Mourning in America - Trump Year One: November '16 to

Good policy has to be a cornerstone, and those are good policies! But she wasn't hearing what people wanted, which was .. Well, they wanted "not crooked Hillary" for one, but way more than that, they wanted someone to tell them that things were going to change for them for the better. Those numbers are pretty abstract for a lot of folks but she could have told them in Garrison Keillor terms what that was going to do for them.

Fred otm.

These Trump voters didn't vote that way because they were serious about improving the lot of working people. They did so because they're assholes.

Just curious how much do you guys pay for insurance? Is ilx in agreement that Obamacare doesn't need to be fix? Last year when I filed my taxes I was penalized due to not having coverage on myself, a little more than $600. That doesn't sit well with me.

They're not children or morons. They chose to indulge their darkest instincts, embracing blind anger over pragmatism.

Fuck. Them.

Not working people, but Trump voters. Although there is overlap, they're not the same, and the Trump voters have now hurt working people more than Hilary ever could.

premiums would have come down if congress was able to address the issue in good faith. It's a big in the system they don't want to address because they want the system to fail. That's what the Republican party is about

*bug in the system

It's interesting that the error that caused many poll aggregators to overstate their confidence is the same mathematical error that caused the rating agencies to give AAA ratings to mortgage CDOs that turned out to be junk, which led directly to the 2008 financial crisis:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161111-election-models-polling-data/

Is ilx in agreement that Obamacare doesn't need to be fix?

i would imagine that ilx is in agreement that it should have been one-payer to begin with. but yeah changes would have ultimately been necessary (and worthwhile) before sad paul ryan destroys it

i had obamacare for one month after years of paying out of pocket; the plan was considerably cheaper and better than that which i'd previously been paying for, but i live in a state that offered significant choices.

That's not my issue. I would prefer to pay out of pocket. Hospitals prefer to work with you than wait on insurance companies to pay them. Now I have to have coverage or the government takes my tax return. To cover my family and myself, I pay $1383.57 a month. I use to pay $640 for my wife and child before Obamacare really kick in. I'm willing to admit I'm ill informed about what exactly has happened, but I know it was better before.

I get a tax credit with my plan. It's affordable and good.

I don't want a tax credit and I would prefer to not have insurance for myself. But now I have to or I pay the government a fee every year.

i mean yes, healthcare costs are constantly rising; obamacare has kept it below the otherwise prevailing rate. and anyone who thinks that government 'death panels' are going to screw them more than rapacious health insurers is mistaken.

nor does health care offer an opportunity for the magical fucking hand of the market to work -- patients have neither the knowledge nor the time to shop around

That's part of the way the system was designed. Without the mandate (ie. fines), you can't offer coverage regardless of pre-existing conditions, because otherwise people just wait till their very sick to get coverage. xp

What does single payer involve?

government provides health care for everyone (and taxes go up)

Single-payer doesn't need a mandate because everyone's covered whether they like it or not. xp

Yeah I don't want that.

Paying taxes and carrying around a health card, at least in Canada.

3xp

government provides health care for everyone (and taxes go up)

I think the government actually ends up spending less on health care in Canada than the US, though?

Clinton was asked about ACA rate increases on Oct. 25, and the tone-deaf statement from her campaign was:

http://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvofTv1XEAAxWdD.jpg

(via https://twitter.com/ABCPolitics/status/790979111602847744/)

i suspect you underestimate the actual market cost of insuring the three of you for health care. insurance companies are, after all, trying to make a profit, not necessarily keep you healthy

we'll have you all here (actually the uk won't, but london will)

Good policy has to be a cornerstone, and those are good policies! But she wasn't hearing what people wanted, which was .. Well, they wanted "not crooked Hillary" for one, but way more than that, they wanted someone to tell them that things were going to change for them for the better. Those numbers are pretty abstract for a lot of folks but she could have told them in Garrison Keillor terms what that was going to do for them.

― hardcore dilettante, 12. november 2016 03:15 (seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I've only written the outlines, but there was a bunch of details on her website. I mean, I agree she should have told them those details, but the reason she never did is because she was never there to begin with. I do think a pay increase from 7,25$ to 12$ an hour should be a pretty substantive improvement - though of course it could backfire, they could be layed off, etc. However, the 'fact sheet' I took this from? That's geared towards an african american audience. This is the headline for the part about investments: I. INVEST $50 BILLION TO CREATE JOBS IN COMMUNITIES BEING LEFT OUT AND LEFT BEHIND—INCLUDING COMMUNITIES OF COLOR And quite honestly, I think that's a pretty big reason why her messaging didn't function in the Midwest. She does mention them, but she says: 'It’s outrageous that so many African American families live in pockets of extreme poverty and that so many families of color with good credit cannot get a mortgage. It’s outrageous that millions of undocumented workers live in the shadows. And we can’t allow rural communities from Coal Country to Indian Country to be further hollowed out by unemployment, abandonment, and addiction.' They come in last. With Trump, they weren't just first, they were the only ones in the race. Messaging to white rural voters would ALWAYS be easier for Trump than Clinton.

I think the government actually ends up spending less on health care in Canada than the US, though?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0b/OECD_health_expenditure_per_capita_by_country.svg/1200px-OECD_health_expenditure_per_capita_by_country.svg.png

(via https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita )

sund4r otm in that every developed nation with national health care spends less per capita than the usa

My problem is when I need health care I can't get the cost up front. I can't compare their price to someones else. I get the bill afterwards. Nothing else works like that.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/2016/images/02/08/pharma-contributions_desktop.png

we'll have you all here (actually the uk won't, but london will)

iirc we're all moving to the hebrides if only nicola will have us

The shocking thing about the graph though is that there are countries with government health insurance for all in which the government spends less per capita than the government spends in the US. Mainly because costs are higher in the US to begin with and the US has government health care for those with the highest health costs, ie. the elderly.

xxp

I'm all for insurance companies making money. When I was a union member, I received all of my earnings. I paid my dues and my health care came out of a centralized health care fund. Basically dues covered the cost and the insurance was very good. Now that I work non-union jobs, nearly a third of my earnings goes to health care.

There's no pressure to keep costs low and big pharma has no problems with contributing to both sides of the fence.

http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-pharmaceuticals-idUSKCN0Z22F1

Presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton has taken more money from employees of America's 15 biggest pharmaceuticals companies than all of the Republicans who attempted a run for the White House this year combined, according to campaign finance disclosures.

The donations, which were nearly double those accepted by Democratic rival Bernie Sanders, came even as the former senator and secretary of state vowed to curb price gouging in the industry if elected.

Ugh. I'm fucking depressed. Have to limit time in this thread.

Mr. Trump, a homebody who often flew several hours late at night during the campaign so he could wake up in his own bed in Trump Tower, is talking with his advisers about how many nights a week he will spend in the White House. He has told them he would like to do what he is used to, which is spending time in New York when he can.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/us/politics/trump-president.html

i was joking to my mother on the phone this evening, well, maybe he won't even move here..

It's interesting that the error that caused many poll aggregators to overstate their confidence is the same mathematical error that caused the rating agencies to give AAA ratings to mortgage CDOs that turned out to be junk, which led directly to the 2008 financial crisis:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/20161111-election-models-polling-data/

― o. nate, Friday, November 11, 2016 9:20 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

quanta is usually a good mag but that article is bad and misses the point in both cases. "correlation error" had to do with one element of cdo pricing (but it isn't the sort described here, not exactly) -- correlation actually was measured in that case, but using a poor formula (historic-trend-based). the other "error" in cdo pricing was more directly a pure slight-of-hand with repackaging tranched debt. (and there were other things as well).

the poll case is vastly different and correlation of errors is a weird way to look at it -- rather there were systemic biases which aggregators attempted to but did not completely account for, and there were just _pure unknowns_.

Sure, there's lots of differences in the details, but both the election prediction models and the CDO rating models underestimated correlation in a way that led to overstating confidence.

Oh, one more thing, if 1) Clinton should have told the truth and 2) she should have offered them something, here's the truth about what she could offer: Nothing. Because it would have to pass a republican house, which has been gerrymandered into something absurdly undemocratic. That's the truth she could tell them: You'll get nothing. The GOP is fucking you over, so you'll get nothing, until the GOP is defeated. Clinton skipped the math and ran against Trump rather than on empty promises. And lost for lack of enthusiasm.

The idea was to flip the senate and chip away at the house

I know hindsight is 20/20 but it seems clear that Clinton erred by letting Trump get to her left on trade. Pointless to speculate now, but one can imagine an alternative reality in which after beating Sanders in the primary, she offered his followers an olive branch by pledging to renegotiate NAFTA or something along those lines. xp

Yeah. But that would have taken until 2020, probably. Which is just in time for the next round of gerrymandering, so it did make sense. But there wouldn't have been any higher federal minimum wage, and there wouldn't have been a 275 billion $ investment fund. It's just... You can't say both that Clinton should have run on a positive message, and that she should have figured out to sell the truth, because the truth was always bleak.

And I'll repeat, Sanders would have won, imo, but he wouldn't have run on a truthful message (nobody does) and he wouldn't have been able to deliver. It would still have been fucking bleak.

that was to treeship.

And you can't just pledge to renegotiate a trilateral agreement. That's kinda what trilateral means, it would have to include a willing Mexican partner, and they've already said they won't renegotiate NAFTA with Trump.

I mean, you can pledge it, but it's bullshit. It's not truthful.

With Mexico, Trump has repeatedly threatened to pull out of NAFTA if Mexico and Canada don't negotiate with the U.S. and offer it more favorable terms. He's also threatened to impose a 35 percent tariff on Mexican imports.

As president, Trump would have the authority to renegotiate NAFTA and withdraw if the terms aren't to his liking. Under the rules of the trade pact, any member can withdraw with six month's written notice, and the American president can call for additional duties if trade terms unfairly advantage Canada or Mexico.

Don't see why Hillary couldn't have threatened the same.

Yeah, she could have threatened to withdraw. But that's not the same as saying that she would negotiate. And if she should also tell the truth about the impact of withdrawing from NAFTA, that wouldn't be a positive story as well.

And btw, Trump won't withdraw from NAFTA, nor get to negotiate it.

This is a very interesting point:

And part of where Clinton's campaign failed is that there was almost no acknowledgement of that fear in Middle America, and no story to tell that said, "If you give us your vote, we'll fix it for you."

I've been wondering about this in the UK context, where there are politicians and policy advisors who know nothing outside of the world they live in. They studied Politics/economics at a good university and then went straight into a political role.

Is it similar in the US?

If so, maybe part of the problem is that we now have a political class who come from a very narrow slice of society. In their ambition to fit in they lack the empathy for other parts of the population.

I think it's unfair to say Clinton didn't offer anything to Middle America. She offered tons of things (higher minimum wage, vastly increased education subsidies, better healthcare, etc.) - it's just that all of those things required Congressional approval which no one thought she was going to get. Something that is actually within Presidential prerogative to achieve - torpedoing trade deals - is something Trump promised but Clinton didn't.

trump merely promised to make corporations bring back jobs to america because he said so and defeat isis in a way the generals wouldn't fathom and build a wall that mexico would pay for

stupid hillary, offering nothing to the working class

Mr. Trump, a homebody who often flew several hours late at night during the campaign so he could wake up in his own bed in Trump Tower, is talking with his advisers about how many nights a week he will spend in the White House. He has told them he would like to do what he is used to, which is spending time in New York when he can.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/12/us/politics/trump-president.html

i was joking to my mother on the phone this evening, well, maybe he won't even move here..

this article makes him sound like such a baby.

That's not my issue. I would prefer to pay out of pocket. Hospitals prefer to work with you than wait on insurance companies to pay them. Now I have to have coverage or the government takes my tax return. To cover my family and myself, I pay $1383.57 a month. I use to pay $640 for my wife and child before Obamacare really kick in. I'm willing to admit I'm ill informed about what exactly has happened, but I know it was better before.

Do you understand why the tax penalty is there? The pre-Obamacare setup may have been better for you, but it was not better for the country as a whole. I've seen many people bemoan Obamacare because their premiums went up (or cause they have to pay tax penalty for going w/o insurance), but I've yet to see any of said people say "I don't care if a kid with leukemia can't get coverage, just lower my premiums". Cause that's the trade off.

Trump could offer a shitton of things, actually, because a win for him would include a republican controlled congress - as it turned out. Hopefully it's also pretty obvious how extreme it would have been if Clinton had pledged to 'torpedo' trade deals. It would have been shocking to do so for Sanders as well, btw, he clearly refused to do it, though he did say 'renegotiate'.

Again. Again. She should have been there in the Midwest. But fuck if I can figure out what she could have offered them. It's really easy to be outflanked on every issue, when you're running against a hypocritical liar who just spouts bullshit without thinking about any reaction.

Sure, there's lots of differences in the details, but both the election prediction models and the CDO rating models underestimated correlation in a way that led to overstating confidence.

― o. nate, Friday, November 11, 2016 10:31 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

with a broad enough brush though (as is used here) all issues at all with any form of probability aggregation can be chalked up to "correlation". it doesn't tell you anything. you might as well say "the election models and the cdo models both had in common one thing: statistics"