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Thread: US elections, 2016 - Page 11







Post#251 at 04-13-2015 09:56 PM by Brian Rush [at California joined Jul 2001 #posts 12,392]
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Quote Originally Posted by Classic-X'er View Post
I'm the CEO and majority shareholder of a small business (S-corp)
Then obviously I wasn't referring to you when speaking of "the rich," and your personal experiences don't show us much. If you have to work for a living, you're not rich.
"And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, slouches toward Bethlehem to be born?"

My blog: https://brianrushwriter.wordpress.com/

The Order Master (volume one of Refuge), a science fantasy. Amazon link: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00GZZWEAS
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Post#252 at 04-14-2015 12:16 AM by Eric the Green [at San Jose CA joined Jul 2001 #posts 22,504]
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Quote Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84 View Post
Depending on who the larger 3rd parties not to mention the GOP put in the ring, heck, I might vote for her!
Are you of the female persuasion, XYMOX?
"I close my eyes, and I can see a better day" -- Justin Bieber

Keep the spirit alive,

Eric A. Meece







Post#253 at 04-14-2015 12:17 AM by Eric the Green [at San Jose CA joined Jul 2001 #posts 22,504]
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Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a View Post
I see no cause to see that she would do as badly among (Bill) Clinton-but-not-Obama voters. Showing the states in green from the above map, I am guessing that Barack Obama did unusually badly for a Democrat in the states in green. How badly?


Year \\ State AR KY LA MO TN WV US
1972 -- McGovern 31 35 28 38 30 37 38
1988 -- Mondale 38 39 38 40 42 35 41
2004 -- Kerry 45 40 42 46 43 43 48
2012 -- Obama 37 37 41 44 39 35 51

Numbers under the states' postal abbreviations are percentages for the Democrat that year. "US" is for the United States at large.

All of these states, which gave execrable results for George McGovern in 1972, went to Jimmy Carter in 1976.
All of these states, which gave execrable results for Walter Mondale in 1988, went to Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996.

No state goes from ultra-conservative to 'liberal', at least in economics in one election and stays there indefinitely. These states seem to swing wildly. Politicians who offend the cultural sensibilities of Backwoods America (Louisiana is more Deep South than the others) lose these states -- often catastrophically.

All of these states have a populist history. They swing wildly based, it seems, against what they see as politicians seeming too cerebral. (Carter and Clinton were smart folks, but they also played the plain-folk game well).
It would be amazing if Hillary Clinton could carry a state like WV, KY, TN or AR in 2016. Do you think she has a chance there? Anyone think so?
"I close my eyes, and I can see a better day" -- Justin Bieber

Keep the spirit alive,

Eric A. Meece







Post#254 at 04-14-2015 12:46 AM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Quote Originally Posted by Eric the Green View Post
It would be amazing if Hillary Clinton could carry a state like WV, KY, TN or AR in 2016. Do you think she has a chance there? Anyone think so?
Really, I doubt it. Like Al Gore, she has separated herself from the South in many ways, becoming about as much a d@mnyankee. She might have a chance at Missouri, but I see her having a better chance at Arizona (which is about where California was when it flipped from R to D due to the growth of the Mexican-American population) and Georgia (which has some weird politics).

Don't try to figure whether any states that have seemed solid-R have gotten tired of right-wing pols.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#255 at 04-14-2015 01:14 AM by Classic-X'er [at joined Sep 2012 #posts 1,789]
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Quote Originally Posted by Brian Rush View Post
Then obviously I wasn't referring to you when speaking of "the rich," and your personal experiences don't show us much. If you have to work for a living, you're not rich.
Nope. I'm not rich and I've never claimed to be rich.







Post#256 at 04-14-2015 01:31 AM by Eric the Green [at San Jose CA joined Jul 2001 #posts 22,504]
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Quote Originally Posted by Classic-X'er View Post
Nope. I'm not rich and I've never claimed to be rich.
But you do support the Party of the rich, and its policies which favor only the rich.
"I close my eyes, and I can see a better day" -- Justin Bieber

Keep the spirit alive,

Eric A. Meece







Post#257 at 04-14-2015 02:02 AM by Classic-X'er [at joined Sep 2012 #posts 1,789]
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Quote Originally Posted by Eric the Green View Post
But you do support the Party of the rich, and its policies which favor only the rich.
I've always worked in the private sector. I do business with privately owned companies and corporations. I bank with a privately owned bank. I do work for wealthier people who work in the private sector. I'm on the wealthier side of the fence as far as wealth. I'd be a fool to support the party of big government and support redistributing private sector wealth to support the growth of the lefts welfare programs.







Post#258 at 04-14-2015 05:38 AM by Mikebert [at Kalamazoo MI joined Jul 2001 #posts 4,501]
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Quote Originally Posted by Classic-X'er View Post
The elites aren't spoiled. The elites have a job to do for the companies and the shareholders who employ them today.
Of course they have a job to do. I'm just saying they do a poorer job of it than their predecessors despite getting paid lots more (as if they were doing a better job). If they aren't spoiled how do you explain that?
Last edited by Mikebert; 04-14-2015 at 05:40 AM.







Post#259 at 04-14-2015 06:01 AM by Marx & Lennon [at '47 cohort still lost in Falwelland joined Sep 2001 #posts 16,709]
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Quote Originally Posted by Classic-X'er View Post
It's not decoupled for the rich. It's still associated with the rich, the upper middle class and the middle class as well. How does a society continue to grow and advance with an effortless based economy that no longer has any financial initiative?
That's the prime question in many circles: business, academe and government among them. Guess what? It needs to be resolved, because the future is coming fast. In the future, we simply won't need anywhere near as much human effort to keeps running. Humans, on the other hand, still need food, clothing, shelter and transportation ... at a minimum.

There's the obvious contradiction between our ability to do much more, and the idea that we owe each other much less. If we squeeze people we don't think worthy of our concern, it will come full circle and squeeze us too. Economics isn't a dismal science for nothing.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.







Post#260 at 04-14-2015 06:12 AM by Marx & Lennon [at '47 cohort still lost in Falwelland joined Sep 2001 #posts 16,709]
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Quote Originally Posted by Classic-X'er View Post
Government driven economics, baseless driven economics and effortless entitlement programs is voodoo economics.
Try to envision a society where a large percentage of the population has no skin in the game, because we've decided they aren't worth of our concern. If you're having problems getting your mind around that, try France in the late 18th century. You might also note how that played-out for the upper classes. In fact, the shopkeepers and petite businessmen got run over too. Once anger turns to action, it tends to run its course.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.







Post#261 at 04-14-2015 09:02 AM by Marx & Lennon [at '47 cohort still lost in Falwelland joined Sep 2001 #posts 16,709]
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Quote Originally Posted by Classic-X'er View Post
If we get to the point where you have to choose between keeping your social security and medicare benefits or the welfare programs, which would you choose?
Why would we ever get to that point? We can produce far more goods and services today than we ever could in the past, and do it with less labor ... even less capital, in many cases. You're raising a bogus strawman.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.







Post#262 at 04-14-2015 09:13 AM by Marx & Lennon [at '47 cohort still lost in Falwelland joined Sep 2001 #posts 16,709]
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Quote Originally Posted by Classic-X'er View Post
True, I could hire and pay a manager to do my job as CEO and manage her/him and those below them instead of managing the entire company myself. See the pattern here? My job shifts to managing the CEO that I hired to run the company. We all make money on our work...
I think you have an issue with scale here. Small businesses are run by their owners in 99% of all cases. They aren't profitable enough to employ professional managers ... unless they grow, of course. Instead of thinking small, try thinking really big. Do you think the Waltons give a tinkers damn about the management of Walmart? They have lackeys to manage even that, and they do it because they can. First generation wealthy are exceptions. Their heirs will rarely follow in their footsteps, but they reap the rewards.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.







Post#263 at 04-14-2015 10:40 AM by XYMOX_4AD_84 [at joined Nov 2012 #posts 3,073]
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Quote Originally Posted by Eric the Green View Post
Are you of the female persuasion, XYMOX?
Negative (and that is from the standpoint of biological truth not the more modern definition).







Post#264 at 04-14-2015 10:51 AM by XYMOX_4AD_84 [at joined Nov 2012 #posts 3,073]
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Quote Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon View Post
That's the prime question in many circles: business, academe and government among them. Guess what? It needs to be resolved, because the future is coming fast. In the future, we simply won't need anywhere near as much human effort to keeps running. Humans, on the other hand, still need food, clothing, shelter and transportation ... at a minimum.

There's the obvious contradiction between our ability to do much more, and the idea that we owe each other much less. If we squeeze people we don't think worthy of our concern, it will come full circle and squeeze us too. Economics isn't a dismal science for nothing.
I think you tend to give too much credit to automation and supposed productivity. I think such claims could be made if we were still at the same levels of overall quality and true, unvarnished total cost of ownership as we were at the outset of the high tech era (which in my book was roughly the late 1970s). Instead, what has happened is the slowly boiled frog syndrome. Quality has gotten lower and lower, TCOO has slid upward (a sly "socialization" of costs onto the backs of consumers by the Corporatists), and life cycles have shrunk. People buy crappier and crappier goods and services and justify the declining customer experience with acceptance of the throw away mentality. I HAVE TO HAVE the new iPhone6, don't you love Amazon Fresh, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, measured against a brick and mortar, long ownership baseline of say 1978, people are accepting utter rubbish.

Viewing this from within the Corporatist realm, there are a small number of overworked people (at nearly all levels) doing lots of things really poorly. Speed is valued over completeness and robustness. Knowledge management is nearly nonexistent, and wheels are forever reinvented. It is completely unsustainable. Simply reforming the status quo would open all sorts of opportunities for work, and ultimately, would provide longer term wealth as well. But the present treadmill (driven by sad attempts to continue to play in "The Flat World" against masses of cheaters) will not allow the sorts of proactive, in depth work, that is needed to start on the road of healing.
Last edited by XYMOX_4AD_84; 04-14-2015 at 10:58 AM.







Post#265 at 04-14-2015 05:13 PM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Quote Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84 View Post
(Some of us) give too much credit to automation and supposed productivity. I think such claims could be made if we were still at the same levels of overall quality and true, unvarnished total cost of ownership as we were at the outset of the high tech era (which in my book was roughly the late 1970s). Instead, what has happened is the slowly boiled frog syndrome. Quality has gotten lower and lower, TCOO has slid upward (a sly "socialization" of costs onto the backs of consumers by the Corporatists), and life cycles have shrunk. People buy crappier and crappier goods and services and justify the declining customer experience with acceptance of the throw away mentality. I HAVE TO HAVE the new iPhone6, don't you love Amazon Fresh, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, measured against a brick and mortar, long ownership baseline of say 1978, people are accepting utter rubbish.
The technological miracles of the last few decades have given us new abilities and allowed us to get richer experiences (golf, nature programming, and travelogues on high-definition media on high-definition television are far more satisfying than their predecessors on the media and televisions of the era of broadcast-and-CRT screen era) at lesser cost. Because the digital camera allows me to get hundreds of images on a replaceable chip that costs much less than dozens of rolls of film which must be processed to be usable, I have taken more photographs in four years than I did from age ten to age 55 (considering where I live I go nowhere without a digital camera from September to early November). The cell phone allows me to take trips that allow me to get away to see something enriching (I plan to see an exhibit on Leonardo about 150 miles from home tomorrow, a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and a longer journey than I have taken in four years) without fear of being thirty miles from home and 120 miles away from my destination and on the way to the destination and being clueless to a family emergency. I am obviously using a computer to express my thoughts... and I have two tablets, one largely for reading and another connected to the stereo but getting classical music off YouTube by in-house WiFi. But these have their limitations. If you have a bad back, you are practically blind, and you have Parkinson's as did my late mother none of those miracles means much... and the lives of loved ones are irredeemably miserable, so those miracles can be suspect. Also, if one is a two-legged swine one might use the media to get access to illicit material whose creation does great harm to children compelled to participate in it. Other side effects arise: I am less likely to visit a movie theater when I can choose between a recorded great movie from the 1930s than contemporary bilge; I no longer pay for as much film and processing (did I say that I have had all the photos developed?); I no longer buy books now in the public domain; that I need no longer need to buy recorded media for music; I don't use pay phones as often as I used to; I don't buy so many books -- never anything public domain. I'm not alone -- so movie theaters have been shutting down, live sporting events are becoming places for people willing to throw away money, pay phones have largely disappeared, many printers and bookbinders have lost their jobs, and such entities as Tower Records are no more... and Kodak and Polaroid, which used to be renowned as great places to work, are going under. When quality is inexpensive, trash becomes even more unattractive. But one man's cost is another's income -- such is economic reality.

Some things can't be automated out of human need. People still must eat; they need protection from the elements. If they are to have any freedom they need some mobility. I don't see a way around food, fuel, clothing, housing, real estate, furniture, electrical power, refrigeration, cooking appliances, and transportation. In good times one may be happier to have a complete set of Beethoven's piano sonatas to enjoy. In bad times one may pay more attention to hunger, the cold draft, or an internal ache.

...It is of course wise to be a late adapter of consumer technology unless one is in the business. Even so I recognize that the "Early Adapters" make it possible that I have two 7" tablets that cost $50 each. It is wiser for someone just starting out to go to Goodwill or Salvation Army and get an old CRT television, a VHS machine (yes, people have practically thrown those away, but they still function) and old (but still playable) VHS tapes -- and a record player and ancient vinyl discs as entertainment that one settles for while saving for the more modern stuff instead of buying the latest devices on a rental-payment rip-off. So you are twenty years behind the time in your technology -- at least you are saving money by doing so without undue deprivation.

Viewing this from within the Corporatist realm, there are a small number of overworked people (at nearly all levels) doing lots of things really poorly. Speed is valued over completeness and robustness. Knowledge management is nearly nonexistent, and wheels are forever reinvented. It is completely unsustainable. Simply reforming the status quo would open all sorts of opportunities for work, and ultimately, would provide longer term wealth as well. But the present treadmill (driven by sad attempts to continue to play in "The Flat World" against masses of cheaters) will not allow the sorts of proactive, in depth work, that is needed to start on the road of healing.
A 4T is when the contradictions between ideals and reality, between justice and raw power, between opportunity and helplessness, between war and peace, between freedom and tyranny, and even between good and evil force their way into the lives of almost everyone. Much of this 4T will have its focus on labor-management relations as did the last one, at least in America. But if workers won something closer to a fair shake during the 1930s, this one poses the threat that fascistic regimes did to workers in the 1930s of imposing a new form of peonage.

Give me liberty or give me death -- so said Patrick Henry in the early days of the Revolutionary Crisis. Tyranny has shown its eminent ability to impose fates worse than death... and even tyranny can pose as 100% American.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klu...tricks_Dau.jpg
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#266 at 04-14-2015 08:45 PM by Marx & Lennon [at '47 cohort still lost in Falwelland joined Sep 2001 #posts 16,709]
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Quote Originally Posted by XYMOX_4AD_84 View Post
I think you tend to give too much credit to automation and supposed productivity. I think such claims could be made if we were still at the same levels of overall quality and true, unvarnished total cost of ownership as we were at the outset of the high tech era (which in my book was roughly the late 1970s). Instead, what has happened is the slowly boiled frog syndrome. Quality has gotten lower and lower, TCOO has slid upward (a sly "socialization" of costs onto the backs of consumers by the Corporatists), and life cycles have shrunk. People buy crappier and crappier goods and services and justify the declining customer experience with acceptance of the throw away mentality. I HAVE TO HAVE the new iPhone6, don't you love Amazon Fresh, blah, blah, blah. Meanwhile, measured against a brick and mortar, long ownership baseline of say 1978, people are accepting utter rubbish.

Viewing this from within the Corporatist realm, there are a small number of overworked people (at nearly all levels) doing lots of things really poorly. Speed is valued over completeness and robustness. Knowledge management is nearly nonexistent, and wheels are forever reinvented. It is completely unsustainable. Simply reforming the status quo would open all sorts of opportunities for work, and ultimately, would provide longer term wealth as well. But the present treadmill (driven by sad attempts to continue to play in "The Flat World" against masses of cheaters) will not allow the sorts of proactive, in depth work, that is needed to start on the road of healing.
Some goods are worse, but most are much better. Why? Because now we have machines doing precisely the things humans did in the past with much less precision, and doing it much faster. Take automobiles. A car with 100,000 miles on the odometer is not markedly different from its new state, whereas cars built 50 years ago were at or near Junker status at that point. Auto factories needed more humans then than now. Apply that broadly across industries. Only services still need humans at the same level as the past, and we are rapidly becoming a low-wage service oriented world for that very reason.

So to your point about iPhones and the like: 50 years ago even simple electronics was much more expensive and much less reliable. As we find ways to use machines to do our work, the results get better fairly quickly. The fact that you honestly believe that things are crappier now just shows me that your frame of reference is not very long. Yes, we make crap too, but much less than before and it sells for cheap. Even good sells cheap.
Marx: Politics is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.
Lennon: You either get tired fighting for peace, or you die.







Post#267 at 04-14-2015 10:06 PM by XYMOX_4AD_84 [at joined Nov 2012 #posts 3,073]
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Quote Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon View Post
Some goods are worse, but most are much better. Why? Because now we have machines doing precisely the things humans did in the past with much less precision, and doing it much faster. Take automobiles. A car with 100,000 miles on the odometer is not markedly different from its new state, whereas cars built 50 years ago were at or near Junker status at that point. Auto factories needed more humans then than now. Apply that broadly across industries. Only services still need humans at the same level as the past, and we are rapidly becoming a low-wage service oriented world for that very reason.

So to your point about iPhones and the like: 50 years ago even simple electronics was much more expensive and much less reliable. As we find ways to use machines to do our work, the results get better fairly quickly. The fact that you honestly believe that things are crappier now just shows me that your frame of reference is not very long. Yes, we make crap too, but much less than before and it sells for cheap. Even good sells cheap.
I'm not baselining 50 years ago, more like 35. I think we were on the cusp of a wonderful breakthrough in both quality and appropriate automation ... when globalization started to get completely out of control. Quarterly performance and stock price also got out of control. Then the China Price. True, cars are better and electronics do more. But overall, I compare what we have now with what we should have had by now. It brings a tear to my eye, scores of lost opportunities.







Post#268 at 04-14-2015 11:12 PM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Quote Originally Posted by JustPassingThrough View Post
The purpose of this thread was to look at the generational divide illustrated by the chart in the first post. The Republican candidates are largely Xers, and the Democrats are generally very old Boomers.

What I had actually forgotten to some degree was how badly this forum has devolved over time into a run-of-the-mill, left wing ideologue political forum, with little or no interest in the subjects raised by S&H. There are a few obsessive Boomers of the most dogmatic, partisan-blinder variety who drive every thread into this territory. In other words, nothing has changed. And it makes this forum not worth paying much attention to, because this kind of stuff exists everywhere on the internet where politics is discussed. The generational subject is what should be unique here, but there is little attention paid to it, except as a secondary rationale for left wing dogma. Oh well.
There are fewer imaginable Democratic candidates for President. Thus one or two potential candidates can skew the sample old. Republicans by contrast have a 'youth movement'. Several of them came into prominence in the 2010 election, the victory of the Tea Party over.... (insert partisan rhetoric here). I will try to stop the partisan sniping here, at least for this post.

We need recall what sort of President we now have by temperament -- someone reminiscent of the two Lost Presidents that we have. Barack Obama acts like a 60-something Reactive, a mellowed and cautious figure. Such is a reasonable successor of the disaster that was George W. Bush -- someone scrupulously attentive to precedent and legal formalities, someone who has read his history, and someone who does not act on old slights and resentments. We may have wanted a 'new FDR', but we instead got a 'new Harry Truman' or a 'new Dwight Eisenhower'. He may have been 48 when elected but he acted more as if he were in his 60s. The next President that we have who will act like a 60-something Reactive will be a 60-something Reactive, and we will start having plenty of such candidates around 2024. Truman turned 61 the year in which he succeeded FDR; Eisenhower was 61 on New Year's Day of the year that he became President.

Can you accept that nobody has an Obama-like candidate by temperament? Maybe he really is unique as President... no, they all are. The electorate and the times changes as the generational cycle would suggest. I'm not going to slander any Republican candidate by saying that he is the worst and most dangerous sort of Reactive as exemplified by the worst of the Lost generation worldwide. We know those all too well, and if Dante Aligheri were to come back to life and write a sequel to his Inferno he would have plenty of European and Asian fascists and commies born between 1883 and 1900 -- political leaders who, full of rage and seething with cynicism, were utterly amoral, deceitful, ruthless, cruel, and reckless -- for colorful additions to his Ninth and most horrid bolgia. Just imagine the Hungarian Stalinist stooge Mátyás Rákosi finding himself in the same horrible place of punishment with his Nazi-aligned predecessor (and Holocaust perpetrator) Ferenc Szálasi for betraying their people, legal decencies, and humanity as a whole. To give some idea of how fortunate America was to never get such perverse leadership, may I suggest Indiana Grand Dragon David Curtiss Stephenson, whose Klan had man of the hallmarks of fascism and Nazism.

It would be libelous to compare any current American politician to such thugs... but Reactive generations have their peculiar hazards. Many kiss up to the most rapacious plutocrats, sell out integrity for power, and show contempt for rational truth when such contempt offers a temporary advantage but ultimately does harm... maybe Republicans get to concentrate Reactive vice this time.

So as a means of a sort of final response before I'm overcome by boredom here once again, a lot of the posts by the usual suspects above display a kind of megalomaniacal, quasi-religious belief that is common among the most hardcore Democrats and leftists, that the US is destined for one-party rule, with the Republicans being run out of existence and the Democrats maintaining absolute control, forever. That's at the core of the belief system that expresses itself in the increasingly totalitarian, collectivist ideology of the left.
Final response? I doubt it. I hope that my post is too entertaining for that. First of all, I have severe doubt that the Republican Party respects the tradition of participatory democracy that has long marked America and other multi-party democracies. The Republican party has taken a marked shift toward authoritarianism, abandoning the center-right for something nearly... the word is a political obscenity beginning with the letter F. The Republican Party operates in near lockstep on behalf of people who want a country under the command of a plutocratic oligarchy with the majority of the People consigned to miserable lives of hunger, exhaustion, and fear, with all happiness to be earned through selfless toil on behalf of rapacious elites but enjoyed only in the Afterlife. Such is consistent with Christian Protestant fundamentalism which itself has gone from recognition of its political limitations to having a vision of its own dominion over American religion and culture.

We are on the brink of either (1) the full consolidation of an authoritarian, if not totalitarian, order in which the Republican Party is the only Party or the dominant party capable of ensuring that anything that one gets with the aid of politics comes with the assent of the Party, and in which the Democratic Party is rendered permanently impotent or irrelevant -- or (2) the collapse of the Republican Party as center-right politicians leave it for the Democratic Party which then splits due to its unwieldiness. Single-Party states in which no democracy exists within the single or dominant Party are nasty places in which toadying to irresponsible power becomes essential for getting a good education or a desirable job. Using the best-known proxy for talent (IQ) a bright kid with an IQ of 140 who believes that competitive politics, civil rights, and rule of law are good things might find himself consigned to a career as a laborer and no chance at a college education unless he defects to Slovakia or Slovenia or whatever (if you think learning a Slavic language is tough, try living with a conscience in a dictatorial state; someone with an IQ of 85 who shouts loudest on behalf of the Party at its rallies would get every career advantage possible.

Nate Silver, who had been worshiped by the left in recent times, just posted an article (referenced above) that has earned him a hailstorm of repudiation by these True Believers:

Clinton Begins The 2016 Campaign, And It’s A Toss-up

It's a pretty run-of-the-mill, cautious early assessment that puts Hillary Clinton's odds of winning at 50-50. He also includes plenty of left-leaning bias against Republicans. But he did something that strikes at the heart of the left wingnut belief system, and has been met with a large blowback of denial. He rejected both the "Blue Wall" and "demographic inevitability" articles of faith.
One begins the discussion of the next Presidential election with the assumption that the next one will be a 50-50 proposition. I am old enough to remember that such was how people discussed the elections of 1972 (!) and 1984 (!) that involved an incumbent who had won decisively in the previous election. Such would prove excessively cautious in those years, but that would prove extremely wise in the years leading to 1980, 1992, and 2008. Just think of how long it took for people not Democratic hacks to accept that Barack Obama had a chance in 2008. After all, the Republicans had been riding cultural trends and had succeeded in winning some Mexican-American votes by sponsoring home ownership (who buy houses -- any houses -- as the key to achieving the American dream). Nothing could really go wrong in Iraq because of the omnipotent US Army to put out any smoldering embers of Baathist resistance, and economic panics like 1929 just didn't happen anymore. As late as early September 2008 many people thought that John McCain had all the critical edges. Then came the worst financial panic in 79 years.

Political advantages are fluid. The Presidential elections of 1980, 1992, 2000, and 2008 show how the common wisdom can be wrong going into the Presidential election. But as for Nate Silver -- he has gone from a statistician dabbling in political journalism (which paid badly but left him with much freedom) to a political journalist who still does statistical analysis of politics as he did with baseball. In practice, journalists have an obvious interest in being read and keeping attention paid to themselves so that people will read the advertisements and perhaps click on a link that encourages people to consider a vacation in Slovakia or Slovenia or some place like that. If people quit reading the journalist, they will never click on links that lead one to contemplate taking a vacation in Slovakia or Slovenia or some place like that, and the advertising revenue that supports his job will vanish. That is the free market at work at its best. Were I a political journalist and I thought that Hillary Clinton had seemingly every advantage I would do what I do: I would think of ways in which she could lose because such is more interesting (if disgusting to me).

"Blue Firewall"? The Democratic nominees for President won it and perhaps a couple of electorally-small states then on the margin (Iowa and New Mexico in 2000; New Hampshire in 2004) and still lost because the Republicans won every conceivable swing state outside the Blue Firewall. The Blue Firewall is not enough for a Democratic nominee for winning the Presidency. Of course the 2000 and 2004 elections involved what many consider the worst President in American history since at least Andrew Johnson. Maybe a more astute pol would have cut deeper into what has proved the Blue Firewall in recent years and made it irrelevant with an administration operating with more probity. (No war based on lies, no speculative boom based upon predatory lending, no bungling of the response to Hurricane Katrina? Above-average Presidents get re-elected). But someone other than Dubya as President is counterfactual history and we are stuck with an unmitigated eight-year disaster. (President Lugar? President Voinovich? America is probably in a better position than it is now).

John Judis, who co-wrote the book "The Emerging Democratic Majority" in the early 2000s, has also recently stated that the concept, which originated with that book, has become exaggerated and over-interpreted by Democrats compared to the original intent.
Things have changed. The inroads that Republicans thought that they had made among Hispanics as they entered the American middle class have evaporated except perhaps in Texas -- ironically because Texas has tight regulations on lending in response to the Texas real estate bubble of the 1980s.

Without going into all the details, the summary of what Judis has noted and Silver has repeated is that the big electoral advancement predicted for Democrats is not some open-ended, permanent majority (the same thing was predicted for Republicans as recently as 2004). Rather, that trend for Democrats already happened, and peaked in 2008 (the same year, don't forget, that Boomer representation in political office peaked). Since then, the pendulum has swung back sharply in the other direction. Republicans now hold their largest majorities in Congress since before the Great Depression. They also hold the majority of governorships and state legislatures, and in many states they control both. All of that has happened in the last 6 years.
Republicans have responded with the Tea Party Movement and got an advantage that they have turned into a structural advantage in the House of Representatives (it might as well now be called the House of Corporations) that Democrats cannot undo unless they get a general blowout in Congressional elections. Republican pols know that they can run as nice guys as front groups assault anyone who fails to believe in a militaristic, plutocratic oligarchy. The Republican candidate gets to make homilies about 'common sense', 'freedom', 'growth', and 'family' while the front groups stop at nothing to smear a Democratic opponent. We thus get political scum like Senator Tom Cottonmouth, who would rather nuke Iran than negotiate with its leadership. Few of us saw that side of his politics before he got elected. Arkansas elected a potential war criminal to the US Senate. Shame on Arkansas!

The response of Democrats has been to double down with even greater intensity and single-minded focus on "identity politics". They are taking the horse Obama rode in on, and riding it into the ground along with his approval ratings. Obamacare is and has been extremely unpopular since before it was passed, and their foreign policy and economic policy have been complete failures. So all they have left is to try even harder to divide people by race, sex and so forth, and they think they can do it all one more time with Hillary, whose only qualification is that she's female. That's where we now stand. The Democrats are on the downswing of a pendulum we've seen many times in politics, where one side gets the wind at its back, racks up some victories, then goes too far and suffers a backlash. It's impossible to know yet for a fact who will win in 2016, but the larger trends are clear, and the historical odds are not in Hillary's favor. Ronald Reagan had approval ratings in the 60s and a booming economy that led to George Bush being elected in 1988. That is the only time either party has won three terms since the passage of the 22nd Amendment. Obama's approval ratings and the economy are not good. And yet some people (including posts here) actually believe Hillary is an absolute lock in 2016 who cannot lose. It is arguably an expression of legitimate mental illness.
2016 is a new political year. Nobody has yet won a Congressional or Senate seat, let alone the Presidency. I can think of ways in which the Republicans win the Presidency and even consolidate more power on the way to transforming the United States into a Christian, plutocratic mirror image of the old Soviet Union with the same passion for subversion and repression. So, surely, does Nate Silver.

1. Personal health of Hillary Clinton fails, and the Democrats end up with a weak candidate easily defeated.
2. Scandals erupt around either Barack Obama or either Bill or Hillary Clinton.
3. The economy goes into a severe depression that Republicans can exploit.
4. America endures a huge disaster related to military or diplomatic matters analogous to the Iranian Hostage crisis of 1979 and 1980.
5. A big part of the country within the Blue Firewall undergoes a right-wing religious revival that transforms the political climate to the advantage of the GOP.
6. (God help us!) Republicans begin a campaign of success with electoral fraud or outright intimidation as does Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe.

Most liberals would say "I don't see any of those happening", which is translated from wishful thinking to "God help us if any of those things happen!"

Which brings me back to generations, and the chart in the first post. "Nomads" (who are archetypically a conservative/Republican-leaning generation) moving towards leadership, meaning society is heading towards the 1T. When you look at both S&H and reality, this conclusion is pretty clear. And there are plenty of precedents in the last 4T. Republicans made a comeback, and among other things passed the 22nd Amendment, making sure there would never be another 4 term president, with the slide towards dictatorship that began to threaten.
Nomad/Reactive generations tend to the Right on economics and eschew radical changes in culture. At their best they are cautious conservatives unless they have strong ties to a liberal culture or to a group that has seen itself getting a raw deal from the Establishment. With the housing bubble of the Double-Zero decade the Republicans hurt the Mexican-American population harder than about any other identifiable segment of America. That's about the same as doubling the African-American vote in political effect. By pandering to ignoramuses who insist that evolution is a fraud and young-earth creationism is reality, Republicans practically wrote off the Asian-American population as potential voters, as if doubling the Jewish vote. Republicans used to get a bigger vote as formal education increased, perhaps because Democrats had the populist demagogues. Now the Republicans have the anti-intellectual demagogues who offend most of the well-educated. Republicans have gained the South, only to lose critical parts of the electorate that make a difference in swing states.

The issues this time around are completely different from the last 4T, but should not be a surprise given the nature of the "Prophet" generation. When you look back at the 60s and 70s, the things the left has done are not surprising at all. It makes for a very weird 4T compared to what S&H predicted, but it's pretty obvious when you balance their theories with a look at what is actually happening in reality. If they were right, we are headed for an Xer leadership that puts a halt to the far left and restores peace and prosperity to a society on the verge of collapse. If something else happens, they were either wrong, or we're in their worst-case scenario where the society collapses and disintegrates.
I have a simpler explanation. The economic meltdowns that began in 1929 and 2007 happened in, respectively, the the first year of the single Presidentiad (don't blame me for that word -- Ralph Waldo Emerson coined that word) of Herbert Hoover and the third year of the second Presidentiad of George W. Bush. The truly-destructive crashes happened in 1930 (second year for Hoover) and 2008 (last year of Dubya). In 1930 the Republicans lost the Congress but not the Presidency, and Hoover was still around to muck things up through 1931 by failing to back the banks from the destructive bank runs. In 2008 Barack Obama was elected, and in 2009 he did what he needed to do to stop the economic meltdown after roughly a year and a half.

Hoover bungled the economy to the detriment of right-wing interests who, by 1933, were still concerned more with survival than with changing the political system to their political advantage. Obama rescued people who would stab him in the back politically so that America would avoid a replay of the Great Depression. FDR could entrench political power as Obama could not. That makes all the difference between the last 4T in America and this one -- so far. Those who want a return to Gilded Age inequity and plutocracy have the GOP.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#269 at 04-15-2015 12:56 AM by Classic-X'er [at joined Sep 2012 #posts 1,789]
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Quote Originally Posted by pbrower2a View Post
There are fewer imaginable Democratic candidates for President. Thus one or two potential candidates can skew the sample old. Republicans by contrast have a 'youth movement'. Several of them came into prominence in the 2010 election, the victory of the Tea Party over.... (insert partisan rhetoric here). I will try to stop the partisan sniping here, at least for this post.

We need recall what sort of President we now have by temperament -- someone reminiscent of the two Lost Presidents that we have. Barack Obama acts like a 60-something Reactive, a mellowed and cautious figure. Such is a reasonable successor of the disaster that was George W. Bush -- someone scrupulously attentive to precedent and legal formalities, someone who has read his history, and someone who does not act on old slights and resentments. We may have wanted a 'new FDR', but we instead got a 'new Harry Truman' or a 'new Dwight Eisenhower'. He may have been 48 when elected but he acted more as if he were in his 60s. The next President that we have who will act like a 60-something Reactive will be a 60-something Reactive, and we will start having plenty of such candidates around 2024. Truman turned 61 the year in which he succeeded FDR; Eisenhower was 61 on New Year's Day of the year that he became President.
I saw a 48 year old politician who lacked the wisdom of the 60 year old politicians who were serving him. I saw a cocky young president who didn't have a diplomatic bone in his body. I saw a 48 year old man with the ego of an over acheiving teenager and college boy before entering the pro's. I see a president who was lifted to one of the highest mantle that he didn't earn or rightfully deserve to begin with. I see a president who doesn't rightfully deserve to sit on the same mantle as Eisenhower or whatever mantle Clinton is on either. I'll be nice and accept him being placed on the same presidential mantle as Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter's a great liberal.







Post#270 at 04-15-2015 01:15 AM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Quote Originally Posted by Classic-X'er View Post
I saw a 48 year old politician who lacked the wisdom of the 60 year old politicians who were serving him. I saw a cocky young president who didn't have a diplomatic bone in his body. I saw a 48 year old man with the ego of an over acheiving teenager and college boy before entering the pro's. I see a president who was lifted to one of the highest mantle that he didn't earn or rightfully deserve to begin with. I see a president who doesn't rightfully deserve to sit on the same mantle as Eisenhower or whatever mantle Clinton is on either. I'll be nice and accept him being placed on the same presidential mantle as Jimmy Carter. Jimmy Carter's a great liberal.
I was discussing temperament more than I was discussing overall competence.

There is no such thing as a 'diplomatic bone'. But he has a great legal mind.

Practically all successful politicians have big egos. Humility is demanded of servants (and elites are rarely expected to show anything more than theatrical humility), and the more abject the servility as a requirement of the job, the more complete is the humility.

He got elected. That is how we normally get the President. If he had been a corrupt and greedy pol he would still be in Chicago collecting graft. The Chicago machine wanted him as far from Chicago as possible because he would be a nasty DA or judge... not too bad for a shoplifting case, but put a corruption case or one involving organized crime before him and he would make life miserable for the crook. He wasn't going to leave the country and he wasn't astronaut material, so Washington DC is good enough.

Like Carter he is scrupulously honest. Unlike Carter he is better trained for the Presidency, and it shows.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#271 at 04-15-2015 01:45 AM by Classic-X'er [at joined Sep 2012 #posts 1,789]
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Quote Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon View Post
I think you have an issue with scale here. Small businesses are run by their owners in 99% of all cases. They aren't profitable enough to employ professional managers ... unless they grow, of course. Instead of thinking small, try thinking really big. Do you think the Waltons give a tinkers damn about the management of Walmart? They have lackeys to manage even that, and they do it because they can. First generation wealthy are exceptions. Their heirs will rarely follow in their footsteps, but they reap the rewards.
I'd never find a professional manager with my over all knowledge of the trade. I've watched them get hired and eventually fired by small business that has the profits to employee professional managers. I worked for one for several years. Are the Walton's completely removed or does the Walton family still have the largest interest in the company? If they do, they still care about how the company is being managed and all their lackeys are being paid and directed by them to continue running their business their way as far as it's management and it's decisions are concerned. I don't have an issue with scale. It doesn't matter where you're at on the corporate scale, if you represent the controlling interest in a corporation, you maintain control over the management of the corporation and the major decision's that are made as well.
Last edited by Classic-X'er; 04-15-2015 at 01:52 AM.







Post#272 at 04-15-2015 03:46 AM by Classic-X'er [at joined Sep 2012 #posts 1,789]
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Quote Originally Posted by Marx & Lennon View Post
Why would we ever get to that point? We can produce far more goods and services today than we ever could in the past, and do it with less labor ... even less capital, in many cases. You're raising a bogus strawman.
There's a hill of debt directly in front of us now and a mountain of debt beyond that and you still believe that the left will be able to have it's cake and eat it too.







Post#273 at 04-15-2015 07:54 AM by pbrower2a [at "Michigrim" joined May 2005 #posts 15,014]
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Quote Originally Posted by Classic-X'er View Post
There's a hill of debt directly in front of us now and a mountain of debt beyond that and you still believe that the left will be able to have it's cake and eat it too.
As a general pattern, creditors are usually on the Right; debtors are usually on the Left. People in debt generally support expansionary fiscal and monetary policy that dilute debt and create more opportunity to pay it off. Creditors want restrictive monetary policy to keep the value of their debt high because principal is their precious asset whose value they want protected. People heavily in debt in relation to their income have a gigantic burden to bear -- and they could even be peons. Big creditors in respect to their debtors might have their debtors as near-slaves.

Have you considered that the promotion of consumer debt and student-loan debt (instead of thrift) by the George W. Bush Administration itself changed the political culture? Small-scale savers have a stake in controlling inflation just to keep their life-savings valuable. People in debt up to their eyeballs are deep trouble to conservative causes.
The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" (or) even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered... in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by (those) who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business concern."


― C.S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters







Post#274 at 04-15-2015 07:58 AM by Mikebert [at Kalamazoo MI joined Jul 2001 #posts 4,501]
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Quote Originally Posted by Classic-X'er View Post
It doesn't matter where you're at on the corporate scale, if you represent the controlling interest in a corporation, you maintain control over the management of the corporation and the major decision's that are made as well.
This is a ridiculous statement. First of all, very few corporations have a single individual how holds a majority of shares, certainly not Walmart. In that case there is no person who "maintains control over the management".

There are a larger set of corporations that are closely held, that is a small group of major investors who sit on the board hold a majority or near majority of the stock and have practical control of the board. I used to invest in such companies. I figured with major shareholders sitting on the board they can keep an eye on management to make sure they are cooking the books. Well I figured wrong. I owned about 0.1% of a company that had be growing like gangbusters for a decade. The company was a merger of two firms in the business, both of whose founders sat on the board and were the largest shareholders. The CEO had been hired by one of them to run the firm more than a decade earlier in order to get a smoother stock price profile. The firms did contract work for which they were paid after completion.

Isn't this what you do? You do work for which you are paid upon completion, right? In order to be successful you have to bid the job right, that is, not too high (so you get the business) but not so low so that you lose money. Imagine your business was experiencing a growth spurt where it was growing rapidly--say 25-35% per year, and the average length of a project was two years. You would be in a situation in which in a given year you would be doing a lot of work (for which you are incurring costs) for which you won't get paid until next year. You will experience a negative cash flow and with straight accounting, negative profits. Then after the growth spurt slows and the revenues for work previously done comes in you will have big positive cash flow and huge profits. EPS will be extremely choppy, as will share price, and your stock will trade in the single-digit multiples despite your impressive growth rate when averaged over a longer horizon. So this founder got a financially-adept professional manager and stuck to running his business.

This guy implemented percentage of completion cost accounting like Dick Cheney did at Halliburton. The result was a smoother EPS profile which shows sustained EPA growth. This boosted the multiple, which allowed the firm to acquire a series of firms in accretive deals (that is, deals that boosted EPS) in which high-priced stock is used to acquire earnings of companies with low priced stock (because they aren't using Cheney-style accounting). This practice gave the rapid 25-35% growth and the negative cash flow alluded to above. it is imperative that the manager bid the contracts correctly in this case.

Well it turns out that this manager ultimately didn't know what he was doing like Cheney in Iraq and the company went under. I lost 200K. The founders lost tens of millions. Despite having worked in the business their entire careers and having founded apparently successful companies the company's principal owners on the board did not know the contracts were being underbid and they were shafted like I was.

So no, the owners of a business do not exert effective control over the people they hire to manage their affairs; if they want it done right they have to do it themselves. But in the case of heirs like the Waltons, this is not possible, they are not the old man, and even the old man may not have really been on top of things after they got beyond a certain size.

Ever heard of the Putt principle? It says in technology-orientated industries, people do not rise to their level of incompetence (Peter principle) as in ordinary hierarchies, but rather they rise beyond their level of incompetence so that the a inverse pyramid is set up, in which to most competent individuals occupy the bottom rungs of the firm (and do the work) while those at the very top are the least competent and either do nothing (if shareholders are lucky) or do something and so harm the company (if shareholders are unlucky). A company on its way up runs itself and all is good. At some point its initial idea/product etc that caused it success runs out and a crisis arises. Something has to be done. And the expectation is the financial clown in the corner office has to do something. So he does, typically an acquisition, merger, spin-off or some other financial operation, which more often than not gives a worse outcome than doing nothing. In this situation the board would be best served by hiring the janitor as CEO and have him make decisions using the Magic 8 ball. If the ball gets it right, then the janitor is kept on. if the ball gets it wrong the janitor is fired and they hire another one.

The company would make decisions that are, on average, as good or better than hiring an expensive CEO, and you could pay the janitor a lot less. But the optics of this look bad so instead they hire a CEO. Since many of the board members are themselves CEOs (of other companies) or executives (who might like to be CEOs) it is natural for them to believe that there is such a thing as CEO talent (as opposed to luck) because there is such a thing business talent and they would naturally believe that they must have it or they wouldn't be where they are.
Last edited by Mikebert; 04-15-2015 at 08:27 AM.







Post#275 at 04-15-2015 09:52 AM by '58 Flat [at Hardhat From Central Jersey joined Jul 2001 #posts 3,300]
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Are you buying the Democrats' little badger game; i.e. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, and now Bill de Blasio kvetching about Hillary from the left, to make Hillary appear "moderate"?

If you are buying it, as G. Gordon Liddy used to say on his '90s-era talk radio program:

Oh, ye suckers!
But maybe if the putative Robin Hoods stopped trying to take from law-abiding citizens and give to criminals, take from men and give to women, take from believers and give to anti-believers, take from citizens and give to "undocumented" immigrants, and take from heterosexuals and give to homosexuals, they might have a lot more success in taking from the rich and giving to everyone else.

Don't blame me - I'm a Baby Buster!
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