CFB51 College Football Fan Community
The Power Five => Big Ten => Topic started by: medinabuckeye1 on February 14, 2025, 05:12:31 PM
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Over on the catch all, @ELA (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=55) stated that Trump shifted American politics away from running towards the middle.
Others have blamed social media.
I think there are many causes but I think this predates Trump by around 20 years.
So back up to the 2000 election. Of course we all remember Florida and Ohio and hanging chads and six weeks of "too close to call" but lost in the commotion of all of that is, I think, the beginning of the shift away from ELA's notion of running towards the middle.
In the roughly week prior to the election it looked like Bush was going to get a solid win. Gore needed to very nearly run the table in the swing states of that time and he very nearly did. Bush actually underperformed relative to the last polls.
In the post-election review period it came out that Gore had very nearly pulled off the upset NOT because he "ran to the middle" but because his campaign had operated a VERY effective voter registration and GOTV effort among likely Democratic Voters. These newly registered voters didn't show up in the polls because most polls are of "likely voters" and they generally determine who is a likely voter by asking whether or not the person voted in the last election. Those say they did are likely voters, those who say they didn't, aren't. Thus, all of Gore's new voters didn't show up in polls of "likely voters".
Fast forward four years:
Whatever you think of Bush himself, his people weren't idiots. They saw what happened in 2000 and said "two can play at this game". In the runup to the 2004 election I suddenly started seeing Republican Political operatives showing up at Church events, Gun Shows, basically anywhere that there was a crowd of likely Republican Voters.
Now going back a bit:
What ELA referred to is known in PolySci as the Median voter theorem. To explain it, suppose that Democrat @SFBadger96 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=51) and Republican @medinabuckeye1 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1547) are running for B1G Board Political Representative. Now suppose (for simplicity) that only the 11 most frequent posters are going to vote. If we line up those most frequent posters from L->R then number them with #1 being the most left-wing and #11 being the most right-wing then according to the theorem, whoever gets voter #6's vote will win. Basically, if @SFBadger96 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=51) leans far enough right to get voter #6 he'll still get 1-5 because their only other choice is to vote for a Republican and similarly, if I lean far enough to the left to get voter #6 I'll still get 7-11 because their only other choice is to vote for a Democrat. #1 and #11 will "hold their nose", grumble about "DINO's/RINO's" and vote for the guy on their side.
Gore's strategy in 2000 was an end-run around the middle voter theorem. Instead of fighting hard over voter #6 he attempted to engage non-voters #0, #-1, #-2, and #-3 to get them to vote and effectively push the middle from voter #6 to voter #4.
The bottom line is that Gore's strategy was effective (not quite effective enough for him) because it is generally easier to convince non-voters who already agree with you to vote than it is to convince voters who disagree with you to completely change their worldview.
At least since 2004 both Parties' primary focus has been on getting their people to the polls rather than convincing moderates that theirs is the best way forward as it was prior to that.
Social media, IMHO basically poured gasoline on the fire but the fire was already raging.
Social media makes it MUCH worse because people stay in their own bubbles were (from my example below) EVERYONE agrees that she really "got" me.
I've seen literally countless videos on Facebook and YouTube where the hook is basically "watch this liberal get owned" or "watch this conservative get owned" where if you actually watch the video with anything close to an open mind, nobody got owned. The two sides stated their position. You could literally take the EXACT same video on a given issue and package it for Liberals as "Watch this conservative get owned" then package it for conservatives as "Watch this liberal get owned".
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Side note:
The first time this really hit home to me, I was at a candidates forum as a Republican Candidate for a job that has literally NOTHING to do with elections or counting votes. A woman who I know to be what would fairly be termed a Democrat activist asked me a question that was basically an attempted "gotcha" question having to do with Republican efforts against voter fraud. Making this short, she basically was saying that Republican anti-voter-fraud efforts were all a farce (this was clearly hostile and more statement than question but anyway) and she was trying to more-or-less tag me with that.
I gave what I thought was a pretty good answer. From a candidate's perspective this is actually a great question because it had absolutely NOTHING to do with the job I was running for so what I did was I said (nicely) that the job I was running for had nothing to do with elections, registering voters, or counting votes, and that the important thing was the we elect the best candidate for the job then I pivoted into my strengths.
At the risk of pulling a muscle patting myself on the back, my answer was EXACTLY what a candidate should do when faced with a question like that because getting into an argument about something totally unrelated to the job you are running for can only be counterproductive. Instead, briefly explaining why that is irrelevant to the job you are running for (without actually saying "irrelevant" and without being condescending) then pivoting to your best argument (whatever that is) is essentially the A+ way to handle that situation.
What I found REALLY weird was that she and her friends were yuking it up in the back of the room, high-fiving as if she had really "gotten" me.
There are basically three views of this exchange and, IMHO, they are:
First, activist liberals:
They all think that she really "got" me because they all think that Republican anti-voter-fraud efforts are a farce.
Second, activist conservatives:
They all think that she is a looney tune.
Note that neither of the above groups are relevant to the outcome of the election because their votes are a foregone conclusion.
Third, everyone else, ie normies:
These people do matter and their votes aren't a foregone conclusion. They have only a vague idea what she was talking about and to them I was able to give my best spiel for 90 seconds because I had two minutes to answer the question so I spent 30 seconds (nicely) explaining that the question was irrelevant (without saying that) then pivoted to 90 seconds of my best stuff.
What baffled me was that I thought she (an obvious opponent) had basically handed me a softball down the middle and yet she appeared to *THINK* that she really "got" me. Why?
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I think the big thing Trumps team realized is #6 is voting left. Theres no convincing them. But #9, 10 and 11 might have some friends. They were disengaged, because they thought there vote was taken for granted. But some of the purple states were only purple because we thought the distribution 1-11 was equal. Instead of fighting for #6, go convince 9, 10, and 11 to vote.
HRC had a million personality and record problems. But her main issue was that she kept fighting for #6, and while she may have had 1-2-3, she didnt convince any of them to vote
Had Trump lost in 2016, I think we were on track to see the status quo. I said in 2012 that the GOP needed to make a major shift and concede a lot of social issues if they were ever going to win a national election. Trump threw that whole thing on its head. Now some 2s vote Red and some 9s vote Blue, and Im curious to see how it shakes out
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Side note:
The first time this really hit home to me, I was at a candidates forum as a Republican Candidate for a job that has literally NOTHING to do with elections or counting votes. A woman who I know to be what would fairly be termed a Democrat activist asked me a question that was basically an attempted "gotcha" question having to do with Republican efforts against voter fraud. Making this short, she basically was saying that Republican anti-voter-fraud efforts were all a farce (this was clearly hostile and more statement than question but anyway) and she was trying to more-or-less tag me with that.
I gave what I thought was a pretty good answer. From a candidate's perspective this is actually a great question because it had absolutely NOTHING to do with the job I was running for so what I did was I said (nicely) that the job I was running for had nothing to do with elections, registering voters, or counting votes, and that the important thing was the we elect the best candidate for the job then I pivoted into my strengths.
At the risk of pulling a muscle patting myself on the back, my answer was EXACTLY what a candidate should do when faced with a question like that because getting into an argument about something totally unrelated to the job you are running for can only be counterproductive. Instead, briefly explaining why that is irrelevant to the job you are running for (without actually saying "irrelevant" and without being condescending) then pivoting to your best argument (whatever that is) is essentially the A+ way to handle that situation.
What I found REALLY weird was that she and her friends were yuking it up in the back of the room, high-fiving as if she had really "gotten" me.
There are basically three views of this exchange and, IMHO, they are:
First, activist liberals:
They all think that she really "got" me because they all think that Republican anti-voter-fraud efforts are a farce.
Second, activist conservatives:
They all think that she is a looney tune.
Note that neither of the above groups are relevant to the outcome of the election because their votes are a foregone conclusion.
Third, everyone else, ie normies:
These people do matter and their votes aren't a foregone conclusion. They have only a vague idea what she was talking about and to them I was able to give my best spiel for 90 seconds because I had two minutes to answer the question so I spent 30 seconds (nicely) explaining that the question was irrelevant (without saying that) then pivoted to 90 seconds of my best stuff.
What baffled me was that I thought she (an obvious opponent) had basically handed me a softball down the middle and yet she appeared to *THINK* that she really "got" me. Why?
Because you "dodged" her laminated placard talking point, meaning (to her) your refusal to answer her irrelevant attack was a "got em".
Also, Dunning Krueger Effect.
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To explain it, suppose that Democrat @SFBadger96 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=51) and Republican @medinabuckeye1 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1547) are running for B1G Board Political Representative. Now suppose (for simplicity) that only the 11 most frequent posters are going to vote. If we line up those most frequent posters from L->R then number them with #1 being the most left-wing and #11 being the most right-wing then according to the theorem, whoever gets voter #6's vote will win. Basically, if @SFBadger96 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=51) leans far enough right to get voter #6 he'll still get 1-5 because their only other choice is to vote for a Republican and similarly, if I lean far enough to the left to get voter #6 I'll still get 7-11 because their only other choice is to vote for a Democrat. #1 and #11 will "hold their nose", grumble about "DINO's/RINO's" and vote for the guy on their side.
Doesn't that assume that there's a normal distribution amongst most likely voters? If so, I think that could easily be flawed in the cfb board example, and almost certainly flawed in American politics at large.
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Doesn't that assume that there's a normal distribution amongst most likely voters? If so, I think that could easily be flawed in the cfb board example, and almost certainly flawed in American politics at large.
I think its a reverse bell curve. You have a lot of 1-2-3-8-9-10. Those are typically the least educated voters. But it was the 4-7 who voted. The left has done a ton of leg work to get the 1-2-3 to the polls, but Trump actually engaged the 8-9-10. However I feel about him, his team listened to those voters rather than offering them a free bus ride and some shitty coffee on Election Day
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Doesn't that assume that there's a normal distribution amongst most likely voters? If so, I think that could easily be flawed in the cfb board example, and almost certainly flawed in American politics at large.
If you take away the R/D labels then it doesn't make any difference.
Liberal and Conservative are relative terms. When I was in law school, for example, I was generally considered the "resident conservative" in school but I would sometimes go to breakfast with my dad and a group of his buddies and at those breakfasts I was the "resident liberal". It wasn't that I flip-flopped, it was just that, as I said, Liberal and Conservative are relative terms. No matter how far left or right a given group of 11 voters is, #6 is still the middle voter. In my Republican-leaning County #6 is a (nationally) moderate Republican. In @SFBadger96 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=51) 's neighborhood I would guess that #6 is a (nationally) far left Democrat. Regardless, there still IS a middle voter.
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Regardless, there still IS a middle voter.
And neither party seems to want our vote.
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Well...I have some thoughts.
1) The Cold War ended.
Societies without an existential outside threat turn on themselves. Existential threats bring people together. With the end of the Cold War, our focus turned more and more on each other. This is a strong historical pattern. We came together (briefly) during the beginning of the "Global War on Terror" because we felt threatened, but not long after, the outside threat dissolved (or at least become much less significant), so we went right back to the infighting that we've always been good at, but that takes on a larger role when we don't have the existential outside threat.
2) Data.
We have gotten better and better at analyzing data. That has been a consistent theme over the years, and, yes, regarding the Al Gore point, by 2000, our political machines were more effective at analyzing the data and acting on it. We knew going into the 2000 election that it would be very close. We didn't know how close, but it wasn't a surprise. More surprising to the non-data crowd was the relative ease with which Obama was re-elected in 2012. Team Romney really thought they had it in the bag. Obama's team was really good at analyzing who they needed to get to vote and where. I think that was an eye opener for everyone.
3) Media / Social Media.
Back when most of us were young, there was a local paper that people read, local news broadcast around 6pm, then a national news broadcast at 7 pm. Your choices were CBS, ABC, nor NBC. Then Fox (not Fox News) joined the picture and--at least in our neck of the woods--put their broadcast at a different time to try to capture different people. That largely meant that we consumed essentially the same national news, and we all consumed more local news.
Then cable news proliferated, the internet blew up, and the idea of local news being one's primary source for understanding what was going on around you became an anachronism. The number of swing states and swing districts right now is--I think--at an all time low. Why? Because most news is national. So Republicans and Democrats have become much more homogenous. And all of them are much more responsive to national news than local news.
Elections (competitive ones) are won by a few percentage points. More than 5% is a blowout. So it's not voters 4-7, it's voters 47-53 (or if we only have eleven, it's voter 5 and no one else). High engagement voters are very unlikely to be swing voters. Most of them (me certainly included) made up their mind a long time before the election. Lower engagement voters are the target, but given how media is more and more self-selected, we're seeing fewer "swing" voters, because more and more people get only targeted information. Targeted media does not encourage swing voting.
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And neither party seems to want our vote.
Because the middle voter is less and less an undecided voter
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New poll reveals growing number of Dems want party to move in new direction (https://www.yahoo.com/news/poll-reveals-growing-number-dems-090028141.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANOVIqmX0f9BSgohsVQ5ZUu10cljSvoz8yzNHGPSPj77FVwWcJeJYd9JWWgI9s4vTONrphcOol7iTPG6e3_MkmHzlIcbBjAY_yhk7jMCoKe4bnL6FUs-bhb7hKrR-jZHaJGJE6VTDpSGVAuiZueQHq1c83QULeUlOm-7YgSnIcq7)
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One thing I’d like to ask is what did everybody think of Kamala as a candidate?
Me personally, I think the democrats fumbled the election horribly. I’m not even sure the people who voted for her liked her much.
Bill Mahr remarked to one of his guests after the election. They were basically explaining that Kamala didn’t have enough time to get to know her etc and he quipped that they had plenty of time, people just didn’t like her.
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New poll reveals growing number of Dems want party to move in new direction (https://www.yahoo.com/news/poll-reveals-growing-number-dems-090028141.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAANOVIqmX0f9BSgohsVQ5ZUu10cljSvoz8yzNHGPSPj77FVwWcJeJYd9JWWgI9s4vTONrphcOol7iTPG6e3_MkmHzlIcbBjAY_yhk7jMCoKe4bnL6FUs-bhb7hKrR-jZHaJGJE6VTDpSGVAuiZueQHq1c83QULeUlOm-7YgSnIcq7)
I have some sort of larger thoughts about this political mess, but I kind of wonder how much that kind of polling exists coming out of any election?
Like, I feel like in 2021 and 2013, republicans were pushing for certain kinds of moderation for the sake of building a bigger coalition, and that didn’t really come to pass.
Then again, it could be some polling bias as well, as moderation usually sounds better than not. Not that Democrats don’t need to rein in some stuff that I find deeply annoying, but I also think a sizable chunk of the party is trapped in an ineffective centrist spot.
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One thing I’d like to ask is what did everybody think of Kamala as a candidate?
Me personally, I think the democrats fumbled the election horribly. I’m not even sure the people who voted for her liked her much.
Bill Mahr remarked to one of his guests after the election. They were basically explaining that Kamala didn’t have enough time to get to know her etc and he quipped that they had plenty of time, people just didn’t like her.
Mediocre. A bit on the John Kerry level.
There was a lot of bubbling about “they two original candidates were both bad and a replacement level candidate from the other side would clearly win” and she disproved that.
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One thing I’d like to ask is what did everybody think of Kamala as a candidate?
Me personally, I think the democrats fumbled the election horribly. I’m not even sure the people who voted for her liked her much.
Bill Mahr remarked to one of his guests after the election. They were basically explaining that Kamala didn’t have enough time to get to know her etc and he quipped that they had plenty of time, people just didn’t like her.
I'm not sure this matters much. A lot of people that voted for Trump don't like him very much, either.
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One thing I’d like to ask is what did everybody think of Kamala as a candidate?
Me personally, I think the democrats fumbled the election horribly. I’m not even sure the people who voted for her liked her much.
Bill Mahr remarked to one of his guests after the election. They were basically explaining that Kamala didn’t have enough time to get to know her etc and he quipped that they had plenty of time, people just didn’t like her.
I can only speak for me.
She was the scariest potential person in my adult life. She is a horrible communicator ( word salads). Her lack of understanding of even basic concepts was hard to even believe, and she proved it over and over. And lastly, and probably the biggest thing for me, was her well established positions on certain issues ( the whole bail thing, promising/ encouraging more riots, bold faced lies about Biden’s lucidity- the border failure, the list goes on and on). I hated being put in that position at voting time. The other choice was extremely unpleasant as well. My 2 cents
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I can only speak for me.
She was the scariest potential person in my adult life. She is a horrible communicator ( word salads). Her lack of understanding of even basic concepts was hard to even believe, and she proved it over and over. And lastly, and probably the biggest thing for me, was her well established positions on certain issues ( the whole bail thing, promising/ encouraging more riots, bold faced lies about Biden’s lucidity- the border failure, the list goes on and on). I hated being put in that position at voting time. The other choice was extremely unpleasant as well. My 2 cents
Refresh my memory, what was the bail thing?
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Refresh my memory, what was the bail thing?
She backed the MFF and encouraged people to donate to it, after the George Floyd riots.
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I'm not sure this matters much. A lot of people that voted for Trump don't like him very much, either.
It only matters if you also have no plan, or concrete policy positions.
Just…“here I am” won’t cut it.
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It only matters if you also have no plan, or concrete policy positions.
Just…here I am won’t cut it.
I mean, we're still talking about people who voted for her, that was the premise for the discussion, and I don't think her dislikability mattered to those people any more than Trump's dislikability mattered to people who ultimately voted for him. Those people were either voting for overall platform, or simply based on identity politics.
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I can only speak for me.
She was the scariest potential person in my adult life. She is a horrible communicator ( word salads). Her lack of understanding of even basic concepts was hard to even believe, and she proved it over and over. And lastly, and probably the biggest thing for me, was her well established positions on certain issues ( the whole bail thing, promising/ encouraging more riots, bold faced lies about Biden’s lucidity- the border failure, the list goes on and on). I hated being put in that position at voting time. The other choice was extremely unpleasant as well. My 2 cents
that would be Hillary. She was evil.
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I mean, we're still talking about people who voted for her, that was the premise for the discussion, and I don't think her dislikability mattered to those people any more than Trump's dislikability mattered to people who ultimately voted for him. Those people were either voting for overall platform, or simply based on identity politics.
Yes, hard partisans will vote for a tree stump if the R or D is present
“Here I am”.
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that would be Hillary. She was evil.
I would vote for Hilary twice before I would vote for Kamala.
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what was your fear of Kamala?
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what was your fear of Kamala?
No border, WWIII.
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what was your fear of Kamala?
90 IQ. A pliable moron.
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And figurehead.
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I feel Hillary could & would do more harm
but, that's just a guess
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I feel Hillary could & would do more harm
but, that's just a guess
She could, and has done harm in the past, but at least we know who would be in charge.
We can suspect, but we really have no idea who ran the country the last few years. That, to me, is beyond scary.
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kinda scary, but the country survived the past 4 years pretty well
I'd assume the same group of folks would have been in charge for Kamala
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kinda scary, but the country survived the past 4 years pretty well
I'd assume the same group of folks would have been in charge for Kamala
Ehh…. Ukraine/Russia. Israel/Gaza.
Pass.
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agreed, horrible
Hillary may have put US troops in the mix
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She backed the MFF and encouraged people to donate to it, after the George Floyd riots.
I deeply enjoyed that the first Google result for MFF is Midwest FurFest. How’s that for academic?
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I deeply enjoyed that the first Google result for MFF is Midwest FurFest. How’s that for academic?
😂😂. Not sure what that is….but sign me up
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😂😂. Not sure what that is….but sign me up
Minnesota Freedom Fund – Freedom Regardless of Wealth (https://mnfreedomfund.org/)
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I think this forum is making a big mistake not limiting political discussion to one thread
Im glad we still have one thread for such discussion but feel it should be limited to one thread
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Should we merge them?
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😂😂. Not sure what that is….but sign me up
Oh, no. You don’t want that.
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Minnesota Freedom Fund – Freedom Regardless of Wealth (https://mnfreedomfund.org/)
I figured it was that. The bail thing is … interesting to me on an academic level.
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I figured it was that. The bail thing is … interesting to me on an academic level.
Well, it's certainly a shift from center to want people who burn things down set free.
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I think this forum is making a big mistake not limiting political discussion to one thread
Im glad we still have one thread for such discussion but feel it should be limited to one thread
you're entitled to your opinion
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Well, it's certainly a shift from center to want people who burn things down set free.
I mean, that gets into the whole purpose of bail, pre-trial detention, due process, etc. and if the gap between that freedom and confinement were simply being rich, that seems to be questionable.
(this is probably worth taking to the other thread)
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you're entitled to your opinion
hey you know whats going to happen. Sooner or later someone will call someone else a poophead or a democrate and the thread wiil be shut down. Just trying to be helpful ;)
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we all know this...........
I'm ok with it
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hey you know whats going to happen. Sooner or later someone will call someone else a poophead or a democrate and the thread wiil be shut down. Just trying to be helpful ;)
Shaddap, poophead!!!
:88:
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A guy was talking to me about a hypothetical thing he'd like to see enacted (not that he thinks it ever would be). He suggests parties would be prohibited, resulting in the removal of "R" and "D" next to candidates' names. This, he thinks, would remove the party-line voting and force people to vote strictly on the platform a candidate runs on. He estimates a significant amount of current voters would just not vote, not being herded through the D or the R door as they're conditioned, but those who do vote would vote on issues rather than party loyalty.
I see the appeal here, and I agree that removing a party affiliation from candidates would disorient the public and force interested voters to actually know something about the positions of the candidate. Where I think it's La-La-Land is....
...it's crap.
My take:
--Parties are inevitable. To get anything done in Congress, there has to be some measure of widespread agreement. When people agree on a range of issues, they're a party whether they have a name and a national convention (etc.) or not. Eventually, a candidate would be identified with "the guys who voted for all this stuff and against all that stuff" as opposed to being identified with "the other guys who voted for all this other stuff and against all that other stuff." Which would wind up being exactly where we are now, sans convenient names. It may even wind up effectively being more like multi-party countries, rather than the no-party thing he's shooting for.
--Parties are necessary. As mentioned, it takes widespread agreement to do anything. Also, parties raise money and contribute to campaigns, and without that, I don't see how many candidates could raise the $ necessary to get their name out there and make voters aware of their stances, which is the purpose of this proposed system.
What do you think? I think this is an example of a good idea, but that has no realistic mechanism. Or at least this form isn't it. Curious if anybody else disagrees with my critique, in which case, tell me what I'm missing.
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it's worth a try, @ this point
I suppose it could get worse, but I'm willing to take the chance
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My Dad used to go down to the local McDs for breakfast every morning and sit with 3-4-5 other guys. I went with him, once. My Dad, who was quite conservative, was the most liberal of the lot. By far. The other men were mostly complaining about "guvmint" and the VA, they'd get going on the VA and it would never stop. And of course they lit up about thiose "other folks", I suppose 40 years early they would have said "Negroes" or worse, probably worse. Everything was someone else's fault.
Today, those folks are "on line". Their voices are amplified and public, and garner others of like mind, or near like mind, and yet others to combat them.
Humans are very tribal. Ever been to some party where you were the only white dude? It's pretty fun.
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I've been to a couple bars in Iowa a few times where my buddy and I were the only white folks.
Gives one a different perspective
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A guy was talking to me about a hypothetical thing he'd like to see enacted (not that he thinks it ever would be). He suggests parties would be prohibited, resulting in the removal of "R" and "D" next to candidates' names. This, he thinks, would remove the party-line voting and force people to vote strictly on the platform a candidate runs on. He estimates a significant amount of current voters would just not vote, not being herded through the D or the R door as they're conditioned, but those who do vote would vote on issues rather than party loyalty.
I see the appeal here, and I agree that removing a party affiliation from candidates would disorient the public and force interested voters to actually know something about the positions of the candidate. Where I think it's La-La-Land is....
...it's crap.
My take:
--Parties are inevitable. To get anything done in Congress, there has to be some measure of widespread agreement. When people agree on a range of issues, they're a party whether they have a name and a national convention (etc.) or not. Eventually, a candidate would be identified with "the guys who voted for all this stuff and against all that stuff" as opposed to being identified with "the other guys who voted for all this other stuff and against all that other stuff." Which would wind up being exactly where we are now, sans convenient names. It may even wind up effectively being more like multi-party countries, rather than the no-party thing he's shooting for.
--Parties are necessary. As mentioned, it takes widespread agreement to do anything. Also, parties raise money and contribute to campaigns, and without that, I don't see how many candidates could raise the $ necessary to get their name out there and make voters aware of their stances, which is the purpose of this proposed system.
What do you think? I think this is an example of a good idea, but that has no realistic mechanism. Or at least this form isn't it. Curious if anybody else disagrees with my critique, in which case, tell me what I'm missing.
I agree with your take.
People don't like the parties but, IMHO, that is simply because it is easier to blame them than to look at where the responsibility really lies which is with the voters.
Frankly, voting based on R/D IS voting based on issues. When you consider how many campaign promises end up being broken, voting strictly based on R/D makes MORE sense than voting based on what the candidates say.
Also, people aren't loyal to parties forever. I think that Trump is a symptom more than a cause but there has been a massive shift over the last ~20 years of white working-class voters from D to R. I'm sure @OrangeAfroMan (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=58) would tell us that they are voting against their own interests. I've seen that argument from leftists but that isn't how THEY see it. They have switched parties en-mass because, as they see it, the R's now more closely align with their interests and beliefs than the D's.
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I agree with your take.
People don't like the parties but, IMHO, that is simply because it is easier to blame them than to look at where the responsibility really lies which is with the voters.
Frankly, voting based on R/D IS voting based on issues. When you consider how many campaign promises end up being broken, voting strictly based on R/D makes MORE sense than voting based on what the candidates say.
Also, people aren't loyal to parties forever. I think that Trump is a symptom more than a cause but there has been a massive shift over the last ~20 years of white working-class voters from D to R. I'm sure @OrangeAfroMan (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=58) would tell us that they are voting against their own interests. I've seen that argument from leftists but that isn't how THEY see it. They have switched parties en-mass because, as they see it, the R's now more closely align with their interests and beliefs than the D's.
I mean, this isn't uncommon. The "Solid South" voted Democrat for generations, until many of those people finally realized that they were far more conservative than the democrats were. My grandfather didn't vote Republican until 1976. Before that, he'd absolutely been voting "against his own interests" just for the sake of historical animosity toward the republican party.
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Some cities don't label candidates by party, it doesn't seem to matter much. Maybe it does and I don't notice it.
I figure most candidates PROMISE x Y and Z and deliver very little if any of that. In reality, most individual members of Congress has limited power to get much done other than to vote how they are told. Can anyone here name a real maverick in Congress today?
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Some cities don't label candidates by party, it doesn't seem to matter much. Maybe it does and I don't notice it.
I figure most candidates PROMISE x Y and Z and deliver very little if any of that. In reality, most individual members of Congress has limited power to get much done other than to vote how they are told. Can anyone here name a real maverick in Congress today?
Thomas Massie. Matt Gaetz was.
On the other side -- Joe Manchin, maybe.
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Thomas Massie. Matt Gaetz was.
On the other side -- Joe Manchin, maybe.
Sinema was too.
McConnel is now.
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I mean, this isn't uncommon. The "Solid South" voted Democrat for generations, until many of those people finally realized that they were far more conservative than the democrats were. My grandfather didn't vote Republican until 1976. Before that, he'd absolutely been voting "against his own interests" just for the sake of historical animosity toward the republican party.
To be fair though, prior to 1994 specifically there were a LOT of "Conservative Southern Democrats" in the House and Senate.
The Democrats held a majority in the House from the 1954 election up until the 1994 election. During that 40 years of Democratic control of the HoR they also controlled the Senate for all but six years (1981-1986).
That sounds like a big deal but, back then, it really wasn't. Actual ideological control of congress flipped multiple times within that stretch as coalitions usually consisted of:
- Conservative coalitions of (some of the) Republicans and the Conservative Southern Democrats vs
- Liberal coalitions of (some of the) Democrats and Liberal Northern Republicans.
Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party ended that by effectively nationalizing the Congressional election in 1994. That made it more difficult for Southern Democrats from conservative districts to run as conservative at home but vote liberal in DC.
Around 30 years ago Lincoln Chafee was a Republican in Rhode Island and Dick Shelby was a Democrat in Alabama and, realistically, Chafee was the liberal and Shelby was the conservative.
Both of those types have effectively gone extinct. Liberal northern Republicans like Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee switched to D while conservative southern Democrats like Shelby switched to R.
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To be fair though, prior to 1994 specifically there were a LOT of "Conservative Southern Democrats" in the House and Senate.
The Democrats held a majority in the House from the 1954 election up until the 1994 election. During that 40 years of Democratic control of the HoR they also controlled the Senate for all but six years (1981-1986).
That sounds like a big deal but, back then, it really wasn't. Actual ideological control of congress flipped multiple times within that stretch as coalitions usually consisted of:
- Conservative coalitions of (some of the) Republicans and the Conservative Southern Democrats vs
- Liberal coalitions of (some of the) Democrats and Liberal Northern Republicans.
Newt Gingrich and the Republican Party ended that by effectively nationalizing the Congressional election in 1994. That made it more difficult for Southern Democrats from conservative districts to run as conservative at home but vote liberal in DC.
Around 30 years ago Lincoln Chafee was a Republican in Rhode Island and Dick Shelby was a Democrat in Alabama and, realistically, Chafee was the liberal and Shelby was the conservative.
Both of those types have effectively gone extinct. Liberal northern Republicans like Jim Jeffords and Lincoln Chafee switched to D while conservative southern Democrats like Shelby switched to R.
Good points, and I was thinking more specifically of the presidential elections. My grandfather was voting for guys like JFK and LBJ, and by then his actual beliefs were pretty much the antithesis of those democrats' platforms/ideology.
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Good points, and I was thinking more specifically of the presidential elections. My grandfather was voting for guys like JFK and LBJ, and by then his actual beliefs were pretty much the antithesis of those democrats' platforms/ideology.
I’ve been slowly working through a long biography of LBJ. Fascinating figure, especially in the context of the old Democratic coalition.
It’s kind of wild it existed as a party at all.
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Good points, and I was thinking more specifically of the presidential elections. My grandfather was voting for guys like JFK and LBJ, and by then his actual beliefs were pretty much the antithesis of those democrats' platforms/ideology.
It is interesting that you noted 1976. Presidential voting patterns changed well before Senate, HoR, and local voting patterns.
Presidents couldn't really hide their ideology. They ran nationally so Democrats were more liberal and Republicans were more conservative and the south started voting R in Presidential elections while it was still solidly Democratic in Senate/HoR elections.
Back then all of the Southern Democrats from conservative districts ran as conservatives at home and some voted conservative in DC while others voted with their liberal northern Democratic colleagues. The 1994 election changed all of that by nationalizing the platform. That changed the dynamic and ever since ideological control of the HoR and Senate have been pretty much exactly tied to Partisan control.
Checking in on your 1976 as compared to national patterns (defining "Southern" here as states of the former Confederacy):
- 1960 the only Southern States that Nixon carried were Florida (lots of Northern transplants/retirees), Tennessee (border), and Virginia.
- 1964 Goldwater carried most of them only losing Florida, Tennessee, Virginia, and North Carolina
- 1968 Nixon carried Florida, South Carolina, North Carolina, Virginia, and Tennessee. The rest went for Wallace except for Texas which voted for Humphrey
- 1972 Nixon carried everything not just in the South, McGovern only got Massachusetts and DC
- 1976 The only Southern State that Ford carried was Virginia
- 1980 Reagan won nearly everywhere but did lose Georgia (Carter's home state)
- 1984 Reagan won everything except Minnesota and DC
- 1988 Bush own all of the South and most everything else although he did lose in WV which is now solid R.
- 1992 The South roughly split with Clinton/Gore getting their home states, LA, and GA while Bush/Quayle got FL, AL, MS, SC, NC, and VA
- 1996 Dole carried most of the south only losing FL, LA, AR (Clinton's home state), and TN (Gore's home state)
- 2000 Bush got the whole south even winning in Gore's nominal home state of Tennessee
- 2004 Bush got the whole south
- 2008 McCain got all of the southern states except FL, NC, and VA
- 2012 Romney got all but FL and VA
- 2016 Trump got all but VA
- 2020 Trump got all but VA and GA
- 2024 Trump got all but VA
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I’ve been slowly working through a long biography of LBJ. Fascinating figure, especially in the context of the old Democratic coalition.
It’s kind of wild it existed as a party at all.
It really is. It was more of a club than an ideological coalition.
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Local voting patterns vs. national ones are interesting, and remain rather abstruse to me.
My home state of Louisiana votes Republican in presidential elections since I was old enough to pay attention to them. But they frequently vote Democrat for governor. And I've followed them enough to know the Republican and Democratic governors are largely in line with the broader, national ideals of their parties.
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My take:
--Parties are inevitable.
Damn straight it's Friday let the week end begin
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Is it too late for a nap?
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Also, people aren't loyal to parties forever. I think that Trump is a symptom more than a cause but there has been a massive shift over the last ~20 years of white working-class voters from D to R. I'm sure @OrangeAfroMan (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=58) would tell us that they are voting against their own interests. I've seen that argument from leftists but that isn't how THEY see it. They have switched parties en-mass because, as they see it, the R's now more closely align with their interests and beliefs than the D's.
Yeah, and I'd say that because a group of people who value $$$ (perhaps behind only anti-abortion), voting along ideology lines while getting screwed financially.
I couldn't cite it if they cared a lot about $$$ and voted $$$ or if they cared about a litany of other things above $$$. But as it is, it's just obvious to me that they're being duped. I don't want people to be duped.
And many voted for the ultimate duper. So.....yeah. It's a sonofabitch.
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Who is being duped over $$$? How?
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Every poor southerner for the last 50 years.
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You support a party that openly discriminates against your own demographic, the White male, and then you have the audacity to accuse other people in that demographic of voting against their own interests?
The mental gymnastics are a sight to behold.
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Every poor southerner for the last 50 years.
Is that because they value ideology over $$$$???
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In my view, politicians promise a lot of stuff and deliver very little to the common folk. Whether you vote for a D because he somehow promises you $$$ or an R because he promises you "ideology", don't take anything to the bank with either. Most, nearly all, the impressions generated by both parties, to me, is imagery, marketing, not substance.
For example, Democrats claim they want to "tax the rich", but their proposed tax plans would be little to nothing of that. Republicans claim they want tio "cut the size of government", same thing. One of the biggest government guys in the past century was Nixon.
We actually have a very progressive income tax system as compared with most, or all, of Europe. The tax revenue to be had really comes from the middle class, not the few billionaires out there. If you confiscated every dollar from every billionaire in the US you'd have a tidy sum, once, and that sum would put only a small dent in the debt. And then ... (I know no one yet has proposed that seriously, but taxing billionaires is very very difficult to achieve in the US.).
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A good question is why Person A is "liberal" and Person B is "conservative". Is it heritage? Genetics? Life experience? Some of it is age, younger folks tend to be much more idealistic, and liberal. They see wealth disparities and it seems obvious to take from "B" and give to "A". Later in life they might possible get jaded on that, or start to understand the downsides to that basic equation.
Some of it is religious of course, or tradition. A lot of it is where one lives, I think, folks in urban areas see a need for large government and central "control", if you will. Rural folks are much more self sufficient. Suburbanites are "in the middle" often as not.
I live in about as urban an environment as anyone here I suspect. I'm OK paying for "street cleaners", which we have. My taxes are rather exorbitant. I moved here knowing that. I'm OK paying for parks, rural folks don't need that. They live in a "park". I'm OK with heavy zoning ordnances here, rural folks are more itolated. We have a local police force here in addition to the city police, I'm fine with that too. Am I a "liberal"? In some ways, probably so, in others not, I don't really like either term applied to me.
Would I like to tax "billionaires"? That depends on how, I haven't seen any serious legal proposals that would manage that realistically, I know Lix warren has proposed a wealth tax which has all sorts of problems (I don't think she's very smart about it).
I'm also familiar with Hauser's "Law", which isn't a law, but is a pretty remarkable trendline. I also believe we're spending way too much for what we take in and that will end us, eventually.
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We actually have a very progressive income tax system as compared with most, or all, of Europe. The tax revenue to be had really comes from the middle class, not the few billionaires out there. If you confiscated every dollar from every billionaire in the US you'd have a tidy sum, once, and that sum would put only a small dent in the debt. And then ... (I know no one yet has proposed that seriously, but taxing billionaires is very very difficult to achieve in the US.).
and if a group of politicians were ever serious about targeting billionaires with serious taxation, there would obviously be a strong reaction from billionaires. They have the money and therefore the resources/influence to defend themselves.
I don't think there's large successful examples of taxing the wealthiest in other parts of the world or in history. It's just not the way the world works.
Perhaps that doesn't mean it couldn't be done or we shouldn't try.
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Even if billionaires didn't oppose being taxed, it's still very difficult to propose a legal path to doing it that is realistic, or wouldn't cause certain reactions.
Various European countries tried this, and nearly all reversed it fairly quickly.
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It'd be nice if every country got on the same page, because all would benefit.
But if just one doesn't, the super-wealthy will all flock there to house their monies. I guess because you don't become a billionaire by paying your fair share.
God forbid.
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Differently countries obviously have, and perhaps "need", very different taxation systems. The European model taxes this middle much harder than we do here. They also use blanket VATs of course that tax the poor as well as the middle. Nobody really taxes "billionaires". Some pretend to, I don't think they do.
"We" probably should stop viewing billionaries as some new pot of money for revenue because I don't think it's feasible to figure a legal way to tax them at this point that would really work. I've never seen a workable proposal beyond the vacuous Facebook memes that are ridiculous.
And the wording of the 16th Amendment arguably is a problem with taxing wealth instead of income. Like most of them, it's a bit vague.
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My point really is that if $X is being spent foolishly, and you stop spending it yourself, you save money. It doesn't work that way in government. Congress appropriated $X to be spent, and legally, it has to be spent, on something. Maybe it can be spent more effectively, great, but it not any savings without Congress changing appropriations.
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I'm pretty tired of certain problems receiving a shrug and an "I guess that's how it has to be"
Echo-o-o-o cham-m-m ber-r-r-r
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You seem to have all the answers, present your solutions.
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I'm pretty tired of certain problems receiving a shrug and an "I guess that's how it has to be"
Echo-o-o-o cham-m-m ber-r-r-r
Well then get off the message boards and do something about it Instead of grousing about and ankle biting like we're backsliders with nothing better to do
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My point really is that if $X is being spent foolishly, and you stop spending it yourself, you save money. It doesn't work that way in government. Congress appropriated $X to be spent, and legally, it has to be spent, on something. Maybe it can be spent more effectively, great, but it not any savings without Congress changing appropriations.
this seems crazy, but possibly true
is there enforcement on this? what happens to the agency that doesn't spend all the money?
that money can't be used the next year, or given back somehow?
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"We" probably should stop viewing billionaries as some new pot of money for revenue because I don't think it's feasible to figure a legal way to tax them at this point that would really work. I've never seen a workable proposal beyond the vacuous Facebook memes that are ridiculous.
how about the flat sales tax.
not a luxury tax on yachts or Rolls Royce
an estate tax that sticks
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You seem to have all the answers, present your solutions.
Literally the opposite of my point.
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I'm pretty tired of certain problems receiving a shrug and an "I guess that's how it has to be"
Echo-o-o-o cham-m-m ber-r-r-r
Can you offer any plausible solutions?
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No, offering solutions is the opposite of his point.
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No, offering solutions is the opposite of his point.
OK, as usual, I missed his point entirely then. Complain about some problem, and then complain when folks discuss why the problem exists and may be intractable.
Most of us enjoy throwing out possible "solutions" for discussion and critique. And if there were some easy workable solution, it would be in place.
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it's nicer to think about a perfect world where billionaires share their wealth and provide for the poor.
Politicians did the right thing and were NOT selfish to their own interests
Banks, Insurance companies, and casinos were non profit organizations
The SEC shared the football recruits and TV money equally with the northeast and west coast so that all NCAA teams had an equal chance to win a trophy
The Dodgers and Yankees shared with the small market teams and didn't load up their rosters with superstars
and teachers were paid the same as surgeons, cause education is important and people deserve free heathcare
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I'm reading about Germany getting polarized, the center groups lost votes and the right and left won more than normal.
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so, at least 4 parties (groups)??
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It'd be nice if every country got on the same page, because all would benefit.
But if just one doesn't, the super-wealthy will all flock there to house their monies. I guess because you don't become a billionaire by paying your fair share.
God forbid.
I don't agree with this in the least. You seem to think that the government would actually use the money wisely and it would benefit the populace with whatever program you think would help people (healthcare, housing, whatever you pick). It wouldn't. They would more than likely waste 90% of the money, still run a deficit, and get almost nothing done. The other thing is that you seem to be under the impression that billionaires don't pay taxes. While I'm sure that a lot of them avoid taxes or minimize taxes, a lot of them do in fact pay a lot of taxes. Elon Musk, everybody's favorite hate'em rich guy lately, paid several billions in taxes to the feds a few years back. 4-5 billion in taxes if I recall.
During the 2016 election there was a debate between Trump and Hillary where she was attempting to cut him down over the fact that he did not pay taxes. It was a very famous exchange, one that I think may have singed Hillary bad enough to lose her the election. Hillary basically said that Trump did not pay taxes, and Trump said that the people in charge set the system up, rich people that backed people like Hillary and that she (and by extension her Husband) could have changed it years ago but didn't. Now, whatever you think of Trump and my views on him have certainly evolved over these last 8 years, 90% of the people who watched this knew then that he was right, and they know now that he was right.
You work in a government setting. You know that one of the biggest "anything killers" is the bureaucracy. It's the bureaucracy that we need to diminish. The bureaucracy is what keeps taxes from doing what they need to do, the middleman and the endless regulatory and paperwork. There is absolutely no benefit whatsoever in taxing people more if the money will just be wasted.
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I don't agree with this in the least. You seem to think that the government would actually use the money wisely and it would benefit the populace with whatever program you think would help people (healthcare, housing, whatever you pick). It wouldn't. They would more than likely waste 90% of the money, still run a deficit, and get almost nothing done. The other thing is that you seem to be under the impression that billionaires don't pay taxes. While I'm sure that a lot of them avoid taxes or minimize taxes, a lot of them do in fact pay a lot of taxes. Elon Musk, everybody's favorite hate'em rich guy lately, paid several billions in taxes to the feds a few years back. 4-5 billion in taxes if I recall.
During the 2016 election there was a debate between Trump and Hillary where she was attempting to cut him down over the fact that he did not pay taxes. It was a very famous exchange, one that I think may have singed Hillary bad enough to lose her the election. Hillary basically said that Trump did not pay taxes, and Trump said that the people in charge set the system up, rich people that backed people like Hillary and that she (and by extension her Husband) could have changed it years ago but didn't. Now, whatever you think of Trump and my views on him have certainly evolved over these last 8 years, 90% of the people who watched this knew then that he was right, and they know now that he was right.
You work in a government setting. You know that one of the biggest "anything killers" is the bureaucracy. It's the bureaucracy that we need to diminish. The bureaucracy is what keeps taxes from doing what they need to do, the middleman and the endless regulatory and paperwork. There is absolutely no benefit whatsoever in taxing people more if the money will just be wasted.
And even still....when Maddow got ahold of one year of Trump's taxes --- I think he paid 36 million that year.
She was so disappointed.
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She was so evil and Stoopid
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so, at least 4 parties (groups)??
They probably have 30, but I think four are of some consequence.
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It'd be nice if every country got on the same page, because all would benefit.
But if just one doesn't, the super-wealthy will all flock there to house their monies. I guess because you don't become a billionaire by paying your fair share.
God forbid.
How much do you want them to pay?
According to the IRS publicly available data (because the resident jaded Dawg only listens if you can cite a source), the fabled 1% pay 46% of all federal taxes collected. The top 10% earners pay 76% of taxes collected. (I don't recall if that was for one particular year or a period of time, but anyone can scrape the data for themselves from irs.gov)
So....how hard exactly do we hammer these guys/gals?
Billionaires definitely have tax shelters (hell, I did too when I owned my own business and I was nowhere near the Top 10%, let alone 1%ers) and they certainly leverage loopholes. People also miss the facts of how that stuff works over time.
CD is right about one thing. You could confiscate ALL of the American billionaire's money, and it would barely make a dent, or change hardly anything.
Griping about billionaires has always sounded to me like a sound byte for people bitter about not having that much net worth. Which, fine, but just don't act like taxing them more is going to lead to any wanted results. And it's just goofy as far as understanding what it is those people "have." No billionaire has billions of dollars sitting around in a bank, which is what people seem to think. They own stuff. How exactly does the federal government propose to take buildings, stocks, etc. and redistribute that to the poor people those unselfish altruists in DC would absolutely serve, if only they could get those billionaires to pony up. It's like people think the Elons of the world are Scrooge McDuck, rolling around in his massive vault of gold coins.
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A major key for billionaires is how they can easily avoid having any taxable income with no tricks, no dodges, no off shoring, no anything.
My quippy definition of a rich person is "Someone who doesn't need income for their lifestyle".
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As of the end of 2024, the total wealth of billionaires in the United States was $6.72 trillion, according to Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2024/04/02/forbes-38th-annual-worlds-billionaires-list-facts-and-figures-2024/). This includes 813 billionaires.
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As of the end of 2024, the total wealth of billionaires in the United States was $6.72 trillion, according to Forbes (https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2024/04/02/forbes-38th-annual-worlds-billionaires-list-facts-and-figures-2024/). This includes 813 billionaires.
Cool, so we could fund federal spending for a year if we took every last thing every billionaire owned, perfectly liquidated it, and funneled it to the government. I'm sure the non-billionaires would be thrilled for that year, except for that they'd be sad when they had to start paying WAY more taxes the following year, and every year thereafter, because there's no more billionaires left to pick up the bulk of the taxes paid. They'd also be pretty sore about all the jobs that would be permanently lost if billionaires were liquidated.
You could say this is hyperbole. Same thing would still apply to a lesser degree, by however much you ramp up the billionaire tax.
The key is going to lie in less government spending, not higher taxes, particularly for the rich. If less government spending can be achieved, therein will lie the solution. If that can't be achieved, therein will lie the eventual downfall of the economy, or a radical restructuring such that the country is permanently altered.
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but, but, but, billionaires are evil and take advantage of the masses
they should be called names and punished
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"Hauser's Law" (or rule) is fascinating, to me.
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but, but, but, billionaires are evil and take advantage of the masses
they should be called names and punished
Well, they do largely vote democrat and support democratic candidates, so ok, they're evil and I'll call them names.
Most of the left is fine with billionaires until they support the wrong candidate. My friends and family want Elon to pay more/go away/go to hell, etc. They're cool with Mark Cuban.
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Well, they do largely vote democrat Republican and support democratic Republican candidates, so ok, they're evil and I'll call them names.
Most of the left is fine with billionaires until they support the wrong candidate. My friends and family want Elon to pay more/go away/go to hell, etc. They're cool with Mark Cuban.
FIFY
The rich have always voted Republican. They're the only ones who can afford it.
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Let's imagine somehow the government taxes billionaries at 10% of their wealth. So, one of them worth say $200 billion, nearly all in stock of "X Corp", has to see a good chunk of said stock (for which he'd normally pay capital gains taxes of about 23%). The price of X Corp would take a beating of course.
Then is would come up again the next year, and the next, until his wealth drops below the magic figure.
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FIFY
The rich have always voted Republican. They're the only ones who can afford it.
Mostly, no-one knows how the rich vote, because they mostly don't say.
Tracking donations though, it depends on how you look at it. By sheer number, I think you are correct, a larger % of billionaires donate to Republican candidates. By volume, I believe the democratic donations outweigh the Republican ones over the last several cycles.
And as far as public support, those who do speak out (a relatively small %, actually) have definitely favored the democratic presidential candidates.
If you think the rich always vote Republican, you must never have met all of Hollywood.
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Cool, so we could fund federal spending for a year if we took every last thing every billionaire owned, perfectly liquidated it, and funneled it to the government. I'm sure the non-billionaires would be thrilled for that year, except for that they'd be sad when they had to start paying WAY more taxes the following year, and every year thereafter, because there's no more billionaires left to pick up the bulk of the taxes paid. They'd also be pretty sore about all the jobs that would be permanently lost if billionaires were liquidated.
You could say this is hyperbole. Same thing would still apply to a lesser degree, by however much you ramp up the billionaire tax.
The key is going to lie in less government spending, not higher taxes, particularly for the rich. If less government spending can be achieved, therein will lie the solution. If that can't be achieved, therein will lie the eventual downfall of the economy, or a radical restructuring such that the country is permanently altered.
In my best Jim Carrey voice "WRONGO". All they would do is INCREASE the budget by that amount for one year, and then probably increase it some more and pile on some more debt.
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FIFY
The rich have always voted Republican. They're the only ones who can afford it.
George Soros. Jeff Bezos. Mark Zuckerberg. Mike Bloomberg. And on and on.
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Both 'sides' like to claim "billionaires" are on the other side and give selected examples while ignoring others. I don't think we can really know. I don't particularly care.
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In my best Jim Carrey voice "WRONGO". All they would do is INCREASE the budget by that amount for one year, and then probably increase it some more and pile on some more debt.
I stand corrected.
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Both 'sides' like to claim "billionaires" are on the other side and give selected examples while ignoring others. I don't think we can really know. I don't particularly care.
I think PAC donations and such can be tracked. We can certainly track the sentiments of the ones who make them public. What we can't track is how they actually vote. But in a lot of their cases, it would seem somewhat obvious.
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A lot of billionaires are politically silent.
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we have a good idear regardin Taylor Swift
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A lot of billionaires are politically silent.
A lot of them financially are not.
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a lot of them?
I'd guess every one of them is using some $$$ to try to influence someone about something
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There are reportedly over 800 billionaires in the US. We hear about maybe 20 of them. I suspect 700+ live quiet lives, perhaps trying to make a difference with donations, etc., and are not politically very active or interested, or least are not publically known as D or R.
We have one pair here who started Home Depot, one is very well known (Arthur Blank) for donations etc., the other is almost never in the news except he passed on recently. I'm "told" the other quiet one donated a lot of money to various local causes. Neither seems politically involved, but Blank probably is quietly.
My wife is close friends with one (she's French, not American) and she's an example of one who lives quietly trying to help where she can. I think a lot of them value anonymity and avoid the public eye, no doubt some donate politically, but quietly. So, we don't know in which direction they lean.
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I'd avoid the public eye if it was lookin at me like that
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I once found myself in line behind the CEO of our company at Kroger. I nodded at him when he turned around to unload his cart, and he nodded back. I suspect being even that famous in public has a lot of downside potential.
It's nice to be anonymous.
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it's lonely at the top
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My wife chats with her friend over the phone fairly often, her friend has "problems" like we all do, just paying bills isn't a problem for her of course. We used to stay on her "estate" in France but she sold it, we stayed in a guest house on the property. Some aspects of being wealthy strike me as negatives regular folks don't really suffer.
Anyway, I think the vast majority of US billionaires try and live quiet lives out o0 the public eye.
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My wife chats with her friend over the phone fairly often, her friend has "problems" like we all do, just paying bills isn't a problem for her of course. We used to stay on her "estate" in France but she sold it, we stayed in a guest house on the property. Some aspects of being wealthy strike me as negatives regular folks don't really suffer.
Anyway, I think the vast majority of US billionaires try and live quiet lives out o0 the public eye.
Same goes for most Millionaires.
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FIFY
The rich have always voted Republican. They're the only ones who can afford it.
there is a uniparty in Washington- and the rich bet on both horses.
what you stated was actually generally true- up until the Clinton revolution- where he courted big money and transformed the Democratic party into the party of Wall Street and mega multi-national corporations. Clinton got NAFTA pushed through- it was a wet dream of the Bush I administration that could never get it done- and why do you think Clinton did that....hmm? Out of the goodness of his heart to help the American working class? Lulz.
And Obama just took what Clinton started with the party and kicked it up a notch on steroids. Obama raised more funds for his campaign from Wall Street than any candidate in history- his entire first cabinet was virtually hand-picked by CitiBank. Obama was the Wall Street bailout king- they loved the man- and one of his final acts in office was to hand out bailouts to Wall Street private equity landlords. Hillary was no better. And Biden is an archetype kingpin for a politician being bought off by corporations- won't even talk about his brother and son's shady foreign investment deals- we'll just stick to the Big Guy and the Big Guy alone- the Big Guy didn't fucking get the nickname the Senator from MBNA for nothing ya know.
you are living in an alternative universe and not in the real one. sorry to say.
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(https://i.imgur.com/1LZoWRz.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/Swl7E8B.png)
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Let's imagine somehow the government taxes billionaries at 10% of their wealth. So, one of them worth say $200 billion, nearly all in stock of "X Corp", has to see a good chunk of said stock (for which he'd normally pay capital gains taxes of about 23%). The price of X Corp would take a beating of course.
Then is would come up again the next year, and the next, until his wealth drops below the magic figure.
I don't know how you could tax billionaires on their stock holdings- and the entire idea just seems to be pretty stupid to me imo.
the only time billionaires pay huge tax bills is when they sell stock holdings or exercise stock options. they almost never sell significant stock holdings- and often just borrow money from banks putting up stock as collateral. and it's not like they are exercising options every year- they usually have time window to exercise their options before they expire.
there is a gigantic problem in this country with wealth inequality though- and it just gets SO much worse when government fires up the printing presses and injects trillions- like in '08-'09, like during COVID with CARES Act, and like with all of Biden's insane trillion dollar plus spending acts he signed into law which only drove the crisis further. when government prints and spends money like water all it does is devalue the dollar, inflates the price of assets (stocks, homes, & land), and that money just concentrates into the hands of the people who already have all the money. but this is not the fault of the billionaires. it is the fault of the politicians continually giving hand outs to them.
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I don't know how you could tax billionaires on their stock holdings- and the entire idea just seems to be pretty stupid to me imo.
It's a hypothetical, often proposed by some in social media, and thus perhaps worth exploring for impact and ramifications.
It could be unconstitutional.
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It's a hypothetical, often proposed by some in social media, and thus perhaps worth exploring for impact and ramifications.
It could be unconstitutional.
you could try to plug the bank loan and 1-2% interest hole in order to try and make them have taxable income- but not sure. you could maybe set up a sovereign wealth fund where they have to donate x amount of shares- which the government could then sell or get dividends from (if that stock pays them), or borrow against. not sure. no one ever gets into detail on it- they just say stupid shit like "tax the rich, take all the billionaires money!".
but it's pretty stupid to try and tax them on a stock holding that could be worthless or lose half it's value in a month imo. most of these billionaires net worth are theoretical- they don't actually have tens or hundreds of billions on hand in cash. and if someone like Musk tried to sell all his Tesla stock or was forced to sell it at once- the value would crater because he owns so much of it.
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(https://i.imgur.com/bg2ZsdY.png)
Copied from FB today, it's a rather popular concept there.
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I would be a bit curious to see how 1/20th of that would halt climate change by 2030. But, I suspect they could offer no plan.
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I would be a bit curious to see how 1/20th of that would halt climate change by 2030. But, I suspect they could offer no plan.
Well, to be precise, a lot of US politicians and activists, as well as global WEF-affiliated voices have offered plans.
They've just been laughed out of credibility by environmental scientists.
Maybe we should say they could offer no feasible and effective plan.
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I started picking up feeds on FB from sources VERY negative on economic prospects and saying to sell sell sell. I was wondering how my postings attracted that stuff. Whatever. I wonder how many investors get advice on the topic on FB.
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I once found myself in line behind the CEO of our company at Kroger. I nodded at him when he turned around to unload his cart, and he nodded back. I suspect being even that famous in public has a lot of downside potential.
It's nice to be anonymous.
I wonder if you're rich enough, if you can buy anonymity.
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They spend more on that than they do taxes, so....
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some would rather wave chainsaws and save the $$$
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Exclusive | Meet The World’s 24 Superbillionaires: Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos Top List of People Worth More Than $50 Billion - WSJ (https://www.wsj.com/real-estate/meet-superbillionaires-worlds-ultra-rich-cb7a797c?mod=djem10point)
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exclusive?
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(https://i.imgur.com/mFPo2GJ.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/4qZWa8B.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/0CsxGqd.png)
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They spend more on that than they do taxes, so....
Elon Musk paid $11 billion in federal income taxes to the US government in 2021 alone. which is more than everyone on here combined will pay in their entire lives.
they pay taxes when they produce income. they don't have to produce income. you do understand the vast majority of the wealth of these billionaires are stock holdings- not actual cold hard cash, right? how would you suggest to tax unrealized gains of their stock holdings? and if their stock shares crash will the federal government refund them money next year?
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(https://i.imgur.com/mFPo2GJ.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/4qZWa8B.png)
(https://i.imgur.com/0CsxGqd.png)
Da hell?
It was just a couple years ago, I think, Musk and Bezos were in the $120B range, at least according to whatever source I found when I looked it up. Actually, Bezos was on top, Musk was #2. Shortly after Musk had moved into #1, but they were both still showing substantially less. Has Amazon increased in value that much in just 2-3 years? Or does the price of a set number of stock shares say something about inflation over the last ~3 years?
It's really weird to see Bill Gates that far down the list. He was on top for so long.
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Elon is worth about as much as the NFL
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Amazon was at $85 at the start of 2023 (a nadir) and now is at $215. These folks of course don't have all their wealth in just the one stock. Space X for example has value Musk as Tesla has dropped pretty hard of late (under a trillion now in market cap). Space X is not publically traded.
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Bill Gates got divorced where he lost about half and has been donating a lot of money otherwise.
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Da hell?
It was just a couple years ago, I think, Musk and Bezos were in the $120B range, at least according to whatever source I found when I looked it up. Actually, Bezos was on top, Musk was #2. Shortly after Musk had moved into #1, but they were both still showing substantially less. Has Amazon increased in value that much in just 2-3 years? Or does the price of a set number of stock shares say something about inflation over the last ~3 years?
It's really weird to see Bill Gates that far down the list. He was on top for so long.
it's called forced COVID lockdowns and money printing. thanks big government!
Musk's net worth is ludicrous- Tesla is the single most over valued company on the stock market- there is zero reason it should have a $1 trillion market cap.
Gates doesn't hold as much Microsoft as he once used to- he has been strategically selling off Microsoft stock for the last 30 years and has also donated much of his stock holdings not for profit foundations. #charity. And he hasn't been the CEO or high level exec at Microsoft getting fat stock compensation or stock options for what seems like decades.
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The compensation for "high level execs" is generally not enough by itself to get into the billionaire club. It can hit $50 million or more of course in good years, so over 20 years or so you could get there if you save and don't spend. A CEO usually isn't around 20 years. They tend to fall into the mere $100 million club.
The billionaire wealth comes from inheritance or owning a large part of a company that goes huge.
I don't know of a billionaire who got there on compensation alone. There could be one or two.
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Hence, my earlier point about people thinking billionaires are Scrooge McDuck reveling in his giant vault of gold coins, when what they really have is assets.
CEO-type millionaires, otoh, may have a proverbial vault of gold coins, or actual millions in the bank.
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The compensation for "high level execs" is generally not enough by itself to get into the billionaire club. It can hit $50 million or more of course in good years, so over 20 years or so you could get there if you save and don't spend. A CEO usually isn't around 20 years. They tend to fall into the mere $100 million club.
The billionaire wealth comes from inheritance or owning a large part of a company that goes huge.
I don't know of a billionaire who got there on compensation alone. There could be one or two.
Jamie Dimon says hi. There are a couple of people at NVIDA- one I actually know- who have made hundreds of millions of dollars just from stock compensation. Fun fact- 76% of NVIDIA's employees have net worths (because of stock compensation) in excess of $1 million and over one third of NVIDIA employees have net worths in excess of $20 million- you guessed it- from stock compensation.
ANYWAY, regardless of that- what I was talking about OBVIOUSLY relates to Bill Gates as he founded Microsoft and was it's largest single shareholder and CEO for a very long time and 99.9% of his wealth came from it blowing up. If Gates had not gotten divorced as you mentioned- was still running the company- not selling off or donating his stock for the last 30 years- and still getting stock options like Musk has been getting at Tesla- my guess here without looking at the actual #'s - he'd be dubbed the "the richest person in the world" like Elon is. Microsoft stock has BLOWN up in the last 10 years alone- went from a $400 billion market cap to $3 trillion. Billy boy would be worth insane amounts of money if he was still running the company, holding all his Microsoft stock and getting awarded options like Elon is at Tesla.
Reality is no one in America is the richest person in the world. The gulf state dictators who we kiss ass too have more cash than anyone in the world. Saudi Aramco is the most profitable company in the entire world. When you have enough cash on hand to buy a fake Da Vinci painting for $350 million to put it on your $700 million mega yacht- well.....yeah.
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Walmart money is good. Real good.
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Walmart money is good. Real good.
apparently not good enough to pay it's workers a living wage
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apparently not good enough to pay it's workers a living wage
What do you consider to be a "living wage"?
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What do you consider to be a "living wage"?
Depends where you live.
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I'm also familiar with Hauser's "Law", which isn't a law, but is a pretty remarkable trendline. I also believe we're spending way too much for what we take in and that will end us, eventually.
It is amazing how static Federal Revenues have been as a percentage of GDP for 80+ years despite vast differences in the tax code over the decades.
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What do you consider to be a "living wage"?
um, I think being able to pay basic living expenses without being on US government housing or food assistance programs would be a start. Walmart is notorious for being one of the biggest employers in the US having it's employees on the government teet.
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Microsoft stock has BLOWN up in the last 10 years alone- went from a $400 billion market cap to $3 trillion.
I still have the same question as before.
I understand how inflation works and I understand how market caps work, but not necessarily the extent to which they work together.
I'm wondering how inflation affects market caps, and if it does, then how much? Seems like if inflation means prices of goods increase, then so would the price of stocks.
So when Microsoft, Tesla, Amazon, etc. shoot up, how much is because the companies gained real economic value, and how much (if any) is due to inflation? It strikes me as not coincidental that these net worths have shot up over the same time as inflation skyrocketed. (I understand there was a large xfer of wealth to the uber-wealthy in that same time frame, which would go under the "gained real economic value, 'cuz we forced it" category.)
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and if a group of politicians were ever serious about targeting billionaires with serious taxation, there would obviously be a strong reaction from billionaires. They have the money and therefore the resources/influence to defend themselves.
Or just move.
Billionaires are very different from "normal" rich people with a net worth of say <$10M.
Most people with a net worth of $1-10M are small businesses owners. They can't really move because the business that they own and run has a fixed location and they don't really have enough money to fly themselves and their friends around on private jets without limitations.
Billionaires are in a different situation.
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It'd be nice if every country got on the same page, because all would benefit.
But if just one doesn't, the super-wealthy will all flock there to house their monies. I guess because you don't become a billionaire by paying your fair share.
God forbid.
See the Cayman Islands among others.
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I'm pretty tired of certain problems receiving a shrug and an "I guess that's how it has to be"
Echo-o-o-o cham-m-m ber-r-r-r
Ok, name one, let's discuss.
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um, I think being able to pay basic living expenses without being on US government housing or food assistance programs would be a start. Walmart is notorious for being one of the biggest employers in the US having it's employees on the government teet.
So, how much per hour is that exactly, or approximately?
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um, I think being able to pay basic living expenses without being on US government housing or food assistance programs would be a start. Walmart is notorious for being one of the biggest employers in the US having it's employees on the government teet.
How much of that, I wonder, comes from their hiring of elderly people (to kinda do nothing at the front of the store) who are all certainly on Social Security and Medicare?
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this seems crazy, but possibly true
is there enforcement on this? what happens to the agency that doesn't spend all the money?
that money can't be used the next year, or given back somehow?
It is a legal grey area.
Congress did pass a law mandating that the executive branch spend the appropriations but not 100% and it is a fair question whether Congress has that authority anyway.
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I'm reading about Germany getting polarized, the center groups lost votes and the right and left won more than normal.
I think this demonstrates that the problem hasn't been caused by any individual because if it had, Germany wouldn't be experiencing the same thing.
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During the 2016 election there was a debate between Trump and Hillary where she was attempting to cut him down over the fact that he did not pay taxes. It was a very famous exchange, one that I think may have singed Hillary bad enough to lose her the election. Hillary basically said that Trump did not pay taxes, and Trump said that the people in charge set the system up, rich people that backed people like Hillary and that she (and by extension her Husband) could have changed it years ago but didn't. Now, whatever you think of Trump and my views on him have certainly evolved over these last 8 years, 90% of the people who watched this knew then that he was right, and they know now that he was right.
Chappelle has an interesting take on this, he called Trump an "Honest Liar".
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I'm wondering how inflation affects market caps, and if it does, then how much? Seems like if inflation means prices of goods increase, then so would the price of stocks.
This gets a bit complicated because inflation among other things tends to raise interest rates. It also of course will increase the revenue numbers as prices increase. This is why investors look mostly at ratios, where I worked we had a figure called "cases", or "units", it didn't depend on inflation, you had to ship more product. The most common ratio of note is "PE" or price to earnings ratio.
But let's imagine a stock that shows an increase in sales of 10%, but inflation was 10%, and maybe profits also went up 10%. The stock might also rise 10%, but the actual value of the stock would remain the same. And if you sold, you'd pay taxes on your inflationary gains.
If some bond also paid 10% in interest, that would compete for your attention, it's not quite this simple, but as bond interest rates rise, the appeal of stocks tends to diminish.
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FIFY
The rich have always voted Republican. They're the only ones who can afford it.
I'm astounded that you could actually believe this so I suspect that you are just being snarky but if you are actually this detached from reality, here is a very liberal source with an article that will educate you:
https://slate.com/business/2004/10/why-the-super-rich-favor-kerry.html
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As of February 2025, the average hourly pay for a Walmart employee in the US is $25, or $51,669 annually. However, the pay range can vary widely depending on the role, location, and experience.
They pay what the market demands. We could have government mandate they pay more of course.
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So, how much per hour is that exactly, or approximately?
therein lies the rub- every state/area requires a different amount of $. pay has to be adjusted for area.
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I still have the same question as before.
I understand how inflation works and I understand how market caps work, but not necessarily the extent to which they work together.
I'm wondering how inflation affects market caps, and if it does, then how much? Seems like if inflation means prices of goods increase, then so would the price of stocks.
So when Microsoft, Tesla, Amazon, etc. shoot up, how much is because the companies gained real economic value, and how much (if any) is due to inflation? It strikes me as not coincidental that these net worths have shot up over the same time as inflation skyrocketed. (I understand there was a large xfer of wealth to the uber-wealthy in that same time frame, which would go under the "gained real economic value, 'cuz we forced it" category.)
I have the same questions. I clearly remember it being Big Shit back in the 90's when Gates became the richest person in the world at $32 Billion dollars. It was quite the story. Now his wealth is much more, despite allegedly giving away a lot of it to "charity". I put the charity in quotes because part of me thinks maybe his whole foundation is some kind of tax shelter or somewhat dodgy.
As far as charity goes, we got a nice chunk of change from Jeff Bezos when his ex-wife McKenzie gave away millions to community colleges and our oldest got to go to a local community college for 1 full year with no tuition. Saved us a few $$$ thousand.
I heard Melinda has pulled back from the "Bill and Melinda Gates" foundation and is putting her money elsewhere for charity as well.
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there is a gigantic problem in this country with wealth inequality though- and it just gets SO much worse when government fires up the printing presses and injects trillions- like in '08-'09, like during COVID with CARES Act, and like with all of Biden's insane trillion dollar plus spending acts he signed into law which only drove the crisis further. when government prints and spends money like water all it does is devalue the dollar, inflates the price of assets (stocks, homes, & land), and that money just concentrates into the hands of the people who already have all the money. but this is not the fault of the billionaires. it is the fault of the politicians continually giving hand outs to them.
I truly believe that wealth inequality is one of the most troubling issues in our Country.
We are heading down a road towards being like our Central and South American neighbors with a fantastically rich over-class and massive slums for everyone else.
Democrats talk about this some but most of their policies make it worse. Republicans don't generally talk about it and should.
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And if I remember correctly, Bill has been "retired" since probably around 2010 or so. At least a decade, if not more.
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Charitable donations are tax deductable of course (if you itemize).
I don't view it as a dodge. You can't get rich donating money.
Basically, if you own a large chunk of some very successful company, you end up very wealthy, duh, in terms of wealth.
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Yeah, and I'd say that because a group of people who value $$$ (perhaps behind only anti-abortion), voting along ideology lines while getting screwed financially.
I couldn't cite it if they cared a lot about $$$ and voted $$$ or if they cared about a litany of other things above $$$. But as it is, it's just obvious to me that they're being duped. I don't want people to be duped.
And many voted for the ultimate duper. So.....yeah. It's a sonofabitch.
I disagreed with this take before Trump but it was debatable. Trump effectively made opposition to immigration and central plank of the Republican Party and that is clearly in the best interests of all but the very wealthiest Americans. Even if YOU disagree with me, they don't and their votes depend on their beliefs not yours nor mine.
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Our wealth disparity is a very intractable issue no matter who talks about it.
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Charitable donations are tax deductable of course (if you itemize).
I don't view it as a dodge. You can't get rich donating money.
Basically, if you own a large chunk of some very successful company, you end up very wealthy, duh, in terms of wealth.
The trick is that when you donate appreciated assets you can deduct the appreciated value without paying the capital gains tax on that appreciation.
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The trick is that when you donate appreciated assets you can deduct the appreciated value without paying the capital gains tax on that appreciation.
Yes, I have done that myself. You still don't get rich doing it. You'd have more money paying the cap gains tax after selling.
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um, I think being able to pay basic living expenses without being on US government housing or food assistance programs would be a start. Walmart is notorious for being one of the biggest employers in the US having it's employees on the government teet.
I wonder why unskilled laborers (most of Wal-Mart's workforce) have been seeing their real incomes drop for ~50 years.
It couldn't possibly be related to supply and demand . . .
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In my experience, Walmart employees are, well, unmotivated. Costco employees are highly motivated. I quit shopping at the former.
It's just too depressing for me.
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I still have the same question as before.
I understand how inflation works and I understand how market caps work, but not necessarily the extent to which they work together.
I'm wondering how inflation affects market caps, and if it does, then how much? Seems like if inflation means prices of goods increase, then so would the price of stocks.
So when Microsoft, Tesla, Amazon, etc. shoot up, how much is because the companies gained real economic value, and how much (if any) is due to inflation? It strikes me as not coincidental that these net worths have shot up over the same time as inflation skyrocketed. (I understand there was a large xfer of wealth to the uber-wealthy in that same time frame, which would go under the "gained real economic value, 'cuz we forced it" category.)
it is mainly from the money printing presses and the injection of capital/access to cheap capital that the largest players get first dibs on/just naturally just flows to them. every time the government has fired up the printing presses- from the '08-'09 bailouts to the COVID forced lockdowns and CARES Act bailout spending spree- which was the single largest transfer of wealth from the lower and middle classes to the upper class in history- you have wound up with concentrations of capital in fewer hands and skyrocketing prices in assets. it's not limited to stocks either- great example of this are the mega mansions in South Florida. houses that used to sell in Palm Beach for $30-40 million 10 years ago are now selling for $100-200 million, houses in Miami that used to sell for $10-20 million 10 years ago are now selling for $60-70 million. price of construction hasn't gone up that drastically.
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Yes, I have done that myself. You still don't get rich doing it. You'd have more money paying the cap gains tax after selling.
I get that, but let's say you were someone like Musk, Gates, etc whose fortune came almost exclusively from starting a company that made it big. Now let's say you retired and walked away so you have no income.
Ok, you have a $1B net worth all in stock in CincyCo. If you sell to finance your Billionaire lifestyle you'll pay capital gains tax on everything you sell (for purpose of discussion, assume that the basis is either zero or effectively zero because it probably is).
If you donate $1M and sell $1M to finance your lifestyle, you pay zero tax because the donation offsets the gain.
You are right, you don't get rich that way, but if you already are rich and the annual appreciation covers 2x your spending you can effectively pay no income tax indefinitely.
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I wonder why unskilled laborers (most of Wal-Mart's workforce) have been seeing their real incomes drop for ~50 years.
It couldn't possibly be related to supply and demand . . .
shhhhh....open border policy was long time considered a right wing policy backed by right wing billionaires like the Koch brothers in order to drive labor costs down to US corporations. Bernie Sanders used to rail against this in the past. haven't heard him talk about it anymore. talk about a complete cuck and fraud.
why do you think Illinois' "good billionaire" Governor favors unchecked illegal immigration? could it possibly be because he likes saving money on labor costs for his hotel empire by hiring someone who is here illegally that will work for less than an American?
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shhhhh....open border policy was long time considered a right wing policy backed by right wing billionaires like the Koch brothers in order to drive labor costs down to US corporations. Bernie Sanders used to rail against this in the past. haven't heard him talk about it anymore. talk about a complete cuck and fraud.
why do you think Illinois' "good billionaire" Governor favors unchecked illegal immigration? could it possibly be because he likes saving money on labor costs for his hotel empire by hiring someone who is here illegally that will work for less than an American?
He is not a good person.
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Ok, you have a $1B net worth all in stock in CincyCo. If you sell to finance your Billionaire lifestyle you'll pay capital gains tax on everything you sell (for purpose of discussion, assume that the basis is either zero or effectively zero because it probably is).
I would borrow, not sell, whatever I needed for my lifestyle, and pay zero tax on anything.
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I truly believe that wealth inequality is one of the most troubling issues in our Country.
We are heading down a road towards being like our Central and South American neighbors with a fantastically rich over-class and massive slums for everyone else.
Democrats talk about this some but most of their policies make it worse. Republicans don't generally talk about it and should.
I'm fine talking about it, just as long as we're removing the supremely ignorant idea of equity from the jump, and the idea that the goal is for everyone to have roughly the same amount of....anything.
It's a noble goal, and I bet it works well in Utopia. I hear the unicorns crap chocolate ice cream there.
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He is not a good person.
I was poking fun of the Democrats for their messaging on "we have the good billionaires!"....
But yes, I know. He is not. Nor a healthy one that should be lecturing anyone about health or giving any sort of health advice.....
https://twitter.com/jonnygroves/status/1894004087043031111
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In my own case, which of course is enormously smaller, I had a double salary year my last year, and some highly appreciated stock in my "plan". I hadn't understood this, but my advisor had me donate my appreciated stock to a charitable fund which I still operate (a Donor Advised Fund it's now called). That did reduce my income tax liability a good bit because I had earned income from my salary x2 that year.
I've kept that charitable fund going with investments and all my donations come out of that now.
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I was poking fun of the Democrats for their messaging on "we have the good billionaires!"....
But yes, I know. He is not. Nor a healthy one that should be lecturing anyone about health or giving any sort of health advice.....
https://twitter.com/jonnygroves/status/1894004087043031111
That's an old picture. He's even bigger now.
Governor Big Boy, as he is commonly known.
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I would borrow, not sell, whatever I needed for my lifestyle, and pay zero tax on anything.
which is exactly what most of them do. borrow, refinance, borrow, refinance. And every major bank in the country kisses their asses trying to get their business- and give them low interest loans the average Joe could never sniff.
Btw, Googled it- if Gates had still held all his stock at his peak holdings (and hadn't gotten divorced)- even with no new options or stock compensation- his net worth on paper today would be over $1 trillion.
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If you want to somehow limit the wealth disparity in the US, you first should study up on how they currently maintain their wealth and live HotH, it's not complicated.
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That's an old picture. He's even bigger now.
Governor Big Boy, as he is commonly known.
yeah he really is a fat tard lub of shit. it honestly amazes me that people in Illinois actually voted for the guy....twice.
like I get Obama coming out of Illinois, he was a good looking, young, thin, slick talking, nimble on his feet, working class guy that put himself through law school. impressive guy. on the surface. this dude is however is just a fat fucking slob who sounds like he can barely breathe and needs another cheeseburger by the second and every time he opens his mouth he sounds incoherent.
Democrats are in a major crisis right now. They have absolutely no one even remotely impressive to be the figurehead on a national level.
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If you want to somehow limit the wealth disparity in the US, you first should study up on how they currently maintain their wealth and live HotH, it's not complicated.
if you wanted to limit the wealth disparity I think you'd have to enforce anti-trust laws first- which no one has really done in decades- they are there for a reason- to try and prevent concentration of mass wealth/power and to open up competition. you'd have to basically end government handouts and bailouts of large corporations and let them fail and die when they fail. you have to overhaul all the regulatory agencies- slash regulations that either favor big players and/or prevent competition from smaller players, and end corporate regulatory capture and root out conflict of interest. we don't really have a free market in this country- we have some sort of weird mixed system built on crony capitalism.
I think these issues are even more pressing matters than taxes imo.
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I'm fine talking about it, just as long as we're removing the supremely ignorant idea of equity from the jump, and the idea that the goal is for everyone to have roughly the same amount of....anything.
It's a noble goal, and I bet it works well in Utopia. I hear the unicorns crap chocolate ice cream there.
I agree.
The problem, in my view, isn't at the top it is at the bottom. Demonizing billionaires is always a neat way to score cheap political points but most of them have created a LOT more wealth than they hold. They've also typically created a lot of "lower-order rich" people in the form of their employees and other stakeholders.
The problem, as I see it, is more that the working poor have been getting poorer for generations now. In the 1960's-1970's there were a lot of blue collar men who fully supported their families on ONLY their income and lived reasonably well. They weren't jet-set rich, but they could afford homes and cars and child-rearing on ONE blue-collar income.
That isn't even remotely possible today. Even after doubling the workers for those families by sending the wives into the workforce they are STILL worse off financially today than their equivalents were ~50 years ago with only ONE income.
Then, to make it MUCH worse, the reality today is that marriage is effectively a luxury. College educated white women are married at their first childbirth today at rates nearly equal to what those rates were when Leave it to Beaver was on TV. Ie, the reasonably well off get married and form families. The change has been to the lower classes. A female HS dropout is about as likely to be struck by lightning as she is to be married before she has kids (this is probably an exaggeration but not by nearly as much as you might think).
Also, people generally marry (or hook-up at lower classes) within socio-economic class.
Then this fuels the cycle. Looking at the above groups you have:
- Kid #1 has two college educated parents.
- Kid #2 has a HS dropout mom and may not even know who their father is.
This is also multi-generational now so in many cases:
- Kid #1 also has four college educated grandparents and a few college educated aunts and uncles.
- Kid #2 doesn't have any immediate family educated much beyond HS.
Also, intelligence is at least somewhat heritable so Kid #1 is, on average, smarter than Kid #2 to begin with.
To make this all worse, the "knowledge based economy" has dramatically increased the value of a strong mind relative to a strong back.
Then, in case Kid #2 didn't already get dealt a bad enough hand, we have imported literally MILLIONS of unskilled laborers to compete for the few remaining unskilled and low-skill jobs.
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if you wanted to limit the wealth disparity I think you'd have to enforce anti-trust laws first- which no one has really done in decades- they are there for a reason- to try and prevent concentration of mass wealth/power and to open up competition. you'd have to basically end government handouts and bailouts of large corporations and let them fail and die when they fail. you have to overhaul all the regulatory agencies- slash regulations that either favor big players and/or prevent competition from smaller players, and end corporate regulatory capture and root out conflict of interest. we don't really have a free market in this country- we have some sort of weird mixed system built on crony capitalism.
I think these issues are even more pressing matters than taxes imo.
Troubles me to agree with @Mdot21 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1595) but this is true.
In a lot of ways our goofy system is a combination of the worst aspects of capitalism and the worst aspects of socialism.
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I was poking fun of the Democrats for their messaging on "we have the good billionaires!"....
But yes, I know. He is not. Nor a healthy one that should be lecturing anyone about health or giving any sort of health advice.....
https://twitter.com/jonnygroves/status/1894004087043031111
One wonders how that guy on the right could push on much of anything.
Or how successful he'd be pushing against the guy on the left.
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Troubles me to agree with @Mdot21 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1595) but this is true.
Troubles me to apparently be agreeing with SFBadger so much lately, too.
These are the strange times we live in.
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The problem, as I see it, is more that the working poor have been getting poorer for generations now. In the 1960's-1970's there were a lot of blue collar men who fully supported their families on ONLY their income and lived reasonably well. They weren't jet-set rich, but they could afford homes and cars and child-rearing on ONE blue-collar income.
That isn't even remotely possible today. Even after doubling the workers for those families by sending the wives into the workforce they are STILL worse off financially today than their equivalents were ~50 years ago with only ONE income.
...
This is also multi-generational now so in many cases:
- Kid #1 also has four college educated grandparents and a few college educated aunts and uncles.
- Kid #2 doesn't have any immediate family educated much beyond HS.
One of the (probably few) things I agreed with Obama on was how he hammered on this. He did draw attention to the very real, measurable, disparate outcomes between two-parent children and anything other than the two-parent household (single parent, raised by grandparents, foster care, etc.).
I truncated your post, but in total those are the things that nobody will talk about, and I'm convinced they're foundational to the most significant problems, in a lot of areas, income prospects being only one. I won't say there isn't anything politicians can do about it, but the vast majority of the shift would have to be cultural and sociological.
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I truly believe that wealth inequality is one of the most troubling issues in our Country.
We are heading down a road towards being like our Central and South American neighbors with a fantastically rich over-class and massive slums for everyone else.
Democrats talk about this some but most of their policies make it worse. Republicans don't generally talk about it and should.
I don't understand your stance on weath inequlity.
IMHO, as long as the super wealthy are not hindering those of us in the lower classes from succeeding, where is the harm? Not everyone is going to be successful. Some will and of that group, a few here and there will far exceed successful and fall into the group of the ultra wealthy.
Right now, Musk, Bezos and Gates all made their money by working hard and finding a market that they could exploit. They broke no rules, just hard work and perserverance. their accusition of wealth in no way affected me or my persuit of success. As a matter of fact, I was able to piggy back on Gates's contributions to become successful in my career field.
The lower class poor in this country would be considered rich by may other conutries standards. And while I don't have the luxeries affordable to the billionare class, their having that wealth has not hurt me in the slightest. I don't see the issue.
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The antitrust question is an interesting one. The laws haven't changed (in a very long time), but the government enforcement changed dramatically. My recollection is that the big change occurred under the Reagan Administration, but feel free to fact check that. The big change was that instead of protecting the number of competitors in a given market, the DOJ's antitrust enforcement division changed its focus to the impact on price competition. That helps really large companies against small compeitors because economies of scale will always favor Amazon over your local retailer (or your local-ish distributor who sells to your local retailer). And it allows for far fewer competitors. Hence, consolidation. As long as there is still price competition, the DOJ won't step in.
This is a good example of how enforcement decisions can dramatically change the way a law (or set of laws) works. But try to rally people around telling DOJ antitrust attorneys how to determine what is pro-competitive. It gets a little wonky and dry.
The income gap is a large and growing problem. I think it's pretty easy to see how it is impacting politics in the country (which is to say it is destabilizing). I'm curious what you guys think caused this and what can help the working poor catch back up to the 1950s/60s era gap. I have my own perspective, but I'm curious what yours is.
FYI: one major impact on wealth in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s was that this country was the only industrialized nation that emerged from WWII with a fully functioning industrial economy. When it was time to rebuild the world you needed to buy from the U.S. to do it. That provided a major boost to our economic fortunes.
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if you wanted to limit the wealth disparity I think you'd have to enforce anti-trust laws first- which no one has really done in decades- they are there for a reason- to try and prevent concentration of mass wealth/power and to open up competition. you'd have to basically end government handouts and bailouts of large corporations and let them fail and die when they fail. you have to overhaul all the regulatory agencies- slash regulations that either favor big players and/or prevent competition from smaller players, and end corporate regulatory capture and root out conflict of interest. we don't really have a free market in this country- we have some sort of weird mixed system built on crony capitalism.
I think these issues are even more pressing matters than taxes imo.
BINGO!
(Hard to believe I am agreeing with a fan of that team up north) :)
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The income gap is perhaps more relevant than a wealth gap. As noted above, the fact that Joe X. has a zillion dollars doesn't change my own quality of life. We "live" off income, one way or the other. Being stressed to pay bills is a factor for many, credit card debt, student loan debt, you get underwater quickly. You pay rent, you don't own. Your job may not be appealing but you can't find another. The chart below is one interesting item:
(https://i.imgur.com/4WBVD4K.png)
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Does anyone disagree that the wealthy will always wield more power than the middle class and the poor?
And does anyone disagree that the experiment of trying to actually eradicate private wealth was a collossuly awful failure?
However, the converse--the wealthy being so wealthy that they can effectively control everything to their benefit has a longer history than constitutional democracy does: they were called kingdoms. I wouldn't volunteer to go back to that system of government.
It's almost as if you need some balance. And if so, how do you create and maintain that balance?
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The antitrust question is an interesting one. The laws haven't changed (in a very long time), but the government enforcement changed dramatically. My recollection is that the big change occurred under the Reagan Administration, but feel free to fact check that. The big change was that instead of protecting the number of competitors in a given market, the DOJ's antitrust enforcement division changed its focus to the impact on price competition. That helps really large companies against small compeitors because economies of scale will always favor Amazon over your local retailer (or your local-ish distributor who sells to your local retailer). And it allows for far fewer competitors. Hence, consolidation. As long as there is still price competition, the DOJ won't step in.
This is a good example of how enforcement decisions can dramatically change the way a law (or set of laws) works. But try to rally people around telling DOJ antitrust attorneys how to determine what is pro-competitive. It gets a little wonky and dry.
The income gap is a large and growing problem. I think it's pretty easy to see how it is impacting politics in the country (which is to say it is destabilizing). I'm curious what you guys think caused this and what can help the working poor catch back up to the 1950s/60s era gap. I have my own perspective, but I'm curious what yours is.
FYI: one major impact on wealth in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s was that this country was the only industrialized nation that emerged from WWII with a fully functioning industrial economy. When it was time to rebuild the world you needed to buy from the U.S. to do it. That provided a major boost to our economic fortunes.
yup- and that is despite having very high marginal tax rates.
I believe that if you actually produce and manufacture and make things- that generates real wealth- and it spreads to many people not just a select few. we don't really do that anymore- we have a service economy large chunks of corporate profits are financialization casino money games on Wall Street and Healthcare related.
China brought 800 million people out of extreme poverty and is arguably the greatest economy in the world right now- and they did it on the back of actually making/producing things- right now they manufacture around 33% of the entire worlds goods.
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yup- and that is despite having very high marginal tax rates.
I believe that if you actually produce and manufacture and make things- that generates real wealth- and it spreads to many people not just a select few. we don't really do that anymore- we have a service economy large chunks of corporate profits are financialization casino money games on Wall Street and Healthcare related.
China brought 800 million people out of extreme poverty and is arguably the greatest economy in the world right now- and they did it on the back of actually making/producing things- right now they manufacture around 33% of the entire worlds goods.
see antitrust discussion, above.
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One approach I'd like to flesh out more is a "guaranteed income". We spend a lot on various programs, what if we just spent it all on this. You get this income guaranteed, the support declines as you work and earn more, but you still get some for a while. It ends poverty, simply. And yes, some would waste the money.
No welfare, no SNAP, no Section 8, no nothing, just send in your income statement and get paid, sort of akin to the income tax earned income tax credit.
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One approach I'd like to flesh out more is a "guaranteed income". We spend a lot on various programs, what if we just spent it all on this. You get this income guaranteed, the support declines as you work and earn more, but you still get some for a while. It ends poverty, simply. And yes, some would waste the money.
No welfare, no SNAP, no Section 8, no nothing, just send in your income statement and get paid, sort of akin to the income tax earned income tax credit.
The concept is soooo hard for me to get my head around because this is the definition of a hand out.
But the reality of the connection between poverty and all of these social ills is also so strong that it is an interesting question whether the hand out is actually the more cost effective way of addressing these problems. Many people argue (and I'm no economist, but the argument has a logical feel to it), that such handouts would just result in inflation and wouldn't end up solving anything.
BUT, there are plenty of places that basically do this already: Alaska, for instance. The state generates revenue as a result of its natural resources that it then redistributes to all of its established residents (I'm sure there are some vagaries there that I'm not accounting for). So, at a national level, the concept is that our nation is so profitable that we can share a wealth dividend with everyone--or at least anyone who needs it (with, presumably, some kind of graduation built in).
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The concept is soooo hard for me to get my head around because this is the definition of a hand out.
It is a direct handout instead of a bunch of other de facto handouts. The poverty programs don't work, they had some impact initially, and virtually none sense. Time to rethink it all. And how much of the money appropriated for SNAP actually goes to the beneficiary? Maybe it's 70%, maybe less, my approach would probably be 95% passthrough efficient.
Maybe.
So, every legal resident would get enough to be over the poverty line. And nothing else (unless a state wanted to do something).
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The antitrust question is an interesting one. The laws haven't changed (in a very long time), but the government enforcement changed dramatically. My recollection is that the big change occurred under the Reagan Administration, but feel free to fact check that. The big change was that instead of protecting the number of competitors in a given market, the DOJ's antitrust enforcement division changed its focus to the impact on price competition. That helps really large companies against small compeitors because economies of scale will always favor Amazon over your local retailer (or your local-ish distributor who sells to your local retailer). And it allows for far fewer competitors. Hence, consolidation. As long as there is still price competition, the DOJ won't step in.
This is a good example of how enforcement decisions can dramatically change the way a law (or set of laws) works. But try to rally people around telling DOJ antitrust attorneys how to determine what is pro-competitive. It gets a little wonky and dry.
The income gap is a large and growing problem. I think it's pretty easy to see how it is impacting politics in the country (which is to say it is destabilizing). I'm curious what you guys think caused this and what can help the working poor catch back up to the 1950s/60s era gap. I have my own perspective, but I'm curious what yours is.
FYI: one major impact on wealth in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s was that this country was the only industrialized nation that emerged from WWII with a fully functioning industrial economy. When it was time to rebuild the world you needed to buy from the U.S. to do it. That provided a major boost to our economic fortunes.
Hart Celler Act. Timeline checks out, and probably a good starting point.
The are many ugly inferences there, that many dare not touch -- but, nevertheless ---- IT is what it is, as they say.
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The income gap is a large and growing problem. I think it's pretty easy to see how it is impacting politics in the country (which is to say it is destabilizing). I'm curious what you guys think caused this and what can help the working poor catch back up to the 1950s/60s era gap. I have my own perspective, but I'm curious what yours is.
That's way more than I can type, but just a few quick thoughts in response.
CD's point about wealth gap and income gap is a relevant one. I don't think it matters much how wealthy the wealthy get. More pertinent is how much buying power does a family/individual have, and what are their prospects when they are too old to work?
Then comes the task of defining our operating terms. When we say that in the 50's and 60's Boomers like my parents could be solidly middle class growing up with only one working parent who didn't even have to have a stellar job/income in order to have a home, a car, afford food, etc., we're still talking about a very different way of life than what people tend to think of now (imo) as "middle class." Look at how much crap we have now that didn't exist then. Crap that people think is necessity, but isn't really. That all has to be accounted for. Prices of homes and cars have to accounted for obviously, but there's 100 things around my house that are "normal" and people think we're "poor" if we don't have them, but arguably, they're not, and it's all stuff that my folks didn't have growing up.
As far as what we can do. Families need to be nuclear. That's a bigger deal than anybody wants to talk about or admit. We need to be healthier. Insert diatribe against me here about how we're just better at diagnosing things now, we're not really getting less healthy blah blah blah. Screw that, I have some small measure of industry knowledge here. The costs associated with health care are drags on income, quality of life, and overall economy. Energy needs to be as cheap as possible. That drives so many other things beyond mere "I can pay my electric bill easier this month." We need to make more "stuff" in the US, in addition to service industries and financial markets. The federal government has find a way to spend less than it takes in, and not take in what unduly burdens its citizens. As mentioned by someone else, get rid of the crony capitalism aspects that plague our regulations. I have nothing at all against the rich, but screw any regulatory favors for them that make barrier to entry more difficult.
This is a short list off the top of my head, and it all needs much more explanation and support, I realize. Offering nothing more than a quick rundown, you might disagree with all the above. But I think those ideas are defensible, and would result in a better standard of living for middle class, elevate the lower class, and make the possibility of a single working parent achievable again.
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Charitable donations are tax deductable of course (if you itemize).
I don't view it as a dodge. You can't get rich donating money.
Basically, if you own a large chunk of some very successful company, you end up very wealthy, duh, in terms of wealth.
Oh sure they're tax deductible. And what if the head of the charity is your daughter or some other kind of kinship, and they make a salary of $1,000,000 per year plus expenses and private flights to attend Clean Water Conferences in Switzerland or whatever. And all the executives of the charity each make $300-800,000 per year, and they also travel to all these conferences and the like. But it's a charity, so it's a 501c tax exempt.
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I don't understand your stance on weath inequlity.
IMHO, as long as the super wealthy are not hindering those of us in the lower classes from succeeding, where is the harm? Not everyone is going to be successful. Some will and of that group, a few here and there will far exceed successful and fall into the group of the ultra wealthy.
Right now, Musk, Bezos and Gates all made their money by working hard and finding a market that they could exploit. They broke no rules, just hard work and perserverance. their accusition of wealth in no way affected me or my persuit of success. As a matter of fact, I was able to piggy back on Gates's contributions to become successful in my career field.
The lower class poor in this country would be considered rich by may other conutries standards. And while I don't have the luxeries affordable to the billionare class, their having that wealth has not hurt me in the slightest. I don't see the issue.
I agree with most of this and I stated some of it in a post after the one that you quoted.
I don't think the problem is at the top, I think it is at the bottom. The fact that Musk/Bezos/Soros et al have BILLIONS of dollars doesn't hurt the poor in any substantial way.
What I believe DOES hurt the poor is that they are MUCH poorer relative to the middle class than they were 50+ years ago. I believe that there are a multitude of causes for this and a lot of them have little or nothing to do with government. This list is not meant to be everything but it is a few of the big ones:
Knowledge Based Economy:
In a profession like mine (accounting), I am vastly more productive than I could possibly have been in a pre-computer world. I don't have to crunch numbers and do calculations myself because the computer does all of that. All I have to do it set up the spreadsheets and let it do the work. This has made nearly all of the "knowledge based" professionals MUCH more productive than their predecessors from a few generations ago. Engineers on here can do more because they don't actually have to draw the stuff themselves, they just have to set CAD up right and let it go.
The massive productivity increases have been almost exclusively for knowledge based professions and hasn't accrued to more physical professions. Ie, the guy who empties the trash cans in my office is still doing the same function that his predecessor did 50+ years ago, he isn't any more productive than his grandfather.
It doesn't help that accountants and engineers already made more than janitors even 50+ years ago so they were already starting from a higher wage 50+ years ago but now they are vastly more productive while the janitors started off lower and haven't seen the same increases in productivity so they've just fallen further and further behind.
Note that this one is technology-based so it really isn't something that government or social policy could dramatically impact.
Knowledge Based Economy Pt II, impact on labor demand:
Pre-WWII the percentage of American workers with a college degree was in the single digits. Today it is pushing 40%. In spite of that, real wages for the college educated have gone up because the modern economy has a MUCH greater demand for educated workers. Manufacturing processes that used to employ 100's of unskilled and semi-skilled laborers have been automated so that they now employ few if any unskilled or semi-skilled laborers. However, the machines that handle the production need to be designed, managed, maintained, etc. Most of the people doing the design/management/maintenance of those machines are college educated engineers and the like.
In sum this change decreased the demand for unskilled and semi-skilled labor while increasing the demand for college educated workers.
The other side of the equation, labor supply:
Immigration policy changed in the 1960's. Additionally, the US became a welfare state. Pre-WWII immigration to the US was exclusively people looking for greater opportunity. Nobody came to the US for handouts in the 1920's because there weren't any handouts to be had. Immigrants still come for opportunity but some also come for handouts. Our system does an atrocious job of prohibiting immigrants here for a handout and it also allows and even encourages unskilled and semi-skilled immigration. This into an economy that ALREADY has a surplus of unskilled and semi-skilled workers for technological reasons outlined above.
Side issue but I want to mention it because it is related to this, disappearing middle-income jobs:
Think of an Accounting or Engineering firm. 50+ years ago they had high paid Accountants/Engineers and low-paid janitorial staff but they also had middle-income bookkeepers/draftsmen. Functionally the Accountants/Engineers oversaw and directed the bookkeepers/draftsmen and the janitorial staff emptied the trash cans and cleaned the toilets. Computers have mostly replaced the middle-income bookkeepers/draftsmen so instead of those firms having high, middle, and low earners, they now mostly only have high and low with an enormous gap in between.
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One of the (probably few) things I agreed with Obama on was how he hammered on this. He did draw attention to the very real, measurable, disparate outcomes between two-parent children and anything other than the two-parent household (single parent, raised by grandparents, foster care, etc.).
I truncated your post, but in total those are the things that nobody will talk about, and I'm convinced they're foundational to the most significant problems, in a lot of areas, income prospects being only one. I won't say there isn't anything politicians can do about it, but the vast majority of the shift would have to be cultural and sociological.
One problem is that, from a sociological perspective it is effectively impossible to separate out the genetic impact of having smart parents from the environmental impact of being raised by smart parents. There are a few random mix-up at the hospital type situations but not enough to get solid data.
Realistically, intelligence IS at least partially heritable. So for the kids there ARE two factors:
- Having smart parents
- Being raised by smart parents.
As I referenced above, marriage has effectively become a luxury. The well off (who are generally smarter and more well educated) marry and raise kids as families. The poor (who are generally less smart and less well educated) hook up and raise kids as single parents.
Part of the problem is that there isn't much genetic mixing of the smart and the not-so-smart anymore. In today's world most college educated people marry other college educated people and have kids who will probably go to college while most HS dropouts hook up with other HS dropouts and have kids who will probably drop out of HS.
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Chappelle has an interesting take on this, he called Trump an "Honest Liar Recipient".
FIFY
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The income gap is a large and growing problem. I think it's pretty easy to see how it is impacting politics in the country (which is to say it is destabilizing). I'm curious what you guys think caused this and what can help the working poor catch back up to the 1950s/60s era gap. I have my own perspective, but I'm curious what yours is.
I laid out most of my theory in the last few posts. I'm curious to see yours because I know you come at this from a very different political perspective.
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FYI: one major impact on wealth in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s was that this country was the only industrialized nation that emerged from WWII with a fully functioning industrial economy. When it was time to rebuild the world you needed to buy from the U.S. to do it. That provided a major boost to our economic fortunes.
You know I'm a history buff and the US industrial dominance in the middle of the 20th century is astounding. By the middle of the 1940's and for about a decade the US literally had half of global industrial production.
That translated into Military Power. In 1945 if there had been a massive naval battle of US vs everyone else, the US would have been so much more powerful than the rest of the world combined that it wouldn't have been close.
During WWII the US not only fought wars in Europe and the Pacific simultaneously, we also provided massive amounts of aid to the British, Soviets, Chinese, and other allies and had enough capacity left over to research, develop, and utilize incredible advances in technology such as proximity fuses, strategic aircraft, and the atomic bombs. Nobody else came CLOSE to us in these areas.
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yup- and that is despite having very high marginal tax rates.
The high marginal tax rates are a bit of a red herring because while the US had a 90% top rate at mid-century they also allowed deductions for basically everything so nobody actually PAID that much.
Still, I think that lower rates and less deductions are MUCH better for the economy than higher rates and more deductions because private individuals are then able to spend their time trying to build a better mousetrap rather than trying to build the same mousetrap but in a more tax-friendly way.
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Realistically, intelligence IS at least partially heritable. So for the kids there ARE two factors:
- Having smart parents
- Being raised by smart parents.
I believe #2 is wildly more relevant than #1. I don't believe there is a significantly wide IQ-distribution difference between population groups if the children are not stunted (neglected, not read to, never play games and puzzles with them, not verbally interacted with, etc.)
Give a set of good parents a child who was born to people considered low-intelligence, and give their biological child to the low-intelligence parents, and I believe almost every time, the kid you're saying is genetically climbing uphill will come out fine, intelligent, and ahead of the other one.
If you have data that suggests otherwise, I'm open to it.
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You know I'm a history buff and the US industrial dominance in the middle of the 20th century is astounding. By the middle of the 1940's and for about a decade the US literally had half of global industrial production.
That translated into Military Power. In 1945 if there had been a massive naval battle of US vs everyone else, the US would have been so much more powerful than the rest of the world combined that it wouldn't have been close.
During WWII the US not only fought wars in Europe and the Pacific simultaneously, we also provided massive amounts of aid to the British, Soviets, Chinese, and other allies and had enough capacity left over to research, develop, and utilize incredible advances in technology such as proximity fuses, strategic aircraft, and the atomic bombs. Nobody else came CLOSE to us in these areas.
I'll do my best to add a little response to your other question (probably not today), but I don't disagree with any of this ^^^^
I watched a really good lecture by historians of Stalin, Churchill, and Roosevelt about their goals for WWII. The Roosevelt historian had a really interesting take on WWII: basically, Roosevelt absolutely believed in defeating Japan and Germany, but his goal was to do as little of the fighting as possible, instead, to fund the people doing the fighting. In that area, he largely succeeded (although the U.S. had to manage Japan mostly by itself). The war cost Russia a massive portion of its population, it cost the UK its empire (the UK spent approximately 1/3 of its total wealth on WWII), and it massively benefitted the economy of the United States--not just in the 1940s, but for at least another decade to come.
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The concept is soooo hard for me to get my head around because this is the definition of a hand out.
But the reality of the connection between poverty and all of these social ills is also so strong that it is an interesting question whether the hand out is actually the more cost effective way of addressing these problems. Many people argue (and I'm no economist, but the argument has a logical feel to it), that such handouts would just result in inflation and wouldn't end up solving anything.
BUT, there are plenty of places that basically do this already: Alaska, for instance. The state generates revenue as a result of its natural resources that it then redistributes to all of its established residents (I'm sure there are some vagaries there that I'm not accounting for). So, at a national level, the concept is that our nation is so profitable that we can share a wealth dividend with everyone--or at least anyone who needs it (with, presumably, some kind of graduation built in).
IMHO, the graduation is the key to making this work. The idea is to create an incentive to work so functionally it is a negative income tax.
Say you set the threshold at $40K. At that point you neither pay nor receive, then below that:
- $30-40k you get $0.25 for each dollar under $40k so at $30K you'd be a $32,500.
- $20-30k you get $0.50 for each dollar under $30k so at $20K you'd be at $27,500.
- $0-20K you get $0.75 for each dollar under $20k so at $0K you'd be at $22,500.
If it wasn't clear the above is an explanatory example, not @medinabuckeye1 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1547) 's proposal.
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Does anyone disagree that the wealthy will always wield more power than the middle class and the poor?
And does anyone disagree that the experiment of trying to actually eradicate private wealth was a collossuly awful failure?
However, the converse--the wealthy being so wealthy that they can effectively control everything to their benefit has a longer history than constitutional democracy does: they were called kingdoms. I wouldn't volunteer to go back to that system of government.
It's almost as if you need some balance. And if so, how do you create and maintain that balance?
Somewhere upthread I said that in some ways our goofy system has developed into a combination of the worst aspects of capitalism combined with the worst aspects of socialism.
I agree about balance and I'll give what I think is a perfect example. By far the worst nuclear accident occurred not here or in some other mostly capitalist system but in the near fully socialist Soviet Union. Why? I would argue that in our system where private entities run the nuclear plants and the government regulates them you have the crucial give-and-take. In the Soviet Union the regulators were the publicly owned power company and Chernobyl happened there.
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I believe #2 is wildly more relevant than #1. I don't believe there is a significantly wide IQ-distribution difference between population groups if the children are not stunted (neglected, not read to, never play games and puzzles with them, not verbally interacted with, etc.)
Give a set of good parents a child who was born to people considered low-intelligence, and give their biological child to the low-intelligence parents, and I believe almost every time, the kid you're saying is genetically climbing uphill will come out fine, intelligent, and ahead of the other one.
If you have data that suggests otherwise, I'm open to it.
I'll try to look around for the data but I completely disagree with you here and what limited data I've been able to find supports that IQ is MUCH more important than environment.
Data is extremely hard to find here because, as I mentioned upthread, it is nearly impossible to separate:
- The genetic impact on IQ of having smart parents from
- The environmental impact of being raised by smart parents.
That said, people's outcomes correlate more closely with IQ than with how they were raised. If you look at siblings the higher IQ kids do better than the lower IQ kids despite them having the exact same upbringing. From a control standpoint the best cases for studies are twins raised apart and the few of those that I've ever seen also support that environment is not only less important than IQ but IQ is so dominant that environment is nearly irrelevant.
I think that the impact of environment is mostly a time issue. Ie, a smart kid with a poor environment will take a little longer to realize his or her potential but they will still get there eventually because they are a smart kid.
One example:
There was a study done of the impact of HeadStart. I'll look for the study but the general result was that it made a big difference in Kindergarten and early elementary performance but it had basically zero impact beyond around the middle of Elementary School. I'll look for the study.
Life is an IQ test. Great/Terrible parenting can help/hurt a kid in the early grades but at the end of the day a kid with an 85 IQ simply isn't going to outperform a kid with a 115 IQ no matter how great the 85IQ kid's parenting and no matter how terrible the 115IQ kid's parenting.
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I'll try to look around for the data but I completely disagree with you here and what limited data I've been able to find supports that IQ is MUCH more important than environment.
Here is from NPR:
https://www.npr.org/2007/10/25/15629096/identical-strangers-explore-nature-vs-nurture
They literally have the perfect set-up, identical twins separated at birth but the actual results are locked away due to ethical objections to, ya know, separating identical twins at birth. However, there is this quote"
"Twins really do force us to question what is it that makes each of us who we are. Since meeting Elyse, it is undeniable that genetics play a huge role — probably more than 50 percent," Bernstein says.
The source for this article looks pretty shady so who knows, but:
https://michigantoday.umich.edu/2022/12/16/nature-vs-nurture-its-both/
The key here is a reference to a UMinnesota study that:
"Research from the Minnesota Center for Twin and Adoption Research (The Minnesota Study of Twins Reared Apart) includes more than 137 pairs of separated identical and fraternal twins and triplets who participated in a battery of medical and psychological tests. Over the years, identical twins reared apart developed personalities and interests that showed about the same degree of resemblance as identical twins raised together."
Emphasis added, ie nature is decisive and nurture is more-or-less irrelevant.
The bottom line is that nature is FAR more impactful than nurture. If you have a kid with an IQ of 115 you really can't mess that up and if you have a kid with an IQ of 85 there isn't really anything you can do to help much.
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Some scary findings for parents (as in hard to believe, but true, if you trust the studies):
a) parents have nearly a 0% effect on how their kids turn out.....their friends from age 9 and up (whom they choose and spend lots of time with DOING things) have far more influence
b) after the age of 18 (or moving out/going away to school), parents have ON AVERAGE one year with their kids for the rest of their lives.....as in you have about 365 days of time spent with them after the age of 18 (a weekend here, a week there.....)
Crazy stats.
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True story. My wife’s aunt and uncle travel the country as retirees. Anyways they were in Vegas or somewhere and met this young lady, 20 or 30 years old. Anyways they noticed that she looked really similar to a friend of theirs from back home. Even had the same facial expressions and very similar personality traits. They said they were just really taken aback by how similar she was to their friend. They casually asked her where she was from and she named the exact small town in Texas where their friend was from. They were taken aback at this, and asked her who her daddy was. The person she named was not their friend. They asked if she knew their friend, Mr So and so. She said she didn’t know this person. Anyways, kinda got off track but it was obvious to them who the real daddy was and how strong genetics drive much of our personality and traits.
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The war cost Russia a massive portion of its population, it cost the UK its empire (the UK spent approximately 1/3 of its total wealth on WWII), and it massively benefitted the economy of the United States--not just in the 1940s, but for at least another decade to come.
It must be stated that the British Crown conveniently forgot to repay its loan debt to the US Treasury in the 1st WW .Whilst the so-called Royals were still fox hunting and playing polo on their estates back when balancing the budget was serious stuff. Britain had the Royal Navy in WWI blockading Germany's Northen ports causing 3/4 of a million German citizens to starve to death. That was a clear violation of not only international law, a callous disregard for human rights - and was in fact a war crime. Of course, this is only atrocity and genocide if others do it, evidently. This was long before Hitler and the Nazis.
The U.S.A. voted down & flatly rejected the terms of the Treaty of Versailles. As those terms most primarily led to the resentments that led to WW II that Britain and France enforced placing the burden of war guilt entirely on Germany - in a war they didn't start. Ceding to France & Poland 25,000 square miles of German lands. The citizens themselves lost their homes as a result of these measures. The reality was that Treaty was anything but a fair settlement for the Central Powers. It was that criminal act of despotism plunging their country deep into anarchy, destitution and chaos - the treaty forced Germany to disarm, to make territorial concessions, and to pay reparations to the Allied powers in the staggering amounts. Reparations the British Crown had never paid to ANYONE when they invaded, subjugated and plundered near/far like Ireland/India/South Africa/USA or anyone else 350 yrs prior.
The English Crown had an ass kicking coming for all of that. Hitler turning on the Russian/Jewish people for no reason seemingly got the fauntleroys off the hook for this
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75% of Germans starved to death?
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Sorry - 3/4 of a million
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Medina,
I think we're talking about two different things, but thanks for providing the info you did.
I'm talking about the infant/toddler years and saying that proper care and engagement is critical, and that if a kid lacks it, no amount of genetics is going to salvage that. You could breed two super-geniuses with sci-fi technology to make sure the kid gets all the best traits, and an uncared-for child is still going to be permanently stunted, and in worst cases, feral (there are unfortunately recorded instances of that--not the super-genius-alien breeding part). I have anecdotal evidence to add there, but it is anecdotal. You have a crucial stage of development in the first few years, and if you stunt that environmentally, no amount of genetics is going to make you really smart, or even of normal intelligence. That is my assertion, anyway.
If I'm understanding you correctly, you're talking about once a kid gets through that stage with no problems, their genetics will either catapult them to a level of corresponding greatness, or curtail their ability to exceed a certain threshold, regardless of their home life, socioeconomic circumstance, and other environmental factors. I think that makes sense and I don't dispute it.
I'm not going to go looking for it now, but I think I've seen data in the past showing a positive correlation between activities like reading to your child, talking to them regularly, doing little games and puzzles with them, and their intelligence outcome. But again, if I understand you correctly, that doesn't contradict anything you're saying.
The problem, as you noted, is how to operationalize any good experiment to test the hypothesis. Proving the counterfactual in either case is a really tough ask, and if it can be done at all, I don't think it could be done ethically.
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There also can be environmental factors like lead, and of course poor nutrition.
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Medina,
I think we're talking about two different things, but thanks for providing the info you did.
I'm talking about the infant/toddler years and saying that proper care and engagement is critical, and that if a kid lacks it, no amount of genetics is going to salvage that. You could breed two super-geniuses with sci-fi technology to make sure the kid gets all the best traits, and an uncared-for child is still going to be permanently stunted, and in worst cases, feral (there are unfortunately recorded instances of that--not the super-genius-alien breeding part). I have anecdotal evidence to add there, but it is anecdotal. You have a crucial stage of development in the first few years, and if you stunt that environmentally, no amount of genetics is going to make you really smart, or even of normal intelligence. That is my assertion, anyway.
If I'm understanding you correctly, you're talking about once a kid gets through that stage with no problems, their genetics will either catapult them to a level of corresponding greatness, or curtail their ability to exceed a certain threshold, regardless of their home life, socioeconomic circumstance, and other environmental factors. I think that makes sense and I don't dispute it.
I'm not going to go looking for it now, but I think I've seen data in the past showing a positive correlation between activities like reading to your child, talking to them regularly, doing little games and puzzles with them, and their intelligence outcome. But again, if I understand you correctly, that doesn't contradict anything you're saying.
The problem, as you noted, is how to operationalize any good experiment to test the hypothesis. Proving the counterfactual in either case is a really tough ask, and if it can be done at all, I don't think it could be done ethically.
This is the Nature vs Nurture debate. It is a long-running debate and there really isn't a 100% consensus but there are some general parameters.
It seems pretty clear that I am more on the nature side than you but I am not at all stating that nurture is 100% irrelevant. The Head Start example, however, is telling. Head Start REALLY helps kindergarten performance but the impact dissipates as the child ages.
I guess my position (leaning more nature than yours) is something like this:
At the very high and very low ends of the IQ spectrum, I tend to think that nature predominates and nurture is more-or-less irrelevant. IE:
Mean IQ is approximately 100 with a Standard Deviation of approximately 15. Contra your theory, I think that a super-genius (whether naturally occurring or sci-fi created) is going to be fine no matter how awful their upbringing. Basically I would say that anyone above about 115 (one SD above mean) is just plain smart enough to overcome poor upbringing so it doesn't much matter. Similarly, at the other end of the scale, I would say that anyone under about 85 (one SD below mean) is just not smart enough to accomplish much no matter how great their upbringing.
Note that when I say that, I mean IN THE LONG run. Ie, an 85 IQ kid with REALLY good parenting is probably going to be a better student in Kindergarten and early Elementary than a 15 IQ kid with REALLY bad parenting. However, the difference caused by nurture is temporary unlike the "nature" difference which is permanent so over time the high-IQ poorly-parented kid will overtake the low-IQ well-parented kid and eventually, certainly long before HS Graduation the 115 IQ kid will have completely overcome the initial advantage enjoyed by the well-parented 85-IQ kid.
That being said, only approximately 16% of people have IQ of 115 and above and another 16% have IQ of 85 and below. The other roughly 2/3 of the population is within +/- 1 SD of average IQ. I think that the closer you get to average, the more impact parenting can have. For the ~50% of the population with IQ's of 90-110 parenting matters a lot because they are:
- Not so smart that long-term success is more-or-less inevitable like the 115+ kids, and
- Not so dull that long-term success is more-or-less impossible like the 85- kids.
For this half of the population, things can go different ways.
It might help to think of it with an analogy. If you think of racing cars, I think IQ is like the car and parenting is like the driver. At the very low end, if you are driving a 1982 Pinto (sub 85 IQ kid), you aren't going to get good lap times no matter how great of a driver you are. At the very high end, if you are driving a McClaren F1 (115 IQ kid), you are going to get very good lap times even if you don't really know how to drive.
Where I think nurture matters the most is if you are closer to average so, in this analogy, if you are racing a Toyota Corrolla against a Honda Accord (I have no idea of the relative performance of those two, I'm just assuming they are both average and about the same) the better driver is going to win every time.
Just to clarify, I'm not asserting that 85 and 115 are the EXACT points where nurture becomes more-or-less irrelevant and nature predominates. What I am saying is that I think there ARE points where that happens. It is probably more of a gradual shift. I am saying that I think that as you move away from average (in either direction) the impact of nature becomes stronger relative to nurture and eventually you will reach a point (again, in either direction) at which nurture is basically irrelevant.
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The problem, as you noted, is how to operationalize any good experiment to test the hypothesis. Proving the counterfactual in either case is a really tough ask, and if it can be done at all, I don't think it could be done ethically.
Exactly. This is why the twin study that I referenced has been locked away.
In the normal course of things it is impossible to separate the genetic (nature) impact of having smart parents from the environmental (nurture) impact of being raised by smart parents because in the normal course of things the exact same people are both the birth (nature) parents and raise the child.
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So should we write a book titled Nature AND Nuture and get rich? :)
The other roughly 2/3 of the population is within +/- 1 SD of average IQ. I think that the closer you get to average, the more impact parenting can have.
That's an interesting angle I hadn't considered. It makes sense, the causal mechanism is certainly there, and, I would guess, current data likely backs it up. (I don't know, I'm still operating from a rationalism perspective, and anecdotal evidence.)
Where I do think there is hard evidence is in the early childhood stages. A kid who in most situations with any decent raising would've wound up a genius could instead suffer neglect and abuse in the toddler years, and will never overcome it to reach even the mean, let alone the +1/+2 st. dev. As I understand it, child psychology is fairly firm in that you only have a certain amount of time to develop linguistic skill, and if you don't, or it's not to a certain level, it's not going to happen. And without language or language of a certain sophistication, a person won't reach certain levels of higher intelligence.
This unfortunately happened to my four adopted cousins I recently referenced elsewhere. All the same biological mom and dad, all suffering roughly the same abuse, but the impact on them increased with birth order. It's possible that the youngest was abused the worst and the oldest was abused the least--I don't have a way to know that--but they all had it pretty bad from what I understand. I believe the reason the oldest is "mostly normal" followed by increasing problems on down to the youngest who is fully mentally retarded is little more than the youngest was so young, whereas his older brother and sisters had gotten further and further past that crucial stage before things got bad, allowing them to reach or exceed the point where environment is critical.
All that said, I'm as subject to domain expertise as could be. I have no accredited knowledge in that area and everything I've said is either anecdotal or based on stuff I've read from others who are supposed to know what they're talking about.
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So should we write a book titled Nature AND Nuture and get rich? :)
That's an interesting angle I hadn't considered. It makes sense, the causal mechanism is certainly there, and, I would guess, current data likely backs it up. (I don't know, I'm still operating from a rationalism perspective, and anecdotal evidence.)
Where I do think there is hard evidence is in the early childhood stages. A kid who in most situations with any decent raising would've wound up a genius could instead suffer neglect and abuse in the toddler years, and will never overcome it to reach even the mean, let alone the +1/+2 st. dev. As I understand it, child psychology is fairly firm in that you only have a certain amount of time to develop linguistic skill, and if you don't, or it's not to a certain level, it's not going to happen. And without language or language of a certain sophistication, a person won't reach certain levels of higher intelligence.
This unfortunately happened to my four adopted cousins I recently referenced elsewhere. All the same biological mom and dad, all suffering roughly the same abuse, but the impact on them increased with birth order. It's possible that the youngest was abused the worst and the oldest was abused the least--I don't have a way to know that--but they all had it pretty bad from what I understand. I believe the reason the oldest is "mostly normal" followed by increasing problems on down to the youngest who is fully mentally retarded is little more than the youngest was so young, whereas his older brother and sisters had gotten further and further past that crucial stage before things got bad, allowing them to reach or exceed the point where environment is critical.
All that said, I'm as subject to domain expertise as could be. I have no accredited knowledge in that area and everything I've said is either anecdotal or based on stuff I've read from others who are supposed to know what they're talking about.
Let's write that book!
I noticed that both of us are using extreme examples in pushing our arguments for Nature (me) and Nurture (you). That probably makes a lot of sense because at the far extremes either Nature or Nurture probably predominate.
I don't generally think in terms of actual abuse. I was thinking more in terms of parents who are at least reasonably well intentioned but may vary from very ineffective to very effective. It looks like you, similarly, aren't thinking in terms of extremely smart or extremely dull kids.
I'll concede that at some point once you get into serious physical and/or sexual abuse the parenting isn't just passively "not good" but actively bad to the point that nurture probably overrides nature in most cases. I think that you would similarly concede that once you get into extremely low or extremely high IQ, nature probably overrides nurture in most cases.
The concept of genius level kid having physically and/or sexually abusive parents probably exists but it is also probably so rare that studying it would be solely an academic pursuit and wouldn't have any real bearing on policy ideas for the vast majority of kids.
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I'm just curious what the current understanding is about IQ being hereditary. It seems I've known so many highly intelligent people who stood out from the rest of their family (siblings and parents alike), as well as highly intelligent couples who produced what seemed to be very normal children, that I guess it's never really crossed my mind that much.
That said, I don't know what any of their IQs are. I'm basing intelligence solely off of the obvious horsepower under the skull I perceived from them, or lack thereof.
I don't know what to make of IQ tests in the first place. Some say they're the most telling psychological test we have, others think they're bunk. I've done a couple different tests in my life and they put my IQ in about the same spot, so I guess if nothing else, at least there's consistency. What it means, I have no idea. It's a high percentile, but not exactly a high number compared to the geniuses you read about. I have a hard time believing I have a higher IQ than that much of the population. I've never thought of myself as unintelligent, but it must be said I often meet, and always have, people who seem every bit as intelligent as me, and quite a few over the years who I'd bet money flat-out have superior CPU's.
Hell, after posting here for 19 years, I'm convinced that most here are at least as intelligent as I am, if not more so in many cases. Doesn't really jive with my supposed score.
To your point, my dad, my sister and I are all very similar. They are highly intelligent, if I had to guess, smarter than me, though probably not by much. To my point, I was read to a lot, and talked to, and played with, and had encouragement and help through my learning years.
Beats the hell out of me. Guess I'm not so smart after all.
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Regression to the mean is common with children, in both directions.
I think standardized tests tell us something, but the correlation with whatever actual intelligence might be is not perfect. A person who does well on SATs several times is probably pretty smart, in most cases. It does a pretty good job predicting first year success in college for example. My guess is "IQ" is a linear thing, and actual intelligence is not. Was Mozart brilliant? In one facet he was off the charts, does that mean he would have been a great physicist? Could Newton have written Beethoven symphonies or chiseled marble like DaVinci?
DaVinci is an interesting sort who seems "off the charts" in nearly every vector we can imagine. I'm halfway through a book on him. His parents were not apparently particularly smart, his mother was, well, not well known in history except as a "peasant girl". His father was probably reasonably smart, but not like DaVinci. Probably nobody was.
Think of all the super brilliant people who lived and died in obscurity, perhaps in childbirth or childhood, or just very distant from any recorded history.
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it's unfortunate that Jimmy the Greek can't be brought into this conversation and have some influence into writing of the book
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it's unfortunate that Jimmy the Greek can't be brought into this conversation and have some influence into writing of the book
Charles Murray will do.
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I laid out most of my theory in the last few posts. I'm curious to see yours because I know you come at this from a very different political perspective.
Don't want you to think that I'm evading this--just have been really busy at work.
So I'll take a quick shot at it:
1) The post-WWII U.S. industrial advantage was beginning to end as of the mid-1960s. Not only were other industrialized nations catching up, but because of their economic situations, they were selling goods at lower costs than the U.S. manufacturers did.
2) The U.S. economy began to shift to take advantage of the available lower cost goods (which, given the stability of the world order, could be reliably shipped), which lead to the development of the knowledge economy, referred to earlier.
3) Union labor, which emerged from the Great Depression and WWII as a very strong force for protecting middle class jobs, was largely tied--because of the way the National Labor Relations Act (circa 1934?) was written--to "shops," i.e. manufacturing jobs. As other countries began to put pressure on the U.S. through cheaper manufacturing, labor lost bargaining power against the "owner class." That meant a deterioration of middle class wages for traditional blue collar jobs. We saw this very explicitly through the 1970s and 1980s as private union labor lost a huge amount of economic and political power.
4) At the same time (the mid-60s), the traditional political power behind union labor, the Democratic Party, became the party of civil rights. There was a massive conflict between the union system (which protects jobs above all else) and civil rights activism, which sought to end barriers for minorities (at the time, primarily black people) in the work stream. That involved a direct assault on the union labor system, which relies a great deal on seniority, further weakening labor's political power. While this was morally the right thing to do, it was also disruptive to the economic order, with a big impact on the middle class.
5) At the same time, the "knowledge economy" was expanding, which allowed many in the middle class to shift to other work, so the middle class didn't go away, it just changed. While the middle class has shrunk, only part of that was going to the poor; much of it (more of it) was people moving up in economic status, with a larger portion of the population in the "wealthy" class.
6) The global order that the U.S. basically created and maintained, also provided for the expansion of industrial economies all over the world. So cheaper goods were available, and as long as goods were cheap, things remained "affordable" even if the job market was changing a great deal.
7) The expansion of the "knowledge economy," including the loss of pensions, and the growth of investment among the (primarily upper) middle class, meant a larger set of people with a direct interest in corporate profits, further eroding organized labor's bargaining power.
This sounds like the recitation of a person who is opposed to global trade--I am not. Global stability has been very good for the U.S. financially--allowing us to remain the wealthiest country in the world, including a generally healthy enough middle class.
Responding to a few other things I've seen here: I would be curious to see studies that estimate the impact of changing legal immigration trends on the U.S. economy. I suspect that downward wage pressure on the middle class hasn't been especially strong as a result of legal immigration--even if that immigration changed in character in the mid-60s.
I agree that stable homes, with two parents, generally make for better training grounds for productive economic participation. And I think that certain federal policies have negatively impacted that.
I also agree that we seem to be further insulating ourselves from each other. It's what I've heard referred to as the frequent flyer, or airline pricing effect. In a simpler economy, and in a less connected world, in the Depression years, and in the immediately post-WWII years (including as long as we had a big external threat in the Soviet Union), we were more connected than I think we are now. We divide ourselves, in schools, in subdivisions, in parks, in clubs (actually, we largely don't participate in clubs anymore), in churches, even in which seats we sit in on airplanes, and now--especially now--through algorithms that identify our interests and target us with information (largely driven by advertising dollars), largely along socio-economic lines. The more we insulate ourselves, the harder it is to feel empathy for each other, the harder it is for us to even understand where the others are coming from. There was a lot of this that was very overt in reaction to changes that came as the result of the civil rights movement, and there is a lot of it that has absolutely nothing to do with that.
That erosion is a massive problem because empathy is such a strong human emotion. When we sit across the dinner table from each other, most of us immediately connect with each others' humanity, and we start to wonder why there is so much fighting in the world. But when we retreat from there, and see each other across a tribal line, it is very easy for us to accuse each other of all manner of terrible things.
But how to deal with defacto insulation is a very, very big question. At the micro level, I'm not about to move my family into a different city just so they are exposed to different viewpoints and life experiences. I value that my city has a fair amount of diversity, including socio-economic diversity--but I also value that it has strong property values, strong schools, and is safe to live in--all of which are very closely associated with being the home of a high proportion of high wage earners.
Wow--this has turned into quite the rant that I have no interest in editing so... those are my rough thoughts [post]
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I'm always too busy to type that much
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I'm always too busy to type that much
Imagine he wasn't busy at work ....
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Or he was just trying to avoid work for a few minutes...
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Or he was just trying to avoid work for a few minutes hours...
Fixed.
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Well, this little rant wasn't an hour, but my time here this morning has been...more than necessary. :-)
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I also agree that we seem to be further insulating ourselves from each other. It's what I've heard referred to as the frequent flyer, or airline pricing effect. In a simpler economy, and in a less connected world, in the Depression years, and in the immediately post-WWII years (including as long as we had a big external threat in the Soviet Union), we were more connected than I think we are now. We divide ourselves, in schools, in subdivisions, in parks, in clubs (actually, we largely don't participate in clubs anymore), in churches, even in which seats we sit in on airplanes, and now--especially now--through algorithms that identify our interests and target us with information (largely driven by advertising dollars), largely along socio-economic lines. The more we insulate ourselves, the harder it is to feel empathy for each other, the harder it is for us to even understand where the others are coming from. There was a lot of this that was very overt in reaction to changes that came as the result of the civil rights movement, and there is a lot of it that has absolutely nothing to do with that.
In support of this point, I've been studying theology informally for the past ~1.5ish years. There seems to be a prevalent strain of thought subsisting through the Roman Catholic and Mainline Protestant traditions which says that while the rights of the individual are crucial to a Christian society (and, frankly, vice versa), the modern-day, radical individualism is neither encapsulated in nor prescribed by historic Christianity. i.e., it believes in individual rights, liberties, and freedoms, but it's not good to come to a place where everyone is just doing whatever they feel like doing with no regard to the wider society. You write here that we're split into further factions these days, and that exacerbates what I think I'm mentioning here, which is that we're not looking outside of ourselves enough when we consider what's "best." (That probably sounds like some hippie, socialist-loving, utopia-hunting, tree-hugging-liberal stuff, and I assure you, it's not :-D )
In, well, not rebuttal, but maybe addition to, this point....while I think there is a ton of explanatory power in what you said, I do think we're also dealing with some very disparate sets of values in our culture today. There are some old studies that show that people across the political spectrum largely have the same values, but they tend to disagree on the order of priority and on means of achieving or actualizing said values. I'm not convinced that's true anymore. Given the underpinnings of what many advocate for these days, it seems we're dealing with some more foundational differences in core principles than we've dealt with in much of the modern era of politics. The effect serves to further insulate us, perhaps as much or more as the technological advances mixed with confirmation bias you outlined above.
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Don't want you to think that I'm evading this--just have been really busy at work.
There is obviously a LOT to unpack here so I'm going to break responses into sections.
First, Unions:
For years I've said that:
- If you can't admit that Unions have done some good things, you are too anti-Union ideologically biased to have a serious discussion about the topic, and
- If you can't admit that Unions have done some harm, you are too pro-Union ideologically biased to have a serious discussion about the topic.
Frankly, I think that part of the problem is that for various reasons (mostly legal/political), US Unions are essentially set-up in the most adversarial way possible. This ends up harming the Unions, their members, and their employers but everyone is kinda locked into their roles so here we are.
My dad just HATED unions because of an experience that he had early in his career. He used to do trade shows in Chicago and the Electricians Union at McCormak (sp?) Place had instituted a restriction that only a UNION Electrician could do anything electrical. This restriction might sound reasonable until you understand that it literally included plugging in the display. Then, to make it worse, the Union Electricians had a minimum call of something like an hour so they would charge vendors for one hour of labor at inflated Chicago Union Electrician wages to plug in a lamp. Then, to make it worse, the Union Electricians at McCormak Place were habitually unavailable during normal hours and if you had to have one after hours you got dinged for time-and-a-half and a longer minimum call so you ended up paying three hours of Chicago Union Electrician wages to plug in a lamp.
Another example is a friend of mine from my early days as an accountant. During college he had worked at a UAW Automotive factory in security. He had a couple of observations:
- He literally had a grievance filed against him, had to attend a grievance hearing, and got written up for picking up a piece of trash. Apparently the trash-picker-upper Union objected to a Security Union guy taking their work away from them.
- WC Injuries were VASTLY more common first thing Monday morning. He saw guys walking in wincing in pain just so that they could get to their workstation and claim that the injury occurred at work thus making it a BWC injury for which they would get wage replacement.
I have one more example that is more current and that I have first-hand knowledge of. The RR industry is HEAVILY regulated by the Federal Government and it is also HEAVILY unionized, like basically anyone anywhere close to a train is in a Union. When we pave a street at a RR Crossing there is some Federal/Union regulation/requirement that we have to have a RR Union "Train watcher-outer" to stand at the RR Crossing to let our construction guys know when a Train is coming. Now first of all, this is patently ridiculous. Our Construction guys obviously know what Trains are and could watch out for them themselves. For that matter, my five year old LOVES trains and he literally could do this job, he'd love it. But it gets worse. They have periodic Union-mandated breaks so you can't just have ONE "Train watcher-outer", oh no, you have to have two so that they can cover each other's breaks and lord help you if you do any after-hours construction work because then you get to pay time-and-a-half which means three hours per hour (because there are two of them) and I think we get charged around $125/hour per Train watcher-outer for this "service".
I'm not saying that Unions haven't done good things (see point #1 way above) but I'm writing these out to make the point that they clearly do bad things as well. They often act as cartels (Chicago Electrician's Cartel, UAW Trash-picker-upper Cartel) in an effort to force work to themselves. This type of nonsense massively inflates prices and only works so long as there is no viable competition.
In the immediate postwar era there wasn't any offshore competition. Germany and Japan were digging out from under the rubble that we had created by bombing their cities/factories, the British couldn't keep up with their own internal demands, China, India, Korea et al simply weren't sufficiently industrialized to manufacture anything complex so the UAW could demand whatever it wanted and as long as the Big Three (GM, Ford, Chrysler) were all roughly on the same page the customers didn't have any other viable options so tough.
The US Auto industry frankly got fat and happy and then the Germans and Japanese (later also Koreans, Chinese, etc) showed up with cars that were better for a lot less money.
Your acknowledgement of the inherent conflict between Labor and Civil Rights is rare and an important point. Government entities have to pay what are called "Davis Bacon Wages" on Construction projects. This is because back in the 1920's Unions saw employers hiring cheaper southern blacks and rebelled. Davis Bacon was initially passed to keep construction jobs for high wage Union (white) workers from going to low wage (black) workers. It is STILL law.
My dad was born in 1940 and graduated HS in 1958. One of his friends is a guy I still see around town. This friend of his did a couple years in the Army in the (lucky) lull between Korea (ended in 1953) and Vietnam (heated up in 1964/5) then got a UAW Job at a Ford plant not far from here. For guys like him, these were GREAT jobs. He retired at ~50 in the late 80's / early 90's then did concrete while collecting a rich Ford/UAW pension. The problem is that this was never sustainable.
I think that a lot of times we look at the 1950's labor environment and think we can replicate that and . . . we can't.
On top of that, my dad's friend was a reasonably smart guy. I don't mean to say he was Einstein, he was no rocket scientist but he was smart enough that Ford/UAW trained him to be a pattern maker. For the most part, guys smart enough to do higher-level labor like that don't end up going to work for Ford anymore anyway because instead they go to college.
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You mentioned Pensions:
ERISA has been an interest of mine ever since law school. So the brief history of ERISA is that when Studebaker went greasy side up their thousands of employees who had been promised a pension were mostly left out in the cold and this created the Political impetus to fix the Pension issue. It wasn't just Studebaker, there were also multiple instances of Union Pension Funds being misappropriated (the movie Hoffa touches on this).
Briefly:
Before ERISA if you worked for me and I offered a Pension, the Pension was simply a promise from @medinabuckeye1 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1547) to you. The obvious problem here is that the promise only had value so long as @medinabuckeye1 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1547) was solvent and a collectible defendant. If and when @medinabuckeye1 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=1547) went broke, the pension was worth less than the paper it was printed on.
ERISA changed all of this. Post-ERISA, if I want to offer you a pension, I have to fund it according to actuarial requirements laid out by the Feds and the funds that I put into your pension are held in a constructive trust so that if I go bankrupt my other creditors can't grab your pension assets to satisfy my other obligations.
I think that ERISA is definitely a good thing and that it should be applied to Public Sector Pensions (this is a MASSIVE side issue) but the downside is that almost all employers have dropped their defined benefit pension plans. ERISA compliance is famously expensive and this is why almost nobody gets a Company Pension like in the old days. Instead, workers who do get Pensions get 401k's and the like.
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in the legal world we call this onerous.
I still have 'two' separate pension benefits (from a prior private employer). they had gradually been refashioning their pension plans, which is why I have two separate pension benefits. It's impossible to attempt to evaluate the benefits, despite all of these tools they provide employees. Half the time, the result I get is, 'sorry, your shit is really complex, call #888.....for more detailed information
I basically forecast a budget inclusive of pension benefits to pay for my future utilities in retirement. Anything past that is speculative.
meanwhile, many of the public pensions are a time bomb. I was a public employee for a hot minute years ago and get an annual pension benefits statement. It is comical how 'rich' my payout will be for my minuscule tenure as a State employee. People wonder why 'Act 10' was such a big deal in WI for so many years, Unsustainable. ERISA applying to public pensions.....a little too late for that, I'm afraid.
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He used to do trade shows in Chicago and the Electricians Union at McCormak (sp?) Place had instituted a restriction that only a UNION Electrician could do anything electrical.
McCormick.
This applies not only to electrical. It applies to ANY trade.
Union carpenters must do booth assembly. Anything with water? Union plumbers. And on and on.
It is still that way.
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meanwhile, many of the public pensions are a time bomb. I was a public employee for a hot minute years ago and get an annual pension benefits statement. It is comical how 'rich' my payout will be for my minuscule tenure as a State employee. People wonder why 'Act 10' was such a big deal in WI for so many years, Unsustainable. ERISA applying to public pensions.....a little too late for that, I'm afraid.
Hmm. I'm currently a state employee (Texas) and as best as I can figure/predict from what our pension is, it ain't too hot. My mom was a long-time state employee (Louisiana) and her pension, while safe and better than nothing, is....not great.
I must be living in the wrong states.
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My mom worked for Texas Workforce Commission for about 20 years, and her benefits seem to be pretty good.
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my father was on the Iowa state plan (IPERS)
36 years - he liked his union (I'm not sure why)
his pension wasn't enuff to allow him a lavish lifestyle with international travel, but he spent many days fishing for walleyes out of state and never feared running out of money.
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- If you can't admit that Unions have done some good things, you are too anti-Union ideologically biased to have a serious discussion about the topic, and
- If you can't admit that Unions have done some harm, you are too pro-Union ideologically biased to have a serious discussion about the topic.
Absoutely. And the National Labor Relations Act is one of the main sources for the rules and conflicts you identify. There are lots of problems with unions (like any person-run bureaucracy), plenty of history of shady stuff, and unquestioned benefits to creating middle class wealth. Additionally, now, unions in the construction trades are one of the primary sources for job training for very critical jobs. Side note, one of the reasons the construction trades remain strong (longshoreman, too) is that you can't offshore/outsource their jobs.
And it's not just that the U.S. was the available manufacturing base to rebuild the war-torn world, it's also that as a condition of getting U.S. aid, we forced Europe and Japan to buy American. That's a pretty good gig if you can get it. We also made some form of free trade between us, Europe, and Japan as a condition of support.
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meanwhile, many of the public pensions are a time bomb. I was a public employee for a hot minute years ago and get an annual pension benefits statement. It is comical how 'rich' my payout will be for my minuscule tenure as a State employee. People wonder why 'Act 10' was such a big deal in WI for so many years, Unsustainable. ERISA applying to public pensions.....a little too late for that, I'm afraid.
This could be a thread all by itself but I'll dive in a bit here.
First I want to say a couple things:
A LOT of private sector folks complain about Public Sector Pensions and I get it but I can see both sides of this issue. When I graduated from Ohio State I had an offer from an Accounting Firm at about $35k/yr and an offer from the State at about $28k/yr. The major advantage of the State job was that it was in OPERS which meant (at the time) 30-and-out. To a 22 year old that meant a pension at age 52. I'm now 49 but they changed up the rules a few years ago so now I need 32 years AND a minimum age of 57. In retrospect . . .
It sucks when they change the rules on you midway. Ohio *should* have recognized and fixed their Pension issue decades ago and if they had, then back in 1997 I would have been able to make an accurate comparison between private and public sector work.
Some of the crazy things that used to exist in OPERS:
Until a few years ago you only had to make $250/mo in pensionable salary to earn a full month's credit. On top of that, your eventual pension benefit was based on your highest three years so if you earned $250/mo for 27 years at some PT gig (like City Council or once-a-month acting judge) then got an actual FT public job for a mere three years you got the same pension as if you'd worked 30 years as a FT employee.
Shortly after I got out of school I met a City Service Director at a nearby city who was in his early 40's and about to retire. He had started working for the City in the summer when he was 14. Then he worked at the Rec Center when school was in session and went back to FT/Seasonal employment in the summers. By the time he graduated from HS at 18 he already had four years of OPERS credit and then he worked FT for the City from HS Graduation on. He hit retirement eligibility at the ripe old age of . . . 44.
A few years ago Ohio made some changes to make the system more sustainable and realistic. These changes eliminated the worst of the pervious loopholes. Among them:
- Retirement is now based on the highest 5 years rather than 3
- There is an "anti-spiking" formula that is applied that effectively cracks down on the situation I described above where some PT employee for most of their career works FT for a few years at the end and retires with a full pension.
- There is now a minimum age so a guy like the Service Director in the example above can't retire until 57 rather than 44.
When Detroit went bankrupt a while back the real reason for the bankruptcy was their pensions. In Michigan, unlike Ohio, the pensions are handled locally. Thus, a retired Detroit Cop, Firefighter, or maintenance worker is covered by a pension owned and managed by the City of Detroit. On the contrary, a retired Cleveland Cop, Firefighter, or maintenance worker is covered by a pension owned and managed by the State of Ohio.
The Detroit bankruptcy caused some ripples so now local cities have to report unfunded pension liability. In the case of Ohio, the unfunded liability for the entire state is determined at the State level then that amount is divvied up among all the participants. For most Cities in Ohio this is by far the largest liability on their Financial Statements. That is odd since the local City has no control over it and it isn't really their liability but nonetheless that is how it is handled.
I absolutely do NOT think that it is too late to force ERISA compliance on Public Sector Pensions but there would obviously have to be a phase-in period. The same thing was done when private sector pensions were brought under ERISA. You could take 20 years:
- Year 1, Pension must be 5% funded
- Year 2, Pension must be 10% funded
- . . .
- Year 19, Pension must be 95% funded
- Year 20, Pension must be 100% funded
One carrot/stick at least for the states exempt from SS would be to make the exemption conditional on being fully funded.
The feds should do this and the sooner the better because eventually they are going to be asked to bail out irresponsible states like Illinois and California. That is going to be a political minefield. I sympathize with both sides:
- It isn't the fault of Chicago Cop that his state wasn't responsible enough to fund his pension and he legitimately earned that pension and should get it.
- OTOH, it isn't fair to the states that either don't have public pensions or managed them responsibly to take money from them to bail out states that managed theirs based on unicorns and ferries. Ie, my Ohio Taxes already paid to fund Ohio's Pensions, I shouldn't now have my Federal Taxes used to bail out Illinois' Pensions.
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Let’s keep spending $60m on testing transgender mice. 😂😂😂😂
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life isn't fair
the Chicago cop could have went to work in Indiana
it isn't the Chicago cop's fault, but it's certainly not the Detroit cops problem to fix
hold the administrator's to the fire of accountability
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Let’s keep spending $60m on testing transgender mice. 😂😂😂😂
I've read that was "transgenic mice", a quite different thing.
I didn't watch the 'speech' of course.
Yes, Biden Spent Millions on Transgender Animal Experiments – The White House (https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2025/03/yes-biden-spent-millions-on-transgender-animal-experiments/)
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I smell a rat
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I absolutely do NOT think that it is too late to force ERISA compliance on Public Sector Pensions but there would obviously have to be a phase-in period.
It's too late.
Report: Illinois, Chicago public pension crises worst in U.S. (https://www.illinoispolicy.org/report-illinois-chicago-public-pension-crises-worst-in-u-s/)
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It's too late.
Report: Illinois, Chicago public pension crises worst in U.S. (https://www.illinoispolicy.org/report-illinois-chicago-public-pension-crises-worst-in-u-s/)
Illinois is widely understood to be the biggest disaster.
Apparently they have some State Constitutional restrictions that were pushed through by the Public Sector Unions that effectively make it impossible to fix.
IMHO, the only way around this is to utilize the Supremecy Clause of the Constitution. A Federal law requiring that Public Sector Pensions be fully funded would override the Illinois State Constitution.
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Illinois is widely understood to be the biggest disaster.
Apparently they have some State Constitutional restrictions that were pushed through by the Public Sector Unions that effectively make it impossible to fix.
IMHO, the only way around this is to utilize the Supremecy Clause of the Constitution. A Federal law requiring that Public Sector Pensions be fully funded would override the Illinois State Constitution.
Pushed through by Michael Madigan and the Unions, yes.
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Pushed through by Michael Madigan and the Unions, yes.
My understanding is that the Constitutional provision prohibits benefit reductions, is that correct?
Does it also address contributions?
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My understanding is that the Constitutional provision prohibits benefit reductions, is that correct?
Does it also address contributions?
1. Correct
2. No
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1. Correct
2. No
My Federal solution should work fine then. The contribution would probably become a multiple of rather than a fraction of payroll but that is a problem for Illinois and it's political subdivisions to solve.
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Great if that happens. Does the Senate need 60 in that case? 2/3 House?
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Great if that happens. Does the Senate need 60 in that case? 2/3 House?
No, simple majority. Federal Law isn't dictated by State Constitutions so the Illinois Constitution is a non-factor in the determination of a Federal Law. Moreover, we wouldn't technically be overriding the Illinois Constitution anyway. What this *WOULD* do is to put Illinois' public officials in a real pickle.
Review of my general proposal:
- Drop the exemption for Public Sector Pension Plans from ERISA.
- Establish a multi-year (probably multi-decade) phase-in period.
- Enact such penalties and enforcement provisions as necessary.
This would present most states with a challenging situation. Ie, Ohio's Pensions are somewhere around 70% funded depending who you ask. So if ERISA was applied to them, the State of Ohio would have to figure out how to close that 30% gap. They would almost certainly accomplish this through a combination of contribution increases and benefit reductions. Ie, they'd hire actuaries to tell them how much impact various changes would have then select a combination of changes that worked.
In Illinois the officials presented with this challenge would have half of their options (benefit reductions) taken away from them by the State Constitution so they would have to close the gap entirely through contribution increases. This is why I stated earlier that the Illinois contributions would probably become a multiple of rather than a fraction of payroll.
As a practical matter, this would be catastrophic for Illinois and it's political subdivisions. They would see their pension contributions increase by a staggering amount. For nearly all governments, payroll is easily the largest expenditure and it is frequently more than half of total expenditures. If payroll costs suddenly increased by a large amount, there would be a massive number of layoffs and budget cuts across the state. That would be terrible but it would ultimately just be adjusting to force Illinois and it's political subdivisions to live within their means rather than promising pension benefits that they have no ability to pay and counting on unicorns and ferries to make up the difference.
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life isn't fair
the Chicago cop could have went to work in Indiana
it isn't the Chicago cop's fault, but it's certainly not the Detroit cops problem to fix
hold the administrator's to the fire of accountability
I don't disagree and my proposal of subjecting the Public Sector Pensions to ERISA would do exactly what you are asking for here.
It's too late.
Report: Illinois, Chicago public pension crises worst in U.S. (https://www.illinoispolicy.org/report-illinois-chicago-public-pension-crises-worst-in-u-s/)
This was an interesting read but I don't think it is quite as bad "too late" as you do, at least for most pensions.
Looking at some of what they present, there are only four states with funding of <60%. The worst states are:
- 51% Illinois
- 53% Kentucky
- 56% New Jersey
- 57% Connecticut
- 62% South Carolina
- 62% North Dakota
- 63% Alabama
- 63% Mississippi
- 64% Hawaii
- 64% Pennsylvania
As I see it, this isn't really even a partisan issue. Sure, some Republicans might point at Deep Blue Illinois and say this is because Democrats are in charge there but the next worst state is Deep Red Kentucky so that argument doesn't get far. Of the 10 worst I've got:
- 5 Deep Red (KY, SC, ND, AL, MS)
- 4 Deep Blue (IL, NJ, CT, HI)
- 1 Purple (PA)
At the other end of the spectrum, Deep Red Tennessee, South Dakota, and Utah are 100%+ funded but so is Deep Blue Washington with Deep Blue New York not far behind at 93%.
My point is that it isn't an issue where one party is solely responsible. There are Deep Red states with well funded Pensions and with catastrophically underfunded Pensions, same for Deep Blue states.
After looking at this article, I have now fleshed out my phase-in idea so here it is:
- Minimum of 50% funding one year from adoption.
- Increases by 2% per year for 25 years until reaching 100% funding requirement 26 years after adoption.
- Plans below the required funding level would have to have a Court/DOJ monitored actuarially realistic plan in place to reach 100% funding within 36 years of adoption or 10 years of current date whichever is later.
- Failure to comply would result in the plan being sent to bankruptcy court to be liquidated.
If you look at the 10 worst statewide plans, I think this would be difficult but achievable for all but a few, per the article linked by @847badgerfan (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=5) , worst statewide plans:
- 1.9% California Judges (but this one is pay-as-you-go)
- 21.7% Kentucky State Employees
- 30.1% New Jersey State Employees
- 32% Arizona Elected Officials
- 32.9% New Jersey State Police, Fire
- 36.4% Indiana Teachers pre-1996
- 39.3% New Jersey Teachers
- 40.7% Illinois State Employees
- 42.4% Illinois Judges
- 42.8% Illinois Teachers
The Illinois plans and the New Jersey Teachers are at least close to 50%, it wouldn't be prohibitively expensive to fix those over 36 years. The rest get trickier but there aren't THAT many Judges in California nor Elected Officials in Arizona so those wouldn't be all that expensive to just fund. The ones that look seriously problematic are the Kentucky and New Jersey State Employees and New Jersey Police and Fire. Those, I assume, are large plans with LOTS of beneficiaries so the States in question couldn't just fund them overnight. Severe changes would have to be made.
Looking at the large local plans (again from @847badgerfan (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=5) 's link) only Chicago laborers, police, municipal, and firefighters are below 40% funding. Those are seriously problematic and possibly looking at insolvency. The rest are all at at least 40% so they could be fixed over time (36 years as I laid it out above).
This isn't impossible to solve but it gets worse every year that nothing is done. What say you on the legal side @MarqHusker (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=41) and from a different political perspective @SFBadger96 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=51) ?
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In the abstract, yes, I think public pension funds need to be guaranteed by more than the public entity saying so. I know there has been a decent amount of work on that in California, much of which involves cutting benefits for people who come into the system later, and increasing their individual contributions. Also, politicians responsible for this sort of thing are always a little rosy in their projections. A federal law governing that seems like a good idea (which Article I clause would it fit under--the Commerce Clause, I suppose? Bit of a stretch there, but I haven't paid a lot of attention to the (admittedly broad) reach of the Commerce Clause under current jurisprudence). I haven't given much thought to how the system would work (and while I'm aware of ERISA, I don't know its details, either), but, again, good idea.
What I'm not worried about? The funding level of the judges' pensions in California. In the grand scheme of the State of California, the pensions for however many judges we have isn't going to bankrupt the state. Now, all public employees combined? Yeah, that's a problem. As I said, one that is being addressed, but it wouldn't be a bad idea to put some federal teeth behind it.
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What I'm not worried about? The funding level of the judges' pensions in California.
Since they are judges I assume that they would simply order the California Legislature to fund their pension and that would be that.
Also, politicians responsible for this sort of thing are always a little rosy in their projections.
This is a major problem. A while back there was an LA Mayor who adjusted to more optimistic projected investment returns then campaigned for reelection on having reduced LA's pension liability, LoL.
This problem is bad enough that Moody's doesn't use the local figures. Instead they make their own calculations:
- MANPL (Moody's Adjusted Net Pension Liability) for pension, and
- MANOPEBL (Moody's Adjusted Net Other Post-Employment Benefit Liability) for retiree Healthcare.
Here in Ohio, my local city's liabilities according to Moody's are around three times the amount calculated by the State and reported on the Financial Statements.
ERISA would fix this because under ERISA private sector pensions do not get to choose their own assumptions, those are dictated.
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According to Google AI, there are about 1500 judges in California, out of approximately 2.3 million public sector employees. While the judges are relatively highly paid public employees, I don't think their pension plans will break the state.
:)
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According to Google AI, there are about 1500 judges in California, out of approximately 2.3 million public sector employees. While the judges are relatively highly paid public employees, I don't think their pension plans will break the state.
:)
Agreed. Even given that the Judges are fairly highly paid and I assume that their pensions are pretty rich, 1,500 people is a rounding error next to 2.3 Million beneficiaries.
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the judges will be OK
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I'm starting to feel real sympathy for California judges after watching a bunch of Lincoln Lawyer episodes.
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You should have [some] sympathy for California judges, at least in the big cities. I couldn't afford to be a judge. I would have to sell my not especially amazing house. It's a nice house, sure, but it's nothing all that special. On of my law partners is married to a judge. My partner is the one who is the family bread winner. Don't get me wrong, judges here make solid six-figure salaries, but they don't make close to what private practice lawyers make. My colleagues who have become judges have done so after making really good money somewhere else for long enough that they can afford the pay cut. Superior Court judges in my area make almost exactly the area's median income for a household of 4.
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less if the judge is married to a law partner
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You should have [some] sympathy for California judges, at least in the big cities. I couldn't afford to be a judge. I would have to sell my not especially amazing house. It's a nice house, sure, but it's nothing all that special. On of my law partners is married to a judge. My partner is the one who is the family bread winner. Don't get me wrong, judges here make solid six-figure salaries, but they don't make close to what private practice lawyers make. My colleagues who have become judges have done so after making really good money somewhere else for long enough that they can afford the pay cut. Superior Court judges in my area make almost exactly the area's median income for a household of 4.
Related topic I'm just curious about:
Do Federal judicial salaries vary based on local cost of living?
I'm wondering because if the are uniform then I imagine that a Federal Judge in say NYC or San Francisco is poor while one in say KC is rich.
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Nope. Same throughout the country.
Upside: the best job security you can imagine, and I imagine they end their careers with federal pensions. So in NYC that won't make you rich, but it will make your retirment comfortable. In the Northern District of Mississippi it's probably a pretty good gig.
Also, the most typical route to becoming a judge is by first being a public attorney, whether a prosecutor or public defender (more often prosecutors), and probably next is a public civil attorney (for the state attorney general or the feds). On the appeals courts there are a decent number of academics--they were making a university salary, so also probably not that high. Everyone fits their lifestyle to their salary, so if you're going from being an assistant district attorney to being a judge, that's not going to be a financial hit.
For people going from private practice, they will have time to prepare for the pay.
So don't feel too bad for the judges. :-)
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and in Sioux City, IA
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Nope. Same throughout the country.
That strikes me as half-insane at best, and borderline criminal at worst.
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Being a federal judge is an incredible honor. Many people are fine with the pay, regardless of the city they live in, to have lifetime tenure in probably the most exalted position in the legal field. It also becomes a problem when the feds start paying people more to live in more expensive places. It's putting the thumb on the scale of the more expensive place. It's different than the military because there people are told where to go, whereas attorneys/judges (etc.) volunteer for where they live.
At my old firm they joked about the guy on the federal bench who used to be a partner there. They said that they thought he probably just liked looking at himself in the mirror with his robes on. Kind of funny, but probably also true. It's no small thing to be a federal judge.
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Being a federal judge is an incredible honor. Many people are fine with the pay, regardless of the city they live in, to have lifetime tenure in probably the most exalted position in the legal field. It also becomes a problem when the feds start paying people more to live in more expensive places. It's putting the thumb on the scale of the more expensive place. It's different than the military because there people are told where to go, whereas attorneys/judges (etc.) volunteer for where they live.
At my old firm they joked about the guy on the federal bench who used to be a partner there. They said that they thought he probably just liked looking at himself in the mirror with his robes on. Kind of funny, but probably also true. It's no small thing to be a federal judge.
Ok, so I looked it up:
- $246,300 for Federal District Court Judges
- $257,900 for Federal Appeals Court Judges
I don't disagree that it is an honor but I am always leery of creating a situation where only the independently wealthy can afford to serve. This isn't that . . at least in most of the Country.
I live outside of Cleveland, Ohio. You could live really well here on a Quarter-Million per year. I imagine that is a really good wage where @FearlessF (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=10) lives as well and in most (geographically) of the country. However, if you are a Federal Judge in NYC, San Francisco, or some other very high cost area, that is not a lot of money at all. I'm guessing that wouldn't get you into a house in @SFBadger96 (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=51) 's neighborhood or for that matter into a house anywhere in the Bay Area in a decent school district.
I'm pretty sure that the FBI and some other federal agencies DO have location adjustments such that the head of the FBI Field Office in Manhattan makes enough to actually be able to live there and considerably more than the heads of the FBI Field Offices in Cleveland and Sioux City.
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On the subject of Pension Plans where it is "too late" to use @847badgerfan (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=5) 's words:
The article that he linked suggested that funding of <40% is basically destined to insolvency. That seems about right to me.
Using Ohio as the example simply because it is the one I am most familiar with, Ohio has multiple state-wide pension plans:
- STRS, State Teachers Retirement System is for certified employees of Ohio's Schools.
- SERS, School Employees Retirement System is for non-certified employees of Ohio's Schools. This includes relatively low-pay janitorial staff and maintenance but also some higher paid non-education employees like School Treasurers, Business Managers, Legal Counsel, etc.
- OPF, Ohio Police and Fire is for Police and FT firemen*.
- OHPRS, Ohio Highway Patrol Retirement System for members of Ohio's Highway Patrol (this is by far the smallest)
- OPERS, Ohio Public Employees Retirement System, this is the catch-all. Membership is literally statutorily defined as any public employee in Ohio who is not covered by one of the other four nor specifically exempted is required to be in OPERS.
OPERS is around 70-80% funded depending on who you ask. If ERISA suddenly applied to OPERS with a reasonable phase-in (such as what I outlined) it wouldn't be catastrophic. Current contributions are:
- 14% employer
- 10% employee
- 24% total
According to Moody's, the "tread water contribution" would be a little under 30%. So if OPERS had to be fully funded in 36 years, they could probably raise the contributions by 3% each (employee and employer) and tweak the benefits a little and get there. That would increase payroll costs for all of Ohio's Cities, Counties, Townships, Park Districts, Transit Authorities, Housing Authorities, etc by about 3%. As per above, that is an increase that we'd feel but it wouldn't be completely catastrophic.
Where you run into trouble is in a systems like (from @847badgerfan (https://www.cfb51.com/index.php?action=profile;u=5) 's link):
- 18.8% funded, Chicago Fire
- 20.7% Chicago Municipal
- 21.7% Kentucky State Employees
- 25.5% Chicago Police
- 30.1% New Jersey State Employees
- 32% Arizona Elected Officials
- 32.9% New Jersey State Police, Fire
- 36.4% Indiana Teachers (pre-1996)
- 39.3% New Jersey Teachers
- 39.9% Chicago Laborers
I think the problem here is that in order to solve the problem you would have to enact humongous increases in contributions, not 3% like my estimate for OPERS above but probably on order of magnitude larger. At that point you are likely to create a downward spiral. Allow me to explain:
In my City one of the functions that public employees handle is trash collection. The City owns the Trash trucks and the guys who drive the trucks and sling the trash are Municipal Employees and thus covered by OPERS. We are continually asked about privatizing. Ideologically we have some on the right who basically always think we should privatize and some on the left who basically think we should never privatize. I'm a pragmatist in the middle. At the present time I'm opposed to privatizing and I've more-or-less led the opposition to several privatization efforts because our trash rates are LOWER than several surrounding Cities that have private trash haulers. I'm opposed to privatization but my opposition is conditioned on our public employees being able to do the job cheaper or at least for a rate competitive with private haulers. If the City contribution to OPERS increased to 17% instead of 14% it would only minimally impact that calculation. However, if the City contribution to OPERS suddenly increased to 44% then it would instantly become MUCH cheaper to contract out Trash Hauling. For that matter, a whole lot of what my City does would be cheaper to contract out if OPERS contributions went up by 30%.
That downward spiral is because if your 30% increase pushes half of your workforce out of the system then you need EVEN HIGHER contributions from the remaining workers to balance the books.
I obviously haven't gone to the effort to calculate things exactly but my assumption is that for plans in the 40-60% funding range, this would be difficult but probably attainable so long as you had a sufficiently long phase-in period. That is why I suggested 36 years above. For plans above 60% funding, they'd be fine, just normal-ish increases. For plans below 40% funding, they realistically couldn't fix the problem with contribution increases. They would have to be bailed out by the State/City/whatever or liquidated.
*If you want to know, I'll explain it.
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Being a federal judge is an incredible honor. Many people are fine with the pay, regardless of the city they live in, to have lifetime tenure in probably the most exalted position in the legal field. It also becomes a problem when the feds start paying people more to live in more expensive places. It's putting the thumb on the scale of the more expensive place. It's different than the military because there people are told where to go, whereas attorneys/judges (etc.) volunteer for where they live.
At my old firm they joked about the guy on the federal bench who used to be a partner there. They said that they thought he probably just liked looking at himself in the mirror with his robes on. Kind of funny, but probably also true. It's no small thing to be a federal judge.
That's understandable, and fine. What I mean is, it's silly to to expect someone to live in an area where real estate is astronomical along with other costs of living, and say we'll pay you no more than what the guy in Podunk, MS makes. I don't see how it puts any thumbs on the scale to say we want Judge A to have roughly the same standard of living and purchasing power as Judge B, despite the fact Judge A lives in an extraordinarily expensive locale.
If anything, it seems like it might more easily open up Judge A to corruption. I mean, dude's got private school for his kids to pay for, and the government sure doesn't make it affordable.
I suppose it could instead mean we just "overpay" Judge B, but then, I'm not really down with that either. Everything in the private sector is theoretically based on standard-of-living, and that's what makes sense to me. If you do Job X, you should be able to afford Lifestyle Y. It's not hard to calculate, and it makes sense to me, even for federal judges.
But I don't know a lot about federal judges.
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if ya can't afford a decent place on $250K a year, move out to the burbs and commute
I live in a town of 300, much cheaper than Sewer City at 75,000 people
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You could make the same argument about congresspeople. Should my congressperson make more than one from Mississippi? It costs a lot more to live here. My congressperson actually isn't independently wealthy. He lives a very moderate lifestyle. The person he replaced was independently wealthy, which is more of the norm.
As it is for a lot of federal judges, at least in this area.
On the one hand, I want to agree with you. Once upon a time I wanted to be a judge. Then I hit the point when it became economically irrational for me to try for that. I would have to become much more wealthy than I am currently on track for to want to switch now, given how long I hope to have left before I retire.
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if ya can't afford a decent place on $250K a year, move out to the burbs and commute
I live in a town of 300, much cheaper than Sewer City at 75,000 people
My best friend constantly reminds me that I could sell my home here and move to the suburbs of Milwaukee and never have to work again. It's true. But SFIrish ain't moving to Milwaukee (or anywhere else in Wisconsin or near that lattitude).
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we all have our priorities
I'd like to live in the bay area, not the city, but the expense is too much
NYC or the middle of San Fran, I'd rather stay here, even if the cost were the same
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Im worried were going to f'ix ' the pension shortfalls in a similar fashion as we saw when the government waived away the rights of creditors with certain bailouts of certain companies during financial crisis.
What....these bonds .. ..they don't mean anything
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My step son lives in SF near the baseball park. His rent is not that bad. He pays a lot in CA income taxes because he earns a lot. He likes it, it's good for some younnger folks I think.
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I assume
many some judges take a big pay cut from being very successful lawyers first. Is that accurate? This came up in a discussion in my classroom the other day. I'm assuming the top 1-5% (or more?) lawyers make $500K+, no?
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Depends on what type of law.
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Depends on what type of law.
Of course...
How about generic lawyer X (I know, that doesn't exist) makes partner at a firm (so it took awhile to get in that spot).......he's taking a pay cut if he "advances" to being a judge, yes?
And if it's a woman, it can never be a pay cut, because y = .7x :57:
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how much do lawyers make - Search (https://www.bing.com/search?qs=LS&pq=how+much+do+law&sk=CSYN1&sc=16-15&q=how+much+do+lawyers+make&cvid=6783ef27ec0d441997288dd3eb313b10&gs_lcrp=EgRlZGdlKgcIABAAGPkHMgcIABAAGPkHMgYIARBFGDkyBggCEAAYQDIGCAMQABhAMgYIBBAAGEAyBggFEAAYQDIGCAYQABhAMgYIBxAAGEAyBggIEAAYQNIBCDUzODhqMGo0qAIIsAIB&FORM=ANAB01&adppc=EDGEESS&PC=DCTS)
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And if it's a woman, it can never be a pay cut, because y = .7x :57:
I infer this is something about women earning less than men, which is widely disputed for obvious reasons.
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do female teachers makes less?
superintendents?, principals?
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Imagine I ran a business and could hire women to do the SAME JOB as men, for 80% the salary. I'd be a fool not to hire every woman I could.
I can't because they don't.
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How about generic lawyer X (I know, that doesn't exist) makes partner at a firm (so it took awhile to get in that spot).......he's taking a pay cut if he "advances" to being a judge, yes?
Yes, this is a common occurrence.
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Related topic I'm just curious about:
Do Federal judicial salaries vary based on local cost of living?
I'm wondering because if the are uniform then I imagine that a Federal Judge in say NYC or San Francisco is poor while one in say KC is rich.
This reminds me of the fact that doctor salaries are often inverse of cost of living. Living in more out of the way places tends to pay more.
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I'm guessing there are limits
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Im worried were going to f'ix ' the pension shortfalls in a similar fashion as we saw when the government waived away the rights of creditors with certain bailouts of certain companies during financial crisis.
What....these bonds .. ..they don't mean anything
Yeah, me too. That is why I want them to force funding by doing something like my proposal here to drop the Public Sector exemption from ERISA and make them catch-up over time. That would be a MUCH better solution than waiting until the State of Illinois or the City of Chicago goes broke and then bailing them out.
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You could make the same argument about congresspeople. Should my congressperson make more than one from Mississippi? It costs a lot more to live here. My congressperson actually isn't independently wealthy. He lives a very moderate lifestyle. The person he replaced was independently wealthy, which is more of the norm.
As it is for a lot of federal judges, at least in this area.
On the one hand, I want to agree with you. Once upon a time I wanted to be a judge. Then I hit the point when it became economically irrational for me to try for that. I would have to become much more wealthy than I am currently on track for to want to switch now, given how long I hope to have left before I retire.
FWIW, I've made the argument before that I think Congresspeople are underpaid. Per my quick google (could be wrong), they make $174k/yr which is just not much given the job that they do.
I think the biggest issue for Congresspeople is not so much their home cost of living but their distance from DC. A VERY few congresspeople live close enough to DC to actually commute from home so they only have to maintain ONE residence. The rest need to maintain two residences and that is obviously pretty expensive on just $174k/yr.
We have a similar issue here in Ohio. The base salary for a Representative in Ohio is $71,099. They do get extra for committee chairs but I don't think that is all that big of a deal.
If you are a lawyer who lives and works in the Columbus area, this is a REALLY good deal. Your firm will generally give you a lot of leeway because there is prestige value in having an Ohio Rep as a partner and you can commute to the Capitol and still work some at your firm.
If you are say a farmer or plant manager from Ashtabula, this sucks. You are a three hour commute from the Statehouse, you can't really do your job at home because you are away too much, and you basically need a second home in Columbus.
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do female teachers makes less?
superintendents?, principals?
That's all set, regardless of who is in the position. We make what we make.
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I infer this is something about women earning less than men, which is widely disputed for obvious reasons.
Hence the :57:
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FWIW, I've made the argument before that I think Congresspeople are underpaid. Per my quick google (could be wrong), they make $174k/yr which is just not much given the job that they do.
I'm not saying you're wrong, just sayin, we don't seem to have a shortage of candidates
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Aside from just money, humans thrive on status. It's a pretty big deal to be a Congressperson, like being a Federal judge. It isn't the money, it's the status, having people cater to you, being "important", feeling like you're somebody. You walk around and people notice, you have a staff getting you coffee, etc.
And there is a lot of etc.
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like a rock star
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I had a notion when I was working that folks would go after promotions even if they included a salary cut. The status of being director or VP was enormous. The extra compensation was an additional perk. One could argue which was more motivating.
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I'm not saying you're wrong, just sayin, we don't seem to have a shortage of candidates
We don't, but:
- For the kinds of people with sufficient qualifications that you want them in Congress, it is a paycut.
- Would there be less temptation to corruption and graft if they were paid more in line with the job?
- Are we getting the best candidates or just getting candidates? Congressional salaries are such a miniscule portion of the Federal Budget that if we doubled them and the more well paid Congresspeople cut 0.01% of fraud/waste/abuse out of the overall budget it would be a net positive for the Country.
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it's the status, having people cater to you, being "important", feeling like you're somebody. You walk around and people notice, you have a staff getting you coffee, etc.
And there is a lot of etc.
That sounds awful.
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Paying a lot more would draw in more effective people, but also more people just wanting that status and a fatter check.
Is getting both worth either?
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We don't, but:
- For the kinds of people with sufficient qualifications that you want them in Congress, it is a paycut.
- Would there be less temptation to corruption and graft if they were paid more in line with the job?
- Are we getting the best candidates or just getting candidates? Congressional salaries are such a miniscule portion of the Federal Budget that if we doubled them and the more well paid Congresspeople cut 0.01% of fraud/waste/abuse out of the overall budget it would be a net positive for the Country.
1. - I'm ok with that. It's a service position
2. - very little less, not enough to matter to most
3. - Only 3 or 4 things are not such a miniscule portion of the Federal Budget. I'm sure Elon isn't getting paid too much to cut a helluva lot more than 0.01%
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As noted, for various reasons I'm not at all sure that paying say a million a year would attract more qualified candidates. For one thing, incumbents have a very strong advantage anyway that would persist. The status thing is greater than any salary considerations for most.
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Insider trading.
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FWIW, I've made the argument before that I think Congresspeople are underpaid. Per my quick google (could be wrong), they make $174k/yr which is just not much given the job that they do.
I think the biggest issue for Congresspeople is not so much their home cost of living but their distance from DC. A VERY few congresspeople live close enough to DC to actually commute from home so they only have to maintain ONE residence. The rest need to maintain two residences and that is obviously pretty expensive on just $174k/yr.
We have a similar issue here in Ohio. The base salary for a Representative in Ohio is $71,099. They do get extra for committee chairs but I don't think that is all that big of a deal.
If you are a lawyer who lives and works in the Columbus area, this is a REALLY good deal. Your firm will generally give you a lot of leeway because there is prestige value in having an Ohio Rep as a partner and you can commute to the Capitol and still work some at your firm.
If you are say a farmer or plant manager from Ashtabula, this sucks. You are a three hour commute from the Statehouse, you can't really do your job at home because you are away too much, and you basically need a second home in Columbus.
One question I've always had is how do congressmen (and women) pay their staffs? Is there an allotment for them? Are they federal employees, volunteers? I honestly have no idea.
I think the $174K is way too low myself, but can you imagine the blowback if they were really paid what they probably deserve, which is probably more like $300,000 per year? Surely it would have to be more than $200K. The average person, making $40-60k a year would not like that at all.
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was talk and maybe something done about Referee and officials salaries in the NFL a while back - the though was to pay them enough for that to be their fulltime job and it would increase performance
being on the small town - city council here doesn't pay much. They usually don't have many candidates and have to beg someone to take the job. It could pay double or triple and I'm not interested. It's a service that someone needs to step up and do for the community. For the right reasons, not for the money.
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One question I've always had is how do congressmen (and women) pay their staffs? Is there an allotment for them? Are they federal employees, volunteers? I honestly have no idea.
There is an allotment. Each Congressperson has a staff budget then the committees (or at least some of the committees) have staffers beyond that. So if you have some seniority you have not only your own staff but you also effectively control committee staff as well.
I think the Paige position is basically volunteer but I honestly don't know. I believe that the typical congressperson has DC staff and also local staff.
I think the $174K is way too low myself, but can you imagine the blowback if they were really paid what they probably deserve, which is probably more like $300,000 per year? Surely it would have to be more than $200K. The average person, making $40-60k a year would not like that at all.
Yeah, that is why it doesn't happen but I think that is not a good thing. Underpaying Congress means that you generally limit yourself to one of two types of people:
- People who don't have better options, and
- People who are independently wealthy.
I don't think it is a good idea for Congress to be made up of people who aren't competent enough to earn that much on their own and trust fund babies.
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being on the small town - city council here doesn't pay much. They usually don't have many candidates and have to beg someone to take the job. It could pay double or triple and I'm not interested. It's a service that someone needs to step up and do for the community. For the right reasons, not for the money.
I work with local Council a LOT. Here they make a little under $10k/yr. It ends up being <minimum wage if you look at all the meetings they attend and dealing with constituent calls and whatnot.
It is a service but if YOU aren't interested and they have to beg someone to take the job then I would submit that there is a problem. Part of that problem is that they aren't being adequately compensated to make it worthwhile. Anybody in it for the money would be better off getting a PT gig at a gas station.
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this town of 350 people would have some serious fighting for a spot at $10K a year
I'm guessing its more like $1K
same with the board of directors at the small cooperative internet provider
they get paid a few bucks a month, mileage, and get some light refreshments, along with free internet service
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This is an interesting dillemna. Elected positions of power do have some prestige to them, which is worth something to encourage people to apply for the job (i.e., run for election). From sitting on the front row of this, I think my spouse was fairly compensated for her work as a city councilmember for a small-ish city (~30K residents). Her takehome pay was paltry, but she did get decent medical benefits, which was worth far more than what she was paid. And how much work each councilmember put in varied a great deal. On her way out she worked to get the number increased (for those who followed her, not for her), which I think did result in people who might otherwise have felt they couldn't afford to to do it stepping up and running for (and in at least one case winning) the job. My wife really liked the work and became interested in moving up in elected life, which resulted in her putting a lot of work into what she was doing. There are other people who barely bother to read their packet before showing up at a meeting.
Moving up the ladder in elected life meant moving into a position that was a full-time, paid like a real job, position. Which seems fair. And the pay is low, but not embarassingly so. I think that's true of congress, too (and judges). The pay is low for the work performed, but not embarassingly so. That means that most people who try to do it are willing to take the pay cut. That also means that it is people who can afford the pay cut (i.e., have the money coming from somewhere else) who fill most of those positions. I think that is detrimental because it does result in a skewed pool of applicants and job holders.
How to fix it? I think the wages should be increased. How much is the question, and I'm not sure what the right answer is.
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therefore, a living wage
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If the pay isn't more, it's not a promotion, sorry. If it IS a promotion, up the pay. Make it obvious.