ComradeKayAdams

I am MORE invested in this season than ever before! I have never experienced the Bills winning a division title, hosting a playoff game, winning a playoff game, or playing in an AFC Championship game. They finally constructed a team that has a realistic shot at achieving all of this. It’s definitely a little sad to know that the Bills won’t be playing this year in front of their typical home game crowds. But I also can’t think of a more poetically beautiful season for the Buffalo red, white, and blue to win its first Super Bowl than during the year of Covid-19...and 100 years after the Staley Swindle, no less! America loves its Cinderella stories with likeable characters (players). Maybe America NEEDS the Bills to lift its spirits from the mess that has been 2020? I won’t get into any of the political stuff here. I respect everyone’s right to boycott the NFL as much as I respect everyone’s right to support BLM in the manner that they feel is warranted. Just remember that life is short and often mostly painful. If following professional football brings you joy and a bit of relief in your life, then that alone could be a worthy reason to keep watching. Just my stupid opinion.

THREAD BUMP for perhaps the most important thing happening in my life right now, which is kinda sad but whatever. We are in a MUST WIN scenario, people!!! Voting closes tomorrow afternoon at 2:30pm. To quote legendary Wall of Famer, Lou Saban: “You can get it done, you can get it done. And what’s more, you GOTTA get it done.” My brief analysis of the final 4: I’m super happy that the Titans aren’t around this year to sully the competition. The Bills, Packers, Chiefs, and Saints all deserve to be in the conversation for top NFL fan bases, although I would personally rank the Steelers and Browns slightly ahead of the Chiefs and Saints. I suppose the Broncos and Eagles also deserve to be in the mix for the title. Don’t you DARE suggest the Cowboys, Giants, or Patriots. I will slap you if you do so. By the way, this final 4 bracket reminds me of yet another reason why Buffalo versus KC is ready to be the next great NFL rivalry. Passionate fan bases and excellent tailgates to go along with a great history as classic AFL rivals and as early 90’s AFC rivals during the Levy/Kelly/Schottenheimer/(93-94) Montana era. I like the new dynamic of McDermott the protege versus Reid the mentor, as well as Allen the humble hard-working small-town hero versus Mahomes the flashy QB the Bills passed over in the 2017 draft.

Oh I definitely DENY, in a wacky-waving-inflatable-arms-flailing-tube-man visual kind of way!! The absence of universal suffrage codifies power of the few and inevitably leads to plutocratic oligarchies and societal uprisings. Okay…technically you could avoid the latter with a strong enough power grip from the former…but I’d much rather gather all the rational adults in the room and find common ground on the freeloader dilemma. Some of y’all seem overly fixated on tyranny of the majority issues with democracies and republics, at the exclusion of tyranny of the minority dynamics. I absolutely DENY, for all 3 categories given. The early U.S. automatically fails the social stability test on account of all the disenfranchised black slaves, Native Americans, females, and non-landowning (i.e. non-wealthy) non-WASP males. Most economic historians agree that the laissez-faire boom/bust cycles of the early Industrial Age were longer and more painful than any experienced in modern (post-Great Depression) American history. And in terms of political stability, why would anyone ever think the early US political history was more idyllic? They were still trying to iron out all the messy fundamental Constitution questions back then that we take for granted today, like the Tenth Amendment interpretation, the role of the Supreme Court, the need for a central bank…just to name a few. Oh yeah, let’s not forget all the Whiskey Rebellions, Hamilton-Burr duels, Hatfield-McCoy skirmishes, and Wild West lawlessness back then. If y’all think the contemporary political skies are falling on a daily basis, it might be because you are tuned in to mass media at unhealthy levels? Find a hobby! Try looking into knitting or Vinyasa yoga. Very therapeutic. Too girly? Fine. Then just get ready for the new Bills season! But there’s nothing sensible about exclusively regressive tax structures! Why was the Sixteenth Amendment ratified in the first place? What was the socioeconomic climate like during the Gilded Age? Why did all those left-wing populist third parties keep popping up in the early twentieth century? I see that many here are struggling with the free-rider market failure problem. I recommend trying to approach this from a data-driven economics perspective and not from a philosophical one. Just try it for a bit and see what happens (random aside: I was once similarly stubbornly against quinoa dishes…until I tried a few of them and learned how to add the proper amount of cooking water. Now I love ‘em and am enjoying an exotic leftover quinoa breakfast of sorts as I type! The moral of this story is to not be afraid to try new things). Before we even entertain a policy of ceasing all taxes on productivity, we first need to push our so-called Judeo-Christian society to live up to its Judeo-Christian ideals of voluntary community service and compassion for the downtrodden. But human nature is what it is, which is why I prefer practical data-driven economics over theoretical philosophizing…the realities of human behavior are already accounted for in the data! Yay! No need to waste one’s own time like some wanna-be Hobbes/Locke/Rousseau.

No, GunnerBill, you don’t want that!!! Don’t forget the Fitz Curse and what it would mean for Josh’s health! But I understand the sentiment. Fitzy + Buffalo = perfection. Hopefully he eventually reaches the playoffs before retirement. 15 seasons so far, 39th in career passing yards, and 38th in career TD’s. What a career! Our thoughts and prayers go out to the bearded Harvard gunslinger and his family.

Hi GG, I will attempt to address every point you touched upon in your post, minus the Obamanomics stuff because I’m not particularly motivated to defend neoliberalism. But I promise to eventually look over the earliest pages of this thread, as you suggested, on the Obama versus Trump economic policy debate. My focus today is on the current recession, with a little bit of economic philosophy mixed in and hopefully also a more in-depth segue into the federal unemployment benefit extension (FUBE) confusion. I’m already at the estimated daily caffeine limit (300 mg) for my body weight (110 lb), so LET’S DO THIS. Wooooooooo!!! 1. General criticisms of economic libertarianism: 1-A. Government stimulation of economy: I agree that government should stay out of the private market’s way in most instances, but to think that the government has no role in directly stimulating production and quickly creating jobs would be absurd and dangerous. This narrative runs contrary to all the excellent historical evidence we’ve seen since WW2, for example, of governments initially pulling economies out of recessions as private markets flounder. In fact, let’s go all the way back to 1790 to include all 47 estimated recessions in US history. The best data we can gather on them shows an obvious reduction in the severity and duration of recessions as our country has moved further away from its laissez faire capitalistic roots. 1-B. Government regulations: We risk speaking over and around each other here because of overgeneralizations. But without listing and explicating every regulation imaginable in painful detail, I’ll say that many of them are frivolous, some useful, and some essential despite whatever limitations they may place on short-term economic growth. Regarding the latter, I’m moving to the clear political left of Trump on many regulations that have to do with finance/banking, real estate, workers’ collective bargaining, monopolies/mergers, environment, and energy. One example of a regulation I like but libertarians hate is Glass-Steagall, whose absence perfectly captured the economic milieu that led to the Great Recession…sigh… 1-C. Random libertarian pet peeves of mine: A big one is how they consistently and willfully confuse short-term speculation-based economies with long-term investment-based ones. Many of them tend to approach all forms of investing like cocaine-addicted Gordon Gekko-style day traders, hating on any attempts to curb investment risk that putatively slows capital gains…with the resulting market instability from investors’ collective psychological rollercoasters of trust/distrust leading to long-term sub-optimal economic growth. Libertarians also frustrate me with their blind spots for the role of consumer spending in generating macroeconomic growth, for the negative effects that wealth concentration at the top have on society’s institutions of power, and for the hypocrisy in loving both privatized profits and socialized losses at the top echelons of business. Oh yeah, and many often insist that government programs never work…as they elect unqualified politicians that do everything they can to undermine and sabotage said government programs. Oh yeah, and some libertarians keep confusing marginal tax rates with effective tax rates whenever the progressive tax code fearmongering routine goes on repeat… Very frustrating. Ugh. 2. Miscellaneous issues related to the current economic crisis: 2-A. Opening up the economy: When I say fully opening up the economy ASAP isn’t a “panacea,” I’m using the “cure-all” definition of the word and not a “cure-some” one. Even if social distancing measures were to somehow be fully relaxed in all service industries, consumer behavior is not going to return to normal any time soon. Anyone thinking otherwise is delusional (IMHO) and not paying attention to the health component, the job losses, the housing crisis, the food insecurity crisis, and the general economic anxiety for a large majority of Americans who were living paycheck to paycheck BEFORE the coronavirus began. Continued government stimulus is needed for both American consumers and for the small businesses to keep everything afloat for at least a few months longer. Companies that survive will undoubtedly restructure operations as a result of the pandemic, which will be to the detriment of workers and will further hinder economic recovery. So expect more political calls for government intervention beyond the fall season, too, in the form of living wages (yes!) and permanent UBI’s (meh.). 2-B. The health factor: To be fair, we can’t say for sure that blue states are playing a deliberate game of economic chicken and focused only on defeating Trump. Much of the reticence to fully open businesses and schools may very well have to do with genuine health concerns. The political right tends to downplay the health aspect to an extent that is out of proportion with the overall population, where something like two-thirds of polled Americans are still very worried about catching Covid-19, three-fourths support mandatory mask-wearing, and a majority are angry at the government’s handling of the pandemic and believe it’s only going to get worse this fall. 2-C. Cuomo and de Blasio: Both have performed abysmally at their jobs and should not seek reelection. Even before their blunders with the pandemic health emergency and the police protests, we had serious issues with NYS and NYC budgetary mismanagement. The two have taken polar opposite positions on the financial crisis. While Cuomo has met regularly with the wealthy NYC elite to reassure them that their taxes won’t be raised, de Blasio has emphasized the 22 thousand NYC public employees that will have to be laid off this fall. My compromise solution during a pandemic would be tough mutual sacrifices on all sides: partial federal bailout with conditions, state/city budget streamlining, and slight tax raises on the rich. But this is America…so expect the federal government and the wealthy elite taxpayers to completely win this argument. Massive public layoffs and cuts to public services will ensue, further tanking the precarious local economy…and national economy too, since NYC is kind of a big deal. I’m sure MMT purists are arguing that the smartest solution would be a 100% federal government bailout, on account of our nation’s monetary sovereignty. 2-D. The departing NYC coffers: No surprise whatsoever that the wealthy NYC elite can’t be bothered to lift half a finger during a health crisis while the working class of the city get destroyed! The dullards can nibble on their cake crumbs while waiting for their job-creating superiors to allow their generosity to slowly trickle down… I say let the uber-wealthy go ahead and flee to their glorious “tax havens” of northern NJ, Suffolk Co, Westchester, Hudson Valley, and Connecticut. Such decadent behavior on the eve of a long-overdue political revolution only expedites the transition process. Muhahaha! While I agree that state and local taxes are higher than they need to be for everyone in NYS and NYC, federal taxes are also way too low on the highest income brackets (I’d go from 37% marginal to 50%...there are scholarly arguments being made for 65-70%). So long as the federal taxes are abnormally low, the rich should temporarily pay a little more at the local and state level with some form of a sunset tax hike. Because of all the tax discrepancies between U.S. regions, the easiest way to manage irksome tax haven issues during unusual economic crises like this one may have to come at the federal level. Enforce creative region-dependent income and corporate tax laws, close off tax loopholes, and restrict geographical market access for the wealthy and for companies who refuse to play fair. 2-E. Trump’s August 8th executive orders: I’d love to hear more from those who similarly feel that Trump “continues to insert himself in the weeds of economic policy,” specifically relating to Trump’s most recent executive orders. The four orders overall seemed woefully insufficient to me, relative to the magnitude of the economic crisis…more symbolic than substantive. The student loan payment suspensions were good, but they don’t account for private student loans. The eviction moratorium was excellent in principle, even though it’s not legally enforceable and only pushes a lump sum of payments months into the future. The temporary payroll tax cut/deferral was ok in theory, but probably overrated in macroeconomic impact and sketchy in terms of how it might affect social security funding long-term. I’ll get to the complicated $400+ unemployment benefits issue in a minute. What about a second round of $1200 stimulus? Or extensions of PPP support for small businesses, with as many as 40% of the nation-wide pre-pandemic number rumored to be in danger of permanently disappearing beyond Labor Day? Thoughts on Bernie’s proposed but rejected 60% tax on the specific wealth gains from billionaires during the pandemic, which would have generated ~$425 billion in revenue? Yes, I realize these all are issues more appropriate for Congress, with the Senate mysteriously adjourning through early September… But my questions reference the spirit of how various economic efforts may help, not the political logistics. 3. Analysis of the August 8th federal unemployment benefits extension (FUBE): 3-A. Extension details: So the $600 weekly federal bump from CARES expired at the end of July. Then Trump signed an executive order to extend but reduce to $300 weekly, plus an option for each state to determine an additional $100 weekly bump of their own contribution. This translates to a $15-per-hour wage boost dropping to either a $7.50 or $10 hourly wage boost. What complicates matters a bit is the confusing coordination needed between the federal government and the state unemployment offices in order to make the executive order work. It’s such a mess that many people will only receive these benefits retroactively, possibly not until after the extension expires near the middle of September. Hey, and you know what didn’t help?! Years of habitually underfunding unemployment offices so to deliberately frustrate citizens using the services. Perverse mind games meant to incentivize people to find work. Disgraceful. 3-B. The uncertain macroeconomic impact: According to the July 2020 JPMorgan Chase Institute study, average spending during the pandemic dropped by 10% for those employed and rose by 22% for those receiving the CARES Act’s $600+ (FYI: those going on normal unemployment benefits usually decrease their spending by 7%). The spending increase effect was most pronounced for the lowest wage workers. We have about 32 million people believed to be receiving unemployment benefits at the moment, with the normal US labor force capacity at about 160 million…that’s 20% of the workforce using FUBE! So the spending habits of those receiving unemployment benefits is significant to the overall economy and very likely has been stabilizing total consumer spending this year. The only issue I have with the study is that they can’t separate the collective effects of the $1200 stimulus checks, student loan suspensions, and rent forbearances from the unemployment benefits…however, the line charts clearly show huge jumps in consumer spending from 2 weeks before the CARES benefits first kicked in to 1 week after. Also, household spending fell by 20% for those individuals who experienced large delays in receiving the original fed unemployment benefits. So my conclusion: there’s a good case to be made here that ANY reduction from the original $600+ weekly will mean BAD NEWS for gross economic consumption, given the fact that new US unemployment claims of ~1 million minimum each week are being made 22 weeks into the crisis and that Covid-19 is still very much with us. 3-C. The contentious job search incentivization question: To what extent are the FUBE’s disincentivizing people from seeking employment? My short answer: FAULTY QUESTION because the number of people looking for jobs is currently at a MUCH bigger number than the number of job openings. The official U-3 unemployment rate is about 10%, with the true unemployment rate closer to about 19%. According to BLS (Bureau of Labor Stats), the recent job growth rate has significantly slowed and permanent/long-term job losses have substantially increased. Goldman Sachs research findings have led them to make very dire job growth/job loss predictions through all of next year. Now granted, I imagine that excessive FUBE’s are very well creating disincentives for people who despise their dead-end jobs and find zero fulfillment from them. I could detour into a lengthy debate here about living wages, but I won’t! In an ideal world, the FUBE’s would have been distributed according to costs of living variations by state/locality, regional pandemic spreads and pandemic responses, various job nuances and worker stipulations and caveats, etc… but that was never practical (FWIW: a right-wing source is making a claim I’m unable to confirm that 5 out of 6 who received the original CARES UB made more from the benefits than they would have otherwise normally made). The point is that we shouldn’t turn national economic public policy for the many into a morality play on laziness for the few, especially during a time of emergency. Too many individuals and families are just trying to pay their bills, so I don’t appreciate privileged DC politicians far removed from the economic destruction NOT compensating people for their inability to fully return to work…when THE POLITICIANS are the ones who forced the people to stop working in the first place during a health calamity. Ok, done! Y’all still there…? I hope SoCal Deek doesn’t see this monstrosity hahaha…

Interesting perspective, KRC. My opinions derive from a bunch of news articles over the years that have reported on Amazon workplace conditions (plus an amusing South Park episode...no, just kidding). I don’t believe these articles ever made comparisons with the workplace conditions of other e-commerce businesses, so I trust you when you say they are very similar. However, this then raises the question of how the markedly fast-paced nature of distribution/fulfillment centers in the e-commerce industry compare to warehouse labor conditions in other industries? From your personal experiences, do you think special labor laws and unions are needed for them? Also, any thoughts on the Chris Smalls Staten Island Amazon protest? As for government price controls, I insist that they are safe and necessary in very limited situations. So what are these limited situations? Temporary emergencies (food shortages, some types of hyperinflationary circumstances, etc.), systemic market failures (living wage price floors for labor, price ceilings for isolated oligopolistic housing markets, etc.), and competition in already heavily price-controlled markets (global pharmaceutical products, etc.) are three categories of examples. And what do I mean by “necessary?” I’m usually referring to ethical dilemmas, which often overlap with sub-optimal market performances. And what do I mean by “safe?” This one gets tricky…but I’m referring to cases where we have an excellent understanding of the demand for the goods/services/job openings, and a central authority (like in a nationalized industry) can readily control the supply as needed. The trickiness comes about when we can’t easily quantify or forecast the demand, or when the “proper” equilibrium prices for the labor and the materials going into the final product that we aim to control are equally uncertain. It’s when you add too many layers of price controls that you very quickly end up with something akin to the horribly inefficient national market of the 1980’s Soviet Union, which was a direct consequence of all the multiplying product surpluses and shortages. I’m all about data-driven economic decision theory, so I’m also open to alternatives to price controls such as the government providing direct economic stimulus to the people, UBI implementations, market regulations, or creative uses of tax laws and subsidizations. Black markets and other such complications tend to pop up with any of these types of government-mandated market distortions, but choosing instead to do nothing is not normally an option on the table for me...mainly on ethical grounds. I refuse to deify the will of the private markets. 1. Working 40 hours per week doesn’t mean a low-skilled worker should be paid “well,” per se, but it does mean he/she should be paid at a level ever so slightly above subsistence for his/her region’s cost of living standards. There’s quite a bit of obvious subjectivity in how our society and how legislators choose to define this level, of course, but I think you get the principle of it all. No one should have to work OT or a second job above a full-time one in order to meet the subsistence threshold. Many people, such as single moms, can’t logistically do so even if they have the energy and willpower. If an employer can’t provide a living wage, then they should not bother hiring in the first place. I don’t ever want our society to regress toward the quasi-slave labor era of the early Industrial Age. If the private market is persistent in its inability to create jobs for these low-skilled workers, then I would turn to the creation of government employment options as a last resort. 2. Economists are the ones who define market failures, though there is some ambiguity here depending on the school of thought. We also have experts in specific industries and fields whose jobs are to flag market failures. I think everybody seems to agree on non-competitive markets, market information asymmetries, negative externalities, all types of public goods, and chaotic consumer demand as areas where market failures can occur. The Board of Governors for the Federal Reserve, the Secretary of the Treasury, all of our elected politicians, and the American people (in theory) ultimately decide what are market failures and how to handle them. Government’s market interventions always distort the market, for better or worse, and can absolutely lead to serious market failures. The alternative choice of taking no action at all, however, is often intolerable. We use historical precedent and quality economic data to guide government market intervention. Sometimes a bit of guess work is involved (see: CARES Act’s federal unemployment benefit extension debate). The housing crisis that led to the Great Recession is a lot more complicated than a “government = bad, private markets = good” reasoning, but yes I agree that government played a major negative role. I STRONGLY disagree with you when you say that markets don’t fail in the long run! Market failures can last indefinitely or for as long as the causes remain. Too many examples to cite, but my inner eco-socialist can’t help but mention the environmental destruction and resource depletion that unrestrained capitalism creates. Jared Diamond, among many, would argue that this is the biggest reason for why civilizations collapse. My inner Marxist must also emphatically challenge any notion of free markets inherently tending to long-term Pareto efficiencies, given the past 40 years of neoliberalism in relation to the mid-twentieth century…as if Pareto efficiencies are worth aspiring to anyway from a moral point of view…or as if Pareto efficiencies can even be reached since there’s no such thing as a perfect market without any of the market failures I described above. And I would be remiss to not mention Somalia as the most extreme contemporary example of long-term market failures in the absence of government intervention. But even if market failures were to theoretically always self-correct in the long run, we can potentially avoid a lot of human misery along the way by entertaining the possibility of early or preemptive government intervention. Um actually…characterizing me as a bookworm with little real-world experience is pretty accurate...so good call, hahaha! You should be proud of your successful team management experience in the private sector, but I still don’t see how that experience makes you better positioned than others here to adjudicate the Amazon labor union issue (or any macroeconomic theory)? Recall that I agreed with you earlier that labor unions aren’t necessary for a large variety of work situations such as your own. But you’re incorrectly extrapolating your positive management experiences onto all other work environments in all other industries. Are you against all labor unions in principle? What about all that historical bad stuff that precipitated the passing of the 1935 NLRA? Our work experiences (or lack thereof) often shape our political orientations, but they often create political blind spots as well. Maybe our disparate politics would converge if we began having similar work experiences? No matter…labor rights situations relate to human ethics, so any thoughtful person is already fully equipped to analyze them (given enough information and enough comparative labor cases) independent of work experience. And in sort of the opposite way, rigorous academic training in macroeconomic theory precludes most of us from tackling complex labor theory at the level that only professional economists can attain (who often never spent a day of their working adult lives outside the ivory tower).

People come to PPP for different reasons, SoCal Deek. Some check in for the news updates, online editorial links, and Twitter posts. Some enjoy the funny memes. Others just want their political predispositions validated here and reinforced. A select few come here for the dopamine hits they get for calling AOC a stupid c-word, with the c-word not standing for “communist.” There’s also a group who enjoys open-minded political discourse with people who think differently from them, often at whatever post lengths deemed necessary to advance the discussion. You’re possibly not among the lattermost type. That’s quite all right, really, but stop hectoring others here into conforming to your personal standards and expectations for this place. I’m unaware of any maximum word limit per post before one’s account is suspended. Since February, I’ve received 8 different PM’s from people thanking me for taking the time to type my lengthy posts. Most (but not all) were left-leaning lurkers supporting me for my yeoman’s service in the fervently right-wing environment that is PPP. What you may consider using a platform for personal manifestos is what others call sharing political opinions on an internet message board. I suggest that you, Nanker, and Bray Wyatt (and any others who feel the same way but are too bashful to “like” your post) go ahead and block my user name if you can’t deal with the post lengths or the content quality anymore. My longest posts, by the way, are not any longer than most news articles and opinion pieces you’ll find online. So I dunno…maybe y’all should also consider getting checked for ADHD?? Thank you very much for the kind words, ALF! Much appreciated! But please think of me as an “enthusiastic amateur internet economist” and not as an “economy expert.” The definition of “blather” is “to talk foolishly at length.” I won’t disagree with the length part, but the foolish part I consider highly insulting. I’ll leave it at that. Good Will Hunting* is an excellent movie, but I don’t see how your “experience trumps knowledge” ad hominem attack is going to help advance your argument(s). Quality socioeconomic data is far more persuasive than personal anecdotes. And what exactly do you mean by my “theories?” Are we still discussing Amazon NYC versus AOC and the Amazon company versus its warehouse employees? Or are you referring to labor economics now and social democratic philosophy? If you insist on focusing on human experiences, then first we should be listening to what the employees at Amazon warehouses and what Amazon business executives have to say. Or if you’re thinking about my more general “theories,” then we should be listening from people who have lived and worked in both the US and in social democracy countries abroad…in both public and private sectors…low-wage laborers and business owners alike. That would be far more interesting and relevant than my own lived experiences. Anyhoo…I could be a successful multi-decade small-business owner or a 400-lb middle-aged Antifa foot soldier living in her parents’ basement…but I could have access to the same international socioeconomic data that best informs us of how the actual world works. If you’d like, we can agree to disagree and then let this thread die the miserable death it so richly deserves. If you’re perfectly fine with Amazon’s practices on both ethical and economic grounds, then so be it. And yes…Ted Yoho is still a piece of trash. * - Believe it or not, as soon as I heard that AOC endorsed Bernie during her convention video, the first thought that ran through my head was: how do you like THEM apples, DNC?! Ha!!

Yes, I currently work for a private company. No union membership. Early-career white-collar professional job. Why do you ask? Oops! Sorry…I didn’t mean to ruin your discussion with Tiberius. I assumed his answer was eventually going to be some small variation of my vague economic statism response. He definitely doesn’t come across as a laissez-faire kind of guy, but he has never struck me as a planned economy or Chinese dirigism type either?? Ok I’ll shut up now and let Tiberius speak for himself…

But disproportionately helping big corporations relative to whatever help small businesses receive can have a similar effect as directly harming the small businesses, right? The same mechanisms that lead to oligopolies in poorly regulated markets go into play. We’ve known about these mechanisms since the Teddy Roosevelt trust-busting days of the post-Gilded Age, and we should have learned again from history during the Great Recession economic fallout. Too many voters in this country apparently haven’t over the past 12 years, which makes me feel very sad. No one else sees the power consolidation in certain critical sectors of our economy? Finance, media, communication tech, info tech, transportation, metal materials, fossil fuels, pharmaceuticals?? Over the next few months to couple years, we’ll know for sure how well our politicians actually protected small businesses during the Covid-19 pandemic. If they collapse and get swallowed up at the numbers I fear, then it will be additional evidence of the two-party corporate oligarchy theory. Regarding the special relationship between big corporations and government: yes, big corporations are golden egg-laying geese, but I’m sure we can figure out a happy compromise between job production and market monopolization. And besides, government can and should allow large companies to fail in most instances, in accordance with the intent of truly competitive capitalist systems. Bankruptcy filings for major corporations often lead to asset restructuring where very few jobs end up lost and the only people negatively impacted are major equity holders and senior executives (but they usually have the money and connections and golden parachutes to survive okay, so don’t shed too many tears for them!). And for the cases where we determine that it’s preferable to bail out big companies because the economy can’t absorb the big loss of jobs, we need proper government oversight to make sure payrolls are maintained and the bailout money isn’t being siphoned off predominantly for share repurchases. That’s an interesting take on the Obama-versus-Trump economic debate, 3rdnlng. Kinda like how it’s much easier to train for a 6-minute mile run from an 8-minute-pace starting point, versus going to a 4-minute mile run from a 6-minute one. I don’t agree at all, however, that the Trump economy was operating at a close-to-optimal level. Now it would be difficult for me to persuade you that you’re wrong without offering an alternative presidential performance of my own preferred choice, since we haven’t had such a president in at least the past 50 years of American government…or not ever, actually. I could make references to presidents from other modern Western democracies, but that’s too much of an apples-to-oranges economic comparison to be convincing. So maybe I’ll suspend that line of thought for the time being and try this another way… What I’ll do instead is first point out the inherent limitations in the common economic metrics you mentioned (which I’m sure you already know, but I’ll remind anyway!): unemployment, GDP, and stock market. Official unemployment percentage is one of the few numbers where the Trump economy was clearly performing at near-optimal levels, but this acknowledgment also masks the limitations of such a simple number (underemployment, part-time employment, gig workers, job satisfaction, counting those who have given up looking for jobs, etc.). GDP growth rates, meanwhile, have all sorts of limitations of their own. Aside from the obvious of not accounting for off-the-books labor, it lumps in all the many nuances of the economy into dumb aggregate numbers for private consumption, business investments, government expenditures, exports, and imports. So two economies structured drastically different from each other can have the same GDP numbers. Economy “HC,” for example, could be a “haute couture” goods-and-services economy heavily reliant on the fashion industry and might be something I value immensely but most of the people on this message board could not possibly care less about. Economy “HT,” meanwhile, could be a GDP-equivalent one based on “high-tech” manufacturing that would have much greater future GDP growth potential than the high-fashion one as well as be much more consequential to the human condition. And stock market growth is just a psychological corollary to anticipated GDP growth, with about 50% of adult Americans not having any ownership stake in it whatsoever and the top 10% of income earners owning about 90% of the total stock market value. Now honing in on that GDP metric: we’re an economy driven by consumer spending to the tune of 70%. The economic fortunes of the lower and middle classes matter a great deal to consumer-driven economies. So my argument is that optimally performing American economies (assuming you value stand-alone GDP numbers above all else) should be ones where the lower and middle classes have the most economic success. That is partly why I lean more toward macroeconomic numbers like adjusted wage growth in reference to costs of living, as well as upward socioeconomic mobility ratings. In that respect, the Trump economy has been performing somewhat poorly relative to the rest of the industrialized world and a little bit worse than Obama’s (standard sources: IMF, BLS). And because y’all know that I’m a wacky lefty who is all about “muh feelings,” I care about measurable socioeconomic happiness indices too (such as UN World Happiness Reports)! After all, we only get about 80 years on this planet…if we’re lucky. What’s the point of generating amazing GDP-per-capita numbers if so many of us are so bleeping depressed and anxious while doing it (also see: Japan’s social crises)?! But alas, we Americans continue to get mediocre scores in those metrics as well. This minor economic controversy from a couple weeks back only highlights the importance of language precision. Any reference to the -32.9% GDP number should be prefaced with the “annualized” qualifier, as should the -9.5% GDP number with the “quarterly” qualifier. I’ll cut certain Twitter laypeople some slack on the sloppiness, but journalists and politicians ought to know better! I was going to clarify my thoughts on the difference between “intentionally misleading” and “lying,” but I suppose it’s a tautological waste of time on an already extremely BORING and tired topic. Yep, we agree on the absurdity of the second California shutdown! Note that my super negative U.S. economic outlook is simply a prediction based on the evidence that’s presented to me and the reality as I see it. I’m not necessarily endorsing the collective way our society perceives the pandemic’s health dangers or the collective way we have managed the economic response. Thanks for reading and replying, GG! I ran out of time this morning, but I’ll be sure to respond to your post tomorrow morning.

I probably misphrased the “no allowed labor unions” remark. Amazon doesn’t officially disallow unions because they can’t, but they do everything they think they can legally get away with to discourage their formation. In other words, Amazon higher-ups have been actively and quite aggressively skirting the 1935 NLRA as a company policy. They’ve been repeatedly caught red-handed doing so! Only after vigorous outside political pressure did Amazon finally cave and raise their lowest wages to $15 an hour. But their warehouse working conditions are still pretty terrible by conventional 2020 labor standards. Amazon even openly justifies their company practices by claiming they run such a unique business model that depends on unusually super-fast service. Unions would obviously threaten to put an end to it all. For some types of jobs and for some industries (like the companies you say you’re familiar with), unions aren’t all that necessary because the laws of labor supply and labor demand suffice. For other jobs and industries, however, this is not the case. Why? Classic market failures due to competition distortions. Labor market monopsonies for low-skilled workers and top-heavy consumer pool wealth asymmetries are two example reasons. And yes, I realize the laws of labor economics work in the opposite direction too! Unions can create labor monopoly conditions and might push for adverse things like overly high minimum wages, for example, that raise unemployment and raise the costs of goods and services onto the consumer. People on the right these days seem to hate teacher unions. People on the left these days seem to hate police unions. But we can all love prospective Amazon unions because they’re nowhere near a situation right now that favors the labor side over the employer side! We know this to be the case because many low-wage Amazon employees still rely on social welfare programs such as food stamps. The taxpayers are effectively subsidizing companies like Amazon for their employee underpayment practices. And I hope we can all agree that any American willing to work 40 hours a week should not have to live in abject poverty! The private market should set wages just as it should set the prices for goods and services. But then government should have a role as well in looking at the resulting economic data and making a few (intelligent) corrections for market failures. These corrections include appropriate living wage determinations plus a small handful of price control/fixing measures in certain industries. So your standard mixed economy, basically, with the private market the main driver and the government a reactionary stabilizer in a constant cycle of market evaluation and market modification.

Sure, I understand low tax incentivization just as I’m sure everyone here understands lost tax revenue, so thankfully we can all skip deep analyses into boring corporate tax theory! The issue here is that Amazon was trying to negotiate for excessive tax breaks that went way beyond the business standard for NYC. The ever-so-humble citizens of NYC believe they have the best workforce in the world and the greatest quality of life ever, so they don’t very much like outsiders coming here and bullying them into rolling out the red carpet. It was as much about pride and maintaining leverage over future negotiations with companies as it was about Amazon itself. But to be clear, it was most definitely also about taking a general stand against this company’s monopolistic and anti-worker policies (mainly in the form of no allowed labor unions and poor warehouse safety practices…issues that former Staten Island employees, Rashad Long and Christian Smalls, famously brought to the fore). At some point, politicians need to start playing hardball with companies taking advantage of workers. Not all job creation must necessarily be encouraged. Everyone would be okay with AOC’s stance on NYC Amazon, for example, if they were discovered to be somehow hiring children somewhere in the US at slave wages. So we acknowledge that a line exists and that it’s just a matter of how far you’re willing to go to support workers. I also want to reiterate that the future Amazon jobs were loosely estimated at 25-40k over 10-20 years, so few would have been immediately ready during the pandemic, nor were they ever fully guaranteed to exist. Those median estimated $150k jobs (not a big deal in NYC, anyway, given the cost of living here) were expected to be primarily in financial management and marketing and could have theoretically been done from home. So they weren’t exactly the type of blue-collar service jobs that have been hit the hardest by far from NYC’s pandemic shutdown. The cancelled Amazon NYC headquarters debate is such a fascinating one because it underscores the major ideological divide right now between the country’s political left and right. Much more interesting than the childish Ted Yoho spat, anyway! To be ever so slightly fair to Amazon, I’ve heard very little from their side of the negotiation story.

Interesting results! Tells us a lot about this message board, if not much about the election. Sorta like a PPP “census,” showing at least 61 message board participants. Heavily skewed to the political right (43 for Trump, 10 for Biden, 8 elsewhere). No crossover voting between the two major parties, but notable healthy skepticism toward notions of party loyalty. I’d love to see data for location, age, income level, and education level with this poll. Wow…am I really the most far-left person here?? No market socialists lurking around these parts? EDIT: Oooh up to 43 for Trump this morning! I happily voted for Jill Stein in 2016 and will reluctantly vote for Howie Hawkins in 2020. My “reluctant” support of the Green Party is because I’m uncomfortable rubber-stamping Howie’s despicable Russiagating. I’ll only eventually return to the Democrats on the highly unlikely condition that Progressive Caucus members take over the party. The DNC has made it perfectly clear that they’d rather have Trump again than have anyone from the proper left threaten the oligarchical status quo. The Kamala Harris VP selection, which was fairly PREDICTABLE if you followed the big donor trail since 2017 and the fawning mainstream media from last year, certifies how Democrats envisage themselves in the 2020’s: a party for warmongering corporatist sociopathic leaders and for the professional/managerial class that exclusively benefit from these policies. And when I say “predictable,” that’s also partly because the swift suspension of Kamala’s once reputed campaign in early December always felt more like the result of a backroom deal (Hillary…?!), as opposed to the singular campaign mismanagement excuse we were given. I have no evidence at all to support this claim…just a gut feeling. Though I’m sure Kamala’s arch-nemesis, Tulsi, understands that feeling. I can’t imagine ever voting for a Republican, unless it’s an unusual protest vote dilemma…or there is some radical unforeseen realignment in American politics where genuine nouveau political populism emerges on that side. Excellent choice, DR. May the spirit of “aloha” continue to be with you. YES that would make the VP debate must-see TV!!! Congresswoman Gabbard would also be an amazing Secretary of State or Secretary of Defense in Trump’s Cabinet. She may still eventually become President for this broken, divided country. Very JFK-like. But after seeing the way all shades of the political spectrum attacked Tulsi during the past year, maybe we don’t deserve her? Ok, actually the right wingers weren’t that bad. The Hillary cacklers were by far the worst, followed by the Warren Witches and a sizable portion of the Bernie Bros. I was ready to switch my NYC campaign volunteer allegiance from Bernie to Tulsi until she suspended her campaign in mid-March…and then Covid-19 struck us hard…sigh… That would have been an effective campaign slogan in many places: “Bernie 2020. More integrity than Kasich 2016.” I like it! As it stands, NYC metro politics completely dominate the state with its population of 13.5 million versus Upstate NY’s 6 million. Dividing electoral college votes by congressional district would finally give the good people up north some presidential voting representation. Gerrymandering rules complicate matters, but that’s yet another reason to justify revisiting gerrymandering rules. Hmmm…I don’t anticipate the Harris selection rocking the Bernie Boat any more than it was already rocked. Everyone already knew Biden would choose a prominent female woman of color disappointingly far to the right of Nina Turner. A few were hoping for Liz Warren, but those few weren’t paying close enough attention to which way the centrist political winds blow (insert Kamala joke here). Warren is also badly needed in the Senate. Her potential “kingmaking” seat would have otherwise temporarily opened for whomever the Republican governor of Massachusetts would have selected. Some Bernie Bros tepidly preferred Karen Bass because they couldn’t stand the personalities of the other major VP candidates. The overall vast majority of progressive leftists (Bernie Bros + Warren Witches) view this election (erroneously, IMO) from a classic “lesser of two evils” strategic perspective, whereby the Bernies and the Warrens will theoretically have a lot more access and influence on a Biden/Harris ticket. Neither Biden nor Harris is widely perceived to have strong political convictions, and both have acquired reputations for following popular polling trends. Warren’s people especially love the Kamala pick because they tend to view everything more from a race/gender/religion/sexual orientation identity lens and love the weaponization of PC politics that she will deliver. The Bernie people see politics more from a socioeconomic class lens and view Kamala with extreme caution, but we have our PC proclivities as well and still tend to despise Trump above all else in this world. My latest Election Day breakdown for the Bernie Bros: 78% sticking with Biden, 10% staying home, 8% going Green/DSA, 4% for Trump. And I’ll do the Warren Witches too: 92% for Biden, 6% staying home, 2% Green. These are my own predictions based on scientific polling trends, unscientific internal Bernie campaign canvassing data from the primaries, and lots of personal anecdotes. I expect these approximate numbers to hold steady, so long as the following don’t happen which would suppress voter turnout in obvious blue states: a second wave of Covid-19 flare-ups, Biden tanking the debates because of dementia, and the economy tanking from a collapse in consumer spending. Far less predictable and far more interesting to the election outcome are the independent voters, the 2016 Trump-voting Boomers/female suburbanites worried about Covid-19, and African-American males. Speaking strictly in terms of political strategy, it admittedly makes a lot more sense for Biden/Harris to go after these groups instead of the mostly settled Bernie Bro contingent.

Oh, well I don't like ageism, but I sorta see what they mean. The ages of the convention lineup: 30 (AOC), 38 (Buttigieg), 45 (Yang), 48 (Whitmer), 50 (Giffords, Bottoms), 51 (Booker), 52 (Newsom, Duckworth), 55 (Kamala), 56 (Cortez Masto, Michelle, *****), 58 (Baldwin, Rochester), 59 (Barack, Yates), 60 (Grisham, Klobuchar), 62 (Cuomo), 66 (Jones), 68 (Evers, Kasich), 69 (Jill Biden, Schumer, Moore), 71 (Elizabeth), 72 (Thompson, Hillary), 73 (Bill), 76 (Kerry), 77 (Joe), 78 (Bernie, Bloomberg), 80 (Pelosi, Clyburn), and XX (Biden family). EDIT: apparently C O O N S is a no-no word! I meant Chris C., of course. So you have the Bidens, the Obamas, the Clintons, Kerry, Pelosi, Schumer, Bernie, and Clyburn headlining the list. It’s deja vu all over again, with about the same entertainment of rewatching a fuzzy VHS tape of Space Cowboys on my parents’ dusty cathode ray TV. Kamala is a veritable newborn in that group. Maybe that’s the contrast the DNC wanted all along. How else are they going to sell their prison labor-loving political puppet to a voter base that resoundingly rejected her during the primaries? A social democrat’s perspective: I counted 2 true progressive leftists, 2 quasi-progs, 30 variations of Republican-light, 2 actual Republicans cosplaying as Democrats, plus Biden’s family in that convention list…for a party whose base consists of anywhere between 35-45% progressive-friendly voters (going by the 2016 and 2020 primary results). Interesting representation ratio… And of course the DNC gives prime time speaking slots to a Lincoln Project type (Kasich) and a textbook two-party oligarch (Bloomberg) while largely muffling AOC with a short 1-minute time slot and allowing Yang to speak only after he begged them. Absolute perfection. The power of corporate donations in full display. You’d think this would push the Progressive Rage-O-Meter from the “accost cisgendered white male for using wrong gender pronoun” reading past a “throw brick through business window” one and right on over to the “tip over police chief’s car” mark. It looks like Bernie speaks tomorrow night, AOC speaks on Tuesday, Warren speaks Wednesday night, and Yang speaks on Thursday. Expect from them a bunch of unity platitudes, apocalyptic Trump Derangement Syndrome-fueled forewarnings, and false Biden + Harris = FDR declarations. Basically 4 explicit propaganda lectures on the virtues of political lobotomization. No thank you.

I participated in cross country, track, soccer, ballet, and modern dance but wasn’t particularly good at any of them. Now all I do is the occasional park run and weekend yoga. I learned about the X’s and O’s of football solely from watching games with my Dad as a child. If one is passionate enough about the sport, I bet it’s possible to develop a Bill Belichick-like understanding of the game despite having never played it. That’s exactly how I look at pro football and why I love watching it: it’s like a more violent and emotional version of chess, with each piece filled to the brim with steroids!

If there is an Internet Thread Hall of Fame, then someone should immediately get this one fitted for a gold jacket.

Didn’t Josh play more efficiently on the road last year? Maybe playing in front of large and rabid home crowds works against him at this early stage of his career. Josh plays with such emotion, so having no fans at all to impress and who pump him up may force Josh to settle down and focus on the cerebral aspects of the position. All this great discussion about Josh’s passing potential, but don’t forget his scrambling ability!! I really hope the additions of Diggs and Moss doesn’t mean Daboll will minimize such a unique game-breaking component to Josh’s game. It’s likely key for the offensive game plan to have him run about 5 times a game, whether improvised or drawn up that way. Here’s my own representation of an ideal workload for Buffalo’s 2020 offense: Allen: 5 rushes, 30 passes Singletary: 15 rushes, 3 receiving targets Moss: 10 rushes, 2 receiving targets Knox: 4 targets Beasley: 6 targets Brown: 7 targets Diggs: 8 targets It’s equally balanced between running and passing, with a lovely pass distribution to keep defenses guessing. This should optimize everyone’s talent and give Josh his best chance for a Pro Bowl nomination.

To be fair, Colin’s argument seems perfectly reasonable for August of 2020. His AFC QB ranking is fine as well, though I would have put Allen at #4 ahead of Big Ben at this point in their careers (or ahead of Tannehill, in the case of the player-voted ranking) and right behind Mahomes, Jackson, and Watson. Mr. Cowherd has never been one to be overly enamored with elite physical skills, but he does at least have some respect for Allen and his potential. I, meanwhile, LOVE Josh Allen so much and my reasons go beyond his ability to throw a football over them mountains. It’s partly the way he treats his teammates, his love for the beautiful citizens of Buffalo, his love for the sport of football, and his work ethic. It’s partly his boyish good looks situated on a total hunk of a man’s body. But what puts him over the top for me is the way he is willing to put his body on the line, like a running back, in order to will the team to victory. I’m thinking back to the watershed Dallas Thanksgiving game and recalling the 4th and 1 QB sneak in the 2nd quarter with the botched handoff. The rest of the players in the NFL were at home watching that game. They noticed that play and probably had it in their heads when voting for Josh at #87. To quote Adam Schein, “that’s MY GUY.”

What a strange turn this thread took… The annoying conservationist in me can’t help but respond! For what it’s worth, the second article features the opinions of one researcher and doesn’t represent the overwhelming consensus from wildlife experts. Same goes for Buffalo716’s rather aggressive declarations of fact. I’m not saying I know these two are wrong. I’m emphasizing their minority stance on the subject. Most ecologists believe that the large majority of the blame for the decline in American bison numbers goes to overhunting from nineteenth century European American settlers. Prior to the Manifest Destiny expansion, it is widely understood that Native Americans had maintained a fairly stable population balance with the American bison they hunted. Also, it was almost definitely a LOT more than tens of thousands of bison that were killed from frontier hunting. It was likely in the tens of millions over multiple nineteenth century decades. Dr. Sierra Stoneberg Holt’s disease theory is probably at least partly true, but also potentially misleading. Tick fever and anthrax had been with American bison species for a long time, but the more likely diseases (Brucellosis?) that decimated the American bison population came from the settlers’ domesticated cattle. Fast forward decades into the westward expansion after the Lewis and Clark expedition, and one could have witnessed firsthand the rapid disruption to ecosystems and the massive reductions in space in which the American bison could roam as a consequence of shortsighted agricultural planning. This ecosystem damage and space confinement is what probably created the ripe conditions for cross-species bovine bacteria and viruses to spread like epidemics. Modern day examples of what I’m talking about: zoonotic coronaviruses (like Covid-19?) more easily transfer as a result of habitat destruction (bats to intermediary species to humans from Chinese deforestation practices?) and then proliferate like wildfire in more confined spaces (say…NYC?). So remember that regardless of the specific reason for the demise of the American bison, we can all still safely blame evil omnivorous humans. Or at least I will. Sorry. I know this wasn’t the point of the thread, but I couldn’t help myself. Yes, we should absolutely keep the name “Buffalo Bills.” Carry on.

My understanding of the situation was that Amazon demanded over $3 billion in combined public funding and incentivized tax breaks from NYS+NYC, with this demand coming from a trillion-dollar company whose CEO is worth about $190 billion… The speculated (i.e. nowhere near guaranteed!) job creation was estimated at between 25,000-40,000 over a 10-year to 20-year period. In typical Amazonian behavior, the pay for most of the jobs was expected to fall well below the cost of living standards of NYC, so that many prospective employees would have faced crazy work commutes and would have also strained the subway system in certain places. There were also gentrification housing market concerns for the surrounding southwest Queens neighborhood where the massive company headquarters was expected to reside.

It technically depends on what B-Man is referring to when he says “Obama’s policies.” There are Obama’s first-100-days Keynesian crisis escape policies (~$800 billion ARRA, Fed Reserve manipulations of interest rates/monetary supply, etc.) which all credible economists agree most definitely helped (but ended up being not nearly enough, in my opinion), and then Obama’s general post-crisis neoliberal economic policies that defined his last 7 years in office. I assume B-Man is referring to the latter, in which case my roundabout answer is “yes, B-Man is correct.” It's widely agreed upon that the Great Recession lasted 6 economic quarters from January 2008-June 2009. We’re using the mainstream definition of a recession here as at least two consecutive quarters with a decline in GDP. Important side notes: Obama should have done WAY more in early 2009. Way tighter regulation of Wall Street, actual criminal prosecutions of bankers, more oversight of the big business bailouts and the real estate industry, bottom-up stimulus support for Americans, and way more federal protections for homeowners. These early missteps, in addition to 7+ years of neoliberalism, are what truncated the recovery even though I give Obama credit for doing the bare minimum to clean up what was largely Bush’s mess and stabilize the economy. These economic shortcomings are what set the stage for the populist political uprising of 2016, which continue today. The Great Recession “recovery” is also an excellent lesson in the shortcomings of popular singular economic metrics like GDP, which do nothing to tell the story of how blacks, Latinos, Millenials, and whites without college degrees have fared overall during the past 12 years. 100% in agreement here, but I have a comparative opinion of Trumponomics that is not so flattering for President Trump, either. I take Obama’s last 12 quarters and Trump’s first 12 quarters when making this economic comparison because that keeps the analysis the furthest removed from the Great Recession and Covid-19. Using standard economic sources (NBER, BEA, BLS), I rate Trump as better on consumer confidence, about the same as Obama with unemployment decline rate and stock market growth rate and net job growth and cost-of-living-adjusted wages/income and GDP (Trump originally over-promised quarterly 5% but never got much above 3%), and worse with import/export trade balance and budget deficits/national debt (but like I said earlier, I don’t get worked up over this one like deficit hawks do). In “defense” of Obama, we’ve seen our fair share of crony capitalism (or rather, socialism?) throughout the tenures of Bush (such as fall 2008 TARP), Trump (such as 2017 TCJA and CARES), Clinton, and most who have been in Congress. I have to look over HEROES again and check out the HEALS Act proposals, but I’m sure there’s egregious pork in them too. Yes, I’m a deeply cynical person! Sure, but then again we already know about the GOP’s cult-like devotion to supply-side economic ideology. And amusingly enough, the one HEALS pandemic remedy McConnell is advocating the hardest for is the corporate coronavirus liability protection (the right call, though, to be clear…but amusing nonetheless). What’s far more interesting to me is how the Democrats are responding in the ongoing HEALS negotiations. Especially the obsequious clown car known as the Progressive Caucus (Bernie, the Squad, Khanna, Porter, Meng, Jayapal, etc.). We’ll see if Pelosi, Schumer, and the Dems are more interested in helping the American people or in playing partisan theatrical roles as Trump contrarians and GOP obstructionists. My central thesis and PPP raison d’etre: America is actually controlled by a one-party corporate oligarchy, with two flavors depending on your tastes for personal/social freedom issues. The oligarchy takes advantage of economic and foreign policy crises to increase their wealth and power. They couldn’t care less if small businesses fail and people lose their homes during this pandemic because then they can buy ‘em all up at discount prices in 2021. We shall see… So far I’ve heard that at least the $1200 stimulus won’t be a point of contention, but that there’s been virtually zero Dem movement on the following: foreclosure/eviction moratorium, fed aid to state and local governments that will otherwise need to cut payroll, a payroll tax that could help workers and small businesses, and Covid-19/general health care relief for the recently unemployed. I don’t think the Democrats have been pushing hard for an approximate $600+ weekly unemployment benefit extension, either. In my non-expert opinion, they should be doing so because it has likely been boosting consumer spending all summer and I bet also keeping many working class families afloat (the first time making living wages for some?!). From a macroeconomic perspective, the value of this extension would far outweigh the enablement of a small percentage of lazy people from going back to work (not to mention the easy political points to be scored with the Dems’ constituencies!). I’m assuming the job applicant to job opening ratio is currently uncomfortably high in most sectors of the economy, although I honestly haven’t seen a full July numbers report on weekly new unemployment claims, furloughs, layoffs, permanent job losses, and new job creation to say so with any certainty. This is among the most serious crises our country has ever faced and one that economists have never quite seen before, so I will continue to preach the importance of both political parties erring on the side of caution and going full Keynesian on historically tried-and-true recession recovery policy. Agreed. This quarterly GDP number can’t really tell us much beyond the fact that an unprecedented nation-wide shutdown of the economy during a historic pandemic caused an unprecedented drop in economic activity. Well…duh. The 2020 Q3 number will be much more meaningful and will give us a much better idea of where exactly the economy may be headed. HEALS might buy us some more time, but my best guess is that the poop hits the economic fan in 2020 Q3. An economic depression could even be declared as early as 2020 Q4, depending on the unemployment rate. Seems like talk of a v-shaped recovery has disappeared? Is reality sadly sinking in for a lot of people? That’s a good historical analogy. In poor Mr. Hoover’s defense, everyone back then had so much less economic data to study and learn from, compared to what we have now. The true prisoners of the modern-day GOP’s economic ideology are its populist coalition of economic nationalists, particularly the sub-$60k median household income Rep voters who have been led to believe that the wealth has been trickling down. The economic libertarians are the ones who control the GOP and will continue to do so after self-aggrandizing faux populist hero, Donald Trump, is gone. There’s no reason for professional and managerial GOP types to question the 40-year-old edifice of an economic philosophy designed to work magnificently for them, so any ideological challenge will have to come from the GOP working class. The problem here is that any and all economic woes will easily be blamed on Covid-19 and/or Joe Biden and/or even Trump’s personal foibles, so we should expect a bare minimum of another 2 presidential election cycles before an internal GOP working class revolt occurs…if ever. More likely, this GOP voting bloc will just skip on over to the Dems, whose own internal working class revolt could begin as early as 2022…um…if ever?? No problem, so long as fully opening up the economy ASAP is not thought of as a panacea for the recession. As Covid-19 goes, so go economic activity levels. Until there’s a vaccine or until herd immunity is somehow reached, we’re stuck with a limited set of solutions: modified partial reopenings in many sectors of the economy, more government-issued economic stimuli, and the usual health and safety practices (social distancing, face masks, hand sanitizers). Economic uncertainty is our new reality for at least the rest of 2020. Unfortunately they’re not lying. Annual rates are the traditional way GDP quarterly reports are given in the US. Misleading? Yes, since the more tangible number is about a 10% total macroeconomic contraction from 2020 Q1 to 2020 Q2. Intentionally misleading? Possibly. Bigger numbers are scarier than smaller numbers and can be used to promote agendas. But there’s no need for us to kid ourselves about the state of the economy: this GDP drop was historically awful. 2020 Q1 dropped at an annual rate of 5%, 2020 Q2 dropped at an annual rate of 33%, and so now we’re in an official recession.

Yes, the hallmark of a healthy economy is a large, strong middle class like what was seen during the few decades after WW2. These types of economies score well on economic happiness metrics and provide the government with the highest tax revenue needed to pay down big debts. So they represent the approximate end goals of domestic economic public policies. Federal debt is nothing more than a malleable means to reach these more optimal end goals. There are no apparent target numbers like total debt-to-GDP ratios that we should strive for during different economic situations. As long as we increase national debt during economic downturns, then I’m happy. If we’re not doing some combo of cutting taxes or injecting economic stimulus during recessions, then we’re not trying hard enough to get out of them. Balanced budgets (last done under Bill Clinton in 2000) and zero national debt (last done under Andrew Jackson in 1835) can be goals between recessions, but they don’t appear to matter all that much in American macroeconomics. Seems counterintuitive, but that’s because we tend to incorrectly think of federal government debt as perfectly analogous to personal household debt. It’s unclear how much automation will replace human labor after the pandemic, but I don’t think it will be too bad yet and this opinion has more to do with current technology limitations than anything else. The AI revolution is coming, so it’s never too early to start thinking about what our displaced work force can do instead: public works projects, taking up Hillary’s and Joe’s idea of learning to code, arts and crafts, creating online memes, space force cadets, etc… Old sectors of the economy have always been replaced by new technology all throughout capitalism’s history (horse-drawn carriages with cars, Blockbuster with Netflix, etc.), but never at the level of what AI would do. If the transition happens too quickly for the economy to accommodate, then we’ll need government to intervene. But as you know, a nation’s strength isn’t solely dependent on the size of its military budget. It’s also a matter of HOW and WHERE the military budget is spent, global military force positioning/logistics, war strategy, battle tactics, training/command execution, foreign policy toward allies and enemies, economic strength, internal stability with regards to social and political unrest, and so on... I’m not sure if our military leaders could ever delineate for the American taxpayers a military budget size threshold at which they’d feel confidently safe from Chinese aggression. There will always be an argument to be made for more. The latest proposed US military budget is $740 billion, but let’s use the 2018 numbers for the sake of international comparisons. The entire global defense budget was $1.8 trillion in 2018, with the US leading the way at $650 billion and China in second at $250 billion. This seems…excessive. For starters, I would personally propose cutting about 25% of that annual budget (note: this is much greater than the 10% that Senator Sanders meekly proposed this year and that was unanimously rejected), which would still have us outspending China by a 2-to-1 ratio. Budget cuts would then force our military leaders and politicians to streamline our post-Cold War military, focusing more on high-tech capabilities and less on soldier deployments, while discontinuing the subsidization of other countries’ defense programs. I cannot imagine any realistic scenario where Chinese military aggression would ever play itself out on the world stage without them sustaining devastating multilateral military and economic damage. And I don’t see a physical invasion of our own country at all likely within the next two generations. Remember that our citizens have the second amendment! Modern warfare with the US will either be done purely economically, by cyber security intrusions, or with “accidental” biological weapon releases, but not with big metal machines and bombs and boots on the ground except in very desperately nihilistic scenarios. Some of these grand national defense spending proposals we hear about simply reek of Chinese fearmongering for the sole benefit of the military-industrial complex and the usual neocon suspects. I would argue that we could simultaneously increase our international strength while substantially reducing military costs by establishing a new “Swiss Doctrine” foreign policy ethos centered on strong border defense, non-interventionism (not the same as isolationism!), and last-resort multilateral military offensive engagements. I know I’m speaking a bit too generally, of course, because international relationships and military strategy and ethics are rarely this simplistic. But y’all get my idea, I hope? And finally, I want to quickly note the non-military implications of a potential military budget escalation with China. Foolishly doing so would only replicate the Roman Empire’s classic mistakes, spreading financial investments and other vested interests out too far and wide while decaying internally from the outward diversion of resources. Why not use some of that money to invest in our own citizens and reduce social unrest? Education and health care are two big example investments for me, as you know. Reduced military expenditures would not kill domestic tech jobs, either, but would rather simply free up military company contractors for more socially beneficial ventures such as commercial space tech, commercial electronics, or any of my many fantastic Green New Deal public works project recommendations!

Hi RochesterRob, I’ll try to address every debt-related concern in your second paragraph. When it comes to government stimulus and federal debt, I don’t think the fork in the road is in the year 2020. Nor SHOULD a fork be presented in 2020. Because we are now in an obvious period of very high unemployment and disturbingly low inflation, the potential benefits of directly injecting capital into the weak market FAR outweigh any economic anxieties caused by an absence of a sound federal austerity policy. Let’s examine the situation with some numbers! Yay! The current ratio of total national debt to annual federal tax revenue is about 11 to 1, or about 1.3 if you substitute US GDP into the denominator. Adding an aggressive and very major stimulus package like, say, $2 trillion of strictly bottom-up economic stimulus through the remainder of 2020 (so that would be 5 more monthly $1200 stimulus checks to every living American…even children) would push the ratio higher to something like 12 to 1, or 1.4 when using a GDP measure. Now a rule of thumb for a typical country is to not exceed a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 0.8 so to prevent stalling of economic growth. The US, though, is nothing like most countries because our fiat currency enjoys a privileged status as an international reserve standard. Our government is in no imminent danger of defaulting (if ever, technically, if you’re willing to ignore inflationary effects from printing money out of thin air in order to make payments). The ratio was 1.1 early this year without issue. We once had a debt-to-GDP ratio of about 1.2 around WW2 without issue, and our underlying national economic standing during this Covid-19 apocalypse is way more secure now than it was back then (besides…the rest of the world’s governments are all currently in the same boat, so who’s in danger of defaulting on whom anyway??). Our economy is simply too massive and too comparably stable on the international arena for these 1.1, 1.2, 1.3, and 1.4 ratios to trigger an economic meltdown. We’ve seen no signs of panic in the collective psychology of global investors and speculators as we’ve advanced from 1.1 through 1.3. Now a rapid jump to 2.0+? MAYBE… But not from these relatively incremental and perfectly justified increases toward 1.4 during a universally understood health crisis. The size (and duration) of the national debt really only matters to the extent that people begin to lose confidence in our government’s ability to pay back that debt or lose confidence in the strength of the US dollar. That COULD very well happen, however, at some unknown theoretical debt limit in the abstractly near future. So yes, federal debt DOES ultimately still matter. The signs and consequences of runaway national debt would be unreasonably high interest rates, hyperinflation spirals, mass hysteria, human sacrifice, dogs living together with cats, etc. So by all means, let’s try to force our Congress and our President to propose a long-term plan for debt reduction as soon as Covid-19 dwindles. The mere existence of a well-articulated proposal would be enough to allay market fears and keep interest rates low and stable. And for the unconvinced deficit hawks still worried about the debt right this very minute…then let’s begin cutting the budget immediately and start with national defense!! Or begin raising annual revenue by eliminating tax loopholes for the top 1%, accompanied with thorough IRS oversight!! Finally! Hurray! If continued government stimulus at the level of tens of trillions of dollars becomes necessary to stave off societal collapse, then we’ll know that something else is terribly and fundamentally wrong with our economy…either that or the pandemic has morphed into something beyond the 1918 Spanish Flu and toward fourteenth century Black Death territory. As long as we’re still using capitalist economic systems in the future, people will still have to care about work incentivization and paying taxes, regardless of the particular federal budgetary policy employed (Austrian, cyclical Keynesian, MMT, etc.). The basic laws of economics won’t go away. No, people definitely won’t lead and produce at nearly ideal levels if everyone gets the same. But I also don’t think the end game to running large federal budget deficits is going to be communism! The true problem with this Monopoly game we’ve been playing is that the players who took the early lead began changing the game’s rules to amplify their financial power. These same players also surreptitiously stole from the bank whenever the elected banker took her bathroom breaks. Some of the badly losing players now want to flip the board over and play Hungry Hungry Hippos instead. I denounce such temper tantrums, but I can’t blame ‘em for feeling that way either. Just keeping it real! That’s how REALKayAdams rolls.

I believe it’s only 18 straight weeks of 1 million+ new unemployment claims, not 19…so…yay? The old weekly record before the pandemic began, by the way, was 700,000 in 1982. The total of first-time unemployment claims that have been made since March is now over 52 million. Some of that number have returned to work, of course, but the total US working population is about 155 million if that helps put things in perspective. These next 30 days are absolutely critical to the US economy. Unemployment benefits are running out, eviction/foreclosure deadlines are approaching, and school reopening/closing plans are being finalized. I hope Congress and Trump realize the historic gravity of the situation. A payroll tax is a viable supply-side booster, but our economy is driven mostly by consumer spending. Payroll taxes don’t immediately help the people who are not on payrolls. And who’s to say the tax cuts will equate to increased rehiring at the rate we want? Especially given the fact that the pandemic is still a thing? This is a totally unprecedented economic downturn, so I’d just play it safe and do both a payroll tax cut and another round of stimulus checks. Even if all businesses everywhere were allowed to resume fully normal operations, the economic demand is not going to return to pre-pandemic levels any time soon. Financial confidence issues aside, a majority of Americans are still worried about catching the virus out in public. While reopening businesses wherever possible and whenever possible and however possible is important, government economic stimulus throughout the fall is a necessary reality.

I’m more than happy to keep the focus of the discussion here on the Uyghurs and China, so I will refrain from a long and tired essay on the ethical and strategic failures of post-WW 2 US foreign policy. It’s slightly relevant to this topic, however, because our international reputation affects how we can go about solving the Uyghur genocide problem. Look at the list of the 50+ countries who have defended China on Xinjiang and on Hong Kong. Notice how they tend to fall into 2 groups: African countries that stand to benefit economically from good Chinese relations, and then countries with reason to hate the US because of our 75 years of foreign policy blunders and bullying. With the latter group, we have inadvertently strengthened China’s global power by pushing many of these countries over to our enemy’s side as a consequence of our long history of organized coups, draconian sanctions, economically motivated wars, drone/bomb collateral damage, etc... Also note that I’ve never made an absurd moral equivalence argument between the deliberate Chinese genocide of Uyghurs and US foreign policy mistakes. Even so, from time to time our international enemies do love to point out our own internal history of Native American genocide and African American slavery. Quite an unfair argument since all those responsible have been dead for a long time, but the greater point here is that (recent or old) track records of human rights abuses matter and that they taint future international relationships. Ok, now a quick pivot back to China and the Uyghurs… My hope is that Europe, the rest of the industrialized West, Brazil, India, Japan, South Korea, and all of the other democratic countries in the world would join the US in multilateral trade negotiations. These countries I just listed form a huge percentage of the total global GDP, so that is an overwhelming amount of economic leverage right there. “Incentivized” multilateral trade negotiations do NOT mean free bags of bribery cash courtesy of the American taxpayers. I’m referring to complex, mutually beneficial trade deals involving many countries besides the US and China. And no, I do not want to resurrect the TPP. I’m as outspoken as one can get against TPP, NAFTA, most of USMCA, and globalism’s failures in general. I’ll ask again for the message board community: what are the viable alternatives? If anyone wants to suggest military action, then walk us through how that would play out on the international arena. The pandemic’s attack on the global economy has the world’s leaders sufficiently on edge right now, so one or two missteps could easily trigger World War 3. No, I don’t think I’m being entirely hyperbolic. Yes, that’s a slightly less diplomatic but equally valid way of saying the same thing: multilateral economic pressure on China is our best bet in saving the Uyghurs. Your idea of mass international protests a la Tibet is excellent, since that would publicly humiliate China and scare them with threats of worldwide boycotts of their (craptacular) products.

Ah good catch, thanks! It did kinda feel like I was forgetting something important. Let me update the solar drawbacks list a bit more for @plenzmd1: 1-9. (…) 10. Energy availability restrictions (obviously less effective on cloudy days and at night, but not an issue with suitable battery storage). 11. Energy storage limitations (lots of promising research is being done with lithium-ion batteries to improve capacity/power rating/lifespan/round-trip efficiency and especially to drop their costs down, but I also like the future potential of saltwater batteries and supercapacitors). 12. Transmission line losses (only relevant to remote desert solar arrays, but it’s not a unique problem to solar and not a super major one…maybe high-temp superconductor tech can help). Regarding the brevity tip: in my defense, I was replying to a whopping 9 different posts in my most recent superpost. My personal motivations for being here are more related to debating, persuading, informing, and learning rather than displaying wit, but I can strive to cut down on extraneous material in future posts. By the way, everyone should know that they can delete quoted post content, so this could drastically cut down on posted reply lengths whenever I am quoted. I think your skepticism is fine and healthy. I just wish you’d also reserve some skepticism for your own skepticism, that’s all. Especially with your sources of climate science information (I'll do the same). 1. I’ve been fighting you so vehemently because I’m trying to understand your point of view on a topic I find important. You appear to be blaming the community of professional climate scientists for inaccurate and sometimes outrageous claims that were instead likely made by random nutty climate alarmists, politicians, and essentially non-professional climatologists. I’m not currently aware of any geoscientist who predicted the Earth would warm 4-5 degrees Celsius between 1995 and 2020. 2. That El Nino-related 0.5 degree Celsius change in one year was a REGIONAL effect over a large part of the Pacific Ocean. I’m referring to GLOBAL mean surface temperatures. Dating back to the late nineteenth century, we haven’t recorded a 1-year change in global mean temperature beyond about 0.2 degrees. I do like the fact that you identified a benchmark by which you will consider MMGW. Unfortunately, I was hoping it would be in the ballpark of 0.25 degrees over the next decade and not an 8-10 degree Dansgaard-Oeschger Ice Age swing… 3. I see this Joanne Nova blogger is making a couple logical fallacies on her front page that we’ve already covered in this thread. It’s also worth noting that she has no professional Earth science training and yet appears to be running a small business as an international climate skeptic. 4. Yes, the sea level rise measuring variance is 4 mm. I’ve stated that the measured rise has been 85 mm over the past 25 years. So that means the actual rise is somewhere between 8.1 cm and 8.9 cm. I also don’t believe there is a grand scientific conspiracy afoot here. I think it’s more likely that you (and I, and other laypeople) simply don’t understand the technical nuances of their laser-based precision measurements. If we truly want to get to the bottom of this, we should start by contacting the involved scientists and instrumentation engineers directly with technical questions. 5. I hadn’t heard of this pre-2010 data-scrubbing controversy. I’m vaguely familiar with the 2009 Climategate controversy, but I believe those involved scientists were eventually exonerated. We can at least agree on a couple points in your last paragraph. Humans definitely need to begin thinking seriously about how to transition to living life in a warmer Earth. And yes, there are many politicians on the left who prioritize their own power way more than the well-being of Earth. Thank you for your last two posts. We don’t see eye to eye on this topic, but they have helped me understand the opposing argument a little better. Hopefully your side will prove my side wrong within the next few years. Yah, I figured you deducted points for me being such an openly devout social democrat. It’s sadly true that I bought into the Bernie hype both in 2016 and in 2020. Even up until the March 15 debate, I still clung to the hope that Bernie was serious about winning. But where else was someone of my political persuasion to go?! At least I had Liz Warren pegged as a political fraud years ago. I much preferred Tulsi in 2020, but Bernie had all the campaign momentum. I should have jumped ship as soon as his Russiagating and “Donald Trump is the worst and most dangerous president in modern US history” rhetoric began (what about Bush 43, Bernie??). Oh well, live and learn. Numerical lists help me organize my thoughts while I type. I think they’re also a bit easier to read on phones and other small screens when looking at long paragraphs of info. I only have 2 conditioners and 3 brushes. Well-kempt, silky-smooth hair is a critical part of my bodily feng shui. It helps me keep all of my amazing political and football ideas balanced in my head! It was unintentional. Any silly sort of “Boomers versus Millenials” rivalry is inconsequential to the point I was making, which is that we need to think about pollution as two completely separate categories. The first is the traditional pollution we all clearly recognize as bad because even relatively small amounts cause easily identifiable and relatively immediate damage (lead or mercury in water, arsenic or cesium-137 in food, sulfur oxides or CFC aerosols in air, etc.). The second are the collective greenhouse gases responsible for over 30 degrees Celsius of warming at the Earth’s surface. They are the far more controversial type of pollution for all the obvious reasons: they are completely natural and necessary at still very large levels, their alterations have delayed effects that are almost imperceptible to an ordinary human’s life, and their interactions with Earth’s ecosystems are way more complex. The “pompous ass Millenial” remark is my long overdue cue to officially retire from this thread. I’ve written plenty here, so people can make use of the info and my opinions as they so choose.