Just like the San Francisco school board becomes "all Democrats, everywhere," so Rick Scott should become "all Republicans, everywhere" with much more justice.
As Scott so ably demonstrates, as hard as Republicans try to be populist party of the working people, you don't have to dig down too far to find the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
Most of the points in the plan are nonsense. School choice is a good idea, but its completely inconsistent to mandate it from a federal perspective when Republicans are adamant that education is a traditionally state-level prerogative not covered by Congress' Article 1 enumerated powers. And school choice absolutely won't get rid of "woke" curriculum. Indeed, school choice would allow parents and students to self-sort into their curricular preferences, including those who want "woke" schooling. The pledge of allegiance stuff is all unconstitutional bullshit.
The border wall as an immigration plan is nonsense.
The economic protectionist stuff is nonsense and would also completely screw over any plan to balance the budget.
Balance the budget is a good, if painful, idea. There is no way Scott's plan sniffs a balanced budget. in 2019 (pre-COVID distortion), our budget was 22.7% Social Security, 14.6% Medicare, 9.2% Medicaid, 15.3% Military (not including military retirement). When we're talking about a 900 Billion deficit, there is no way to balance a budget by cutting discretionary services or making sure that everyone has a little skin in the game vis-a-vis individual income taxes. We would need a 24% increase in revenue from payroll taxes, corporate income taxes and individual income taxes. While taxes on rich people should go up, they don't have enough income and there aren't enough of them to pay for the difference. You can't balance a budget without a tax increase on the middle class. As you note, that message is radioactive, probably way more radioactive than Scott's token plan.
I would prefer that politicians stop lying about what they can and can't do, and what needs to be done. But since that's not going to happen, I would simply take them not lying and not having the lies be wacky bullshit.
Doesn’t someone, at some point, need to address entitlement spending? We keep hearing that by “ such and such” date, they’ll be insolvent. Is this a serious problem or not?
I've argued for a long time that anyone serious about ensuring the solvency of the OASDI Trust Fund could do it easily by removing the income cap and maintaining the benefit structure as it is. The IRS indicates that just over 50% of reported income isn't subject to SocSec taxes.
"While you may hear a lot of people in Washington say they are “fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” it’s much more common for voters to be the opposite"
The link doesn't really show that - what it shows is that on average the economic questions they asked in their survey are ones where a majority prefer the liberal option, which the social questions are more 50/50 (if you look at the scatterplot it's basically a blurry diagonal line shifted on one axis). But that's an artifact of the questions chosen! You could easily "prove" the opposite by making the economic questions stuff like "should taxes go up" or whatever.
And while this is more subjective, my read of their questions is that the economic questions really are worse at dividing the political spectrum in the US (judging by, say, "would a moderate democrat worry about embracing the liberal answer to this question").
I agree with this analysis conditional on the public's awareness that they are part of the 47% of non, net-income tax payers. Considering all the payroll taxes and income tax withholdings people stump up, I wouldn't be surprised if a big chunk of the 47% (and a bigger chunk of those inclined to vote republican) would feel they were tax payers even though they weren't. Perhaps a "Everyone should pay at least a small amount in taxes" argument would work for those who misperceive themselves as taxpayers. People don't like free rides when they aren't getting one themselves.
What polling is there on people's self-awareness of whether they pay taxes? I'd be interested in how the cross tabs would look for this message too.
Just like the San Francisco school board becomes "all Democrats, everywhere," so Rick Scott should become "all Republicans, everywhere" with much more justice.
As Scott so ably demonstrates, as hard as Republicans try to be populist party of the working people, you don't have to dig down too far to find the Wall Street Journal editorial page.
Most of the points in the plan are nonsense. School choice is a good idea, but its completely inconsistent to mandate it from a federal perspective when Republicans are adamant that education is a traditionally state-level prerogative not covered by Congress' Article 1 enumerated powers. And school choice absolutely won't get rid of "woke" curriculum. Indeed, school choice would allow parents and students to self-sort into their curricular preferences, including those who want "woke" schooling. The pledge of allegiance stuff is all unconstitutional bullshit.
The border wall as an immigration plan is nonsense.
The economic protectionist stuff is nonsense and would also completely screw over any plan to balance the budget.
Balance the budget is a good, if painful, idea. There is no way Scott's plan sniffs a balanced budget. in 2019 (pre-COVID distortion), our budget was 22.7% Social Security, 14.6% Medicare, 9.2% Medicaid, 15.3% Military (not including military retirement). When we're talking about a 900 Billion deficit, there is no way to balance a budget by cutting discretionary services or making sure that everyone has a little skin in the game vis-a-vis individual income taxes. We would need a 24% increase in revenue from payroll taxes, corporate income taxes and individual income taxes. While taxes on rich people should go up, they don't have enough income and there aren't enough of them to pay for the difference. You can't balance a budget without a tax increase on the middle class. As you note, that message is radioactive, probably way more radioactive than Scott's token plan.
I would prefer that politicians stop lying about what they can and can't do, and what needs to be done. But since that's not going to happen, I would simply take them not lying and not having the lies be wacky bullshit.
Doesn’t someone, at some point, need to address entitlement spending? We keep hearing that by “ such and such” date, they’ll be insolvent. Is this a serious problem or not?
I've argued for a long time that anyone serious about ensuring the solvency of the OASDI Trust Fund could do it easily by removing the income cap and maintaining the benefit structure as it is. The IRS indicates that just over 50% of reported income isn't subject to SocSec taxes.
The gets a like from me just for note #5.
"While you may hear a lot of people in Washington say they are “fiscally conservative and socially liberal,” it’s much more common for voters to be the opposite"
The link doesn't really show that - what it shows is that on average the economic questions they asked in their survey are ones where a majority prefer the liberal option, which the social questions are more 50/50 (if you look at the scatterplot it's basically a blurry diagonal line shifted on one axis). But that's an artifact of the questions chosen! You could easily "prove" the opposite by making the economic questions stuff like "should taxes go up" or whatever.
And while this is more subjective, my read of their questions is that the economic questions really are worse at dividing the political spectrum in the US (judging by, say, "would a moderate democrat worry about embracing the liberal answer to this question").
I agree with this analysis conditional on the public's awareness that they are part of the 47% of non, net-income tax payers. Considering all the payroll taxes and income tax withholdings people stump up, I wouldn't be surprised if a big chunk of the 47% (and a bigger chunk of those inclined to vote republican) would feel they were tax payers even though they weren't. Perhaps a "Everyone should pay at least a small amount in taxes" argument would work for those who misperceive themselves as taxpayers. People don't like free rides when they aren't getting one themselves.
What polling is there on people's self-awareness of whether they pay taxes? I'd be interested in how the cross tabs would look for this message too.