In principle, the Laffer curve is a truism. (There may not be an actual single point in between that creates a maximum given the complications of our system.) In politics, the Laffer curve was used solely by conservatives to justify any and all reductions of taxes on the grounds that higher productivity would replace the lost revenue.
In practice, the positive use of the term is equivalent to the positive use of the gold standard. You can safely dismiss anything ever said by anyone who bases their policies on either. (And I do mean anything, not just economics.)
I’ll end my hijack here, but I don’t think this is true. Or let me refine my statement… the exact point on the curve may be incalculable, but based on the harm in wealth inequality we can see which direction we ought to go.
I’m not saying Trump would be a competent politician or good at the job of governance. I’m saying he knows how to read his crowds and tell then what they want to hear w/o making it sound like he is pandering. The guy has pretty amazing social skills in a way.
He somehow manages to walk a tightrope between pandering and driving away his base, and it is a tightrope that most people fall off of but Trump just keeps standing while 99% of other people would’ve fallen off by now. You can’t do that unless you have exceptional social skills on some level.
LBJ was good at governance, but terrible at getting elected (that is my understanding). Trump is the opposite, probably terrible at governance but excellent at getting elected.
You forgot xenophobic, ignorant, bellicose, arrogant. Trump could be a great thing for the democrats if he wins the primary because ideally he will drive latinos and women even further away from the GOP. Women made up 54% or so of the electorate in 2012, and Latinos are growing rapidly and approaching the same % as black voters.
However who knows, maybe Trump will figure out a way to get 51% of the vote. He has managed to get this far so I wouldn’t put it past him.
Wesley Clark: He somehow manages to walk a tightrope between pandering and driving away his base, and it is a tightrope that most people fall off of but Trump just keeps standing while 99% of other people would’ve fallen off by now. You can’t do that unless you have exceptional social skills on some level.
I’m not impressed much with that, it’s hard to fall off the floor.
The Laffer Curve doesn’t touch on wealth inequality at all. It only deals with the relationship between tax rates and government revenue. I mean, I’m not saying anything at all about its correctness or not of the way it’s drawn, but wealth inequality is an irrelevant factor.
The idea that people “throw away their vote” is what is insane. It has no rational basis - no matter who you vote for, your one vote isn’t going to be the one that turns defeat into victory. And if you believe you’re part of a voting bloc with the power to decide the election… why not use that power to put someone good into power instead of settling for the second worst candidate?
The President should be someone with the morals to refuse to drive people into poverty selling them false hope, and the brains to refuse to sabotage our intelligence-gathering capability with barbaric methods that don’t fucking work. Trump is neither.
Read what you wrote. Yes, Trump is the key that fits the lock. That either means he’s a yokal who has repressed it for a long time, or he’s a salesman with a solid sense of what people want to hear. I’m betting on the latter, since he modifies his pitch with his audience, judging from his business history. And he’s wise enough not to fuck around with briefing books before a debate. It doesn’t matter how many howlers the guy tells: the base doesn’t want facts. They want sweet dreams and Trump is willing to deliver them.
Unfortunately, sales is just one aspect of being a President. Trump also has a short attention span, too short to focus on policy or even seriously managing his properties. That’s why he went into virtual bankruptcy in the early 1990s. (The banks let him off easy, because they correctly figured they could get a better price for his properties if he remained at least barely solvent. And selling essentially on their behalf.) That’s why he segued away from property development and into branding.
Yes. Point still stands. 60-65% of the Republican polling is going to outsiders who have no business running for the Presidency. This compares with 10-30% back in 2012. It’s a big change. Thread: Introducing the Jimmy Carter Outsider Index, 2016 Republican Primary Edition - Politics & Elections - Straight Dope Message Board
For professional movement conservatives, Trump poses a dire threat. He has a rich appreciation of the conservative id without strong ideological commitments or tribal loyalty. He threatens their lock on those with temperaments both perpetually resentful and reality indifferent. So he must be stopped. The politicos in contrast fear Ted Cruz since unlike Trump Cruz can’t be disavowed and can’t be negotiated with. Cruz could split the party into 2, with him leading the smaller of the 2 parts. That’s deadly in an electoral system without proportional representation.* So both front runners have their intra-party haters.
*…unless Cruz focuses like a laser on the South. Which he may be doing.
Of course NR came out against him. Their endorsement has been for sale for years, and he didn’t pay them any money. All this means is that Trump isn’t playing by the “pay-to-play” rules Romney did.
As I understand it, the Laffer Curve’s magnitude at real-world tax rates has not been empirically demonstrated to be large enough to measure? The problem is that tax monies end up feeding spending within the country, so they can’t actually shrink the overall economy per Laffer.
In any case, even using Laffer’s model, it’s counter-intuitive that cutting taxes can bring in more revenue once the tax base is below 50% of GDP.
First off, yokels don’t necessarily only respond to other yokels. Second, Trump doesn’t have to be smart for his shtick to resonate. There were 17 people trying for the GOP nomination. Trump’s vapid manner was exactly what the nimwits that vote in the GOP primaries want to hear. If a hundred people guess a random number, the one that wins isn’t brilliant. He’s just the one who got lucky. I contend that Trump’s stupidity has luckily fit the GOP cult of ignorance.
I don’t get your argument here. It sounds like you’re now saying that Iowa and New Hampshire don’t predict or determine anything because the winner of one or the other is bound to be the nominee.
I’m also confused by your Apple-or-Microsoft analogy. The candidates aren’t Iowa and New Hampshire. There’s a bunch of candidates, but none of them seem to win without winning one of these two. That’s either predictive or determinative, or some combination of the two.
And plenty of people are saying even now that no, a Republican doesn’t have to win one of those two states to be the nominee. Why, if Rubio finishes a solid second in New Hampshire, then yada yada yada. And sure, it could happen. But it would break the pattern. If the pattern continues to be predictive/determinative, then second in NH means Rubio can start negotiating for a pundit gig on Fox News.
Geez, it took an entire magazine issue to convey the conservative objection (“You’re supposed to use dogwhistles, not bullhorns, asshole!”) to The Donald?
To say nothing of the fact that he’s (not entirely unreasonably) consider it a violation of the understanding that he’d get a fair shot at the nomination, and consider himself released from the “no independent run” pledge.