International Oligarchy is not just a Russian phenomenon. It exists right here in the USA.

[Islam Imamate]

Life expectancy in America is lesser than it is in Cuba. America is capable of being better than that with all our advancements in healthcare and technology, getting outplayed by a runt like Fidel in any metric is embarassing…

I'm skeptical that the Cuban regime is being honest about that data but in fairness there are other countries that are "poorer" than the US in the sense of having smaller economies and lower GDP per capita figures that nonetheless have higher life expectancies.

Cynicism and Populism coupled together is a recipe for disaster. The Naxalite movement back in India is concise evidence for that.

That being said, a “fair market” economy is pretty subjective. Time and time again, wealth has shown not to redistribute reasonably for the working class. Since ‘87, the top 1% federal tax has plummeted and swimmed around 30-40%. The trend of income disparity has only risen since then….It is uncanny.

Historical Income Tax Rates

Wolters Kluwer takes a historical look at the top marginal income tax rates in the United States.

www.wolterskluwer.com

If you want to argue the market isn't fair for some reason that's one thing, depending on the specific issue I might very well agree. The goal though should be to work towards a more fair market but populists, especially left wing populists, aren't in favor of fairer markets as much as they are anti-market.

So for example housing costs are rising and that is an issue. The unfairness in the system is that the excessive rules and regulations makes it hard for those who want to build housing while the current tax policy incentivizes land speculation. If your neighbors can veto your housing project and instead make money based on appreciation of land values you will have less housing.

IMO the solution is to create a fairer market by cutting some of that red tape so that its easier for all developers, whether big corporations or families looking to renovate their own homes, can more easily build while taxing land values to discourage land speculation. Left wing populists on the other hand tend to support anti-market policies like rent control which doesn't work.

I wouldn’t necessarily have a particular issue with the billionaire entourage or their tax cuts either if stuff like Healthcare were efficiently universalized or infrastructure was well-maintained like in Singapore. They manage to do that with some freakishly low tax rates.

Tax in Singapore | Singapore Tax Guide - HSBC Expat

Moving in to or out of Singapore? Get in-depth information for expats on different taxes and how to deal with them.

www.expat.hsbc.com

Nonetheless, I’m not saying that we need to go all technocratic like Singapore but surely, there is some unnecessary expenditure going on the government’s behalf that can be better served in the domains of universalized healthcare or rebuilding impoverished communities.

See I disagree and I think this gets at a widely held myth, namely that there's so much waste in government that if we merely cut it out we could fund social programs without raising taxes. The reality is there isn't a lot of invisible waste.

Now I do think there is some waste, for example I don't believe in programs like SNAP and Section 8 as I think its better to have fewer welfare programs that exist as direct cash transfers than many different ones for specific goods that create their own bureaucracies. In other words having a SNAP program and a Section 8 program is like getting someone two $50 gift cards, one for groceries and one for rent, whereas I think its better to just give that person $100 outright. At the individual scale the savings aren't obvious but when you scale these programs up to millions of people you can see that having two parallel welfare programs that transfer funds for different goods is more wasteful than one that transfers the same amount of money but with less bureaucracy.

The thing is even with that example you're not going to be saving that much money. If you want to fund big social programs like public healthcare or some kind of basic income you need to raise taxes on a wide swath of Americans to include the middle class. And yet ITT we have people like kflo arguing that actually the top .3% are more financially precarious than we might think and if anything we should consider cutting their taxes. You can never build the necessary consensus to fund social programs in the face of that kind of intransigence towards taxes.

U.S. income inequality, on rise for decades, is now highest since 1928​

U.S. income inequality, on rise for decades, is now highest since 1928

Credit: Dorsey Shaw; Source: Emmanuel Saez, UC Berkeley President Obama took on a topic yesterday that most Americans don't like to talk about much:

www.pewresearch.org

US obesity rates have tripled over the last 60 years​

US obesity rates have tripled over the last 60 years

Nationwide surveys show that 43% of Americans are obese, while 10% are morbidly obese.

usafacts.org

Overall, 11 percent of US children were living in a father-absent household in 1960 as compared to 25 percent in 2020

The Rise of Father Absence and Its Attendant Social Ills

Fatherless children are at higher risk of delinquency that undermines their own prospects and disrupts the communities in which they reside.

quillette.com

Annual suicide deaths per 100,000 people in the US increased gradually from 10 in 1950 to 13 in 1970 then experienced a long decline, reaching a trough at 10 in 2000. Between 2000 and 2020, however, the US suicide rate exhibited an upward trend.

What Accounts for the Rise in Suicide Rates in the US?

www.nber.org

Nine-year-olds had the largest score decline in reading since 1990.

NAEP Blog - Performance Declines in Basic Mathematics and Reading Skills Since the COVID-19 Pandemic Are Evident Across Many Racial/Ethnic Groups

NAEP Blog - Performance Declines in Basic Mathematics and Reading Skills Since the COVID-19 Pandemic Are Evident Across Many Racial/Ethnic Groups

nces.ed.gov

I certainly won't deny we're dealing with serious issue even today but I think in general the average American is better off today than 50 years ago. Life expectancy and average wages have both significantly increased for example

Spoiler

I don't want to overstate the importance of two stats but Americans are significantly wealthier and live longer than Americans of 50 years ago so that suggests overall improvement.

There are serious recent issues like the opioid crisis and later fentanyl which has lead to spikes in overdoses so intense that if you break life expectancy down into various age and geographic cohorts some of them have seen overall declines compared to 15-20 years. That said I think we can address these specific issues without buying into the gloom and doom narrative that we're worse off than 50 years ago. I say this as someone who is intensely pessimistic about the damage the incoming admin is going to do.

 

[Jack V Savage]

I'm skeptical that the Cuban regime is being honest about that data but in fairness there are other countries that are "poorer" than the US in the sense of having smaller economies and lower GDP per capita figures that nonetheless have higher life expectancies.

If you want to argue the market isn't fair for some reason that's one thing, depending on the specific issue I might very well agree. The goal though should be to work towards a more fair market but populists, especially left wing populists, aren't in favor of fairer markets as much as they are anti-market.

So for example housing costs are rising and that is an issue. The unfairness in the system is that the excessive rules and regulations makes it hard for those who want to build housing while the current tax policy incentivizes land speculation. If your neighbors can veto your housing project and instead make money based on appreciation of land values you will have less housing.

IMO the solution is to create a fairer market by cutting some of that red tape so that its easier for all developers, whether big corporations or families looking to renovate their own homes, can more easily build while taxing land values to discourage land speculation. Left wing populists on the other hand tend to support anti-market policies like rent control which doesn't work.

See I disagree and I think this gets at a widely held myth, namely that there's so much waste in government that if we merely cut it out we could fund social programs without raising taxes. The reality is there isn't a lot of invisible waste.

Now I do think there is some waste, for example I don't believe in programs like SNAP and Section 8 as I think its better to have fewer welfare programs that exist as direct cash transfers than many different ones for specific goods that create their own bureaucracies. In other words having a SNAP program and a Section 8 program is like getting someone two $50 gift cards, one for groceries and one for rent, whereas I think its better to just give that person $100 outright. At the individual scale the savings aren't obvious but when you scale these programs up to millions of people you can see that having two parallel welfare programs that transfer funds for different goods is more wasteful than one that transfers the same amount of money but with less bureaucracy.

The thing is even with that example you're not going to be saving that much money. If you want to fund big social programs like public healthcare or some kind of basic income you need to raise taxes on a wide swath of Americans to include the middle class. And yet ITT we have people like kflo arguing that actually the top .3% are more financially precarious than we might think and if anything we should consider cutting their taxes. You can never build the necessary consensus to fund social programs in the face of that kind of intransigence towards taxes.

I certainly won't deny we're dealing with serious issue even today but I think in general the average American is better off today than 50 years ago. Life expectancy and average wages have both significantly increased for example

Spoiler

I don't want to overstate the importance of two stats but Americans are significantly wealthier and live longer than Americans of 50 years ago so that suggests overall improvement.

There are serious recent issues like the opioid crisis and later fentanyl which has lead to spikes in overdoses so intense that if you break life expectancy down into various age and geographic cohorts some of them have seen overall declines compared to 15-20 years. That said I think we can address these specific issues without buying into the gloom and doom narrative that we're worse off than 50 years ago. I say this as someone who is intensely pessimistic about the damage the incoming admin is going to do.

The link on inequality is very dated. It's come down a lot since then. Generally, a lot of numbers get weird in recessions and recoveries. If you want to really understand long-term trends, you gotta take that into account.

 

[Jack V Savage]

When I said libs I wasn't referring to you specifically, you weren't posting here or at least not on this account then.

I don't expect you to bend the knee, I sure as shit hope not. A scary amount of people are already doing that.




This is the kinda stuff I was talking about that is extremely well known and there's even more that goes with this, that's why I brushed off @Islam Imamate, he's not some MAGA goof and this stuff is easy to look up and he probably already knew a lot of it, that's why I was confused about his responses. Nothing I said is remotely controversial.

Your claims were uncontroversially false. If you look up the numbers to make your point instead of assuming they must be true, you'll see that.

 

[deviake]

Your claims were uncontroversially false. If you look up the numbers to make your point instead of assuming they must be true, you'll see that.

So everything is fine and the entire working class and decades of statistics on the price of shit like college to healthcare are wrong?

 

[deviake]

Housing and rent haven't gotten more expensive? Stand by your words dudes

 

[Jack V Savage]

So everything is fine and the entire working class and decades of statistics on the price of shit like college to healthcare are wrong?

Can you not do that?

The stats are right. Real (i.e., inflation-adjusted) incomes keep rising. That includes everything people buy, which does involve a mix of some prices rising relatively and others falling. And "things have been improving" doesn’t imply "everything is fine" or anything at all about what should be done. We should get things right first, but what we do from there is a matter of opinion. Getting the facts wrong distorts your take.

 

[Jack V Savage]

Housing and rent haven't gotten more expensive? Stand by your words dudes

All prices, including labor prices, have risen. On the whole, Americans up and down the income distribution have seen increasingly higher material living standards since the end of the Civil War.

 

[deviake]

All prices, including labor prices, have risen. On the whole, Americans up and down the income distribution have seen increasingly higher material living standards since the end of the Civil War.

Inflation exists, thanks, didn't know that had to search it.

So taxes haven't been lowered on the wealthy, wages haven't stagnated, healthcare hasn't went up, housing hasn't gotten more expensive, college, CEO pay hasn't risen, etc, got it. Okay cool, good talk, very informative.

 

[deviake]

Billionaires also have no influence on the government, we gotta look out for them like Elon Musk. There's nothing wrong with money in politics either. Here I thought there were problems but I was wrong. I look forward to Trump's presidency, nothing has gotten worse for the average person at all so it doesn't matter anyway.

 

[Jack V Savage]

Inflation exists, thanks, didn't know that had to search it.

So taxes haven't been lowered on the wealthy, wages haven't stagnated, healthcare hasn't went up, housing hasn't gotten more expensive, college, CEO pay hasn't risen, etc, got it. Okay cool, good talk, very informative.

I already asked you not to do that. Just address actual points made. I know you can do it.

 

[deviake]

I already asked you not to do that. Just address actual points made. I know you can do it.

I agree with you. You said,

Your claims were uncontroversially false.

Those were my claims, I see the error of my ways. Thank you Jack and @Islam Imamate

 

[Jack V Savage]

I agree with you. You said,

Those were my claims, I see the error of my ways. Thank you Jack and @Islam Imamate

Material living standards of Americans up and down the income distribution have been rising for a very long time. Life expectancy is also way up over the last 50 years. True, right?

 

[deviake]

Material living standards of Americans up and down the income distribution have been rising for a very long time. Life expectancy is also way up over the last 50 years. True, right?

You guys are right, I'm wrong about everything I said and so is the entire working class. I look forward to Trump's tax cuts on the wealthy and money in politics isn't an issue as we can see. Shit, not even a point in voting, things have only been looking up.

 

[moreorless87]

Billionaires also have no influence on the government, we gotta look out for them like Elon Musk. There's nothing wrong with money in politics either. Here I thought there were problems but I was wrong. I look forward to Trump's presidency, nothing has gotten worse for the average person at all so it doesn't matter anyway.

Your seeing now really some of the most fervent partisan posters on Sherdog really are 95% of the way to being Republicans, shows you the whole thing for them is merely a distraction.

The last 40ish years especially I think the arguments "some less well off are better off by some merits" even if they were true(and very often there BS stat manipulation) really its the mic drop them seem to think it is. The truth is poverty, ill health, etc are still obviously very real and very significant and we should be looking towards reducing them as much as possible, if 90% of economic growth ends up on ivory back scratchers I think its pretty hard to argue that's the case even relative to other liberal capitalist western nations which has more socialist elements to their politics and less influence by the ultra wealthy.

That were seeing "left wing popularists" being applied to literally anyone outside of centre right liberials I think shows you how deeply warped in favour of the interests of the wealthy things have become. In reality the most significant enemies of the capitalist establishment are actually very mild compromise politicians like Bernie Sanders who would have been pretty mainstream in terms of economic policy in the mid 20th century.

What it comes down to I would argue though is credibility, the truth is politics is absolutely full of people who claim to be working against the influence of the ultra wealthy, as non sensical as it is even Trump has pushed that line. In most cases though your dealing with politicians who are sold out lock stock and barrel to those influences, the same for vast amounts of the regulatory system which has been captured by the influence of these people.

I would argue the greatest barrier to genuine significant improvement in the lives of much of the population tends to be the liberial establishment, its politics might be somewhat less unpleasant than conservatives BUT its acting to suppress any kind of shift away from our current direction of travel towards greater oligarchy, making such that any credible pushback against this is kept away from the ballot box and sabotaged even if it gets there.

Outside of those who have genuinely sold out I think the "Big Brained Centralist" ideology is something which has been carefully pushed to much of the public by the political/media establishment, strong appeals to authority and the idea that our centralist technocrat overlords are the only ones who REALLY understand the world. When it comes down to it though so much of it is smoke and mirrors, a ideology which is actually quite simplistic which appeals to the ego and the desire to avoid criticism, I mean who wants to be called an anti-Semite because you think the ethnic cleansing of millions of people is bad? much better to just keep your head down, nod along with the big boys at the dinner party and ignore the blood leaking from under the carpet.

 

[deviake]

Your seeing now really some of the most fervent partisan posters on Sherdog really are 95% of the way to being Republicans, shows you the whole thing for them is merely a distraction.

The last 40ish years especially I think the arguments "some less well off are better off by some merits" even if they were true(and very often there BS stat manipulation) really its the mic drop them seem to think it is. The truth is poverty, ill health, etc are still obviously very real and very significant and we should be looking towards reducing them as much as possible, if 90% of economic growth ends up on ivory back scratchers I think its pretty hard to argue that's the case even relative to other liberal capitalist western nations which has more socialist elements to their politics and less influence by the ultra wealthy.

That were seeing "left wing popularists" being applied to literally anyone outside of centre right liberials I think shows you how deeply warped in favour of the interests of the wealthy things have become. In reality the most significant enemies of the capitalist establishment are actually very mild compromise politicians like Bernie Sanders who would have been pretty mainstream in terms of economic policy in the mid 20th century.

What it comes down to I would argue though is credibility, the truth is politics is absolutely full of people who claim to be working against the influence of the ultra wealthy, as non sensical as it is even Trump has pushed that line. In most cases though your dealing with politicians who are sold out lock stock and barrel to those influences, the same for vast amounts of the regulatory system which has been captured by the influence of these people.

I would argue the greatest barrier to genuine significant improvement in the lives of much of the population tends to be the liberial establishment, its politics might be somewhat less unpleasant than conservatives BUT its acting to suppress any kind of shift away from our current direction of travel towards greater oligarchy, making such that any credible pushback against this is kept away from the ballot box and sabotaged even if it gets there.

Outside of those who have genuinely sold out I think the "Big Brained Centralist" ideology is something which has been carefully pushed to much of the public by the political/media establishment, strong appeals to authority and the idea that our centralist technocrat overlords are the only ones who REALLY understand the world. When it comes down to it though so much of it is smoke and mirrors, a ideology which is actually quite simplistic which appeals to the ego and the desire to avoid criticism, I mean who wants to be called an anti-Semite because you think the ethnic cleansing of millions of people is bad? much better to just keep your head down, nod along with the big boys at the dinner party and ignore the blood leaking from under the carpet.

Precisely my issue with liberals, agreed. Civil rights activists like Malcom X and MLK over here described them perfectly. They're the gatekeepers so they're the biggest impediment to change. Hence my posts; since I'm apparently wrong about everything I said, then that means Republican presidents like Reagan, Bush and Trump didn't do any real damage to the average person nor the country (never mind the issues over there and in many countries in general nor the shit liberal presidents have gotten up to, but since they're liberal they get a pass) and what Elon is doing by blatantly throwing his wealth and power around is fine because as I've been told by one of these posters, money in politics isn't an issue. (As an aside, one person in here doesn't even think billionaires are an issue.) That pretty much ends the game, because they can't say, "no, things are great actually and have been improving for everyone" and also decry the Republicans at the same time and act like Trump is some great threat since apparently the system is fine, never mind that saying everything I said is false is insane and that I've seen conservatives on here make the same arguments. Like you said, 95% of the way there. It can't be both things at the same time, that's why I'm not gonna bother, they're smart enough to know better but not smart enough to not get caught in the Catch-22 of the contradictory views they're espousing.