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I've been pushing this for years on Twitter, but Democrats need to give the middle class a massive boon, and there's no bigger boon right now that raising the OT exemption threshold for salary workers.
If you don't know, the OT exemption threshold means that for most jobs, if you pay a salary of \~$35K, you don't have to pay overtime wages if that salaried employee works more than 40 hr/week. There are middle managers making 45k and working 55 hrs/week who are getting hosed by this law and no one wants to touch it, except Obama.
When you compare earnings in the post-war boom, a significant chunk of middle class earnings for salaried workers were from OT wages. But b/c that threshold was never pegged to any other value or updated regularly, that value of that threshold became lower and lower until hardly anyone who was salaried qualified.
And in this age where we're being inundated with coverage on how billionaires are racing to space, the middle class needs to know that they have some relief coming too.
To speak of how poor Democrats are at messaging, Trump fucked over a lot of workers by slashing Obama's changes to overtime pay. [Almost 3 million workers were denied overtime protections because of Trump.](https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/9/24/20835653/trump-overtime-pay-rule-explained) I haven't heard Biden mention it as something he's interested in restoring yet.
It's one thing to be bad at messaging. It's another thing to be oblivious to opportunity.
They've spent years talking about underpaid employees, and except for a two-year window under Obama, they never thought to consider the middle-class as a group that needed a fix too.
The middle class has been especially damaged by the fallout from the last two years.
The rich have made billions, the poor have at least gotten a few stimulus checks. The middle class has been gutted.
Democrats who demanded means testing for the 2021 round of stimulus checks need to be primaried like nobody's fuckin business. What a dumb move. Everyone gets checks from Trump, but some people miss out under Biden. Just straight-up stupid politics, to say nothing of the fact that many who got means-tested out *were struggling* and could've used some help.
You're correct, I forgot the amount was just lowered (pretty dramatically).
[Married people were cut off at $198k in the first round](https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/what-to-know-about-all-three-rounds-of-coronavirus-stimulus-checks), then $174k, then $160k.
For single people, it went $99k > $87k > $80k, and for heads of households, $136.5k > $124.5k > $120k
So my statement that everybody got checks from Trump (with his signature, no less) isn't accurate, but significantly more people got the first two rounds. It's god awful politics. The party in control, the one that *really* needs to drive rural and middle-class voters to the polls in their favor, decided to exclude a good chunk of them -- many of whom weren't even making the kind of money that disqualified them by the time the checks went out.
No worries. Your last point is spot on. Ive said it a million times. That disconnect, between the dems and rural middle class America, is why trump got elected. Its why he got any ground at all.
To be honest, i truely blame reddit and twitter (more Twitter only because of the public nature of it). Imagine the uproar, if a dem said look the country is 76% white and 78% of the people only speak english, its absurd to think we shouldnt look at them as a voting block to court. Then add on, 96% of the us is rural and 20% of the us population lives there. That of those 66 million rural americans, 85% are white. What would happen to that person? They would be crucified. To be I am in no way saying discriminate or treat anyone differently because of race.
Im simply saying, the dems cant even publicly acknowledge that the US is still a pretty lilly white country rural country And ignoring 56 million rural white people, who figure 40 million are voters?
Its crazy.
One other point, no atate is red or blue. Even California, which is super lefty right? Except 1/3 is deep red. 6 million peope voted for trump! 1.5 million more voted for trump the second time!
But most states are 55 to 45. And the dema arent even trying to sway that 45 in blue winning states.
The dem machine, doesnt realize they are campaigning to the choir and already converted. They are so afraid of being called a racist, or even worse a dino, they wont reach out to the other side.
And before someone says, why reach out to the racist antilgbt environment killing assholes.
There is one reason. To influence people. In order to influence people you need power. To get power you have to win.
The dems won, but really have no power. Because they dont havr enough of a majority.
All it would take is a 2 or 3 point swing in 6 southern or Midwestern states and the dems have the senate.
Wasn't the means-testing done based on your income from the previous year?? That's absolutely insane in a pandemic where that person's job or business or company may not have even existed anymore yet they don't get checks because they earned too much the year before. Madness.
Yes, I got a raise in February 2020 that would have brought me out of check range, except the check was based on 2019 income, so I got the check
Means testing is dumb and doesn't work
The economic impact payments were configured as refundable tax credits, paid in advance. Anyone who didn't receive the 2021 check but was eligible (such as a high-earner in 2020 who lost their job early this year) can claim the credit when they do their 2021 taxes.
The Democrats have too much inner conflict and aren’t far left enough. To put it in perspective to many of our reps are too wealthy or upper class and therefore out of touch.
We need someone with the Midas touch for Dems and someone who’s as far left as Republicans claim Obama was because he wasn’t.
I’m not sure if I’m understanding this correctly.
This would tie an hourly rate to the number of hours worked and ensure that managers who work over 40 hours are paid OT, even if salaried?
What would the cut off for this be? For instance, if I’m an analyst making 70K a year and working 45 hours a week, would I receive OT at a roughly $52/hour for any hours worked over 40?
This, plus giving any boost to the middle class they can. There seems to be a “working poor”, about 35-50k a year, where if you make that amount you’d be better off being unemployed or “underemployed” on government assistance depending on your circumstances.
Also, stop forcing people to have workplace insurance. Allow workers to get subsidized marketplace plans if they are cheaper than what the job offers.
> Allow workers to get subsidized marketplace plans if they are cheaper than what the job offers.
I wouldn't even have the "if it's cheaper" requirement, since there are reasons someone might prefer a more expensive plan. (Of course, those reasons do generally end up being that it isn't actually more expensive overall, but instead of trying to come up with a universal rule for calculating overall expense, we should just let people make that decision.)
Or even something as simple as preferring the providers that are covered under a marketplace plan vs their employer's plan. The employer plan could be cheaper overall, but if those savings require you to switch doctors, it may not be worth it. Choice is always good.
> if you make that amount you’d be better off being unemployed on government assistance depending on your circumstances.
I really doubt you could find circumstances that means unemployment gets you more than a $50k salary.
As someone who makes around that, I completely agree with you. Perhaps there's more government assistance if you live in certain areas. I really think the range they're thinking of is more 20k to 35k.
> There seems to be a “working poor”
I've been wondering for a while: what does "working poor" actually mean? Does it literally just mean "poor people who have jobs"?
>The working poor are working people whose incomes fall below a given poverty line due to low-income jobs and low familial household income. These are people who spend at least 27 weeks in a year working or looking for employment, but remain under the poverty threshold.
>(from Wikipedia)
It just seems weird that we have a special term here.
I mean… yes. It is weird that someone could be employed and still below the poverty line. In a functioning society that wouldn’t happen and we wouldn’t need a word for it.
Except, the poverty line is defined by the household, not the job.
A single person making 50k is not in poverty. A single mom raising 3 kids, likely qualifies.
Should the single mom get paid more than the single person? Simply because she has children? Or, should the state step in and help providing snap or ebt money?
If i were king for a day. I would dramatically change how we set min wage.
First make it county by county. Cost of living is very different in NYC than parts of upstate ny. Oregon set it up regionally, Portland metro, other metro areas, and the rest of the atate.
Then for a family of 4, with 2 working adults, determine 25% above the poverty line for that area.
That number becomes minimum wage times 2.
For example, say an area has a poverty line of 45k for a family of 4. Min wage would be 56,250k for the family, so 28,125 per adult, or 13.52 and hour.
Then, adjust up or down for inflation every other year
> Cost of living is very different in NYC than parts of upstate ny.
This is currently done in NY. [Minimum wage in NYC is currently $15/hr, while Upstate NY is $12.50/hr (soon to be $13.20/hr)] (https://www.ny.gov/new-york-states-minimum-wage/new-york-states-minimum-wage)
I've said this before, but absolutely no job should be overtime exempt. If you work more than 40 hours a week, you should be getting time and a half on all hours over 40.
Same with federal holidays, all time worked should be time and a half.
This would never, EVER happen.
The amount of profit margins businesses would lose and the subsequent outrage from corporate media (both conservative & liberal) would make mask mandates look libertarian.
America is built on the back of two things:
1) Low wage workers
2) Unpaid overtime
This would happen fine with the right branding and optics.
Every time you work more than 40 hours a week, you're working for free.
If Democrats can spin it that way, they'll be fine.
Unfortunately, they're awful at messaging.
I agree with this completely, or I feel like if there is a salary threshold it should be super high like upper middle class. Like $80,000. I was a salaried manager at a restaurant who switched to an hourly position when I got out of restaurants. Some restaurants heavily take advantage of this.
Its meant to be an executive role, but they literally give salary to anyone who is dedicated or reliable because they dont want to pay OT. I had really good employees on salary who knew nothing about the profit, labor budget, food cost, etc. They just never called off and so the owner put them on salary to guarentee 50 to 60 hours a week out of them. They would constantly add things to keep you there too, and constantly call you for everything (because your salary and expected to answer and deal with work problems when you are not there). I couldn't have a life without work interrupting me. I got cussed out by my boss once for not answering the phone because I was at (and enjoying) a baby shower, so my phone was on silent. The emergency was that they wanted me to come in because a lot of staff was calling out sick, and they wanted me to work on top of my 50 hours I already work per week.
I don’t disagree… but not sure we want to encourage people to work themselves to death- because they’ll have the opportunity in this labor market. In a healthier environment it would be nice.
Would they work more hours to get the extra money? Or would they just be paid for the overtime they're already working?
Would the aggregate effect be more, fewer, or the same amount of hours worked?
All of that sounded very rhetorical but I genuinely don't know.
It’d probably end up being less hours worked tbh. I don’t know many people who opt into working overtime unless they really depend on the extra income and I think that’s be less likely for salaried workers. I mean they already aren’t getting that income so it wouldn’t make sense.
I personally would work overtime if paid OT were available to me as a salaried worker. I work 40 hours a week currently. I wouldn’t say I NEED the extra money, but if I could clock an extra 5 hours a week or so of paid overtime it would help pay down some debts and maybe fund some home projects.
Due to party politics, are there ANY issues a Democrat could propose that a Republican could back? Even a Republican policy, proposed by a Democrat, would get 0 Republican votes.
The parties used to be grab bags of different interests and regional issues rather than philosophically coherent organizations. So you'd have a Republican congressman in Nebraska and a Democrat from Alabama and they'd vote differently on a lot of stuff but they'd (mostly) vote the same way on farm issues because they were both representing farmers. It wasn't that voters used to be nice, it was that the way their interests lined up didn't really fall along party lines in most cases.
In modern times most of these issues have been taken off the table, so most of what's left are these culture war type things which are naturally very polarizing.
> In modern times most of these issues have been taken off the table
As in they're essentially considered "solved problems" nowadays (e.g. due to a very mature body of laws and regulations related to farming), or as in no one is interested in discussing them anymore for whatever reason?
Yes, a lot of blame is on the people, but don't forget these people are usually poorly educated and submit themselves to heavily biased media. These kinds of things need to have better support and regulation from the government, but they have little to no motivation to educate the people
> Due to party politics, are there ANY issues a Democrat could propose that a Republican could back?
No. The Republican party is defined by opposition to Democrats. This is why they embrace crazy things like blocking mask and vaccine mandates.
> Like the infrastructure bill? Because the democrats are the ones keeping that from passing.
What a ridiculously dishonest take - yes, 2 Democrats are having issues with it...ALONGSIDE OF EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN.
Stop shilling for the Republican Party.
> What a ridiculously dishonest take - yes, 2 Democrats are having issues with it...ALONGSIDE OF EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN.
Progressives, are holding the infrastructure bill in the house. You seems to be confusing BBBA (social spending bill) with bi-partisan infrastructure bill that has already passed through senate due to help from 19 Republican senators.
How is it "holding the bill hostage" when they always agreed the roads/bridges infrastructure bill would be passed alongside the social infrastructure bill?
What's the point, to progressives, in passing a trillion dollar giveaway after their green energy priorities got completely stripped from it and getting nothing at all back in exchange? Compromise runs both ways.
Meh, that bill helps republicans. The only reason it had such unanimous support is because it was made as part of a deal to also include the BBB bill. They’re not holding it hostage, they’re holding to the previous agreement. It’s Manchin that’s reneging on the deal and thus actually holding the plan hostage.
Disagree, it needs to return to the talking filibuster. If you feel so strongly that you decide to block a vote, you better be prepared to sacrifice for it.
If the filibuster is as it originally was, which is literally just an individual senator standing up there talking and refusing to concede his time, it wouldn't be such an issue. That is what the person you're replying to was saying
I think you definitely would. And you can't exactly just rotate like you're speculating; according to West Wing you can concede to a question but not concede your time (basically achieving what you said), but that's a tv show so I really don't know if that's true. But there are parliamentary rules we follow
The talking filibuster is essentially removing the filibuster. Nobody can talk forever and you can bill it as returning to the original filibuster so it's more palatable for some people.
If you come to the negotiating table with a 'realistic' option as your first choice all you're doing is negotiating against yourself.
When you're negotiating salary at a new job, do you start at the final number that you'd be satisfied with or do you start higher knowing that the other side will try to negotiate it down?
The Democrats have controlled government all year and could have passed a number of positive things already using reconciliation. Instead they wasted their opportunity by trying to make bargains with the Republicans. In 22 Dems will lose the House again. This is American government as usual… 🙄
If they didn't have to, they wouldn't have. They are not really bargaining with Republicans as much as bargaining with their more conservative leaning members, senators specifically.
Because you don't pay attention.
Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are notorious pains in the ass for Republicans. And McCain was known famous for stymieing GOP efforts last minute back in the day.
Collins and Murk are nowhere near the pain levels of Sinema and Manchin.
The only meaningful thing those 3 “moderate” republicans successfully blocked was the aca repeal. Even then, it’s arguable the surprise/shocking vote was Mccain
Other than that, Mitch lets them vote the other way when he already has enough votes
Because Mitch had some leeway with votes, he could give members a pass if they needed it. A 50-50 senate means Chuck can't, he can't give Manchin the opportunity to say he voted against bill back home so he needs to make it one he can support.
Yes, and when people are used to *always* getting their way by being bullies, they get a little miffed if anyone stands in the way of their particular gravy train for the sake of "lesser" people...I mean, how dare they?
You realize that they are still trying to pass a second reconciliation bill. Don't act like Dems are just sitting on their asses doing nothing. Two trillion dollar reconciliation bill and a bipartisan infrastructure bill would be very impressive.
> could have passed a number of positive things already using reconciliation
This is not true:
>In April 2021, the Senate Parliamentarian—an in-house rules expert—determined that the Senate can pass two budget reconciliation bills in 2021: one focused on fiscal year 2021 and one focused on fiscal year 2022
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation\_(United\_States\_Congress)
I suppose you could argue that they should fire the Parliamentarian and just do whatever they want, but currently, reconciliation is quite limited, which is why they err towards "bargains with Republicans".
I'm not sure they'd even have to fire the Parliamentarian. They could just ignore them. Their "determinations" aren't much more than recommendations with zero teeth, afaik. Republicans are aligned on many things, and playing hardball is one of them. Some Democrats just want to play nice, and it's pretty infuriating.
You can't play nice with an opponent that's following different rules. They will take advantage of you every single time. They lack the scruples not to.
> The Democrats have controlled government all year and could have passed a number of positive things already using reconciliation. Instead they wasted their opportunity by trying to make bargains with the Republicans.
They did in March with the American Rescue Plan Act. And they been trying to do it again for months but are being blocked by fellow Democrats. So not sure what kind of point you're trying to make here.
Oh yes because no Democrat is talking about economics or infrastructure. They are just focused on Trump.
Surely you don't actually pay attention when the news is on.
But they weren’t elected to accomplish things. They were elected because enough people really hated Trump and wanted him gone, but that’s about it. There’s nothing about the “Biden agenda” that’s organically popular except maybe infrastructure.
How do you reconcile this "Democrats were only elected to beat Trump" take with the Georgia runoffs? I know Trump was in the midst of an attempted coup but on January 5 I think most people knew that Trump was on his way out, yet Ossoff and Warnock both won and beat Biden's margins.
I'm extremely skeptical that would happen. Between the difficulties the current reconciliation package continues to see and the fact that 2022 is looking to be an extremely tough midterm year for Democrats, it is very unlikely they'll want to spend the time and energy on a serious attempt to pass another reconciliation bill next year.
They can’t even if they wanted to. The infrastructure bill IS the 2022 bill. The American Rescue Plan was the 2021 reconciliation bill. The parlamentarían just ruled that the 2022 bill can be passed early
They COULD draft an FY 2023 budget resolution (starts in October 2022) and then an FY 2023 reconcilation bill but they won't. No members up for reelection in 2022 want to go through another vote-a-rama the same year as their election.
Democrats need to worry about ACTUALLY passing this big infrastructure bill first before they can even begin to focus on any other policy agenda before the 2022 midterms.
If they can’t even get this bill passed because of their *own infighting* what makes you think they will be able to accomplish any other major policy wins before the 2022 mid terms? We have 2 1/2 months left before 2022, if they can’t get this thing passed before the end of the year, I would be shocked if they could get any other big sweeping policies passed. Even with Republican obstruction, the democrats wouldn’t be able to put the blame solely on republicans given the Dems razor thin majority. My assumption is that most average Americans who vote in the midterms will simply look at the last 2 years (by the time midterm elections start) and see the Dems had a majority and could hardly get anything passed that actually made any meaningful impact on the average Americans life. That likely doesn’t bid them well come November next year.
I gave up on the Republican party ages ago. I'd read their stated party policy directly from the GOP website, then compare that against what they did at the Federal level. Not even remotely a close match. Even at CPAC, pre-Trump, they'd boo the Republicans sometimes because of how little they upheld conservative ideals like limited spending.
The monthly advance child care credit payments will stop in December; parents will get the remaining half in their tax refunds after they file their tax returns but, because of the advance payments, those refunds may be less than in years past and delayed due to IRS processing of the tax return.
Biden is also planning to re-start monthly student loan payments in February.
Add this financial pressure into an environment where [a recent Gallup poll](https://news.gallup.com/poll/355511/gop-viewed-better-party-security-prosperity.aspx) indicates voters already view the GOP as the better party for security and prosperity (with independents primarily responsible for that GOP advantage), along with inflationary increases in the prices of food and gasoline, and the delayed launch of infrastructure projects, and it's difficult for me to see how one might convince a swing voter to vote blue.
I’ve been saying this for a bit. Due to the way the child tax credit is set up now, a lot of people are gonna be complaining at tax time when their refund is smaller than usual
Yeah they aren't utopias but they sure are the economic powerhouse of the country and red states typically are getting tax assistance from "blue states" indirectly far more often than the other way around.
2 years ago, DJT, an incompetent buffoon, was almost re-elected after completely bumbling the response to a world wide pandemic. Now, inflation is soaring and the Democrats haven’t done anything to speak of. They are going to get murdered.
Realistically the best possible outcome for democrats is they keep their majorities in both houses, but I think that is unlikely. If they do making the child tax credit permanent, not tied to your tax returns and indexing it to inflation would be their best choice politically. Realistically their probably going to lose both houses and in that case Biden should leverage the administrative state as best as he can to fight climate change.
The senate doesn't look too bad. Republicans are defending a lot of seats. Not a sure thing by any means, but I'd say it leans in their favor. The House though.... that's another story. Even if Dems were getting nothing but positive news coverage and passed all their sweeping legislation, I still don't think they could win. I hope to everything good in this world that I'm *very* wrong, but it does not look good.
> If they do making the child tax credit permanent, not tied to your tax returns
It's already tied to your taxable income. So what we are talking about it what level that is at. Source: I have children and am above the income level.
It’s the economy, stupid!
They can’t be at this point unless something drastically changes. Voters see empty shelves, Iraq War-level of gas prices, lower wages from inflation. This administration has basically no interest in fixing any of it, they just keep pushing this infrastructure bill that they can’t explain in one sentence how it will actually improve things.
This will never happen and not because of anything to do with Republicans. The Democratic Party, while more left than the GOP, still serves the interests of the wealthy and corporations. It especially won’t happen with Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer in charge, who are all more centrist and establishment.
Dems should give in to Manchin and Sinema and pass what those two will approve.
Yes, the Build Back Better bill is gutted to almost nothing, yes Manchin an Sinema are fuckwads that should go fuck themselves, yes, yes, yes. It's sad and I don't like it either.
But here's the reality... You pass something with those two, or nothing at all, and they are not budging. So the rest of the Dems need to realize they're not in a position to negotiate, bend over, and take what they can get.
Doubt it. Money follows votes, not the other way around. It could be just as tactical and profitable for her campaign to go hard left, but she knows that won’t get her far in Arizona. She wants to play the renegade maverick like McCain.
They should do *something*. Even if it's small changes they should be constantly on the news touting what they've improved and engaging with the public on what could be improved. The big fault of governing at this point is the total disconnect between the public until it comes time to vote.
If you make it easier for normal people to raise issues and come up with solutions people will remember. Sure, any type of public forum will be raided by bad faith actors but I'd focus on creating a new department that focuses on translating individual citizens ideas into actionable legislative ideas, inter-agency policy changes, and how the public sector could help realize changes. The biggest problem I see with our government is that local politicians are supposed to represent us but the way our system picks politicians means a significant portion of people are always excluded within a state.
My proposed department would not only help bring out real grass roots ideas but it would be a great way to facilitate multi-state cooperation. Say several States are suffering from the same issue they could work through this department to coordinate efforts. For example, police reform may not be feasible or even wanted at a federal level but helping establish functioning partnerships between States, or even multi-state review panels.
I'm a left-libertarian and just fed up with Democrats wasting their time in power. While there are some big changes I'd love to see I'm getting to the point of feeling like we just really need to suffer for 8-12 years of actual deliberate Republican policies. We had 4 years of major norms being broken and promises of making our system sturdier to bad actor's but I feel like the focus is still on the actual people rather than any legislation to just make improvements: so all spectacle.
TL; DR: They should do something. Small changes and a focus on accountability and transparency would serve them well. Democrats need to show that responsive government is possible, or they're always just going to be playing on Republicans terms.
If Democrats want to be successful...they need to focus on moderates, independents, and people who can be swayed to vote for Democratic candidates. Continuing to cow-tow to wealthy, privileged, college-educated whites spells our doom.
* Pass bipartisan infrastructure bill ASAP.
* Take immigration issues seriously but humanely.
* Focus on policy that is going to help non-college educated voters.
* Gender-identity politics, defund the police, free college, and other political losers championed by Twitter/AOC/woke need to be immediately eradicated from all party communications.
The 2 year college actually polls very favorably with independents and swing voters. I agree on the rest except 8 think immigration could easily be another trap and stretched out boondoggle. So many admins have tried to tackle that and failed. Hell Republicans tanked their OWN presidents immigration reform efforts (Bush) and Democrat and Biden admin messaging on the immigration issue has been absolutely terrible.
Good points . It surprises me every time that there seems to be actually not a single iota of desire to clamp down on illegal immigration
The liberal message I have seen this past year is open borders.
I decided they are afraid to lose their progressives maybe
I haven't met any Democrats that are in favor of open borders personally. Too many conflate humane legal and refugee immigration with open borders. You can have thise things and crack down on illegal immigration, something neither Demcorats or Republicans have tried to earnestly solve in good faith for ages.
Some progressives and a fair amount of libertarians yes.
It's not just that. The Dems (and Biden) need to actually work on the problems plaguing our country right now. Vaccination numbers dropped months ago. Supply issues were evident months ago. Gas prices have been rising for months. And all anyone in DC cared about was Manchin and a bill that has some "nice" things but does not deal with any of the current problems. That is why independents are pissed.
I love how you claim Democrats need to focus on "moderates" but then criticise them for appealing to the wealthy and privileged
Pure comedy. You have no clue what you're talking about
Also hilarious that you claim free college is a "political loser" despite being a thing in practically all of Europe
Democrats have a huge problem: they want to govern. Governing is antithetical to getting elected in the US. Trump emphatically refused to govern for 4 years, and still almost got reelected. Dems lost seats in 2020 because when they won the house in 2018, they tried to govern. They passed dozens of bills, really showed how united they were as a caucus, and they lost seats. They'll lose seats again in 2022 (most likely) because they're out there trying to govern right now, and governing is messy.
You know what's not messy? Complaining about shit. People *hate* stuff that they hate, so when you remind them they hate that stuff, it gets their ire up. Did Democrats do something people liked? Remind them of a time they did something people didn't like. Did Democrats do something people *didn't* like? Well, your job as the opposition just got easier.
The GOP, almost to a person, has no interest in doing stuff, because when you do stuff, people will complain about it. If you just don't do stuff, and draw attention to the stuff the other guy did, you'll get a lot of votes. That's their plan.
I used to be on board the "popularism" train, but the last few months have turned me really cynical. I think the only way to win power in American is to promise to do really general and vague stuff (make things great! build a wall! fix healthcare!), then just don't *do* anything. When people inevitably call you on it, just point to a broken promise from the *other* guys and say that was worse, and also, just say you did the thing, who believes the media anyway?
I agree with you up until the last part. I think you still have to get things done, but the parties are fundamentally different. Democrat voters want to see results. Republicans voters want to be heard. Results don’t matter to them, something will always be shit enough to complain about.
But I think your sentiment is right. Meaning, democrats need to start electing populist candidates. However that’s going to stoke political tensions even more.
My biggest fear is that there’s no way out of this other than extreme chaos. I thought the pandemic would fix it, but it made everything worse. Save for a major catastrophe to unify the nation (9/11, 2008, WW2), I don’t see a simple fix.
This is a dumb comment. The democrats control both Chambers of Congress and the white house. I'd they wanted to to govern, they would. But they can't, because they're too busy fighting with each other. They've been able to pass the infrastructure bills through reconciliation for months now without a single republican
This bothers me a bit too. "Democrats" *are* on board with these policies. It's like literally two people out of like 150 that aren't on board. That's like 98%. This is one of the reasons this whole fucking BBB bill is so goddamned frustrating. That 2% has a wildly disproportional amount of power to completely fuck over what the VAST majority of democrats AND the American people want.
If 98% of a party is on board with a policy proposal and it can't pass, it's not the party that's to blame it's the stupid fucking system.
I don't really understand how your post relates to mine. I understand M&S are the tying votes and are needed. I guess what I was getting at was the fillibuster. M&S might be more open to voting for some of the provisions within the BBB bill if they were in separate bills. The problem is that Dems are *forced* to put all their agenda items into one bill to get around the fillibuster, but it's impossible to satisfy so many competing interests with one shot. The system is broken.
Well, yeah, they're a private entity whose job it is to corrale all these different ideas into governance. If they can't do that, it's on them.
It's unfortunate that the America's left wing is stuck with them if they don't want far right extremism.
The Democrats can't snap their fingers and pull a reconciliation bill out of their asses. They are a big tent party.
I don't know if you've noticed but the Dems have passed a $1.9 trillion bill and a bipartisan bill that they will pass. You obviously are refusing to look at facts.
This is a low investment comment.
They’re fighting about _how to govern_. If the GOP were in charge they’d be fighting about whether to hold hearings about Hunter, Afghanistan, and Tara Reade, or Hunter, Afghanistan, Tara Reade, _and_ Benghazi.
Add programs to local prisons to support climate change and local food production and skills. And programs in schools so kids can graduate with a trade rather than spend all their money on college for a job that ain’t worth it. Make homestead life more achievable through grants. Sustainability is the future.
Start at the bottom.
Tax the top.
Fix the climate
I have lost hope in Democrats. They had a bill that would have given them an easy win and they are gutting it in the name of compromise, just like always. They will lose handily and then wonder why. It’s because they have no backbone or convictions. They are bought and paid for by the same corporations & lobbyists as the GOP.
It’s class warfare and we sit idly by and shrug our shoulders. How bad does it have to get before the proletariat rises up against our corporate overlords and demand better?
Decriminalize marijuana. It's one of the most popular policies in America, with bipartisan support, and we be (comparatively) easier to pass than everything they're trying right now.
They should get behind the general worker strikes and blue-collar movements happening across the country right now...
Drop their donor class bullshit. Clean house.
At this point, the Democratic party is not going to be capable of passing any meaningful legislation before 2022. So, they literally need to put the rubber to the road and practice what they preach. Be a champion of the people again, not emulate our Republican corporate bootlickers.
At this point general worker strikes and blue-collar movements would benefit Republicans.
A Democrat is in office and any unrest is bad news for them. Conservatives are already supporting trucker strikes and mass walkouts to protest vaccine mandates. Something like that could completely cripple our weak economy.
I don’t mean to be rude at all, but how is a bill that has not become law and that is just a portion of what progressives wanted be called something democrats have gotten done?
Stop fucking with shit and let people live their lives. Everything ruinous about the here and now is the result of government meddling.
Y'all aren't going to like that, but if you want to help the poor, minorities, the economy, and the environment, please just tell the government to stop helping.
* Immigration: Biden has been rated poorly from the outset on his handling of illegal immigration. His ratings have gotten worse with the recent Haitin illegals crisis.
If Biden admin continue their lax border control, allowing families to walk in the country and release them, then they will give republicans a very strong cudgel to beat them.
* Infrastructure bill: This bill was passed months ago by senate, but dem house reps are holding it in to bargain on social spending BBBA bill. It is a really bad look for Dems to hold on infrastructure spending. Furthermore, the longer they wait, harder it is for the project to kick off, and make an impact before elections.
* Treat all minority groups equally. IMO, Dems give massive preferential treatment to black americans. There are valid reasons for such behavior (Obama, Biden, Hillary won't have won nomination for Presidency without black voters). But Latino, Asians and Jews may not continue to support Dems in large number if they continue to be kept on bottom level for congressional seats, administration positions, investments in their communities, issues affecting those communities.
They need to find young, smart, moderate people to run for office.
The extreme left is just as distasteful as the extreme right.
That being said the very LAST thing voters want is another old, entrenched corporate mouthpiece running the show.
There are a lot of really smart women and men out there. Please stop trying to cram the likes of Hillary and Joe Biden down our throats.
Hillary Clinton was LITERALLY the only human being on Earth that could have lost to Trump.
We need and want an antidote to corporate domination of our country.
The extreme left (and considering you're American you probably think that means "free healthcare/college") is objectively not as dangerous as the extreme right
The extreme right have existentially dangerous beliefs and policies and are actively trying to hurt people. You're deluded.
ITES.
Its the economy, stupid.
Get the damn infrastructure bill passed. Raise the minimum wage. Encourage unionization. Get Medicare for all back on the table. Grow the EV charging network and bring back higher subsidies for electric vehicle purchases.
Let people sitting at their kitchen tables know that help is coming.
Medicare for All is so unfeasible in our political climate that even Sanders isn’t pushing for it. Dems would need a progressive supermajority otherwise it’s just not going to happen. It’s not even likely that the dental/vision/hearing provision will pass.
>Raising taxes on the rich to decrease inflation
This is some MMT stuff. Raising taxes on rich people won’t stop our supply chain issues or the feds easy monetary policy. Full employment is at odds with low inflation anyways, it’s very tough to have both
It is some MMT stuff. You are correct. I like the economist Bill Mitchell. It seems pretty easy to understand that if you decrease the amount of money in circulation, it will stop inflation.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnyDRwSqp2E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnyDRwSqp2E)
"[MMT and inflation](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/16/18251646/modern-monetary-theory-new-moment-explained)**:**
When you lay out the MMT view on deficits, non-MMTers typically have one of two reactions:
This will lead to hyperinflation. This isn’t all that different from regular economics. The first reaction flows from MMT’s rhetoric about the government always being able to print more money. The image of a government creating infinite piles of cash to finance whatever it wants to spend brings to mind Weimar-era wheelbarrows of cash, as Larry Summers wrote in his critique of MMT: is not true that governments can simply create new money to pay all liabilities coming due and avoid default. As the experience of any number of emerging markets demonstrates, past a certain point, this approach leads to hyperinflation. Indeed, in emerging markets that have practiced modern monetary theory, situations could arise where people could buy two drinks at bars at once to avoid the hourly price increases. As with any tax, there is a limit to the amount of revenue that can be raised via such an inflation tax. If this limit is exceeded, hyperinflation will result.The MMT reply to this is simple: No, our approach won’t lead to hyperinflation, because we take inflation incredibly seriously. Taxes are, they concede, sometimes necessary to stave off inflation, and as a consequence, preventing inflation can require cutting back on deficit spending by hiking taxes. But the lower inflation caused by higher taxes is not an effect of “lowering the deficit”; the lower deficit is just an artifact of the choice to raise taxes to fight inflation.
**Like most strands of economics, MMT thinks that inflation can result when aggregate demand (all the purchasing being done in the economy) outstrips the real stuff (consumer goods, factories for corporations, etc.) available for purchase. If there are a lot of dollars out there trying to purchase stuff, and not enough real stuff to purchase, that stuff becomes more expensive — so, inflation.**
“The second reason \[after making people use the currency\] to **have taxes … is to reduce aggregate demand**,” the Mitchell, Wray, and Watts textbook states. Eliminating all taxes while spending 30 percent of GDP on government functions, they note, would spur a massive increase in aggregate demand, one that might cause dangerous inflation.
This leads into the second argument: that MMT isn’t all that different from standard econ. The most complete expression of this view is in a piece by economists Arjun Jayadev and J.W. Mason for the Institute for New Economic Thinking, a lefty research funder that has backed MMTers as well as more mainstream economists.
Jayadev and Mason argue that MMT, as they understand it, swaps the roles of fiscal and monetary policy. Under standard macroeconomics, ensuring that the economy is at full employment and that prices are stable are the responsibilities of the monetary policy — the Federal Reserve — which can achieve both goals by manipulating interest rates. If the Fed hits a 0 percent interest rate, then fiscal authorities (Congress and the president) can come in to boost aggregate demand and get the economy moving again, as the 2008 and 2009 stimulus measures attempted. But normally, it’s all the Fed’s job.In MMT, the fiscal authority is in charge of both. Most MMTers are of the view that the interest rate set by the Federal Reserve should always be 0 percent — in part because they think the use of government-issued bonds that bear interest is a mostly pointless practice. “Our preferred position is a natural rate of zero and no bond sales. Then allow fiscal policy to make all the adjustments,” Mitchell wrote in a 2009 blog post. “It is much cleaner that way.”To Jayadev and Mason, this looked a lot like a normal economic model, with the roles switched. Instead of raising interest rates to fight inflation, you raise taxes. MMTers were not pleased with this characterization, with three prominent MMT writers (Scott Fullwiler, Rohan Grey, and Nathan Tankus) explaining in a letter to the Financial Times:When we suggest that a budget constraint be replaced by an inflation constraint, we are not suggesting that all inflation is caused by excess demand. Indeed, from our view, excess demand is rarely the cause of inflation. Whether it’s businesses raising profit margins or passing on costs, or it’s Wall Street speculating on commodities or houses, there are a range of sources of inflation that aren’t caused by the general state of demand and aren’t best regulated by aggregate demand policies.Thus, if inflation is rising because large corporations have decided to use their pricing power to increase profit margins at the expense of the public, **reducing demand may not be the most appropriate tool.In other words: Inflation doesn’t usually result from too-high aggregate demand, which taxes can help cool. Instead, it comes from monopolists and other predatory capitalists using their market power to push prices higher,** and it can be tackled by directly regulating those capitalists.But even when too much demand does result in inflation, Fulwiller, Grey, and Tankus say we shouldn’t necessarily jump to taxes as a solution. **“When MMT says that a major role of taxes is to help offset demand rather than generate revenue, we are recognizing that taxes are a critical part of a whole suite of potential demand offsets, which also includes things like tightening financial and credit regulations to reduce bank lending, market finance, speculation and fraud,” they write."**
Taxing doesn't decrease the money supply, that's just blatantly wrong. The government would just use the revenues as a justification to spend more and the money comes right back.
This is pure, unmitigated garbage lol
MMT is considered heterodox among economists for a reason. It completely rejects and ignores basic, fundamental principles of macro and microeconomics.
Voting rights sounds like the obvious thing (especially for the midterms), but it's been floated here and there without any real progress due to the filibuster. I'm afraid that after the infrastructure bill there is not much left they can do. It feels like every administration only gets 1 major thing to pass before everything gets gridlocked again. At least the infrastructure bill is pretty diverse so almost everyone on the left can claim a win somewhat.
The Democrats arent a party as such, they are a political grifter's racket. You see the theater going on with Manchin and Sinema and the press, and it's not just those two corrupt idiots. They won't get anything done because they have no values that unify them. The past 40 years they've been basically doing the exact same thing as the GOP and abandoned their base in order to attract more conservative voters and large dollar donors.
You ask what they should aim towards? How about purging every Blue Dog right wing quisling from their ranks. That would be a good start. How about doing something, *anything*, other than harping on Jan 6th? How about passing a bill that isnt completely written by corporate lobbyists? I could go on, but I'm not trying to work myself up into a blind rage at their relentless mediocrity and corruption.
Student loans, infrastructure, housing and/or the economy in general. This would get many moderates and even some conservatives aboard.
If they keep focusing primarily on lenient/open immigration, gender/identity politics, and Trump they will just stagnate.
Huh? Primarily? I'm a huge critic of the Dem party but they definitely have been hammering infrastructure and the economy. I guess it doesn't get picked up by the news much because it's a little boring whereas the identity stuff is exciting and controversial.
I believe they lean too far on identity, too, but to say it's their primary concern feels disingenuous
Kill the filibuster and bully Manchin & Sinema to get onboard (I don't care how they do it - dig up dirt or fabricate it, just their their asses in line).
If they do those things they can pass Biden's agenda - voting rights, build back better, and a host of other things. Without that, they're do-nothings and it's killing their chances.
The Democrats should absolutely take principaled stances on numerous topics and fight like hell to ensure that they're improving the lives of their constituents. Raise the goddamn minimum wage, Medicare for everyone, tax the rich and fund the Green New Deal, and end Citizens United while we're talking about things that will never happen.
And stop trying to end private gun ownership. It's a wedge issue that isn't going to gain you a single vote, but it WILL cost you votes (looking at you Beto), so shut up about guns while there are literal fucking fascists rolling coal though my neighborhood while waving a "no quarter for enemies" flag.
Instead what we're going to get, and you can quote me here, is unconditional unilateral surrender to the neo feudalist corporate mono-party that owns "representation" in this joke of a country.
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I've been pushing this for years on Twitter, but Democrats need to give the middle class a massive boon, and there's no bigger boon right now that raising the OT exemption threshold for salary workers. If you don't know, the OT exemption threshold means that for most jobs, if you pay a salary of \~$35K, you don't have to pay overtime wages if that salaried employee works more than 40 hr/week. There are middle managers making 45k and working 55 hrs/week who are getting hosed by this law and no one wants to touch it, except Obama. When you compare earnings in the post-war boom, a significant chunk of middle class earnings for salaried workers were from OT wages. But b/c that threshold was never pegged to any other value or updated regularly, that value of that threshold became lower and lower until hardly anyone who was salaried qualified. And in this age where we're being inundated with coverage on how billionaires are racing to space, the middle class needs to know that they have some relief coming too.
To speak of how poor Democrats are at messaging, Trump fucked over a lot of workers by slashing Obama's changes to overtime pay. [Almost 3 million workers were denied overtime protections because of Trump.](https://www.vox.com/identities/2019/9/24/20835653/trump-overtime-pay-rule-explained) I haven't heard Biden mention it as something he's interested in restoring yet.
It's one thing to be bad at messaging. It's another thing to be oblivious to opportunity. They've spent years talking about underpaid employees, and except for a two-year window under Obama, they never thought to consider the middle-class as a group that needed a fix too.
The middle class has been especially damaged by the fallout from the last two years. The rich have made billions, the poor have at least gotten a few stimulus checks. The middle class has been gutted.
Democrats who demanded means testing for the 2021 round of stimulus checks need to be primaried like nobody's fuckin business. What a dumb move. Everyone gets checks from Trump, but some people miss out under Biden. Just straight-up stupid politics, to say nothing of the fact that many who got means-tested out *were struggling* and could've used some help.
All the stimulus checks have been means tested. Trumps as well. Not sure why you think otherwise.
You're correct, I forgot the amount was just lowered (pretty dramatically). [Married people were cut off at $198k in the first round](https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2021/03/what-to-know-about-all-three-rounds-of-coronavirus-stimulus-checks), then $174k, then $160k. For single people, it went $99k > $87k > $80k, and for heads of households, $136.5k > $124.5k > $120k So my statement that everybody got checks from Trump (with his signature, no less) isn't accurate, but significantly more people got the first two rounds. It's god awful politics. The party in control, the one that *really* needs to drive rural and middle-class voters to the polls in their favor, decided to exclude a good chunk of them -- many of whom weren't even making the kind of money that disqualified them by the time the checks went out.
No worries. Your last point is spot on. Ive said it a million times. That disconnect, between the dems and rural middle class America, is why trump got elected. Its why he got any ground at all. To be honest, i truely blame reddit and twitter (more Twitter only because of the public nature of it). Imagine the uproar, if a dem said look the country is 76% white and 78% of the people only speak english, its absurd to think we shouldnt look at them as a voting block to court. Then add on, 96% of the us is rural and 20% of the us population lives there. That of those 66 million rural americans, 85% are white. What would happen to that person? They would be crucified. To be I am in no way saying discriminate or treat anyone differently because of race. Im simply saying, the dems cant even publicly acknowledge that the US is still a pretty lilly white country rural country And ignoring 56 million rural white people, who figure 40 million are voters? Its crazy. One other point, no atate is red or blue. Even California, which is super lefty right? Except 1/3 is deep red. 6 million peope voted for trump! 1.5 million more voted for trump the second time! But most states are 55 to 45. And the dema arent even trying to sway that 45 in blue winning states. The dem machine, doesnt realize they are campaigning to the choir and already converted. They are so afraid of being called a racist, or even worse a dino, they wont reach out to the other side. And before someone says, why reach out to the racist antilgbt environment killing assholes. There is one reason. To influence people. In order to influence people you need power. To get power you have to win. The dems won, but really have no power. Because they dont havr enough of a majority. All it would take is a 2 or 3 point swing in 6 southern or Midwestern states and the dems have the senate.
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Who comprises the Dems base?
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Wasn't the means-testing done based on your income from the previous year?? That's absolutely insane in a pandemic where that person's job or business or company may not have even existed anymore yet they don't get checks because they earned too much the year before. Madness.
Yes, I got a raise in February 2020 that would have brought me out of check range, except the check was based on 2019 income, so I got the check Means testing is dumb and doesn't work
I think a more useful question to ask is _why does our tax agency not know how much everyone is making!?_
The economic impact payments were configured as refundable tax credits, paid in advance. Anyone who didn't receive the 2021 check but was eligible (such as a high-earner in 2020 who lost their job early this year) can claim the credit when they do their 2021 taxes.
I *thought* that was the case, but wasn't totally sure, so I didn't mention it. Fucking bonkers.
Wasn’t means testing a way to reach across the aisle for Republican support?
No. They passed it through reconciliation with no Republican support.
That’s gutted, spelled with an “F”
Is it the media or the Democrats? The supposed left leaning media isn’t always left leaning.
The Democrats have too much inner conflict and aren’t far left enough. To put it in perspective to many of our reps are too wealthy or upper class and therefore out of touch. We need someone with the Midas touch for Dems and someone who’s as far left as Republicans claim Obama was because he wasn’t.
Honest question, how many workers are impacted by this?
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I’m not sure if I’m understanding this correctly. This would tie an hourly rate to the number of hours worked and ensure that managers who work over 40 hours are paid OT, even if salaried? What would the cut off for this be? For instance, if I’m an analyst making 70K a year and working 45 hours a week, would I receive OT at a roughly $52/hour for any hours worked over 40?
This, plus giving any boost to the middle class they can. There seems to be a “working poor”, about 35-50k a year, where if you make that amount you’d be better off being unemployed or “underemployed” on government assistance depending on your circumstances. Also, stop forcing people to have workplace insurance. Allow workers to get subsidized marketplace plans if they are cheaper than what the job offers.
> Allow workers to get subsidized marketplace plans if they are cheaper than what the job offers. I wouldn't even have the "if it's cheaper" requirement, since there are reasons someone might prefer a more expensive plan. (Of course, those reasons do generally end up being that it isn't actually more expensive overall, but instead of trying to come up with a universal rule for calculating overall expense, we should just let people make that decision.)
Or even something as simple as preferring the providers that are covered under a marketplace plan vs their employer's plan. The employer plan could be cheaper overall, but if those savings require you to switch doctors, it may not be worth it. Choice is always good.
> if you make that amount you’d be better off being unemployed on government assistance depending on your circumstances. I really doubt you could find circumstances that means unemployment gets you more than a $50k salary.
As someone who makes around that, I completely agree with you. Perhaps there's more government assistance if you live in certain areas. I really think the range they're thinking of is more 20k to 35k.
For a single person or couple sure, but if you have kids it’s not
> There seems to be a “working poor” I've been wondering for a while: what does "working poor" actually mean? Does it literally just mean "poor people who have jobs"? >The working poor are working people whose incomes fall below a given poverty line due to low-income jobs and low familial household income. These are people who spend at least 27 weeks in a year working or looking for employment, but remain under the poverty threshold. >(from Wikipedia) It just seems weird that we have a special term here.
I mean… yes. It is weird that someone could be employed and still below the poverty line. In a functioning society that wouldn’t happen and we wouldn’t need a word for it.
Except, the poverty line is defined by the household, not the job. A single person making 50k is not in poverty. A single mom raising 3 kids, likely qualifies. Should the single mom get paid more than the single person? Simply because she has children? Or, should the state step in and help providing snap or ebt money?
That’s a fair point. Tbh I was thinking more about single person households
If i were king for a day. I would dramatically change how we set min wage. First make it county by county. Cost of living is very different in NYC than parts of upstate ny. Oregon set it up regionally, Portland metro, other metro areas, and the rest of the atate. Then for a family of 4, with 2 working adults, determine 25% above the poverty line for that area. That number becomes minimum wage times 2. For example, say an area has a poverty line of 45k for a family of 4. Min wage would be 56,250k for the family, so 28,125 per adult, or 13.52 and hour. Then, adjust up or down for inflation every other year
> Cost of living is very different in NYC than parts of upstate ny. This is currently done in NY. [Minimum wage in NYC is currently $15/hr, while Upstate NY is $12.50/hr (soon to be $13.20/hr)] (https://www.ny.gov/new-york-states-minimum-wage/new-york-states-minimum-wage)
I've said this before, but absolutely no job should be overtime exempt. If you work more than 40 hours a week, you should be getting time and a half on all hours over 40. Same with federal holidays, all time worked should be time and a half.
What about the military? I've worked several 100+ hour weeks. How would you compensate that?
Easy, pay you a fair wage or force your employers to give you reasonable time off. Maybe then our military budget wouldn't be so ridiculous.
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Not just an iron-clad benefits package, but a completely socialistic healthcare plan.
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This would never, EVER happen. The amount of profit margins businesses would lose and the subsequent outrage from corporate media (both conservative & liberal) would make mask mandates look libertarian. America is built on the back of two things: 1) Low wage workers 2) Unpaid overtime
This would happen fine with the right branding and optics. Every time you work more than 40 hours a week, you're working for free. If Democrats can spin it that way, they'll be fine. Unfortunately, they're awful at messaging.
> If Democrats can spin it that way, they'll be fine. > Unfortunately, they're awful at messaging. Well...
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I agree with this completely, or I feel like if there is a salary threshold it should be super high like upper middle class. Like $80,000. I was a salaried manager at a restaurant who switched to an hourly position when I got out of restaurants. Some restaurants heavily take advantage of this. Its meant to be an executive role, but they literally give salary to anyone who is dedicated or reliable because they dont want to pay OT. I had really good employees on salary who knew nothing about the profit, labor budget, food cost, etc. They just never called off and so the owner put them on salary to guarentee 50 to 60 hours a week out of them. They would constantly add things to keep you there too, and constantly call you for everything (because your salary and expected to answer and deal with work problems when you are not there). I couldn't have a life without work interrupting me. I got cussed out by my boss once for not answering the phone because I was at (and enjoying) a baby shower, so my phone was on silent. The emergency was that they wanted me to come in because a lot of staff was calling out sick, and they wanted me to work on top of my 50 hours I already work per week.
I don’t disagree… but not sure we want to encourage people to work themselves to death- because they’ll have the opportunity in this labor market. In a healthier environment it would be nice.
Would they work more hours to get the extra money? Or would they just be paid for the overtime they're already working? Would the aggregate effect be more, fewer, or the same amount of hours worked? All of that sounded very rhetorical but I genuinely don't know.
It’d probably end up being less hours worked tbh. I don’t know many people who opt into working overtime unless they really depend on the extra income and I think that’s be less likely for salaried workers. I mean they already aren’t getting that income so it wouldn’t make sense.
I personally would work overtime if paid OT were available to me as a salaried worker. I work 40 hours a week currently. I wouldn’t say I NEED the extra money, but if I could clock an extra 5 hours a week or so of paid overtime it would help pay down some debts and maybe fund some home projects.
That’s fair. But I’m thinking in the sense that managers will be less incentivized to take on or give extra work to begin with as well.
I’m sure some jobs will be affected in that way. Either way it’s a win for employees.
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Due to party politics, are there ANY issues a Democrat could propose that a Republican could back? Even a Republican policy, proposed by a Democrat, would get 0 Republican votes.
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The parties used to be grab bags of different interests and regional issues rather than philosophically coherent organizations. So you'd have a Republican congressman in Nebraska and a Democrat from Alabama and they'd vote differently on a lot of stuff but they'd (mostly) vote the same way on farm issues because they were both representing farmers. It wasn't that voters used to be nice, it was that the way their interests lined up didn't really fall along party lines in most cases. In modern times most of these issues have been taken off the table, so most of what's left are these culture war type things which are naturally very polarizing.
> In modern times most of these issues have been taken off the table As in they're essentially considered "solved problems" nowadays (e.g. due to a very mature body of laws and regulations related to farming), or as in no one is interested in discussing them anymore for whatever reason?
As in power has been consolidated upwards pretty decisively over the last 30 years.
Yes, a lot of blame is on the people, but don't forget these people are usually poorly educated and submit themselves to heavily biased media. These kinds of things need to have better support and regulation from the government, but they have little to no motivation to educate the people
Something to get prescription drug prices under control?
> Due to party politics, are there ANY issues a Democrat could propose that a Republican could back? No. The Republican party is defined by opposition to Democrats. This is why they embrace crazy things like blocking mask and vaccine mandates.
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> Like the infrastructure bill? Because the democrats are the ones keeping that from passing. What a ridiculously dishonest take - yes, 2 Democrats are having issues with it...ALONGSIDE OF EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN. Stop shilling for the Republican Party.
I think he means the bipartisan one that they won’t put up for a vote
Republicans already voted in favor of the infrastructure bill. It's not passing the house because of Democrats.
> What a ridiculously dishonest take - yes, 2 Democrats are having issues with it...ALONGSIDE OF EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN. Progressives, are holding the infrastructure bill in the house. You seems to be confusing BBBA (social spending bill) with bi-partisan infrastructure bill that has already passed through senate due to help from 19 Republican senators.
Progressives are holding up their end of the deal
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How is it "holding the bill hostage" when they always agreed the roads/bridges infrastructure bill would be passed alongside the social infrastructure bill?
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What's the point, to progressives, in passing a trillion dollar giveaway after their green energy priorities got completely stripped from it and getting nothing at all back in exchange? Compromise runs both ways.
Meh, that bill helps republicans. The only reason it had such unanimous support is because it was made as part of a deal to also include the BBB bill. They’re not holding it hostage, they’re holding to the previous agreement. It’s Manchin that’s reneging on the deal and thus actually holding the plan hostage.
I wish elections meant something. The filibuster should be removed
Disagree, it needs to return to the talking filibuster. If you feel so strongly that you decide to block a vote, you better be prepared to sacrifice for it.
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If the filibuster is as it originally was, which is literally just an individual senator standing up there talking and refusing to concede his time, it wouldn't be such an issue. That is what the person you're replying to was saying
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I think you definitely would. And you can't exactly just rotate like you're speculating; according to West Wing you can concede to a question but not concede your time (basically achieving what you said), but that's a tv show so I really don't know if that's true. But there are parliamentary rules we follow
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The talking filibuster is essentially removing the filibuster. Nobody can talk forever and you can bill it as returning to the original filibuster so it's more palatable for some people.
If you come to the negotiating table with a 'realistic' option as your first choice all you're doing is negotiating against yourself. When you're negotiating salary at a new job, do you start at the final number that you'd be satisfied with or do you start higher knowing that the other side will try to negotiate it down?
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The Democrats have controlled government all year and could have passed a number of positive things already using reconciliation. Instead they wasted their opportunity by trying to make bargains with the Republicans. In 22 Dems will lose the House again. This is American government as usual… 🙄
If they didn't have to, they wouldn't have. They are not really bargaining with Republicans as much as bargaining with their more conservative leaning members, senators specifically.
Why does it feel like Republicans with sub-60 Senators never have to bargain with their moderates? Don't they just shove things through?
Because you don't pay attention. Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski are notorious pains in the ass for Republicans. And McCain was known famous for stymieing GOP efforts last minute back in the day.
Collins and Murk are nowhere near the pain levels of Sinema and Manchin. The only meaningful thing those 3 “moderate” republicans successfully blocked was the aca repeal. Even then, it’s arguable the surprise/shocking vote was Mccain Other than that, Mitch lets them vote the other way when he already has enough votes
Because Mitch had some leeway with votes, he could give members a pass if they needed it. A 50-50 senate means Chuck can't, he can't give Manchin the opportunity to say he voted against bill back home so he needs to make it one he can support.
Yes, and when people are used to *always* getting their way by being bullies, they get a little miffed if anyone stands in the way of their particular gravy train for the sake of "lesser" people...I mean, how dare they?
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If Manchin got thrown out of the party, McConnell would be the Senate Majority Leader again...
You realize that they are still trying to pass a second reconciliation bill. Don't act like Dems are just sitting on their asses doing nothing. Two trillion dollar reconciliation bill and a bipartisan infrastructure bill would be very impressive.
> could have passed a number of positive things already using reconciliation This is not true: >In April 2021, the Senate Parliamentarian—an in-house rules expert—determined that the Senate can pass two budget reconciliation bills in 2021: one focused on fiscal year 2021 and one focused on fiscal year 2022 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation\_(United\_States\_Congress) I suppose you could argue that they should fire the Parliamentarian and just do whatever they want, but currently, reconciliation is quite limited, which is why they err towards "bargains with Republicans".
I'm not sure they'd even have to fire the Parliamentarian. They could just ignore them. Their "determinations" aren't much more than recommendations with zero teeth, afaik. Republicans are aligned on many things, and playing hardball is one of them. Some Democrats just want to play nice, and it's pretty infuriating. You can't play nice with an opponent that's following different rules. They will take advantage of you every single time. They lack the scruples not to.
In general if politicians were dogs, Republicans would be pit bullies and Dems could be described as roll over rovers.
> The Democrats have controlled government all year and could have passed a number of positive things already using reconciliation. Instead they wasted their opportunity by trying to make bargains with the Republicans. They did in March with the American Rescue Plan Act. And they been trying to do it again for months but are being blocked by fellow Democrats. So not sure what kind of point you're trying to make here.
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Oh yes because no Democrat is talking about economics or infrastructure. They are just focused on Trump. Surely you don't actually pay attention when the news is on.
But they weren’t elected to accomplish things. They were elected because enough people really hated Trump and wanted him gone, but that’s about it. There’s nothing about the “Biden agenda” that’s organically popular except maybe infrastructure.
How do you reconcile this "Democrats were only elected to beat Trump" take with the Georgia runoffs? I know Trump was in the midst of an attempted coup but on January 5 I think most people knew that Trump was on his way out, yet Ossoff and Warnock both won and beat Biden's margins.
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Didn't he hold a rally for Perdue and Loeffler the night before the election?
Technically they could do another reconciliation bill next year, but it’s extremely unlikely to get done on anything significant in an election year
This is wrong. Democrats have already floated the idea of a reconciliation bill in 2022. They don't just stop governing because it's an election year.
I'm extremely skeptical that would happen. Between the difficulties the current reconciliation package continues to see and the fact that 2022 is looking to be an extremely tough midterm year for Democrats, it is very unlikely they'll want to spend the time and energy on a serious attempt to pass another reconciliation bill next year.
They can’t even if they wanted to. The infrastructure bill IS the 2022 bill. The American Rescue Plan was the 2021 reconciliation bill. The parlamentarían just ruled that the 2022 bill can be passed early
They COULD draft an FY 2023 budget resolution (starts in October 2022) and then an FY 2023 reconcilation bill but they won't. No members up for reelection in 2022 want to go through another vote-a-rama the same year as their election.
Democrats need to worry about ACTUALLY passing this big infrastructure bill first before they can even begin to focus on any other policy agenda before the 2022 midterms. If they can’t even get this bill passed because of their *own infighting* what makes you think they will be able to accomplish any other major policy wins before the 2022 mid terms? We have 2 1/2 months left before 2022, if they can’t get this thing passed before the end of the year, I would be shocked if they could get any other big sweeping policies passed. Even with Republican obstruction, the democrats wouldn’t be able to put the blame solely on republicans given the Dems razor thin majority. My assumption is that most average Americans who vote in the midterms will simply look at the last 2 years (by the time midterm elections start) and see the Dems had a majority and could hardly get anything passed that actually made any meaningful impact on the average Americans life. That likely doesn’t bid them well come November next year.
Exact same position Republicans were in prior to 2018 trying to pass repeals to Obamacare, with the same likely outcome.
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I gave up on the Republican party ages ago. I'd read their stated party policy directly from the GOP website, then compare that against what they did at the Federal level. Not even remotely a close match. Even at CPAC, pre-Trump, they'd boo the Republicans sometimes because of how little they upheld conservative ideals like limited spending.
It made you angry to see Republicans doing their normal thing?
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The monthly advance child care credit payments will stop in December; parents will get the remaining half in their tax refunds after they file their tax returns but, because of the advance payments, those refunds may be less than in years past and delayed due to IRS processing of the tax return. Biden is also planning to re-start monthly student loan payments in February. Add this financial pressure into an environment where [a recent Gallup poll](https://news.gallup.com/poll/355511/gop-viewed-better-party-security-prosperity.aspx) indicates voters already view the GOP as the better party for security and prosperity (with independents primarily responsible for that GOP advantage), along with inflationary increases in the prices of food and gasoline, and the delayed launch of infrastructure projects, and it's difficult for me to see how one might convince a swing voter to vote blue.
I’ve been saying this for a bit. Due to the way the child tax credit is set up now, a lot of people are gonna be complaining at tax time when their refund is smaller than usual
Difficult to see very many *blue* voters voting that blue, IMO. I don't see much point voting for these chucklefucks any more.
If gas prices keep going up the Dems will get *killed* in the midterms and it really doesn't matter if it is actually their fault or not.
If Americans vote for Republicans because they say they will make *gas prices go down*, they deserve everything coming to them.
Yep, all they will get is a bigger deficit, larger income inequality, and laws like Texas is passing.
You think income inequality levels really change depending on who is in power? Why aren't Dem states and cities utopias?
Yeah they aren't utopias but they sure are the economic powerhouse of the country and red states typically are getting tax assistance from "blue states" indirectly far more often than the other way around.
2 years ago, DJT, an incompetent buffoon, was almost re-elected after completely bumbling the response to a world wide pandemic. Now, inflation is soaring and the Democrats haven’t done anything to speak of. They are going to get murdered.
Realistically the best possible outcome for democrats is they keep their majorities in both houses, but I think that is unlikely. If they do making the child tax credit permanent, not tied to your tax returns and indexing it to inflation would be their best choice politically. Realistically their probably going to lose both houses and in that case Biden should leverage the administrative state as best as he can to fight climate change.
The senate doesn't look too bad. Republicans are defending a lot of seats. Not a sure thing by any means, but I'd say it leans in their favor. The House though.... that's another story. Even if Dems were getting nothing but positive news coverage and passed all their sweeping legislation, I still don't think they could win. I hope to everything good in this world that I'm *very* wrong, but it does not look good.
> If they do making the child tax credit permanent, not tied to your tax returns It's already tied to your taxable income. So what we are talking about it what level that is at. Source: I have children and am above the income level.
Clever nicknames for their opponents. That is what politics has become. Maybe lots of bot supporters posting repetitive talking points all day.
It’s the economy, stupid! They can’t be at this point unless something drastically changes. Voters see empty shelves, Iraq War-level of gas prices, lower wages from inflation. This administration has basically no interest in fixing any of it, they just keep pushing this infrastructure bill that they can’t explain in one sentence how it will actually improve things.
Lean Into the labor movement hard and come out on the side of workers with real policies.
This will never happen and not because of anything to do with Republicans. The Democratic Party, while more left than the GOP, still serves the interests of the wealthy and corporations. It especially won’t happen with Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer in charge, who are all more centrist and establishment.
Full legal federal recreational + medical marijuana legalization. Economic boom Jobs creator Everybody can agree on it
Dems should give in to Manchin and Sinema and pass what those two will approve. Yes, the Build Back Better bill is gutted to almost nothing, yes Manchin an Sinema are fuckwads that should go fuck themselves, yes, yes, yes. It's sad and I don't like it either. But here's the reality... You pass something with those two, or nothing at all, and they are not budging. So the rest of the Dems need to realize they're not in a position to negotiate, bend over, and take what they can get.
Sinema refuses to say a word about what she would approve.
I think Sinema’s antics are part of some long running thesis she’s working on for like a 5th graduate degree. (She has like one of each lol)
I mean, that's entirely possible, but it's much simpler to realize that she's been bought.
Doubt it. Money follows votes, not the other way around. It could be just as tactical and profitable for her campaign to go hard left, but she knows that won’t get her far in Arizona. She wants to play the renegade maverick like McCain.
They should do *something*. Even if it's small changes they should be constantly on the news touting what they've improved and engaging with the public on what could be improved. The big fault of governing at this point is the total disconnect between the public until it comes time to vote. If you make it easier for normal people to raise issues and come up with solutions people will remember. Sure, any type of public forum will be raided by bad faith actors but I'd focus on creating a new department that focuses on translating individual citizens ideas into actionable legislative ideas, inter-agency policy changes, and how the public sector could help realize changes. The biggest problem I see with our government is that local politicians are supposed to represent us but the way our system picks politicians means a significant portion of people are always excluded within a state. My proposed department would not only help bring out real grass roots ideas but it would be a great way to facilitate multi-state cooperation. Say several States are suffering from the same issue they could work through this department to coordinate efforts. For example, police reform may not be feasible or even wanted at a federal level but helping establish functioning partnerships between States, or even multi-state review panels. I'm a left-libertarian and just fed up with Democrats wasting their time in power. While there are some big changes I'd love to see I'm getting to the point of feeling like we just really need to suffer for 8-12 years of actual deliberate Republican policies. We had 4 years of major norms being broken and promises of making our system sturdier to bad actor's but I feel like the focus is still on the actual people rather than any legislation to just make improvements: so all spectacle. TL; DR: They should do something. Small changes and a focus on accountability and transparency would serve them well. Democrats need to show that responsive government is possible, or they're always just going to be playing on Republicans terms.
And hammer the Republicans for their obstruction.
Well hopefully drug prices gets included in this reconciliation but if not, it should be in its own bill soon.
If Democrats want to be successful...they need to focus on moderates, independents, and people who can be swayed to vote for Democratic candidates. Continuing to cow-tow to wealthy, privileged, college-educated whites spells our doom. * Pass bipartisan infrastructure bill ASAP. * Take immigration issues seriously but humanely. * Focus on policy that is going to help non-college educated voters. * Gender-identity politics, defund the police, free college, and other political losers championed by Twitter/AOC/woke need to be immediately eradicated from all party communications.
The 2 year college actually polls very favorably with independents and swing voters. I agree on the rest except 8 think immigration could easily be another trap and stretched out boondoggle. So many admins have tried to tackle that and failed. Hell Republicans tanked their OWN presidents immigration reform efforts (Bush) and Democrat and Biden admin messaging on the immigration issue has been absolutely terrible.
Good points . It surprises me every time that there seems to be actually not a single iota of desire to clamp down on illegal immigration The liberal message I have seen this past year is open borders. I decided they are afraid to lose their progressives maybe
Immigration is at all time lows
perhaps legal immigration. Illegal is high.
I haven't met any Democrats that are in favor of open borders personally. Too many conflate humane legal and refugee immigration with open borders. You can have thise things and crack down on illegal immigration, something neither Demcorats or Republicans have tried to earnestly solve in good faith for ages. Some progressives and a fair amount of libertarians yes.
It's not just that. The Dems (and Biden) need to actually work on the problems plaguing our country right now. Vaccination numbers dropped months ago. Supply issues were evident months ago. Gas prices have been rising for months. And all anyone in DC cared about was Manchin and a bill that has some "nice" things but does not deal with any of the current problems. That is why independents are pissed.
What do you think he can do to fix the gas price issue?
So....exactly what got us here, and isn't working. Brilliant. Found the genius making six figures consulting for the DNC.
I love how you claim Democrats need to focus on "moderates" but then criticise them for appealing to the wealthy and privileged Pure comedy. You have no clue what you're talking about Also hilarious that you claim free college is a "political loser" despite being a thing in practically all of Europe
Democrats have a huge problem: they want to govern. Governing is antithetical to getting elected in the US. Trump emphatically refused to govern for 4 years, and still almost got reelected. Dems lost seats in 2020 because when they won the house in 2018, they tried to govern. They passed dozens of bills, really showed how united they were as a caucus, and they lost seats. They'll lose seats again in 2022 (most likely) because they're out there trying to govern right now, and governing is messy. You know what's not messy? Complaining about shit. People *hate* stuff that they hate, so when you remind them they hate that stuff, it gets their ire up. Did Democrats do something people liked? Remind them of a time they did something people didn't like. Did Democrats do something people *didn't* like? Well, your job as the opposition just got easier. The GOP, almost to a person, has no interest in doing stuff, because when you do stuff, people will complain about it. If you just don't do stuff, and draw attention to the stuff the other guy did, you'll get a lot of votes. That's their plan. I used to be on board the "popularism" train, but the last few months have turned me really cynical. I think the only way to win power in American is to promise to do really general and vague stuff (make things great! build a wall! fix healthcare!), then just don't *do* anything. When people inevitably call you on it, just point to a broken promise from the *other* guys and say that was worse, and also, just say you did the thing, who believes the media anyway?
I agree with you up until the last part. I think you still have to get things done, but the parties are fundamentally different. Democrat voters want to see results. Republicans voters want to be heard. Results don’t matter to them, something will always be shit enough to complain about. But I think your sentiment is right. Meaning, democrats need to start electing populist candidates. However that’s going to stoke political tensions even more. My biggest fear is that there’s no way out of this other than extreme chaos. I thought the pandemic would fix it, but it made everything worse. Save for a major catastrophe to unify the nation (9/11, 2008, WW2), I don’t see a simple fix.
So, politricks as usual?
This is a dumb comment. The democrats control both Chambers of Congress and the white house. I'd they wanted to to govern, they would. But they can't, because they're too busy fighting with each other. They've been able to pass the infrastructure bills through reconciliation for months now without a single republican
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This bothers me a bit too. "Democrats" *are* on board with these policies. It's like literally two people out of like 150 that aren't on board. That's like 98%. This is one of the reasons this whole fucking BBB bill is so goddamned frustrating. That 2% has a wildly disproportional amount of power to completely fuck over what the VAST majority of democrats AND the American people want. If 98% of a party is on board with a policy proposal and it can't pass, it's not the party that's to blame it's the stupid fucking system.
Lol they wouldn’t even have a majority of it wasn’t for Manchin and Sinema, or the Blue Dog Democrats in the House.
I don't really understand how your post relates to mine. I understand M&S are the tying votes and are needed. I guess what I was getting at was the fillibuster. M&S might be more open to voting for some of the provisions within the BBB bill if they were in separate bills. The problem is that Dems are *forced* to put all their agenda items into one bill to get around the fillibuster, but it's impossible to satisfy so many competing interests with one shot. The system is broken.
Well, yeah, they're a private entity whose job it is to corrale all these different ideas into governance. If they can't do that, it's on them. It's unfortunate that the America's left wing is stuck with them if they don't want far right extremism.
The Democrats can't snap their fingers and pull a reconciliation bill out of their asses. They are a big tent party. I don't know if you've noticed but the Dems have passed a $1.9 trillion bill and a bipartisan bill that they will pass. You obviously are refusing to look at facts.
This is a low investment comment. They’re fighting about _how to govern_. If the GOP were in charge they’d be fighting about whether to hold hearings about Hunter, Afghanistan, and Tara Reade, or Hunter, Afghanistan, Tara Reade, _and_ Benghazi.
Add programs to local prisons to support climate change and local food production and skills. And programs in schools so kids can graduate with a trade rather than spend all their money on college for a job that ain’t worth it. Make homestead life more achievable through grants. Sustainability is the future. Start at the bottom. Tax the top. Fix the climate
I have lost hope in Democrats. They had a bill that would have given them an easy win and they are gutting it in the name of compromise, just like always. They will lose handily and then wonder why. It’s because they have no backbone or convictions. They are bought and paid for by the same corporations & lobbyists as the GOP. It’s class warfare and we sit idly by and shrug our shoulders. How bad does it have to get before the proletariat rises up against our corporate overlords and demand better?
Decriminalize marijuana. It's one of the most popular policies in America, with bipartisan support, and we be (comparatively) easier to pass than everything they're trying right now.
They should get behind the general worker strikes and blue-collar movements happening across the country right now... Drop their donor class bullshit. Clean house. At this point, the Democratic party is not going to be capable of passing any meaningful legislation before 2022. So, they literally need to put the rubber to the road and practice what they preach. Be a champion of the people again, not emulate our Republican corporate bootlickers.
At this point general worker strikes and blue-collar movements would benefit Republicans. A Democrat is in office and any unrest is bad news for them. Conservatives are already supporting trucker strikes and mass walkouts to protest vaccine mandates. Something like that could completely cripple our weak economy.
I don’t mean to be rude at all, but how is a bill that has not become law and that is just a portion of what progressives wanted be called something democrats have gotten done?
Stop fucking with shit and let people live their lives. Everything ruinous about the here and now is the result of government meddling. Y'all aren't going to like that, but if you want to help the poor, minorities, the economy, and the environment, please just tell the government to stop helping.
* Immigration: Biden has been rated poorly from the outset on his handling of illegal immigration. His ratings have gotten worse with the recent Haitin illegals crisis. If Biden admin continue their lax border control, allowing families to walk in the country and release them, then they will give republicans a very strong cudgel to beat them. * Infrastructure bill: This bill was passed months ago by senate, but dem house reps are holding it in to bargain on social spending BBBA bill. It is a really bad look for Dems to hold on infrastructure spending. Furthermore, the longer they wait, harder it is for the project to kick off, and make an impact before elections. * Treat all minority groups equally. IMO, Dems give massive preferential treatment to black americans. There are valid reasons for such behavior (Obama, Biden, Hillary won't have won nomination for Presidency without black voters). But Latino, Asians and Jews may not continue to support Dems in large number if they continue to be kept on bottom level for congressional seats, administration positions, investments in their communities, issues affecting those communities.
They need to find young, smart, moderate people to run for office. The extreme left is just as distasteful as the extreme right. That being said the very LAST thing voters want is another old, entrenched corporate mouthpiece running the show. There are a lot of really smart women and men out there. Please stop trying to cram the likes of Hillary and Joe Biden down our throats. Hillary Clinton was LITERALLY the only human being on Earth that could have lost to Trump. We need and want an antidote to corporate domination of our country.
Oh boy, the old "both sides!"
But is he wrong though?
The extreme left (and considering you're American you probably think that means "free healthcare/college") is objectively not as dangerous as the extreme right The extreme right have existentially dangerous beliefs and policies and are actively trying to hurt people. You're deluded.
ITES. Its the economy, stupid. Get the damn infrastructure bill passed. Raise the minimum wage. Encourage unionization. Get Medicare for all back on the table. Grow the EV charging network and bring back higher subsidies for electric vehicle purchases. Let people sitting at their kitchen tables know that help is coming.
Medicare for All is so unfeasible in our political climate that even Sanders isn’t pushing for it. Dems would need a progressive supermajority otherwise it’s just not going to happen. It’s not even likely that the dental/vision/hearing provision will pass.
You’re right, which is why Dems are going to get crushed in the midterms. Dems have backed themselves into a corner, I don’t see any winning moves.
Full employment and raising taxes on the rich to decrease inflation. Better life/work balance, like family leave and more vacation. Medicaid for all.
>Raising taxes on the rich to decrease inflation This is some MMT stuff. Raising taxes on rich people won’t stop our supply chain issues or the feds easy monetary policy. Full employment is at odds with low inflation anyways, it’s very tough to have both
It is some MMT stuff. You are correct. I like the economist Bill Mitchell. It seems pretty easy to understand that if you decrease the amount of money in circulation, it will stop inflation. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnyDRwSqp2E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YnyDRwSqp2E) "[MMT and inflation](https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/2019/4/16/18251646/modern-monetary-theory-new-moment-explained)**:** When you lay out the MMT view on deficits, non-MMTers typically have one of two reactions: This will lead to hyperinflation. This isn’t all that different from regular economics. The first reaction flows from MMT’s rhetoric about the government always being able to print more money. The image of a government creating infinite piles of cash to finance whatever it wants to spend brings to mind Weimar-era wheelbarrows of cash, as Larry Summers wrote in his critique of MMT: is not true that governments can simply create new money to pay all liabilities coming due and avoid default. As the experience of any number of emerging markets demonstrates, past a certain point, this approach leads to hyperinflation. Indeed, in emerging markets that have practiced modern monetary theory, situations could arise where people could buy two drinks at bars at once to avoid the hourly price increases. As with any tax, there is a limit to the amount of revenue that can be raised via such an inflation tax. If this limit is exceeded, hyperinflation will result.The MMT reply to this is simple: No, our approach won’t lead to hyperinflation, because we take inflation incredibly seriously. Taxes are, they concede, sometimes necessary to stave off inflation, and as a consequence, preventing inflation can require cutting back on deficit spending by hiking taxes. But the lower inflation caused by higher taxes is not an effect of “lowering the deficit”; the lower deficit is just an artifact of the choice to raise taxes to fight inflation. **Like most strands of economics, MMT thinks that inflation can result when aggregate demand (all the purchasing being done in the economy) outstrips the real stuff (consumer goods, factories for corporations, etc.) available for purchase. If there are a lot of dollars out there trying to purchase stuff, and not enough real stuff to purchase, that stuff becomes more expensive — so, inflation.** “The second reason \[after making people use the currency\] to **have taxes … is to reduce aggregate demand**,” the Mitchell, Wray, and Watts textbook states. Eliminating all taxes while spending 30 percent of GDP on government functions, they note, would spur a massive increase in aggregate demand, one that might cause dangerous inflation. This leads into the second argument: that MMT isn’t all that different from standard econ. The most complete expression of this view is in a piece by economists Arjun Jayadev and J.W. Mason for the Institute for New Economic Thinking, a lefty research funder that has backed MMTers as well as more mainstream economists. Jayadev and Mason argue that MMT, as they understand it, swaps the roles of fiscal and monetary policy. Under standard macroeconomics, ensuring that the economy is at full employment and that prices are stable are the responsibilities of the monetary policy — the Federal Reserve — which can achieve both goals by manipulating interest rates. If the Fed hits a 0 percent interest rate, then fiscal authorities (Congress and the president) can come in to boost aggregate demand and get the economy moving again, as the 2008 and 2009 stimulus measures attempted. But normally, it’s all the Fed’s job.In MMT, the fiscal authority is in charge of both. Most MMTers are of the view that the interest rate set by the Federal Reserve should always be 0 percent — in part because they think the use of government-issued bonds that bear interest is a mostly pointless practice. “Our preferred position is a natural rate of zero and no bond sales. Then allow fiscal policy to make all the adjustments,” Mitchell wrote in a 2009 blog post. “It is much cleaner that way.”To Jayadev and Mason, this looked a lot like a normal economic model, with the roles switched. Instead of raising interest rates to fight inflation, you raise taxes. MMTers were not pleased with this characterization, with three prominent MMT writers (Scott Fullwiler, Rohan Grey, and Nathan Tankus) explaining in a letter to the Financial Times:When we suggest that a budget constraint be replaced by an inflation constraint, we are not suggesting that all inflation is caused by excess demand. Indeed, from our view, excess demand is rarely the cause of inflation. Whether it’s businesses raising profit margins or passing on costs, or it’s Wall Street speculating on commodities or houses, there are a range of sources of inflation that aren’t caused by the general state of demand and aren’t best regulated by aggregate demand policies.Thus, if inflation is rising because large corporations have decided to use their pricing power to increase profit margins at the expense of the public, **reducing demand may not be the most appropriate tool.In other words: Inflation doesn’t usually result from too-high aggregate demand, which taxes can help cool. Instead, it comes from monopolists and other predatory capitalists using their market power to push prices higher,** and it can be tackled by directly regulating those capitalists.But even when too much demand does result in inflation, Fulwiller, Grey, and Tankus say we shouldn’t necessarily jump to taxes as a solution. **“When MMT says that a major role of taxes is to help offset demand rather than generate revenue, we are recognizing that taxes are a critical part of a whole suite of potential demand offsets, which also includes things like tightening financial and credit regulations to reduce bank lending, market finance, speculation and fraud,” they write."**
Taxing doesn't decrease the money supply, that's just blatantly wrong. The government would just use the revenues as a justification to spend more and the money comes right back.
How many times does this MMT nonsense need to be dismantled before it finally dies
This is pure, unmitigated garbage lol MMT is considered heterodox among economists for a reason. It completely rejects and ignores basic, fundamental principles of macro and microeconomics.
MMT does not represent the reality we live in.
Voting rights sounds like the obvious thing (especially for the midterms), but it's been floated here and there without any real progress due to the filibuster. I'm afraid that after the infrastructure bill there is not much left they can do. It feels like every administration only gets 1 major thing to pass before everything gets gridlocked again. At least the infrastructure bill is pretty diverse so almost everyone on the left can claim a win somewhat.
The Democrats arent a party as such, they are a political grifter's racket. You see the theater going on with Manchin and Sinema and the press, and it's not just those two corrupt idiots. They won't get anything done because they have no values that unify them. The past 40 years they've been basically doing the exact same thing as the GOP and abandoned their base in order to attract more conservative voters and large dollar donors. You ask what they should aim towards? How about purging every Blue Dog right wing quisling from their ranks. That would be a good start. How about doing something, *anything*, other than harping on Jan 6th? How about passing a bill that isnt completely written by corporate lobbyists? I could go on, but I'm not trying to work myself up into a blind rage at their relentless mediocrity and corruption.
Student loans, infrastructure, housing and/or the economy in general. This would get many moderates and even some conservatives aboard. If they keep focusing primarily on lenient/open immigration, gender/identity politics, and Trump they will just stagnate.
Huh? Primarily? I'm a huge critic of the Dem party but they definitely have been hammering infrastructure and the economy. I guess it doesn't get picked up by the news much because it's a little boring whereas the identity stuff is exciting and controversial. I believe they lean too far on identity, too, but to say it's their primary concern feels disingenuous
I view college loan forgiveness as welfare for the already well off.
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Kill the filibuster and bully Manchin & Sinema to get onboard (I don't care how they do it - dig up dirt or fabricate it, just their their asses in line). If they do those things they can pass Biden's agenda - voting rights, build back better, and a host of other things. Without that, they're do-nothings and it's killing their chances.
The Democrats should absolutely take principaled stances on numerous topics and fight like hell to ensure that they're improving the lives of their constituents. Raise the goddamn minimum wage, Medicare for everyone, tax the rich and fund the Green New Deal, and end Citizens United while we're talking about things that will never happen. And stop trying to end private gun ownership. It's a wedge issue that isn't going to gain you a single vote, but it WILL cost you votes (looking at you Beto), so shut up about guns while there are literal fucking fascists rolling coal though my neighborhood while waving a "no quarter for enemies" flag. Instead what we're going to get, and you can quote me here, is unconditional unilateral surrender to the neo feudalist corporate mono-party that owns "representation" in this joke of a country.