US Politics V - now with 20% more echo chamber
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This is what I find so fascinating in US politics these days is that, really, polls mean nothing. Obviously in the 2016 Election they were meaningless, and due to many factors, social media, peer pressure, they may still mean nothing. There are probably many people who will still vote for Trump and never admit it to anyone because he is putting more money in their pocket. I don't know if there's really any way to predict anything with any certainty anymore.
OP
OP
Irvine511
Blue Crack Supplier
We are all not Donald Trump.
We all should run.
We all should run.
BVS
Blue Crack Supplier
I agree. It’s something I kept saying over and over last year; polling is dying, it means nothing. I got a lot of flak for it, but the means are just no longer there. Which eventually will prove to be a really good thing.
OP
OP
I'll give Nick this...
All of the things I put in Irvine's post are true, and were readily known before election day, in regards to our national embarrassment of a president.
And he still won.
The Rock, or A rock, should have beaten him.
Hillary wasn't a great candidate... Trump has easily verifiable ties with actual mobsters. And not just Russians, regular old Jersey casa nostra.
He admitted to sexual assault as a hobby.
He mocked a disabled reporter.
He made openly racist statements.
He probably didn't really want to win.
And he won.
Anyone should beat him. Literally anyone.
But anyone should have beaten him last time.
And sure, maybe Bernie could have won because "he wasn't Hillary." Fine.(don't give me the disenfranchised voter argument when it was just argued earlier that it was rich suburbanites that elected Trump). But Hillary isn't Trump. I don't like Hillary. I'd have loved to have voted for someone else (not Bernie)... but when faced with a choice between Trump and Hillary? Come on...
The thing that we can hang our hats on is turnout and fatigue (and the strong possibility that we never see a candidate Trump in 2020).
But this never should have happened to begin with.
He still won.
All of the things I put in Irvine's post are true, and were readily known before election day, in regards to our national embarrassment of a president.
And he still won.
The Rock, or A rock, should have beaten him.
Hillary wasn't a great candidate... Trump has easily verifiable ties with actual mobsters. And not just Russians, regular old Jersey casa nostra.
He admitted to sexual assault as a hobby.
He mocked a disabled reporter.
He made openly racist statements.
He probably didn't really want to win.
And he won.
Anyone should beat him. Literally anyone.
But anyone should have beaten him last time.
And sure, maybe Bernie could have won because "he wasn't Hillary." Fine.(don't give me the disenfranchised voter argument when it was just argued earlier that it was rich suburbanites that elected Trump). But Hillary isn't Trump. I don't like Hillary. I'd have loved to have voted for someone else (not Bernie)... but when faced with a choice between Trump and Hillary? Come on...
The thing that we can hang our hats on is turnout and fatigue (and the strong possibility that we never see a candidate Trump in 2020).
But this never should have happened to begin with.
He still won.
OP
OP
The polls weren't wrong, though.
We just don't know how to read them.
The polls closed to within the margin of error in the states that changed the election, and the popular vote matched the national polling.
Nate Silver himself warned that Trump has gotten close enough where it was unlikely but not impossible... and that's kinda what it was.
bono_212
Blue Crack Distributor
I feel like I'm losing my damn mind. Are we seriously talking about a celeb running for POTUS again?
monkeyskin
Refugee
corianderstem
Blue Crack Distributor
LuckyNumber7
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nbelcik
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Vlad n U 2
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From a family of Contras and proud of it, not much to admire there.
OP
OP
YOU get crazy pills! YOU get crazy pills! EVERYBODY gets crazy pills!!!
Nick66
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
As long as they never called anyone "girly."
PhilsFan
Blue Crack Addict
One of the worst Americans of all-time, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, is running for Senate! I can only hope his campaign manager will be Steven Seagal in a tank, operating from abroad due to his love for sex crimes.
It's part of why Clinton lost, she ran on eight years of Obama not realizing many people did not see any significant change during those eight years.
The economy is not good and has not been for a long time. Stock markets are doing well. But the vast majority of the American public have seen no improvement, and in many cases conditions worsening.
It's part of why Clinton lost, she ran on eight years of Obama not realizing many people did not see any significant change during those eight years.
DaveC
Blue Crack Addict
either you haven't looked at the actual numbers, or if you have you're ignoring them. you can't just flatly assert without evidence that "the vast majority of the american public has seen no improvement" when most of the statistics plainly show otherwise.
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PhilsFan
Blue Crack Addict
Most of the increases in jobs since the recession have been temporary ones, no? While Obamacare helped things, plenty of other areas of healthcare have gotten worse. College debt is larger than ever. An entire generation is priced out of the housing market. I'm not sure the old ways of looking at the economy and its sustainability apply any longer.
mama cass
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DaveC
Blue Crack Addict
are you just guessing here or do you have any actual statistics or evidence to back up these confident assertions or your claim that apparently economic science is no longer relevant?
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iron yuppie
ONE love, blood, life
Statistically there is no way around that wages for lower and middle class people are not growing at the same rate as other essential sectors of the economy, esp. housing and education, and actually have been hardly growing in real terms for decades now. Minimum wage for example should be around $19 right now had it kept up with inflation since its inception. There is merit to a lot of what PFan is saying.
Plenty of charts about this here:
http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
And yes the stock market is great right now, but a lot of people don't see any direct benefit from that, either.
http://news.gallup.com/poll/211052/stock-ownership-down-among-older-higher-income.aspx
Plenty of charts about this here:
http://www.epi.org/publication/charting-wage-stagnation/
And yes the stock market is great right now, but a lot of people don't see any direct benefit from that, either.
http://news.gallup.com/poll/211052/stock-ownership-down-among-older-higher-income.aspx
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Part of this though, and this will show more this year and next, as businesses are relieved of regulations, then competition will grow, which always improves products and services, and drives prices down. This will help low income and middle income earners.
Falsely inflating minimum wage never works. Minimum wage jobs were never meant to be careers if you can't live on it. That's where getting qualified for promotions or moving to a different employer is part of personal responsibility.
nbelcik
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Really? Show us some facts showing it's wrong.
It's Economics 101.
Let me guess, income redistribution is your plan??
iron yuppie
ONE love, blood, life
I think price level for everyday goods/services is a bit of a red herring here. A few dollars off a cell phone plan doesn't matter much when you're facing a 20k tuition bill or the 100s of dollars paid monthly to loans. Debt relief and prevention for young generations should be our number one economic priority right now. That's the first step in integrating more people into stocks and other investments that can help mitigate the wealth distribution problem.
I TOTALLY agree that student loan debt is ridiculous, but as a parent of three teenagers, on their way to adulthood, I understand that
1. Don't go to a college you can't afford.
2. Get a degree in something useful, that you can get a job in.
3. You don't HAVE to go to college to get a good job or make decent money.
4. Tuition will go down if people stop taking out massive loans that they can't pay back and enrollment at these schools go down.
Again, these are personal responsibility decisions, and no one should be FORCED to pay for someone else's student loan bills.
Moonlit_Angel
Blue Crack Addict
Yeah, no.
My mom has worked in both office and retail jobs throughout her life. She has plenty of office experience, and when she worked retail, she was an assistant manager at some stores. She worked many different areas of retail, too, so she had a variety of experience. She didn't go to college after high school, but back when I was a little kid, i do remember her taking a few night classes at a local community college to help further her office experience back then, which was certainly beneficial.
When we lived in South Dakota back in 2009, she tried to apply to both office and retail jobs. She had a nice, full resume of decades of work, she's a hard worker, she put in the time and effort at the jobs she's had over the years, all that good stuff. Know what the only job she was able to get was? A minimum wage job at Target. She kept getting rejected from a lot of jobs because she was too "over-qualified" for a lot of positions.
The fact is that nowadays, unless you can afford to go to college and get a degree (and I'm not even talking some fancy, super expensive college, either, just general college classes), your job opportunities in some towns, especially in smaller ones, are narrow. You may HAVE to take a minimum wage job because that's the only type of job that will hire you. Moving to a different employer may not be as easy an option, for all sorts of reasons. People working minimum wage jobs for a living aren't doing so because they lack the "personal responsibility" to go elsewhere or get promoted, so let's stop with that belief right there. They do that kind of work because it's the only type of job that's available to them (not everyone lives in a big city with lots of job opportunities, after all), or the only sort that will bother to hire them.
And as for promotions, yeah, that's a great idea...except some jobs will promote people based less off of their actual job performance and more off the fact that they happen to kiss up to the owners, or they know somebody/are related to somebody in the business. I remember my dad telling stories about that happening when he worked in radio. And I know it's the case for many other types of jobs in this town as well.
Minimum wage jobs may have been a fun after school type of job for high school kids back in the day, but nowadays, they're pretty much the only option some people have to make any sort of a living at all. So yes, in that case, we either need to allow for more opportunities for people to get jobs that aren't minimum wage, or we need to make the minimum wage jobs pay enough for people to at least pay the basics-food, bills, heat, and the like.
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Nick66
Rock n' Roll Doggie ALL ACCESS
The minimum wage is interesting as a political issue. Raising it is mostly popular, and it often wins when put to a referendum.
But as much as Democrats harp on it, I don't think it's a very good election issue, and I don't believe it's something that gets people out to vote. It consistently ranks low in exit polling on the issues that decided people's vote.
And that's because people want to be inspired to vote...for big programs, big ideals, etc. That's something Bernie realised and tapped into. But even for people who rely on the minimum wage, the notion of earring an extra dollar or two per hour hasn't proven to be a motivator to get people to the polls. Young people, who occupy the majority of minimum wage jobs, don't think of themselves as minimum wage workers...they just think they're temporarily stuck in a minimum wage job. The promise of a better job and brighter financial future is a much bigger motivator than the minimum wage. People want to be inspired, and there's little inspirational about maybe there will be a dollar or two raise in the minimum wage, sometime down the line, if only you vote for x.
It think there were a couple elections in the 2006 cycle the hinged on the minimum wage, but that's about it.
He's not (I got tested after).
But as much as Democrats harp on it, I don't think it's a very good election issue, and I don't believe it's something that gets people out to vote. It consistently ranks low in exit polling on the issues that decided people's vote.
And that's because people want to be inspired to vote...for big programs, big ideals, etc. That's something Bernie realised and tapped into. But even for people who rely on the minimum wage, the notion of earring an extra dollar or two per hour hasn't proven to be a motivator to get people to the polls. Young people, who occupy the majority of minimum wage jobs, don't think of themselves as minimum wage workers...they just think they're temporarily stuck in a minimum wage job. The promise of a better job and brighter financial future is a much bigger motivator than the minimum wage. People want to be inspired, and there's little inspirational about maybe there will be a dollar or two raise in the minimum wage, sometime down the line, if only you vote for x.
It think there were a couple elections in the 2006 cycle the hinged on the minimum wage, but that's about it.
I guess Matt Damon is contagious.
He's not (I got tested after).
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