2016 USA Presidential election thread I: The warm-up

[Quicklet]

I would encourage people to watch Fareed Zakaria's GPS or read his Washington Post opinion pieces. He explicitly details how the US as economic power isn't being "killed" by China, Japan, or Mexico like Trump constantly mentions, but quite the contrary -- we are killing them (and by extension the EU as well) when it comes to the economy, especially in a 2008 post crisis market.

As much as his show is one of the less flashy and more substantive pieces of the Sunday talk circuit, it's hard to take him seriously when he's been documented to be a serial plagiarizer.

Meanwhile, GOP Florida state representative is caught on tape suggesting to redistrict a Democratic U.S. representative's district in such a way to include a higher prison population.

“It's a perfect storm," Adkins said on the audio recording. "You draw it in such a fashion so perhaps, a majority, or maybe not a majority, but a number of them will live in the prisons, thereby not being able to vote."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckrak...gerrymandering

[Sho]

As much as his show is one of the less flashy and more substantive pieces of the Sunday talk circuit, it's hard to take him seriously when he's been documented to be a serial plagiarizer.

I don't follow this line of logic. Even if he's plagiarizing, shouldn't that serve to justify the facts as correct? Lets say he does in fact lift a lot of his information from others -- do you think he would re-purpose the facts without any consideration for fact checking at all? I'm not condoning plagiarism, just looking at it all objectively. The opinion pieces in particular that I was talking about is conceived from data that is readily available for anyone to view if they want to. Plagiarism comes in when we view how the facts are presented in this case.

[Thunder]

I would encourage people to watch Fareed Zakaria's GPS or read his Washington Post opinion pieces. He explicitly details how the US as economic power isn't being "killed" by China, Japan, or Mexico like Trump constantly mentions, but quite the contrary -- we are killing them (and by extension the EU as well) when it comes to the economy, especially in a 2008 post crisis market.

Can you link a particular clip/blog/post/etc? There's a lot out there and I just stumbled upon the worst website ever. 7 videos started autoplaying on the longest page ever, that GPS website is retarded

[Sho]

Can you link a particular clip/blog/post/etc? There's a lot out there and I just stumbled upon the worst website ever. 7 videos started autoplaying on the longest page ever, that GPS website is retarded

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...679_story.html

http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2015/09...on-inv-ctn.cnn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyi-3p06U-I

[archibaldcrane]

That's nice that global poverty is getting better, but most people who are bitching about the status of our economy don't give a single solitary fuck about the rest of the world. If you think AMERICANS are doing better now than they were in the 1960's, you're out of your goddamn mind.

By what measures do you think Americans are doing worse? Serious question.

[Andalusian girls]

That's nice that global poverty is getting better, but most people who are bitching about the status of our economy don't give a single solitary fuck about the rest of the world. If you think AMERICANS are doing better now than they were in the 1960's, you're out of your goddamn mind.

better in almost every significant measure. the official poverty rate in America has declined 7-8% since 1960, median & mean inflation-adjusted annual income per capita has improved for every quintile, and the population has achieved an unprecedented level of education. not to mention the tremendous cultural advances from marriage equality to legalized abortion to the end of segregation

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/w...n-five-charts/

http://www.advisorperspectives.com/d...stribution.php

http://www.pewresearch.org/daily-num...n-ever-before/

[archibaldcrane]

But we have way more college debt now!

(of course, in 1965 fewer than 10% of Americans had college degrees, now over 30% do)

[Marootsoobutsu]

That's nice that global poverty is getting better, but most people who are bitching about the status of our economy don't give a single solitary fuck about the rest of the world. If you think AMERICANS are doing better now than they were in the 1960's, you're out of your goddamn mind.

Fewer Americans are in poverty, and the definition of poverty now has some pretty high lows. Americans work fewer hours today. Americans have cheaper access to leisure. Our economy is stronger now, and our purchasing power is higher now than it was then, on average. Fewer of our billionaires are inherited-wealth, and more entrepreneurs. The rights of blacks and the support of women are so different now vs. the 1960s, you're psychotic if you think it's not an absolute improvement of opportunity and real experience. Americans biggest fears right now are "they might some day become scary"-- we are not living in anything like the shadow of the Soviet Union. Our economy is more diverse, more powerful, and more stable than at any point in the 1960s. We have nothing like a Viet Nam, or anything like it looming. We live longer than in the 1960s. We have substantially less crime than in the 1960s. We have more government transparency than in the 1960s. We have more freedom of speech than in the 1960s. We have better access to education-- black, white, everyone-- than we did in the 1960s. We have better (though admittedly not cheaper) health care. We have safer cars, with better mileage. We have cheaper (yes, cheaper), gas. We have better care of the environment, less smog, more parks. I legitimately struggle to find any way in which America is worse off now than it was in the 1960s, except maybe in its music.

If you think we're worse off now than we were in the 1960s, you're delusional or flat-out ignorant of history. The 1960s is a particularly awful decade to pick-- it was one of the most turbulent, violent, and disruptive decades in American history; we're still trying to recover from it.

[archibaldcrane]

I mean fuck in '65 half a million people were catching measles per year.

Measles.

[Andalusian girls]

hey, rap today is a lot better than it was in the 1960s

[archibaldcrane]

But the MRIs and CAT scans and smartphones are so much more expensive now!

[Marootsoobutsu]

hey, rap today is a lot better than it was in the 1960s

There wasn't really any rap in the 1960s, and I know some folks who would call that a net improvement over now.

[notorious bum]

Nobody is denying that progress has been made in various metrics, that's not the point I was trying to make, but I'm not one of those utopian assholes, so it's not worth delving into further.

Have a Bernie update: Boston rally with Bernie Sanders, announced yesterday, now has 7,800 RSVPs. Is Bernie a Patriots fan?

[Sho]

hey, rap today is a lot better than it was in the 1970s

Gat damn lol so hard. Fixed for accuracy.

[Thunder]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opini...679_story.html

http://www.cnn.com/videos/us/2015/09...on-inv-ctn.cnn

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyi-3p06U-I

what do you think of this dude's comments? http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/22/schif...ut-stocks.html

Other videos of the guy talk about China suppressing its currency by buying american bonds, has 4 trillion in reserves. Which is kinda the opposite of what your links say how beijings's racked up debt and we're "beating" them because of it.

His message is the economy is a propped up "fake" economy. Says the fed is printing more and more money to buy bonds so that countries/banks can continue to lend us money to buy things. More by him:

So, the reason that we’re having this real recession under this phony recovery is because the Fed won’t allow the recession to run its natural course, because the recession is kind of like a detox. It’s what’s necessary to make the economy healthy, to allow a restructuring that would facilitate legitimate economic growth. But instead of that happening, we just inflate financial bubbles. And superficially it looks like things are getting better, because the stock market goes up. The real estate market goes up, and there’s some increased spending as a result of all the extra borrowing, but all that is actually hurting the economy. But if we’re gonna allow the recession to run its course, then debt is gonna be defaulted on, because there’s no way around it.

I mean, if the government allowed the recession, banks would fail. People would default on their debts because they couldn’t pay the interest, let alone the principal, but that is more healthy. Allowing that natural, free-market restructuring, that process is healthier and more conducive to a return to legitimate growth than what the Fed is doing. Than trying to prevent that through inflation, through printing money and quantitative easing and zero-percent interest rates. But the Fed is going to continue to fight this battle until it loses the war, and that means the dollar collapses. And I think that’s ultimately where we’re headed.

Another way I understand it is, raising the price of assets to then borrow against those more expensive assets =/= economic growth

[Quicklet]

I don't follow this line of logic. Even if he's plagiarizing, shouldn't that serve to justify the facts as correct? Lets say he does in fact lift a lot of his information from others -- do you think he would re-purpose the facts without any consideration for fact checking at all? I'm not condoning plagiarism, just looking at it all objectively. The opinion pieces in particular that I was talking about is conceived from data that is readily available for anyone to view if they want to. Plagiarism comes in when we view how the facts are presented in this case.

The problem isn't necessarily over whether or not the facts are correct or not. It's that repackaging other people's work in slightly different wording and not giving them credit is sketchy behavior for a professional and shouldn't be acceptable. Even middle of the road intellectuals have a narrative they're pushing, and it's important to throw an extra heaping of skepticism on those who have a history of passing off others' work as their own.

With regard to the economic discussion going on, most Americans are better off than in the 1960s but probably about the same or slightly worse than the 1990s/2000s. Middle-class real wages have stagnated while the cost of essential goods (food, housing, health care, education) has outpaced. Cheap electronics are nice but they're not a good measure of financial success for a family.

[archibaldcrane]

what do you think of this dude's comments? http://www.cnbc.com/2015/09/22/schif...ut-stocks.html

Other videos of the guy talk about China suppressing its currency by buying american bonds, has 4 trillion in reserves. Which is kinda the opposite of what your links say how beijings's racked up debt and we're "beating" them because of it.

His message is the economy is a propped up "fake" economy. Says the fed is printing more and more money to buy bonds so that countries/banks can continue to lend us money to buy things. More by him:

Another way I understand it is, raising the price of assets to then borrow against those more expensive assets =/= economic growth

His argument that this is a "natural" recession is wrong from the jump. '08-'09 wasn't a simple "business cycle" recession, it had a very specific cause that wasn't related to normal economic factors - and suggesting that we should "let it run it's course" is silly. This wasn't a common cold, it was a car crash. Complaints about easy money and the like have been going on for most of the past decade - "inflation is right around the corner, the dollar will collapse!" and it continues to be completely untrue. The Fed is still hawkishly eyeing inflation, unemployment and GDP growth for any sign that it's finally ok to raise rates, but it hasn't done so because those signs of good growth and even moderate inflation are simply not there yet - and when they show up, rates will increase. Arguing for rate increases before then is patently ridiculous. Quantitative easing has been over for more than a year now too, so complaining about that ruining everything is, uh, no?

[notorious bum]

If you guys ever want a good laugh and some financial news to go with, The Keiser Report is where it's at.

[Thunder]

His argument that this is a "natural" recession is wrong from the jump. '08-'09 wasn't a simple "business cycle" recession, it had a very specific cause that wasn't related to normal economic factors - and suggesting that we should "let it run it's course" is silly. This wasn't a common cold, it was a car crash. Complaints about easy money and the like have been going on for most of the past decade - "inflation is right around the corner, the dollar will collapse!" and it continues to be completely untrue. The Fed is still hawkishly eyeing inflation, unemployment and GDP growth for any sign that it's finally ok to raise rates, but it hasn't done so because those signs of good growth and even moderate inflation are simply not there yet - and when they show up, rates will increase. Arguing for rate increases before then is patently ridiculous. Quantitative easing has been over for more than a year now too, so complaining about that ruining everything is, uh, no?

he doesn't call 2008 a natural recession. Says it was caused by much of the same thing, low interest rates and letting people borrow as much as possible - raising real estate prices because of it. Afaik he says the "natural" bit of the recession started 2001 and got propped up by the fed & bush jr who neither wanted a recession during their term

[Sho]

The problem isn't necessarily over whether or not the facts are correct or not. It's that repackaging other people's work in slightly different wording and not giving them credit is sketchy behavior for a professional and shouldn't be acceptable. Even middle of the road intellectuals have a narrative they're pushing, and it's important to throw an extra heaping of skepticism on those who have a history of passing off others' work as their own.

I still cant go with line of thinking, but only because I wanted to go as far as the facts themselves, which all passed the smell test. The facts are what matters, not Fareed's actions of plagiarism. We can be skeptical yes, but it doesn't take away from whats factual.