FROM 2012 INTO 2013 POLITICS THREAD

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Needs unmet? Such as? OBAMA FAILS!!!!!!!1

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Suppose the minimum wage increased by $0.25 per hour tonight at the stroke of midnight. Across the country, people who are barely capable to living up to their current wage would suddenly will be net losses for their employer. Further, people who today would have been barely worth hiring tomorrow won't be. What in the heck do you think the consequences for employment would be?

Do employers have their employees' actual worth calibrated that finely? Of course not. But in aggregate, on the margin, across an economy as big as the U.S.'s is, it would be as if that was happening. When a floor price on labor is set, unless it is ridiculously low then unemployment has to be higher than it would be otherwise*.

*Assuming that buyers of labor aren't in collusion. Perhaps you think that is possible, but I have a hard time buying that.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

I think the "circle jerk" praise for hugging for photo ops may have been a bit premature, though I do appreciate the willingness to act like "adults" as Christie said on Twitter. I think it says a lot about how angry and delusional some people are about the President that they're seething over some basic public displays of decency.

I find the growing attempt to call Staten Island "Obama's Katrina?" (BTW, how many of those are we up to now?) kind of disgraceful. If anyone is rooting for gas shortages and for people to suffer because they think it will entangle the president in a boondoggle, they need a serious timeout.

That said, Bloomberg is a clown for going through with this marathon. He is truly one of the most tone deaf politicians in the United States. I think, policy-wise, he's actually pretty sharp, but this is just another reminder of how he could never survive a year-long presidential campaign.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Training wage? Why would someone hire teen-agers for whom there's no need? If there's a need, pay them. If there's no need, don't hire them. I'm OK with that. Once I got my working papers (16?), I got real grunt-work jobs (shoveling sand at a foundry, pumping gas, spot welding at an aluminum fabrication plant, etc.) where my labor was actually needed. I'd have been pissed off if someone had told me that work was worth less because I was a teen-ager.

As an aside: Middle-class teen-agers don't seem as motivated to work anymore, I assume because their parents want them to focus on studies. I'd also like to find a teen-ager to shovel my snow in the winter but I can't find one.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

For what it's worth, as long as my teen-agers, some day, are involved in school extra-curriculars, I don't want them to work. Things are just too competitive these days to take that study time away. And I get that working teaches life-long, valuable lessons - I worked from the time I turned 16. But my back-of-the-napkin calculation is that the benefits aren't worth the loss these days.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Silver did a great job explaining today why all the criticism is just obfuscation at this point.

He showed how you can do all the complicated matherization that he does, or you can boil it down to a simple sentence, and the result is the same: Obama is probably but not certainly going to win.

The simple sentence was "Obama’s ahead in Ohio."

There's always a chance that all the polls will miss by several points in the same direction because of an expected turnout profile. Essentially, the polls are saying Obama +2, and you've got maybe a three-point spread either way, so it might be anywhere from R+1 to O+5.

Side note: In a future election cycle, I want the Democrats to nominate a candidate whose last name begins with R, and the Republicans to put up a "D" and really confuse people like me.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Chuck Rangel and Jim DeMint are intrigued by your ideas, and want to know if you accept bribes.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

I agree. Different time. I discouraged my daughter from working while she was in high school. The other thing is she didn't have time to work, anyway. The amount of homework/reading time for kids has soared since I was a kid.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

Chance of winning up over 80 percent and EVs over 300.

I have to believe Silver is getting a little nervous about this just because of the payback that will come if Romney wins. The fact that he even now gives Romney a 20 percent chance -- which is not insurmountable, I've made many bets in my day at 4-1 odds or worse -- will be completely forgotten, of course.

But we all know everyone mocking Silver will definitely write a column with "Damn, the guy nailed it" if he's as close as he was last time. Right? Right.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

It's remarkable how much more people get worked up about his projections now that he's working at the New York Times instead of just Five Thirty Eight.com.

What's funny is that some of the other statisticians' projections linked yesterday were far more confident in an Obama victory than Silver has been, yet he's the only one getting dumped on.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

If Romney wins, his blog will fade into obscurity and he'll likely be a cultural relic. You'll see him on some documentary some day about the crazy '10s.

It may not be fair, but that's what will happen.

 

Re: THE 2012 POLITICS THREAD

But Silver's driving the train. I bet you could take the next 10 stat projectors combined and they wouldn't have the traffic Silver does. (Also, I'm not sure if they are followers to his very original idea, but I think they are.)