I would be highly surprised if the majority of Trump voters preferred Trump over some other candidate (rather than simply defaulting to him as a vote against Hilary Clinton), and that some such other candidate wouldn't have won the nomination in a different voting system. Although perhaps my idealization of Republican voters is too optimistic, and they really do love the idiot king.

It's a little odd that some people say the US is not a democracy because we don't have universal enfranchisement. Since when was it the case that a government is only a democracy if there's universal enfranchisement? Given all the other features that make up democracy, universal sufferage seems like kind of like a peripheral feature of democracy to say that if it's not present, a government is not a democracy, especially when the overwhelming majority of people are enfranchised.

Just to be clear this is may be a semantic issue. If someone who argues that the US is not a democracy because we don't have genuine universal sufferage intends merely to observe that our system isn't just, and doesn't mean to say that "democracy is a system of government with universal enfranchisement", then I don't disagree.

That was Piketty's answer for America, which is exceptional in that "supermanagers" actually earn high incomes. A big part of inequality, and the main driver of inequality everywhere, is that capital's share of income is higher than labor's share of income. Since growth produces more capital, long term capital owners end up absorbing much more of the income.

The only real solution is to either blow up all of the capital so that labor is necessary again. Or, be sure people who depend on labor for income are able to partake in the income of capital. I.e. either violence or socialism.

bUt SoCiAlIsM iS ViOlEnCE

That's not the best account of Piketty's articulation of the problem I've ever read, but, iirc, for Piketty one part of his solution is an international tax regime that makes would impossible for the wealthy to protect assets from tax exposure by parking them offshore.

Socialism is a big eye roll

Socialism is being a nerd on the internet who complains about people who complain about video games to other nerds on the internet and thinking it means you speak truth to power

Medicaid only covers a small portion of poor people.

But more importantly, preventative care is things like the various tests you get as you get older (colonoscopy, mammograms), as well as actual surgeries. For instance (warning: yucky ahead), I have laser surgery on my leg every couple years to keep spots from bleeding on my leg. It's not a requirement, it's preventative. If I forgo it, I'll have much worse complications down the line. Furthermore, although not purely preventative, you have a situation right now where many people will ignore aches, pains, etc. because they can't afford a visit outside of their checkups. This results in dramatically worse quality of life for them, and even worse, results in many otherwise curable conditions being caught too late.

According to Wikipedia, it covers everyone up to 133% of the poverty line. However, the state legislature would need to opt to expand Medicaid, and many have not. That said, I would assume that coverage would be pretty good for the states that did choose to expand it?

By the way that's how you resolve the discrepancy that both Elon Musk and the people who complain about him call themselves socialists

Incidentally, that map is a pretty good concise summary of the states that one might want to avoid living in generally.

All 50 of them!!

(Although I've heard good things about Georgia)

i've heard other things about Florida

You've invented the Electoral College. Good job.



Piketty missed one very important point, and that's capital securitization. "Supermanagers" aren't the de jure owners, but they are the de facto owners - they are the capitalists. Although they're nominal employees of the company (and by extension its shareholders), under US/Delaware law shareholders have very little power over them, while these "supermanagers" have near total control over the allocation of capital and unlimited ability to return that capital's share of income to themselves through dilution, share repurchase, and bonuses. The difference between a Piketty "supermanager" and a traditional capitalist seems more like a legal quirk than anything concrete, that there's no benefit to being a sole majority owner of a private business versus exerting the same power over a publicly traded one as an outside hire.

^

Liberalism is being a poor dude who thinks he'll own slaves one day, and is also afraid of those slaves.

Isn't the distinction here that a supermanager is someone like a CEO, who isn't the owner of a company (because in the most important and relevant cases, the company will be publically owned), but who has effective control over the company's assets to do what ever stock market voodoo allows them to turn their money into more money for them and their peers?

I guess what I'm getting at is... that's the distinction between a traditional capitalist and a so-called supermanager... but what's piketty mixing up?

Yes. Instead of drawing an income from returns to capital, the returns to capital are owned by the company and the CEO uses his power over the company to convert it into a more liquid form.

Edit:



Capital in the Twenty First Century spends a lot of time drawing parallels between the current day American economy and the French economy of the belle epoque. The difference is that, during the belle epoque, all of the fabulously rich people financed their lifestyles from traditional returns: interest payments, dividends, or drawing down capital gains. The American economy looks and smells a lot like the belle epoque, except for one major difference: the fabulously rich people aren't financing their lifestyles from traditional returns, they're drawing what looks like labor incomes (plus benefits). "Supermanager" is basically Piketty's way of identifying these people while also, I believe, trying to justify the difference - that they are doing work, that they're adding value that historical capitalists might have not.

This is what I think Piketty got wrong. These people aren't adding any more value, they've just been forced to structure their parasitism in a different way.

See my question since my edit?

I responded in an edit.

*Thumbs up emoji*

Insurance, of course, has also driven costs up.

To end consumers, sure, but Obamacare is effectively a bunch of regulations that force insurance companies to offer more for less to people who don't get insurance through their employer.

It's hard for me to say with a degree of certainty because I'm not going to look up statistics and they're probably flawed anyway but considering the primary I think it is safe to assume that a majority of Trump voters, or at least a very large portion, already preferred another candidate as he couldn't even attain a majority of delegates in the primary until everyone dropped out and it should be noted that the Republican delegate system is far from being anywhere near as convoluted as the Democrat system.

Another candidate very well could have won the nomination under the current system but the last viable option, Cruz, bowed out. I think he did so because if he legitimately won the nomination by denying Trump a delegate victory in the first round and beating him in a subsequent round Trump would have tried to bring the whole damn thing down in the blaze of glory he probably always thought was going to happen. Also, I think actual Trump primary supporters would have been so butthurt they would have stayed home or at least not voted for the Republican nominee. I think Cruz also thought legitimately beating Trump in this manner was going to lead to a Clinton victory.

My point is, there was a system to deny Trump the victory. It should have worked. As can be plainly seen certainly over the course of at least the last two presidential races the electorate has been hijacked by stupid. I don't think this gets any better, only worse, and one of the reason I really would like to see a return to a strong federal system so we can minimize the impact future idiot rulers have on us.

I mean more broadly since it has been instituted in general.

Yeah, premiums are going up, but that's partially because Trump is proactively trying to make the Obamacare individual market implode, and partially because the legislature isn't stepping in and fixing it.

I don't know whether premiums are higher now than they were before Obamacare, but plans are definitely more robust.

Watching you post is like living proof that the center is being dragged to the right. Apparently Reaganism and Thatcherism are the new center. The antisocialism is stuff is classic Americanism, though. Better shoot me before I get too violent.

There wasn't a system to deny Trump the victory. Trump voters were an extreme minority but they were still able to get a plurality because the rest of the primary voters couldn't choose among a field of virtually identical candidates.

At least it's only taking from the working economy, and not selling treasury bonds to hand over to stock buybacks.



I'm in total agreement with him. His solution is basically Social Democrat express: more progressive taxation and international cooperation to slap countries who function as tax havens.

Don't be. Rich people don't just "park" money overseas, they park it with foreign sinecures. Putin holds very little wealth himself, for example: it's all technically owned by his criminal buddies (like Donald Trump). If you want an international tax regime to track down sheltered wealth, you'll need to come up with some way to distinguish between a foreign agent holding money and an independently wealthy person who chooses to reside in a tax haven (like Delaware).

This is why I said socialism is easier. It'll let billionaires get away with their yachts and gold, but that's where it ends - period. The sustaining wealth of an oligarch comes from a permanent lien on the labors of the working class. Socialism cuts that off forever, no matter where they are, no matter how hard they work to hide it.

Again, I'm not referring to Obamacare. In the post you responded to I'm talking about insurance in general. Insurance has led to higher costs of medical care. Regulation on top of that has led to even higher costs.



Here is an example of you being completely incorrect. You cannot win the Republican nomination without a majority of delegates. He did win a majority of delegates but that was after Cruz dropped out. There is a process for what happens at that point and it very well could have denied Trump the nomination. Other Republican primaries have gone through the process. I'm a little surprised you are unaware of this.

Except as you pointed out a brokered convention would have let Trump burn the whole thing to the ground, sooooooo

(Trump called the primary rigged against him, the vote against him was split, a brokered convention would have basically left choosing the candidate up to the electors. Meaning whoever got the nomination would have received fewer votes than Trump. That would have pissed people off.

Also this would have taken place in the US, where mass shootings are the national pastime.)

Okay, so to be clear, you do understand there is a system even though you don't seem to understand it? Not that I do fully. I've forgotten most of what I researched during the primary. I do know that there are various terminology for the different stages and I believe a brokered convention is not actually step 2. Could be wrong but regardless there's a system and, come on, who wouldn't have wanted to watch that **** show?

If I’m wrong it’s that a brokered convention isn’t step 2, because I’m pretty sure it is.

You’re asking delegates to nominate a candidate themselves from a highly split field. What do you think they’d do? Most of them would go for Trump anyway, which is exactly what Democrat super delegates would do. A process to remove Trump in the primaries would be something like IRV or a runoff or something.

There's so much terminology I could be wrong. I think people associate brokered convention with the "smoke filled room". Contested convention? Doesn't matter, semantics. Anyway, that may have happened but other conventions have quite dramatically gone through the process and they did not end as simply as you suggest this last one would have.

Of course Americans were probably much less 'Murica back then.

Many who now call themselves socialists do it even though they will acknowledge that the policy views that they're advocating aren't actually socialist, but policy proposals that were common in the 70s. Ted Kennedy pitched single-payer in the 1970s. It's been a desideratum of the Democratic party for decades. It's not as radical or edgy as socialists claim. I don't know what the fact that "socialists" do this says about the "center." Probably not very much.



Yet more evidence that many so-called "socialists" are just people who say things that are eye roll inducing.