Hah, this really puts it into perspective. Despite how bad things are now, it's not 1865.
Today's politics are positively gentrified by comparison.
GOP knows they're gonna lose the election. They want to hand the dems the worst economy possible.
Then, 4 years down the road, they can start campaigning against "do-nothing-dems" and point to the horrible economy they had to start fixing.
At the same time, we can't have this, "the world ends", at the end of every GOP administration either. So we really do need to fix this.
The alternative is we get some different parties, and I've seen little to no indication of that happening. The other parties have neither shown an ability to evoke a response large enough to get elected. Nor have they shown an ability to govern even in the extremely unlikely event that they were elected.
For the foreseeable future, we are stuck with the dem-rep dichotomy. Which can work. We just need for the reps to stop running the nation into the ground when it's their turn. Other nations have shown us that reasonable and effective responses to the pandemic were possible. Why are we here? What is the set of missteps or issues that got us here? We have to identify those issues, and fix them.
I just moved to California so I don't have too much of a personal opinion yet but that sounds like a bold claim. From what I've seen, people over the age of 30 seem split on whether or not it's an improvement. You look at mismanaged cities like SF where there's insane homeless budgets but very little action and results and wonder if the monopoly on political power has made politicians here complacent.
Then there's the whole NIMBY thing. There's a whole lot of Democrats (arguably DINO's) that are very anti-building. They run under the Democrat banner so they'll probably keep getting re-elected. Obviously a solution here is people getting involved in local party politics to primary these candidates out, but that sounds like a miracle that'll happen as soon as we get nuclear fusion power plants.
The whole thing makes me wish 3rd party candidates were more viable in the US. This flip-flopping really sucks and creates a lot of chaos but political monopolies, from what I've seen, are able to hide mismanagement and bad policies really well. (Texas is probably a similar example from the other spectrum.)
Homelessness is an infinite money sink coupled with very problematic civil rights issues. It takes a unified effort at the federal level when states are willing to just ship their problems to other states. It also requires a unified effort at healthcare--both physical and mental. Nobody has come up with a good solution to homelessness yet--anywhere. If you have one, put it out there as lots of governments are desperate for a fix.
While NIMBY is bad irrespective of party, the YIMBY movement only started gaining traction once the Republicans were purged as the NIMBY movement could COUNT on them as a unified bloc of obstruction. And, as for NIMBY, renters outnumber property owners, yet don't show up to vote. Well, then what results do you think you're going to get?
As for Texas, it isn't as uniformly Republican as you think. The major cities are gaining significant Democratic representation (the Republicans just banned straight ticket voting because it destroyed them in Houston last cycle). You can also see this in the Covid-19 response--the mayors for big Texas cities almost uniformly shut down--Austin declared very early in order to avoid the disaster that would have been SXSW.
Yes, the gerrymandering in Texas is horrific, and the areas outside the cities are as stupid red as it gets. However, Texas isn't as unified as you think--in spite of the human-shaped Senator known as Ted Cruz.
To a first order approximation, the majority of homeless are simply residents who lose a job or can't earn enough money, can't afford their rent, and end up on the street. Making a lot more housing available so it's not so impossible to afford is clearly an important part of the solution, which we seemingly can't do as long as progressive democrats are in charge.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/06/us/homeless-population.ht...
Some chunk are from out of state. Some chunk are mentally ill. Some chunk are addicted to drugs. Some chunk have physical ailments. Some chunk are fleeing abuse.
This is what makes homelessness so intractable. Even if you fix a chunk, that's probably less that 20% of the problem. Now, you've spent a lot of money, made no visible progress on the problem, and have a bunch of people clamoring about how you wasted money.
This is because of Democrat-voting people leaving Democrat-led states and cities that are no longer functioning well. If their policies worked, why would they leave (for example) CA in record numbers to move to TX?
Rent control, nimbyism, etc all backed by the current government have made the housing market a hellscape. Nothing has been done to address the education system and huge pension liabilities either.
The issue with Democrats in charge without any meaningful opposition is that none of the Democratic radioactive stuff gets touched (excessive regulation, entitlements, etc).
> Rent control, nimbyism, etc all backed by the current government have made the housing market a hellscape. Nothing has been done to address the education system and huge pension liabilities either.
Rent control and Nimbyism is not new in the last 10 years in CA. In fact, rent control in the state is less strong than it was in the past.
So you can't directly blame those for changes in the last 10 years.
What's changed in the last 10 years? A lot of incoming migration into high-paying jobs. And it largely sucks for everyone but those new residents who are making more than the existing residents. People who make less are increasingly starting to leave, but not enough to make a dent compared to the influx of newcomers with money. If you have money, you're still more likely to move to CA than away from it.
You think if all those people were wealthy Republicans instead of Democrats they'd be less-NIMBY? Right-wing suburbs in the rest of the country are NIMBY-central.
The question is if California is soooo bad. Why are smart, intelligent people coming here? Why does capital still invest here?
Part of the answer is other places in the US are slowly failing. So many of the problems have to due with California serving as a refuge from failed economic and social policy in other states and countries.
California is being propped up by the tech industry because historically the biggest tech companies are headquartered here, which caused all the talent to be clustered here, and then new tech companies were forced to be here to attract that talent. Obviously, smart, intelligent people move here because jobs are here, and capital invests here because talent is here -- but things are changing quickly and other cities are becoming tech hubs.
If these other states have such "failed economic and social policies", why are so many people moving there?
The worst will be when Californians move to other states and then vote for policies that ruined the place they just fled.
[1] https://www.ocregister.com/2019/10/31/190122-more-people-lef...
The state is bankrupt. It funds healthcare for illegal immigrants while being the only state that forces a fee for lack of health insurance for US citizens. It has the highest homeless population and wealth inequality with declining economic mobility, ballooning cost of living, and generally worse overall quality of life compared to other major metros.
If you think that is what the Republicans are doing each time it's their turn, not sure there is much hope in changing that pattern.
After all, they clearly think they are not running the nation into the ground when it's their turn.
Or another party will rise to power, and one of the current powerhouses will fade away.
Just as our legal system is adversarial, where two "teams" enter a court to at least attempt justice, it seems crucial to a successful political system that there be a dialectic between opposing views, hoping compromise benefits the whole.
Comments such as this, dismissing a huge portion of fellow citizens out of hand, without so much as recognizing that "they" might be trying to do what's best in their eyes is so far from a democratic ideal...
Explain to me what I'm supposed to do with people who wear "Better Russian than Democrat" t-shirts or my father-in-law who literally said "Her views are everything I want, but I can't vote for her because she's with the Democrats."
That kind of stuff is not anti-Democratic party--it is anti-Democracy.
> Just wow. Hope your dictators benevolent.
Sorry, I'm pretty comfortable burying a party that is anti-Democracy.
However, it turns out that the California jungle primary gives the opposing party more power because it often gets to be the king-maker between the two Democratic candidates rather than simply getting ignored because one candidate won the primary and now can roll over the general election.
So, that actually approximates your dialectic as opposed to mouthing it and never compromising. Unlike the Republicans, Democrats don't seek to silence the opposing party. But, yeah, the jungle primary is going to do a good job of removing the wing nuts from both parties from the conversation.
I consider that a feature and not a bug.
I suggest some further research.
> 99% of all humans are plain old every day decent individuals
Sorry. When you can build an entire political movement out of "But he's not hurting the right people", your statement is prima facie false.
What has become clear is that a very significant chunk of the US citizenry are very much not "decent".
It might be straight-up politics. But there is a real situation where state governments have been financially mismanaged. Should the "working class" person in Alabama without any retirement prospects be forced to bail out (via the Federal Gov't) the state of California's very generous pensions that were not fiscally sustainable in the first place?
The answer is of course not, they are states populated by real people who live under the laws and economic system of the United States Federal government. The government should ensure that all people are entitled to enough funding to provide opportunity, health and justice. We don't just leave people to suffer regardless of who they vote for. At least we didn't used too.
Hypothetical example: The DoE wants to build a supercomputer from XBox 360s (ASCI RRoD). They select UNM as the lead contractor and write a check for $101M. UNM buys $50M in XBoxes from MSFT in Seattle, and another $50M for compilers and professional services from IBM in Armonk, NY. Did NM get $101M for their taxes, or $1M?
I'd bet on it not being used on R&D. In fact, I'm betting most of that money never even leaves the state of New Mexico. Those contractors building roads aren't being paid with monopoly money.
I could be wrong, but I doubt it.
That's one of the reasons I'm such a big proponent of lower taxes. The tax resource allocation scheme is fundamentally unfair as currently structured. There are other reasons I support lower taxes, but you don't want to get me started.
I would say yes since the brain drain California has cost on other poor states has been significant.
Multiple citations needed. Alabama takes back a lot more than they pay into the federal government (CA not so much). It's easy to appeal to the "working class" people, but those people have been getting much more federal support relative to what they pay in, while states like NY pay in substantially more than they get back.
If there weren’t any blue states around to sign the red state welfare checks, they’d be in a pretty poor position.
https://www.mercatus.org/publications/urban-economics/state-...
Good read on the matter:
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/05/which-s...
The Federalist has done an analysis of federal aid per resident:
>Against a national average of $1,935 in intergovernmental spending per American, red states receive just $1,879. Blue states get considerably more, at $2,124 per resident. Purple states see the least of their money returned to them per capita, at just $1,770. Measured in this way, the blue states are getting quite a bit more than the red or purple.
https://thefederalist.com/2017/11/17/red-states-tax-takers-b...
Never lived there myself, but I know for a fact they're consistently in the top 5 of contributors to the federal kitty of all states both nominally, and per-capita. They get almost nothing back compared to what they put in. They are, arguably, the largest contributor to the nation if we're considering individual burdens. And a top 5 contributor by outright total aggregate tax contribution.
Illinois and New Jersey, by total outright tax contribution, are also consistently in the top 5 of states that contribute to the federal government. (And I'm from Wisconsin. I hate Illinois. But facts are facts man.)
Hate to tell you, but your source is bogus as far as analyzing the biggest contributors to the national kitty.
Paying out a lot more to the federal government than they receive back does not mean these states are doing well and others poorly. It really just a natural consequence of having a lot of high earners in a progressive tax system. The states in question have been racking up huge amounts of debt and/or have underfunded pensions funds, which is why they are consistently ranked lowly in terms of fiscal health. I am a little surprised you had you not heard of the financial problems coming out of Illinois, New Jersey and the like? There's even a dedicated Wikipedia article:
Sigh.
Even if we look at a list of states by GDP, Illinois, New Jersey, and Massachusetts would still be perennial top 10 states. Even a list of states by GDP per capita, they all still are perennial top 10s. Per capita, I would bet that Massachusetts is number 1? (Maybe NY might edge them out? But I'd definitely bet they're number 1 or 2.)
Listen man, I don't even like Illinois. I hate Chicago. But facts are facts. They make a $#!t ton of money. And not the easy way doing financial engineering like New York. They do it the hard way with a huge diversified economy. Few states are like that. It's just a fact man.
Are you going to say that GDP is not a good indication of what a state produces?
Do they? I'll grant you that nobody wants to live in Kansas. It had a net migration of −4.32% between 2017-2018. But California doesn't fair much better at −3.95%. People are also fleeing Illinois, Connecticut and Massachusetts (all in the bottom 5 as give by Mercatus) in record numbers.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territ...
As people leave these state, it certainly does impact their ability to raise revenue, and this is compounded by how many blue states rely on progressive taxation.
>I mean, the fact that Kansas is so high on this list should tell you all you need to know.
But Kansas is a special case. Their pension funds were crippled by particularly bad mismanagement and corruption. The question you should be asking is why are the other bottom 5 blue states?
If pensions or any other specific things are mismanaged - which IMHO is in fact the case in California - let's fix them together.
I dunno, that feels like that kinda matters, too.
There's a caveat here that the Federal laws will need to change a bit to allow States to go into packaged restructuring. And to ensure that we are bailing out specific individuals to ensure that they are not too negatively affected.
One of the strongest arguments against "bailouts" of large corporations is that it negatively impacts price discovery. More specifically, it removes a company's ability to thrive in certain extreme conditions from the pricing equation entirely. An example: Amazon is at all-time-highs right now, and it's because it's proven itself to be a hugely important institution, both during wartime and peacetime. Its market price should reflect this value. Airlines, OTOH, are an institution that can be prone to failure when some things go wrong (exogenous or otherwise), and the price should reflect that. A theoretical airline doing $1B in revenue should be worth less than a theoretical Amazon doing $1B in revenue, even if both have identical profits, growth, balance sheets, etc. The net effect of this is inefficient and poor capital allocation, where more capital would be allocated towards airlines than warranted, and that capital could be allocated elsewhere in more productive / less risky endeavors.
This may come across as overly fundamentalist about the market, but where this really manifests is in the Fed's bailout of junk bonds, which is absolutely nuts. The whole point of junk bonds (I.e. the type of a loan that WeWork would have to take) is that it's default risk is high, but the yield is also high. If junk bonds are bailed out, then that means that we all ought to go and buy junk bonds. High yields for everyone! The Fed is going to bail you out no matter what. This, then, overly inflates the demand (and price) for junk bonds, and you now have a total capital mis-allocation, with a lot of capital going into AirBNBs and WeWorks of the world, rather than the Amazons of the world.
How does this relate to States? Taxation is the price we pay to live in a society, and States are a really underrated way we can accurately come up with the correct "price" for the correct basket of services society might offer. This is the Charles Tiebout school of thought. Bailing out states with shitty fiscal policies is 1) a moral hazard and 2) messes with the long run calculation of the optimal level of taxation.
Okay great, so then what happens if we just let States "fail", like we might let Corporations fail? If we allowed States to declare bankruptcy, the bond-holders won't get paid, and the State credit ratings will shift to reflect their true creditworthiness. In this regard, bailing out bad States is no different from bailing out junk bonds — the only difference is that today State bond-holders don't know that they're holding onto junk bonds — most States have a generally high credit rating (except Illinois, because, well lol)[1]. The only mechanism we know of for the system to correct the ratings of these bonds is to 1) let States relieve themselves of their debt obligations, and 2) organically allow the bonds for those States to become more high-yield.
You might argue that this makes it difficult for States to fund infrastructure projects and safety nets. Yes, it makes it difficult to finance projects in the short run, because the bond failures are reflective of the quality of the current governance. Who comprises the government, who is running things can change democratically — if citizens want more infrastructure projects / better development, they will have to vote for better policies and better representatives. It's the democratic equivalent of swapping out the entire executive team at WeWork with the executive team at Amazon. The alternative is that you never see these governance changes at the State and local levels, and you have the same problems in perpetuity because the same people are always in power, and we never learn from mistakes — institutional rot. Better governance might be to restructure bad pension systems, or raise their own State taxes (IMO State taxes are far too low).
TL;DR — the best argument for letting States go bankrupt is that it's an effective way to weed out institutional rot in the long run, and come up with the optimal level of taxation for the optimal basket of State provided services. Such a scheme can only work if individuals continue to be bailed out so that they are not caught in the onslaught.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_credit_...
This is a great ideal, in theory, but the flip-side of it is that in reality if we don't have any sort of negative consequence for unsustainable policy-making, you have a moral hazard, and institutional corruption and rot. Heaven knows there is a lot of that at the State and local level. You ultimately need some creative destruction in the long-run to ensure that we have the best possible governments. I heavily caveated that we must make sure that, in the short run, the poorest are taken care of. Insofar as one would be in support of allowing States to fail in a "good faith" way, it would be if the Federal policy ensured that the poorest among us are bailed out and taken care of in the short run.
> These same states (often blue) have higher taxes to fund their barriers to entry with surpluses that give them the capital to weather aberrant situations like these.
Sure, and a lot of Blue states will be fine and not have to go into packaged restructuring / bankruptcy. For a lot of States (both Red and Blue), the most worrisome line item is the defined-benefit pensions — they promise a certain return that has never happened and will never happen. These pensions will _never_ be solvent. Most people in Illinois under the age of 50 know that they will probably never see a dime of these pensions, and that's terrible. You would want to push States to more sustainable pension systems, maybe a Sovereign Wealth Fund like Singapore / Scandinavian countries, or just raw publicly funded 401(k)s. If those same pension plans instead put the annual contributions into the S&P500, they would have been more solvent than they are today.
> In addition, it is difficult to argue that constituents will vote for their economic best interests if social issues are more top of mind in redder states.
I mean, you have to let constituents look out for themselves in a democracy. If they don't vote in their economic best interests, then that means those societies favor different outcomes. All of these states have republican forms of government with checks and balances to ensure that democracy doesn't turn into mob rule. Letting Blue states go into bankruptcy might even be better off for Blue states and worse off for Red states, but the underlying idea is that we need to let States test out different approaches to welfare and infrastructure and prevent long-term institutional rot.
> This will only exacerbate the problems without a federal solution in place.
Yes, hence my caveat to bailing out individuals.
States pay first responders - medics, firefighters, police, teachers - fund projects, and invest in their communities. State governments themselves employ huge amounts of people. They fund homeless shelters and food banks and all sorts of public services. It would be incredibly harmful to these communities to have their support systems that they depend on removed. Not to mention not being able to pay first responders during a crisis. Hows that for a moral hazard?
I also do not see how your post addresses the fact that blue states are overwhelmingly net contributors in federal taxes, and how red states are overwhelmingly net takers. It seems like it warps your view of price discovery, since the government has for decades guaranteed the bond prices of red states. The consistent federal allocation of tax money towards the everday failure of red states totally discredits your theory weeding out "institutional rot" during a crisis, and of optimal taxation.
Taxation and economic performance are essentially the 2 core predictors for any political entity's prosperity. This is true of any nation in the world, from Germany, Denmark, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, Estonia, etc. The core thesis is that we want States to be as prosperous, if not more prosperous than those countries. There's no way to get there without digging ourselves out of the fiscal hole — or if you believe in it, MMT. And unless we totally swap out the governing decision-makers responsible for digging States into the fiscal hole in the first place, this will keep happening again and again. It's the same reason bailing out big banks and corporations is also bad.
> States pay first responders - medics, firefighters, police, teachers - fund projects, and invest in their communities. State governments themselves employ huge amounts of people. They fund homeless shelters and food banks and all sorts of public services. It would be incredibly harmful to these communities to have their support systems that they depend on removed. Not to mention not being able to pay first responders during a crisis. Hows that for a moral hazard?
Going into bankruptcy doesn't change any of this, it just means that they get to keep the funds that they borrowed in order to pay for all of those things without having to pay back bond-holders. The bond-holders lose. Then the next thing that happens is that the credit rating falls, and they would have to pay higher interest rates on future bonds. This is definitely painful in the short-term, but institutional investors will continue to have some appetite for higher-yield bonds for near-term projects. In the long-term, credit ratings can change if the people of a State elect better leaders, and the State can take out lower interest-rate bonds. California had a BBB credit rating in 2003, and through strong leadership and good policy, raised their credit rating up to an A+ rating in 2006.
Additionally, States can also raise revenue by raising taxes. State taxes are awfully low. Those services, while good and important, aren't free — and their societies need to pay for them through sustainable taxation. The marginal income tax rate in the US is lower than it was in a lot of the 20th century — Illinois, California, New York, etc can all raise taxes to fill in that void. In most European countries, the middle class income tax rate is what pays for most programs, and is far higher than the middle class tax rate in the US. Another avenue that States can look into.
> I also do not see how your post addresses the fact that blue states are overwhelmingly net contributors in federal taxes, and how red states are overwhelmingly net takers. It seems like it warps your view of price discovery, since the government has for decades guaranteed the bond prices of red states. The consistent federal allocation of tax money towards the everyday failure of red states totally discredits your theory weeding out "institutional rot" during a crisis, and of optimal taxation.
Yes, fiscally irresponsible Red states should also declare bankruptcy, and all of this applies to them as well. 2 things can be true at the same time: we should ensure that there is a mechanism to weed out long-run institutional corruption/rot in both Red and Blue states, and we should also reduce transfer payments from net contributors to net takers. If there is a net contributor that ends up having to go through bankruptcy restructuring they should be able to use their surplus to weather the short-run fallout.
There are a bajillion different variables that go into how we price corporations / assets in a decentralized way. This includes basic stuff like revenue, margins, balance sheets, growth, but can also include macro risk, which political party is in power, the current weather, etc. Apple isn't worth $1T because some schmuck decided it was worth that much, it's worth that much because we all play some part in the price discovery. When you remove some of the variables from this equation, the price becomes less reliable (mis-priced assets).
You might argue that it doesn't matter for most assets like airlines, and you'd probably be right about that, but there are certain types of assets like junk bonds where this has more negative consequences in the long run. We've been mis-pricing junk bonds to the degree that, at a macro level, there is way more capital being allocated to bad companies with poor fundamentals than there should be. We want more Amazons, Stripes, and Shopify's, and fewer WeWorks and SoftBanks.
States are similar, you have some States that are incredibly well run (Massachusetts, Washington) and some that are very poorly run (eg Illinois). We need some mechanism to nudge poorly run states in the right direction, and encourage well run States to keep doing what they're doing, and more.
Bottom line is that they want rich people (their primary donors) to get richer and don't care about poor or middle class. They are very open about it now and still somehow supported.
This is a good read on it:
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/04/why-mitch-...
Can states (or municipalities) not declare bankruptcy, and instead default on only the obligations they don't want to pay? That would be similar to how I as an individual can just stop paying one credit card but not the other. Or are those left holding the bag able to sue and force bankruptcy proceedings?
I don't understand this. What is the connection between pensions and union members?
I still don't understand. Surely almost every professional has a pension, but few people are in unions.
Companies used to have things like this - when my dad retired he had several pensions from multiple companies that worked like this. Nowadays government usually uses them to put off paying the full cost of employees.
Mainly pensions are available for state employees, or union members. And for that matter, state employees tend to be part of a union.
Unions are responsible for pensions, and the only people who have held onto them as the 401k has taken over.
Edit: Because I apparently can't reply to chriseaton below - 401k is defined contribution, you contribute $x which is a set amount and non-taxable. Pension is defined benefit; you receive $x, guaranteed, after x,y,z parameters are met (age, years experience, etc). They are not even slightly the same thing. Not even close.
The difference between a pension and 401(k) type plan is that pension is a defined benefit plan and 401(k) type plan is a defined contribution plan.
Which 401(k) plans are you thinking of require paying out to a retired employee if that employee has contributed 0%?
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pension:
"A pension is a fund into which a sum of money is added during an employee's employment years and from which payments are drawn to support the person's retirement from work in the form of periodic payments. A pension may be a "defined benefit plan", where a fixed sum is paid regularly to a person, or a "defined contribution plan", under which a fixed sum is invested that then becomes available at retirement age.
The common use of the term pension is to describe the payments a person receives upon retirement, usually under pre-determined legal or contractual terms. A recipient of a retirement pension is known as a pensioner or retiree."
A 401k is a savings account, not a contractual obligation, so that's why it's not a pension in common usage.
If you plan to spend it when you're retired then it's a pension!
This is significant because the risk is on the employer to make up any short falls if the pension fund is not able to pay $Y because of market performance or underfunding. A 401K shifts the risk to the employee. If it's not enough to provide $Y per year, that's the former employee's problem to deal with.
Then I guess my savings account is a pension too as well as the jar of small change I keep on the kitchen counter.
> If you need help defining the words in that section let me know
Well I must not understand the word 'pension' then, because it says multiple times that it's a 'pension'!
If you don't to explain it to me you're not obligated to.
Not sure why you keep repeating my name and job like you're trying to dox me for asking a question about pensions... and it's in my HN Profile and my name is my username, you're not a genius for finding it out.
That's what I just said... but why do you keep copy and pasting it into your comments and then deleting it?
I really don't know what your problem is.
But people can see you editing your comments so they know what you're writing even if you remove it later.
People can also see you trawling through my comments to reply to unrelated things.
For this reason I've flagged you - looks like other people are as well as your comments are showing up flagged now.
Currently most of non-union ( and mostly non-government union ) employees have a defined contribution plan. A worker contributes a specific amount every year, a company matches some amount of workers' contribution. At the retirement worker's draw down is limited to the amount in that account. If the account did well. the maximum amount is that can be drawn is large and if it has not done well, it is not large.
Today, very few workers still have pensions, but the few that do tend to be those represented by a union. In many states, this includes government employees: teachers, firefighters, police, etc.
This is why traditional pensions were usually a better deal for most employees.
Exactly it means juicing the stock market, which the fed can do by lowering interest rates etc.
> If you happen to reach retirement age in a down market, you're kinda just screwed.
That's why you're supposed to allocate more of your money to bonds as you approach retirement.
I've never seen a professional job that didn't include a pension - certainly not in the tech industry.
Pensions are defined benefit. That is, it is specified exactly how much money you will receive in retirement.
A 401K retirement plan is not a pension. You save your own money and possibly an employer contribution, and you make your own investment decisions. The value goes up and down in accordance with what you invested in.
Are we both talking about https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/401(k)?
"In the United States, a 401(k) plan is the tax-qualified, defined-contribution pension"
Therefore, they are doing a great job.
By the way, the most watched cable news is Fox News. I assume you aren't talking about them?
I wonder if you felt the same way from 2008 to 2016 when they were fawning over the previous president. It's interesting that they do a great job only when a certain political party happens to be in power.
It's easy to be the most watched cable news when every other mainstream channel is carrying water for the opposition party.
Just _perhaps_ Republican presidents are worse than Democrat presidents?
This comment is just more of the hate-mongering. "I saw an article I didn't agree with: I'm being attacked!" In the same threads, we hear of the bubbles people build by reading only agreeable news. How can all that be true at the same time? It cannot.
The "why" is obvious; I find a better question would be, are they wrong?
That's always been the case. But whatever one thinks of Trump, it's pretty obvious that his campaign and post-election behavior is fundamentally different than presidents in living memory. He has rewritten the rules. The media just hasn't been able to adapt successfully to that, and still often writes about him and his administration as if they're covering things in a different era.
Among many others, journalism professor Jay Rosen has long been making this point, and made it again recently on his blog: https://pressthink.org/2020/04/a-current-list-of-my-top-prob...
What would you say about other politicians who implicitly supported such irresponsible behavior.
This isn't even a political question - I mean it's basic science. Bleach.
“I see disinfectant, where it knocks it out in a minute, one minute, and is there a way we can do something like that by injection inside, or almost a cleaning. "
Sure bleach can be considered a disinfectant, but not all disinfectants are bleach. I do find it fun to extrapolate that Trump was telling people to go drink bleach and die though. Very entertaining during these lockdown times.
Has there ever been a time in US history that the federal government has been so openly antagonistic and overtly willing to attack opposite-party state governments? If so, what were the outcomes? If not, is there anything even close?
Current question - what is the endgame for those who what blue states to go bankrupt? What do they get if that happens, outside of talking points? I assume they profit off of it (because that's the reason anyone does anything that I can tell), but how?