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[DasRaven]

If debate organizers had any balls, they would have let the other declared candidates (Karger/McCotter/Johnson/Roemer/etc) on the stage.

Fixed (in both ways).

 

[SecretMoblin]

Fixed (in both ways).

This too, but let's be honest: the general election debates would be much more substantive if several minor party candidates were allowed on the stage.

 

[DasRaven]

This too, but let's be honest: the general election debates would be much more substantive if several minor party candidates were allowed on the stage.

I completely agree. But since we're in primary season, it'd be nice if the GOP primary debates actually included all the GOP candidates as a start.

 

[ToxicAdam]

Agreed.
By the way, do you support that?

http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showpost.php?p=29948839&postcount=12532

I would expound more on this but I'm out the door for the weekend.

 

[Particle Physicist]

Wait until the general election debates! Those will be all about substance and meaningful solutions, at least from whatever candidate you plan on voting for. Honestly, I haven't seen one genuinely fascinating political debate among major party candidates in the last decade (including intraparty debates).

If debate organizers had any balls, they would have leftist and socialist intellectuals asking questions to Republicans, and have conservative and libertarian intellectuals ask questions of the Democrats.

Spoiler

lol *insert ideology here* aren't intellectuals haha its an oxymoron

These things are so finely coached that there needs to be provocative, ideologically-driven questions to attempt to drive out their true thoughts and feelings, assuming any of the candidates actually have a belief system anymore.

This too, but let's be honest: the general election debates would be much more substantive if several minor party candidates were allowed on the stage.

Oh god yes. I'm surprised that legally they can block certain people from the debates. I would have thought that there would have been some sort of law preventing that.

 

[besada]

I don't agree. The more people on the stage, the less substantive the debates are going to be, because no one will have more than a handful of minutes. They'd be more exciting to watch, certainly, because third-party candidates have less to lose and are therefore more willing to be honest, but so long as you have only two minutes to speak a half-dozen times through the debate, no one's going to be particularly substantive.

I don't have a problem jettisoning some of the poorer performing candidates in favor of third parties, but -- as an example -- if they'd had Gary Johnson on stage last night, his total talking time would probably have been around six minutes total. Even given equal time (and why give equal time to candidates who can't win because of structural deficiencies in the system) he might have had twelve minutes.

Debates face a constant problem of either excluding people or reducing everyone's talking time so much that the only thing they can do is toss out talking points. Maybe we should do three sets of competitive debates, and the adjudged winners go on to do a real debate. I don't really have an answer to the issue, and I'm not sure there is a reasonable answer to it, other than longer debates, which seems unlikely considering our cultural dislike of watching political people argue with each other.

DasRaven: There are more than 20 candidates who've declared as Republicans. How do you put twenty people on stage for two hours and have a substantive debate?

 

[SecretMoblin]

Oh god yes. I'm surprised that legally they can block certain people from the debates. I would have thought that there would have been some sort of law preventing that.

I'm not sure about this (please, correct me if I'm wrong), but I'm pretty sure the general election debates are not publicly funded. Meaning, it's entirely legal - and, I would argue, defensible - for the two major parties to get together and have a debate between the two candidates. I just think it's better in theory to have passionate ideologues on stage to challenge each other rather than what we currently have, which is a battle of who has the better handlers and who is better prepared. Say what you want about Ron Paul's views, but he pushes and pulls the other Republicans on stage in a way that the moderators of the debate can't.

There are several debates every cycle that invite the major party candidates, but they never show up. So there ends up being really interesting debates between candidates from several minor parties, usually including the Libertarian, Green, and Socialist Workers Party. Organizations like Pacifica Radio or the Cato Institute will sponsor and/or fund the debates, and that's where all the genuinely interesting discussion takes place. I think one or two of them airs on one of the C-SPANs.

And I'm also in favor of doing away with this dumb "equal time" business. Just let the nets put whomever they choose on the screen.

The more people on the stage, the less substantive the debates are going to be, because no one will have more than a handful of minutes. They'd be more exciting to watch, certainly, because third-party candidates have less to lose and are therefore more willing to be honest, but so long as you have only two minutes to speak a half-dozen times through the debate, no one's going to be particularly substantive.

I agree that there would be less time for each of the candidates, but I don't think the debates could possibly be any less substantive than the ones that currently take place. Even if there were four or five candidates on stage, if two or three of them spoke from their respective ideologies and not from language and speech coaches I think it would make a world of difference.

Maybe we should do three sets of competitive debates, and the adjudged winners go on to do a real debate.

I know this is a quick and dirty thought experiment, but I shudder at thinking how we could go about judging the "winner" of a political debate in any sort of objective fashion. Plus, if one candidate has an off night, or is sick or something, I don't think their views should be excluded from future debates.

 

[empty vessel]

Here's the difference that many on the left seem to ignore:

This could be a rosy estimation as this is based on the CBO's projection that the economy will grow 3 percent, every year, for the next 5 years. Anyone feel confident of that?

For the life of me, I do not understand what is problematic about that graph (in either scenario).

http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2011/07/pinch-hitting-for-peterson-part-2-how.html
http://my.firedoglake.com/lrwray/20...pete-peterson’s-money-and-remain-progressive/

 

[mckmas8808]

For the life of me, I do not understand what is problematic about that graph (in either scenario).

http://neweconomicperspectives.blogspot.com/2011/07/pinch-hitting-for-peterson-part-2-how.html
http://my.firedoglake.com/lrwray/20...pete-peterson’s-money-and-remain-progressive/

Dude.....the debt to GDP is way too high.

 

[besada]

I know this is a quick and dirty thought experiment, but I shudder at thinking how we could go about judging the "winner" of a political debate in any sort of objective fashion. Plus, if one candidate has an off night, or is sick or something, I don't think their views should be excluded from future debates.

It was a quick and dirty thought experiment, and you're right. There's no way to really come up with a winner.

I guess what I'd like to see, rather than us complaining about something that's been a problem forever (they used to use the 5% public support rule of thumb -- which would have excluded not only all the third party candidates but about half of the people who were actually on stage), maybe trying to come up with some sort of workable solution. I'm not sure there is one that doesn't involve a six hour debate that might tax even my attention. But we have some fairly smart, fairly original folks in here, so maybe someone else has better ideas than I do.

I'll be back later tonight (going to a friend's musical) and I'll gladly respond to anyone who can think of something.

 

[empty vessel]

Dude.....the debt to GDP is way too high.

Explain it to me. You're just repeating words that you've heard somebody else say. You don't have any meaningful understanding of what you're repeating. Mind you, it's not a sin to lack a meaningful understanding of economics. We can't all be experts. But we can at least seek some experts out and read what they have to say. Have you done that? Because I have and the position of so-called deficit owls is convincing.

http://kmci.org/alllifeisproblemsolving/archives/deficit-hawks-deficit-doves-and-deficit-owls/

Repetition of this mantra is what causes economies to be shitty and jobless. So please think twice before blindly repeating it in the future, as it's really nothing more than a political tactic to cut government services and benefits.

 

[Invisible_Insane]

Dude.....the debt to GDP is way too high.

I've posted this before, and I'll post it again: The Debt to GDP Ratio is not a particularly meaningful statistic.

 

[besada]

Mind you, it's not a sin to lack a meaningful understanding of economics. We can't all be experts.

I'm not, which is why you'll rarely see me get balls deep into an economic discussion. I can read opinions as well as the next guy, but I don't have any intuitive feel for it, unlike political operations, the moral implications of policy, science, rhetoric, etc. So I try to stick to subjects I have a more comprehensive grasp of.

 

[Suikoguy]

I've posted this before, and I'll post it again: The Debt to GDP Ratio is not a particularly meaningful statistic.

So, am I understanding this right but would additional debt/gdp be a more accurate measurement?

 

[Invisible_Insane]

So, am I understanding this right but would additional debt/gdp be a more accurate measurement?

Measurement of what?

That would clearly be nonsense. After all, debt (which is measured in currency units) and GDP (which is measured in currency units per unit of time) yields a ratio in units of pure time. There is nothing special about using a year as that unit. A year is the time that it takes for the earth to orbit the sun, which, except for seasonal industries like agriculture, has no particular economic significance.

We should remember this from high school science: always pay attention to units of measurement. Get the units wrong and you are totally befuddled.

If economists did not habitually annualise quarterly GDP data and multiply quarterly GDP by four, Greece's debt-to-GDP ratio would be four times higher than it is now. And if they habitually decadalised GDP, multiplying the quarterly GDP numbers by 40 instead of four, Greece's debt burden would be 15 per cent. From the standpoint of Greece's ability to pay, such units would be more relevant, since it doesn't have to pay off its debts fully in one year (unless the crisis makes it impossible to refinance current debt).

Some of Greece's national debt is owed to Greeks, by the way. As such, the debt burden woefully understates the obligations that Greeks have to each other (largely in the form of family obligations). At any time in history, the debt-to-annual-GDP ratio (including informal debts) would vastly exceed 100 per cent.

The point is that the debt-to-GDP ratio depends entirely on what unit of time you use, and we should be more concerned with the ability of a given country to repay its debt in a period like ten years, or some other unit of time that more capably appreciates the realities of debt service.

 

[elrechazado]

Explain it to me. You're just repeating words that you've heard somebody else say.

I hate when people do this.

we can at least seek some experts out and read what they have to say. .

Oh. So what you actually meant was that he just heard what he's repeating from the wrong people, and you heard what you're repeating from the right ones.

 

[empty vessel]

I'm not, which is why you'll rarely see me get balls deep into an economic discussion. I can read opinions as well as the next guy, but I don't have any intuitive feel for it, unlike political operations, the moral implications of policy, science, rhetoric, etc. So I try to stick to subjects I have a more comprehensive grasp of.

I'm not either, although I try to learn as I go (and if the debt ceiling debacle was good for anything, it was for giving me a much deeper understanding of monetary policy, an area that I had never thought much about before, at least not at a theoretical level). I think it's important for us to step back sometimes and avoid endorsing ideas just because it's a common media or social theme (e.g., that we have a "debt crisis" that we need to "solve"). These tropes don't come to us by accident.

Not being an expert, I could be wrong. But what I know now is that there is a very credible position held by credible economists that this isn't something we need to be worrying about and that our efforts are best spent fixing the economy and other problems (e.g. rising cost of health care) without regard to debt or deficits. Those trying to direct attention to debt and deficits and away from those problems aren't helping us and are likely pursuing their own agendas (shrinking the US government) harmful to the overwhelming majority of us.

Oh. So what you actually meant was that he just heard what he's repeating from the wrong people, and you heard what you're repeating from the right ones.

Not quite. Because there is a difference between repeating tropes that are uncritically and passively absorbed and talking substantively about something that genuine research and thought has affirmatively gone into.

 

[elrechazado]

I'm not either, although I try to learn as I go (and if the debt ceiling debacle was good for anything, it was for giving me a much deeper understanding of monetary policy, an area that I had never thought much about before, at least not at a theoretical level). I think it's important for us to step back sometimes and avoid endorsing ideas just because it's a common media or social theme (e.g., that we have a "debt crisis" that we need to "solve"). These tropes don't come to us by accident.

Not being an expert, I could be wrong. But what I know now is that there is a very credible position held by credible economists that this isn't something we need to be worrying about and that our efforts are best spent fixing the economy and other problems (e.g. rising cost of health care) without regard to debt or deficits. Those trying to direct attention to debt and deficits and away from those problems aren't helping us and are likely pursuing their own agendas (shrinking the US government) harmful to the overwhelming majority of us.



Not quite. Because there is a difference between repeating tropes that are unconsciously and uncritically absorbed and talking substantively about something that genuine research and thought has gone into.

If you think that's a believable distinction, then I can see why you made the statement initially, but I don't see anything here beyond you having believed one position, and not another. Besides, these tropes literally fill these threads, and you clearly aren't making a point of logic, but rather one of ideology..

 

[empty vessel]

If you think that's a believable distinction, then I can see why you made the statement initially, but I don't see anything here beyond you having believed one position, and not another. Besides, these tropes literally fill these threads, and you clearly aren't making a point of logic, but rather one of ideology..

What is any substantive discussion between two people except one about "believing one position and not another"? I wouldn't say I'm making an ideological point at all. I am indeed making a political one, that being that progressives and liberals should not be endorsing in any way the idea that we have a debt or deficit crisis. And that's not just because it will lead to politically bad results for people who do not want to see government services and benefits cut (which it will), but because many credible economists (and I) believe it not to be true.

 

[elrechazado]

What is any substantive discussion between two people except one about "believing one position and not another"? I wouldn't say I'm making an ideological point at all. I am indeed making a political one, that being that progressives and liberals should not be endorsing in any way the idea that we have a debt or deficit crisis. And that's not just because it will lead to politically bad results for people who do not want to see government services and benefits cut (which it will), but because many credible economists (and I) believe it not to be true.

You weren't making a substantive argument, you were calling someone out for "believing what other people say" as a faulty appeal to authority, exactly one sentence before .... making a faulty appeal to authority.

 

[Hari Seldon]

Another court struck down the mandate for health insurance. Hopefully the Supreme Court agrees and we can get real health reform, aka single payer.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44121956/ns/politics-white_house/#.TkXBfoKTNoZ

 

[Particle Physicist]

Another court struck down the mandate for health insurance. Hopefully the Supreme Court agrees and we can get real health reform, aka single payer.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/44121956/ns/politics-white_house/#.TkXBfoKTNoZ

With the current political climate, do you seriously think that is going to happen?

 

[Piecake]

With the current political climate, do you seriously think that is going to happen?

If everyone was sane, yes. Save a crap ton of money, save the individual money, improve health care, and provide health care to everyone. There is literally no downside, well, if you take those selfish douche bags seriously who say that it infringes on their freedom and robs them of choice, then there is one, but we shouldnt pay attention to them.

 

[Hari Seldon]

With the current political climate, do you seriously think that is going to happen?

Not until after the election of course. However it won't happen for 20 years at least if the current law is upheld.

 

[speculawyer]

With the current political climate, do you seriously think that is going to happen?

It could over time happen.

Medicare is a complete nightmare and MUST change. So perhaps they'll change it to be more like European system instead of just blindly paying fees for services. If that happens and it works then eventually there could be calls to extend it to everyone.

Possible. It would take many many years though.

 

[Souldriver]

If everyone was sane, yes. Save a crap ton of money, save the individual money, improve health care, and provide health care to everyone. There is literally no downside, well, if you take those selfish douche bags seriously who say that it infringes on their freedom and robs them of choice, then there is one, but we shouldnt pay attention to them.

I always knew you were a socialist nazismerist.

 

[empty vessel]

You weren't making a substantive argument, you were calling someone out for "believing what other people say" as a faulty appeal to authority, exactly one sentence before .... making a faulty appeal to authority.

Appeals to experts are not faulty appeals to authority when we quite rationally recognize the limits of our own expertise. As I said, I was making a political point. If mckmas8808, the poster to whom my comment was directed, wishes to engage substantively on the issue, he is welcome to do so. But given what my original point was, I don't think he will. Of course, were that to happen, that substantive discussion would amount mostly to linking to various economic experts. But I'd rather be doing that than chanting mantras.

 

[Piecake]

It could over time happen.

Medicare is a complete nightmare and MUST change. So perhaps they'll change it to be more like European system instead of just blindly paying fees for services. If that happens and it works then eventually there could be calls to extend it to everyone.

Possible. It would take many many years though.

Medicare isnt the main problem. The problem is the rest of our shitty health care system. We have a billion different health care providers with a billion different ways of filing so every hospital doctor needs to hire medical coders (forgot the correct term), which, if I remember right, costs them like 20% of the funds budgeted to salary. That's absurd. Not to mention that a lot of doctors get paid by how much business, patients and tests they do. That is also ridiculous. Doctors should be paid a salary because them doing extra tests so that they can fill their pockets hurts everyone's premiums.

I remember that when This American Life did their two podcasts on our health system, they had a comparison between the Mayo clinic's costs, whose doctors are paid a salary, and another hospital, who's doctors get paid on commission basically, and the difference was significant.

 

[Particle Physicist]

I'm sorry, but I think some of you guys are a little too optimistic. If Obama and the Democrats had such a hard time passing the current Healthcare Reform act.. which was extremely similar to a bill originally proposed by the Republicans during Clinton's era, what makes you think that anything more to the left would have an even remote chance of passing?

 

[Flying_Phoenix]

Guy on my Facebook put this as his status:



I responded with:



Evaluate my statement PoliGAF. Do you agree with me?

P.S. Dude is a Tea Bagger.

Even if his plan worked, $28 billion is mere drop in the water compared to the problems military spending, bush tax cuts, corporate loopholes, "healthcare system", etc.

 

[tokkun]

The point is that the debt-to-GDP ratio depends entirely on what unit of time you use, and we should be more concerned with the ability of a given country to repay its debt in a period like ten years, or some other unit of time that more capably appreciates the realities of debt service.

I'm sorry, but that seems like an incredibly inane argument to me. Sure the numerical value of the ratio would change if you used a different time period. That doesn't mean it's not a useful metric as long as you adjust your definition of what a good ratio is.

I mean, if you measure your height to weight ratio, the numerical value will change if you use pounds, kilograms, inches, feet, yards, etc. But height-to-weight ratio is still useful, as long as you keep track of which units are being used.

 

[RustyNails]

I don't know if Debt to GDP ratio is as useful as it seems. It provides a quick snapshot, and that's it. You can't extrapolate it and do in-depth analysis. It's like a company looking at it's share price. But no company will make financial decisions just based on it's share values. They look at return on equities, earnings per share, price/earnings ratio, etc, and a whole host of other economic indicators which show the direction the company is headed. Similarly, a country's "economic health" is measured by indicators such as manufacturing index, consumer price index and of course, unemployment and underemployment statistics, and among many others.

Heck, Japan's Debt to GDP ratio is 220%. The country should've been bankrupt by all accounts. But it's not and remains one of the most stable economies in the world, despite being hit by catastrophic disasters in recent times.

 

[Invisible_Insane]

I'm sorry, but that seems like an incredibly inane argument to me. Sure the numerical value of the ratio would change if you used a different time period. That doesn't mean it's not a useful metric as long as you adjust your definition of what a good ratio is.

I mean, if you measure your height to weight ratio, the numerical value will change if you use pounds, kilograms, inches, feet, yards, etc. But height-to-weight ratio is still useful, as long as you keep track of which units are being used.

How can you call my argument inane when my statement addresses the point you just made?

The point is that the debt-to-GDP ratio depends entirely on what unit of time you use, and we should be more concerned with the ability of a given country to repay its debt in a period like ten years, or some other unit of time that more capably appreciates the realities of debt service.

And to quote the article I posted again:

And if they habitually decadalised GDP, multiplying the quarterly GDP numbers by 40 instead of four, Greece's debt burden would be 15 per cent. From the standpoint of Greece's ability to pay, such units would be more relevant, since it doesn't have to pay off its debts fully in one year (unless the crisis makes it impossible to refinance current debt).

So again, I think that if we're going to talk about debt-to-gdp ratios, they should be considered for the term over which the debts are expected to be repaid.

 

[cartoon_soldier]

Rick Perry Muslims:
http://www.salon.com/news/politics/war_room/2011/08/10/rick_perry_muslims

But it turns out that the Texas governor has had surprisingly warm, constructive relations with at least one group of Muslims over the years.

Perry is a friend of the Aga Khan, the religious leader of the Ismailis, a sect of Shia Islam that claims a reported 15 to 20 million adherents worldwide. Sprouting from that friendship are at least two cooperation agreements between the state of Texas and Ismaili institutions, including a far-reaching program to educate Texas schoolchildren about Islam. That's a partnership that has already prompted a bit of grumbling in far-right corners of the blogosphere and could conceivably become a primary issue if, as expected, Perry enters the presidential race.

Doesn't that pretty much screw him over in the right-wing world?

 

[Fragamemnon]

A little friday fun:

From Josh Marshall's twitter, UK media proving that they can always one-up American media when they want to. Newsweek cover eat your heart (or foot-long corn dog) out:

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/t...d-and-retail-politics-at-the-iowa-state-fair/

Never change UK newspapers.

Now back to the regular investigation on who killed the confidence fairy.

 

[tokkun]

How can you call my argument inane when my statement addresses the point you just made?



And to quote the article I posted again:


So again, I think that if we're going to talk about debt-to-gdp ratios, they should be considered for the term over which the debts are expected to be repaid.

I was more responding to the article you posted, which didn't come through when I quoted you.

But to address what you said more directly, I don't think your own comments really work with the article either. You may as well say "Isn't 10 years an arbitrary value? Why not 6 years?" Or "Why the time to pay back 100% of the debt? Why not the time to pay 80%?"

Unless we are talking about a specific scenario with a real time limit in place, the other metrics are no more or less arbitrary than using one-year GDP, and the debt-to-GDP ratio is at least a known value, unlike something "Ability to pay off debt in 10 years" which is dependent on speculation and projections about future economic conditions.

 

[cartoon_soldier]

Oh, Pelosi stamped golf balls:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005F5QCVQ/?tag=neogaf0e-20

 

[Piecake]

I'm sorry, but I think some of you guys are a little too optimistic. If Obama and the Democrats had such a hard time passing the current Healthcare Reform act.. which was extremely similar to a bill originally proposed by the Republicans during Clinton's era, what makes you think that anything more to the left would have an even remote chance of passing?

Well, if you are including me in that group, I said if everyone was sane, and I definitely do not think the majority of republicans are sane, so I don't see that passing any time soon

 

[Invisible_Insane]

I was more responding to the article you posted, which didn't come through when I quoted you.

But to address what you said more directly, I don't think your own comments really work with the article either. You may as well say "Isn't 10 years an arbitrary value? Why not 6 years?" Or "Why the time to pay back 100% of the debt? Why not the time to pay 80%?"

Unless we are talking about a specific scenario with a real time limit in place, the other metrics are no more or less arbitrary than using one-year GDP, and the debt-to-GDP ratio is at least a known value, unlike something "Ability to pay off debt in 10 years" which is dependent on speculation and projections about future economic conditions.

1) You misunderstood me--I was saying that the debt-to-gdp ratio be considered over some period that properly reflects the time in which the loans need to be repaid, whatever it happens to be.

2) The ubiquity of a bad metric is not a good reason to continue using it.

 

[tokkun]

1) You misunderstood me--I was saying that the debt-to-gdp ratio be considered over some period that properly reflects the time in which the loans need to be repaid, whatever it happens to be.

The real debt is made of bonds that mature at different times. There is no specific deadline for paying it off.

2) The ubiquity of a bad metric is not a good reason to continue using it.

When I said it was a "known value", I didn't mean that it was familiar, I meant that it was based on measured values that are not under dispute. If you tried to make the metric based on the difficulty of repaying the debt in a certain span of time, you would have to guess about future economic conditions and you would end up with economists disagreeing on what the value was.

I get the point that the debt-to-GDP ratio doesn't really have an easily relatable meaning to Joe Sixpack.

 

[Bulbo Urethral Baggins]

Well, if you are including me in that group, I said if everyone was sane, and I definitely do not think the majority of republicans are sane, so I don't see that passing any time soon

So your opinion is that roughly one third of adults in this country are insane?

 

[Piecake]

So your opinion is that roughly one third of adults in this country are insane?

I guess I should have been more specific, I was referring to congress. Citizen republicans, well, either they like voting against their own interest, are ignorant, or have some issues.

 

[GaimeGuy]

So your opinion is that roughly one third of adults in this country are insane?

Dude, roughly 1/3rd of the country supported bush when he left and around the same amount thought obama wasn't born in the US just a few months ago.

Yes, roughly 1/3 of the country is insane and certifiably stupid. At least.

 

[giga]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/t...d-and-retail-politics-at-the-iowa-state-fair/

 

[TacticalFox88]

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/t...d-and-retail-politics-at-the-iowa-state-fair/

Damn, there's a perfect joke in here somewhere

 

[Piecake]

Damn, there's a perfect joke in here somewhere

She has to do that on foot long corn dogs because she never get's to chow down on her husband's corn dog?

 

[Frank the Great]

best part is the guy getting excited in the left bottom corner

 

[Byakuya769]

She's gotta get it somewhere.

 

[Clevinger]

:/

 

[RustyNails]

:/

PoliGAF 2011: Of Weiners, Boehners, Santorum, and Teabags