Kamala Harris's endorsements of some dumb populist economic policies (and also some smart ones) are good signs she is focused on winning. But she has more pandering to do on energy policy.
This makes electoral sense and probably none of this will actually happen even if she's elected, but I insist on my right to be morose here.
I'm worried something big is happening here. The big problem the left in the US has always had is that middle-class taxes are way too low to support a European or Canadian-style welfare state, and the tax increases necessary would be toxic. Implement a double digit VAT on all items? Might as well propose poisoning all the ice cream. Bernie "solved" this problem in 2016 by simply promising a huge welfare state without any plausible plan to pay for it, and eventually this became mainstream thinking in the party. In 2020 the moderates wanted to throw $X trillion at every problem, Warren wanted $3X trillion, Sanders wanted $5X trillion. It was just nuts. But interest rates were low, inflation was a distant memory, and you could make a wrong-but-not-transparently insane argument that we could massively ramp up borrowing or even printing with no ill effect.
The fiscal environment is no longer hospitable to giant spending plans, even MMTards are admitting the deficit is too high, and so the left hasn't really had anything non-Gaza related to talk about. But I'm told that "neoliberalism is dead" these days so I think there will be a big push for hamfisted price regulation and micromanagement of the economy. Harris is at the moderate edge of this, but this could be the new direction for bad leftwing ideas.
We're extra screwed, because not only is all our *old* borrowing now coming up for renewal at higher interest rates, but once we experience a level of spending we seem small-c constitutionally unable to reduce that. Politicians brag if they reduce the yearly deficit just a little bit.
Even our "one time" COVID spending has become the new baseline.
For the annual spending to go from $3T to $4T took from 2008 to 2017.
Then $4.1T and $4.4T in 2018 and 2019. 2020 it exploded, obviously, to $6.5T.
It was arguable to keep in going in 2021 to $6.8T. In 2022 we came back down to $6.2T, and then in 2023 around $6.1T.
The Republicans used to talk about reform and suffer electorally while not delivering. Trump realized that was electorally stupid so he just said he'll fix everything and got votes.
But as a good illustration of where pandering can go really wrong consider Warren.
She still has her fans but I think a ton of people like myself liked her because she pretended to be who Hillary actually was -- a serious policy minded intellectual who had well thought out solutions -- but with less baggage. Hell that's why I was a fan initially
I know despise her almost as much as Trump and while my reaction is stronger than most others have also been alienated because they see that she keeps betraying that persona by outright lying to pander to some voters when she doesn't have to. I mean she could say here are some vague ideas for policies I'd like to develop but no she says "here's the text of the bill I'd pass" but if you actually read it critically you know damn well no former Harvard law prof actually thinks it's a good law.
When pandering starts to undermine your fundamental message about who you are it's not such a great idea. Luckily I don't think Kamala is there.
What she absolutely isn't misinformed about is that her proposed laws are actually good things to pass.
Look, if she just called them ideas or outlines I might give her the benefit of the doubt like you. But she presents them as if they were the literal text of a law congress should pass.
For instance, consider her proposed law sending executives of a company to prison if their company commits another criminal violation while they have a deferred prosecution agreement are on corp probation etc..
Maybe there is some way personal criminal liability could be used but her proposed law doesn't require the executive have any knowledge of it or even negligent failure to know. It doesn't consider the obvious incentive issues -- the old CEO leaves and the company has to spend huge amounts to convince a new exec to bet that he can make sure the corp doesn't violate the law.
Even avoiding the policy issues she was a fucking law prof. She knows that it poses serious constitutional issues to convict someone for behavior they didn't get a chance to defend against (exec doesn't want to go to prison but it in corp interest to settle).
The whole fucking proposal is obviously not thought out. It's an applause line. Ok, I admit pols need those but don't fucking rub our nose in it by showing us proposed law text you know damn well can't be the actual law even if the idea is sound.
Typed quickly on phone (as usual): I 100% agree with you on the merits of her proposals and find these ones despicable. Especially because even lots of educated people seem to fall for them. My assumption was that she’s not thinking things through for various other reasons (eg judgment clouded by emotion) but when it comes to many areas she might just know better and be intentionally lying. It’s even worse because most of her audience is staunchly democratic and would vote for her anyway, even without the lies.
I mostly agree with your positions about supply/demand (I mean, econ101 isn’t exactly *vibes*) but what would you call it if four major corporations essentially control the supply of beef, as reported by AP? Price collusion, even if inadvertent, is bad for consumers, and bad for the farmers as well.
I remember reading The Myth of Capitalism (Jonathan Tepper) and if he was right, *a lot* of major industries that we don’t think too hard about exist in a state of both oligopoly and oligopsony.
In lieu of price controls, would you favor strong anti-trust enforcement and maybe breaking up some of these conglomerates? You know, let the free market actually do its job. (Probably won’t get you elected though).
The federal government created the consolidation with regulatory burdens that you need to spread out over the market to be able to handle. Google "usda private bathroom"
The best first step in fixing things is to stop breaking them.
I assume that because the permitting reform would be wildly good for Americans and humans in general flourishing it has zero shot of actually happening? But it combined with yimby housing policy and all of the above energy maximalization plus common sense conservationism would lock me in for the duration where nothing to date from either side has come close.
Also— if democrats fail the “price controls aren’t deflationary” IQ check what’s the equivalent “just straight wrong homie” but it feels good of republicans? Tariffs bring back manufacturing?
Yay! It’s not as if we haven’t already pandered enough bad economic and fiscal policy over the past 2 decades. Let’s just keep doing it until we’ve manufactured an intractable economic and budgetary crisis.
I own a small popular restaurant in Savannah GA, where the minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 per hour. by the time the tips are added into their paychecks, the final hourly rate is anywhere from $20.00 to $35.00 per hour depending on the level of tips paid. The non-tipped workers are paid anywhere from $19.00 to $30.00 per hour. Here is a fact: It the mininimum wage is increased to $15.00 or $20.00 across the board, including for tipped workers, that will drive prices up so much that we will close down driving 25 families into umemployment.
In this case I agree but it's has dangers for someone like Harris. EDIT: Nope, once I realized it wasn't a normal price gouging law -- no giant price hikes during an emergency -- but basically a price control law it switched my take since price controls are so strongly associated with the extreme left it seems like the wrong way to pander./EDIT
Voters are trying to figure out which canidate is most likely to implement the policies they want. Yes, saying you'll do something is a good way of convincing the voters in front of you but the more you show yourself willing to pander the more other voters start to wonder how likely you are to follow through. Also it can create a general bad vibe around you.
I generally agree that most democratic politicians need to pander somewhat more to the center -- some like Hillary don't pander enough while others pander to the activist groups not the center -- but Harris is already at risk of being accused of changing her views whenever it's convenient. I don't think this stupid policy hurts her but she needs to be careful.
I feel like that as usual the devil’s in the details. I think a good point of comparison is Trump’s proposal to have an across the board 10% tariff on all goods and Obama imposing tire tariffs in 2009. The latter was a dumb policy on the merits for the reasons I’m sure you can lay out in detail. But at the end of the day its actual real world damage was pretty muted because it was so narrowly tailored. In addition, it was part of a policy to save the America auto industry that at least temporarily was successful. And let’s be real; that policy overall was about pandering to swing states like Ohio*. So as much as I think it was bad policy, if I was a political consultant at the time I probably would have given the go ahead.
The Trump tariffs on the other hand would be economically ruinous if actually implemented. One of those policies that sounds great to too many voters who would almost certainly turn around and absolutely notice (and hate) the results.
So I’m willing to give benefit of the doubt..for now. I’m guessing the proposal against “price gauging” is not going to actually involve anything too dramatic like price controls on food (at least I hope not). And honestly if the policy proposed primary component is empowering DOJ or FTC I’m not actually sure on the merits this is bad. Are we really sure that various grocery chains didn’t take the opportunity in 2022 and 2023 to boost prices a bit higher for longer than the market would otherwise dictate?
*worth remembering Obama won Ohio. Pointing out because this political pandering worked given the small margins involved. Also, a reminder that states can go from “blue” to “red” quicker than we think. Thinks it’s quite likely that Ohio will have larger Trump margin than Texas by a good distance (actually think Texas will end up being quite close for a variety of reasons).
They could mute some of the left-wing environmentalists’ criticism if they combined accelerated greenlighting in all forms of production with a program of national emissions trading reducing quotas over time.
I agree with your assessment of what they want, but in this context I think ‘a lil of this a lil of that’ approach mutes their fury, and that’s the best anyone can hope to achieve.
"And Harris has made an important move in this direction by rescinding (via spokesperson) her opposition to fracking."
This should only be taken seriously when asked about it in an interview setting and she's able to actually articulate her views on fracking and the extent to which she things there should be federal restrictions on it.
I wonder if a good counter to bad leftwing price control proposals would be to look for more legit *existing* regulations that are underenforced, and boost them instead. For example, laws against avoiding taxes. That's where the true shenanigans are from what I can tell.
This makes electoral sense and probably none of this will actually happen even if she's elected, but I insist on my right to be morose here.
I'm worried something big is happening here. The big problem the left in the US has always had is that middle-class taxes are way too low to support a European or Canadian-style welfare state, and the tax increases necessary would be toxic. Implement a double digit VAT on all items? Might as well propose poisoning all the ice cream. Bernie "solved" this problem in 2016 by simply promising a huge welfare state without any plausible plan to pay for it, and eventually this became mainstream thinking in the party. In 2020 the moderates wanted to throw $X trillion at every problem, Warren wanted $3X trillion, Sanders wanted $5X trillion. It was just nuts. But interest rates were low, inflation was a distant memory, and you could make a wrong-but-not-transparently insane argument that we could massively ramp up borrowing or even printing with no ill effect.
The fiscal environment is no longer hospitable to giant spending plans, even MMTards are admitting the deficit is too high, and so the left hasn't really had anything non-Gaza related to talk about. But I'm told that "neoliberalism is dead" these days so I think there will be a big push for hamfisted price regulation and micromanagement of the economy. Harris is at the moderate edge of this, but this could be the new direction for bad leftwing ideas.
We're extra screwed, because not only is all our *old* borrowing now coming up for renewal at higher interest rates, but once we experience a level of spending we seem small-c constitutionally unable to reduce that. Politicians brag if they reduce the yearly deficit just a little bit.
Even our "one time" COVID spending has become the new baseline.
For the annual spending to go from $3T to $4T took from 2008 to 2017.
Then $4.1T and $4.4T in 2018 and 2019. 2020 it exploded, obviously, to $6.5T.
It was arguable to keep in going in 2021 to $6.8T. In 2022 we came back down to $6.2T, and then in 2023 around $6.1T.
The Republicans used to talk about reform and suffer electorally while not delivering. Trump realized that was electorally stupid so he just said he'll fix everything and got votes.
This is a great comment.
But as a good illustration of where pandering can go really wrong consider Warren.
She still has her fans but I think a ton of people like myself liked her because she pretended to be who Hillary actually was -- a serious policy minded intellectual who had well thought out solutions -- but with less baggage. Hell that's why I was a fan initially
I know despise her almost as much as Trump and while my reaction is stronger than most others have also been alienated because they see that she keeps betraying that persona by outright lying to pander to some voters when she doesn't have to. I mean she could say here are some vague ideas for policies I'd like to develop but no she says "here's the text of the bill I'd pass" but if you actually read it critically you know damn well no former Harvard law prof actually thinks it's a good law.
When pandering starts to undermine your fundamental message about who you are it's not such a great idea. Luckily I don't think Kamala is there.
I think Warren is just genuinely misinformed but I can see it your way too.
What she absolutely isn't misinformed about is that her proposed laws are actually good things to pass.
Look, if she just called them ideas or outlines I might give her the benefit of the doubt like you. But she presents them as if they were the literal text of a law congress should pass.
For instance, consider her proposed law sending executives of a company to prison if their company commits another criminal violation while they have a deferred prosecution agreement are on corp probation etc..
Maybe there is some way personal criminal liability could be used but her proposed law doesn't require the executive have any knowledge of it or even negligent failure to know. It doesn't consider the obvious incentive issues -- the old CEO leaves and the company has to spend huge amounts to convince a new exec to bet that he can make sure the corp doesn't violate the law.
Even avoiding the policy issues she was a fucking law prof. She knows that it poses serious constitutional issues to convict someone for behavior they didn't get a chance to defend against (exec doesn't want to go to prison but it in corp interest to settle).
The whole fucking proposal is obviously not thought out. It's an applause line. Ok, I admit pols need those but don't fucking rub our nose in it by showing us proposed law text you know damn well can't be the actual law even if the idea is sound.
Typed quickly on phone (as usual): I 100% agree with you on the merits of her proposals and find these ones despicable. Especially because even lots of educated people seem to fall for them. My assumption was that she’s not thinking things through for various other reasons (eg judgment clouded by emotion) but when it comes to many areas she might just know better and be intentionally lying. It’s even worse because most of her audience is staunchly democratic and would vote for her anyway, even without the lies.
I mostly agree with your positions about supply/demand (I mean, econ101 isn’t exactly *vibes*) but what would you call it if four major corporations essentially control the supply of beef, as reported by AP? Price collusion, even if inadvertent, is bad for consumers, and bad for the farmers as well.
I remember reading The Myth of Capitalism (Jonathan Tepper) and if he was right, *a lot* of major industries that we don’t think too hard about exist in a state of both oligopoly and oligopsony.
In lieu of price controls, would you favor strong anti-trust enforcement and maybe breaking up some of these conglomerates? You know, let the free market actually do its job. (Probably won’t get you elected though).
The federal government created the consolidation with regulatory burdens that you need to spread out over the market to be able to handle. Google "usda private bathroom"
The best first step in fixing things is to stop breaking them.
4 suppliers of beef is more than enough to induce competition.
I assume that because the permitting reform would be wildly good for Americans and humans in general flourishing it has zero shot of actually happening? But it combined with yimby housing policy and all of the above energy maximalization plus common sense conservationism would lock me in for the duration where nothing to date from either side has come close.
Also— if democrats fail the “price controls aren’t deflationary” IQ check what’s the equivalent “just straight wrong homie” but it feels good of republicans? Tariffs bring back manufacturing?
Where you been man? Been missing that very serious content
Yay! It’s not as if we haven’t already pandered enough bad economic and fiscal policy over the past 2 decades. Let’s just keep doing it until we’ve manufactured an intractable economic and budgetary crisis.
I own a small popular restaurant in Savannah GA, where the minimum wage for tipped workers is $2.13 per hour. by the time the tips are added into their paychecks, the final hourly rate is anywhere from $20.00 to $35.00 per hour depending on the level of tips paid. The non-tipped workers are paid anywhere from $19.00 to $30.00 per hour. Here is a fact: It the mininimum wage is increased to $15.00 or $20.00 across the board, including for tipped workers, that will drive prices up so much that we will close down driving 25 families into umemployment.
In this case I agree but it's has dangers for someone like Harris. EDIT: Nope, once I realized it wasn't a normal price gouging law -- no giant price hikes during an emergency -- but basically a price control law it switched my take since price controls are so strongly associated with the extreme left it seems like the wrong way to pander./EDIT
Voters are trying to figure out which canidate is most likely to implement the policies they want. Yes, saying you'll do something is a good way of convincing the voters in front of you but the more you show yourself willing to pander the more other voters start to wonder how likely you are to follow through. Also it can create a general bad vibe around you.
I generally agree that most democratic politicians need to pander somewhat more to the center -- some like Hillary don't pander enough while others pander to the activist groups not the center -- but Harris is already at risk of being accused of changing her views whenever it's convenient. I don't think this stupid policy hurts her but she needs to be careful.
I feel like that as usual the devil’s in the details. I think a good point of comparison is Trump’s proposal to have an across the board 10% tariff on all goods and Obama imposing tire tariffs in 2009. The latter was a dumb policy on the merits for the reasons I’m sure you can lay out in detail. But at the end of the day its actual real world damage was pretty muted because it was so narrowly tailored. In addition, it was part of a policy to save the America auto industry that at least temporarily was successful. And let’s be real; that policy overall was about pandering to swing states like Ohio*. So as much as I think it was bad policy, if I was a political consultant at the time I probably would have given the go ahead.
The Trump tariffs on the other hand would be economically ruinous if actually implemented. One of those policies that sounds great to too many voters who would almost certainly turn around and absolutely notice (and hate) the results.
So I’m willing to give benefit of the doubt..for now. I’m guessing the proposal against “price gauging” is not going to actually involve anything too dramatic like price controls on food (at least I hope not). And honestly if the policy proposed primary component is empowering DOJ or FTC I’m not actually sure on the merits this is bad. Are we really sure that various grocery chains didn’t take the opportunity in 2022 and 2023 to boost prices a bit higher for longer than the market would otherwise dictate?
*worth remembering Obama won Ohio. Pointing out because this political pandering worked given the small margins involved. Also, a reminder that states can go from “blue” to “red” quicker than we think. Thinks it’s quite likely that Ohio will have larger Trump margin than Texas by a good distance (actually think Texas will end up being quite close for a variety of reasons).
Seems like there is confusion between "price fixing" and "price gouging." Fixing is per se illegal. Gouging can be illegal, but usually is not.
They could mute some of the left-wing environmentalists’ criticism if they combined accelerated greenlighting in all forms of production with a program of national emissions trading reducing quotas over time.
This won't satisfy the climate left. They don't want increased production (unless it's rooftop solar) and they don't want cap-and-trade.
I agree with your assessment of what they want, but in this context I think ‘a lil of this a lil of that’ approach mutes their fury, and that’s the best anyone can hope to achieve.
"And Harris has made an important move in this direction by rescinding (via spokesperson) her opposition to fracking."
This should only be taken seriously when asked about it in an interview setting and she's able to actually articulate her views on fracking and the extent to which she things there should be federal restrictions on it.
I wonder if a good counter to bad leftwing price control proposals would be to look for more legit *existing* regulations that are underenforced, and boost them instead. For example, laws against avoiding taxes. That's where the true shenanigans are from what I can tell.
This... is not my understanding? Can you point to what story you're referring to?
I wish I could. It’s just a half-baked memory. I’ll just take the comment down rather than perpetuate confusion.