American Politics Discussion Thread

[T-hawk]

I don't know if you would consider my words at all, as I don't live in America, but just assume for a moment that in reality, most people are like you and I. They are not parasites. They don't want to. I understand that different countries do have different ways to go about certain things, but I think you know as well as I do that when political parties start to dehumanize the opponent ("Those leeches just want to take our money") something is going very wrong.

I'm not quite sure what argument you're making or what response you want, but of course the general point is true. There are parasites who are happy to be exactly that (I have one in my family, she brags about how much free time she has to spend at home), and those who legitimately want to earn their way into doing better for themselves. How would you propose assisting the latter while not being exploitable by the former? Any incentive that rewards behavior gets more of that behavior.

I would expect for people who have jobs to be interested in increasing their gains from the ones they have, why would they want there to be more of them?

If you have a job, you still want more to exist. You might lose yours and have to look again. Or more people with jobs means more spendable money to keep your original job in business.

Trump fans: how is that "jobs and economy" thing working? Businesses are closing, unemployment is still at 8.4%, and the outlook is pretty grim, all because the Coronovirus was so badly mishandled. Most of that can be laid directly at the feet of Donald Trump.

Trump did exactly the most American thing: leave this to the states. He's been exactly the opposite of the dictator that the media tries to frame him as. Some states chose to badly mishandle their economy, some correctly realized the lockdowns are worse than the virus itself.

[DaveV]

Trump fans: how is that "jobs and economy" thing working? Businesses are closing, unemployment is still at 8.4%, and the outlook is pretty grim, all because the Coronovirus was so badly mishandled. Most of that can be laid directly at the feet of Donald Trump.

Trump did exactly the most American thing: leave this to the states.  He's been exactly the opposite of the dictator that the media tries to frame him as.  Some states chose to badly mishandle their economy, some correctly realized the lockdowns are worse than the virus itself.

Except he didn't. He wanted the governors to take responsibility for mistakes made while he sniped at them from his Twitter account and claimed credit for any successes. Some things *need* to be done nationwide: I remember reading at the time that states were getting into bidding wars over ventilators.

Most of all, Trump didn't use the world's biggest megaphone well. The idea of a daily press briefing was fine, but Trump is pathologically unable to let someone else be the center of attention, so there he was every day occupying the bulk of the briefing with his usual word salad and misinformation. The result was confusion , inconsistency, and distraction, when clear information and guidance was needed. And Trump is still unwilling to model mask wearing, which seems to be the single best tool against the virus.

[T-hawk]

Most of all, Trump didn't use the world's biggest megaphone well. The idea of a daily press briefing was fine, but Trump is pathologically unable to let someone else be the center of attention, so there he was every day occupying the bulk of the briefing with his usual word salad and misinformation. The result was confusion , inconsistency, and distraction, when clear information and guidance was needed. And Trump is still unwilling to model mask wearing, which seems to be the single best tool against the virus.

This is all true... and this is all the small stuff. A Democratic administration would have slapped on blanket nationwide lockdowns and kept them there permanently waiting for a completely impossible zero virus count. (Ask California if six months of lockdowns and masking has gotten them anywhere. They're miserable while the red states simply got over it to enough herd resistance to resume most of life.) A bit of Trump word salad is by far the lesser evil.

[Woden]

Are Republicans better at job creation than Democrats?

Since Reagan, job growth under republican presidents has been 19.4M jobs. This includes Reagan and both Bushs but not Trump. Reagan accounts for most of those jobs (16.1M). However, under Democratic presidents (Clinton and Obama), there has been 35.1M jobs added, nearly double with 4 less years. The trend continues if we go back to Truman, 66.7M jobs under democratic presidents versus 34.2M under republican presidents, with republicans having more terms (9 R v 8 D). Job growth under democratic presidents is nearly double what it is under republicans.


(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobs_creat...tial_terms)

[Gustaran]

A Democratic administration would have slapped on blanket nationwide lockdowns and kept them there permanently waiting for a completely impossible zero virus count.  (Ask California if six months of lockdowns and masking has gotten them anywhere.  They're miserable while the red states simply got over it to enough herd resistance to resume most of life.)  A bit of Trump word salad is by far the lesser evil.

Sorry, but that is incorrect, which becomes clear if you follow the epidemiological discussion of the last months. The most successful strategy was indeed the well known "The hammer and the dance" aproach, meaning you hit the epidemic with a strong lockdown in the beginning until the basis reproduction number is below 1 and case numbers are so low contacts can be traced and quarantined by the authorities (for Germany that's 50 cases per week/100.000 people). If those numbers are exceeded, restrictions will temporarily return. But the goal is never zero cases (unless maybe New Zealand ). There is also no place on earth that is even close to herd immunity.

In order for this succeed, everyone would have to do 2 simple things: Wear masks and stay 6 feet apart. But unfortunately the administration has actively undermined these two most effective tools, causing the strategy to fail.

What people don't seem to understand: This strategy is economically very sound. Example: Here in Germany, while following certain social distancing rules, the economy could quickly open up again. All shops are open, schools & music schools are open, contact sports are allowed. Germany's unemployment is only 1.3% higher than last year.
And while there are businesses that suffer economically, the government will pay part of the wages and subsidize certain industries during the crisis. It's certainly not all rosy, but people can keep their jobs and income and we don't see a wave of bankruptcies. And when the pandemic is over, everything will kickstart quickly while the number of deaths remains low.
Of course we have idiots here as well, but 84% support the administration's course of action.


So, why do I think it didn't work very well for the US?

• People's general distrust of science from the beginning
  

• Trump, who (correctly) saw the downturn of the economy as a great threat to his reelection wanted to re-open as soon as possible (wrong strategy) and downplayed the pandemic while accepting a high death toll
  

• People not following the basic rules (to be fair that's not only on Trump, almost all countries experience declining compliance with masks and distancing rules)
  

• General lack of social safety net: If you don't have a lot of paid sick leave days, people will go to work even when sick, spreading the virus. Quarantine becomes highly unpopular, because some people can't afford it if they want to pay their bills. Yes, there were measure put in place to address this, but these happened very late and still allowed exclusions depending on business size, for example https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/17/millions...e-law.html
  

• I suspect probably not enough governement support for businesses and wages: If you impose restrictions for business owners, the government has to give enough financial support. Of course, businesses are not motivated to follow restrictions (or try to keep workers in the job) if they go belly up when doing so.
  

The major takeaway is: Taking the pandemic seriously from the beginning leads to a lower number of cases and deaths which in turn benefits the economy and saves money for the government.
The correct strategy would have been to prepare two months earlier and create a bipartisan message on the pandemic, as well as come to an agreement on the necessary rules and restrictions (maybe linked to local infection numbers). Add earlier and more generous financial support and cases stay low, meaning the economy will experience less of a downturn and government needs to hand out less money.

[Bobchillingworth]

You're arguing with someone who believes that:


A. Democratic voters are parasites

B. A national pandemic should be combated through the uncoordinated efforts of 50 individual state governments

C. A person who claims that his opponent will "abolish suburbs", "hurt God", lead to "cities in flame", and whose rhetoric has pushed the idea of an imminent civil war from the lunatic fringe to the pages of respectable publications is genuinely interested in avoiding panic.

D. Social distancing couldn't get America's COVID numbers close to zero, even though it and other practices have managed to accomplish exactly that in several other Western nations.

E. Republicans are the only party which creates real jobs, while tens of millions of people are currently unemployed due to the incompetence of the current administration

F. Red states have somehow achieved "herd resistance", while the virus continues to rampage across the south and midwest


You're wasting your time. T-Hawk is reasonably polite, doesn't cuss, likes the same games as most of us, and has written some fun Civ and Alpha Centauri reports, but you don't even have to read between the lines to see that he's complete lowlife.

[T-hawk]

D. Social distancing couldn't get America's COVID numbers close to zero, even though it and other practices have managed to accomplish exactly that in several other Western nations.

No they absolutely have not. Not a single country has gotten to any semblance of zero. New Zealand was all smug about it, while it was still circulating below detection and then it started inflating there again. Australia is on six months of miserable lockdown and isn't getting to zero. Hawaii keeps trying harsher and harsher lockdowns and isn't getting to zero.

The entire world is deluding themselves about the reality of this. The only way any of this ends is herd resistance once it runs its course. Everywhere in the world has proven that. Nothing is miraculously changing in the next six months that didn't in the previous six.

If you can't understand that, there's no point continuing with any of the rest of the discussions.

[T-hawk]

Re the German situation as brought up by Gustaran: It does appear they have kept R0 from substantially exceeding 1 for an extended period of time now.  Herd resistance is some percentage of this, by cases that happened before the lockdowns started being imposed.  How much is debatable, but it's turned up everywhere that 20% or so detectable antibodies is mostly enough that exponential spread doesn't really restart.  But it's not zero and never will be.

This is the big question: What do you think ends this state of affairs?  It's not zero cases, that's been proven unattainable by every single polity in the world.  It's not a vaccine - we're already seeing the arguments of "it's not 100% effective" and "you can't prove a vaccinated person doesn't spread it" plus all the usual anti-vaxxer stuff.  It's not some miraculous disappearance or "less-dangerous mutation" on its own.  If you think Germany's approach is correct, then you arguing for the masks and distancing theater to continue permanently for the rest of human society.  No bars, nightclubs, crowded sports events, conventions, ever again.  Is that the world you want to live in?

[T-hawk]

And there are plenty of places in the world close to or well past herd resistance.  (I'm deliberately using that term insted of herd immunity, because that's misleading.  It's not immunity at all.  It doesn't mean nobody gets it.  It means the cross-section of the population is collectively resistant enough that any clusters fizzle out rather than continuing to spread.)

Here's the full picture of the math.  There's direct antibody results of 20% or more in many places such as New York. There is growing evidence that another significant proportion of at least 20% and perhaps much more fights off the virus based on other factors (T-cell response, vitamin D, whatever) rather than detectable antibodies.

Herd immunity happens at 1-1/R0.  If R0 is 4 (a generous ballpark figure), then that's 75%, if 3 out of 4 spreads don't happen because of resistance then the spread declines.

Here's the last missing piece.  That 75% is not of people, it's of spreadable interaction events.  Which are asymmetrically distributed.  You can get that 75% threshold with 40% of people if it's the right 40% that account for a sufficient supermajority of interactions.  This is too complicated to fit in a CNN headline, and difficult to study directly with a scientific approach, but it's what has happened.

[Amicalola]

  Australia is on six months of miserable lockdown and isn't getting to zero.  

Look, I don't want this to turn into the 'gang up on T-Hawk' thread because political discussion is obviously better when more perspectives contribute. With that said, as an Australian, this is really blatantly untrue. 6/7 of our states/territories have been essentially COVID-free and out of lockdown after the first 6-8 weeks (~May). The only one that isn't is Victoria, which had a really nasty second wave caused by a failure in our returning-travellers quarantine system, after even we'd resumed normal activities for about 2 months. It's believed that COVID may have been completely eradicated domestically until then.

Daniel Andrews (the Victorian Premier) has kept much of the state in mild lockdown and especially the capital city of Melbourne under a harsh lockdown for the past 2.5 months as a result of this second wave, despite ever-increasing criticism and misinformation being circled on social media. Thanks to his actions, the state is lowering our COVID case numbers again (we were 42 yesterday, compared to over 700 on our worst day in August), and we are set to loosen restriction in 2 weeks, and lose them entirely in 1-2 months. 

Dan Andrews has received a lot of criticism from the right over the past two months, is near-killing himself with stress and overwork (he's literally developed a grey streak in his hair over the last two months, for example), and has probably knowingly made himself less likely to be re-elected, as no one likes lockdowns. What he's also done though, is get Melbourne through a vicious second wave, looking like we'll be fully ready to reopen after only about 4 months since the second wave started and with less than 1000 deaths statewide. I have a feeling he's going to go down very well in the history books.