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Politics and Economics
What this data tells me is that one reason healthcare spending is out of control in the US is that the cost of healthcare services isn’t being borne by the ultimate consumer - patients - but by third parties, mainly insurers, employers, and the federal government. And these third parties are less sensitive to price than individuals and households (for various reasons, including ability to pay, lack of market power, and an artificial shortage of healthcare providers).
The University of Michigan’s Consumer Sentiment Index (CSI) is regarded as one of the leading indicators of consumer confidence in the United States. The CSI survey asks consumers about their own personal finances, as well as their views on the state of the US economy. As measured by the CSI, consumer confidence typically drops right before recessionary periods, whereas rising consumer confidence predicts increased consumer spending and economic growth. This pattern is clear in the following chart...
So it doesn’t surprise me that political groups can agree on the same moral basics but still doubt each other’s moral commitments. This doubt may not reflect a misunderstanding or lack of trust but real disagreement on how foundational values and principles should be applied in real life.
“Sense of agency refers to the feeling of control over actions and their consequences.” - James W Moore, What Is the Sense of Agency and Why Does it Matter?
Kamala Harris has pledged to increase taxes on the wealthy should she be elected president. Per the Kiplinger Newsletter, she would bring back the top 39.6% income tax rate for people making $400,000 or more, as well as hike the 3.8% net investment income surtax to 5% for these taxpayers. She also plans to increase the long-term capital gains tax rate for the wealthy.
Should Kamala Harris’s election and tax plans come to fruition, US physicians would take a major tax hit. Why? Because they’re rich.
Given that individual income taxes cover almost half of federal spending, I thought it reasonable to expect income taxes to cover around half the cost of servicing the federal debt, roughly $500 billion this year. Which led me to the following back-of-the-envelope calculations...
Power makes it easier to get what you want. Power gets you even more of what you want. Power gets you things you didn’t know you wanted. Power opens up a world of expanding possibility.
What to do about this China situation? Not huge, broad-based tariffs, which would hurt the US economy, increase global poverty, and create an anti-US backlash. Not going to war to save Taiwan, which would lead to massive fatalities, with the US losing anyway. Not relentless lecturing of China on human rights, which would continue to fall on deaf ears.
Unfortunately, many proposed fixes to the US national debt problem focus on raising income and capital gains taxes on the very affluent and rich. Politically and emotionally satisfying, perhaps, but the revenue proceeds are bound to disappoint. Besides the distortive and unpredictable effects of such taxes, there simply are not enough high-income taxpayers to fill tax coffers to the required level.
At $35 trillion and rising, the national debt seems to threaten America’s economic future…But how serious is the US national debt, really? That is, does it pose a major risk to the nation’s economic growth and undermine our ability to maintain essential government programs? And will these problems be difficult to fix given US politics and the scale of the mess?
According to the Census Bureau, California and Texas have the largest urban populations in the country. Violent crime rates tend to be higher in urban than rural areas. That’s probably why Texas and California have much higher rates of violent crime compared to the other states in these charts.
Yes, my example is old. But I still encounter that binary mindset just about every day: variations on we’re smart, they’re dumb; we’re good; they’re bad; we see the truth, they’re deluded.
The FBI’s crime rates are based on arrests, whereas people in these states’ Criminal Legal System have been convicted of crimes. What I’d like to see is how much arrest rates diverge from conviction rates, and why they diverge, e.g., plea deals, diversion programs, prosecutorial discretion/approach to criminal justice, overzealous police over-arresting without sufficient evidence, etc. I imagine the prevalence of these various factors vary according to state, jurisdiction and local politics.
“Anita Kunz’s cover for the July 22, 2024, issue focuses on what appears to many to be an existential threat to democracy: the far-right shift of the Supreme Court, and the conservative movement’s plans to commandeer it” - Anita Kunz’s “The Face of Justice”: The remaking of the Supreme Court in Donald Trump’s image. By Françoise Mouly/The New Yorker July 15, 2024.
As for the other countries, I detect themes of historic struggle followed by triumph, of creating something grand out of initially slim pickins; in other words, a feeling of having overcome adversity. Maybe that feeling is essential to pride in general, whether personal or national.
This series of posts will focus on what patriotism means to people who consider themselves patriotic. For example, what beliefs, perceptions, principles, values, ideals, actions and emotions come to mind when they feel the swell of patriotism or explain why they consider themselves patriotic. I will not be defining patriotism, but will approach this project in the spirit of a descriptive dictionary, which…
Per Merriam-Webster Dictionary, to support is to favor actively. However, the qualifier “somewhat” is a hedge, reflecting mixed feelings or reservations. To “somewhat support” means to partly support - it definitely does not mean wholehearted endorsement. The above headlines mislead because they imply that most poll respondents wholeheartedly endorsed the President’s Plan. They did not - and how could they? Only 23% of survey respondents indicated they have seen, read, or heard “a lot” about the Plan, of which some unknown subset supported it (with or without reservations).
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released ‘An Update to the Budget and Economic Outlook: 2024 to 2034’, in which it addresses how the recent surge in US immigration is helping to reduce the federal deficit. Some tidbits…
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) just released its latest report projecting what the federal budget and the economy would look like over the next 10 years if laws governing taxes and spending generally remained unchanged. Per the CBO, relative to the size of the economy, the federal debt swells from 2024 to 2034 as increases in interest costs and mandatory spending outpace decreases in discretionary spending and growth in revenues… Here’s the chart:
I’m going to assume that just about all political allies have been portrayed as perpetrators of wrongdoing and/or victims of injustice, no matter their ideological leanings. This would include LGBTQ+ groups, labor unions, environmentalists, Blacks, Whites, poor people, young people, Hispanics, student activists, old people, business people, farmers, rural folk, pro-life groups, pro-choice groups, evangelicals, mainstream Protestants, Catholics, moderates, Asian Americans, men, women, and plenty of others.