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Jimmy Carter has died

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Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#551

Post by jmward01 »

distortionfield wrote: post #255
Salgat wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's frustrating is that a few years ago a recession was predicted, and we avoided that. But no one seems to have even mentioned it during the election. Am I just misremembering this? At least in the tech sector, lots of layoffs seemed to be attributed to the coming downturn.

Right? Biden actually pulled off a soft landing and got inflation under control. Just couldn’t land that messaging by the time it mattered.

We are in post policy politics. It no-longer matters what you do, how intelligent or well executed your plans were, just what the messaging says. It is far easier to pick things that you can control messaging on and make them the issues, even when they aren't, than to actually take on the hard things that truly impact people's daily lives. That is what killed Carter's second term and that playbook has just gotten stronger in the years since.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#552

Post by rayiner »

bdndndndbve wrote: post #125
linguae wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For these reasons, Jimmy Carter is my third-favorite president of the 20th century, behind my favorite, Calvin Coolidge, and my second-favorite, Dwight Eisenhower. I am a very big fan of Paul Volcker and I’m glad Jimmy Carter nominated him as chair of the Fed. I wish Reagan kept Volcker as chair during Reagan’s second term.

FDR doesn't make the cut?

When historians study the U.S. a thousand years in the future his presidency will be the demarcation line between the Anglo-American Republic and the semi-democracy we live in now.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#553

Post by jfengel »

warner25 wrote: post #141
jfengel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That replacement didn't last long. The Democrats had an absolutely historic filibuster-proof majority. It's a bit odd that blue Massachusetts would choose a Republican, even a relatively moderate one, to replace Kennedy, but for the Senate as a whole it was something of a reversion to the mean. He did not win re-election, and was replaced by Elizabeth Warren. It did derail the Democratic agenda, but mostly because Re…

> It's a bit odd that blue Massachusetts would choose a Republican, even a relatively moderate one, to replace Kennedy It feels that way, but let's remember that Republicans have held the governorship in Massachusetts for most of the past 30+ years. That's an interesting broader phenomenon, though. A number of other states have turned reliably blue in congressional and presidential elections while voting in Republica…

And Maryland, where I'm from. Our most recent Republican governor ran for Senate, in the awkward position of trying to run away from Trump. It did not work.

Those Republican governors in blue states try to run as "old fashioned" conservatives, more about economic policy than culture war. It can work within the state but less well when the national platform is at stake.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#554

Post by johnnyanmac »

macrocosmos wrote: post #170
readthenotes1 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look a little harder. The people living through the 1970s knew how bad he was and chose to put him out. He had bad staff, bad relations with the overwhelmingly Democratic Congress, and we got the Mayaguez, iran hostage, stagflation, and other troubles too many to list. He was a bad president, a good man, and a great ex-president.

Most people I’ve spoken to about Jimmy Carter who were alive at the time seem to say the same as you. I’ve heard that living in America at the time was depressing and embarrassing. I have a feeling a lot of the praise for the man is from people who weren’t even around when he was president but have been fed some story about how he was great. I see a lot of praise for him online yet it’s very hard to find from the lip…

Probably because he was the most humanitarian president post-campaign. His accomplishments done after presidency could be its own Wikipedia entry.

That gives me the impression that the 70's was simply a bad time with a good man in charge, when in those times people more or less want to be told "it's okay I'll fix it" with no plan in sight.

we're living through THAT in real time, so I guess history rhymes.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#555

Post by johnnyanmac »

notthemessiah wrote: post #314
zeroonetwothree wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He appointed Volcker, who ended stagflation eventually. And his predecessor was appointed by Nixon so it’s hard to blame Carter for this.

He ended inflation by causing a brutal recession through extreme interest rate hikes, which resulted in an irreversible shift in economic paradigms which caused the US to abandon its industrial lead as we faced recession, idle capital accumulation, and mass unemployment. The US became a deficit economy after that point. Nixon, though he caused the original shock, originally wanted to keep the Bretton Woods system int…

>He ended inflation by causing a brutal recession through extreme interest rate hikes, which resulted in an irreversible shift in economic paradigms which caused the US to abandon its industrial lead as we faced recession, idle capital accumulation, and mass unemployment

Neat. I'm born just in time for the sequel. I wonder how insulting it was back then to be told "we're doing fine" by the feds moments before disaster (that's where we are now).

wonder what we're moving to after the deficit economy. Can we do Coke bottle caps?

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#556

Post by jfengel »

sroussey wrote: post #129
jfengel wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That replacement didn't last long. The Democrats had an absolutely historic filibuster-proof majority. It's a bit odd that blue Massachusetts would choose a Republican, even a relatively moderate one, to replace Kennedy, but for the Senate as a whole it was something of a reversion to the mean. He did not win re-election, and was replaced by Elizabeth Warren. It did derail the Democratic agenda, but mostly because Re…

The ACA was a huge change. People generally know about the parts about mandates et al. The provisions for moving beyond paper was one of the biggest, and most relevant to people here. Examples are the use of electronic records, the incentives to actually use them (both for patents and for metrics), etc. Due to the market power of Medicare, it also changed payments from per procedure to per outcome. Many of these chan…

I say "trivial" in that it did not actually change the core elements of private insurance and employer sponsorship. It's a slightly improved version of the old system -- one which recently provoked literal blood lust from both sides of the aisle.

Within that framework the changes can be seen as significant. But that framework is widely despised in the US and considered insane everywhere else.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#557

Post by aprilthird2021 »

bhouston wrote: post #237
siltcakes wrote: post #15

Carter was the most pro-Palestinian president of the 20th century. It's worth reading his book Palestine: Peace Not Apartheid . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palestine:_Peace_Not_Apartheid

I would argue that he was pro-peace. He wanted both Israel and Palestine to exist, not one at the expense of the other. Just as he peace treaty with Egypt was pro-Peace not pro-Egyptian. For this reason he opposed Israeli settlements in the West Bank saying they were leading to a situation akin to apartheid, eg https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/campaigns/2022/02/israels-... It wasn’t very successful as a proposition…

What is the difference between pro-peace and pro-Palestine? I've always understood them to largely be different terms in favor of a two-state solution.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#558

Post by gigatree »

lotsofpulp wrote: post #542
gigatree wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stupid question but does that mean the “discount” comes from tax dollars? i.e. medical costs are spread out more but we’re also collectively spending more of our income on it?

The discount is from a knowledgeable entity who buys lots of healthcare knowing what they are buying (theoretically preventing fraud) and what competing healthcare providers are selling at, and also negotiating with the collecting purchasing decision of thousands or millions of insureds. Edit: since I can’t respond to comment below due to hitting too fast posting limit: Post ACA and pre ACA plans are completely diffe…

Was thinking of the tax credit, but yeah that makes sense (assuming that the post-ACA unsubsidized price of a plan is lower than its pre-ACA price).

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#559

Post by johnnyanmac »

SideQuark wrote: post #496
datavirtue wrote: post #425

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm amused by the fact that everyone always blames the person who has been explicitly isolated from having any economic power, the president. The electorate just seems to bully the president in this regard.

The President has immense economic power, more than any other person in the US. One example is the ability to levy tariffs at a whim, make and break and alter trade treaties, appoint various economic players such as fed reserve members, and a host of other actions. What single person do you think has greater power?

Given current history, the Feds I guess. President is powerful, but he can't just dig an economy out of recession (which seems to be the times when we have huge swings, for the sake of change). Even if he could, the methods are so unpopular that you basically doom your campaign. Only a lame duck could afford that.

That's a part of why the Feds levy a lot of independence. In this case, what the people want isn't always the best for them.

Re: Jimmy Carter has died

#560

Post by fakedang »

zeroonetwothree wrote: post #195
bdndndndbve wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FDR doesn't make the cut?

FDR did Japanese internment, tried court packing, and was arguably the first of the modern style of power-hungry president. He constantly threatened members of Congress that didn’t roll over and go along with his agenda. To that end he was very influential but not entirely in a good way. He hardly ended the depression, economic conditions were poor until WW2 (eg look at the 1937 downturn, well into his tenure).

Exactly. FDR is the reason that the President today has an unbalanced amount of power compared to Congress.

That being said, back then, I would argue that the situation would have been very different had a lesser person than FDR been elected president, given the kind of political climate it was around the world.

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