The real party that represents the rich in America

[djAdvocate]

Apr 1, 2014 11:04:51 GMT -5 Lizard King said:

Apr 1, 2014 11:01:22 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

dunno.  i was talking about VOTING PATTERNS.

... and WHO (BEST) REPRESENTS VOTERS.

no.  who best represents THE RICH.

If you don't want the topic to broaden, don't broaden it. It's not hard to do. Just rein in the broad brushstrokes a bit.

um, i specifically said the rich, bro.  how is that a widening of the topic, Da Vinci?

[djAdvocate]

Apr 1, 2014 11:06:43 GMT -5 Lizard King said:

as i said earlier in the thread, i don't think EITHER party represents the poor. the reasons for this should be abundantly clear to anyone watching our political system.

This being the case, the choices in our two-party system are between a party that doesn't care about the poor (I don't actually believe this is true of Republicans as a matter of political principle, although I accept its a function of the two-party state) and a party that is so contemptuous of them it openly lies to them while raping their wallets for campaign donations.

no.  for votes.  i think the term is pandering, and it goes back about a century.

the poor don't contribute meaningfully ($) to campaigns. 

[Lizard King]

Well, the links you seemed to find irrelevant went exactly to the question of cui bono.

Neither Dodd-Frank nor Obamacare were Republican legislative initiatives.

[djAdvocate]

Apr 1, 2014 11:09:49 GMT -5 Lizard King said:

Well, the links you seemed to find irrelevant went exactly to the question of cui bono.

Neither Dodd-Frank nor Obamacare were Republican legislative initiatives.

you're widening the topic, Rembrandt.

[Lizard King]

From "how the party that represents the rich is the Republicans" to "how the party that represents the rich is the Democrats" isn't a widening of the topic, it's a counterpoint.

Ars gratia artis.

[djAdvocate]

Apr 1, 2014 12:03:01 GMT -5 Lizard King said:

From "how the party that represents the rich is the Republicans" to "how the party that represents the rich is the Democrats" isn't a widening of the topic, it's a counterpoint.

Ars gratia artis.

you were bringing legislation into the discussion.  that is a widening of the topic, is it not, Van Gogh?

if you think it is NOT, then show me polling that states that the rich were in favor of those pieces of legislation, and we will talk again. 

[Lizard King]

I can't imagine what else you can really mean by a party representing the rich.

Unless you actually do think that rhetoric really does trump reality.

A party that actually represents the interests of the rich does so by enacting legislative and regulatory changes that benefit the wealthy. Such changes might, for example, make it increasingly difficult for small competitors to large corporate entities to retain market share, forcing them to be swallowed up by the larger entities; or, they might compel consumers to purchase products and services from favored wealthy entities, enriching them further; or, they might treat preferentially certain wealthy connected persons at the expense of other less wealthy, less connected persons.

[djAdvocate]

Apr 1, 2014 14:10:11 GMT -5 Lizard King said:

I can't imagine what else you can really mean by a party representing the rich.

there are two meanings of the term, both of which have been explored here.  the first is the trivial sense that i have been using: who do they vote for?  that is how we use the term in a "representative government".  the second is "representing the interests of".  i have already stated very clearly that i think neither party represents the poor, and that i think both parties represent the rich, so there really is nothing to debate on that matter, as far as i am concerned.

Unless you actually do think that rhetoric really does trump reality.

nay, Matisse, i don't think that.

[Lizard King]

i have already stated very clearly that i think neither party represents the poor, and that i think both parties represent the rich, so there really is nothing to debate on that matter, as far as i am concerned

Except that I'm not so sure that the Republican Party does represent the rich in the sense I'm saying the Democratic Party represents the rich. I'm not sure that the Republican Party, given free rein to vote on legislation that might pass the Senate and be signed by a President, would pursue legislative goals that disproportionately aided the wealthy at the expense of the middle class, nor that they would pursue legislative goals that perpetuated poverty for those striving to join the middle class.

That's the difference. We agree that Democrats are crony capitalists, and that their policies don't align with their pieties. Fine. That doesn't mean we agree that Republicans are also crony capitalists and hypocrites.

[djAdvocate]

Apr 1, 2014 14:22:59 GMT -5 Lizard King said:

i have already stated very clearly that i think neither party represents the poor, and that i think both parties represent the rich, so there really is nothing to debate on that matter, as far as i am concerned

Except that I'm not so sure that the Republican Party does represent the rich in the sense I'm saying the Democratic Party represents the rich.

you are expanding the argument again, and i am not really priivy to the collective mind of the Democratic Party, so i wish you a good day.

[Virgil Showlion]

What are you two Picassos up to now?

[djAdvocate]

Apr 1, 2014 14:22:59 GMT -5 Lizard King said:

That's the difference. We agree that Democrats are crony capitalists, and that their policies don't align with their pieties. Fine. That doesn't mean we agree that Republicans are also crony capitalists and hypocrites.

i never claimed that the GOP was hypocritical.  but i am astounded that you don't think they are crony capitalists.

[djAdvocate]

Apr 1, 2014 14:37:54 GMT -5 Virgil Showlion said:

What are you two Picassos up to now?

[workpublic]

[Virgil Showlion]

Apr 1, 2014 10:16:50 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

Apr 1, 2014 0:15:40 GMT -5 Virgil Showlion said:

i don't recall responding in that way, but i don't recall your article, either.  if you would like, post me a link to the ARTICLE rather than your thread, and i will read it.  chances are you caught me at a time that i didn't have the opportunity to read it.

www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=691

Apr 1, 2014 10:21:13 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

Apr 1, 2014 0:15:40 GMT -5 Virgil Showlion said:

true.

i knew you would bring this up, and that i would need to clarify it, so i will do so, here.

the poor vote for Democrats about 60% of the time.  those are good numbers.  but they are not nearly as good as the minority vote, the gay vote, and several other constituencies.  but the reason that i said what i did is this: the poor have notoriously BAD turnout.  that is because of the obvious impediments that the poor experience voting.  they are more transient, so it is harder to keep registered, and have current address on file, and to find the polling place (and, thanks to the wonderful sanctity of vote movement, also quite unlikely that they will have the proper identification).  also, the polling places are staffed less well, and the lines are longer.  and finally, they have greater difficulty getting to the polls.  for these reasons, they are not a "reliable constituency", though they are RELIABLY DEMOCRATS.

Ah. Understood.

Apr 1, 2014 10:41:16 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

never mind, Virgil- i will answer first.

the discussion you linked was about two topics: one- how the red states take more than they give in federal dollars, and how a surprisingly large number of poor voters vote Republican.  i never denied that the poor are largely Democrat, and i have reinforced that, here.  however, this discussion is the OPPOSITE one: who do the rich vote for, and who (best) represents them?  i don't think we have any disagreement on that subject:

it is Republicans.

We do agree on the point.

Jim seems to be taking a different approach in differentiating between "the rich" and "the interests of the rich". Depending on how we define "the interests of the rich", I see his point that there exists a fair bit of richlove built into Democratic platforms. Carbon credits and carbon exchanges would constitute a multi-trillion dollar gift to the 0.01% if implemented on an international scale, for example.

Jim also mentions Obamacare, and to his credit it is arguably the biggest act of corporate welfare to benefit American insurance companies in history. But I'm a bit reluctant to call it richlove, since I believe the Democrats would scrap the insurance companies and move to a universal healthcare system if they could.

On another tangent: The upper tertile of income earners is far too broad definition of "rich". A study I'd be interested in wouldn't have voters categorized by income, but instead by an aggregate measure of total assets owned.

The pool of all voters would be ranked from least value of assets owned to greatest value of assets owned. The total value of all assets owned, T, would be computed. Then the population would be split into deciles, with each decile corresponding to a T/10 share of assets. These aren't technically "deciles", but you get the point. The top decile would comprise perhaps 2-3 families, the next would comprise perhaps a dozen families, the next would comprise several dozen, the next one several hundred, etc., all the way down to the lowest decile, which would comprise maybe 20-30% of all Americans. In this way, we would see how each tenth of America's wealth behaves politically.

With this technique, it's easy to see that the richest third of Americans would cover 5-6 deciles, and thus defined with much better granularity.

Once we'd established these deciles, it would be interesting to compute the total amount donated to Republican and Democratic causes by each one.

If it were possible to get an accurate estimate of how much money was spent by every American on "political influence" (campaign donations, super PACs, lobbying, congressional payola, hyperpartisan websites, etc.), it would also be interesting to compute a kind of Gini coefficient for funding inequality, to see how concentrated political influence really is in the US.

[djAdvocate]

Apr 1, 2014 21:26:22 GMT -5 Virgil Showlion said:

Jim also mentions Obamacare, and to his credit it is arguably the biggest act of corporate welfare to benefit American insurance companies in history. But I'm a bit reluctant to call it richlove, since I believe the Democrats would scrap the insurance companies and move to a universal healthcare system if they could.

i can add something else to this.  most Democrats HATED this aspect of the bill- but it was so difficult to reign in the Blue Dog Democratic contingent, that they had to go with it.  it simply didn't have the votes any other way.  so, as much as folks love to say that this is a liberal proposal, it is actually quite conservative- as conservative as needed to attract Blue Dogs.  if you want, i can back that up.

On another tangent: The upper tertile of income earners is far too broad definition of "rich". A study I'd be interested in wouldn't have voters categorized by income, but instead by an aggregate measure of total assets owned.

income and wealth are closely correlated, and if you want to split hairs in the top 10% that is fine.  but i am barely in the top 10%, and consider myself almost insufferably rich. 

The pool of all voters would be ranked from least value of assets owned to greatest value of assets owned. The total value of all assets owned, T, would be computed. Then the population would be split into deciles, with each decile corresponding to a T/10 share of assets. These aren't technically "deciles", but you get the point. The top decile would comprise perhaps 2-3 families, the next would comprise perhaps a dozen families, the next would comprise several dozen, the next one several hundred, etc., all the way down to the lowest decile, which would comprise maybe 20-30% of all Americans. In this way, we would see how each tenth of America's wealth behaves politically.

With this technique, it's easy to see that the richest third of Americans would cover 5-6 deciles, and thus defined with much better granularity.

Once we'd established these deciles, it would be interesting to compute the total amount donated to Republican and Democratic causes by each one.

If it were possible to get an accurate estimate of how much money was spent by every American on "political influence" (campaign donations, super PACs, lobbying, congressional payola, hyperpartisan websites, etc.), it would also be interesting to compute a kind of Gini coefficient for funding inequality, to see how concentrated political influence really is in the US.

i agree with you, but i know of no data that does this, and a great deal that does it by income.  the curves are pretty smooth for income, so that works for me. 

[djAdvocate]

Virgil: thanks for reposting the article.  i will read it tonight.

[Virgil Showlion]

income and wealth are closely correlated, and if you want to split hairs in the top 10% that is fine.

Read the proposed technique more closely. It relies on ratios as well as rank. The results would be very, very different if we were to use income instead of total assets. Yearly income varies over maybe 4 orders of magnitude from poorest to richest, while total assets vary over 8. Asset distributions are far more singular than income distributions.

[djAdvocate]

Apr 1, 2014 21:26:22 GMT -5 Virgil Showlion said:

Apr 1, 2014 10:16:50 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

i don't recall responding in that way, but i don't recall your article, either.  if you would like, post me a link to the ARTICLE rather than your thread, and i will read it.  chances are you caught me at a time that i didn't have the opportunity to read it.

www.thecuttingedgenews.com/index.php?article=691

ok, i am pretty skeptical of this article, as it was commissioned by the #1 proponent of voter id laws, the Heritage Foundation, but i read it, and found it interesting and partially plausible and disturbing.  however, there are some extrapolations present, and several factual errors.  to wit:

the failure of 3% of jurors to pass citizenship tests doesn't mean that 3% of voters were invalid in that district.  there are demographic issues at play that distort jury polls, and since they are not stating which jurisdiction, it is impossible to judge what the criteria for selection are that might also have had impact on selection.  it could be 0.3%, or it could be 30% in that district.

the second assertion that was blatantly incorrect was that illegal migration is "growing" in the US.  it has not "grown" since the recession started in 2007, and is still about 500k below that peak.

i am still confused why non-citizens even want to vote.  i would be interested in knowing that.  but if congress is to be believed (i am not sure they should be), 624 voted in the Dorner race. 

in short, again, i find this article disturbing, but i don't really trust the source that much (though i have no reason to doubt the basic facts of the article, where it doesn't extrapolate).

[djAdvocate]

this is also bad logic:

These numbers become more alarming when one considers that only a very small percentage of regis­tered voters are called for jury duty in most jurisdic­tions.

small numbers are also used for polling data.  it has no impact on it's accuracy.  what has a greater impact than number is sampling error (which is why weighting in polls is so crucial to accuracy).  this can be either positive, negative or neutral, and was already mentioned above.

[djAdvocate]

Virgil: i am also supportive of a couple measures mentioned in the article.  one of them is tightening the I9 verification.  i would be in favor of making that a legal requirement.  E-Verify is cheap and easy to use.  every business SHOULD use it, because otherwise, I9 verification is a total joke.

i do a lot more at my business.  i run a background check and DMV report on every applicant.  if something doesn't match up, i inquire about it.  if every employer in the US did what i do, we would not have nearly the problem with illegal laborers as we do (and therefore not nearly the presumed problem of them voting).

anyway, the article presented a new idea to me, and backed it with a lot of summary opinion and a few interesting cases.  i think it has some merit, and again, i think there are things that could be done to lessen the problem.  i just worry about the "unintended consequences" of the suggested fixes.

[Lizard King]

This may or may not now have some tangential relevance to this thread:

fivethirtyeight.com/features/rich-suburbs-cant-save-the-democrats-come-the-midterms/

Analysis of how the unusually wealthy concentration of "super ZIPS" in the area of Virginia parasitizing the nation's capital have swung dramatically since 2009 in their allegiance.

[djAdvocate]

Apr 2, 2014 13:22:09 GMT -5 Lizard King said:

This may or may not now have some tangential relevance to this thread:

fivethirtyeight.com/features/rich-suburbs-cant-save-the-democrats-come-the-midterms/

Analysis of how the unusually wealthy concentration of "super ZIPS" in the area of Virginia parasitizing the nation's capital have swung dramatically since 2009 in their allegiance.

i never bought that wealthy suburbs were a reliable constituency for Democrats.

Cuch was a uniquely bad candidate.  uniquely bad candidates usually lose, even to average ones.

i believe that the majority of the rich also voted for Clinton in the Dole election: defection again.  but that is extraordinarily rare.

[Lizard King]

Even in "Super ZIPs" that get that way because of the largesse of the Federal government that Democrats want to expand and Republicans want to shrink?

I get that the ideals of the Modern Left are strictly speaking bourgeois luxuries, but even the most opulent bourgeoisie must pause for a moment when faced with a voting decision so comprehensively inimical to its own interest.

[djAdvocate]

Apr 2, 2014 13:45:50 GMT -5 Lizard King said:

Even in "Super ZIPs" that get that way because of the largesse of the Federal government that Democrats want to expand and Republicans want to shrink?

I get that the ideals of the Modern Left are strictly speaking bourgeois luxuries, but even the most opulent bourgeoisie must pause for a moment when faced with a voting decision so comprehensively inimical to its own interest.

i am not following how those interests are not served by the GOP.

[Lizard King]

You're not following how the party you consider responsible for a government shutdown might not be favored by a constituency whose six-figure salaries are paid by the federal government?

Where can I help you connect those dots?

[djAdvocate]

Apr 2, 2014 14:20:08 GMT -5 Lizard King said:

You're not following how the party you consider responsible for a government shutdown might not be favored by a constituency whose six-figure salaries are paid by the federal government?

Where can I help you connect those dots?

i don't even know where you got the government shutdown thing from, Jim.  i thought we were talking about porn. 

[Virgil Showlion]

Apr 2, 2014 16:21:33 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

Apr 2, 2014 14:20:08 GMT -5 Lizard King said:

You're not following how the party you consider responsible for a government shutdown might not be favored by a constituency whose six-figure salaries are paid by the federal government?

Where can I help you connect those dots?

i don't even know where you got the government shutdown thing from, Jim.  i thought we were talking about porn. 

I was posting on the board late one night
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight
For a poster from his past began to stray
And suddenly to my dismay

He did the flip
He did the DJ flip
The DJ flip
It was a P&M trip
He did the flip
When his argument slipped
He did the flip
He did the DJ flip

So condemnatory of the G.O.P.
Shutting down the system was their fault said he,
But when the words he'd spoken rose like monsters foul,
"I don't know where that's from," I heard his frightful howl.

He did the flip
He did the DJ flip
The DJ flip
It was a P&M trip
He did the flip
When his argument slipped
He did the flip
He did the DJ flip

A-ooooooo A A-oooooo.

[djAdvocate]

Apr 2, 2014 18:33:44 GMT -5 Virgil Showlion said:

Apr 2, 2014 16:21:33 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

i don't even know where you got the government shutdown thing from, Jim.  i thought we were talking about porn. 

I was posting on the board late one night
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight
For a poster from his past began to stray
And suddenly to my dismay

He did the flip
He did the DJ flip

what did i flip on?

[Virgil Showlion]

Apr 2, 2014 19:59:21 GMT -5 djAdvocate said:

Apr 2, 2014 18:33:44 GMT -5 Virgil Showlion said:

I was posting on the board late one night
When my eyes beheld an eerie sight
For a poster from his past began to stray
And suddenly to my dismay

He did the flip
He did the DJ flip

what did i flip on?

If you'll save me the trouble of digging up your many claims that the GOP would be blamed (and crucified) for the government shutdown last year, let's simply assert that you've claimed as much.

Given this, how do you explain Reply #54, regarding the interests of the "Super ZIPs": "i am not following how those interests are not served by the GOP."

Jim points out these are the ZIPs most adversely impacted by a government shutdown. A government shutdown is perfectly contrary to the interests of these districts.

Hence if the Republicans are bearing the brunt of the shutdown as you've claimed, and the shutdown is perfectly contrary to the interests of the Super ZIPs, as is logical, I echo Jim's sentiment in Reply #55: How is it not perfectly clear to you why "those interests are not served by the GOP"?

Maybe it wasn't your intent to deny that you've insistently claimed that the GOP was responsible for the shutdown and would take the blame for the shutdown, but that's what Reply #56 struck me as being.

"What? Republicans blamed for the government shutdown? Wha-? Where did that come from? Well, I never! I thought we were talking about pornography. Oh look! A deer! With a Santa Claus cap!"

So... am I way off base? Do you embrace your previous claims? And if so, what's your response to Reply #55?