy like Murray is to put him to his proofs. Sure, that risks merely assisting him in honing his sophistry. But throwing a shit fit at his speech? That's just giving him $100k in new speaking fees. Self-defeating advocacy.

I also think a better way to assess ideas, or public statements, or art, is to distance them from the source. Bill Cosby's funny comedy bits aren't suddenly awful because he's a rapist. Eric Clapton's lunatic racist speech about Enoch Powell in the '70s doesn't soil the beauty of Layla and Assorted Love Songs. In this same regard, I can remain a fan of Murray's concept for paring the regulatory state in We the People while concluding he's a deplorable sensationalist elsewhere.

[Greedy,Greedy,Greedy]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I don't know or much care about the argument he offered to underpin The Bell Curve. There's no reason to read that book, as one can ascertain from simply meeting enough people the notion any certain group is natively smarter or dumber than another is a preposterous generalization. We're in agreement his "controversial" argument there is actually just sensationalist tripe.

I think the reason we see no more Buckleys is because we've moved from a society of discourse to one of advocacy. Everyone has an opinion he's clamoring to spout, and the attention span of the audience is akin to that of gnats. Buckley and Vidal would get .0000043% in ratings today. "TL;DW!"

Buckley harrumphed a lot, but he allowed a guy with contrary point to get in his licks, and he'd acknowledge where someone found a flaw in his argument. That shit ain't happening anymore because nobody gives a fuck about discourse. Nobody wants a back and forth where they have to adjust their points. People want to advocate. The dumb fucks don't realize - the only way you make an argument bulletproof is to allow the other side to batter it, and to drop the parts of it which opponents prove to be flawed.

And the only way to shut up a guy like Murray is to put him to his proofs. Sure, that risks merely assisting him in honing his sophistry. But throwing a shit fit at his speech? That's just giving him $100k in new speaking fees. Self-defeating advocacy.

I also think a better way to assess ideas, or public statements, or art, is to distance them from the source. Bill Cosby's funny comedy bits aren't suddenly awful because he's a rapist. Eric Clapton's lunatic racist speech about Enoch Powell in the '70s doesn't soil the beauty of Layla and Assorted Love Songs. In this same regard, I can remain a fan of Murray's concept for paring the regulatory state in We the People while concluding he's a deplorable sensationalist elsewhere.

It is not worth putting Murray through his proofs because he doesn't care how wrong he is or whether he can try to make it right. It's just a waste of time. He deserves only ridicule. When he is ready to listen, he can call, until then, it's a waste of time. Yeah, I wouldn't bother to protest his speech myself, since he is playing for the notoriety.

There is lots of perfectly civil discourse in all kinds of avenues these days, but it ends when a right winger walks in the room talking politics.

[Pretty Little Flower]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

Re shooting the messenger, an empirical analysis of a recent, lurid example: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/15/o...talk.html?_r=0

You keep using the term "shooting the messenger" to describe instances where people disregard or criticize otherwise valid information because they do not like who is delivering the information. But shooting the messenger means to attack the person delivering the information, not because of anything about the person, or even because you feel that the person ascribes to or is somehow to blame for the information, but simply because you don't like the information delivered by that person. So, for example, Charles Murray is attacked (in your example) not because of actual merits his more recent ideas, but because people hate him because of the bell curve book. This is not shooting the messenger. An example of shooting the messenger would be attacking the postman who delivered the copy of the bell curve book because you don't like the book.

Cymande has a message. but don't shoot them. Their message is one of funk and harmony. The Daily Dose is "The Message":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VO91BtMIciU