This is politically impossible in the US. The electorate is too short sighted and will blame the current president for killing the economy no matter how sensible the policy actually is. Democrats maybe make a half hearted attempt at this, but Republicans are nakedly partisan in their economic policy, using outright economic stimulus in the best of times: George Bush's "peace dividend", Trump's tax cuts and pressuring the Fed on interest rates. Of course this was right after he attacked the Fed during Obama's presidency for keeping rates low for political reasons. Until these political games become ineffective on voters, economic policy will be stupid.

Ya, we basically get what we vote for. Our political leaders are fiscally not disciplined because we demand them not to be. At best, fiscal discipline is used to fight the otherside’s agenda, like what happened during Bill Clinton’s term coupled with the Republican revolution of 94. That led to a surplus.

If we got rid of First Past The Post voting, third parties could be viable because there wouldnt be a spoiler effect. More players involved would increase the chances of fresh blood and new ideas.

Instead, we are locked into a 2 party system filled with literal fossils. it's obvious to me when there is a tech related congressional hearing that both mainstream political parties are holding us back.

I guess that was good to have people from the cold war Era involved when Russia started pushing Ukraine around. Like a clock that's frozen in time is right twice a day...

Electoral reform is doable one state at a time, some states already use Rankes Choice voting.

Ranked choice voting has led to a stable two party system everywhere it's been tried. Wrong solution if thats the problem you're tying to solve. (Giving third party candidates a chance)

It does tend to reduce polarization of the platforms and drive them to more moderate positions though.

If you want more parties you need a proportional representation system.

What is a proportional representation system? If the votes splits 40/35/25, winner doesn’t take all? Each party will have representatives 40/35/25?

The latter, meaning none of those three parties have a majority

Obviously doesn’t work for the President, you need tanked choice, runoff, etc

but it does for Congress and senate.

Couldn't proportional representation work if the president is selected via electors? Parties get a portion of the electors and then need to form a coalition that has enough electors to select the president.

I’m not sure I’m remembering the same thing. I recall quite a bit of infrastructure spending under Obama [1]. It was smaller than needed but Republicans came out heavily against it and then generated the Tea Party wave in the 2010 midterms effectively ending any infrastructure expansion making Obama a lame duck even in his second term (and then followed by the Trump years).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Recovery_and_Reinve...

There was some spending, but not a lot. And just 2 years free rein until things grid locked. Most of Obama’s political capital was spent on healthcare, to mediocre affect unfortunately.

The only spending it was “not a lot” compared to is the years after. It was still more than presidents before.

Inflation and population growth means that will be true for every president on. Most of the spending in the first two years of his administration was bail the banks out and keep the economy from collapsing. Not much was spent on infrastructure.

Comparing one insufficient pile to another more insufficient pile is disingenuously framing the context.

it's funny you say that, the entire supposed purpose that the Fed was created for was to do just that: get rid of the boom and bust cycles. Unfortunately they never figured it out.