2022 Elections

msstate7 said:
Again, like the trump comment yesterday, this is in jest.
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I’m well aware, man. It’s just that the unintended comedy of that message coming from a guy who is divorced and is now married to a second wife in her 20s is too rich for me.
 
Doesn't every study ever conducted conclude that the happiest women are married with children
The next happiest women are married. And the least happiest women are unmarried?

It is no wonder why miserable people keep voting for their captors
 
mqt said:
One thing I’ll never understand is the idea that we should spend heavily on defense, but not on healthcare or food and shelter for American citizens. If we agree that our social contract with the government is for it to keep us safe, I don’t see how getting involved in wars across Europe and Asia does more to protect ordinary Americans than stopping us from dying from disease or sleeping on the side of the road.
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You don't believe we spend on healthcare or shelter for American Citizens?

Holy crap.
 
chop2chip said:
Agreed. There is a thread that’s updated every couple day with how much money is being spent on weaponry to kill conscripted Russians.
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It should be noted that those conscripts have a choice. Hundreds of thousands of Russian men have made that choice to leave the country. Under Hitler, many Germans chose to go into exile. Others stayed in Germany but were passive resisters throughout the war.
 
mqt said:
We very obviously do. However, I’m quite sure you know which party has a more extensive track record of demonizing that kind of spending.
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Because its the WORST way to do so?

If we cannot agree government run programs are the most inefficient products delivered to consumers, then we can't have a discussion.
 
sturg33 said:
Doesn't every study ever conducted conclude that the happiest women are married with children
The next happiest women are married. And the least happiest women are unmarried?

It is no wonder why miserable people keep voting for their captors
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We are social creatures, it makes sense that people who have found someone they love are happy. My annoyance isn’t with the concept that people like to be together, it’s twisting it to turn being single or childless into a moral failure.
 
mqt said:
We very obviously do. However, I’m quite sure you know which party has a more extensive track record of demonizing that kind of spending.
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I'm in construction, and I've been involved in several gov funded housing projects. Granite countertops, high grade appliances, and extremely expensive windows seems excessive.

Now on my side... we've also done several military jobs, and it is ridiculous the amount of money that's wasted on military construction.
 
nsacpi said:
Mankiw (not exactly a flaming liberal) has a list of "some important public goods" in his Principles of Microeconomics textbook. The list: national defense, basic research, and fighting poverty. Have he and I been brainwashing the yute of America?

The discussion is interesting: "Advocates of antipoverty programs sometimes claim that fighting poverty is a public good. To see why, suppose that someone tried to organize a group of wealthy individuals to try to eliminate poverty. They would be providing a public good. This good would not be rival in consumption: One person's enjoyment of living in a society without poverty would not reduce anyone else's enjoyment of it. The good would not be excludable: Once poverty is eliminated, no one can be prevented from taking pleasure in this fact. As a result, there would be a tendency for people to free ride on the generosity of others, enjoying the benefits of poverty elimination without contributing to the cause. Because of the free-rider problem, eliminating poverty through private charity will probably not work."

Anyhow the key characteristics of goods that are public goods are non-excludability and non-rivalry. They are technical terms with fairly precise definitions.
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The rub for me is the walk from the vague “anti poverty program” to the actual government program that allegedly achieves it. I agree that the consumption of anti poverty is non-excludable and non-rivalrous, but I’m skeptical whether those conditions hold when we get down to the policy level.
 
Tapate50 said:
Because its the WORST way to do so?

If we cannot agree government run programs are the most inefficient products delivered to consumers, then we can't have a discussion.
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Conversely, if we cannot agree that for-profit businesses have insufficient incentive to take care of those in need, we can’t really have a conversation.

I agree that we have a number of programs that are run poorly. However, I happen to think fixing those programs is the path forward, as I don’t trust in the generosity of the public to resolve those issues on their own.
 
msstate7 said:
I'm in construction, and I've been involved in several gov funded housing projects. Granite countertops, high grade appliances, and extremely expensive windows seems excessive.

Now on my side... we've also done several military jobs, and it is ridiculous the amount of money that's wasted on military construction.
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I agree this is a problem. I’m not asking for the poor to live a life of luxury. I just don’t want people dying on the side of the road.
 
acesfull86 said:
The rub for me is the walk from the vague “anti poverty program” to the actual government program that allegedly achieves it. I agree that the consumption of anti poverty is non-excludable and non-rivalrous, but I’m skeptical whether those conditions hold when we get down to the policy level.
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I think you can also point to California and Newsome running on his "no homeless by 2020"..... there is big money in not solving the problem. I can't remember who said that, but it makes sense.
 
mqt said:
I’m really curious as to what your argument would be that public housing or a national healthcare system would not be economically defined as a public good.

You tend to have reasonable (though wrong :P) takes on these issues, but both would seem to fit at least from a definitional sense.
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National defense clearly satisfies the conditions of being non-rivalrous (my “consumption” of the military intercepting a bomb doesn’t lessen your or anyone else’s consumption of it) and it’s non-excludable (when the military intercepts the bomb, it has to intercept it for everyone…there’s no way to allow the missile to hit and only save/not save people based on their willingness to support defense spending). I don’t view public housing or national healthcare as satisfying those conditions once we get down to the actual policies we’d need to enact to actually execute them.
 
acesfull86 said:
The rub for me is the walk from the vague “anti poverty program” to the actual government program that allegedly achieves it. I agree that the consumption of anti poverty is non-excludable and non-rivalrous, but I’m skeptical whether those conditions hold when we get down to the policy level.
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Agreed. It is a public good and there is plenty of room for people of good will to disagree how we go about trying to provide for it. Same as people of good will can debate about various aspects of military spending.
 
acesfull86 said:
National defense clearly satisfies the conditions of being non-rivalrous (my “consumption” of the military intercepting a bomb doesn’t lessen your or anyone else’s consumption of it) and it’s non-excludable (when the military intercepts the bomb, it has to intercept it for everyone…there’s no way to allow the missile to hit and only save/not save people based on their willingness to support defense spending). I don’t view public housing or national healthcare as satisfying those conditions once we get down to the actual policies we’d need to enact to actually execute them.
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In my particular sub of construction, a normal commercial job runs between $55-80/sq ft. On military projects, that number goes up to $125/200 sq ft. Mainly bc of the headache to work on the bases... they make every project a major pain. They should cut some of the red tape on construction, and use the money on technology
 
nsacpi said:
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hopefully very poorly chosen one announces his candidacy before the runoff and campaigns for Herschel...he has been an amazing asset to the Dems
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The GOP candidates, ever the gooberheads who love Trump, would've all done better had he just stayed on the golf course and out of the news, as much as that's possible for a guy being with about a dozen investigations coming down on him.
 
acesfull86 said:
The rub for me is the walk from the vague “anti poverty program” to the actual government program that allegedly achieves it. I agree that the consumption of anti poverty is non-excludable and non-rivalrous, but I’m skeptical whether those conditions hold when we get down to the policy level.
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I see your point, but I think you’re then moving from a purely economical argument to a much murkier political one. And I get it, the devil is in the details. But I don’t think it changes the fact that it’s conceptually a public good. Otherwise I could play the same game with a national defense and how we spend our defense budget.
 
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