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[smjjames]

Edit : On the conservative are fearful libs are hopeful debate, just a note : biologizing politics is killing any possibility of meaningful discussion, doesn't matter where you're standing on the spectrum. Maybe it's true that your inner workings influence the way you vote. But just because you found a trend doesn't mean you should declare politics dead and just decide it's a matter of survival of the fittest now.

Besides, from what I can see cons are frenzied right now, and libs seems to be the ones who are living in fear.

Well kinda carrying that a little further on - though upon consideration, I’m not conflating mental illness with any political position - surely folk with actual anxiety (and perhaps other mental illnesses which increase anxiety or fearfulness) would thus be more likely to be conservative?

[anecdotalevidencdisbestevidence]In my experience that isn’t the case.[/anecdotalevidencdisbestevidence]

I agree in that the study is reading way too much into it and while emotions obviously matter in making political decisions, attributing conservatism to being anxious is going the wrong way. And you don't flip parties based on your current mood, nobody does that.

They probably should follow up that study by asking why they feel anxious or whatever reason they chose the 'invulnerability' vs 'flight'. The study seems to boil it down to one simple thing when it can't be that simple.

[Cathar]

I mean, you can find trends, that are statistiscally relevant. For instance, I believe women vote is heavily influenced by their marital status, with single and divocees voting for mainly democrats, and married women voting for republicans. Don't quote me on that I don't have the papers under my hand, but this is just the first exemple that comes to my mind. You'll find more conservatives in rural areas, more liberals in urban areas, etc.

But when you're discussing policies, you shouldn't go "well the demographics have spoken" and end the debate here. Mature democratic systems should discuss policies and their effects to decide the fate of a country, and not have them decided by a big complex population census. IMHO

[Max™]

Somebody pointed out that Trump has one actual skill: selling bullshit to gullible victims.

His entire career has been about getting dupes to buy nonsense he was spouting, getting as much as he could out of it, then making sure when it goes to shit (and it always goes to shit) he isn't the one left holding the bag.

It is almost impressive how nobody seems to expect it, just like this time with the republican party having to throw away anything resembling an ideological background or moral code because they bought into the idea that sticking with this shitbag will get them what they wanted.

He happily encourages them to think that while he tries his best to enrich himself at their expense and make sure when people start assigning blame, they'll be looking at everybody but him.

[McTraveller]

The average US citizen has lost 13.27% of their spending power since he's in office. Maybe that'd be something more important than empty rhetoric to discuss

On which goods and services?  My dollars do better than 87% of their buying power than in 2016.  Maybe I'm not "average"?

Incidentally, this is tied to discussions of inflation.  Wage increases are a necessary, but not sufficient, criteria for inflation.  If all prices except wages increase, that's not inflation - that's massive reduction in standard of living.  If all prices, including wages, increase at the same amount - that's inflation.

In a "healthy" economy, the overall price level increases, including wages, but the "standard of living" you buy with a given currency unit goes up.  It's hard to measure though - for instance, if you bought a car last year for $10,000, but this year a new car costs $11,000 but also includes three new features (that you may not even use, say, like a lighted passenger sun visor), and you got a 3% raise, how much of that $1,000 increase (10%) is inflation versus how much is "better stuff"?

Conceptually, inflation is any increase in prices that is merely an increase in the numerical price of a good or service without changing the percent of a person's numerical income that is used for that good or service.

Conservative vs Liberal is much more involved than what's been posted before.  I've not seen any mention of other important issues like state rights versus federal power (conservative tends to be more for states rights, liberal for federal power) and funding for initiatives (ignore debt issues on this one: conservative tends to be more for free-market funding, where liberal tends to be for mandatory funding through taxes. Put another way - "conservative" is for market-decided wealth redistribution and "liberal" is for government-decided wealth redistribution).  There is more than that, too - it's not just "rational" versus "fear" like media is trying to make it.

[smjjames]

"selling BS to gullible people" is actually a pretty good description of being a politician.

It'll be harder to sell BS to NK and if/when it fails, there are actual consequences.

Conservative vs Liberal is much more involved than what's been posted before.  I've not seen any mention of other important issues like state rights versus federal power (conservative tends to be more for states rights, liberal for federal power) and funding for initiatives (ignore debt issues on this one: conservative tends to be more for free-market funding, where liberal tends to be for mandatory funding through taxes. Put another way - "conservative" is for market-decided wealth redistribution and "liberal" is for government-decided wealth redistribution).  There is more than that, too - it's not just "rational" versus "fear" like media is trying to make it.

Exactly, the study is really only showing how it is in the hyperpartisan hypertribalistic environment. I think that study mentioned earlier was only done in the US, perhaps it should be done elsewhere, otherwise you're only looking at the psychology of Americans.

[Cathar]

On which goods and services?  My dollars do better than 87% of their buying power than in 2016.  Maybe I'm not "average"?

On the price of a dollar, compared to euro. Euro is the standard I use for its built in stability. Let's say you had $100 in a piggy bank in march 2017, now they worth $86.6 of goods on the international market.

Wage increases are a necessary, but not sufficient, criteria for inflation.  If all prices except wages increase, that's not inflation - that's massive reduction in standard of living.  If all prices, including wages, increase at the same amount - that's inflation.

Maybe its a question of words then. In which case the matter is settled easily

n economics, inflation is a sustained increase in the general price level of goods and services in an economy over a period of time.[1] When the price level rises, each unit of currency buys fewer goods and services; consequently, inflation reflects a reduction in the purchasing power per unit of money – a loss of real value in the medium of exchange and unit of account within the economy.[2][3] A chief measure of price inflation is the inflation rate, the annualized percentage change in a general price index, usually the consumer price index, over time.[4] The opposite of inflation is deflation.

Inflation is the decrease spending power of money in relation to goods. That's all. You can have inflation without a raise in wages, but you are right it would result in a reduction of living standards.

Conservative vs Liberal is much more involved than what's been posted before.  I've not seen any mention of other important issues like state rights versus federal power (conservative tends to be more for states rights, liberal for federal power) and funding for initiatives (ignore debt issues on this one: conservative tends to be more for free-market funding, where liberal tends to be for mandatory funding through taxes. Put another way - "conservative" is for market-decided wealth redistribution and "liberal" is for government-decided wealth redistribution).  There is more than that, too - it's not just "rational" versus "fear" like media is trying to make it.

But even that is political romanticism. For instance, you'll find that rural areas are mainly conservative,especially in the red belt. Those states rely (I'll check if that is questionned) on agriculture, which is in turn dependant on state funding for its very survival. Most conservative want a powerful army, which is entirely state funded, etc.

That is why I believe that making politics a tribe war is not a good idea, however you define the tribes.

[smjjames]

The hyperpartianship and tribalism IS a tribal war, for a definition of 'war'.

Agriculture is an important and influential industry in many of those states, that's true, but it's not really a dominant industry.

[Max™]

"selling BS to gullible people" is actually a pretty good description of being a politician.

It'll be harder to sell BS to NK and if/when it fails, there are actual consequences.

The selling bs part is totally true, but usually politicians don't go in with the intention of wrecking shit to extract cash before bouncing out of there so someone else can take the fall. Everything Trump does makes sense after you look at it like this.

Lemme find that story, and here ya go: https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2018/03/06/donald-trump-survival-blair-217234

[Cathar]

Well maybe debating how agriculture is a strategic sector would take us a bit off rails and is not important for the point I'm trying to make. Take the military budget ; pure "socialist" construct, functions entierely state funded, consumes a lot of raw materials, and has its own secondary and tertiary sectors, who operate entiererly under the state. You'd be hard pressed to find a conservative that will say something along the lines of "we need to cut off military spending".

I think the bottom line is much more simple than trying to apply ideological models to the left and right. The two parties has developped along organic lines so as to occupy the widest space  possible. They don't need to make sense in a rational way, they need to absorb everything that has not been absorbed by the opposition yet constitutes a source of clout (gun control, war on drugs, pro-life/pro-choice etc).

Trying to rationalize that along smooth lines like "pro business" or "pro state" or whatever you want really, is just juxtaposing an ad hoc explanation for a process that occurred organically without real reguard for ideologies IMHO

[Max™]

It's good to remember how much of the party ideology has been directly manipulated by various politicians.

Remember these guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Democrats by any chance?

What about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson and his picture somehow ending up in the office of a dog-whistling hyper-capitalist Republican president?

Anybody wanna solve the energy issue? Go hook up a generator to the corpse of Lincoln, it's gotta be spinning at thousands of RPM by now.

[smjjames]

I don't know how much dog-whistling Andrew Jackson did in his time, but he was pretty racist himself.

[Cathar]

It's good to remember how much of the party ideology has been directly manipulated by various politicians.

Remember these guys: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Democrats by any chance?

What about: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Jackson and his picture somehow ending up in the office of a dog-whistling hyper-capitalist Republican president?

Anybody wanna solve the energy issue? Go hook up a generator to the corpse of Lincoln, it's gotta be spinning at thousands of RPM by now.

More recently, someone described the antifas to me as being pro state. That made me smile

[McTraveller]

On the price of a dollar, compared to euro. Euro is the standard I use for its built in stability. Let's say you had $100 in a piggy bank in march 2017, now they worth $86.6 of goods on the international market.

Ok, I was thinking maybe you were talking about the international market so thanks for confirming.

That said - you can't compare currencies that way - Euros are only one of numerous of things you can buy with USD.  If a Big Mac changes from $3 to $4, you don't say the average US citizen has lost 25% of their purchasing power, because a Big Mac doesn't make up 100% of the purchases the average citizen.  In fact, you have to know how much money the average citizen is making, too - if someone used to make $30 a year and now they make $80, that hamburger would have gone from 10% of their income to only 5% - so it's actually cheaper even though the nominal price increased.

That is a contrived example, but it shows that you can't just look at the USD to Euro exchange rate (especially because forex, like stock markets, doesn't have a deterministic relationship to physical reality) - you have to also look at how much a US citizen has to give up relative to their income to get that thing that now has a higher USD price (because of exchange rate changes) than it used to.

[Cathar]

Well, you're right in a sense. What you need is the CPI for the USA. But of course you don't have to do the math yourself lol those numbers are already available.

Until now, that's what we have

CPI for all items increases 0.5% in January as broad array of indexes rise

02/14/2018

In January, the Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers increased 0.5 percent seasonally adjusted; rising 2.1 percent over the last 12 months, not seasonally adjusted. The index for all items less food and energy rose 0.3 percent in January (SA); up 1.8 percent over the year (NSA)

We'll need to wait  a bit, at least until the end of the month, to check the results in inflation of the tariffs announcements.

Edit : here you go

[McTraveller]

Headline CPI is one half the equation - you also want wage growth.  That's going to tell you how the purchasing power of the average person is faring.

So given headline CPI of 2.1% year-over-year in January 2018 versus a 2.9% year-over-year increase in wages means that purchasing power of the average US citizen improved in 2017.

(In theory of course; we all know how much people question the statistics behind CPI and wage growth.)