sophie wrote: ↑Tue Aug 24, 2021 9:01 am
Interesting how STILL no one who admits to voting for Biden has responded to MangoMan.
I conclude that those of us who remain sane and socially gracious all seem to be those who did not vote for Biden. Where are those posters who heaped so much vitriole against us and That Other Candidate who shall remain nameless?
And, has anyone noticed that Biden's administration (and whoever is pulling his strings) is replicating the 1970s to an amazing degree? High crime, inflation/stagflation, and now an impending Middle East hostage crisis? The only missing piece is the gas shortage, but I expect that's next. They've been working on that one too, by shutting down US/North American oil production. The border crisis is there to add some extra spice.
I don't think this is intentional. It's just the predictable result of the standard Democratic playbook which has apparently not significantly changed since the 1960s: criminals need to be treated with sympathy and not punishment or restraint, fossil fuels are evil, tax and spend like there's no tomorrow, and the world loves us so much nothing bad can happen no matter what we do on foreign soil. I guess we'll see how long voters will put up with it.
I voted for Biden. He wasn't even first choice (or indeed even my sixth or seventh choice) among the Democrats but he was better than a Republican.
The reasons I voted for him (the issues of most concern to me) were:
1. Healthcare (in general). Biden was for building on the ACA and expanding and improving it. Trump (and indeed pretty much the entire GOP) want to get rid of it and replace it with what amounts to nothing (i.e. the pre-ACA status quo or worse) and tens of millions of uninsured Americans. The American Rescue Plan (championed by Biden and passed by a Dem majority House and Senate) expands ACA subsidies for the next two years and if the $3.5 trillion over the next ten years "human infrastructure" bill passes then hopefully the expanded ACA subsidies become permanent. Maybe eventually (although probably not in the near future) we might even get a public option "Medicare for All who want it" type of thing (hopefully with all payer rate setting as well)....but baby steps first, a more generous ACA is still good even if we never get any of the above. Given my absolute preference I'd actually prefer true single-paper Improved Medicare For All over an expanded ACA but half a loaf is better than no loaf at all.
2. COVID (in particular). Trump and most of the GOP don't seem to take COVID as seriously as it needs to be taken and approach it as a "muh freedom" issue rather than as the public health issue it is (and don't even get me started on anti-vaxxism which seems to be a big thing amongst a lot of the GOP base these days). Well, guess what....your freedom ends where everyone else's right not to risk being infected begins. At least Biden is 100% behind vaccination....the GOP....not so much.
3. Environment/global warming. Trump and the GOP would do nothing to solve this. Their solution always seems to "be burn more fossil fuels and to hell with the climate consequences". As relatively meager as the steps Biden and the Dems are taking in the infrastructure bill (and in related stuff like EV mandates and in accelerating higher CAFE standards) are, at least they're better than nothing.
4. Trying to lessen economic inequality. By being willing to increases taxes on the wealthy, by being in favor of things like higher minimum wages (albeit good luck getting that one through the Senate at the moment given the filibuster as it stands), union organizing, and a stakeholder model of capitalism vs just a pure shareholder one, at least Biden and (most) of the D's are standing up for average working Americans (I would also include appointing/reappointing people at Treasury and the Fed like Powell and Yellen.....we finally have a Fed and Treasury that are in favor of full employment even if it does bring a risk of a bit higher inflation.....rather than pissing their pants every time wages begin to show any strong sign of growth like the Fed has too many times done over the past forty or so years). Are Biden and the current Democrats perfect? No....but what they are offering beats the hell out of the supply-side trickle down crap from the GOP that hasn't worked for most working and middle class Americans for the past few decades. Would I go a lot farther if I was in charge as some kind of hypothetical absolute ruler? Yes....but I also realize Biden is
not any kind of king or dictator and that he has a very narrow majority in the House and virtually no majority in the Senate at all and that given thsi reality he's doing all he can.
5. Finally getting us out of Afghanistan and (hopefully) beginning to put an end to the "forever wars". I actually almost didn't include this one because to be fair I presume Trump (having already started the process in 2020) would have likely done so as well. Biden deserves credit, though, for not caving in to the whole "the world is ending" panic from hawks and neocons in the media when the Taliban beat the Afghan government more quickly than anyone expected and immediately sending in more American troops to try and "save" the situation. Afghanistan was an unwinnable quagmire and I for one am glad we're finally getting the hell out.
As for the rest of the stuff you mentioned.
Crime - Not really much of an issue for me. I have a carry permit and a pistol. Anyone tries to rob/assault/rape/murder me and they are getting shot.
Also, if we are so "soft on crime" and doing so results in supposedly soaring crime rates, how do you explain how, say, Scandinavia has lower violent crime rates than us despite sentences that are a fraction of ours and prisons that are so "soft" and non-harsh by American standards they are almost unbelievable to American eyes?
Inflation - Very little sign of a self-reinforcing 1970s style wage-margin-price spiral so far. Overall wage growth is actually slightly below inflation over the past 12 months. Productivity growth hasn't been bad either (unlike the stagflationary period from, say, late 1976 to 1982). Most inflation so far has been in the new and used auto sectors (which is largely due to more demand than supply and then supply can't fully ramp up thanks to a chip shortage....not much Biden can do about that in the immediate sense unless somehow he can build a time machine and go back to 2020 and tell automakers not to cancel/reduce all their chip orders because this time government and the central bank will actually do their damn jobs and thus the recovery won't be nearly as slow as the ones from the early 2000s and 2008-09 recession), in airline ticket and cruise prices (surging demand from all the people who weren't able to use these services in 2020....which will even itself out in a year or so...or maybe less than that if the delta variant keeps doing its thing like it has been), and fuel (there's a reason core inflation doesn't include highly volatile fuel and food prices). If after another, say, six/seven/eight months goes by and every major economic goods and services sector is showing inflation in the 5.5% or 6% or higher range y-o-y I'd be more worried but right now I'd say that inflation expectations remain relatively anchored long-term at between 2.2 and 2.5% (judging by the TIPS spread) per year on average.
"Tax and spend like there's no tomorrow" - As compared to the GOP's "borrow and spend like there's no tomorrow"? Every time the GOP gets a trifecta they always pass a bunch of tax cuts for their wealthy campaign contributors and they never care about trying to pay for them. The previous two Democratic administrations tried to be somewhat "fiscally responsible" and therefore scaled back their fiscal spending plans; Clinton--even after not getting his healthcare plan passed for reasons that had little to do with spending and thus in a situation where he should've had ample budgetary room given the post Cold War "peace dividend"--had to shelve most of his planned middle class tax cuts, cut Federal spending in several areas, hike motor fuel taxes (among other taxes), and altogether aim for almost $500 billion of deficit reduction over the next five years rather than run up the debt and deficit by spending on his party's priorities - and Obama only doing a $787 billion stimulus when an amount closer to $2 trillion would've been actually needed given the hole we were in vis-a-vis potential GDP vs actual GDP); I guess the Dems finally got tired of R hypocrisy on the whole "fiscal discipline" issue and said "screw it; if they can do it we can too".