Politics thread (USA Elections 2016) - Page 203

I'm a fan of those guys
I've watched all the debates, fox cnn abc etc. hard to call yourself a fan of any of that stuff hah
Other guys I respect for their comedy

Like really are you a fan of CNN ? Can anyone be?

Why do you assume CNN is what he idealizes through his critique of conspiracy theorists and late night show hosts?

I don't assume anything
was just listing who I watch I genuinely like despite their biases

I guess there really are CNN and FOX news fans out there
Thinking back the news I get is usually through google news by inputting in keywords
Follow bookies a lot also

and have watched dem debates

TBH all is a fucking waste of my time and real change comes locally and by leading by example, I've been procrastinating on productive stuff by watching US politics a lot because the polarity is so damn entertaining, I love watching The same Issue shown first on Fox then CNN the act of spinning itself from both side is just so addictive

John Oliver is actually pretty decent for that type of show.. except when he purposefully doesn't present all the facts, which does happen sometimes. He might not even be aware of it though

On February 07 2020 12:07 LemOn[5thF] wrote: Show nested quote + On February 07 2020 07:24 Santafairy wrote:   On February 05 2020 23:16 Loco wrote: Lemon seems to like to revert to tone policing when he is unwilling to accept that someone else rightly pointed out the wrongness of one of his claims. It's a pretty cowardly strategy and certainly has nothing to do with growing from debates with others, which he pretends to care about the most. Also typical of centrists in my experience; since they don't have a coherent worldview, it's easy to revert to ad hominem attacks and evasion when they're pushed around a little bit. I agree Lemon is a huge incoherent centrist coward who always uses ad hominem attacks I just try not to see the world as black and white, is that such a bad thing?

I was being sarcastic as Loco is a low hanging hypocrite

Oh right :D

Calling out someone on their tone policing in lieu of responding to arguments being made isn't an ad hominem attack. Neither is making a general comment about the lack of coherence of the centrist position (ironically you posted a meme recently that implies that you acknowledge that this is the case.)

If he had made an argument and I hadn't responded to it and insulted him instead, it would have been an ad hominem. The post I was commenting on had no argument in it, so I couldn't have ad hom'd him. Pretty basic stuff.

there is no centrist position
that's the point
you asses policies and people individually
so naturally it will seem as incoherent and confusing for people that identify with a movement blindly

lemon tried to police your tone instead of making an argument
so you called him a coward instead of making an argument
yeah i see were you have the high ground here

how's 5 years of calling out adults on the internet who have no reason to answer to you worked out by the way

The best thing about democratic primaries are Trump tweets.
I feel Trump is gonna win in a landslide in 2020 and take a big chunk of democrat's historical black vote (something in the 20-30%)

For thouse of you who feel otherwise, you get 1:5 odds on bernie and 1:6,x on Bloomberg if you want to drop some cash.

thinking trump will win big because democrats are retarded is a great point

thinking trump will win big because bernie and bloomberg are huge underdogs is the stupidest political commentary since 98.1%

I was making the first point.

I was not making the second point, it came from your imagination. All I was saying is that for people who think different than me (Trump is gonna lose) the front runners are giving great odds, and the other candidates even better odds.

If I could get 1:5 odds on Trump I would bet a huge chunk of money.

I mean bookies are giving 1:2 in trump vs whomever, if you feel more than 50% confident you should go for it.

On February 12 2020 17:44 Santafairy wrote: thinking trump will win big because democrats are retarded is a great point thinking trump will win big because bernie and bloomberg are huge underdogs is the stupidest political commentary since 98.1%

this pretty much sums up my opinion on US elections lol

also lul at betting at those odds when crypto market is going into a bull run

On February 12 2020 20:02 Liquid`Drone wrote: I mean bookies are giving 1:2 in trump vs whomever, if you feel more than 50% confident you should go for it.

Put some money a few months ago at 2.5. If I could get those odds again I would add a hefty bity, sadly I'm getting 1.5 now.

Trump is a big favourite because of the state of the economy, plain and simple - historically an incumbent with ATH's in a lot of metrics like unemployment etc. is super hard to beat, Dems did what they could really with the impeachment etc.

My unfounded theory is that it's all smoke and mirrors though - he's just fuelling the bubble for political points on purpose.
I mean maybe people have learned and the downturn won't be as panicky and rough as in 2008 and many times in the past but I wouldn't count on it

There will probably be a small recession before the 2020 election although it will be caused more because of the FED and not because of Trump. perhaps it will happen after the election in 2021.

The Fed doesn't understand what causes recessions, neoclassical economists (who are the only economists that get appointed to the FED) don't put bank credit/debt into their models, which are the most volatile source of fluctuations in aggregate demand. (their models assume recessions can't happen except for exogenous factors, like earthquakes or what other economies are doing). The FED will overeact to a small uptick in inflation from Trumps policies by raising interest rates, this will cause a very small slowdown in credit, which will cause a recession.

I'm actually a bit naive and am shocked at how far trump has gone, his recent budget has been to cut funding for the EPA yet again, cuts to foodstamps and medicare, cuts to research and development and to increase spending on the nuclear weapons yet again. This guy is the worst politician in history imo.

Whats the bubble?

On February 13 2020 23:09 Stroggoz wrote: don't put bank credit/debt into their models, which are the most volatile source of fluctuations in aggregate demand. (their models assume recessions can't happen except for exogenous factors, like earthquakes or what other economies are doing).

Wait, what, how is this true - legitimate question. Sounds absolutely bonkers

In this case exogenous factors like the coronavirus could potentially be crushing. I feel like people underestimate the impact it might have but thats mainly due to being tired of virus propaganda (Ebola, H1N1... etc ). The data that is released to the public from China is quite concerning ... and you have to know its China and that they are definitely not showing everything due to political reasons

Ya it is true, this is very standard in economics, to make clearly false assumptions to preserve simplicity and mathematical elegance in their models. The idea largely originates from a paper written by Milton Friedman, he argued 'assumptions don't matter, as long as the predictions are good', and compared this methodology to the sciences. You'll note how physcists since galileo have used idealization, essentially ignoring things like wind resistance or w/e to show the laws of motion. This is not what neoclassical economics does, the purpose of idealization in physics is to reveal the principles of nature, they dont pretend to understand how complex phenomena works. And when they do attempt that, they use mathematics which economists dont use, (chaos theory, partial differential equations), rather than making more assumptions to preserve a model. Economists like Bernanke had that speech in 2006 about how the economy was entering a period of great moderation, but the idealization in these models is to a far more extreme degree than in the sciences, which are more about making ancilliary assumptions rather than ignoring massive holes in the model. Of course, this whole logic that Friedman used has an obvious flaw. If you make ludicrous assumptions, the predictions are going to be bad.

Bernanke did his academic work specializing on the history of the great depression, his (imo bad history), essentially blamed it on government monetary policy. the whole QE policy he did was based on this thing called the money multiplier effect, which is a lie your taught in 101 econ, it's an argument that shows if you put $1 into a bank you'll get a big multiple of that (say $10), going into the economy because of how banks function. Actually that's not how banks function, banks actually create money themselves when loan it out. This is why it took so long to get out of the great recession, it was based on this misguided policy.

Most of economics is completely bonkers imo. For example William Nordhaus got the nobel prize in 2018 for incorporating climate change into economics. How did he do this? He compared states with different temperatures and looked at the economic growth differentials between them through taking statistical averages, and argued that we should heat the world up to 4 degrees because there will only be a small growth difference. He doesn't understand climate science of course, but why not just assume climate science doesn't exist to fit the model? This guy is ridiculed by anyone actually working in climate science but his models were apparently deemed good enough to pass peer reviewed journals and good enough for him to get the nobel prize.

A reference in case you don't beleive me: https://evonomics.com/steve-keen-nordhaus-climate-change-economics/