ComradeKayAdams

I’m a total stats nerd and still a huge believer in the powers of football analytics, but you must use these powers responsibly! FiveThirtyEight did not do so in a variety of ways. I shall highlight the two big ones: 1. The experience of the QB matters: It makes little sense to discuss performance regressions to means when you’re looking at the first 31 games of a young QB’s professional career. This is especially true for a QB prospect like Josh Allen who was so green that most draft prospects initially recommended he sit and watch for his entire first two seasons. These types of statistical analyses are perfectly fine for veteran QB’s, but not for ones on their rookie contract who didn’t come from big college programs and who entered the league with so many question marks surrounding throwing mechanics and decision-making. 2. The players around the QB matter: Between this season and last, it’s already quite obvious how big of a difference a true #1 WR has on the rest of an offense. Diggs opens up so much more space for the other receivers and the backfield, too. And now let’s look back further a year to 2018. Allen and Dawkins are the only 2018 starters on offense still playing for the Bills. The other 9? Vlad Ducasse, Russell Bodine, John Miller, Jordan Mills, Charles Clay, a broken-down McCoy, Kelvin Benjamin, Zay Jones, and Robert Foster. I rest my case.

Meh. While it’s undoubtedly a tough schedule, I’m sticking with my initial prediction of a 12-4 division title and a #3 AFC playoff seed. I’ll leave the losses to KC, New England (away), and Tennessee alone and then flip my fourth loss from injury-riddled SF to Seattle instead. Las Vegas, Arizona, Pittsburgh, New England (home), and SF will all be difficult games. Those teams are thinking the same thing about the Bills, however. The Bills are exceptionally strong on both offense and defense. The only question marks for me involve the running game (o-line juggling, fumbles, Moss as a rookie) and the current strategic weaknesses of the defense due to recent injuries (Milano, Edmunds, Norman) and to not having a normal preseason routine. MAYBE Beane will need to add a free agent to replace Lotulelei or an extra veteran pass rusher, but otherwise I believe all the answers to their problems are located within their locker room. I’ll also go ahead and predict the playoffs. The Bills beat New England in round 1, Baltimore in round 2, KC in round 3, and GB in round 4. Yeah, that’s right. I SAID IT. I’m bold and brash like that. Can you folks handle me?!

Yay! BullBuchanan, I knew I’d finally run into someone at PPP who is ideologically to my left. If you’re looking for suitable Democrats in 2024, don’t hold your breath. For one thing, we could all be stuck with Kamala for up to 12 years. The best the Dems would offer you at the national level is a remodeled Newsom, possibly Warren, or possibly Sherrod Brown. There’s a tiny chance that Andrew Yang could break through if you’re big on UBI. AOC could theoretically always break out because she’ll just barely meet the age requirement in 2024, but the DNC wouldn’t let that happen and I don’t personally trust AOC enough to lead the progressive left movement, anyway. Keep developing her in the House to replace current Speaker, Cruella de Vil. Maybe Pramila Jayapal or Ro Khanna? The problem, however, is that all of these people I mentioned will shift heavily toward the center and sell out the progressive base in order to get nominated. Such is the inherent nature of the Democratic Party and the power of corporate campaign donations. That is why I hope you will join me in a mass left-wing defection to third parties! The Democratic Party can’t be reformed internally and must be pressured from the outside. Honestly…the whole party needs to be burned down to the ground a la 1850’s Whigs if we ever want to kill off America’s Sixth Party System and begin the Seventh that is inclusive of progressive policies. I recommend Nick Brana’s Movement for a People’s Party. They’re building a fairly standard social democrat platform, but a serious socialist like yourself will probably like it enough. It’s where all the coolest Bernie Bros and Bernie Bras are congregating after November! Many among the always rebellious West Coast + So Cal crew seem to have already defected. The Midwest and Northeast folks are slowly reconsidering, too, as long as they can simultaneously support Justice Democrat types like The Squad, Cori Bush, and Jamaal Bowman. I’m guessing that Nina Turner and Jesse Ventura would be the most likely 2024 People’s Party ticket at the moment. I adore Nina. She is my absolute favorite politician in America right now, and Jesse would be great to pull over many of the populists on the right. Ugh…it appears that the ghosts of Democratic primaries past have revisited us. This is neither the best time nor the best place, but I must interject. The will of Deranged Rhinos’s Rule #2 compels me!! So let’s quickly review all the complaints with Bernie Sanders the person: 1. Commie sympathizer: yes, Bernie extolled some of its virtues during his early life and during his formative political years in Vermont. He was willing to buck conventional wisdom and explore ideas that were unpopular and dangerous to have during the Cold War era. He was looking for an economic system that was both ethical and practical. By 1990, he had settled on that region of the socialist spectrum between democratic socialism and social democracy. Throughout the 21st century, he has legislated like a social democrat. 2. 1988 honeymoon in USSR: critics of this should first read Bernie’s own personal account (i.e. not from a right-wing website) of why he went on the trip, what he experienced, and what he learned there which shaped his later political beliefs. 3. Misogynist: complete nonsense made up from somewhere within the DNC (Hillary?) and eventually passed through the Warren campaign. Bernie only ran in 2016 because Warren herself refused to run, despite HIS insistence. 4. 1972 group rape fantasy essay: frigging hilarious AND kind of hot…I mean what hippie girl DOESN’T want her innocence to be stolen like a billionaire’s wallet from a group of strapping young socialists (maybe all with Cole Beasley’s hair too?!)? 5. Owning 3 homes and possessing ~$2.25 million net worth: Bernie is a 79-year old man who has been earning 6-figure salaries as a Congressman for 3 decades, in addition to sales from the “Our Revolution” book in 2016. This isn’t even remotely a controversy, nor is it incongruent with his political economic philosophy since he’s a social democrat. 6. Fidel Castro flattery: this is only a controversy for people who struggle to understand nuance or who have closed minds. Bernie said that there are still a couple good things we could take away from that awful regime, namely a large literacy program and universal health care coverage. I like Adolf Hitler’s vegetarianism and thought he had a pretty neat mustache. DEAL WITH IT. 7. Putin supplication: this is a very fair point, but that would be because of the spinelessness Bernie has shown when dealing with the DNC during the past 5 years. Bernie Russiagated with the best of ‘em for the past several years, so how cozy would Putin really be with Bernie? Also, Russia hasn’t been a communist country since like 1992, so there’s nothing anymore for Bernie to sympathize with over there. While in Congress, I believe he has had committee assignments that gave him access to top national security intel. So if people want to Russiagate back at Bernie in the same way people did with other patriotic Americans like Tulsi Gabbard, then fine. But they are suggesting acts of treason punishable by death. I’d be a little more careful throwing around accusations like that if I were these people. 8. Family/wife/personal financial corruption via Bernie’s public service: There are two sides to all these stories, and I don’t really care anymore because I moved on from Bernie and I’ve typed enough for today. But for the people who somehow think of Bernie as a corrupt self-serving politician…let’s compare with YOUR politician(s) of choice! Joe Biden?! Donald Trump?! Just say you don’t like Bernie because you don’t like his policies and leave it at that, please.

I came to discuss flaws with the SBA’s Paycheck Protection Program (PPP), but it looks like I entered the wrong place. No big deal. DR does raise a good point. No doubt we are on the verge of a historically contentious November election, so this forum should be proactive and anticipate a deluge of new people arriving in October. I have two simple recommendations. The first would be to nominate and choose two moderators by vote: one politically left-leaning, the other politically right-leaning, both level-headed, and both regular forum users. Both moderators would have to agree on any decision to suspend or ban a user before the decision could be executed. My second recommendation would be to create a PPP user guide for new and visiting members and then pin it to the top of the first page. The user guide could include a PPP roster for regular members with basic info about their political orientation, who they’re voting for in November, or any special political “areas of expertise” they’d like to share. You have 100+ blocked?! Why so prickly, Pete? Sometimes people have bad posting days/weeks/months. Even proven internet trolls often post something funny or provide useful links for alternative points of view to which you might have otherwise never been exposed. Also, the answer to your 1990’s Bills question has to be Bruce Smith. Putting him in a 4-3 system opposite Hughes would be enough to elevate Frazier’s defense to 1985 Bears and 2000 Ravens status. If you have me on your triple-digit ignore list, however, I guess you’re not reading this golden little nugget of football insight… Yes, there is definitely a bit of a right-wing “circle-jerk” (ew…) aspect to this place. That’s kind of inevitable when you have about a 3-to-1 ratio of conservatives to liberals and sometimes an even larger ratio for posts. I’m not suggesting we create a special sub-forum safe space for us left-wingers, but more people on the right need to be aware of the intimidating pile-on effect that can occur when the points of view are so lopsided in number. Also, WAAAY too many people on the political right are not following DR’s “show your work” demand, either! If you disagree with the previous sentence, please reconsider your confirmation bias. Threads sometimes become inundated with one-liner stereotypes of “libtards,” cliched representations of leftist ideology, and other miscellaneous pablum…followed by double-digit like/awesome/thank you rep boosts for these remarks, doled out like Oprah Winfrey cars. Any leftist rebuttals are then lucky to receive a couple collective skeptical/meh/confused/mocking laugh emojis worth of attention at best. This could indicate a number of different things, of course, but it could be that most right-wingers aren’t bothering to read or comprehend the rebuttals…or they have the users blocked altogether? I insist on knowing more about the dark history and seedy underbelly of PPP! Is this like Pizzagate or QAnon or HBO’s True Detective Season 1 type of activity? As for your comment about the one-sided nature of PPP: one problem could be that some of my fellow TSW lefties (not thinking of anyone in particular!) are too cowardly or too lazy to defend our political positions. Instead of debating endlessly on the main board whether Josh Allen is really awesome or just really good, on occasion I say put on your big boy pants or your adult female leggings, step on down from the safe confines of TSW, and enter the Dante’s Circle-esque arena of discourse that is PPP!!! Too many of us liberals use our professed “liberalism” as some passive virtue-signaling status-symboling poseur badge to indicate that we’re one of the “good people,” but then don’t actually DO ANYTHING to advance what we purport to care about (tolerance of others, personal freedoms, helping the poor, saving the environment, bringing about world peace, fighting corruption, puppy dogs, rainbows, etc.). Merely voting for Biden/Harris doesn’t count as good enough. NOT EVEN CLOSE. We must engage and persuade whenever possible and appropriate in our lives. If we can’t influence the ever-so-obstinate regular members at PPP, we must also keep in mind the lurkers, independents, occasional visitors, and political neophytes who visit the forum. And any call for shutting down PPP is, as always, a really bad look for the political left. This Orwellian cancel culture dystopian nonsense from “our team” needs to stop. Those that don’t like PPP can continue exercising their First Amendment freedom not to visit it. Those that like PPP can continue visiting and using the ignore function as they so choose (though I don’t recommend using it except in very extreme circumstances). EDIT: a couple spelling errors.

Trump winning the Nobel Peace Prize would be the best thing to happen to our country! The inevitable meltdown on the political left is sorely needed because Democrats need to come to grips with their hypocrisy in defending Obama’s largely disgraceful foreign policy record. Maybe something as absurd as this would be the catalyst for a total paradigm shift in American post-Cold War foreign policy. Our country deserves a political party that is genuinely dovish, favors multilateral diplomacy over heavy-handed unilateral ones, doesn’t take a hardline stance in support of sanctions and embargos, is willing to restrain the military-industrial complex, and is completely against all forms of regime change (full invasions AND sponsored coups). That political party needs to be on the left. I hope you find the time later to reply in your thread, TYTT. An anarcho-capitalist (or minarcho-capitalist?) perspective would be welcome here. No modern era American president deserves it. Not even Jimmy Carter. The Nobel Peace Prize should be reserved for individuals whose actions are motivated almost entirely by desires for peace and for protections of human rights. American foreign policy is mostly about controlling oil, gaining access to mineral resources, preserving international trade hegemony, increasing MIC profits, and (allegedly) improving national security. Anyone who earnestly disagrees with this statement has been indoctrinated with too much American moral exceptionalism propaganda. I could locate a bunch of places around the world where a limited American military presence might conceivably enhance peace and preserve human rights (hint: many of them are in Africa), but our presidents and military leaders choose not to intervene because there’s no benefit for the reasons listed above. Also, there is absolutely doubt that the world is safer now than 4 years ago!!! I doubt it, over half of America doubts it, most of Europe and the UN doubts it, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists (who control the Doomsday Clock) doubt it. Why? Well let’s take the singular issue of Iran. Trump has taken a dangerously aggressive and provocative stance on this country. We don’t know how the complex Middle East political landscape will fully play out in time as a result of withdrawing from JCPOA (which was essentially the only thing about the Obama tenure that I liked…that and Cuba relations), but we do know that Iran will effectively never trust the United States again and that this greatly limits future diplomatic options (killing Soleimani also didn’t help). Trump has done nothing to fix the problem after two years, instead opting for hard sanctions that have badly hurt the Iranian people (not very peaceful and humane…). Yep, sadly. Trump is outpacing Obama’s drone war efforts by over 4 times the number of strikes, though I don’t know in which countries they are occurring. I do know that the cumulative US drone war program has taken place in 7 countries (Somalia, Libya, Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Pakistan, and Afghanistan) since its inauguration under Bush #43. What’s most alarming is that Trump has removed all mandatory disclosure rules for civilian casualty reports that were put in place during the Obama era. He has given himself carte blanche over an anti-terrorism program without any quality control over blowback effects. As I hope we all know, unaccountable drone warfare is so dangerous because it entices our presidents to recklessly magnify their anti-terrorism “tough guy” roles without having to face any public criticism since it’s not putting American troops in danger. Trump is too myopic and narcissistic to think about the long-term repercussions of this program on American security. For every terrorist a drone kills, how many more are we breeding from the collateral damage? I’m super disappointed in all of our politicians (even Tulsi Gabbard…insert cry emoji) and all of America for rarely questioning the morality or the long-term strategic sense of these drone strikes. These are not sufficient reasons to justify Trump winning the award, unless we’re making a comparative analysis with the foreign policy of a previous winner (Obama, 2009). Many of these commonly touted successes are a bit exaggerated and also a bit premature in their declared victories. Let us address each point, one by one, shall we? Yes we shall: 1. No new wars: yes, I’m relieved and thankful that Trump has not treated our military personnel like pawns in stupid regime change wars. But not being a neocon is such a low standard! I just can’t get over the Venezuelan coup efforts, the drone strikes, or the Soleimani assassination that could have easily sparked a world war over a couple misunderstandings. 2. North Korea: I take no issue whatsoever with Trump’s open diplomacy with Kim Jong Un, but I don’t feel it has moved the needle much toward either freedom for DPRK’s citizens or toward nuclear warfare. 3. Ending the War in Afghanistan: I’ll believe it when I finally see it! It’s so depressing that I have no real memory of a time when our troops weren’t there. Trump has had 4 years to fully withdraw troops like he promised and still hasn’t done so. According to Trump, it’ll happen soon after we re-elect him. How convenient. 4. Israel-UAE Deal: more peace in the Middle East is always a good thing, but the deal does nothing to address the fundamental issue of Palestine which continues to plague all diplomatic relationships throughout the region. The same goes for the efforts to dismantle Hezbollah and Hamas. Any US president unwilling to hold Israel to the high ethical standards that we should have for all Western democracies and who doesn’t apply the necessary financial and diplomatic pressures to coax Israel toward these standards is only operating along the periphery of long-term Middle East peace. No one can even begin to change the hearts and minds of Middle Eastern Muslims until our vassal state of Israel addresses human rights and political freedoms for Palestinians. 5. War on Terror: similar problem as above. Dismantling ISIS and Al-Qaeda in Syria and elsewhere are fine, but the underlying problem of radical Islamic terrorism isn’t being addressed. Negligible pressure is being applied on our ally, Saudi Arabia, for their predominant role in breeding terrorism. The large presence of US troops throughout Islamic lands is a major source of Muslim discontent and wouldn’t be even remotely tolerated if the situations were reversed. And once again, I must insist that drone strikes killing innocent civilians isn’t helping.

What likely makes Professor Lichtman’s test so good in its predictive power is that it accounts for such a broad range of factors that might possibly play a role in a presidential election. It has its obvious limitations, however. Many of his listed 13 “keys” are subjective in nature and without specific enough parameters. Not having any weighting system for the different criteria doesn’t make sense to me, either. I take issue with the OP’s answer for #6. Without having calculated or looked at the numbers, I imagine that the mean of real per-capita economic growth (GDP) from this 2017-2020 term is lower than the 2009-2016 terms solely due to the year 2020 lowering the average. But even if it’s not, “key” #6 is supposed to be an assessment of the long-term health of the economy. Our federal government’s GROSSLY INADEQUATE intervention between July and likely through October (for political reasons on the left, for ideological reasons on the right) likely ensures that we will be entering an economic depression around January when the home eviction crisis accelerates. The permanent job loss trends I last looked at are pacing toward depression-level numbers. I lost track of how many consecutive weeks we’ve had of over 800,000 new unemployment claims (remember that the pre-pandemic historical record was about 700,000!). About 30 million Americans are currently in the unemployment insurance system, and who knows how many more SHOULD be in one? So many more painful numbers I could cite… We’ve been seeing since June the economic recovery bifurcate between the “haves” and “have nots.” To put it another way, Kudlow’s V-shaped recovery is only a thing if you rotate the V 90 degrees clockwise. At some point businesses will face the reality that there aren’t enough consumers with enough money to spend. If the stock market realizes this and crashes before November 3, I’d want to add a special large weight to the FALSE in factor #6. I also somewhat disagree with the OP on #12, which is about Trump’s “charisma.” I would argue that to many, he most definitely has it and definitely does when compared to Biden. How much can our snake oil salesman-in-chief lie, deflect, and blame his way out of a pandemic and economic calamity? Potentially a lot, I’d say! And running against an opponent who doesn’t know where he is during the late afternoons only helps Trump’s case. I want to add a special category #14 for a black swan-like health crisis, but I guess you could incorporate Covid-19 partly into category #8 (social unrest) and partly into category #9 (major scandal). The social unrest component comes from the disruption that the pandemic is having on people’s daily lives, especially the effect it is having on education this fall. The major scandal component comes from the fact that Trump grossly mismanaged and underplayed the health crisis during the crucial weeks of February and March (not to mention his lack of adequate preparation for a pandemic leading up to 2020). So notice that with factor #6 and factor #12 in limbo, Trump is barely hovering below Prof. Lichtman’s dreaded 6 FALSES pass/fail demarcation line at 4 to 6 FALSES. This kind of verifies what I’ve been saying here for a while now. Trump needs either the economy to get better or he needs to BS his way out of the economic/health disaster in order to win. Now if only we could quantify Trump’s ability to BS…if only we had some sort of POLLING DATA to work with…hmmm…

Thanks for the poll updates, Tiberius! It looks like Trump is starting to lose control of Michigan and Wisconsin. Trump now needs to hold all of Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, and Ohio at a minimum. These are places where Biden’s lead still likely falls within the polling statistical margin of error. But then Trump must additionally somehow figure out Pennsylvania. Biden’s campaign team knows this, I bet, which explains why we’ve heard a lot of pro-fracking rhetoric from Joe lately. They’re trying to erode some of Trump’s support in Pennsyltucky. Well said, BullBuchanan! This right here is the most important observation one can make of modern American politics. I would even feel reasonably comfortable pushing the time period forward by one or two decades: “Democrats are basically 1990’s-2000’s era Republicans.” Trump Derangement Syndrome and PC politics are convenient distractions from the realities of the same neoliberal corporate establishment owning both parties. And yes, the neoliberals (using the broader 1980’s Chilean definition) AND the Deep State have sufficient control over Trump too! While it’s obviously not quite the perfectly copacetic arrangement that it would be with Biden/Harris, enough puppet strings are attached. Some foreign policy examples: Guaido support, expansion of Obama’s drone strike program, Yemeni Civil War intervention on behalf of Saudi Arabia, saber-rattling toward Iran, rollercoaster ride of actual troop numbers in Afghanistan between Obama’s final months and now, lots of troops still in Iraq and Syria, 2020 Patriot Act extension, pardoning hardball with whistleblower patriots like Snowden and Assange, support of annual MIC budget expansions, etc… No need for me to cover all the domestic economic examples. The vast majority of libertarian voters will still very enthusiastically vote for Trump this November. Need I say more? Nope. No need. Taro T, don’t take my November 3 Biden victory prediction too much to heart! That was mostly just a reflection of the current status of the EC layout, as I see it, and not so much a look into the future. I always hate making early election predictions because of all the variables we can’t realistically foresee. I predicted Bernie winning the 2020 Dem primaries right before Obama’s suspected Super Tuesday behind-the-scenes machinations. I predicted Trump winning the 2020 presidency in March before Covid-19 took over. We still have over 7 weeks left for surprises, and I do not look favorably upon either Biden’s voter enthusiasm polling numbers or his economic trust polling numbers. I believe the polls are telling the truth that a majority of Americans are unhappy with Trump and with the current state of affairs and do prefer “generic other guys.” The question is whether or not this dissatisfaction will translate into actual votes when the “generic other guys” come into cognitive focus and are realized to be Biden and Harris? I dunno. No idea. I expect Covid-19 and the economy to weigh more heavily in the election than the riots because of all the evidence backing the theory that people’s votes are usually based more on how they may be personally affected, rather than on how the world at large may be affected. This characterization is even more accurate for independent voters, i.e. the ones who may comprise the remaining undecideds at this late date. I wish this were not the case, given my intense passion for environmental issues and foreign policy issues, but such is reality. While the riots are clearly awful, morally reprehensible, and devastating to the people and businesses that reside in these specific urban areas, they only directly affect a tiny percentage of Americans. That said…perception is reality. If the economy and Covid-19 somehow stabilize and/or people FEEL it has stabilized, then the riots covered daily in the news WILL take center stage and I’d agree with you then that voters will tend to lean toward the perceived law-and-order president that is Donald Trump (Biden and Harris would be, too, but ugh…another topic for another day…). I can also concede that much of the left-wing anti-police rhetoric is despicable and that most Americans (urban, suburban, rural…middle class, working class, poor) are directly affected by police force funding. The narrative of Republicans voting in-person and Democrats voting by mail has plenty of truth behind it. Democrats fear Covid-19 at much higher percentages than Republicans do, which perfectly explains why Dem voters are commonly polled to be about twice as likely to opt for the mail-in ballot route. I believe absentee ballots are more popular as well among Democrat voters than Republican voters, mostly due to college students and in spite of all the military abroad ballots. So given the expected closeness of the presidential race that we typically see these days, the most likely outcome is Trump having a lead the night of November 3, but then Biden making some form of comeback days later after all the mail-in ballots and absentee ballots are fully counted. There would be nothing conspiratorial or nefarious about such a development. It would match the most probable future reality. Now as for ballot harvesting integrity concerns raised over Democrats…well this presents an inconvenient can’t-win situation for the political left, no? If Trump wins, then it must prove that polls are fake. But if Trump loses, then it must be because of secret manufacturing of mail-in votes. At some point in the months ahead, everyone will have to accept whatever results and peacefully move on, for the sake of the country. And WHAT IN THE WORLD would make anyone believe that the GOP themselves are filled with such morally upstanding people who are consistently above the fray of election integrity transgressions?! These are the same people who have perfected the art of minority/poor/college student voter suppression and who actively undermine third party voices! Bear in mind that I am merely pointing out hypocrisies and NOT exonerating the Democratic establishment in any way whatsoever. Hopefully we already have in place some sort of mutually agreed upon electoral oversight infrastructure. Not only was I witness to the years of Russiagating just like everyone else, but I was also a 2016+2020 Bernie campaign volunteer! I know what these horrible people are capable of doing. I could share so many thoughts and stories using a thousand more words (I still haven’t gotten over the large Dem primary exit poll discrepancies throughout numerous states), but I see that I’m already 9 paragraphs deep, so here’s a slightly amusing picture instead:

BUMP!!!! Voting ends at 4pm today. Bills versus Packers. Old school AFC versus old school NFC. Small town Great Lakes East versus small town Great Lakes West. Wings versus cheese.** Good versus evil. Light versus dark. Yang versus yin. Cheech versus Chong. However you may look at the opponent, just please VOTE! And hurry! The Queen City needs you. **- A vegan proselytizing digression: I must officially discourage consumption of both and leave you with a classic Marv Levy quote: “When I was twelve, I went hunting with my father and we shot a bird. He was laying there and something struck me. Why do we call this fun to kill this creature who was as happy as I was when I woke up this morning?” Hard to argue with someone like Marv Levy, right? Super Bowl XXV strategy aside… So please look further into the truth behind the meat and dairy industries and reconsider your food choices. And PM me for more info or tips. Thank you.

Polls! Yes I love this topic. My many frenetic thoughts after briefly scanning the pages of this thread: 1. Question for conspiracy theorists: Okay, so all the polls are biased to make Biden look good and Trump look bad. Why, exactly? To make Trump voters feel despondent, thereby suppressing their vote…that’s the argument being presented. But couldn’t that logic work in the reverse direction, too? Biden voters see a big lead, get complacent, and don’t bother putting in the effort to vote since they assume their vote isn’t needed? Meanwhile, Trump voters see an election emergency and do all they can to show up and close the voting lead gap? Does anyone have voter data that can corroborate the psychology behind any of these game theory strategies??? 2. Polling accuracy concerns: It’s possible that some of the polls are continuing to undersample voters without a college education, similarly to what happened Midwest statewide in 2016. There’s also the issue of Trump voters lying to pollsters partly out of spite, partly out of fear of retribution or embarrassment for holding political views that the left has demonized (racists, fascists, misogynists, xenophobes, and so on). And then you have the ever-so-mercurial “independent voter.” Oh yeah…and how can I forget all the vague candidate favorability polls that are not coupled with more relevant voter enthusiasm questions? Ok, so all of this uncertainty can be isolated and factored out using historical polling data as precedent. But THE BIGGEST and entirely new issue is going to be the inevitable election integrity failures due to Covid-19 mail-in ballot shenanigans. Those poor polling statisticians will have no choice but to lower their confidence level percentages, raise the error margins, and endure months of public rebuke. 3. Pollster reputations: NBC/WSJ, ABC/WP, CBS News, and Fox News comprise the gold standard for me. Emerson and Monmouth are excellent too. Fox News polls I find to be the most “fair and balanced” of them all, ironically. I’d place Morning Consult, NPR/PBS, CNBC, The Hill, and YouGov in the “meh” pile. Rasmussen polls seem consistently unreliable and only there to boost GOP self-esteem, going back at least to the 2012 Romney blunder if not earlier. Dunno about the other ones at RealClearPolitics. For the skeptics and haters: remember that it’s routine practice to greatly undersample independents (whose votes mostly cancel each other out for the two main parties) and to sample in ways that won’t perfectly match voter registration. Why? Well remember that pollsters are (allegedly) in the business of getting good results that match actual outcomes on election day, NOT in getting the most “fair” registration-based representation. Or to put it another way, likely voters are more important than registered voters. 4. Swing state debate: Everyone here (I hope) knows that it is the electoral college and not the popular vote that decides a presidential election, so that means we should be focusing on the far more important individual swing state polls…even though the national polls still do matter up to specific thresholds. Biden has a comfortable national lead, but the swing states are tightening! I recommend paying close attention to the usual 6 battleground suspects, in this order of importance: Florida, the Midwest cluster (Michigan and then Pennsylvania and then Wisconsin), North Carolina, and Arizona. Ohio, Minnesota, and Nevada are also important demographic bellwether states for me. So that’s 217 EC votes for the Dems, 186 for the Reps, and 135 in 9 swing states. Everyone has their own list of swing states, but those are mine (I have Biden winning 279 to 259 at the moment...taking MN, WI, MI, PA, NV and Trump taking FL, NC, AZ, OH…flipping either MI or PA wins it for Trump, so things are crazy close!). Florida is a political “choke point” for Trump. I know of no viable path for him if he doesn’t win it. I’d also be shocked if Texas and Georgia are seriously in play. If they are, then the GOP has much bigger concerns than the 2020 election. Random trivia: did you know the Republicans have only won the popular vote once since 1988? That occurred during a GOP incumbency election (2004) against an uninspiring Dem candidate (John Kerry) at a time of national crisis (War on Terror/Iraq War). Hmmm… 5. Legislative branch loneliness: Hey, let’s also not forget to track all the extremely important Senate races in this thread! There are 35 seats up this year, 11 of which I’d say are in realistic play for both sides (AL, AZ, CO, GA x 2, IA, KS, ME, MI, MT, NC). That gives the Dems a narrow 45-44 lead to briefly enjoy, when counting Angus King and Bernie with the Dems. I have the Reps holding the 117th Senate at 51-49 for now, but of course these races are WAY too close to be making any serious predictions in early September. There are also quite a few individual House battles that I find interesting, even though the Dems will hold the House for sure. The most interesting one to me that I recommend we follow: Queen Nancy versus progressive challenger, Shahid Buttar. The Pelosi name brand has proven to be quite toxic recently (see: Joe Kennedy endorsement), so I suppose anything can happen now? Such an upset would dramatically alter the trajectory of the Democratic Party and the country…for very much the better IMO. 6. Specialty poll medley: let’s also monitor any and all polls for candidate enthusiasm, chronologically comparative polling data between Biden and 2016 Hillary, polls for black males (differentiated by age, ideally), polls for Latinos (differentiated by geography, ideally), polls for the “yutes” (My Cousin Vinny reference), and polls for Boomers of every stripe! I believe Biden could be in trouble with the first five, but Trump may be in trouble with the last one (especially the female suburban ones). Any Boomer data is super important to me. If you give me good Boomer data, then I will tell you who wins the November election with great confidence! Maybe. I think. 7. Special emphasis on October polls: September polls matter a bit more now than in previous elections because of all the early voting, but they still don’t matter too much. Nothing matters much until “Basement” Biden passes the first debate test on September 29. Afterward, the fate of the economy plus any potential second-wave spread of Covid-19 through schools will determine…well…EVERYTHING (insert Gary Oldman gif here…The Professional reference…yes, I like old movies). EDIT: I whittled down the competitive Senate seats from 18 to 11.

The Pro Football Hall of Fame honors “contributors” as well as players and coaches. You may feel that Joe Namath doesn’t belong in it strictly based on his achievements as a QB, but then you’re ignoring an entire separate category of criteria. The AFL was arguably the most important development in pro football history, and Namath was arguably the most important individual in that development. You can make a fair case against Namath based on QB accomplishments, as long as you’re doing so by comparing him with his contemporaries. This is especially important when comparing passer ratings and career production well into one’s 30’s. Namath wasn’t quite as accomplished as Len Dawson and only marginally more so than Kemp, but he still managed to rank 10th in career passing yards and 14th in career TD’s at the time of his retirement in 1977. I would love to hear more on this subject plus all things AFL from those who followed the league in real-time. A separate thread for “AFL Stories” would also be lovely. How do the mid-60’s Bills match up with other historical pro football dynasties? Would they sneak into your top-25 all-time? And was anyone here alive to have watched the AAFC Bills?? Just thought I’d ask. Or the original All-Americans? If so, please include your diet (vegan?) and exercise regimen (hot yoga?) in your post.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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