The New York Times made a great video about the Democrats. They always howl that the Republicans are in the way if they want to achieve their progressive goals.

The video has now watched how things are going in federal states where the Democrats can rule without a single Republican standing in the way.

Lo and behold, it is not the Republicans who stand in the way of a fairer distribution. It's the Democrats.

 haresfur wrote:

What is the GND? What exactly are the investing in, and how are the funds appropriated?
What record does the gov have in green investing?
The current bill is being bounced around, and appears the current strategy is its basically a frame, which will be filled in later...so more we need to pass it to understand it.

Sure, back in early 2020, we need to throw some $ around. But last summer (under both trump and biden), and now almost 2 years later?

Sorry to say, but most republicans are looking pretty reasonable given the democrats rush to get something done...which is also one of the biggest spending bills outside of the pandemic. 

 black321 wrote:
Is anybody in the Democratic Party pointing out that net taxes from a industrial sector x or y are what should matter rather than subsidies when comparing contributions to government revenues?  

These days, nothing greenfield gets done without subsidies.  Politicians of all leanings like to lift their hind leg and mark job creating projects so they can go back to the electorate and say "See?  I delivered!".   Both Canadian and American conservatives (sic) love sucking hard on the welfare state teat as long as their favourite causes are being supported.

Example.  There may very well be subsidies going to the fossil fuel sector that defy good public policy sense but the overall sector, in particular the exploration and production activities are paying significant net taxes to public treasuries.

I cannot say for sure but would guess that oil & gas exploration & production net taxes in Canada exceed most if not all other industrial activities.  

 haresfur wrote:
Another ancient myth.

1896: "There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it."

 black321 wrote:
There's our difference. I think the Green New Deal is a good start on the tax to invest front. And put up by the progressive wing. Too bad Biden just wanted a half-arsed public works program (as I understand it. I admit I don't know the details). But in any case, I don't think you can blame Biden for the failure of the plan. He's trying to get something through when Manchin and the Republicans hold all the cards.

Don't think you can judge by the covid situation, though. An economic crisis was avoided by throwing money around, but it is hard to design that type of program in the short term. A lot of our federal small business support went to big companies that were making a profit anyway. State government here has been doing a somewhat better job of haemorrhaging money to those who need it. You really need to look at what would make up a good long-term policy. 

BTW I do think government should be run like a business. By that I mean they should maximise their revenue by taxing business (and the rich) to the point just before it causes an economic downturn so that their revenue starts falling. The trouble is it is pretty hard to work that given the general economic fluctuations. Since they are supposedly in the business of working for the people, the system should be designed to minimise the tax burden on those that can least afford it and to provide value-added services and ecological outcomes. 

 haresfur wrote:

I believe even by Reagan's standards, trickle down was a s-t fix, which did work and get us out of an economic mess. It wasn't supposed to be l-t economic policy - once the economy balances, shift back the tax burden. But it became a GOP mantra.  Still, increasing taxes does impact growth...there's a fine balance to maximizing tax revenues. And for the record, I was for most of Biden's original tax changes. 

The fourth way is to grow yourself out of a deficit, but that will take growth of 4%+ over the next few decades. 

Tax your way to equality?  
Tax to redistribute? Maybe, there might some merit to this, if that's what the country wants...but what we've done over the past 18 months is akin to throwing $ out the window...completely shotgun approach that led for windfalls to many who didnt need it, while those who did are still suffering. 
Tax to invest? That's a better idea, but I dont see too many good ideas here. 

So bottom line...if you want to raise taxes, what is your plan for that $? How are you going to make the country better, because to date, it hasn't been working. 

And of course the deficit matters, as does interest rates...and those will eventually pop. 

 black321 wrote:

What makes you think that? The progressives have been losing to fear of over-taxation since Reagan. Same way they have been losing to fear of the deficit even though the debt has grown far faster under Republican presidencies than Democrats. There are three ways to get that under control. Roll back some of the Republican tax cuts on the rich, cut military spending, or inflation. Ok, the conservative Democrats argue that the economy can grow fast enough that the deficit doesn't matter but that still leaves the poor getting poorer under the current regime. There is ample evidence over the past 30 or so years that trickle down is a fraud.

 westslope wrote:

I'm skeptical that these investments will provide much of a real return.
And the progressives seem more interested in taxing as some type of revenge...and to build their political power. 

 black321 wrote:

From the same article:

The splits are reflected in the different ways Democrats describe their goals in passing the Biden agenda. The president, articulating the moderates’ views, describes a need to “invest in our people” to better compete in the great global struggle with China. Progressives describe a need to compel the wealthy and corporations to pay to address longstanding social inequities.

———————————————

Please note that these American self-styled progressives seem more interested in taxing the rich and corporations than actually helping the poor and low-income workers.  It is always nice to see American political actors sticking to US exceptionalism.   Must be hard to be smarter than everybody else on the planet including your own experts.

There is a sweet irony to this situation.   For years, American pundits have wrung their hands over complex coalition governments in European democracies that had embraced proportional representation.

Personally, I doubt proportional representation can be shoe-horned into the existing US presidential system.  But would loved to be proved wrong. 

Story applies just as much to the GOP, (excerpt from WSJ article)

The Forces Behind Biden’s Problems: Four Parties, Zero Trust

Faced with split in his party, president is stumbling as he tries to get his big domestic agenda passed

To understand the difficulty President Biden is having enacting his agenda, keep in mind a couple of simple numbers: four and zero.

Specifically, there are effectively four political parties in Washington right now. And there is zero trust among them.

That alignment creates an awfully rocky road, on which Mr. Biden is stumbling as he tries to get his big domestic agenda passed. It would be an exaggeration to say Washington is ungovernable under these conditions, but at the moment it more resembles a parliamentary system with power divided among multiple weak parties than the traditional American system of two strong parties straddling the spectrum.

The Democrats who (barely) control Congress will try this week to regroup and finally agree on a $1.85 trillion social-spending and climate bill, after multiple failed efforts. That agreement might—only might—allow for the House to pass a $1 trillion, bipartisan infrastructure plan that has been languishing there despite Mr. Biden’s repeated pleas to his own party to pass the darn thing.

This impasse exists because the Democratic Party today really is two parties: the progressive version of the party and the moderate version. This split is hardly new, but now the two sides are roughly equal in congressional strength and leverage. Rather than bringing the two sides together, this balance of power has laid bare their differing agendas and priorities and driven them apart, and Mr. Biden has failed to bridge the gap.

This split is mirrored on the other side of the aisle, where the Republican Party also effectively is split in two. There remains the traditionally conservative GOP, which many Republicans refer to as the “governing part of the party,” because it is interested in advancing its agenda through conventional governing channels. Its power now is at least offset, and probably eclipsed, by the populist, nationalist version of the Republican Party, which is animated more by cultural fights with the left than by traditional conservative policy goals. This part of the party often seems more interested in blowing up the system than working within it.

Left to their own devices, the moderate version of the Democratic Party and the governing part of the Republican Party would fight out big tax and spending questions, and perhaps come to some workable compromises. And indeed, that is what they did earlier this year on the bipartisan infrastructure plan.

But moderate Democrats and governing Republicans aren’t really in charge any more, and they can’t work their will when outflanked by progressives on the left and new-wave populists on the right.

Paid leave’s demise tough on backers in Manchin’s home state

 R_P wrote:
Pasted:  

Was it radical to be correct too soon? What gets called the left is often just ahead of the game, when it comes to human rights and environmental justice; the right is often denying the existence of the problem, whether it’s pesticides and toxic waste or domestic violence and child abuse.


Irony:   Freemarket loving economists and legal scholars argue that secure economic property rights are the key to great economic outcomes.  They are correct.  If you must, count me among the Chicago school style property rights economists.

The irony is that the political pressure for better rights typically comes from the so-called left and progressives, not conservative supporters of freemarket capitalism.

Unfortunately, 'conservatives' appear to often find racial, ethnic or other sectarian criteria to deny groups fundamental rights.    The 'right' to kill and take' is more often than not argued by so-called conservatives. The exception would be Neo-Zionist Democrats who support ethnic cleansing terrorism in the Holy Lands.  

On that note, all Americans who should identify as 'terrorists' will be super happy to know that Israel just gave the green light for another illegal settlement of 3,000 JEWS in the West Bank.   You have to admire the willingness of so many Americans to sacrifice the blood and treasure of their own for this glorious exercise in anti-Semitic violence. 

Americans don't need any of that extreme nonsense. Let's stick with the status quo.

 miamizsun wrote:

Hmm, i wonder if the GOP does a "better job" embracing the extremists.

Interesting discussion on the fractures within the democratic party. Most voters want populism, yet there is  the growing interests of the progressive, despite their yet inability to develop a compelling platform for the rest of the country...to fully define the new democratic culture.  I also disagree with his view that Biden being a populist is the reason his poll #s fell. It's because he's an ineffective leader, amidst increasingly divisive MSM.

Democrats are in deep trouble. While the party managed to take full control of government in 2020, Republicans are poised to return to power in Washington soon—beyond the losses that incumbent parties tend to suffer in midterm elections, Democrats are further endangered by the Electoral College’s current skew and the Senate’s worsening malapportionment.

But a biased interpretation of the polls isn’t necessarily a strategically incorrect one; the popularists argue that whatever we think about them and their politics, it is simply true that the Democratic Party needs to spend less time satisfying the whims of college-educated progressives and more time accommodating the voters who actually matter, given the structure of our federal system—the moderates and conservatives the party’s lost to the right. â€œIf you look inside the Democratic Party, there are three times more moderate or conservative nonwhite people than very liberal white people, but very liberal white people are infinitely more represented,” Shor told Klein in his interview. “That’s morally bad, but it also means eventually they’ll leave.”

Yglesias summarized the party’s strategic devolution since. “What’s changed is that Democrats went from being an urban-based diverse party that nonetheless tried pretty hard to pander to the views of rural white people in hopes of getting the votes of the poorer and less-religious among them, to becoming a party that decided it would be unnecessary or immoral to pander like that,”

https://newrepublic.com/articl...

 westslope wrote: 

 miamizsun wrote: 
They make that sausage bacon stuff now which stands to prove that it's all about packaging, marketing and merchandising. Whether its peeled belly skin or all for one money, You can present something eventually that is irresistible to the masses of pork fans sure to line up for it. Stack it up on a giant cathead and gomp on widdit...

/mustard

Five military veterans advising Sen. Sinema resign, calling her one of the 'principal obstacles to progress'

 Red_Dragon wrote:
The Democrats could win rural voters if they promoted comprehensive immigration reforms.  But urban elites are so used to giving away common property that, strictly speaking, does not belong to them that I doubt urban Democrats will see clear on this one.

Otherwise, reading the CSM article, I could not help but be struck by the parallels between the USA and .... Afghanistan.    Chew on that for a bit. 

 Red_Dragon wrote: 
both of the major parties have the same basic issues

extremists in their ranks disguised as tasty orwellian political bacon!

it may take them a little time, but the machine will turn them into sausage

bring your own biscuits...