domain:arjunpanickssery.substack.com
SophisticatedHillbilly
3hr ago
Any proper system has to explain the machinist vs sheet-metal-worker divide (around a 30-point difference) and I have yet to see one that does.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Well yeah, I didn’t say ‘globally this will be a right wing crusade’. I said ‘in the US restricting minor’s social media will be increasingly associated with republicans’. Other countries might code it differently; I’d expect Japan, Germany, Hungary to make it a center right policy, and most of the rest of the Anglosphere+France to make it a center left thing.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Umm, yes. The GOP is most accurately described as a pro-fossil fuels Party which supports the interests of social conservatives(not necessarily socially conservative interests) and tax cuts.
ControlsFreak
3hr ago
I'm missing anything here about budgets and R's "slash[ing them] so much". Will we be getting to that soon?
Spookykou
3hr ago
Is the average lifespan in 1935 one of those situations where its mostly just a higher rate of infant mortality?
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
3hr ago
Desantis was the one who was quickest to see where the winds were blowing and endorse the guy without reservation.
He only endorsed when it was very clear that Trump was going to trounce him in the primaries. Haley was the only semi-major candidate left in after Iowa. And his endorsement was more like a detente at the time.
By comparison, I still remember when Trump's nickname for Rubio was "Little Marco."
What does this have to do with anything? Ron's nickname was "desanctimonious".
And it is also obvious that replacing a Senator is a much higher-leverage move than replacing a house member, in general.
Not when Trump will likely have a 53-47 majority in the Senate, vs a very narrow majority in the House that's known for being chaotic and unpredictable.
SophisticatedHillbilly
3hr ago
If it set the stage for Trump, then it sure does make sense for Trumpians to support a continuous long-term version of it.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
I’m not discounting Musk himself doing something big. I just don’t think this will be a durable legacy.
zeke5123a
3hr ago
She is a crank whereas your opinions are perfect and normal. Oh but wait — weren’t you the one defending the Selzter poll and calling other people (like me) partisans hacks despite us clearly stating the facts for our doubts? And yet who was right? Maybe that should cause you to have just a minuscule amount of introspection instead of just criticizing your out group. That is, maybe you get a lot of things wrong.
Blueberry
3hr ago
Her brief stint as a Democrat is a bit odd
She was 20 years a Dem? She was 21 when she was voted into the Hawaii House of Representatives as a Democrat.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
Uh, how exactly is she a crank? She’s a Hare Krishna who doesn’t hide her ‘member of a very conservative religion’ views on social issues while having some progressive ideas and being opposed to US intervention.
hydroacetylene
3hr ago
No, they’re not, there are upper and upper mid level officials in the Texas and Florida governments who will get drafted instead.
that most people overcome through age and experience
The sheer size of my political outgroup is clear evidence to the contrary. Most of them are over 18, too.
I'd be in favor of there being some kind of basic test that someone can past to 'remove' that disability in a legal sense
Oi, where's your freedom license?
I am too, but the problem is that society won't tolerate it being an actual, legible test (mainly because muh disproportionate impact, but also because there's a lot of ego/conscience-approval involved in the assumption of righteous disenfranchisement by default, much like there is with all the -isms).
This is currently fulfilled by "having enough common sense to lie to the website about his or her date of birth, and intelligent enough not to contradict that lie after the fact". Fake IDs serve a similar purpose, or at least they did back when they were easier to make; half the problem I have with this scheme is that it makes this much harder (they are/were natural escape valves), as in the face of -ism-driven lawmaking the question of who it actually applies to and what they'll be doing instead won't be seriously considered.
HaroldWilson
3hr ago
Seems a bit of a moot point as there is surely no way she gets through the Senate.
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
3hr ago
She's a crank with similar vibes to RFK Jr. or Ron Paul, although they have very different voting records. The fact this group has ascended now is thanks to the Republicans being dominated by the Dale Gribble voters.
SophisticatedHillbilly
4hr ago
Two arguments here:
1.) Government spending: consider that the massive efficiency issue applies not just to bridges, but to nearly all government spending of any kind. While bridges alone are a small cut, it’s significantly more expensive to spend 10X or 100X for many different things.
2.) The issue goes beyond government spending to include government cost. Cost includes the expenses that are offloaded to the private sector, many of which are executive in nature. Rolling back a wide swath of administrative regulations could massively increase private wealth and save the public fisc indirectly. This also applies to the healthcare spending that makes Medicaid so expensive. That 10X multiplier is there as well (more than in most industries really.) Cut medical regs, increase doctor supply, etc etc.
The administration will have trouble with this politically though, since the second type of cost saving doesn’t show up in a straight “spending in 2022 vs spending in 2026” analysis
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
4hr ago
They're not bitter ideological enemies, but they are political rivals in the same vein as Sanders vs Warren.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
4hr ago
Well, okay then. Sorry for the confusion.
urquan
4hr ago
Unironically the most interesting thing about this dataset is it sorts "Web Developer" into "IT" and not "Engineering." I have no doubt many flame wars could be fought over that one.
And the second most interesting thing is that the most Republican professions work with fossil fuels, and the most Democratic professions work against fossil fuels. Forget about Black Lives Matter, the divide between the left and the right seems to be about Black Gold.
Templexious
4hr ago
I've been reading up more on Tulsi Gabbard. Honestly, she has an incredible and distinguished track record- from being a medic in Iraq, to her Hawaiian heritage.
If she really does get the DNI position in the Trump cabinet, there is strong chance that she will attempt a bid for President immediately after.
This could cause competition for the Thelians hoping for more JD Vance after Trump leaves office. But I'm not here to wargame 2028 campaign hypotheticals when Trump isn't even sworn in yet.
It seems she and her husband converted to hinduism.
My immediate take is that her presence and native pacific islander background means you know she ascended, and worked for the positions she had. Her brief stint as a Democrat is a bit odd, but otherwise she looks like she has a pretty pristine track record that's really hard to shit on.
Her being anti-lgbt, with a track record of policies that would otherwise be fairly progressive, she seems like a standard, good pick for almost any position in ... any president's cabinet?
From reading the wiki page, I'm having a hard time figuring out why anyone would mouth-froth over the idea of her having any position of power.
Dear Mottizens, what is your view on her? Any information I've missed?
Ben___Garrison
Voltaire's Viceroy
4hr ago
All I see on your chart is the nominal amount of money going to government employees going up, but it's not indexed to inflation, so it's useless.
I'm not sure what point you're making about budgets that I haven't already addressed. Federal headcount is declining as a percent of the total workforce. Federal salaries are declining as a percent of total government spending. I've never heard anyone claim people become bureaucrats to get rich (they'd do it for benefits and job stability).
CertainlyWorse
Dedicated Pessimist
4hr ago
I'm sorry for your loss.
My Grandfather passed very recently. He lived a long life into his 90's. He just caught a chest infection one day and deteriorated quite quickly in hospital. He eventually just asked the doctors to stop treating him and switch to palliative care. After 3 days he passed away. He wasn't responsive once they switched to palliative care, being in something of a delirium.
My father did not take his passing well. This is partially because it's his last parent going and also because he himself is in hospital for chronic health conditions and couldn't attend the funeral. It was a bit of an existential crisis in the sense that myself and my siblings have realised that our father likely doesn't have many years left in him either.
For myself, I'm glad Grandfather passed relatively quickly without a long drawn out death from something like dementia. He had his faculties up to the end (with just some physical frailties) and was still driving himself around. He lived a good, long life and left behind a successful and loving family. I'd be lucky to follow his example.
I'm reluctant to post this last part because I don't expect anyone to take this seriously. I'm agnostic, but I sensed when my Grandfather passed. I was in a hyperfocused state doomscrolling at the time. I'm normally completely shut off from most of my emotions when I'm doing this, but I sensed a presence so I stopped what I was doing. I made a prayer for my Grandfather to commend him to God. I felt a warmth like a loving hug and knew he was saying goodbye and that he was fine. Then it was gone. Minutes later I got a text that Grandfather had passed 10 minutes ago. So that was a thing.
Like yourself there's a good chance I'll be deleting this one later on.
anon_
4hr ago
Oh, I totally agree on midwit policy makers.
I do think there is a funny kind of duality here -- in the west some moron can wreck your country but at least you can't personally be thrown in a dungeon for making fun of a politician on social media.
FruitfulLemonyLemons
4hr ago
As much as the whole doge thing warms my millennial heart, DOGE just seems like a clone of Inspector General offices, no? And the main reason those have no balls is they're staffed by people who go to the same house parties as everybody else, right? (I am just assuming, here, this seems like a likely Schelling point over time)
So the most effective DOGE will be the Musk one since he's a true outsider, then they will be less effective over time until DOGE exists just to get paid to rubber stamp things.
More and more I think this stuff is really about the people and not the positions. You can create a "Department of Screw the ATF" whose whole job is to obstruct the ATF but if you populate it with people who are drinking buddies with the ATF people they'll coordinate on one or two "hard hitting" investigations (maybe to get rid of somebody the ATF wanted to fire anyway) to make the public happy and otherwise will be in lockstep.
Checks and balances are a cool idea but it's rare to get people who are true enemies. When that happened in the beginning it was such a crisis that we got the 12th Amendment. Not to mention a literal gunfight. Later we got Brooks/Sumner. It's ugly.
Speaking personally (and as somebody who has had libertarian leanings since the age of 16) I wish Musk the best and I think there is a unique window of opportunity here but I kinda hope DOGE just dissolves itself after he's done, there is no real need for a redundant Inspector General, in fact it would be the sort of redundant bloat that DOGE exists to remove.
I owned up to the Selzer poll being wrong, specifically about thinking it would be off by less than 10 points. The arguments against it were pretty uniformly medicore, along the lines of "nah, it just feels wrong" or crosstab diving or "unskewing", against a pollster who had a track record of proving her critics wrong over and over (e.g. in 2020, when she was far more pro-Trump than most of the competition, and ended up being right). Obviously it ended up being incorrect, and now Selzer has a lot of egg on her face.
Also, I'm not a fan of ad hominem attacks so this will probably be my last response to you.
More options
Context Copy link