So, I was around for this WoC discussion back in the first Trump "administration". Most the questions around constitutional viability that Damir mentions here were brought up then, but there was a lot of resistance (as I remember) to actually thinking about the failure scenario. I think I made the comment somewhere that constitutions are…
So, I was around for this WoC discussion back in the first Trump "administration". Most the questions around constitutional viability that Damir mentions here were brought up then, but there was a lot of resistance (as I remember) to actually thinking about the failure scenario. I think I made the comment somewhere that constitutions are not eternal institutions, that signs of impasse in the US system were unmistakeable, that polarization made standard change mechanisms unworkable, and that -- though we couldn't know the day nor the hour -- either a coup from above or just a plain coup was so likely that the real question was whether one's preferred or detested actors would bring it off. (The previous sentence may pull together points that were originally scattered or less baldly stated.)
It seems like what we are seeing. -- and Damir describes it very well -- is a coup from above. It shocks me, it leaves me groping for a response, but it doesn't surprise me. Might the coup fail? Can we contain it? Like Damir, I just don't know.
Complicity? No. Glee. This is what the GOP base has been demanding, in steadily-less polite terms, for several political generations. And the hunger has only grown more ravenous as all efforts at even-handed reform or compromise have failed, been sabotaged, or rejected. People on the left and institutionalist sides have gotten used to assuming that the civil service and "norms" would handcuff any significant deviation from their goals, but assist them while they were in power. That assumption is in the process of being ripped up.
I think the entire point of our constitution was to only allow agreed upon change. It is often better to do nothing than to make rash changes. I think we would be in a better place if we had left the Federal government on autopilot since the Clinton White House. Spending and debt are out of control. If the Republicans cannot cut spending, then they must increase taxes. Capital gains is the ideal place to start. I hate how the Republicans have turned into this mess of freeloading rednecks who cut taxes and refuse to touch the entitlements that drive government spending.
What no one talks about is that government contracting is expensive because of transparency. It is expensive to have transparency along with other frankly silly requirements such as "buy American" and the requirement that all Federal funds be spent in competitively bid procurements. Such rules necessitate bureaucracy not only in the Federal government, but in the states and municipalities as well because anyone getting Federal funding must play by Federal rules. I work with this first hand (I am in purchasing for a municipal agency).
We should not change our government willy-nilly. That has NEVER helped the country. Searching for "efficiencies" always ends in corruption. We are not Singapore. We do not pay our bureaucrats enough to get the best of the best. We remedy that with process. The correct policy would seek to either cut spending, or raise revenue. There is no easy cash to be found. It is a bad sign that Trump is trying to do this. We can hope it is for show, and not out of ignorance, but the President will need Congress to change laws if he wants to streamline Federal agencies. A better move would be to actually address the problem (the massive gap between revenue and expenditure). We need budget surpluses for a decade at least to get our debt back to reasonable levels, or run up inflation to reduce the debt that way (how we paid for Vietnam and the Great Society).
"Agreed upon" by whom? The waves of conservative voters who have elected multiple "protest" and "reform" movements to legislative majorities haven't agreed to massively-spiraling federal spending or the highest foreign-born percentage of the population since the 1880's. And yet it happens.
Our founding fathers stated that Constitutional reforms require super-majorities. Many of the policies we need only required a simple majority in both houses and a President who does not veto the legislation. Right now we require either cuts in spending or increased revenue (probably both). The current deficit is 7% and growing with the highest debt level ever. The last five years have been a disaster in Federal spending. No one will take responsibility.
I expect this of the creepy modern Progressives who have ruined the Democratic Party, but the Republicans failure to reign in spending has played its part as well. We could not afford the Bush tax cuts nor the Trump tax cuts. At a minimum we need to at least get the deficit lower than nominal GDP growth.
As for foreign-born percentage, that does not concern me. What concerns me is ILLEGAL entries. We can live with well-educated, hard-working immigrants in large quantities. What we do not need are welfare recipients who appear to be permanent public charges. We stop the foolishness at the border, and the problem is fixed. We need immigrants. I have worked in manufacturing and supply chain, and we need people who work hard. We could also use far more foreign doctors and nurses to bring down medical costs.
The real question is how we can get the current Congress and President to balance the budget. Not pontificate, but actually cut entitlements. The myth of government waste is only believed by those ignorant of how and why the government engages in transparent, rules-based contracting/procurement. That is not going to change, but we can cut Medicare and medicaid, or SSDI, or other major spending. If that is not possible, then harmonize capital gains taxes to the long-term rate. If that is not enough, raise that capital gains tax. Ideally, we would end corporate taxation and raise the capital gains tax to offset the revenue loss. That would be a gain to everyone and remove the incentive for much of the lobbying. Of course, no politician will do this because ignorant fools imagine that corporate taxation still matters.
"I hate how the Republicans have turned into this mess of freeloading rednecks who cut taxes and refuse to touch the entitlements that drive government spending."
"Refuse?" Republicans since Reagan have been slavering to cut entitlements. Remember how GW Bush proposed privatizing Social Security? How Republicans have doggedly fought all extensions of Medicaid and unemployment insurance? How they keep trying to kill Obamacare? Republicans are deadly enemies of entitlement programs. They hate spending money on poor people.
You say you're eager to see the budget balanced. Then why aren't you fiercely criticizing the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts, which added $5 trillion (in current dollars) to the deficit and overwhelmingly benefited corporations and the wealthy?
If this is "creepy Progressivism," then call me creepy!
I do not see how are positions are different. The Reagan era tax reforms I agree with, the net tax cuts I do not. The Bush and Trump tax cuts were irresponsible. Regarding cuts to entitlements, we will have NO CHOICE. We cannot continue to keep spending like we do. We can and should increase capital gains taxes, ideally by setting the rate to the short-term rate (we foolishly have two rates based on the false concept that short-term investments are bad (the myth of "speculation"). This would also remedy the current practice of wealthy individuals paying comically low taxes by categorizing their compensation as capital gains.
With regards to "poor people," we could so so much more for considerably less cost by ending humiliation. We should have universal basic income. The first step should be to lay off every employee who determines who gets aid. I think we should have either a national health care system, or a free market one. Either would be better than what we have now. With regards to social welfare, our system is expensive and does a terrible job. The only real fix is to eliminate any determination by people, and frankly, to eliminate the humiliation-based system of social workers. The concept is racist and demeaning. Every citizen should get a check starting at age 18. No one gets more or less. It would be cheap and easy to administer, and no one would be locked down in expensive places like NYC and California.
Also, your "5 trillion dollars" figure is wrong, unless you are taking the NPV of that in perpetuity (which is not correct). I agree that those tax cuts were irresponsible. The Bush tax cuts were worse. BUT, we still need to get entitlement spending back on track. The best way would be to implement UBI. Furthermore, we just need to get rid of the welfare worker system. It is demeaning and worse than useless.
In addition, we should all recognize that the Democrats in local government have committed a crime against poor people with their zoning laws and corruptions dressed up in pretty language ("affordable housing" requirements that give friends and family $5m apartments in Manhattan for $1200 per month, required the construction of 4 bedroom apartments in hip, young neighborhoods that need MORE tiny, affordable units, not "family" housing on Chicago's Rush Street or the Lower East Side of Manhattan). We need our most dynamic markets to have housing for everyone, not only rich people and the politically connected. We need to end zoning laws in NYC, California, DC, Boston, and any other place where a young person cannot get an affordable, TINY studio apartment. Developers should not be forced to build large units, or even worse, to tax the entire market so connected individuals can get apartments at a 99% discount (what "affordable" means in New York City).
I live in Chicago. I have voted Democrat my entire life. It breaks my heart to see how the Democrats have handed the presidency to Trump twice. I have no love for the Republican Party, but so long as the Democrats are the party of rich white ladies who imagine that they are oppressed, they are effectively worse than the Republicans. It is a crime what has been done to our big cities (pricing them out of reach for regular people, and all the opportunities that come with their dynamic markets). I see Chicago going down the same path as NYC, setting up the same terrible policies that result in only luxury housing being built, apartments torn down to build $1m homes in my South Side neighborhood. and the worse, apartment buildings becoming so expensive as a result of counter-productive "affordable" initiatives such that no affordable units are ever allowed to be built, only luxury buildings with a handful of apartments to be gifted to friends.
The Democrats could sweep both the House and Senate, and win the presidency if they just set aside the crazy, but it is a requirement because the rich creeps who run the party demand it. It used to be the Republicans who were the creeps, but now the Democrats seem incapable of even trying to win. And, both parties protect the wealthy. The Democrats are as bad as the Republicans on letting the wealthy pay 15% tax rates. I want both parties to change. For the Democrats, I just want them to be the party of Obama and BILL Clinton. They win elections that way. America is better that way. I have no idea how to get the Democrats to fight for working people again. I am a liberal, and I believe in liberalism, not some "Progressive" who thinks 15% tax rates for billionaires is good, or that allowing anyone to cross the border without documents is good, but making LEGAL immigrants wait ten years is not bad.
I want the LIBERALS to take back the party from the creepy, racist "Progressives." Then the Democrats can rule again. The Republicans only win when the Democrats abandon the working class majority. I do not want my Chicago to be a place where only rich people get to live here, but that is what Progressives do. I hate them. I want liberals back. People like Obama and Clinton. We still have good Democrats like Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin. Either of them would have won the presidency last year. Both get pressured into supporting silly crap by the rich white people who took over the party. The new elite want to look good instead of doing good. The result is Republican electoral victory.
So, I was around for this WoC discussion back in the first Trump "administration". Most the questions around constitutional viability that Damir mentions here were brought up then, but there was a lot of resistance (as I remember) to actually thinking about the failure scenario. I think I made the comment somewhere that constitutions are not eternal institutions, that signs of impasse in the US system were unmistakeable, that polarization made standard change mechanisms unworkable, and that -- though we couldn't know the day nor the hour -- either a coup from above or just a plain coup was so likely that the real question was whether one's preferred or detested actors would bring it off. (The previous sentence may pull together points that were originally scattered or less baldly stated.)
It seems like what we are seeing. -- and Damir describes it very well -- is a coup from above. It shocks me, it leaves me groping for a response, but it doesn't surprise me. Might the coup fail? Can we contain it? Like Damir, I just don't know.
The absolute complicity of the GOP is the only thing that surprises me. We should be terrified
Complicity? No. Glee. This is what the GOP base has been demanding, in steadily-less polite terms, for several political generations. And the hunger has only grown more ravenous as all efforts at even-handed reform or compromise have failed, been sabotaged, or rejected. People on the left and institutionalist sides have gotten used to assuming that the civil service and "norms" would handcuff any significant deviation from their goals, but assist them while they were in power. That assumption is in the process of being ripped up.
Exactly this. The Left hasn't had a fire in its belly (unless it's a woke fire) for ages now.
I think the entire point of our constitution was to only allow agreed upon change. It is often better to do nothing than to make rash changes. I think we would be in a better place if we had left the Federal government on autopilot since the Clinton White House. Spending and debt are out of control. If the Republicans cannot cut spending, then they must increase taxes. Capital gains is the ideal place to start. I hate how the Republicans have turned into this mess of freeloading rednecks who cut taxes and refuse to touch the entitlements that drive government spending.
What no one talks about is that government contracting is expensive because of transparency. It is expensive to have transparency along with other frankly silly requirements such as "buy American" and the requirement that all Federal funds be spent in competitively bid procurements. Such rules necessitate bureaucracy not only in the Federal government, but in the states and municipalities as well because anyone getting Federal funding must play by Federal rules. I work with this first hand (I am in purchasing for a municipal agency).
We should not change our government willy-nilly. That has NEVER helped the country. Searching for "efficiencies" always ends in corruption. We are not Singapore. We do not pay our bureaucrats enough to get the best of the best. We remedy that with process. The correct policy would seek to either cut spending, or raise revenue. There is no easy cash to be found. It is a bad sign that Trump is trying to do this. We can hope it is for show, and not out of ignorance, but the President will need Congress to change laws if he wants to streamline Federal agencies. A better move would be to actually address the problem (the massive gap between revenue and expenditure). We need budget surpluses for a decade at least to get our debt back to reasonable levels, or run up inflation to reduce the debt that way (how we paid for Vietnam and the Great Society).
"Agreed upon" by whom? The waves of conservative voters who have elected multiple "protest" and "reform" movements to legislative majorities haven't agreed to massively-spiraling federal spending or the highest foreign-born percentage of the population since the 1880's. And yet it happens.
Our founding fathers stated that Constitutional reforms require super-majorities. Many of the policies we need only required a simple majority in both houses and a President who does not veto the legislation. Right now we require either cuts in spending or increased revenue (probably both). The current deficit is 7% and growing with the highest debt level ever. The last five years have been a disaster in Federal spending. No one will take responsibility.
I expect this of the creepy modern Progressives who have ruined the Democratic Party, but the Republicans failure to reign in spending has played its part as well. We could not afford the Bush tax cuts nor the Trump tax cuts. At a minimum we need to at least get the deficit lower than nominal GDP growth.
As for foreign-born percentage, that does not concern me. What concerns me is ILLEGAL entries. We can live with well-educated, hard-working immigrants in large quantities. What we do not need are welfare recipients who appear to be permanent public charges. We stop the foolishness at the border, and the problem is fixed. We need immigrants. I have worked in manufacturing and supply chain, and we need people who work hard. We could also use far more foreign doctors and nurses to bring down medical costs.
The real question is how we can get the current Congress and President to balance the budget. Not pontificate, but actually cut entitlements. The myth of government waste is only believed by those ignorant of how and why the government engages in transparent, rules-based contracting/procurement. That is not going to change, but we can cut Medicare and medicaid, or SSDI, or other major spending. If that is not possible, then harmonize capital gains taxes to the long-term rate. If that is not enough, raise that capital gains tax. Ideally, we would end corporate taxation and raise the capital gains tax to offset the revenue loss. That would be a gain to everyone and remove the incentive for much of the lobbying. Of course, no politician will do this because ignorant fools imagine that corporate taxation still matters.
"I hate how the Republicans have turned into this mess of freeloading rednecks who cut taxes and refuse to touch the entitlements that drive government spending."
"Refuse?" Republicans since Reagan have been slavering to cut entitlements. Remember how GW Bush proposed privatizing Social Security? How Republicans have doggedly fought all extensions of Medicaid and unemployment insurance? How they keep trying to kill Obamacare? Republicans are deadly enemies of entitlement programs. They hate spending money on poor people.
You say you're eager to see the budget balanced. Then why aren't you fiercely criticizing the Reagan, Bush, and Trump tax cuts, which added $5 trillion (in current dollars) to the deficit and overwhelmingly benefited corporations and the wealthy?
If this is "creepy Progressivism," then call me creepy!
I do not see how are positions are different. The Reagan era tax reforms I agree with, the net tax cuts I do not. The Bush and Trump tax cuts were irresponsible. Regarding cuts to entitlements, we will have NO CHOICE. We cannot continue to keep spending like we do. We can and should increase capital gains taxes, ideally by setting the rate to the short-term rate (we foolishly have two rates based on the false concept that short-term investments are bad (the myth of "speculation"). This would also remedy the current practice of wealthy individuals paying comically low taxes by categorizing their compensation as capital gains.
With regards to "poor people," we could so so much more for considerably less cost by ending humiliation. We should have universal basic income. The first step should be to lay off every employee who determines who gets aid. I think we should have either a national health care system, or a free market one. Either would be better than what we have now. With regards to social welfare, our system is expensive and does a terrible job. The only real fix is to eliminate any determination by people, and frankly, to eliminate the humiliation-based system of social workers. The concept is racist and demeaning. Every citizen should get a check starting at age 18. No one gets more or less. It would be cheap and easy to administer, and no one would be locked down in expensive places like NYC and California.
Also, your "5 trillion dollars" figure is wrong, unless you are taking the NPV of that in perpetuity (which is not correct). I agree that those tax cuts were irresponsible. The Bush tax cuts were worse. BUT, we still need to get entitlement spending back on track. The best way would be to implement UBI. Furthermore, we just need to get rid of the welfare worker system. It is demeaning and worse than useless.
In addition, we should all recognize that the Democrats in local government have committed a crime against poor people with their zoning laws and corruptions dressed up in pretty language ("affordable housing" requirements that give friends and family $5m apartments in Manhattan for $1200 per month, required the construction of 4 bedroom apartments in hip, young neighborhoods that need MORE tiny, affordable units, not "family" housing on Chicago's Rush Street or the Lower East Side of Manhattan). We need our most dynamic markets to have housing for everyone, not only rich people and the politically connected. We need to end zoning laws in NYC, California, DC, Boston, and any other place where a young person cannot get an affordable, TINY studio apartment. Developers should not be forced to build large units, or even worse, to tax the entire market so connected individuals can get apartments at a 99% discount (what "affordable" means in New York City).
I live in Chicago. I have voted Democrat my entire life. It breaks my heart to see how the Democrats have handed the presidency to Trump twice. I have no love for the Republican Party, but so long as the Democrats are the party of rich white ladies who imagine that they are oppressed, they are effectively worse than the Republicans. It is a crime what has been done to our big cities (pricing them out of reach for regular people, and all the opportunities that come with their dynamic markets). I see Chicago going down the same path as NYC, setting up the same terrible policies that result in only luxury housing being built, apartments torn down to build $1m homes in my South Side neighborhood. and the worse, apartment buildings becoming so expensive as a result of counter-productive "affordable" initiatives such that no affordable units are ever allowed to be built, only luxury buildings with a handful of apartments to be gifted to friends.
The Democrats could sweep both the House and Senate, and win the presidency if they just set aside the crazy, but it is a requirement because the rich creeps who run the party demand it. It used to be the Republicans who were the creeps, but now the Democrats seem incapable of even trying to win. And, both parties protect the wealthy. The Democrats are as bad as the Republicans on letting the wealthy pay 15% tax rates. I want both parties to change. For the Democrats, I just want them to be the party of Obama and BILL Clinton. They win elections that way. America is better that way. I have no idea how to get the Democrats to fight for working people again. I am a liberal, and I believe in liberalism, not some "Progressive" who thinks 15% tax rates for billionaires is good, or that allowing anyone to cross the border without documents is good, but making LEGAL immigrants wait ten years is not bad.
I want the LIBERALS to take back the party from the creepy, racist "Progressives." Then the Democrats can rule again. The Republicans only win when the Democrats abandon the working class majority. I do not want my Chicago to be a place where only rich people get to live here, but that is what Progressives do. I hate them. I want liberals back. People like Obama and Clinton. We still have good Democrats like Tammy Duckworth and Dick Durbin. Either of them would have won the presidency last year. Both get pressured into supporting silly crap by the rich white people who took over the party. The new elite want to look good instead of doing good. The result is Republican electoral victory.
I agree with most of this. Rather than enter minor qualifications, I'll just thank you for the lengthy and good-tempered explanation.
Garry: I think you are speaking to a different situation than the one that exists. "We" aren't changing our government willy-nilly. "They" are.