If it walks like a duck, acts like a duck and quacks like a duck, even if it really is a lamb or a lion, it’s pretty much a duck. A duck by any other name still quacks as sweet…
You’ll never get XT to admit to any specific policies, because as long as the Republicans keep dashing headlong to the right and as long as Washington Democrats keep following them at a distance in the name of “centrism” then the overall direction of US policy is to the right. And it would be disastrous for XT to cite specific policies, because the American voting public is well to the left of BOTH parties on economic issues. Generic “centrism” on the other hand, sounds so nice and wholesome and not right wing at all!
Reduce the middle class’ tax burden, for one thing.
Every side thinks America is being pulled politically to the other side.
Liberals are convinced America is being pulled to the right.
Conservatives are convinced America is being pulled to the left.
It all depends on one’s own perspective.
I actually think America is being pulled to the right, at least on economic issues. Maybe it’s because I’m an optimist.
Well, seeing as the right’s idea of economics is demonstrably wrong and based on wishful, magical thinking, it is to laffer.
Don’t have enough bullets. Drag him out, tie him up, and I’ll get around to it.
Could you define what you mean by the “right” economic issues? Are they:
1- No tax increase for anybody under any circumstance
2- Tax cuts for the wealthy
3- Shred the social safety net
4- Bust the unions
5- Undo environmental regulations
6- And of course end Obamacare
Are these your issues or do you have others? What makes you think America is pulling toward these opinions? And why, when it would do no good, would a pull to the right make one optimistic?
Not that far right, but here are some realities of the current political situation:
- You can’t raise taxes on anyone making under $400,000/yr
- You can’t create any new entitlements without a huge backlash.
- The public prioritizes jobs over environmental regulation. Keystone is splintering private unions from the Democratic Party.
- While massive cuts are impossible, it’s very easy politically to just hold spending flat, which Republicans have done for four years now. In fact, Obama has gone out of his way to take credit for this fiscal retrenchment in public, while trying to increase spending in the future(which he won’t be able to do).
No, there’s a thing called “objective reality” out there. One’s perspective on things like climate change, evolution and trickle down economics does not matter … the facts are in. And the fact is, America has been drifting to the right for decades.
Thanks for the response. Let’s see if we can get somewhere.
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I’m not sure there wouldn’t be consensus to raise taxes on incomes over $250K. I also don’t think resistance to tax increases to be a positive thing.
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Exactly which proposed entitlements are Republicans saving us from?
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If a few dozen jobs is the benefit, and the potential destruction of the Ogalalla Aquifer is the cost, the b/c ratio is quite low. We’ll see that the public’s reaction would be if the pipeline is built and a) no drop in gas prices b) no significant jobs and c) environmental disaster follows.
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The slowing in spending has been at the expense of economic growth. If not for Republican determination to steer the ship into the reef to make the captain look bad, the recovery would have been faster and deeper.
That is why I said “hopes,” not “expects.” 
I’m sure you could get consensus to do it at $250K, but Northeastern Democrats really wanted $1 million to be the threshold. $400K was the compromise on the Bush tax cuts. Is it a positive thing? I’d say absolutely yes. I don’t believe in “starve the beast”, but I do believe that you can’t just fork more money over to the government every time they cry wolf. They can always be more efficient and forcing them to live within current means forces efficiency.
I’m not exactly going to say “saving us” from anything, but the President’s community college plan is going nowhere due to lack of funding. Democrats haven’t really had any big ideas other than ACA, and that did enough damage that it’ll be impossible in the future to get red state Democrats to stick their necks out.
These aren’t terrible arguments, but we’re not really arguing the merits of these issues so much as demonstrating that liberals can’t really get much done given the current center right nature of the electorate when it comes to economic issues. You can’t raise taxes, which means you can’t raise spending. Democrats have no choice but to play defense, defend what’s already been done, rather than do new things.
The only link I provided with “numbers” shows declining per capita numbers of government employees, it has nothing to do with what you are talking about.
However, since you brought it up, see post #14. And neither party is going to touch all of that, it would be electoral suicide.
There is according to Keynes; you balance the budget when the recession/depression has passed.
Naw, I’m willing to talk specific policies, though asking me ‘lay out all of your policies’ in a thread like this is a bit ridiculous. I HAVE talked specifics though in multiple threads in GD, and I’m fairly sure you know where I stand, as I know where YOU (and 'luci) generally stand on things too. 'Luci also knows, generally, where I stand, so that was kind of a throw away line for him as I’m sure he didn’t think I’d be going into great detail in this thread on such a general throw away question.
As for me being right wing, well, I know from your perspective that is certainly the case. Obama is a right winger to you, and I’m pretty good with where he’s at, generally speaking, so I think I’m in good company. 
Not necessarily because, aside from adjusting for inflation in computing real income, the discussion largely ignores the effects of inflation for the middle class. The Bartels paper referenced has a quote:
None of the numbers looked at really gets after net worth of the middle class; income data is far easier to come by. For lower class voters savings is a small part of net worth (inflation can actually make those with negative net worth better off if the declining real value of their debts offsets declining real valued wages.) By the time you get in to the middle class savings matter. As net worth becomes larger inflation matters more. If you ignore that by just looking at income you lose a key driver in an individual making decisions to optimize their own well being.
Bartels analysis for inflation is across a longer period than the work of Hibbs he referenced. Bartels shows no real partisan difference between Presidents. Neither does Hibbs. Seems like a non-issue on the surface which is as far as the Salon article and Bartels go. Hibbs goes more in depth and shows some interesting effects above and beyond simple average rates though. Hibbs builds on the work Bartels refrenced (1977, and 1987) and published this in 1994 (.pdf download). His look at the effects with my bolding added.
Republicans didn’t just sell themselves with messaging about inflation but showed real effects clamping down on inflationary trends.
Hibbs (1994) on growth:
Both seem to be consistent with different preferences in applying the Phillips Curve and Okun’s Law. Trading more inflation for higher employment (Phillips Curve) and that higher employment leading to higher growth (Okun’s Law). The problems is both of those concepts are only applicable in the short term and are generally discredited with respect to providing insight in to long term macroeconomic effects.
From Hibbs’ conlusions:
There really does seem to be a trade off between growth and inflation when making decisions at the polling booth. Maybe those Republican leaning middle class voters actually are voting in their best interest because the inflation effect matters more to them thanthe short term income growth. Maybe it’s not as simple as saying they are voting against themselves and “if only they understood …”
But, inflation in the U.S. has been so low since the 1970s that only cranks seem to worry about it any more, and level-head economists will always point out that deflation is a sign of recession/depression.
Granted, if inflation comes back, it will regain salience with the voters, and middle-class voters in particular . . . but, will it have the salience you think? Middle-class Americans are mostly debtors nowadays. Debtors like inflation. (That was the whole point of the Free Silver movement back in the day; farmers were debtors, farmers wanted inflation.) They are also homeowners, and homeowners like inflation even better; even if it drives up their property taxes, they come out ahead.
In many areas government isn’t spending enough in general. I agree about efficiency, although much waste is attributable to private contracting and the like.
That represents a failure of political messaging-Obama should have come into office advocating a programme of national reform along the lines of the New Deal rather than trying to be post-partisan. Similarly with the lack of popularity on the part of the ACA-there was not enough campaigning to counter right-wing propaganda. Additionally one of the reasons why Blue Dog Democrats have been decimated is that they remain economically right-wing without any compensating social conservatism, so voters might as well vote for the Real Thing ™ rather than Republican Lite.
An electorate that remains strongly supportive of the individual provisions of the ACA, raising taxes on the wealthy, and maintaining Social Security/Medicare is hardly “centre-right”. The fact that very little of Obama’s agenda being accomplished owes much more to the deadlock in Congress than lack of popular support-if we had national referendums to raise the minimum wage, expand community college, and so forth those would be winning handily.
Minimum wage, yes. Community college, unlikely, unless you don’t tell people how the money will be raised.