Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[Dr. Strangelove]

Speaking only of NH, Sanders won everyone 45 and under by wide margins. 45-65 I believe he essentially tied Hillary. She only decisively won the old folks among age groups

[hack]

Oh and how Bernie is promising free stuff too. Selfishly, sure, I'd love it. That sounds great if I didn't think about how that would be paid for.

Bernie is basically going to be a modern-day Robin Hood. It won't be quite that simple, and he won't be able to implement everything he wants, but if it had to be boiled down to one metaphor it would be that the game's up for Wall Street and everyone on every other street in America is going to benefit.

But, overall, I think you're right to say that young people are just more oriented to the vision of a Sandersian left than a laissez-faire right. Whether you consider them informed or misinformed or whatever, that's the result when they look at things. IMO since the financial crisis there's just no way to keep asserting the same ``markets rule/get the government out of the way'' principle. It's no longer a theory that hasn't been tried, and the result was good for one small group and bad for everyone else. So younger generations are not going to have that approach blasted at them in a way that older ones have for the past 20-30 years, and that's an opening for other ideas, like those of Sanders. And, of course, with every election cycle you have older Greatest Generation conservatives aging out and being replaced by younger people even further removed from that era when laissez-faire was the orthodoxy. That's one reason why the pendulum is primed to swing to the left after a few decades moving right.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Death to Government strategies have been practiced by the Governors of both Wisconsin and Kansas and both states are now approaching financial crisis. Walker and Brownback have approval ratings well below Obama.

http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/prairie-politics/article45615459.html

Remember when Scott Walker was considered a favorite for the R nomination? Trump destroyed him by drawing attention to the real economic numbers up there...they aren't nearly as good as Walker loved to brag about.

[iam416]

But, overall, I think you're right to say that young people are just more oriented to the vision of a Sandersian left than a laissez-faire right

Young folks are always way liberal. Until they start real jobs and want to buy houses. Though, apparently, this particularly generation may be of the belief that society owes them both of those things (and lots more).

In any event, the outcome of a Sanders presidency would pretty much finish off the gutting of D power for awhile. And there'd be zero fucking chance Sanders proposal to raise taxes by $19.3B...a 50% increase...will ever come to fruition.

In the mean time, the United States will continue to lead the world in innovation and technological advancement because that's what we do (credit due to the UK, though, who is also an innovator). We make the world a far better place for those that either lack the technological advancement or incentives to do that job.

[Hannibal]

Young folks are always way liberal. Until they start real jobs and want to buy houses. Though, apparently, this particularly generation may be of the belief that society owes them both of those things (and lots more).

It's worse than in previous generations, because people in their early 20s are living a prolonged adolescence, much moreso that you or I when we were in our early 20s. Socialism is ultimately the mentality of children and it's taking longer for people to grow out of it now.

[Hannibal]

Bernie is basically going to be a modern-day Robin Hood. It won't be quite that simple, and he won't be able to implement everything he wants, but if it had to be boiled down to one metaphor it would be that the game's up for Wall Street and everyone on every other street in America is going to benefit.

But, overall, I think you're right to say that young people are just more oriented to the vision of a Sandersian left than a laissez-faire right. Whether you consider them informed or misinformed or whatever, that's the result when they look at things. IMO since the financial crisis there's just no way to keep asserting the same ``markets rule/get the government out of the way'' principle. It's no longer a theory that hasn't been tried, and the result was good for one small group and bad for everyone else. So younger generations are not going to have that approach blasted at them in a way that older ones have for the past 20-30 years, and that's an opening for other ideas, like those of Sanders. And, of course, with every election cycle you have older Greatest Generation conservatives aging out and being replaced by younger people even further removed from that era when laissez-faire was the orthodoxy. That's one reason why the pendulum is primed to swing to the left after a few decades moving right.

The collapse of a bubble created by government-sponsored entities, government-backed loans, and decades of governemt pressure on banks to loan money to the "less fortunate" is totally a free market failure. Makes perfect sense.

[edindetroit]

(credit due to the UK, though, who is also an innovator).

Hey, thanks!

[iam416]

lol

[Dr. Strangelove]

Haha, yes, conservatism the policy of all true responsible adults.

Trump supporters, Cruz supporters, those guys waving guns and threatening cops in Oregon, all seem like mature, cool-headed individuals. They use the awesome power of Reason rather than (BAH!) emotion

[iam416]

At least the conservative wackos don't shit on their on community in a juvenile rampage because a hoax was exposed as, well, a hoax. Just saying. I mean, if we're going to be all snarky and shit.

[Hannibal]

To believe in the magical power of Socialism to wipe away your debts and provide you with "free" health care and "free" college tuition is literally something that my seven year old Harry Potter fan would eat right up. To believe in this is to believe in Santa Claus or magic. And, of course, every good fairy tale needs a villain, and in this case, it's the evil, greedy 1% (who already pays a wildly disporportionate share of the country's income taxes. It's mind boggling how few people know this).

Like I said. It's the mentality of children and a prolonged adolescence for today's youth is fueling the surge in Socialism and the Social Justice Warrior movement. Maybe it's a side effect of being too prosperous for too long and we need a good old prolonged depression for people to realize that food on the shelves and the lights coming on when you hit the switch are not things to be taken for granted.

[hack]

I agree that it's easy to be liberal until you start paying taxes and policies start having a greater impact on your personal balance sheet. Yet it's always been that way and the pendulum has still always slowly swung from right to left over the decades. We'll see how fast these kids go from commies to capitalist, but, again, they are doing so in an environment in which the economic orthodoxy is crumbling and new ideas are getting heard. I'm 42. When I was forming my first thoughts about all this we had Fukuyama going on about the End of History and Tom Friedman with the McDonalds theory, and Clinton triangulating. There was a full-fledged acceptance of laissez-faire as the way to go, and that's gone. Everyone is moving left. In the mainstream we are considering what exactly socialism means, rather than treating anyone who idetifies with it as a witch. On the fringes they've gone from trying to moderate capitalism to trying to kill it completely -- the no-growth economy. So, everyone is moving left. I happen to like this and you may not, but I think the above is not an ideologically-colored observation. How fast will it translate into a meaningful policy shift? Will there be fits and starts? Those are good questions. I think Bernie may be too much too soon myself. I think the various Chaits and Yglesiases and others on the left aren't ready and aren't focused enough on the economics to understand what Bernie is saying. So I suspect we're another cycle away.

[Cody_Russell]

I'm ok with paying my college debt. I deserve to based off the degree I was awarded.
Should that be an entitlement? No.
However, again, it does make sense to me that people my age believe in it based off what we generally learned in school. Even TV shows and movies might have an impact in people's (millennials) views. For example: what if you are 8 years old, you watch all of the SpongeBob TV series. A lot of shows like that implicitly have leftist messages.
Then you get to your middle teens, "Family Guy" and a lot of popular TV shows explicitly have "leftist views." The Simpsons, American Dad, South Park, Futurama...
Late teens, John Stewart and Steven Colbert might have been big.
Overtime if you see enough of that, it could shape one's mind to think that way.
TV is huge for most millennials.

Just a thought. It is a process for how people develop views... TV and education are significant IMO.

[hack]

To believe in the magical power of Socialism to wipe away your debts and provide you with "free" health care and "free" college tuition is literally something that my seven year old Harry Potter fan would eat right up. To believe in this is to believe in Santa Claus or magic. And, of course, every good fairy tale needs a villain, and in this case, it's the evil, greedy 1% (who already pays a wildly disporportionate share of the country's income taxes. It's mind boggling how few people know this).

Like I said. It's the mentality of children and a prolonged adolescence for today's youth is fueling the surge in Socialism and the Social Justice Warrior movement. Maybe it's a side effect of being too prosperous for too long and we need a good old prolonged depression for people to realize that food on the shelves and the lights coming on when you hit the switch are not things to be taken for granted.

I think you have utopias on the left and on the right. The other day you said politics should get out of money. IOW, if I'm not mistaken, you accept no form of oversight over the financial-services sector as legitimate, which is an equally fantastic utopia. I'm not one to praise regulation as it is today, but I've seen economies where there's no effective oversight. Be careful what you wish for, basically.

I agree that some people take food and power for granted, but the other side of that coin is that some people take the benefits of regulation for granted. The bottom line is that trade requires trust. Either you have an economy small enough so that everybody knows each other and has to maintain relationships and therefore self-regulate, or you have laws and regulations in place of that. Or you have the kind of chaos that led to the rise of government and regulation in the first place, centuries ago.

[iam416]

I agree that it's easy to be liberal until you start paying taxes and policies start having a greater impact on your personal balance sheet. Yet it's always been that way and the pendulum has still always slowly swung from right to left over the decades. We'll see how fast these kids go from commies to capitalist, but, again, they are doing so in an environment in which the economic orthodoxy is crumbling and new ideas are getting heard. I'm 42. When I was forming my first thoughts about all this we had Fukuyama going on about the End of History and Tom Friedman with the McDonalds theory, and Clinton triangulating. There was a full-fledged acceptance of laissez-faire as the way to go, and that's gone. Everyone is moving left. In the mainstream we are considering what exactly socialism means. On the fringes they've gone from trying to moderate capitalism to trying to kill it completely -- the no-growth economy. Everyone is moving left. I happen to like this and you may not, but I think the above is not an ideologically-colored observation. How fast will it translate into a meaningful policy shift? Will there be fits and starts? Those are good questions. I think Bernie may be too much too soon myself. I think the various Chaits and Yglesiases and others on the left aren't ready and aren't focused enough on the economics to understand what Bernie is saying. So I suspect we're another cycle away.

It die a horrible a death when middle class taxes skyrocket. And they will.

Meanwhile, your assertion that we're creeping further left in economic policies is a bit at odds with the dominance of Rs in every level of government other than the Executive.

Fukuyama did have it mostly right. Western liberalism in the best sense won. The market and liberty. I suppose Islam as a political ideology is more or less diametrically opposed to this, but that's also why Islamic countries are total shit economies entirely dependent on geologic happenstance. But that's another discussion.

When we stop embracing the entrepreneur and those who add value to this society, we're done. We're not ready for that, thank god.