Allison Schrager on a U.S. sovereign wealth fund; Jodey Arrington and Phil Gramm on the welfare state; David R. Samson on tribalism; Samson on false polarization
Alternately, Harris boycotted Natenyahu's speech in congress and it seems likely she avoided picking someone from the most important swing state for VP because he's a Jew.
I guess the question of extreme views comes down to policy. If it gets reflected in policy then its relevant. A lot of extreme views on the left end up getting reflected in policy.
Right, and also, actions and policies of which would have no awareness without someone paying attention and pointing it out. Furthermore, people lie all the time about politics, so you have to watch what they do, not just listen to what they say.
I mean, doesn't half of Libertarian advocacy of state-power-skepticism orbit the point that, "You absolutely can't trust what people say about how they intend to use state power."
That being said, you -can- pay attention to what they don't say, i.e., the dogs that don't bark, by listening to their answer - if they have one, if they're ever even asked - to the question, "You say that only some extremists on your side support position X and you don't, well, why not, what's wrong with X, what error are those who support it making?"
People who are just pretending not to support X for politically expedient reasons are usually unprepared to also pass the intellectual Turing test and give the other side's best arguments, and relatedly, they can avoid drawing a lot of fire from their own side if they are vague and evasive on the matter, but not when they have to explicitly articulate reasons for opposition. About 90% of the purportedly right-leaning commentariat gets hungry for "strange new respect" and feels the need to do this, voluntarily, about every other post. But it's very rare on the left, due to the "no enemies to the left" incentive structure.
Can you imagine anyone getting the chance to ask Harris, "Ok, what's wrong with what the anti-Israel protesters believe?" Can you imagine her having a good answer to it? Lol, no. Instead, at the convention, it was, "Those protesters out in the street, they have a point, a lot of innocent people are being killed, both sides." "Hey, protester in the street, are you, like, just generically anti-war and pro peace and also protest against Hamas when they commit violent acts which kidnap, torture, rape, and kill innocent civilians?" - "Um, no, that's not actually the point of my protest, which, duh, Biden and the rest know quite well."
But more to the specific point, for several generations, pretty much everywhere else on earth, the left has been vehemently and consistently anti-Israel. That leads one to guess that the anti-Israel position is not some whim or fad but an extension of the underlying logic and principles of leftist ideology. As such it makes perfect sense to presume that American leftists have the same position and harbor similar attitudes and are just trying not to say the quiet part out loud for reasons of political expediency, up until the first minute the cost has fallen below the threshold where no one has to pretend anymore, and then boom, immediate mass shift in consensus to the new position.
Gay marriage provides a good example. Back in the 90's, everybody knew that everybody on the left supported gay marriage, even though many pretended it was an """extreme""" position, and that democrat politicians who were saying otherwise were just lying to win elections, hoping to "wait it out" with regards to efforts to influence the culture in that direction, and also for the courts to just dictate and impose those chances. You can always tell what leftists believe and are going to do soon by looking at what is going on in very blue areas that are always ahead of the curve and assuming that what the left is doing in those places is what they really want to do everywhere, and what they will do, as soon as they enough support and power to get it done. So when Obama ran in blue Illinois, he was for gay marriage, but for national office in 2008, his viewed has 'evolved' against it, but then a few years later, evolved back to be for it, again. Anyone who was fooled by any of that was a chump. Axelrod was very explicit about all this pretense in "Believer: My Forty Years in Politics".
So, the question is "Why is anti-Israel in 2024 different from gay-marriage in 2008?" Answer: it's not. In due time, it will be the official position of the American left, just like it is everywhere else.
The other day I went to see a friend in DC. Didn't really want to go all the way down there or care about the event, but needed to talk to him about something else more important.
The event was a Douglas Murray essentially lecture/interview on why Israel is good and Hamas is bad.
What was interesting about the event to me is that it was clearly ENTERTAINMENT. I don't think it was different then any other political rally I've seen, even though he's not a politician. I already believe his message and he presented no new information. There were lots of jokes and zingers and one liners that were clearly practiced and delivered to get the audience howling and use at a cocktail party later to impress.
There wasn't much substance. There was no obvious call to action if you wanted to do something. No discussion of how you might change someones mind. No new insight anyone who's spent like 30 minutes thinking about this could come up with. Why did all of these people in blazers want to come to this event and spend their time and money? Couldn't they watch it on YouTube and send a donation to Israel or something. It was really unclear to me what the people in the audience were supposed to DO about all this.
Yes - a successful candidate for office more or less has to draw upon those who were active in his campaign to staff policy jobs. So while the candidate may have said one thing to the public and perhaps even believed it, the people he appoints do their own thing, even if this gets the official in electoral trouble.
“Consider the ‘fizzle’ of the anti-Israel protests at the Democratic convention. It seems plausible that online media caused us (and I include myself) to over-estimate the prevalence of extreme hostility to Israel.”
It’s of course certainly *plausible* this is correct.
However what went on on university campuses was not an illusion.
Nor were the Harvard-Harris polls of pro-Hamas sentiment among young adults.
It’s plausible that the event was merely well managed.
It’s even more plausible that those who fund leftist protests, or even the on-the-ground organizers of said protests, decided it was not in their own interest to cause a scene at the DNC.
About the increase in welfare real income since the War on Poverty in 1967.... does that help explain why the labour force participation rate has been falling?
Wouldn't starting up a sovereign wealth fund under these circumstances actually increase the country's debt burden, since it would divert funds away from debt repayment, hoping that returns will exceed debt servicing costs? According to the Peter G Peterson Foundations (citing the CBO), the CBO projects that interest payments will total $892 billion in fiscal year 2024 and rise rapidly...climbing from $1 trillion in 2025 to $1.7 trillion in 2034. In total, net interest payments will total $12.9 trillion over the next decade. I'd love to invest in a fund that could perform positive at even a fraction of that rate.
The payments go up because the debt it is based on goes up. It is not a particularly high return performance for holders of govt debt..
Regardless, the piece mentions leveraging. If investment returns (stock, bond, real estate, etc.) are greater than the added debt interest, profit is gained. I have a mortgage at 2 1/8% I took out shortly before my old mortgage was paid off. I could pay it off but I am making profit on it.
> A lot of “political discourse” consists of highlighting the extreme views of the other side.
It's the political system - when every election is a binary 'left' or 'right' referendum then of course the other side gets labelled as extreme. The media just reflects that.
Which isn't to say a more pluralist system is necessarily better.
Id like to know how Arrington and Grammy arrived at $64,700. I'm skeptical and bet if I had access to the full WSJ I'd be no closer to knowing.
Be that as it may, the problem isn't the current spending above and beyond payroll tax. The problem is future years and the cost of SS and Medicare above and beyond the payroll tax is going to grow far faster than other welfare spending.
That's like saying, "The problem isn't that today I'm taking on debt I won't be able to pay off. It's that ten years from now I won't be able to pay it off. It's not a present problem. It's only a problem in ten years."
Or perhaps, "The problem isn't that I'm sitting around eating junk food. I have no problem today. The problem is only twenty years from now when I have metabolic syndrome and my doctor is telling me to change my life."
Saying, "It's not a problem today" is irresponsible short-term thinking. Something we humans are all too prone to.
I said today's spending isn't the problem and tomorrow's spending was. I didn't say when tomorrow's spending was a problem. I didn't say it didn't result from an obligation made today.
If you make an obligation today that you will have difficulty performing, you have created a problem today. I suppose it's a matter of language whether that's a problem today or later. My feeling is that it's worth worrying about today. It's worth not doing today. It is a problem today.
There's a joke about the man who jumps off a 100 story building. As he passes the fifth floor, someone asks him how's the trip? He replies, "So far, no problem." I would say that he had a big problem as soon as he jumped.
The most important tribalism in the USA is college discrimination against Republicans in professors, Boards of Trustees, and staff. This known but winked at illegal discrimination has led to acceptance of false defamation and then demonization of Republicans. College discrimination, for many decades, is the main root cause for so much polarization.
The Democrat Demonization Strategy. Yes, Republicans also claim that it will be terrible if the Dem wins, because of terrible Dem policies, like sending Haitians to Springfield, not Martha’s Vineyard. Not because Kamala is evil, but because the policy is terrible. Many Democrats, and our AS Kling host, treat Trump as evil, seldom seriously arguing against his policies as compared to the Dems. I’m sure in Kling’s mind, like many of my Dem friends, they don’t admit that they think he’s evil, just that he’s so bad, so uniquely terrible on [insert rationalization here]. As noted by Dan Williams, there is a pundit Market for Rationalizations, yet close reading shows he also treats Trump as evil, with rationalizations.
Once the demonization of the target is accepted, like demonization of Trump or Jews or Blacks or illegal aliens, those doing the demonizing get big tribal benefits including closer bonding. Such bonding allows small in-tribe disagreements, as long as the out-tribe demon remains evil.
The genius of Free Speech is to accept big differences of opinions, big disagreements, and remain within the American tribe. Free Speech allows true but unproven facts to be discussed, as well as others to claim those facts as unproven. Like how many cats & dogs & ducks have been eaten by Haitian immigrants. It’s very likely more than 0.
The fastest way to improve colleges is to require them, as edu orgs getting huge govt benefits like endowment tax exemptions, to have a quota of Republicans as Trustees and professors, like 30%.
Quotas are less meritocratic, in theory, but far better than the current situation. And more politically likely than rapidly ending govt support for famous schools of higher ed and demonization.
Seems there was another Dem incited assassination attempt against Trump.
"The fastest way to improve colleges is to require them, as edu orgs getting huge govt benefits like endowment tax exemptions, to have a quota of Republicans as Trustees and professors, like 30%."
The fastest way to improve colleges is to make it illegal to require 4+ year degrees for any job that pays less than 200,000 dollars per year and index that amount to inflation, and apply similar standards to visas etc. All but eliminate student loan programs. Partially cancel the debts with taxes on university endowments.
What I described is hard to pull off but very easy to enforce. What you described is easy to pull off nominally but impossible to enforce. Passive systems of regulation are more effective than active ones, especially when the active ones are working against natural human incentives.
Fortunately, that quota scheme would never be gamed. "Of course I'm a Republican. Look at my party registration. You say I'm not a Republican because I support Black Lives Matter, racial quotas, racial reparations, higher taxes, and censorship against misinformation. I am a proud member of the progressive wing of the Republican Party."
Of course it will be gamed -- in the future. If a quota system is started in 2025, requiring Rep registration from 2024 or before, it can't easily be gamed by BLM supporters who were NOT R in 2024.
Reps in Congress create a partisan Rep commission to accept or reject claims of being a Republican for the Trustees; with similar commission for the Dems.
Obviously you need Republican decision makers to have the power to specify criteria for being a Rep, like publicly supporting at least 2 of the last 3 Rep candidates (or 4 of 6).
Yeah, a Rep NeverTrumper who supported Romney & McCain, maybe like Liz Cheney, could qualify under this. But Trump will pass, win or not in 2024.
If a BLM supporting Harvard prof claims to be a registered R, but supports all Dem policies, he'll be a bit of a laughing stock known liar. Trolling works ok in tweets on X, but unlikely to get respect or status at any decent college.
I'd expect none of the top 100 endowed colleges to qualify -- and they'd all object as they lose their tax exemptions. Losing tax exemptions, then guaranteed student loans, than Fed research -- colleges like all orgs will follow the money. Quotas will lead to immediate attempts at change, as well as big increases in govt tax revenue from Dem orgs who haven't been paying their "fair share", yet arguing for more govt spending.
Roger, do you have a better idea? You realize you are claiming "no change, continued demonization of Reps" is preferable to quotas which help immediately but likely get somewhat gamed over time.
Finally, we need to accept that our society is split in values, and. like prosecutor & defense in court searching for truth, we need Rep partisans and Dem partisans in govt, checking and balancing the other and increasing the rule of law.
'It is a really horrendous idea for a country that is running massive deficits. We are already setting our descendants up for conflict in order to achieve current political aims. The last we thing we need is to do more of that.'
But have you thought it through? Consider this, the average spread between the 3 month and the 10 year treasury is 1.5 percentage points since 2000. Once we get back to this level the government could just borrow at 3 months and buy their own 10 year treasuries back making a 1.5% spread with no risk. If they borrow enough money would could entirely fund the government with this arbitrage!!!
Medicaid, food stamps, refundable tax credits, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, federal housing subsidies and almost 100 other programs whose eligibility is limited to those below an income threshold."
I mean, I assume basically the whole $64K is Medicaid....
The entire medicaid budget divided by the size of the bottom quintile is ~$17k per person, so you need 4 people per household here, all on medicaid and zero non working age people on medicaid and no other payouts.
"welfare payments received by the average work-age household in the bottom quintile of income recipients"
Is this really what is meant or is it misstated? I'm not sure what this means. Why would we only look at the 20% of recipients with the lowest income? (income other than benefits, I assume) what about the other 80% of recipients?
A sovereign wealth fund is a bad idea for all the reasons stated. Those are all fixable problems. It is a bad idea for another reason that is not fixable. The current Social Security trust fund is near 10% of the total US stock market valuation. In the pat it has been over 10%. In order to cover it's obligations, it should be much larger. This would be a significant portion of the stock market. (Norway's wealth fund is 70% equities)
Well, yes, it would be very easy indeed to do a sovereign wealth fund poorly. And Congress, Trump and Harris ought all have putting an end to the piling on of more and more debt as a top priority.
In considering a sovereign wealth fund, it would seem that it might be helpful to answer some questions first. For example, would the money come from new revenue streams? What assets would the sovereign wealth fund be authorized to hold? Under what circumstances and for what purposes could the sovereign wealth fund be tapped? And what would prevent the new streams from being used as an offset for new spending? What debt control measures would be paired with the sovereign wealth fund? And what alternatives do Congress, Harris, or Trump have in addressing the problems the US faces as a net debtor? Before dismissing a sovereign wealth fund out of hand, one might wish to have good answers to these questions.
The establishment technocracy policy strategy appears to be to slash benefits for or eliminate entirely Social Security and Medicare, leave their respective tax revenue streams in place, increase all other taxes to the maximum extent possible before revenue streams begin to collapse, and continue rampant spending on whatever crisis du jour happens to be gripping their feverish little imaginations. Climate! Equity! Pandemic! The list is endless and the state of crisis is permanent.
One possible populist alternative would be to constitutionally prohibit any increase to the national debt limit, cap non-mandatory federal spending at FY 2017 levels, adopt a VAT modeled after Singapore’s, direct half the VAT revenue into the mandatory spending accounts and half into the sovereign wealth fund. The sovereign wealth fund’s asset allocation would follow the Norwegian model (https://www.nbim.no/en/the-fund/investments/#/ ) except that hard reserves of strategically sensitive metals and other commodities would replace the wind infrastructure sector. The sovereign wealth fund would only be tapped in the event of a congressional declaration of war in order to meet unfunded military necessities, or, by unanimous vote of both House and Senate.
The latter alternative would undoubtedly enjoy broad popular support but unfortunately the US constitution is designed to thwart popular policy measures and to guarantee unlimited spending, taxation, and debt. Once the United States goes completely defunct, its successor states might do well to consider adopting a substantively limited and legitimately republican form of governance.
Alternately, Harris boycotted Natenyahu's speech in congress and it seems likely she avoided picking someone from the most important swing state for VP because he's a Jew.
I guess the question of extreme views comes down to policy. If it gets reflected in policy then its relevant. A lot of extreme views on the left end up getting reflected in policy.
Right, and also, actions and policies of which would have no awareness without someone paying attention and pointing it out. Furthermore, people lie all the time about politics, so you have to watch what they do, not just listen to what they say.
I mean, doesn't half of Libertarian advocacy of state-power-skepticism orbit the point that, "You absolutely can't trust what people say about how they intend to use state power."
That being said, you -can- pay attention to what they don't say, i.e., the dogs that don't bark, by listening to their answer - if they have one, if they're ever even asked - to the question, "You say that only some extremists on your side support position X and you don't, well, why not, what's wrong with X, what error are those who support it making?"
People who are just pretending not to support X for politically expedient reasons are usually unprepared to also pass the intellectual Turing test and give the other side's best arguments, and relatedly, they can avoid drawing a lot of fire from their own side if they are vague and evasive on the matter, but not when they have to explicitly articulate reasons for opposition. About 90% of the purportedly right-leaning commentariat gets hungry for "strange new respect" and feels the need to do this, voluntarily, about every other post. But it's very rare on the left, due to the "no enemies to the left" incentive structure.
Can you imagine anyone getting the chance to ask Harris, "Ok, what's wrong with what the anti-Israel protesters believe?" Can you imagine her having a good answer to it? Lol, no. Instead, at the convention, it was, "Those protesters out in the street, they have a point, a lot of innocent people are being killed, both sides." "Hey, protester in the street, are you, like, just generically anti-war and pro peace and also protest against Hamas when they commit violent acts which kidnap, torture, rape, and kill innocent civilians?" - "Um, no, that's not actually the point of my protest, which, duh, Biden and the rest know quite well."
But more to the specific point, for several generations, pretty much everywhere else on earth, the left has been vehemently and consistently anti-Israel. That leads one to guess that the anti-Israel position is not some whim or fad but an extension of the underlying logic and principles of leftist ideology. As such it makes perfect sense to presume that American leftists have the same position and harbor similar attitudes and are just trying not to say the quiet part out loud for reasons of political expediency, up until the first minute the cost has fallen below the threshold where no one has to pretend anymore, and then boom, immediate mass shift in consensus to the new position.
Gay marriage provides a good example. Back in the 90's, everybody knew that everybody on the left supported gay marriage, even though many pretended it was an """extreme""" position, and that democrat politicians who were saying otherwise were just lying to win elections, hoping to "wait it out" with regards to efforts to influence the culture in that direction, and also for the courts to just dictate and impose those chances. You can always tell what leftists believe and are going to do soon by looking at what is going on in very blue areas that are always ahead of the curve and assuming that what the left is doing in those places is what they really want to do everywhere, and what they will do, as soon as they enough support and power to get it done. So when Obama ran in blue Illinois, he was for gay marriage, but for national office in 2008, his viewed has 'evolved' against it, but then a few years later, evolved back to be for it, again. Anyone who was fooled by any of that was a chump. Axelrod was very explicit about all this pretense in "Believer: My Forty Years in Politics".
So, the question is "Why is anti-Israel in 2024 different from gay-marriage in 2008?" Answer: it's not. In due time, it will be the official position of the American left, just like it is everywhere else.
The other day I went to see a friend in DC. Didn't really want to go all the way down there or care about the event, but needed to talk to him about something else more important.
The event was a Douglas Murray essentially lecture/interview on why Israel is good and Hamas is bad.
What was interesting about the event to me is that it was clearly ENTERTAINMENT. I don't think it was different then any other political rally I've seen, even though he's not a politician. I already believe his message and he presented no new information. There were lots of jokes and zingers and one liners that were clearly practiced and delivered to get the audience howling and use at a cocktail party later to impress.
There wasn't much substance. There was no obvious call to action if you wanted to do something. No discussion of how you might change someones mind. No new insight anyone who's spent like 30 minutes thinking about this could come up with. Why did all of these people in blazers want to come to this event and spend their time and money? Couldn't they watch it on YouTube and send a donation to Israel or something. It was really unclear to me what the people in the audience were supposed to DO about all this.
Yes - a successful candidate for office more or less has to draw upon those who were active in his campaign to staff policy jobs. So while the candidate may have said one thing to the public and perhaps even believed it, the people he appoints do their own thing, even if this gets the official in electoral trouble.
“Consider the ‘fizzle’ of the anti-Israel protests at the Democratic convention. It seems plausible that online media caused us (and I include myself) to over-estimate the prevalence of extreme hostility to Israel.”
It’s of course certainly *plausible* this is correct.
However what went on on university campuses was not an illusion.
Nor were the Harvard-Harris polls of pro-Hamas sentiment among young adults.
It’s plausible that the event was merely well managed.
It’s even more plausible that those who fund leftist protests, or even the on-the-ground organizers of said protests, decided it was not in their own interest to cause a scene at the DNC.
Samson begs a lot questions in his essay. I don't think he sees that his essay is just another tribal manifestation.
About the increase in welfare real income since the War on Poverty in 1967.... does that help explain why the labour force participation rate has been falling?
Of course in part. Without doubt. But stats on what part would surely be interesting.
Wouldn't starting up a sovereign wealth fund under these circumstances actually increase the country's debt burden, since it would divert funds away from debt repayment, hoping that returns will exceed debt servicing costs? According to the Peter G Peterson Foundations (citing the CBO), the CBO projects that interest payments will total $892 billion in fiscal year 2024 and rise rapidly...climbing from $1 trillion in 2025 to $1.7 trillion in 2034. In total, net interest payments will total $12.9 trillion over the next decade. I'd love to invest in a fund that could perform positive at even a fraction of that rate.
Exactly - “If investment returns…are greater than the added debt interest, profit is gained.” Big if.
The payments go up because the debt it is based on goes up. It is not a particularly high return performance for holders of govt debt..
Regardless, the piece mentions leveraging. If investment returns (stock, bond, real estate, etc.) are greater than the added debt interest, profit is gained. I have a mortgage at 2 1/8% I took out shortly before my old mortgage was paid off. I could pay it off but I am making profit on it.
> A lot of “political discourse” consists of highlighting the extreme views of the other side.
It's the political system - when every election is a binary 'left' or 'right' referendum then of course the other side gets labelled as extreme. The media just reflects that.
Which isn't to say a more pluralist system is necessarily better.
Id like to know how Arrington and Grammy arrived at $64,700. I'm skeptical and bet if I had access to the full WSJ I'd be no closer to knowing.
Be that as it may, the problem isn't the current spending above and beyond payroll tax. The problem is future years and the cost of SS and Medicare above and beyond the payroll tax is going to grow far faster than other welfare spending.
That's like saying, "The problem isn't that today I'm taking on debt I won't be able to pay off. It's that ten years from now I won't be able to pay it off. It's not a present problem. It's only a problem in ten years."
Or perhaps, "The problem isn't that I'm sitting around eating junk food. I have no problem today. The problem is only twenty years from now when I have metabolic syndrome and my doctor is telling me to change my life."
Saying, "It's not a problem today" is irresponsible short-term thinking. Something we humans are all too prone to.
I said today's spending isn't the problem and tomorrow's spending was. I didn't say when tomorrow's spending was a problem. I didn't say it didn't result from an obligation made today.
If you make an obligation today that you will have difficulty performing, you have created a problem today. I suppose it's a matter of language whether that's a problem today or later. My feeling is that it's worth worrying about today. It's worth not doing today. It is a problem today.
There's a joke about the man who jumps off a 100 story building. As he passes the fifth floor, someone asks him how's the trip? He replies, "So far, no problem." I would say that he had a big problem as soon as he jumped.
Again, I didn't say anything contrary to that.
The most important tribalism in the USA is college discrimination against Republicans in professors, Boards of Trustees, and staff. This known but winked at illegal discrimination has led to acceptance of false defamation and then demonization of Republicans. College discrimination, for many decades, is the main root cause for so much polarization.
The Democrat Demonization Strategy. Yes, Republicans also claim that it will be terrible if the Dem wins, because of terrible Dem policies, like sending Haitians to Springfield, not Martha’s Vineyard. Not because Kamala is evil, but because the policy is terrible. Many Democrats, and our AS Kling host, treat Trump as evil, seldom seriously arguing against his policies as compared to the Dems. I’m sure in Kling’s mind, like many of my Dem friends, they don’t admit that they think he’s evil, just that he’s so bad, so uniquely terrible on [insert rationalization here]. As noted by Dan Williams, there is a pundit Market for Rationalizations, yet close reading shows he also treats Trump as evil, with rationalizations.
Once the demonization of the target is accepted, like demonization of Trump or Jews or Blacks or illegal aliens, those doing the demonizing get big tribal benefits including closer bonding. Such bonding allows small in-tribe disagreements, as long as the out-tribe demon remains evil.
The genius of Free Speech is to accept big differences of opinions, big disagreements, and remain within the American tribe. Free Speech allows true but unproven facts to be discussed, as well as others to claim those facts as unproven. Like how many cats & dogs & ducks have been eaten by Haitian immigrants. It’s very likely more than 0.
The fastest way to improve colleges is to require them, as edu orgs getting huge govt benefits like endowment tax exemptions, to have a quota of Republicans as Trustees and professors, like 30%.
Quotas are less meritocratic, in theory, but far better than the current situation. And more politically likely than rapidly ending govt support for famous schools of higher ed and demonization.
Seems there was another Dem incited assassination attempt against Trump.
"The fastest way to improve colleges is to require them, as edu orgs getting huge govt benefits like endowment tax exemptions, to have a quota of Republicans as Trustees and professors, like 30%."
The fastest way to improve colleges is to make it illegal to require 4+ year degrees for any job that pays less than 200,000 dollars per year and index that amount to inflation, and apply similar standards to visas etc. All but eliminate student loan programs. Partially cancel the debts with taxes on university endowments.
What I described is hard to pull off but very easy to enforce. What you described is easy to pull off nominally but impossible to enforce. Passive systems of regulation are more effective than active ones, especially when the active ones are working against natural human incentives.
Fortunately, that quota scheme would never be gamed. "Of course I'm a Republican. Look at my party registration. You say I'm not a Republican because I support Black Lives Matter, racial quotas, racial reparations, higher taxes, and censorship against misinformation. I am a proud member of the progressive wing of the Republican Party."
Of course it will be gamed -- in the future. If a quota system is started in 2025, requiring Rep registration from 2024 or before, it can't easily be gamed by BLM supporters who were NOT R in 2024.
Reps in Congress create a partisan Rep commission to accept or reject claims of being a Republican for the Trustees; with similar commission for the Dems.
Obviously you need Republican decision makers to have the power to specify criteria for being a Rep, like publicly supporting at least 2 of the last 3 Rep candidates (or 4 of 6).
Yeah, a Rep NeverTrumper who supported Romney & McCain, maybe like Liz Cheney, could qualify under this. But Trump will pass, win or not in 2024.
If a BLM supporting Harvard prof claims to be a registered R, but supports all Dem policies, he'll be a bit of a laughing stock known liar. Trolling works ok in tweets on X, but unlikely to get respect or status at any decent college.
I'd expect none of the top 100 endowed colleges to qualify -- and they'd all object as they lose their tax exemptions. Losing tax exemptions, then guaranteed student loans, than Fed research -- colleges like all orgs will follow the money. Quotas will lead to immediate attempts at change, as well as big increases in govt tax revenue from Dem orgs who haven't been paying their "fair share", yet arguing for more govt spending.
Roger, do you have a better idea? You realize you are claiming "no change, continued demonization of Reps" is preferable to quotas which help immediately but likely get somewhat gamed over time.
Finally, we need to accept that our society is split in values, and. like prosecutor & defense in court searching for truth, we need Rep partisans and Dem partisans in govt, checking and balancing the other and increasing the rule of law.
'It is a really horrendous idea for a country that is running massive deficits. We are already setting our descendants up for conflict in order to achieve current political aims. The last we thing we need is to do more of that.'
But have you thought it through? Consider this, the average spread between the 3 month and the 10 year treasury is 1.5 percentage points since 2000. Once we get back to this level the government could just borrow at 3 months and buy their own 10 year treasuries back making a 1.5% spread with no risk. If they borrow enough money would could entirely fund the government with this arbitrage!!!
"They are including
Medicaid, food stamps, refundable tax credits, Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, federal housing subsidies and almost 100 other programs whose eligibility is limited to those below an income threshold."
I mean, I assume basically the whole $64K is Medicaid....
The entire medicaid budget divided by the size of the bottom quintile is ~$17k per person, so you need 4 people per household here, all on medicaid and zero non working age people on medicaid and no other payouts.
Unless they're counting disability
"welfare payments received by the average work-age household in the bottom quintile of income recipients"
Is this really what is meant or is it misstated? I'm not sure what this means. Why would we only look at the 20% of recipients with the lowest income? (income other than benefits, I assume) what about the other 80% of recipients?
A sovereign wealth fund is a bad idea for all the reasons stated. Those are all fixable problems. It is a bad idea for another reason that is not fixable. The current Social Security trust fund is near 10% of the total US stock market valuation. In the pat it has been over 10%. In order to cover it's obligations, it should be much larger. This would be a significant portion of the stock market. (Norway's wealth fund is 70% equities)
Well, yes, it would be very easy indeed to do a sovereign wealth fund poorly. And Congress, Trump and Harris ought all have putting an end to the piling on of more and more debt as a top priority.
But consider whether or not the US might be better off if it were to have a pot of gold, other precious metals, and other salable assets available in the event that the BRICS succeed with de-dollarization (https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/04/24/brics-currency-end-dollar-dominance-united-states-russia-china/ ) and the balloon goes up with China (https://www.fairobserver.com/world-news/us-news/us-and-china-on-the-edge-of-war-in-2024/# ).
In considering a sovereign wealth fund, it would seem that it might be helpful to answer some questions first. For example, would the money come from new revenue streams? What assets would the sovereign wealth fund be authorized to hold? Under what circumstances and for what purposes could the sovereign wealth fund be tapped? And what would prevent the new streams from being used as an offset for new spending? What debt control measures would be paired with the sovereign wealth fund? And what alternatives do Congress, Harris, or Trump have in addressing the problems the US faces as a net debtor? Before dismissing a sovereign wealth fund out of hand, one might wish to have good answers to these questions.
The establishment technocracy policy strategy appears to be to slash benefits for or eliminate entirely Social Security and Medicare, leave their respective tax revenue streams in place, increase all other taxes to the maximum extent possible before revenue streams begin to collapse, and continue rampant spending on whatever crisis du jour happens to be gripping their feverish little imaginations. Climate! Equity! Pandemic! The list is endless and the state of crisis is permanent.
One possible populist alternative would be to constitutionally prohibit any increase to the national debt limit, cap non-mandatory federal spending at FY 2017 levels, adopt a VAT modeled after Singapore’s, direct half the VAT revenue into the mandatory spending accounts and half into the sovereign wealth fund. The sovereign wealth fund’s asset allocation would follow the Norwegian model (https://www.nbim.no/en/the-fund/investments/#/ ) except that hard reserves of strategically sensitive metals and other commodities would replace the wind infrastructure sector. The sovereign wealth fund would only be tapped in the event of a congressional declaration of war in order to meet unfunded military necessities, or, by unanimous vote of both House and Senate.
The latter alternative would undoubtedly enjoy broad popular support but unfortunately the US constitution is designed to thwart popular policy measures and to guarantee unlimited spending, taxation, and debt. Once the United States goes completely defunct, its successor states might do well to consider adopting a substantively limited and legitimately republican form of governance.