Miscellaneous And Off Topic Subjects

[iam416]

I tend to agree with Froot. I wouldn't label it as "doubt" -- but, I'd favor both Rs.

[crashcourse]

washington post said schumer wasnt trying to fund raise for them

stock market isn't fretting a dem clean sweep

got my shot today

know about 50 people that got theres

one got a headache for a day or two--some had sore arms

everybody else seemed to be fine

[Jeff Buchanan]

There were 3 names on the ballot. The third was Shane Hazel, Libertarian. Are you really saying to me that Ossoff wins more of Hazel's vote than Perdue? Cmon. Perdue won by 1.8 points and just missed the 50% threshhold. He should still win next week. We'll see. He's polling better this go-around than he did last go-around when the polls all had Ossoff winning. But, we'll see.

Warnock is the nutjob. It's unfortunate that Ossoff and Perdue are running against each other. If they switched opponents then Perdue and Ossoff both win (IMO).

No, I'm not saying Ossoff will get all of Hazel's November ballot votes. The November ballot, as you point out, had three candidates listed for the General and a whole bunch, Including Loeffler and Warnock in a separate column marked Special Election.The presentation on the ballot discouraged marking all Ds or all Rs. The Run-off Ballot will have Perdue (R) v. Ossoff (D) in one box, Loeffler (R) v. Warnock (D) in another and two other dudes, one R and one D, in that order running for GA Public Service Commission.

That presentation on the ballot, I'd argue, favors marking all Rs or all D's. D's are going to straight ticket Ds in greater number than R's will straight ticket R's ..... and I don't mean to imply that GA has a straight ticket circle you can mark. They don't but, IMO, this anti-Trump sentiment or trend I'm speaking of in Fulton, DeKalb and urban Gwinnett is in play. Trump's failures, on a personal and policy level re COVID have been heavily pushd as campaign isssues for Ossoff and Warnock. It's working but, of course we'll see how that actually turns inot votes on January 5th.

I think it will. It turned the state to D for the first time in a while and got Biden the win there, this despite the Trump love in Rural and North and to a lesser extent South GA that is rampantly on display. That, in itself is pushing black D voters to get out the vote and reject Trumpism and any of it's vestiges especially and including Kelley Loeffler and David Purdue. We're talking D and a good portion of moderate R's reactions to yokels displaying huge confederate flags on huge trucks with gun-racks obviously baiting blacks with their Trump antics. All D's hate that. Educated moderate R whites, not in Trump's corner, are willing to vote D to signal their support of black grievances some of them justifiable and just as importantly, rejection of Donald Trump the person.

[Dr. Strangelove]

Cobb County has completed their audit of 15,000+ random ballot signatures. They found issues with 2 out of 15,118, one of which was a wife who signed for her husband.

https://www.wsbtv.com/news/local/cobb-county/gbi-finishes-signature-audit-cobb-county-finds-only-two-mismatches/ON42CSQBORHYJDBGZKKMPC3YAQ/

[Mike]

The wife is in on it!!

[THE_WIZARD_]

Dumb bitch.

[Ghengis Jon]

They've finally caught Deep State Sally in the throes of her casting millions of fraudulent votes! Thank God the election results can be overturned just in time. Now to bring in Sidney Powell and that guy with the runny hair dye!

[Dr. Strangelove]

Late last night Trump launched more attacks on Kemp & Brad Raffensperger, probably pissed that the signature audit was such a bust. He said Raffenberger's brother works for China so it's obvious why he doesn't want the great Trump to win.

As has been pointed out by numerous outlets, Raffensberger doesn't even have a brother. This is a conspiracy theory that originated on the Gateway Pundit site and led to a rare retraction.

EDIT: Fair is fair. Raffensberger apparently does have a brother, but isn't the guy that works for Huawei that the conspiracy theorists have latched upon.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Inequality looked a bit more manageable in the years before the pandemic. A slow but steady strengthening of labour markets, as the global financial crisis faded into the distance, eventually yielded healthy wage gains for workers across the income distribution. Measures of inequality in many economies levelled off or even declined a little. At first, covid-19 did not disrupt this trend much, thanks to generous support from governments around the world. But the picture now looks quite different. Economic analysis of pandemics over the past century suggests that they lead to sharp rises in inequality. Five years after a pandemic begins, Gini coefficients (a measure of income dispersion) typically remain about 1.25% above pre-crisis levels. Among people with middling to high levels of education, the share of people in work scarcely budges as a consequence of a pandemic, but among those with low levels it typically declines by 5%. This time will be no different.

This will become if it has not already become the clarion call of the left. It is a powerful argument for increasing social programs and enlarging government to manage them born out in labor statistics. It will also drive tax policy. I don't think you can dismiss this stuff by denying that it exists or that personal choices alone are responsible for the inequality in earning power secondary to low levels of education/skill development. The concentration of wealth in an increasingly small number of people, IMO, is problematic. I'm not certain I am familiar with reasonable ways to ameliorate it coming from my particular world view - fundamentally conservative with a belief in the value of capitalism as the leading global mechanism to fairly distribute wealth.

[iam416]

Capitalism isn't the most effective system to "fairly" distribute wealth. Capitalism is the most effective system to create wealth. The rebuttal to any Gini Coefficient bullshit is to take them back to a time with there was considerably less inequality by their own terms and ask, "are the poor folks better off now or then?"

Inequality has always been the clarion call of The Left in the very most Leftist sense -- Marxism. And, it will always be. But the argument has to be contextualized. with actual numbers. There's very little inequality in a society where people make between $1000 and $2000 per year. There's massive inequality in a society where people make between $5000 and $100,000 per year. But it's always crystal fucking clear which society is better suited to progress.

Secondarily, the real tension with this topic is that you eventually have to tackle the issue of whether or not the wealthy folks earned their wealth and, at the same time, whether decisions by the poor folks have anything to do with their station. And this invariably leads to gross class warfare from both sides. So, you either fundamentally believe that people are, by and large, responsible for their state of affairs OR you believe that the SYSTEM is responsible for their state of affairs. And, if it's the latter, then only the System can fix their state of affairs.

I'm sure Hannibal can post his cartoon that more succinctly sums up the entire Leftist approach to this issue, but you're plenty smart enough to already know everything I just said (and to appreciate the turgid effort to explain that which can said in one sentence!)

[Hannibal]

I'm sure Hannibal can post his cartoon that more succinctly sums up the entire Leftist approach to this issue...

capitalism-vs-communism-comic.png?fit=625%2C300.png

[Hannibal]

Some context is needed in regards to the distribution of wealth in the Western world.

All first world countries, including the US, already have massive welfare states and wealth redistribution programs already in place. And, we have had these for some time. We also have punitively progressive taxation systems in place. Any discussion about the uneven distribution of wealth in the US begins with the fact that our government already taxes and redistributes absolutely astronomical amounts of wealth from the "haves" to the "have nots". Any world view that ignores this reality is fundamentally flawed and will arrive at the wrong remedy. The billionaires that we occasionally read about who pay less taxes than their secretaries are the outliers. The upper 1% income earners in the country pay massively disproportionate amounts of taxes.

The pandemic is possibly the first example in my lifetime of government redistributing wealth from the "have nots" to the "haves". Pandemic shutdowns have disproportionately hit the poor and middle classes harder than the Mark Zuckerbergs and Jeff Bezoses of the world. This is ultimately why i am fine with Covid relief checks being sent to people on a means-tested basis.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Talent, just so you know, accumulation of wealth IMV is "fair". Ipso facto, capitalism as a means of distributing wealth is fair and works for me. YMMV......and I know yours doesn't. Waiting for DSL, Froot and CGVT to chime in.

[froot loops]

The CARES act was great, this latest COVIDBUS is not as big as I would like but it should be good. Let's hope they have totally learned the lesson of the Great Recession and this latest stimulus is not the last. The Biden Boom looks like is is going to be big but they need to keep the foot to the pedal in stimulating the economy. The federal government needs to do everything it can to get these vaccines out and spare no expense in doing it.

[Jeff Buchanan]

Hanni, I don't think the pandemic is an income redistribution event. Its an opportunity event that is going to benefit those in a position to do so. Your station in life when the pandemic hit determined how you faired. I think it reasonable, as do you, for plenty of helicopter money from treasuries world wide. How that money gets distributed is critical. Do I need 2000 bucks? Nope. The US is probably going to be demonstrably the worst Western, free market economy to do the helicopter money thing correctly.