Trump and progressive Democrats want the same thing?

From the Guardian: Trump and progressive Democrats want the same thing – and Pelosi is in the way - excerpt:

Pelosi is in the way of What exactly? Wholesale promotion of the High-pitched Left (consisting of four ladies)? I doubt that seriously - she has other fish-to-fry.

Neither is it how you win a National Election (for PotUS)! Which is America's biggest political Fish-Fry and in sight for next year.

Besides, these ladies are a passing-fancy of the news and TV squad. Which will move on quickly to the next fatuous event that grabs the public eye during summer vacation time. (When, in fact, many Americans have better things to do than watch TV.)

I cannot imagine that Pelosi does not commiserate with the four ladies making their political-views well known. They are very-left-of-center and are more like European Social Democrats. Which is fine!

Social Democracy has done Europe a world of good. Namely very low-cost National Health Care and postsecondary schooling at public universities at a cost of around $1K a year! (Two public-services that America's really-poor can only dream about!)

And I will not bore anyone with the awesome fact of the MONSTROUS DEBT that postsecondary-tuitions have created!

What, pray tell, could be wrong with such social-provisions of which the poor in America would benefit most. Let's not forget that about 14% of the American population live below the Poverty Threshold ($25K annual income for a family of four). <i>That makes for 45 million American men, women and children!</i>

They are looking for a "way out", and a free or nearly-free tertiary-level education (vocational, associates, bachelors, masters, doctorate) is the right way for them! (Which will not succeed overnight, but America must start somewhere!)

Those four courageous women will lead the fight for better and more substantial government-supported Public Services, which will be a Great Benefit for all Americans below the median salary.

America should elect more of them ...

 

I think we must first recognize that no amount of free education will help many in poverty find employment that will take them out of poverty.

I'm not a proponent of Social Democracy (welfare capitalism), the increased tax burden on the working class nearly guarantees they will remain in the working class by limiting their economic opportunites and upward mobility. They, essentially, become a captive workforce for the capitalists.

One cannot have very low-cost national healthcare and quality/timely healthcare, you must choose one or the other. My choice would be individuals be responsible for minor healthcare needs (millions currently choose this route today) and government paid healthcare for the rare occurrences of catastrophic illness or accident.

Bottom line, we are already spending trillions of dollars on welfare and social security in the US, a better solution, one that I would support, is a universal basic income for all adult citizens of the US. This would give people much more flexibility and options in their lives, they would no longer be forced to take jobs at any wage out of desperation, but by their own choice.

The "Squad" is heading in the wrong direction, they are promoting the goals of neoliberalism.

 

Untrue.

Like no amount of firemen are going to protect us from fire. Or, no amount of policemen will protect us from crime.

That claim is subjectively irrelevant in the face of basic necessities that are well established as necessary and need to be extended education-wise. To that of Post-secondary Education. We are in a New Age - that of the Information Age - and it requires a higher level of post-secondary education that is available to all free, gratis and for nothing.

(Just as did the Industrial Age that finally made the US understand that secondary-schooling was not just a "nice thing" but an absolute necessity. It only took the US almost a century to implement secondary-schooling throughout the nation!)

Moreover, as I never tire of repeating - almost one-third of penitentiary inmates have no secondary-schooling degree according to the NCES here:

The tax-burden on the working-class is well accepted in Europe, because that class sees clearly the benefit of Limiting Defense Expenditures and Spending the savings on both Healthcare and Tertiary Education.

Both of which, most of its citizens see as far better alternatives. Besides, why not if Uncle Sam wants to police-the-world just because it's "good business"!?!

Again untrue! Europe has achieved precisely that objective!

The US refuses to expand ObamaCare (though Federal expenditure) because IT THINKS WRONGLY that defending the nation is the more important expenditure. Which is why the DoD consumes close to half the Federal Discretionary Budget. See that here!

It is ONLY a question of political will, which is absent. Because Yanks-like-you are wedded to an outdated, backward looking and wrong-headed belief! Health-care is a major component of national-objectives because it engenders higher life-spans. See that point proven here.

Bottom line: We are spending trillions of dollars on the DoD. Look at the data as shown above! The "real Bottom Line" is that the US budget has two components - one Non-discretionary (debt) and the other Discretionary (expenditure). And only the political will of the nation can change its distribution from military to real public-utility!

Try it, you might like it! (Ingrained as Americans are in the notion of "self-help" that has never truly worked.

My Point: Factual blindness of your kind is Not An Option for the Future Welfare of the larger US beyond Idaho ... !

 

Always remember that Pelosi is a billionaire dino.

 

Yeah! And that means she doesn't have a brain of her own? It's owned by who? Her husband?

I don't know the lady, but I am not the least bit concerned about her 'difference" with the newly elected ladies - who haven't the slightest notion about how the HofR is run.

They are innocents. America still thinks for the most part that Socialism still exists, and its all over Europe.

When in fact, it was replaced a long time ago by Social Democracy, which - yes - the European Union adopted in its own set of communal laws (because there is no Constitution).

It may take another generation to get one. That is, when this generation of politicians who want to maintain the authority of each state. Given that the EU parliament in Brussels would have to adopt it - whenever the EU gets around to wanting one.

Nobody is waiting with bated breath however ...

 

I'm not bothered, mind you, but rudeness is not a substitute for a good defense of one's premise.

Law Enforcement and fire services don't show up until a a crime has been committed or a fire starts.

I agree, 30% of incarcerated adults do not have a high school diploma. They were incapable of doing the work necessary or chose to drop out. Secondary (high school) education is free and has been free of charge for many years . That fact shoots your argument for free post secondary schooling in the foot. There is no reson to believe free post secondary won't suffer the same fate.

I understand taking half of my sentence out of context and skating over the other half allows you to create a straw man. I'll repeat that sentence and paragraph.

"Bottom line, we are already spending trillions of dollars on welfare and social security in the US, a better solution, one that I would support, is a universal basic income for all adult citizens of the US. This would give people much more flexibility and options in their lives, they would no longer be forced to take jobs at any wage out of desperation, but by their own choice."

Im not convinced that you understand the full meaning of neoliberalism .

 

Excuse my rude, but, so what?

You are ignoring the facts. So I will repeat them!
*The Industrial Age is long gone. (To China!)
*The Information Age requires a higher level of education to meet job-requirements.
*That tertiary-level of education should be free, gratis and (nearly) for nothing - given that secondary-schooling is as well. (Without which only 45% of secondary-school diplomaed children will go into post-secondary education. And only about two-thirds of them coming out because one-third cannot afford the costs of around an average $14K a year.)

And so here follows a lesson budgets and where the money goes.

Here's the lowdown from Wikipedia: Social programs in the United State

It's not trillions that went for welfare but about the same amount of money that went to sustain the DoD. Which do you think is the better expenditure. "Guns or butter"?

Because THAT is the question to which this sort of a discussion ALWAYS reduces!

And there is never an answer that becomes the center of Public Debate. So, we continue to throw DoD-money out the window to private companies, the profits of which become Income, which is minimally taxed. And a tiny bit returned to the DoD. I call that a Vicious Circle!

Oh, you'd be surprised. I'm an economist, after all.

The Federal Expenditure Budget consists of three parts:

The latter two of which are combined to make only two parts - Mandatory and Discretionary.

For a good explanation of the three-part budgetary spending, see here. What it looks like in one fat-description is this:


Open-eyes will see that barely 16% of all spending goes to the DoD (Military). I am saying that that 16% is far too much for what it returns to Americans. Most of America's real enemies are within and not without.

Military-spending should be brought down to one-third of the amount shown. With two-thirds invested in "Education" for all Americans - all on subsidizing state-school post-secondary education.

 

Many good points in your post as usual, but this particular point needs serious revision:

You are still not confronting the dismal growth rates and high unemployment rates in Europe, which are explained by the loss of the currency issuing capacities of some EU members, MMT explains this; so you will need to abandon your neoliberal economic orthodoxy if you wish to understand.
[Note: Trump has no concerns about the $22 trillion (and growing) US debt, and his country is growing quite nicely (quite apart from the gross inequality issues in the US that you are rightly concerned about), meanwhile Greece and Italy are ravaged by unnecessary austerity policies imposed by Brussels (and the IMF in Greece's case); and the "yellow vests" in France aren't too happy either...

To get the ball rolling (to release you from the grip of the faulty mainstream economic narrative, here are Rush Limbaugh's (!!….) latest revelations on debt, and on the 'balanced budget' fetish of neoliberal mainstream economists, including the boffins at the European Central Bank:......from an article in an MMT blog:

<<And just last week (July 19, 2019), the conservative shock-jock Rush Limbaugh told his radio audience, after a naive caller tried to run the usual fiscal conservative Republican line in an attack on Trump, that (Source):

"Nobody is a fiscal conservative anymore … All this talk about concern for the deficit and the budget has been bogus for as long as it’s been around".

Bogus for as a long as it’s been around. In other words, deliberately used to deceive.

Later in his Tuesday show he (ie Limbaugh) said:

"How many years have people tried to scare everybody about the deficit? The years, how many decades of politicians tried to scare us about deficit the national debt, the deficit, any number of things. And yet, here we’re still here and the great jaws of the deficit have not bitten off our heads and chewed them up and spit them out.”

Now, far be from me to agree with Limbaugh, but he serves to make the point: the mainstream (false) economic orthodoxy is losing its baleful grip.

 

Both of you are presuming that Social Democracy is some "special sort of Capitalism" really quite different from the US.

And that difference is SIMPLY NOT THE CASE. Evidently, you have the wrong notion of what Capitalism is - so perhaps a definition could help?
From here:

I frankly do not care which of the above is employed, but I do suggest that the latter is far more important than the former. Whyzat.

Because UNIQUELY IN EUROPE families do not dominate the provision of capital (since more than a century). Not as they once did up to demise of regencies throughout Europe. Which is why rich-families sucked-up to royal- and sub-royal families in order to benefit from the ability to access Capital because these families had enormous amounts of wealth. (One such family became a central purveyor of capital to the public - it was that of the Rothshilds.)

That age is long gone, so what remains is the simple fact that capital employed to start or assist further business development is found in any Capital Market. This in turn develops both further riches, but also companies that employ workers; and therefore General Income of the population. (Of course, in some countries the Communists came along and confiscated the wealth of Rich Families. So the state became the key purveyor of capital to start and maintain businesses. Fortunately, time proved how wrong that solution was compared to the evident success of Free Enterprise.

The "free" meaning that just about anybody can have a "good idea", seek money (capital) to implement the idea and - upon success - benefit from its rewards.

Thus we are discussing today not how it happens but whether the amount of profits that return as capital to those succeeding in taking the risk are fair-and-equitable. Which they are not as Income Disparity studies have amply shown across developed nations of all kinds. (The one most easy for me to post is the Gini Coefficient, a diagram of which is posted here.)

Clearly, there is Great Income Disparity in many developed-nations, and this happens wherever the results of Extravagant Upper-Incomes are insufficiently taxed.

But, clearly, the most extravagant of them all is Uncle Sam ...

 

This is a reasonable statement, I believe, provided you don't conflate those who would benefit from 'free' tertiary education (who are not likely living in poverty at present) with those who are currently living in poverty. This latter group of people need the JG program of MMT.

Now you are going astray.

The real social democrats in the US, like Sanders and AOC (and Warren?), are not planning to tax the "working class"; eg Sanders proposes a tax on Wall St (ie, a financial transaction tax) to fund free tertiary education; Warren proposes a tax on personal wealth over $50 million(!)

Some truth in that, but some countries do have moderate (as opposed to "low") cost national healthcare; Lafayette has pointed to those - and yet they also provide timely/quality healthcare.

….and yet poverty rates in the US are still c. 12% ie c. 40 million people.

Lafayette has also promoted this option, but have you studied the costs to the budget to fund a decent UBI? (to pay people to do nothing, but see below).

Actually MMT solves that problem very neatly by eliminating underemployment entirely, with the MMT JG program, which is a job program administered by the government (but managed at the local level depending on the needs of local communities).

In brief, the JG of MMT replaces the hideous NAIRU fiction of neoliberal mainstream economics with an employed buffer 'pool' of workers that rises and falls depending on the state (growth or decline) of the private sector; the JG program offers an above poverty (but below private sector) wage to anyone who wants work.

Note: I mentioned "cost to the budget"....but this is mainstream terminology.

Fact is, according to the two main axioms of MMT:
(a) Nations face real resource constraints.
(b) sovereign currency issuing governments do not face purely financial constraints (provided they don't borrow in foreign currency)

eg government- the currency issuer - does not face debt repayment on a due date, which is entirely different to the non-government players (house-holds etc) who are users of the currency.

Unfortunately central bankers from the IMF down are still stuck in the neoliberal paradigm (the classical school).

Interestingly, characters like Trump - and even Limbaugh - and Japan and China? are all behaving like MMTers….(why worry about government debt....its been growing for decades and China, Japan and the US are all doing fine.

OTOH, pity the Greeks, who are under the thumb of the IMF and can't use the same 'trick').

Briefly, to stoke your interest in MMT: some valuable/desirable economic activity 'consumes' only the mental and/or physical effort of humans eg education (given the existing infrastructure) and caring, eg assisting the elderly in their own homes - a much better course than forcing people into nursing homes; unlike other economic activity eg making widgets in a factory that indeed consumes real scarce resources (recall axiom (a) above) that are produced for sale in a competitive market. This activity is the profit driven activity of private enterprise.

So...can you perceive that nations are actually much wealthier than the mainstream would have us believe; ie mental and/or physical effort of humans, as a resource, is as free as the air we breathe, and therefore economic activity of this type ought be
funded by Central bank deposit creation, not by taxing the private sector, which makes us all poorer - especially if the excessively rich have no social conscience (which appears to be the case), forcing government to tax the middle and lower classes who can ill afford higher taxation.

No: the "Squad", being true social democrats, are heading in the right direction, but they will likely be made un-electable because of the still dominant neoliberal orthodoxy.

 

I hope, in my reply to bug77above, I have explained my position. Obviously totally different to Bug77.

Bernie Sanders is a true social democrat working within a capitalist democracy, who wants to introduce policies you support .
But as I note in my conclusion, he will have trouble getting elected - indeed he will even have trouble being chosen as the Dem party leader...because mainstream America is mesmerised by mainstream neoliberal economics with its balanced (public) debt fetish -and so the Left is powerless in the face of the Right's "how can we pay for it" mantra.
So people like Perlosi and Biden are (mostly, but not entirely) useless for the social democratic cause.

 

I happen to agree with you. And I don't think Bernie would disagree. (Bernie has been to Europe quite a few times, and what he proposes has been part of the EU configuration from the very beginning, which was a long, long time ago. The British instituted a National Healthcare System in 1950.)

Bernie is having a Great Success in putting over another point-of-view in a country fixated on the Accumulation of Wealth. And how you get it doesn't matter as long as taxes don't take it away from you.

That sort of situation is about as stoopid as a people can get. (But the rich and super-rich enjoy every minute of it. Because they made it, and the rest of you suckers can only dream about it!)

The moist poignant facts benefiting a Social Democracy are these:
*Longer lifespan due to a small-personal-cost National Healthcare System. (There is no such thing as an "ER" in Europe!)
*People are far more adept at finding a job in the Information Age because their postsecondary education was almost free, gratis and for nothing. (My kids here in France cost me $1K (in euros) per year for university (plus room&board.)
*And when push-comes-to-shove (in an economic downturn) and maybe your job goes with it, those features above listed of a Social Democracy are still available!
*There are others, but I won't bore you with them.

What more should a nation want? With this present contraption of a "republican democracy" in place, you and your family are not going to see the share you deserve!

The rich are going to get richer and you'll see not one iota of that economy-derived richness in the way of Social Services for your family. The economy is rigged - those who deserve most the Common Wealth generated are getting the least whilst the Already Wealthy obtain most of it.

The sons/daughters of Donald Dork who are born into wealth (just like their father was) will get most of it and you will get the bread-crumbs off the table ... !

 

You don't understand what the Minimum Living Standard (MLS) does in Europe. More than likely because you are simply ignorant of the facts.

The intent of MLS is to accomplish exactly what it stands for - that is, the minimum of necessities to live a decent life. Like a roof over your head and food on the table. (That roof having been built by the government.)

All that MLS does is maintain the basic sustenance of living. And most people do not spend a lifetime there. Because of the home-security, they try to better themselves (schooling principally) and get out just as soon as they find a better-job. (Which is a damn-site better than those in the US imprisoned below the Poverty Threshold of $25K for a family of four.)

The number of people living below the Poverty Threshold is about 15% of the total population. Which turns out to be around 48M American men, women and children! That's a population of the size of California and Michigan combined!

Now you give me a cogent reason explaining why those people do not deserve a Helping Hand out of poverty. Because the PR at between 12 and 15% has been around for a long, long time:

 

I am more than fine with these women in Congress because that is a great place for the expression of the broadest possible views, including those way outside the mainstream. Not sure I want them as Presidents, or in the cabinet, or on the judiciary, because their temperaments and ideological passion may preclude compromise and the kind of measured and diplomatic speech that we often need to gain ground. They need experience and seasoning to become really effective legislators. Pelosi has a big and broad caucus to get relected in 2020. She has to think about how the PARTY is perceived and how to ensure that its agenda gets moved forward, without alarming more moderate or independent voters or isolating their representatives within their districts, and still provide the progressives with enough to sell their base on accomplishments. Its a tough job with Trump working so hard to sell the progressive left as writing the entire Democratic party agenda.

 

They are mostly upset over Pelosi saying one thing and doing another and it isn't strange that the dems and repubs smooch each other when wanting to raise the debt ceiling and spend more money before the economy crashes so they can bail themselves out. Gotta love the greed of the wealthy...

 

That's a personal complaint.

She's a damn fine lady and VERY intelligent. A woman has to be to put up with the sheetola that goes around in a highly male Congress.

Money, money, money has warped everything. It is going to be a major problem soon enough. Because this wild-ride of the economy is coming to a cyclic end.

It is not going to nice to witness the consequences. Uncle Sam went too far too fast.

WW3 anyone? It'll boost dramatically Federal expenditure ... !

 

This is dreadfully wrong as an assumption and thus unacceptable.

In fact, it is perverse thinking that has been prevalent for quite some time.There are enough women today working in Industry at management-levels to disprove your comment ...

The need better educations.

The current set of males in Congress concentrate only upon themselves and their "place in the crowd". Rarely has there been more crowing than from Congressional males.

Of course, Congressional females might be tempted to do the same? All 27% of total presently sitting in Congress? (One can hardly call that a fair 50-50.)

Interesting comment about the construct of Congress from here:

The educational tide is changing in Congress. That can only mean goodness ...

 

I do know the MLS in Europe has not ameliorated - and cannot deal with - issues like the forced emigration of workers from countries like Greece and Spain due to macroeconomic circumstances (especially smart young people that these countries can ill-afford to lose), nor the low growth rates and an impending debt crisis eg in Italy.

I'm all for it (amazing how we agree at times)

Agreed, BUT...

...48 million (say 50 to make the math easy)multiplied by $25K is $1.25 trillion approx. ; divide by 4 (family size ) = $300 billion.

Is the (above back of the envelope calculation of) the cost - $300 billion - a "cogent reason", given the overwhelmingly powerful mantra of the Right - "where is the money coming from"?) in the US?

I think you and I face the same problem.

You want to solve it by getting people to see the light (ie get past a money fixation), but will Perlosi (forget the Repubs) agree to stump up an extra $300 billion a year?

I want to bypass your problem of waiting for, or teaching people to, "see the light", by managing a fiat currency-issuing government in the way it should be managed, as revealed by MMT.

Your problem is an attitudinal one (ie changing the attitudes of the general population); my problem is getting academia and hence central bankers to understand how modern fiat economies actually work....

Pity the Euro area; the whole thing is going to come crashing down despite the 'nobility' of the concept of the union. MMT explains why, including explaining the insane decent into a likely prolonged period of negative interest rates existing simultaneously with low inflation, a situation that has never existed before (I heard Hammurabi mentioned in a radio program discussing this "strange phenomenon" of persistent negative interest rates.....Hammurabi in Babylon c. 1750 BC!).

 

You are concentrating on their gender, which means you misunderstood my points as pertaining to their gender. It so happens these four are women that Trump is exploiting, so the pronouns are. He picked progressives. He picked women. He picked women of color, and He picked newbies who had not spent time on the national stage and each was a cynical decision on his part to help sell his white nationalist narrative about Democrats.

 

Implying - correctly - that the majority of the electorate won't vote for "progressive left" policies.

Would a majority of Americans support Sanders' 'Wall St tax' (tax on financial transactions)? Or Warren's tax on wealth above $50 million (a wealth tax)?

Recently in Australian a Conservative government was re-elected mainly on the negative policy of attacking progressive Left policies such as removing tax rorts for the rich to enable the nation to reverse the relentless cutting of real expenditure on education, health, and other desirable public programs.

The conservatives just keep shouting "you (the Left) only have a "TAX AND SPEND" policy - and they win the argument....even though the actual policies of the Left party would only have affected the wealthy - though not entirely, and that is a problem, since none of us likes paying more tax than required by law …. so they still win the argument, because at the margin some of the middle class - the so called aspirationals, (as if we are not all aspirational) - unfortunately might be required to pay more tax (might have their "aspirations" clipped) when tax reform is attempted, and it's easy for the Right to misrepresent the actual proposals.

Have a look at MMT and see what you think; in fact an understanding of how (fiat) currency issuing governments can utilise all the nation's resources including labour (thereby eliminating the wastage - and poverty - associated with un+underemployment) reveals that all nations can be more prosperous than the mainstream central bankers would have us believe.

https://www.themacrotourist.com/posts/2019/01/23/mmt/

 

its super stupid and dangerous. LIbcommies can't tax the money away from innocent people so now they want to print it and inflate it away from innocent people.

 

Lets forget the "innocent people" nonsense; 8 people have as much wealth as the poorest 3.5 billion people, most of whom are living in health destroying poverty; 1000 children will starve (or be killed by Trump's arms exports to S Arabia- to make a quick buck; even the US congress is disgusted)- while I'm writing this; your use of the word innocence is a disgrace, and worse - a lie.

Fact: there are sufficient resources in the world to employ everyone - and supply at least the basics to everyone - and Bezos can still sell space joy rides to the super wealthy.

That's MMT.

[You do have a turn of phrase at times, i'll admit - even if your quoted passage is nonsense]

 

From here: How Americans View Mueller ... - excerpt:

I kinda-sorta agree with Pelosi. Concentrate on Donald Dork's weaknesses and not the fact that he may or may not be liable for impeachment.

Mueller was right to let this matter trail on ... the closer the elections next year are, the more this hurts Donald Dork. But, yes, the less Americans will see in it any great matter of impeachment. Still, it could have an influence on their voting-position come next election for the presidency.

Far more important to my mind is the fact that most Americans associate the present Good-Times with Donald Dork. When the fact of the matter was this:
*The new HofR, that we, the sheeple voted into power in the HofR -2009/10) they did their damndest to unseat him in the 2011/12 election. It didn't work.
*But what did happen is that the Employment-to-population Ration diminished definitively from October 2009 to October 2013. It did not budge during four long years (See the BLS-graphic here.) During that period there was NO FURTHER STIMULUS SPENDING - because the HofR Replicants refused it!
*Finally, and all by itself, Demand began to grow again - see BLS-graphic here - perhaps as some had faith in a new Obama Administration. But, that's not enough when a PotUS cannot confront continued low employment by treating the economy with some Stimulus Spending. Anyway,
*By November of 2013 the economy started creating jobs. This is long before Donald Dork decided to run for PotUS in 2016.
*That upturn in the economy helped Hillary win the popular-vote in the elections of 2016!
*But a majority-vote of the popular-vote is not good-enough in the US. Because the vote in the Electoral College is "Winner-Take-All". Meaning that all those in some key-states that voted for Hillary (who came in second in their state) saw their vote thrown-away and all-the-EC-votes in those states went to Donald Dork!

Sorry, boyz-'n-girlz, but that is NO WAY TO RUN A TRUE DEMOCRACY IN WHICH ONLY THE RESULT OF THE POPULAR-VOTE SHOULD DECIDE THE OUTCOME!

Of course, many in this Debate Forum will disagree with that notion. Which only makes we wonder what they learned in Civics Class - because what happened to Hillary was the 5th time in American history that the winner of the popular-vote actually lost the presidency ... !

 

Free education is a fact that we must recognize that can help many of the poor out of poverty.

 

Not all States do that, ME and NE allocate their votes by Congressional district, if a State wanted to allocate theirs by their State's popular vote, they are free to do so.

So, 20% of the time, not particularly unusual.

The Electoral College protects rural voters from domineering Urban voters who tend to be careless about the rights of others.

URBAN VS. RURAL VOTERS: “If they could make us live like them, many would. If we could make them live like us, most wouldn’t.”