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Another 1.3M Americans File for Unemployment

forbes.com

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Re: Another 1.3M Americans File for Unemployment

#161

Post by paulmd »

nightski wrote: post #150
TomSwirly wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to fundamentally misunderstand how voting should work. The idea is not "the rules should be set up so people like me get a bigger voice". It's _one person, one vote._ You don't get an extra vote because you're "unique". What? It strikes me that you basically want the voting system to be be biased to your advantage against a group of people you probably don't like very much. If this is true, it speaks extreme…

No, I want both minority and majority voices heard. What I am saying is that city voices are strong. They get the majority of the funding and influence when it comes to politics, regardless of voting power on a per capita basis. The difference is you are arguing that rural citizens should get no say whatsoever. I care about everyone instead of only those living in a small geographic circle and understand that the nee…

> What I am saying is that city voices are strong. They get the majority of the funding and influence when it comes to politics,

your experience of the american political system is vastly different from mine. You have a whole house in congress devoted to making sure low-population states get disproportionate representation, the other congressional house and the state legislatures have boundary lines that are gerrymandered to disproportionately benefit and empower you, a rural farming state has the first say in primaries and an incredible amount of pandering from legislators, the electoral college gives you disproportionate power over selecting the president in the general, you get incredibly disproportionate amounts of federal spending (military bases, road funding, etc) - far more than they contribute, I can go on.

Hell, in some cases the states themselves have been explicitly drawn to increase the amount of rural power - the only reason the Dakotas aren't a single state is so they'd get extra senators and representatives.

Again, you are coming off as a member of a rural minority who is crying that they don't have total and utter political power over the urban majority. You already have a hugely disproportionate amount of power, influence, and funding in the American system.

A vote in Wyoming is already 3.2x more potent than a vote in California based on electoral weighting, and the same is effectively true for most other areas of the government that involve voting in any form. How much higher, exactly, do you think that should be?

Re: Another 1.3M Americans File for Unemployment

#162

Post by paulmd »

axaxs wrote: post #140
sangnoir wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're implicitly making that argument though - pitting raw number of people vs land owned as a measure of who gets more say.

I'm making the argument that one concentrated area should not control the fate of a much larger area. I'm not, however, asserting that the larger area should control the fate of the concentrated area, either.

I think the issue we're all dancing around is that state lines really need to be re-cut. The rural areas have more in common with each other, the urban areas have more in common with each other.

Cut the urban areas into their own states (eg take the metro NYC or Chicago area and make them their own states) and then merge a lot of the "empty land" in between to try and equalize the population somewhat. End up with somewhere in the neighborhood of 15 urban states and 15 rural states.

Re: Another 1.3M Americans File for Unemployment

#163

Post by 25mph »

imchillyb wrote: post #40
varbhat wrote: post #32

Can UBI(Universal Basic Income) scheme help to overcome Unemployment crisis ?

> Can UBI scheme help to overcome Unemployment crisis ? @varbhat You realize that UBI requires monies, right? The US Federal government, and most states, are bankrupt. There is no money for this years bills. There was no money for last years bills, and we keep borrowing at exorbitant interest rates. Our deficit (shortfall for this year) is -more than- 2.7 trillion dollars. Our debt (shortfall for previous years) is -…

From the gov's point of view, citizens and companies are shareholders in the "US corporation". Right now, the poor citizens own a 10% stake in the corporation. UBI is about giving them maybe 20%, at the expense of diluting the share of bigger shareholders. The board members don't want to dilute their own share, but if the corporation goes out of business, their own stake won't be worth anything. The absolute numbers are irrelevant: what matters is the stake percentage, not whether it's measured in billions or trillions of shares.

Re: Another 1.3M Americans File for Unemployment

#164

Post by scrollbar »

superkuh wrote: post #115
scrollbar wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Money is created by the government, and creating more of it to distributed equally across individuals just redistributes the relative purchasing power from people with more than average to people with less than average.

Not just the government, not really the government at all unless you consider the Federal Reserve Banks lending money to regional banks "government". The majority of the M0 money supply, that bit of currency we use to get things done in our economy, is created by fiat at any of the ~4500 commercial banks (in the USA). Every time they give out a loan they create the money out of thin air as debt on their balance sheet…

Thanks for all the detail, agreed on all your points.

Re: Another 1.3M Americans File for Unemployment

#165

Post by coolspot »

guenthert wrote: post #78
landryraccoon wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am speaking anecdotally here but.. Deflation? I can’t think of a single product that has gone down in price and numerous things are more expensive. In particular, virtually every single food item at the grocery store is more expensive than it was in March. Am I the only one who has experienced this? It seems like basic staples (milk, eggs, flour) are substantially more expensive than a few months ago.

Oil/Gasoline went down in price early this year quite dramatically. This (as energy cost) is included with a heavy weight in the price index calculation.

Not in Southern California.

Regular costs $3.5/gal

Re: Another 1.3M Americans File for Unemployment

#166

Post by deepakhj »

ChrisLomont wrote: post #69
ironman1478 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority didn't vote for this government. We do not deserve this.

Majority vote was not the deciding criteria, known to all well before the election. So this is an odd complaint - that somehow the majority needs to decide. Also, the majority didn't vote for the Democrats either. Of those who voted, 48% voted D, 46% voted R, 3% voted Johnson, 1% voted Stein, misc voted to others. So would a D win also have been somehow not deserved because they didn't get a majority? And this is onl…

I don't think the OP meant the president. The senate has about 400+ bills sitting on it's desk. If we had a functioning senate, then it would force the president to publicly veto the bill.

Re: Another 1.3M Americans File for Unemployment

#167

Post by Paradox0 »

nightski wrote: post #99
Paradox0 wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it doesn't make sense that people should have greater voting power based on their location in the same polity. Your argument is equally valid in reverse -- there's no reason why rural dwellers should decide what happens in cities. Why should your vote count for more because I have more neighbors than you do?

While city dwellers vote may be technically less powerful on a per capita basis, they make up for it in numbers. There are simply more of you with similar needs/wants. Not to mention far more money to achieve those needs and wants. In a city an individual's needs from his/her government are just less unique.

Cities are much more diverse than rural areas in terms of ethnicity, religion, economic class, linguistics, etc. To claim that city dwellers have "similar needs/wants" simply doesn't make any sense.

And having "similar needs/wants" doesn't have a logical connection to justifying taking away their voting voices.

Re: Another 1.3M Americans File for Unemployment

#168

Post by axaxs »

paulmd wrote: post #162
axaxs wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm making the argument that one concentrated area should not control the fate of a much larger area. I'm not, however, asserting that the larger area should control the fate of the concentrated area, either.

I think the issue we're all dancing around is that state lines really need to be re-cut. The rural areas have more in common with each other, the urban areas have more in common with each other. Cut the urban areas into their own states (eg take the metro NYC or Chicago area and make them their own states) and then merge a lot of the "empty land" in between to try and equalize the population somewhat. End up with som…

Yeah, I got downvoted, but I was really trying to be philosophical and frame an opposing side. I walked around a while thinking on it, and that's all I came up with - more states. Our nation would look really gerrymandered, I think.

Re: Another 1.3M Americans File for Unemployment

#169

Post by paulmd »

axaxs wrote: post #168
paulmd wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the issue we're all dancing around is that state lines really need to be re-cut. The rural areas have more in common with each other, the urban areas have more in common with each other. Cut the urban areas into their own states (eg take the metro NYC or Chicago area and make them their own states) and then merge a lot of the "empty land" in between to try and equalize the population somewhat. End up with som…

Yeah, I got downvoted, but I was really trying to be philosophical and frame an opposing side. I walked around a while thinking on it, and that's all I came up with - more states. Our nation would look really gerrymandered, I think.

I actually think less states. Like, even 15 rural states is probably a stretch, it probably would be closer to 8. There really isn't a point to having like 30 states that have less than a half million people in them.

I would slice it into something like:

* Appalachia Region

* Gulf Region

* Great Lakes Region

* Heartland region

* Rockies Region

* Cascadia Region

* Desert Region (Southwest US - need a better name but I'm coming up with a blank.)

* Maybe a Northern Shield region? Could just be part of the rockies region.

Those areas all have common environmental concerns and life experiences, and would bring a sufficient number of residents to be worth bothering over. Then you have the metro areas as their own states, enclaves within the larger regions. If metro areas grow out you would probably would have to have some mechanism to vote to transfer counties/districts between states.

Never going to happen of course, the number of political barriers is insane. And Republicans would never ratify any such plan that rearranged states as any sensible arrangement would unwind the disproportionate power they wield based on the current arrangement.

The only mechanism that could conceivably be achieved is splitting blue states up, and it's not really a good one since populations are so concentrated - imagine trying to split New York City into like 5 independent states, it would just be completely impossible to administer in practice.

In reality we will just keep bumbling along with our current system that immensely, disproportionately advantages the rural states and rural populations. Unless the country goes into an actual civil war, of course, which is not as unthinkable as it was 4 years ago.

Re: Another 1.3M Americans File for Unemployment

#170

Post by dannyw »

charwalker wrote: post #106
34679 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everyone seems to think the stock market going up is always an indicator of an increase in value of those stocks. But there are at least two reasons the price of an asset can increase. One is the asset gains value. The other is the currency loses value. I don't see how anyone can look at the US economy right now, outside of the stock market, and come to the conclusion that more value is being created or profit being…

Another factor is most western nation bonds as well as corporate bonds are running close to 0% return. As long as competition for investment is sitting at about 0%, including private equity investments in companies that could fail in the next year due to recession, supply chain issues, or tariff wars, where else are people putting money? Most employed Americans are still paying into retirement and mostly dumping cash…

Consumer price inflation is not the same thing as asset price inflation. They're in two different worlds. Asset price inflation rarely transfers to consumer price inflation, because when you have $100M you are probably putting that into assets (e.g. luxury house) and not buying 1 billion macbooks.
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