Never understood countries without free health care.

That's correct. If you control the legislative and executive branches, people expect results. I don't think it's risky at all because turnout for Dems will be lower if they don't pass some of their agenda. Combined with the new Congressional districts, the Democrats HAVE to take risk. Reforming, or even abolishing the filibuster, is absolutely necessary for the survival of the Democratic party. Seriously, what are the Republicans going to pass in the next 4-6 years that the Democrats will regret? As I said before, if there was something they wanted, McConnell would have nuked the filibuster to get it done.

I think the Democrats are wise enough to not push the envelope too much with controversial legislation bc that's a good way to lose elections. In addition, they don't have the votes to push controversial legislation so it's likely a non-issue. Take a look at the $15 minimum wage for instance: the Democrats will likely have to settle for $12-13 and then index it to inflation.

The ACA is an interesting case but you can chalk it up to the individual mandate and piss poor messaging. At the end of the day though, Obamacare is still here and the GOP has failed to repeal it for over a decade now. If anything, this shows that the Democrats will benefit long term by pushing through the popular parts of their agenda.

If Democrats did something drastic, like passing a public option, not full universal healthcare, just the public option, then liberals would go batshit crazy in excitement to vote for Democrats lol

We're tired of nothing getting done. The slightest hint of leftist policies, even half-baked ones, would result in outrageous turnout.

Hell, it would probably convert a good chunk of Trump's coalition. Imagine rural PA workers getting a good healthcare plan that's subsidized so they can afford it. "You'll never miss insulin again, and you'll never pay more than $20 for it" would be an absolute banger to the middle and lower working class.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Mar 12 2021 04:02pm

On the "not in Dems best interest to get rid of fillibuster", the new Dem senator out of CA:

https://twitter.com/SenAlexPadilla/status/1370476039659515906



I lean towards this being a silly position. First off, just because something polls high among voters doesn't mean that's what they get excited about. Look at the right-wing... they turn out because they hate the left, not because they are hyped about right-wing legislation or accomplishments. Trump didn't get much done outside of judicial appointments.. and that didn't matter.

So, I don't know how many voters get super excited about climate change or minimum wage legislation. I don't think governing in a competent manner necessarily results in political success, at least by itself. Politics is reality television for many Americans... so competence and governing ability are sort of boring subplots.

That said, I'm in favor of ending the filibuster. Not because I expect Americans to accurately credit the appropriate political party with changing things for the better, but because I don't see how our system could get any worse.

As long as dems pass things that actually make things better for people they will get credit. If they just make token gestures and pussy foot around they won't. Minimum wage would be a huge crowd pleaser that would immediately put more money in peoples hands.

I gotta disagree heavily with the two bolded points. Liberals always overreach when given the chance, and it always backfires. Look no further than Senate majority leader Harry Reid nuking the filibuster on most judicial appointments. 7 years later, the country has the most conservative Supreme Court in 80 years.

McConnell was never gonna nuke the filibuster with Trump in office. He himself as well as several other senators like Romney, Sasse, Murkowski or Collins were never on board with the "Trump agenda", and the filibuster was a convenient tool on deflecting pressure from Trump to actually enact this agenda. (Which he, just for the record, did indeed try to do back in 2017 at the start of his term, no matter how haphazard and hopeless those attempts were...) The filibuster was perfect for stopping Trump's legislative agenda, whatever it would have looked like in practice, dead in its tracks because it neither aligned with the personal beliefs of these senators nor with those of most Republican donors. Hence, the party settled on the lowest common denominator, tax cuts and "repeal Obamacare". And they couldnt even get the latter done...

I'm also not so sure about the "they dont have to push controversial legislation because they wont have the votes"-argument either. There would imho be tremendous pressure to pass stuff like voting rights reform (aka blatant Democratic power grabs), climate legislation, immigration reform, police reform - all those things would be guaranteed to end up controversial, if not outright unpopular, and push GOP turnout like crazy. Worst case and quite realistic scenario for Democrats: they spend a lot of time talking about these things without getting them actually done, triggering a midterm backlash without having anything to show for it. I dont really see how they could put enough pressure on Manchin to fold on policies he doesnt like. Worst thing they could do to him is threaten a primary challenger, which would be like aiming a bazooka at your own foot...




See my previous points on Obamacare. Just because you plan on passing a legislation which is affordable and leaving people better off doesnt mean it's gonna work out as planned in practice, or protect you from the fury of those who get bent over by this legislation.

I'm also unsure if your theory of how politics works is really correct. Is turnout really driven by past achievements? I somehow doubt that. Imho, it's driven more by big bold promises on future action, and of course by negative partisanship.
You are probably right though that the Democrats are more reliant than Republicans on getting at least something done to make their base happy. I just disagree with the notion that the filibuster must fall to accomplish this.


I think your liberal bias is showing here. A federal minimum wage which is too high for poor and/or rural regions would lead to a spike in unemployment, be an additional burden on small and midsized businesses (the aftermath of covid is a bad time for that) and it would also lead to a surge in consumer prices for lowly services in the richer regions, like CA. In the long run, it would presumably lead to higher growth since poor people would have more money in their pockets to spend, but in the short run, the amount of people benefitting from a $15 minimum wage would imho not be much larger than the number of people suffering because of it.

I'm with thundercock on this one: raise it to $12/h and index to inflation. Although I gotta say that indexing to inflation could also be tricky. Is it good if, for example, the minimum wage in Michigan rises despite a stagnant MI economy, just because CA and the South are booming and driving up the national inflation rate?

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 12 2021 11:06pm

Most rural areas either have no employment and people travel or live off welfare, or have a singular giant part of a company that provides virtually all the employment. For instance when I was job hunting I got an offer to work for a plastics manufacturing plant in Arkansas. It was in a town of like 3000 and employed virtually the entire town, save those who were employed by things like the walmart. Before that I worked in supplements manufacturing and it employed probably 30% of that towns people. Remember, I grew up in a dirt poor town. I'm intimately familiar with how the economies of dirt poor run, and the families that have back woods mansions and millions of dollars in their savings accounts because they run all the gas stations within 10 miles and "can't afford to pay more than $5 an hour under the table". My mom just got to $15 an hour, but as the administrator has access to all the finances for the place she runs and they could easily double everybody's wage and still make a shit load.

Also, nobody is saying to raise the minimum wage to $15 right away. All the plans have it happen over the course of at least 5 years afaik. Ideally I'd like to raise minimum wage to where you can afford a specific basket of goods including a one bedroom apartment, food, and healthcare. That way cheap ass places to live get less, due to having less housing cost and the like, and expensive places get more and have an incentive to keep housing prices under control.

The filibuster has to be reformed for any party to tackle our current problems. It needs serious reform because it's lead to stagnation and inability of government to handle basic things for its citizens.

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Mar 12 2021 11:16pm

If an entire town is dependent on one hugeass provider of certain goods or services, like gas stations, and this chain has to raise the wage of half its workforce by, say, $5 - what prevents them from just raising all gas prices in that town accordingly, so that they immediately take back the extra dollars from their employees and the other residents of the town?


Yup, a localized minimum wage is also what I would prefer. In places like San Francisco or NYC, even $15/h is still a starvation wage...

Tying the minimum wage to the local economy might, however, lead to falling minimum wages in really rundown places like rural Mississippi.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 12 2021 11:26pm

because labor isn't the only cost to most things. Even in labor intensive things, like fast food, it's only like 20% of the cost. So if they wanted to recoup the cost of their increase, let's say they doubled the wages as a result of this legislation, then the prices of most things would go up by at most 20%. That's also assuming no competitive effects. Another important effect is increased demand as a result of more spending. If your economy is stimulated by greater spending on wages it helps mostly those with the greatest propensity to spend, which increases purchasing in your community, which drives up profits, which offsets the cost and drives down your per unit cost since you can buy in larger bulk which further cuts cost.

There's a lot of effects with the minimum wage that are hard to account for. The empirical observations are that modest increases YoY in the minimum wage have little to no effect on employment and are stimulating to the economies.

If we got rid of all the arbitrary limitations on unionizing, training, and the like we could probably get rid of the minimum wage entirely, but the U.S. has a long history of police and military being used to break strikes by sometimes straight up murdering and imprisoning the strikers....

This post was edited by Thor123422 on Mar 12 2021 11:37pm

I'm aware of all of that, but it doesnt refute my point. If you have a local economy with local monopolies (on gas, employment or whatever), so that the local bigwigs have the leverage to squeeze the locals dry (see your example with the gas station wages) - what would prevent them from abusing the same leverage to recoup the entirety of the increased wages and funnel them straight back into their own pockets? The situation you're describing in many poor rural towns is characterized precisely by a lack of competitive effects.



I know that it's really complicated if we go into the details. Just wanted to leave a word of caution that what we're actually interested in is not an increase in nominal compensation, but an increase in actual purchasing power, and that there typically is no straightforward, linear relationship between these two.

This post was edited by Black XistenZ on Mar 12 2021 11:46pm