Something new worth discussing.
MinnPost Yes we're more polarized most Americans still don't fit description
"The overall share of Americans who express consistently conservative or consistently liberal opinions has doubled over the past two decades from 10% to 21%." Pew
"That's a tall tree, and growing steadily taller. But don't forget to notice that the forest — the other 79 percent of the population — do not fit this description." Eric Black
Pew Research Political Polarization
NYT Polarization
WP Polarization
G2A Political Self Awareness
G2A The Popularity Contest
G2A Conservative / Liberals: Who Cares More
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37 comments:
That's a hard thing to poll. Maybe it's the issues that have become more polarized. Twenty years ago, the baby boom generation was 20 years further away, and issues related to it's retirement were more remote, and therefore I would suggest, less divisive. Today, that crisis is upon us, and so is the subject of a debate.
--Hiram
I think it's also the case that if you ask divisive questions, you will get divided answers. If you asked different questions, you would get different answers. One reason why congress is held in such contempt, I believe, is that it is seen as too polarized.
--Hiram
I think there is more division today than in the past-- more polarization. The only way that happens is if one political party moves so far and so fast from the traditional that the gap widens. It isn't that conservatives are more conservative; that's not possible.
I think there are louder voices and more forums in which they can be heard. I know there is weal beyond the dreams of avarice to be generated today to be generated from being divisive. And there is asymmetry here. I don't think there is a lot of money to made from being indecisive. To quote Yeats:
"The best lack all conviction, while the worst
" Are full of passionate intensity."
There is also the issue of confirmation bias. If you look for division, as with lots of other things, you will find it. Polls will generally find division because that's what they do. No one polls undivisive questions. We assume that Mom and apple pie would poll well but we don't know because no one has ever asked.
--Hiram
I of course am with Jerry in that I think the left just keeps demanding more concessions from the capitalsits /religious right, therefore the gap widens. I always wonder if they will ever be satisfied??,
"I of course am with Jerry in that I think the left just keeps demanding more concessions from the capitalsits /religious right, therefore the gap widens."
I don't believe in being satisfied. Was Steve Jobs ever satisfied? Did he say we put out the Apple II, and that takes computer technology about as far as it can go?
With respect to health care policy, I want universal coverage at a reasonable price. Obamacare takes us part of the way but we have further to go. So what do the folks on the other side? What are they unsatisfied with? One of the problems with Obamacare is that Republicans in the House never came to the negotiating table leaving some of their important constituencies unrepresented, who are now reduced to writing op eds of complaint in the Wall Street Journal. As my a friend of mine likes to say, people aren't at the table have a way of ending up on the menu.
--Hiram
First let me say I think Hiram is right about conflict being news, and erudite in his quote from Yeats. The only thing the major media like to report more than Republicans being wrong is Republicans disagreeing among themselves. Democrats either all think alike, or have a media that effectively covers up any disagreement. I'm inclined to think the former, since conflict, even among Democrats, is news.
I disagree, though, on Obamacare. It is a completely horrible "solution" to the problem, even if you believe that some form of government health care can deliver better care to more people for less money than the free market. Not possible, but Obamacare has already failed-- had it been implemented as written by the Democrat staff (rather than by committee, debated and amended on the floor), we would have far FEWER people insured today, costs would be much higher, and the quality and availability of care would be lower. Much of that is already true or nearly true, even for the "Obamacare light" that Obama has flouted the law to create.
I'm curious to see on what basis people say that Democrats have moved so far to the left on lots of issues. Because other than marriage equality, I don't see issues where the party has lurched to the left.
"It is a completely horrible "solution" to the problem, even if you believe that some form of government health care can deliver better care to more people for less money than the free market. Not possible, but Obamacare has already failed-- had it been implemented as written by the Democrat staff (rather than by committee, debated and amended on the floor), we would have far FEWER people insured today, costs would be much higher, and the quality and availability of care would be lower."
I am not sure what this means. It's mostly a process complaint I think, but that's the process Congress follows. Every meal Congress makes has 535 cooks, and that can't be changed, it's interent in the process. I would also add that this idea that we should be satisfied at some point, just seems contrary to my understanding of legislation or reality in general. I think it was Nancy Pelosi who observed that we wouldn't really know what was in Obamacare until it passed. She was certainly right about that. Not only has Obamacare left much undone, we are learning now how it can be improved. Just about every week, I read op ed pieces in the Wall Street Journal about various problems Obamacare has, not from dissatisfied liberals, but from conservative observers. These pieces often raise valid concerns, some of them, oddly enough I have raised myself. Why not make the choice to be dissatisfied? Why not respond to Joe Soucheray's question by saying, no enough is never enough, we can always make things better and as imperfect human beings with imperfect process that should always be our goal.
--Hiram
From an editorial in today's Star Tribune:
"Before MNsure launched last October, 8.2 percent of Minnesotans did not have health insurance. On May 1, after a major deadline for 2014 coverage had closed on MNsure, the percentage of Minnesotans without coverage fell to 4.9.'
What I expect I will be saying a lot over the coming months is "Remember when Republicans wanted to repeal Obamacare because the software was buggy?" What I expect I will ask Republican legislators is how many Minnesotans will lose their health insurance because of your plan to repeal Obamacare because the website was buggy last November?
--Hiram
I'll let the Blue speak for itself.
NYT Total Cost Over Time
Wiki Great Society
DFL How Did It Get Here
It seems the big slide to the Left started in the 1960's. And those costs are just growing over time.
Do you have a graph for what government needs to spend on? Did government spending cause the population to get older with the attendant rise in health care costs?
Does government get bigger or more expensive when a child on Medicaid gets a bone marrow transplant? If so, is that a bad thing?
--Hiram
The baby boomer wave is just hitting. This spending shift has been changing for ~50 years.
As for bad or good... That is the question?
Are the parents on Medicare because of some temporary bad fortune.
Or are the parents on Medicare because the welfare state has encouraged them to not learn, work hard, make good choices and take responsibility for their own life and their child's healthcare bills.
Are the parents on Medicare because of some temporary bad fortune.
I don't see it makes a difference. Let's say the parents are really horrible aliens. When a child gets a medical procedure paid for by taxpayers, does that mean the government is getting bigger?
--Hiram
The question isn't what government NEEDS to spend, it is what government OUGHT to spend. If we didn't have Social Security, perhaps more people would have put money away for their old age. If we didn't have Medicare and Medicaid, our health care costs because of the added competition would be half what they are today, and perhaps more people would have health insurance and health care (two different things.) If we didn't have so many means-tested entitlements, we might have a few more desperately poor, but we would have far more people working, and if we didn't have the high taxes and wild overspending, there would be more money left to grow the economy and provide jobs, making all of that wild overspending unnecessary. Just look at how many trillions of dollars we have spent on the "war on poverty," and yet we have more poor people today than when it was launched. There are some things government simply should not do, at least not the way liberals want to do them.
The question isn't what government NEEDS to spend, it is what government OUGHT to spend.
Well, we don't NEED to spend money on the bone marrow transplant, but we certainly OUGHT to spend money on the bone marrow transplant.
--Hiram
Probably not if it encourages wide spread free loading.
"Or are the parents on Medicare because the welfare state has encouraged them to not learn, work hard, make good choices and take responsibility for their own life and their child's healthcare bills."
You may save one child, but at what cost to our country?
Hiram,
I don't remember if you have kids or not, but I will assume you do for this comparison.
I have a friend who's daughter is far off a good path in life. He has tried repeatedly to help her become a responsible member of our society, experiencing a great deal of stress and spending 10's of thousands of dollars in the effort.
Yet she can not or will not change her ways, and the story is only getting worse. Now he is finally cutting back and letting her hit bottom, which is very hard to do.
I understand that you want to save everyone. The reality is that it may not be possible. And if it is possible, the huge costs incurred may generate very significant negative consequences for all of us.
"I understand that you want to save everyone. The reality is that it may not be possible.
I fully understand that we may not be able to afford universal health care in America, although other, poorer countries seem to manage it. But the fact is, it's tough to make that argument when we are also cutting taxes, and seem to have laws on the books that assess tax liability depending on where CEO's get their mail.
--Hiram
So the argument here is that we should let the child die to teach the parents a lesson? Am I following that?
I thought the argument here was that government did and does a terribly inefficient and ineffective job of trying to "provide" everything for everybody, and that the truly compassionate thing would be to allow everybody the freedom to do for themselves as much as possible, or to turn to their neighbors in time of need. Who was it who said that "Capitalism is the unequal distribution of blessings, Socialism is the equal distribution of misery"? You are advocating socialism.
Sean,
I was thinking about that... Maybe we only provide medicare for the old, young and disabled...
"I thought the argument here was that government did and does a terribly inefficient and ineffective job of trying to "provide" everything for everybody, and that the truly compassionate thing would be to allow everybody the freedom to do for themselves as much as possible, or to turn to their neighbors in time of need."
That's the argument that prevailed in Obamacare. That's why insurance is obtained through private companies, who presumably would compete with each other, and that there would be no "public option". By the way, there are lots of ideas and labels out there, that are paid lip service to, but we should be aware that these ideas are often in conflict. Competition, for example is inefficient. It requires companies to have duplicate operations. For example, the newspaper business. Competition required the Pioneer Press and the Star Tribune each to maintain underused printing operations. At some point, they decided that was silly and combined printing operations in the interest of efficiency.
--Hiram
And the problem is that "labels" such as "private insurance in Obamacare" don't really mean what you think they do. These private insurance companies do not compete; they must all offer the exact same government-required insurance contract, and they are guaranteed to make money because they receive a "bailout" if they do not. It is not free-market competition by the most stretched definition of the term.
And "inefficient" is not the proper word for competition, either, because competition forces companies to be more efficient, while having a monopoly allows inefficiency to grow. Curious that government sees the necessity of breaking up private monopolies, but believes that government monopolies like the VA is and Obamacare will become are desirable.
The Star Tribune and PP are great examples. They had excess capacity because they continue to hemorrhage customers. Each had a monopoly in its own town, and failed to adapt to the new market realities. They didn't have to compete. Now they find themselves in competition with new media, and they can't adapt.
"And the problem is that "labels" such as "private insurance in Obamacare" don't really mean what you think they do. These private insurance companies do not compete; they must all offer the exact same government-required insurance contract, and they are guaranteed to make money because they receive a "bailout" if they do not."
Actually many different insurance companies offer a huge number of different coverage options. It's just that they are not allow to offer bad options. It's just like food regulations which allow you to buy a lot of different foods at a lot of different prices but don't allow you to buy foods that violate health regulations. The fact that markets have rules does not mean they are not free. Quite the contrary; markets tend to have lots of rules, the point of many of which is to enable, rather than limit trading.
"And "inefficient" is not the proper word for competition, either, because competition forces companies to be more efficient, while having a monopoly allows inefficiency to grow."
This oversimplifies things immensely. But let's apply this idea to health insurance. Limits imposed by Obamacare take certain kinds of insurance options off the table. Health insurance companies are no longer allowed to offer bad insurance. But in terms of competition, this is a neutral, since companies don't compete with respect to products they do not sell. But they offer a huge variety of good insurance products which do form the basis of competition. And of course, Obamacare isn't concerned with how efficiently they offer them. Of course, what we might see is mergers. The point of a merger is to reduce competition while increasing efficiency by elimination of duplication. We see them all the time.
--
One might almost think that you did not understand free market competition. The whole point, particularly in healthcare, is that there was no such thing as "bad insurance." That assessment belongs to the consumers. For example, health savings accounts (HSAs) are not an option under Obamacare, yet they offer better care at less than half the price of the plans permitted in the Exchanges. Why does government get to tell me, or you, that we cannot purchase a superior product at a lower price? Why do they demand to substitute their judgment of what we need and want and are willing to pay for over our own?
If the point of a merger is to increase efficiency, then why does the federal government not permit every possible merger, and actively work to break up some monopolies?
"The whole point, particularly in healthcare, is that there was no such thing as "bad insurance."
Sure there is, just as there is good meat and bad meat. We don't leave those choice for consumers to make for a variety of reasons. And you know what? There isn't much complaint. Meat companies don't hire lobbyists to persuade Congress to allow them to sell bad meat. Similarly, consumers don't picket grocery stores demanding the right to buy contaminated beef.
Similarly, in case you haven't noticed, insurance companies aren't running commercials to the effect that Obamacare is limiting their right to cheat the insurance buying public. One reason for that is that because that's bad business, but another reason is that federal regulations have relieved them from the competitive pressure to sell lousy insurance.
What about the consumer side of things? Initially, when Obamacare came into effect, we saw a flurry of anecdotal commercials featuring folks who had lost their health insurance. We don't see those commercials anymore for a very good reason. Upon further scrutiny, we found that the specific individuals in those commercials were able to get objectively better deals in health insurance under Obamacare than they were previously. That's why we don't see those commercials anymore.
Why do I demand that my judgment be substituted for that of the guy who wants to buy junk insurance? Because I am either subsidizing his premium or subsidizing the care he potentially receives. It's my money at issue, and that means I get a say in how it is used.
--Hiram
"Sure there is, just as there is good meat and bad meat."
You are mixing metaphors. "Bad meat" is objectively bad, because it contains something that will make many people sick. Nobody wants to buy that, and no company that wants to remain in business wants to sell it, because a company that poisons its customers poisons itself. We have government inspections because bad meat is not always readily detectable by the consumer. If the government did not do it, there is no doubt in my mind that meat companies would do it themselves; the cost to their business of failing to do so would be too great.
"Bad insurance," on the other hand, is an entirely SUBJECTIVE determination. And I don't need an inspector to tell me "what's in it." If I want to buy an HSA with a very low premium and a high deductible, who are you (or Obama) to tell me that I cannot? You may think it is bad insurance, while I may think it is exactly what I need – very "good" insurance. Why do you get to decide?
"… federal regulations have relieved them from the competitive pressure to sell lousy insurance. "
That is an interesting way of looking at federal regulations. I tend to look at it differently. How about this wording: "Federal regulations PROHIBIT insurance countries from selling policies that consumers like and wanted to keep."
"… specific individuals in those commercials were able to get objectively better deals in health insurance under Obamacare…"
That's funny, I don't recall seeing those commercials, either. And I notice that the 50 million additional cancellations avoided by Obama's unlawful postponement of the employer mandate, haven't been factored in, either. Apparently the "startling truth" of Obamacare's abject failure will take a little longer to reach the general public; it should be obvious now, as it was even before this miscegenation passed the Congress.
"Because I am either subsidizing his premium or subsidizing the care he potentially receives."
Well, if those are the restrictions you want to put on your money, go ahead. But I have a few questions. Why are you subsidizing this fellow at all? Why do you demand to say how he will use the money, when at least part of that money is mine? Why am I being forced to subsidize this fellow? Why don't you trust this fellow to make his own decisions about what health insurance he needs? Why don't you trust this fellow to use your money to make the best decisions for himself that he can? Would you accept his putting the same demands on you, regarding your health insurance?
I was just musing, reexamining some ideas I have long taken for granted. Maybe there is no such thing as "bad" meat. In a free society, isn't that a value judgment consumers should be allowed to make for themselves? Why is the government standing in the way of Byerly's having a bad meat aisle? And I bet they regulated food in Nazi Germany, and look what happened there. And where did we get this idea that germs could cause disease? Lots of scientists think so, but since when did we put truth to a vote? And by the way, since I am not a scientist, why is anything scientists say relevant to me?
--Hiram
Jerry, you keep saying this:
"For example, health savings accounts (HSAs) are not an option under Obamacare"
And it isn't true. Go out to mnsure.org and you can find dozens of plans with HSAs. In fact, I found 46 plans with HSAs when I entered my information.
"Why are you subsidizing this fellow at all?"
Because I live in an advanced industrial society that provides health care to those who need it.
"Why do you demand to say how he will use the money, when at least part of that money is mine?"
Again, because I live in an advanced industrial society that provides health care to those who need it.
"Why am I being forced to subsidize this fellow?"
Because you live in an advanced industrial society that provides health care to those who need it.
"Why don't you trust this fellow to make his own decisions about what health insurance he needs?"
Because I know he will want health care when he needs it.
"Why don't you trust this fellow to use your money to make the best decisions for himself that he can?"
Again, because I know he will want health care if he needs it, even if he made the decision at some prior point that he wouldn't. Indeed, freeloader behavior is common in this area.
"Would you accept his putting the same demands on you, regarding your health insurance?"
Yes, I have no problem at all with him demanding that I buy non junk insurance.
--Hiram
Sean, you are apparently correct, though I steadfastly refuse to put my information into a clunky government website to find out. What I think I can safely say is that the HSA I HAD and LIKED is not available through the exchange, or elsewhere.
What I think I can safely say is that the HSA I HAD and LIKED is not available through the exchange, or elsewhere.
I would like to buy the jet pack James Bond uses to fly in the opening scenes of "Thunderball", yet it isn't offered for sale in my current LL Bean catalog. How can a market possibly be free if it doesn't sell literally everything I might want to buy?
--Hiram
How can a product I liked and was buying be ordered off the market by government fiat, and then be offered a product of lower quality and higher cost, sold only by a government-approved vendor? Sure doesn't sound like a free market to me.
"How can a product I liked and was buying be ordered off the market by government fiat, and then be offered a product of lower quality and higher cost, sold only by a government-approved vendor? Sure doesn't sound like a free market to me."
Because when we pay for something, we get to decide what we want to buy.
==Hiram
Unless it's health insurance? We pay for it, but Obama decides what we can buy.
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