There's a specific quality of accomplishment, hard to define but easy to recognise, one instance of which will be enough. I can't put a number on how many accomplishments on the order of 'slightly decreasing the illegality of weed in California' can be stacked up to be considered equivalent, but it's large.

And I mean I won't lie. I'm fairly sure that if you had one of the former, I (and everyone) would know about it and wouldn't be asking. That's what I'm talking about, when I talk about the gulf between OWS' potential and its accomplishments.

Everyone in this thread talking about how we can just raise revenue to pay for Medicare is part of the problem.

The problem is that we're spending 150-250% of what other first world nations are spending on healthcare. Throwing more money at the problem is literally the worst thing you could do.

I'm fine with giving money to the government that is going to get used somewhat well, but there are multiple things the government spends money on that are straight up counter productive. Corn subsidies for instance have resulted in sugar being added to basically everything in the grocery store to the massive detriment of public health.

The government needs to simplify and automate to improve. The goal should be to get 95%+ of the money taken in through taxes back out to the citizens. This means we need to get rid of things like means testing for welfare (give it to everyone and instantly get rid of all the state employees who decide if people qualify or not... Also should make it possible for the federal government to get out of the employee regulation game entirely besides OSHA.)

Every administrative part of the world has gotten MUCH faster over the last 30 years because of the IT revolution. The executive branch has about 6% fewer employees than they had in 1980. That doesn't cover the relatively massive expansion in government contracting during that time period. When liberals pretend that the problem with government is that it isn't big enough it makes you look stupid. The common people interact with the government a fair bit, and they have basically nothing good to say about it.

And let's not pretend like you west coast liberal types love government whole heartedly. You guys hate working for the government so much that healthcare.gov hasn't found a competent web design company yet. A basic ecommerce site that can scale, something any company can create as many of as it wants within any reasonable time window, was beyond the government with a MASSIVE budget and over a year to execute. And now several years later it's still hot garbage. Please don't tell me that what I'm seeing with my own eyes isn't real.

Liberals are right that we can't just let the free market run rampant. It needs a traffic cop there to stop it from running over pedestrians. Also some big stuff needs something with government sized scale. There are also specific businesses with serious issues when private (natural monopolies and special price elasticity of demand situations). Everything else competition improves.

We should all get a lot less ideological and recognize the areas where the other side is just right. Liberals need to own the fact that the organization they love giving money to isn't doing a great job with the money. Conservatives need to own the fact that business is frequently a much worse actor than big government and requires significant amounts of regulation to allow social trust to exist... And social trust is one of those super special things countries should be optimizing for.

Conservatives also need to recognize that if you don't give the poors enough to buy in to society they'll choose to be outlaws. If enough of them make that choice you'll have an actual revolution with guns and everything. Conservatives also need to recognize that too much inequality is bad for social trust and GDP because of resentment and demand effects. People are going to say to themselves "I work 8-10 hard hours a day at a restaurant, why can't I afford a place to live, decent food, and a car that runs?" You don't want that question asked at all. Poor people also spend 100% of what they earn on consumption which drives the economy, many successful people (myself included) spend <50% of our income on consumption.

Conservatives also need to stop denying climate change. It's just stupid when you can physically see the changes happening in the real world. Saying 'I don't see it' makes it physically impossible for me to vote for you. You just look so ****ing bad on this. Nobody is saying we're going to stop using fossil fuels overnight, but pass cap-and-trade please? It's a conservative solution to the problem that I happen to like a lot.

Same for weed and LGBT stuff. You're behind the times and you're not going to win. Let it all go. It's people wanting the freedom to live their lives how they want, it's a fundamentally conservative position.

Basically can we all just agree on reality? What's really real? Not just silly positions we're taking because that's what our party decided was true in the 80's.

^nice post. When it comes to healthcare we need our government to be able to do what every other government on earth does and negotiate prices. It's no wonder pharma companies put out their new drugs here at insane prices as they just can and the regulations are more lax. Dean Baker talks about how we protect our doctors, etc. from competition while we make damn sure our manufacturing workers compete with $2 a day China workers. We also pay our doctors a hell of a lot more $ per year than comparable EU countries do. That cost gets shown in our premiums, etc.

My hope is that on stuff like LGBT/weed/abortions, the younger generations are way more liberal on these issues and I have yet to meet someone younger who is openly against these things (sure it could be sample bias). We need the 2 parties to become more of a labor/business model than what we have now where both parties are beholden to big money and big corporations while pushing social issues to split the vote. We aren't even Americans anymore but Republicans/Democrats and everyone thinks the other wants to destroy the country. It's insane. We need to teach more evidence based rational thinking and go with solutions that come from that.

Since this thread is supposedly about the tragic death of the Democratic party, (that is the thread title), I thought I would throw in my two cents worth ...

In all the hoopla yesterday over Trump's inauguration, a few commentators noted that Trump is taking office with the lowest approval rating of any President ever. (I think his approval rating is somewhere in the high 30-percent range - meaning that barely more than one-in-three Americans have a favorable opinion of our new President.)

There's no denying that those who love Trump believe in him with an almost religious fervor. The afternoon radio program "Marketplace" broadcasted live from Erie County, Pennsylvania last Thursday. Ky Rysdal, the host, spoke with numerous Trump voters who expressed their frustrations over having seen their $20 and $30/hour jobs disappearing and going overseas. Despite strong evidence to the contrary, (i.e. Trump's own branded products are not made in the United States by American workers), these folks actually believe Trump is going to bring back their high paying "family sustaining" jobs.

Trump talks a good game, but he's not going to bring back millions of high paying union jobs to the rust belt. Part of the reason those jobs "disappeared" is because unions priced their "product" (i.e. labor) out of the market. Even Trump himself has complained that "wages are too high" in the United States - and that's why he has his ties and apparel manufactured over in China.

At some point it will begin dawning on the folks in Erie County, and similar Midwestern states that voted for Trump, that their jobs aren't coming back. As that realization begins sinking in, the question will be whether or not Democrats can get their act together and nominate a candidate [to run against Trump] who isn't saddled with high negatives. If Trump (and Republicans) go overboard ripping out the fabric of the social safety net, it's possible that even a socialist like Bernie Sanders could get elected.

When it comes to politics and sensing the public mood, my record is not stellar. However, it's not that difficult to see that if the GOP massively overreaches, they'll open the door for a resurgence of the Democratic Party. Even a handful of [brave?] Republicans seem to realize that possibility - people like Susan Collins of Maine and even Tennessee Senator Bob Corker. When Trump's popularity begins subsiding and members of his own party begin sensing that they are imperiled by Trump, they'll turn on him. Trump is riding high right now, but let's see how he's riding after the country has had four years of his always-flapping lips.

This is all very well but I sense your liberal world view is colouring things. I did not get any real sense that this was about economics, jobs or anything remotely rational.

From what I could tell Trump got elected because a majority of white Americans just hate any one of another race, and they are also deeply misogynistic. You do not see Trump supporters making lucid arguments about the decline of the working class, they are mosty dribbling idiots incapable of forming complete sentences without resorting to slogans.

I noticed the same phenomenon here in the UK with Brexit and the same liberal explanation "Oh it can't be because people are just dumb and xenophobic. It must be some underlying economic problems that the poor little working class dears can't express." There's this middle-class politeness and unwillingess to be labelled as patronizing that stops them saying "These people are just *****".

If those jobs are gone forever-then the Trump voters will blame something other than Trump. They might blame Sillicone valley for automating their jobs (with some justification actually). Or they might blame it on the Zionist lizard conspiracy or whatever bull**** Alex Jones is peddling this week. It doesn't matter.

I think Betty White 2020 would work. She would only be 99 on Inauguration Day, plus her last name is White.

I think the two things got intertwined a lot in this election. Historically here racism has been driven often by economic woes and blaming other races.

So while it was not just about middle class jobs, that was a key component high was fueled by race.

Immigrants are stealing jobs. Blacks and Hispanics are sucking up all the tax dollars being on welfare. Those two factors worked in strong correlation and were clearly targeted by Trump's campaign.

Some of the racist stuff will be implemented but none of the economic benefits will. The middle class will be much worse off in four years now.

You're jumping ship when the other side has been regularly cutting revenue in order to defund social programs whenever they have power and in states they do have power.

The US spending as much as it does on healthcare is a result of conservative intransigence. The answer to the question "under conservative policy, how do poor people get healthcare?" is "they don't". Until this is no longer true, it's hard to have any dialogue on the issue. It's tough to blame liberals for trying to awkwardly and expensively nail on healthcare for poors to the existing system when any attempt at wholesale reform to achieve this will be dismissed as out of the question.

Also, I'd note also that there's something worse you can do than raise revenue and then throw money at Medicare. Namely, NOT raise revenue and then throw money at Medicare. I suspect this will be Trump's policy.

Actually they haven't been cutting revenue.

Actually you're wrong.

No you are. Federal govt revenue was at an all time high for fiscal 2016.

Try reading comprehension.

LOL

In fact spending on social programs has actually increased. Try telling the truth. Name the social program that has been defunded.

There are a lot of factors that contribute to the spending. You can't just point to one and claim that's the reason. But the factor that doesn't get discussed enough imo is all the crap processed food, sugar and chemicals that Americans eat.

So tell me how much control did the R's have in govt when there's checks and balances. Like I said you fail at reading comprehension.

Republicans have been defunding programs in Florida since Rick Scott has been in office. You know in places they fully control? Like I said in the first place.

Go be dishonest elsewhere.

TANF spending has remained roughly the same but has been increasingly diverted to non sense socially conservative "cultural" programs that do not feed the poor. There are less people on it out of the potential applicants than when it was started and they receive less per person with more onerous requirements.

That isn't gutted, TANF is administered by states and please provide some dat so we can discuss. Also TANF was passed as welfare reform during the Bill Clinton administration. Laying that totally on Republicans is absurd. There were reasos why AFDC was reformed. Regarding feeding the poor, what about food stamps and a host of other programs.

Here's a link to a tax policy center giving per capita data on tax revenue.
Per Capita State by State Revenue

The claim by Paul D is just plain wrong. He is promoting a false narrative.

You could say tax revenue should be higher, maybe be higher as a percentage of GDP, maybe say something about income tax revenue should be a higher percentage of revenue collected etc. But claiming Republicans are reducing revenue is just not true. Stating social programs have been gutted is complete BS. Again you could state there should be more programs, better programs, more aid given in the ones that exist and such. Claiming that they've been gutted is again promoting a false narrative.

#falsenarrativesftw

Well sure, that and also....how much money the US has to spend. The strength of correlation between wealth and how much a nation spends on its healthcare is surely far, far stronger than the strength of correlation between the particular mode of healthcare delivery they employ.

There is no scenario in which the US does not outspend every other country in the world on healthcare, nor should there be. At best you could argue that the gap should be smaller....maybe. At best you could argue that the outcomes could be better....which is true! But also, we are far past the point of diminishing returns for most healthcare outcomes, so it takes a ****load of money to improve most metrics. And our outcomes are already pretty good, debatably the best depending on how you want to view things. We could definitely stand to abort more babies, thats a super cheap way to climb a few spots.

I guess those numbers don't take into account inflation. If not 29 states saw a real terms reduction in revenue between 2008 and 2013. The ones with the largest reductions tended to be massively Republican at the state level.

Adios is just a dishonest poster. Especially with what link he posted.

http://www.miamiherald.com/news/poli...e55772115.html

http://www.desmoinesregister.com/sto...tage/96541076/

Programs have been cut in my state. A Republican one at the moment.

And lets look at states with revenue shortfalls...

https://www.multistate.com/insider/2...ue-shortfalls/

LOL adios... keep drinking your Kool-aid. Majority happen to be red states.

iirc it's a separate known 2p2er, which is why mods are so confident in saying it's not ikes. seems obv some former paul supporter who was banned - laughable to suggest he came across the forum in 2016 based on his knowledge of forum culture etc.

Adios, you're not paying attention to what I said. I said spending was remained the same but the dollars spent by a person on food has gone down and the actual people who have it vs potential people who could be on it has gone down. So where did that extra money go? Well states have increasingly took that money and used it on "cultural poverty" programs like marriage promotion. It's the best of all worlds. The religious base gets to have their state sponsored marriage promotion, less money actually goes to the poors, and the program is an eternal punching bag for people who just look at spending and don't see the overall spending go down.

The only people hurt by it are the actual poor who, you know, aren't getting food.

Is anybody else following the race for the Chairmanship of the DNC?
White candidate Sally Boyton Brown of Idaho made a strong case why the DNC should not choose a white candidate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LDOdcsh435Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ID223ToMVxM

TULSI <3 2020