Hyperpartisanship is threatening to destroy our country

[southsider2k5]

How much does campaign financing and media coverage influence or even overwhelm what "the public" wants, though? The debt ceiling deal certainly doesn't match what polling indicated, and I'm pretty sure there was overwhelming support for substantial financial regulation reform, investigation and prosecution.

 

What would public support be for doubling, tripling, or more basic consumer goods prices to push them into line with American labor costs? I don't think you need much media coverage to know that answer. If nothing else watch people's reaction with the price of gasoline.

[Balta1701]

How much does campaign financing and media coverage influence or even overwhelm what "the public" wants, though? The debt ceiling deal certainly doesn't match what polling indicated, and I'm pretty sure there was overwhelming support for substantial financial regulation reform, investigation and prosecution.

If you poll on the trade deficit, significant majorities of Americans think that the trade deficit is a bad thing. However, the debt ceiling vote is basically a vote to maintain a high trade deficit, since that's a net result of strong dollar/low interest rate policies and the lack of investment in alternative energy.

[Balta1701]

What would public support be for doubling, tripling, or more basic consumer goods prices to push them into line with American labor costs? I don't think you need much media coverage to know that answer. If nothing else watch people's reaction with the price of gasoline.

The price of gasoline has gone up by a factor of what, 5 in the last 12 years, and yet we still can't get a reasonable domestic energy policy crafted.

[Y2HH]

The price of gasoline has gone up by a factor of what, 5 in the last 12 years, and yet we still can't get a reasonable domestic energy policy crafted.

 

Strengthen the dollar the gas falls. It's really that simple. We have the weakest dollar of all time...high gas prices should be expected.

[southsider2k5]

Strengthen the dollar the gas falls. It's really that simple. We have the weakest dollar of all time...high gas prices should be expected.

 

Hey look, government policy at work!

[southsider2k5]

If you poll on the trade deficit, significant majorities of Americans think that the trade deficit is a bad thing. However, the debt ceiling vote is basically a vote to maintain a high trade deficit, since that's a net result of strong dollar/low interest rate policies and the lack of investment in alternative energy.

 

Now ask them if they are willing to give up cheap goods to close the deficit, and how much more they are willing to spend to buy American.

[Balta1701]

Strengthen the dollar the gas falls. It's really that simple. We have the weakest dollar of all time...high gas prices should be expected.

Weaken the economy and gas prices fall also.

[Jenksismyhero]

Weaken the economy and gas prices fall also.

 

Um, have you been alive from 2008-2011?

 

[Balta1701]

Um, have you been alive from 2008-2011?

Yeah. The economy collapsed in 2008 and by December 2008 I was paying $1.75 a gallon.

 

The price of oil moves a lot more based on expected demand than on the dollar.

[Jenksismyhero]

Yeah. The economy collapsed in 2008 and by December 2008 I was paying $1.75 a gallon.

 

The price of oil moves a lot more based on expected demand than on the dollar.

 

And by mid 2009 you're back up to pre-crash levels. It was a temporary drop. We're still in a depressed economy and are now paying more for gas than at anytime in the last decade.

 

[StrangeSox]

Strengthen the dollar the gas falls. It's really that simple. We have the weakest dollar of all time...high gas prices should be expected.

 

We're actually a little above where we were in the Spring of 2008.

[Y2HH]

Yeah. The economy collapsed in 2008 and by December 2008 I was paying $1.75 a gallon.

 

The price of oil moves a lot more based on expected demand than on the dollar.

 

It moves based on both. But since oil is traded in dollars, the value of the dollar has a big impact. It's not the only impact, however.

 

My point is, move the dollars value back to where it was during Clintons administration, and you'd be paying a buck 50 for gas now.

Edited August 2, 2011 by Y2HH

[StrangeSox]

It moves based on both. But since oil is traded in dollars, the value of the dollar has a big impact. It's not the only impact, however.

 

My point is, move the dollars value back to where it was during Clintons administration, and you'd be paying a buck 50 for gas now.

 

You also might need to go back to 90's level BRIC demand.

[Balta1701]

It moves based on both. But since oil is traded in dollars, the value of the dollar has a big impact. It's not the only impact, however.

 

My point is, move the dollars value back to where it was during Clintons administration, and you'd be paying a buck 50 for gas now.

Really, the value of the dollar has decreased by a factor of ~3 since 1998? That doesn't seem right to me.

[Balta1701]

And by mid 2009 you're back up to pre-crash levels. It was a temporary drop. We're still in a depressed economy and are now paying more for gas than at anytime in the last decade.

But global demand had recovered to mostly where it was pre-crash by 2009.

[Jenksismyhero]

But global demand had recovered to mostly where it was pre-crash by 2009.

 

So you mean to say a weak economy coupled with lowered demand causes gas prices to drop, not just a weak economy. Since we're still in a weak economy despite an increase in demand.

[StrangeSox]

So you mean to say a weak economy coupled with lowered demand causes gas prices to drop, not just a weak economy. Since we're still in a weak economy despite an increase in demand.

that's what he said.

 

The price of oil moves a lot more based on expected demand than on the dollar.

[Balta1701]

that's what he said.

 

The price of oil moves a lot more based on expected demand than on the dollar.

Right now, oil is behaving as though it is a supply-constrained system. If the global economy wants to grow, it begins to demand more energy, but there is no current way to produce energy from oil faster (we have been at a global production plateau since ~2006). Therefore, when the economy starts to recover, oil prices spike high enough to offset the new demand...and that means they spike far enough to damage the rest of the economy so that it can't grow any more, thus wiping out the demand spike.

[lostfan]

I would endorse policies that make it easier to not outsource jobs. Lower the minimum wage (or better yet, abolish it), give tax breaks to companies that keep jobs stateside, decrease taxes wherever possible etc. Do things that encourage companies to turn towards American labor. I fully support the right of the corporate world to find the most cost efficient labor available, whether it's here or somewhere else. And if it's somewhere else, then jobs are going to be outsourced and that's all there is to it.

This is... not... good. It might sound like it is at first glance, but it translates into all bad for me and you. Intentional cheap labor policy is bad for everyone except the actual corporations themselves (who, without laws specifically stating otherwise, have ZERO obligation to anyone but shareholders, and even employees are only a means to an end). And even profits don't equal jobs, corporations recovered pretty well from the recession and have record profits but why hire anybody if they don't have to?

[bmags]

our problems are structural:

yglesias

Much commentary on current events in the United States could be improved upon by adopting a more comparative perspective. For example, in his 2000 essay on “The New Separation of Powers” (PDF) Bruce Ackerman grants that the American system of government has served the USA well enough but argues that emerging democracies should consider the failures of similar systems in Latin America and shy away from it. Some of his reasoning:

 

It is possible, of course, to avoid the Linzian nightmare without redeeming the Madisonian hope. Rather than all out war, president and house may merely indulge a taste for endless backbiting, mutual recrimination, and partisan deadlock. Worse yet, the contending powers may use the constitutional tools at their disposal to make life miserable for each other: the house will harass the executive, and the president will engage in unilateral action whenever he can get away with it. I call this scenario the “crisis in governability.”

 

Once the crisis begins, it gives rise to a vicious cycle. Presidents break legislative impasses by “solving” pressing problems with unilateral decrees that often go well beyond their formal constitutional authority; rather than protesting, representatives are relieved that they can evade political responsibility for making hard decisions; subsequent presidents use these precedents to expand their decree power further; the emerging practice may even be codified by later constitutional amendments. Increasingly, the house is reduced to a forum for demagogic posturing, while the president makes the tough decisions unilaterally without considering the interests and ideologies represented by the leading political parties in congress. This dismal cycle is already visible in countries like Argentina and Brazil, which have only recently emerged from military dictatorships. A less pathological version is visible in the homeland of presidentialism, the United States.

 

In unrelated developments, the President has proclaimed that there are no “hostilities” in Libya and the hot policy debate among intellectuals is about whether or not the administration should circumvent the statutory debt ceiling by exploiting a loophole in the existing coinage statutes that grants the Treasury Secretary discretion to mint coins of arbitrary denomination as long as they’re made of platinum.

 

background on the "Linzian nightmare" pull:

I call this breakdown the “Linzian nightmare” in ironic tribute to my.

friend and colleague Juan Linz. One of our foremost students of comparative government, Linz argues that the separation of powers has been one of.

America’s most dangerous exports, especially south of the border. Generations of Latin liberals have taken Montesquieu’s dicta, together with America’s example, as an inspiration to create constitutional governments that divide lawmaking power between elected presidents and elected congresses — only to see their constitutions exploded by frustrated presidents as they disband intransigent congresses and install themselves as caudillos with the aid of the military and/or extraconstitutional plebiscites. From a comparative point of view, the results are quite stunning. There are about thirty countries, mostly in Latin America, that have adopted American style systems. All of them, without exception, have succumbed to the Linzian nightmare at one time or another, often repeatedly. Of course, each breakdown comes associated with a million other variables, but as Giovanni Sartori puts it, this dismal record “prompts us to wonder whether.

their political problem might not be presidentialism itself.

[Y2HH]

This is... not... good. It might sound like it is at first glance, but it translates into all bad for me and you. Intentional cheap labor policy is bad for everyone except the actual corporations themselves (who, without laws specifically stating otherwise, have ZERO obligation to anyone but shareholders, and even employees are only a means to an end). And even profits don't equal jobs, corporations recovered pretty well from the recession and have record profits but why hire anybody if they don't have to?

 

This is one of those bite the hand that feeds you type of deals...it's a catch 22 in the worst way, and what's insane is they don't even see it.

 

If you ship all the labor overseas to save money on salaries, benefits, etc...you bite the hand that feeds you because the very people you've put out of work now have no money, who are/were the very people that pay for your products to begin with. If they can't pay for your products because they have no money, the savings is meaningless.

 

These corporations are so shortsighted at times, I don't understand how or why people allow them to pay these executives what they make.

[StrangeSox]

The corporations are short-sighted because those at the top making the decisions make large personal fortunes for focusing on short-term profitability.

[southsider2k5]

The corporations are short-sighted because those at the top making the decisions make large personal fortunes for focusing on short-term profitability.

 

The sad part is we govern the same way. Short term decision making with the 2/4/6 year election cycle in mind.

[StrangeSox]

The need to be in fund-raising mode in perpetuity doesn't help.

[mr_genius]

The sad part is we govern the same way. Short term decision making with the 2/4/6 year election cycle in mind.

 

true