5871

There are some significant problems with your analytical methodology here.
The biggest problem here is that while there mya be 1.3M jobs for post-secondary instructors, those jobs are not homogeneous. It’s not even really a field. It’s a very general job description, which covers a huge number of entirely different disciplines.

As an example, I know someone who is a philosophy professor… and I also know someone who intended to become a philosophy professor, but can’t actually do so, because they haven’t been able to find a position. Because there just isn’t a need for tons of philosophy professors. Math professors? Sure, because everyone who goes to college is going to take some math. But only a small handful are actually going to take philosophy.

This is true, although the upper pay scale for welders is dramatically higher than it is for elementary school teachers. You have the capacity to go into specialized fields where the pay can be hundreds of thousands (albeit for super specialized crap like underwater welding, which is not in high demand), or eventually you’d likely become an inspector where you inspect the work of those under you, where you’d probably be pulling in a good chunk of change.

5872

So the argument for teaching as a good-paying job only applies to some teachers, while the argument for welding as a good-paying job…only applies to some welders.

5873

And teachers can likewise become principals or even superintendents, with supervisory duties and a higher salary.

5874

Those aren’t policies that he thinks are bipartisan, they are policies that will help future conservatives and liberals work together by changing the focus of politics away from critical wedge issues and lobbyist-driven policy positions, and reducing the power of small states. Policies that are broadly popular will be ones that Congress moves on and policies with a mixed response will be ones they fight over, as it should be.

Saying that he’s just Biden because none of his policies will get passed by the GOP Senate is a pretty meaningless statement. You could say the same about Warren or Sanders - Biden embraces a lot of policies that won’t pass either and some that might, but the problem is the ones that might pass, not the ones that actually change things for the better (and therefore require some way to get around the GOP Senate, either at the ballot box, the pulpit, or the Resolute desk).

Electing a President based solely on the specifics of the policies they lay out (or on your own interpretation of which of those could pass the current Congress) doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. People complain about vagueness in policy details, but the reality is that the specifics of anything that actually gets changed need to be hammered out between a wide range of different interests. The purpose of a “plan” is to lay out some goals and an approach that could solve them. To put some stakes in the ground about how things should work and to explain why. If someone’s policy is an unworkable mess then it tells you they aren’t someone who can formulate a good plan or grasp the actual problems (they “aren’t serious”). If the policy is so vague that you can’t tell what it would do or whether it would improve anything, you can assume it’s an issue they aren’t serious about and won’t fight for. If their policy is solid enough to understand and seems like it could work, but the other side won’t like it, then that’s a reason to go out and fight and try to change enough people’s minds to get something done. And it says that it’s something the candidate may actually fight for (especially if their supporters encourage it).

Here’s another way he’s not Biden, which probably matters at least as much as the stuff above: he isn’t a gropey old white guy with a checkered-at-best history on racial issues.

5875

I totally agree. The thing about policy proposals is that they are indications of where the candidate is philosophically. Buttigieg is quite clearly placing himself to the right of Sanders, Warren, perhaps even Biden. And he’s justifying that positioning with an argument for pragmatism, even though his own policy proposals are no more likely than those of his opponents, and even though his argument for being able to work across the aisle is just as fanciful.

It’s the positioning that matters to me. If we elect moderates, the very best we can even hope for is moderate action. I’m not really up for another attempt at a grand bargain with Republicans, in which we e.g. ‘solve the deficit crisis’ by ‘improving social security’ paired with inconsequential increases in marginal tax rates that don’t even get us back to GWB-era rates.

5876

Which is why I like him as a VP pick. He has an ability to vocalize, understand, and explain issues well. And as a VP he would be articulating the agenda of the President. And at that I think he could excel.

5877

And if you elect somebody who isn’t interested in structural reforms to our political system, then the best we can hope for is the same broken political system we have now. Each president will spend their first year rolling back everything the previous president did via executive action while doing whatever they can via the same mechanism. Congress will be worthless. Rinse and repeat.

5878

You’re describing a situation where lasting change requires a party to hold the Presidency as well as Congress. That does happen from time to time. Arguably this is a feature not a bug.

5879

This exactly. He’s more pragmatic, which does not appeal to those who see that as the opposite of vision. That’s also part of why I like him. I have a personal stake in the healthcare debate (I buy in the individual market), and Pete’s MFAWWI is a solution that could actually work.

5880

I reject the idea of higher education as merely jobs training, although I don’t know if it’s feasible to offer access to everyone without regard to how it impacts their employment opportunities.

A future arc welder has as much right to be exposed to Plato or Borges or anything else, as the rest of us do. Whether they want to is a separate question, but not an absolute one: I didn’t really “want” to learn a lot of the stuff I had to learn in school, and found some of it quite difficult, but I don’t regret being nudged to learn it.

I get that some people are not academically inclined, but I also think it’s possible to have a job that doesn’t involve engineering or law or, I dunno, “content marketing,” and still be an educated human being – in the fancy-pants Renaissance sense of what that means. Again, who pays for it and how is a separate question, but it’s pretty clear to me from the last 3 years that a more educated populace would have been a nice-to-have in our country for lots of reasons.

5881

Yep, but Buttigieg isn’t a progressive, and I see him as a terrible pick for even VP. Let him be governor of Indiana.

The links to facebook, and big pharma execs worry me too much.

I see Warren as the more effective pragmatist.

5882

Is there such a candidate?

5883

Pete has always been in favor of a Medicare option for all, as opposed to removing the private option and forcing every one on Medicare.

His argument is that a Medicare option that is good enough will inevitably destroy the private option in the long run, but not cause as much chaos or disrutption.

Personal, I would like to see private and public options in competition with each other. Having Fed Ex doesn’t mean we can’t have the US postal Service and I don’t see why it has to be different with insurance.

5884

Nitpick here, not because I disagree with the sentiment, but because you’re using this wrong: the USPS takes zero tax dollars to operate, which is very different than Medicare.

5885

It’s kinda nice that having a public option is now the ‘conservative’ or ‘centrist’ position on health care. Overton Window ftw!

The appeal of Pete may have something to do with the man, as opposed to the platform.

5886

But not pragmatism of the “this is what will pass a GOP Congress” variety, his pragmatism is about “this is what will achieve goals with less disruption and more popular support”. If you think things should be changed but Warren and Sanders are too extreme he seems like a good option. I get not wanting to vote for him, but I don’t think your point that he just Biden by a different name is accurate.

5887

But people would be paying in to the Medicare in this scenario, right?

5888

That is a good point. And if we paid Medicare from Taxes, that would mean people with private insurance would be paying double

5889

What other candidates spend any time talking about it? Have any of the other candidates signaled a desire to amend the constitution?

5890

It’s a bizarre standard to have, i.e. only being interested in candidates who pursue the impossible, but:

Warren wants to ‘overturn’ Citizens United, amend the Constitution to guarantee voting rights, end voter suppression, ban gerrymandering, end PACs and Super PACs, get rid of the electoral college, and probably others. Those are all constitutional amendments as things currently stand. And I imagine the other candidates share some of these same ideas.