You are not logged in. Please register or login.
- Topics: Active | Unanswered
- Smoking Guns
- Rep: 330
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
Smoking Guns wrote:Well, no way this is accurate now...
There were NOT enough questions about economic policy and there was no "indifferent" it was either agree or disagree which skews you to a certain direction. Sanders should be down there by the Mole and Big Bri honestly because we know Pollux and I don't jive with Sanders that closely. I jive with him on somethings however.
To be fair, several, if not many of those questions, i would have answered "indifferent."
ME TOO.... Poor test if we can't even answer in the middle.
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
ME TOO.... Poor test if we can't even answer in the middle.
Actually, it's commonly accepted that a good survey forces you to make a choice and doesn't have a middle option for opinion polling. For factual questions, you can make an argument that a "don't know" type option should be made available, but even there not all statisticians agree it's a good idea.
Having said that, this test could've been improved with a second multiple-choice response as to whether you find a given policy idea/position important or not, to give weight to the individual question (so, each answer would have consisted of a score on how much you agree and a score on how important you think it is). That would've been more accurate.
It's still a good test though, I've seen much worse political surveys than this.
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
Smoking Guns wrote:Holy fuck, I represent the center!!! I am what we should hope every politician to be! Hahaha
I want to get back to this point. While on the surface it does seem to make sense, I don't think you always want your politicians to be middle-of-the-road in everything. I believe most of the time it's better if they clearly stand for something, allowing voters to make a clear informed decision on which direction they want to see the country go. If you think about it in terms of making a 'correction' to the current state of affairs, it makes sense that you'd vote for a politician that is further along both axises than where you really want to end up.
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
TheMole wrote:In short: the US needs Bernie at this point in its history.
No. We need a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. Enough of the back and forth. We need stabilization in a positive direction. If someone truly fit this description and could generate name recognition, they would be an easy winner.
Yes. You need a correction towards the left before you can stabilize, on fiscal issues as well as social issues. The current system is overly biased towards a specific class of citizen and is unsustainable.
- Smoking Guns
- Rep: 330
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
buzzsaw wrote:TheMole wrote:In short: the US needs Bernie at this point in its history.
No. We need a social liberal and a fiscal conservative. Enough of the back and forth. We need stabilization in a positive direction. If someone truly fit this description and could generate name recognition, they would be an easy winner.
Yes. You need a correction towards the left before you can stabilize, on fiscal issues as well as social issues. The current system is overly biased towards a specific class of citizen and is unsustainable.
So your plan is spend your way out of debt? Please explain.
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
Looking at it from a European perspective, I agree with you: I'd never vote for someone using Bernie's rhetoric on our side of the pond. I'd vote (and have voted) for parties that have very similar policies though.
Lol, I hear you on that. Over here he would be labeled an extremist, ironically.
However, in the context of the US I'm willing to give him a pass on that for a number of reasons:
- The two-party system forces him to be more outspoken to get the nomination for 'his' party, to set him apart from Hillary. In a parliamentary democracy with multiple viable parties you can (need to) be more nuanced in your positions.
- The American media feeds on polarization (more than most European media does). In order to get any amount of screen time, he needs to exaggerate and simplify his message more than a similar candidate would in Europe.
- In order to effectively bring his message across, get through to the average American citizen, and pierce through the "USA is #1 in everything" reality distortion field that some perpetuate, he needs to create a threat to the American Way of Life(tm), a boogeyman if you will, and big nameless corporations are an obvious and easy target, especially given that they really have contributed significantly to the wealth gap over the past few years/decades.
- There's no way in hell that the American people will allow anyone to turn their country into a communist authoritarian nation, the US constitution has many provision that provide protections against that and 4 years (or 8) is not nearly enough time to dismantle that entire framework. So even if you buy into the idea that Bernie is a real communist (he isn't), 4 years of having him in charge is likely to push the US more in the direction of a Western European-style Social Democracy (which would be a good thing), it'll never be enough to push the country over the edge into full blown Communism (a very very bad thing).In short: the US needs Bernie at this point in its history.
Well, we definitely agree on him suiting his rhetoric for his audience. Nor do I think the USA is in any danger of becoming a bona fide communist nation any time soon. 4 years of Bernie would be like 4 years of Obama. The same thing taken a little bit further. Corporations will still be buying elections, politicians, legislation. You say Europe as if that's a shining example at the moment. Yeah, we take better care of our weakest, but the same thing applies when it comes to business, elites and politics here. Even if Bernie turned out to be the unlikely hero, his successors would not be. Long term nothing would change for the better.
With Trump it doesn't matter. If he manages to win, with the entire weight of the establishment against him, it would set an important precedent. It shows people there is still hope for real democracy. Worst comes to worse and he's a terrible President, whatever limited damage he could do would be reversible. He's not starting a world war or anything like it, that's fantasy.
To me this election is shaping up like a litmus test for the system.
Re: 2016 Presidential Election Thread
So your plan is spend your way out of debt? Please explain.
Even the most pessimistic/right-wing view on Bernie's plans project a net positive result of $9.8 trillion over 10 years, how is that spending your way out of debt?
The concept behind it is very simple (and gives some insights into why trickle-down economics doesn't work): the richer people are, the greater the percentage of money they earn becomes "immobile" (in bank accounts, long-term investments, ...) effectively taking it out of the economy. Poor and middle-class people on the other hand will spend most, if not all, of the extra money they earn as part of an updated tax program (or money they don't have to spend on things like healthcare and education), pumping it back into the economy which leads to higher income for the state, which in turn covers the cost of all these social plans.
Don't get me wrong, it's not a miracle cure for an economic malaise, but I believe it definitely is what the country needs at this time.
