American Political Policy Discussion Thread

[History Learner]

So we've had a spate of threads that overall revolve around political policy recently, which has spurred me to want to create a general catch all thread with this topic in mind; it'd be a lot easier than one thread per every policy paper, idea, or such lol. Ideally, I would like to see this thread used to post policy white papers/books, suggestions/news articles related to policy ideas and, most of all, good debate and advocacy for policy prescriptions. Some example topics could be:

• Healthcare (Universal Healthcare or reforms to the current system?)
• Foreign Policy (Global strategy for the United States, military funding, trade policy)
• Welfare Reform/Expansion (Negative Income Tax, Social Security reform?)
• Compensation, particularly things like the minimum wage and benefits
• Political Reform (More Supreme Court Justices? Fewer? How about Citizens United?)

Some tangential things will most likely get brought up and can be useful in discussing topics; by this I mean polling on policy and things like voter demographics. For an idea of what I mean, consider this recent article by UnHeard:

That, at least, is the implication of a new report from the Pew Research Center. According to its findings, the Democrats are divided by cultural issues such as critical race theory — look at how many of them flocked to Glenn Youngkin in Virginia — while the GOP are split over economic questions. Indeed, it’s all too easy to forget that an important minority of Democratic voters is patriotic, worried about cancel culture, and wants border control and strong policing. Likewise, a significant bloc of Republican voters is sceptical of banks and large corporations and wants them to pay higher taxes.​

​

These observations echo the analyses of David Shor, Michael Lind, Lee Drutman and others: that the median voter leans Left on the economy and Right on culture. The serious challenge for both parties, then, is whether they can resist influential factions in their respective parties: for the Democrats, that’s the AOC-Elizabeth Warren progressive caucus; for the Republicans, the Paul Ryan-Mitch McConnell corporate tax-cut wing.​

Ultimately, however, the main focus should always be on policy. With all that said, I hope we all enjoy this thread and perhaps learn a thing or two.

 

[Cherico]

• Healthcare (Universal Healthcare or reforms to the current system?)
• Foreign Policy (Global strategy for the United States, military funding, trade policy)
• Welfare Reform/Expansion (Negative Income Tax, Social Security reform?)
• Compensation, particularly things like the minimum wage and benefits
• Political Reform (More Supreme Court Justices? Fewer? How about Citizens United?)

1. should be handled at a state or local level first doing it on a natioanl level is a mistake because the whole point of having 50 states is to let people experiment to find out what works best. Forcing a one size fits all system upon a continant sized country is a mistake.

2. Complicated...the outside world changes constantly I guess we should be flexible and adapt with the changes beyond that we need to deal with countries on a case by case basis.

3. The welfair state as is, is a complete mess that does more to create generational poverity then it does to solve it.

4. This should be handled at the local and state level.

5. stacking the court would end in complete disaster and set us up for civil war.

 

[ShadowsOfParadox]

3 actually has a funny story attached to it.

Way back, President Nixon went "The Welfare system is too damn expensive, we should replace all this bureaucracy with just giving every citizen some amount of money, that way we'd SAVE money and have functional welfare, everyone wins!"

It never went to vote, the Republicans thought it was too left wing and the Democrats were sure Nixon had laid a trap in it somewhere.

 

[History Learner]

3 actually has a funny story attached to it.

Way back, President Nixon went "The Welfare system is too damn expensive, we should replace all this bureaucracy with just giving every citizen some amount of money, that way we'd SAVE money and have functional welfare, everyone wins!"

It never went to vote, the Republicans thought it was too left wing and the Democrats were sure Nixon had laid a trap in it somewhere.

Are you referring to the ill-named Family Assistance Plan (FAP)? That was basically a targeted Negative Income Tax (NIT) and I fully support those; it's just a solid program idea. Here's an excellent article on it by Vox, and here's a chart from it which really underlines the value:

To quote from the article itself:

In an absolute must-read paper for anyone interested in the basic income debate, the University of Michigan’s Jessica Wiederspan, Elizabeth Rhodes, and Luke Shaefer estimated the cost of the US adopting a negative income tax large enough to wipe out poverty. To be conservative and get a high-end cost estimate, they assume that such a program would discourage work substantially.​

​

Despite that, they find that a household-based negative income tax, set at the US poverty line and with a 50 percent phaseout rate, would cost $219 billion a year. That’s almost exactly the same as the combined cost of the earned income tax credit (which supports the working poor), Supplemental Security Income (itself basically a negative income tax but only for the elderly and disabled), food stamps, cash welfare, school meal programs, and housing subsidies. You could swap those programs out, put a guaranteed income in their place, and wipe out poverty entirely.​

 

[LordsFire]

Snip.

Unless you're going to pay for the 45 dollars that site wants for people to read the article, citing it here is meaningless at best.

 

[History Learner]

Unless you're going to pay for the 45 dollars that site wants for people to read the article, citing it here is meaningless at best.

The Vox article is free?

 

[LordsFire]

The Vox article is free?

Ah, I missed that line was you citing Vox.

They're still citing a paper behind a paywall as the evidence for their claim.

 

[Bear Ribs]

The Vox article is free?

I don't know anything about this specific situation by my experience has been not to trust news articles citing scientific papers unless I can see the actual science.

 

[ShadowsOfParadox]

I don't know anything about this specific situation by my experience has been not to trust news articles citing scientific papers unless I can see the actual science.

My own experience is that you can't trust the news media period. They can kind of vaguely point in the direction of "something important" but you REALLY wanna do your own research before making conclusions.

 

[Terthna]

My own experience is that you can't trust the news media period. They can kind of vaguely point in the direction of "something important" but you REALLY wanna do your own research before making conclusions.

That's even before you take into account all the propaganda they push.

 

[History Learner]

Ah, I missed that line was you citing Vox.

They're still citing a paper behind a paywall as the evidence for their claim.

The article is linked to and the abstract is provided. Being skeptical of media is fine, but I think this is a bit much; the Ford School praised the reporting, for example.

 

[LordsFire]

The article is linked to and the abstract is provided. Being skeptical of media is fine, but I think this is a bit much.

I took another look through the article, and as with all leftist fantasies, I saw no mention of potential social downsides or drawbacks to this. Just 'we could afford to pay for this if we were willing to stick it to the rich.' Like all leftism, it's ignorant of basic human psychology.

Also, it's Vox. I'm humoring you by bothering with something posted on that site at all.

 

[History Learner]

I took another look through the article, and as with all leftist fantasies, I saw no mention of potential social downsides or drawbacks to this. Just 'we could afford to pay for this if we were willing to stick it to the rich.' Like all leftism, it's ignorant of basic human psychology.

Then you didn't actually read it and are simply being contrarian at best:

In an absolute must-read paper for anyone interested in the basic income debate, the University of Michigan’s Jessica Wiederspan, Elizabeth Rhodes, and Luke Shaefer estimated the cost of the US adopting a negative income tax large enough to wipe out poverty. To be conservative and get a high-end cost estimate, they assume that such a program would discourage work substantially.​

​

Despite that, they find that a household-based negative income tax, set at the US poverty line and with a 50 percent phaseout rate, would cost $219 billion a year. That’s almost exactly the same as the combined cost of the earned income tax credit (which supports the working poor), Supplemental Security Income (itself basically a negative income tax but only for the elderly and disabled), food stamps, cash welfare, school meal programs, and housing subsidies. You could swap those programs out, put a guaranteed income in their place, and wipe out poverty entirely.​

They did assume, for the sake of being conservative, a prossible drawback in the form of reduced work by recipients; that's why in the table they factor in a 12.5% reduction. Further, they didn't even propose tax increases but rather converting existing funding for social programs into this. You might find it useful in the future to not engage in knee jerk reactions. Clearly you're a fan of Thomas Sowell, as evidenced by our interactions in the other thread; you might want to read up on how Milton Friedman was all in favor of NITs.

Also, it's Vox. I'm humoring you by bothering with something posted on that site at all.

You're under no obligation to post in this thread, dude.

 

[LordsFire]

Then you didn't actually read it and are simply being contrarian at best:

In an absolute must-read paper for anyone interested in the basic income debate, the University of Michigan’s Jessica Wiederspan, Elizabeth Rhodes, and Luke Shaefer estimated the cost of the US adopting a negative income tax large enough to wipe out poverty. To be conservative and get a high-end cost estimate, they assume that such a program would discourage work substantially.​

​

Despite that, they find that a household-based negative income tax, set at the US poverty line and with a 50 percent phaseout rate, would cost $219 billion a year. That’s almost exactly the same as the combined cost of the earned income tax credit (which supports the working poor), Supplemental Security Income (itself basically a negative income tax but only for the elderly and disabled), food stamps, cash welfare, school meal programs, and housing subsidies. You could swap those programs out, put a guaranteed income in their place, and wipe out poverty entirely.​

They did assume, for the sake of being conservative, a protentional drawback in the form of reduced work by recipients; that's why in the table they factor in a 12.5% reduction. Further, they didn't even propose tax increases but rather converting existing funding for social programs into this. You might find it useful in the future to not engage in knee jerk reactions. Clearly you're a fan of Thomas Sowell, as evidenced by our interactions in the other thread; you might want to read up on how Milton Friedman was all in favor of NITs.



You're under no obligation to post in this thread, dude.

They claim to be able to 'wipe out poverty,' which is definitionally a pie-in-the-sky dream.

They also fail to account for how government-funded living tends to not just result in reduced incentive to work, but things like higher crime rates, more casual property destruction, higher rates of single parenthood, which knock on into all sorts of things.

'We assumed 12.5% reduction in work' does not cut it. Even if that was the only factor, does the Vox article cover the means by which they came to 12.5%, or is that behind the paywall?

 

[History Learner]

They claim to be able to 'wipe out poverty,' which is definitionally a pie-in-the-sky dream.

Based on what? Let's run through this since it's obvious you don't understand what you're even talking about; what defines poverty? Would you agree it is through living below the Federal Poverty line or would you use another metric?

They also fail to account for how government-funded living tends to not just result in reduced incentive to work, but things like higher crime rates, more casual property destruction, higher rates of single parenthood, which knock on into all sorts of things.

...to be blunt, you're being deliberately obtuse here in order to "own the libs". In your very next point you concede they assumed a 12.5% reduction in work, but then here say they failed to do so; be consistent here and admit you're wrong at best or lying at worst.

'We assumed 12.5% reduction in work' does not cut it. Even if that was the only factor, does the Vox article cover the means by which they came to 12.5%, or is that behind the paywall?

They assumed that receiving the benefit would discourage over all work by 12.5%, why does that not cut it? For someone very clearly in the "facts don't care about your feelings" school of thought, it's remarkable how unwilling you are to engage in facts and engage in knee jerk emotional responses.

 

[strunkenwhite]

...to be blunt, you're being deliberately obtuse here in order to "own the libs". In your very next point you concede they assumed a 12.5% reduction in work, but then here say they failed to do so; be consistent here and admit you're wrong at best or lying at worst.

Sorry, but "they fail to account for how thing causes not just A but also B, C, and D" is consistent with admitting they accounted for A given reasonably charitable interpretation; that is, "they failed to account for B, C, and D when they accounted for A". But I do not know LordsFire's mind.

 

[ShadowsOfParadox]

They also fail to account for how government-funded living tends to not just result in reduced incentive to work, but things like higher crime rates, more casual property destruction, higher rates of single parenthood, which knock on into all sorts of things.

Is this true for the Alaska Oil Dividend? Or is this associated with Government spending on specifically single mothers thereby encouraging single motherhood and all the problems that come with a lack of two parents in the house. Or maybe it's true for the current "Welfare Ceiling" method, but the point of a NIT or UBI is that it creates a "Welfare Floor" instead.

If you don't know what I mean by saying "Welfare Ceiling", the way Welfare currently works, if you are the sort of person who, while on welfare, wants to get into a position where you can get off it, and you find yourself nearly there, you suddenly hit a wall, where your next raise would take you off welfare, but not make up for what you lose by getting off welfare, creating a perverse incentive unless you can get a massive leap in wages. With NIT or UBI these incentives don't exist, with NIT because they slowly drop until they are gone, so at no point are you facing jumping off a cliff, and with UBI because UBI never actually changes.

 

[LordsFire]

Based on what? Let's run through this since it's obvious you don't understand what you're even talking about; what defines poverty? Would you agree it is through living below the Federal Poverty line or would you use another metric?

The numeric definition of 'poverty' in the US has changed multiple times over the decades, and not just to keep with inflation. It's something a bureaucrat somewhere picks.

The formal definition the government uses isn't relevant though, because the root cause of the concept of poverty is not something any government policy can wipe out.

Why?

Because the root cause is humans making bad decisions.

People can be given a government check that's enough to comfortably but not luxuriously house and feed them, and some percentage of them will waste the money on 'hookers and blow,' and end up homeless. Heroin, Cocaine, Meth, gambling, alcohol, just foolish spending habits, there's a million things people will waste their money on.

There are reasons that programs to specifically subsidize housing or food were implemented, and I can tell you from both statistical analysis and personal experience that the vast, vast majority of people who are in actual poverty (especially those who are there chronically) are there because of their own bad decisions.

Throwing more money at people won't solve the problem. If it was going to, it would have done so decades ago.

I don't support government welfare at all, but if we must have it, I prefer targeted things like a specific housing subsidy or food stamps; those are harder to turn into drug and booze money. Not that people don't (food stamps are notoriously traded at 2:1 or worse ratios for actual cash), but it's at least harder.

 

[Bear Ribs]

Is this true for the Alaska Oil Dividend? Or is this associated with Government spending on specifically single mothers thereby encouraging single motherhood and all the problems that come with a lack of two parents in the house. Or maybe it's true for the current "Welfare Ceiling" method, but the point of a NIT or UBI is that it creates a "Welfare Floor" instead.

I suspect there are other factors involved to be sure, but Alaska's crime rates are legendarily high for the US so mentioning their dividend supports @LordsFire's position about raising crime rather well.

Alaska Crime Rates and Statistics - NeighborhoodScout

Detailed crime rates and statistics information from cities within Alaska. Find the top 10 safest places to live in AK.

www.neighborhoodscout.com

 

[ShadowsOfParadox]

...Yeah, Imma need something more in depth than that to say "Alaska has a crime problem", because Alaska is low enough population that I wouldn't be surprised to learn it's literally all one neighbourhood.

EDIT: oh wait... that map makes it look like it's basically two areas right next to each other... hmmm...