Or at least some uniform federal guidelines that have some fairly stringent requirements.
Which makes your answer redundant!
Yup. Here’s the inescapable truth about redistricting. You can increase the number of districts you control, or you can increase the average margin of the districts you control. But mathematically, you can’t do both at the same time.
So the Republican strategy has been to increase the number of districts they control by converting a small number of very strong districts (e.g. +20) into a larger number of weaker (+10) districts. Their strategy hinged on the belief that a +10 district is perfectly safe, so there is no downside.
Except that a +10 district is actually not perfectly safe, as Republicans are beginning to learn. And that’s exactly why their own gerrymandering might result in an electoral tsunami.
Well this Orc (Morlock? Human-shaped apparition of Evil itself?) couldn’t be happier about the tax bill. All year just the anticipation of it has been rippling through the economy and the stock market to highly positive effect. The US Corporate tax rate is the highest in the world, and the distortions and machinations companies have been using to get out of paying that absurd 35% rate have been highly destructive to the health of the economy, but as a marginalized non-human I’m sure you won’t care what I say. Enjoy the shellacking you’re going to give us in 2018, but I suspect 2020 will be a different story. Cheers!
Congrats on repeating perennial Republican lies. The effective tax rate is actually among the lowest for modern nations, around 16-18%.
The economy is on basically the same trajectory it was under during those horrible Obama years that saw so much damage done to the nation.
No real conservative supports this tax legislation. Hardly any credentialed economists support it.
Look, maybe the official, nominal 35% corporate tax rate (which few enterprises actually pay) has caused us problems as a nation, but what on Earth is the justification for lowering the top marginal tax rate for individuals to 37%?
You have no concerns whatsoever on how this will exacerbate our already extreme wealth and income inequality?
The cardinal, fundamental flaw of the political left, is to think economics is a zero sum game. It is not.
Again, more trickle-down bullshit. At any given moment, there IS only a certain amount of economic production, period. Yes, a certain amount of economic inequality seems to be necessary for economic growth to happen. It does not follow that said inequality needs to be ever greater for growth to continue. That is the great delusion of the political Right.
This part is the one good thing about the GOP’s tax plan. It’s better if decisions are made based on market factors than on tax code provisions. The dynamic of high rates riddled with loopholes means that some of the game is won by better lobbying, not innovation.
As a liberal, I am therefore glad to see this. As someone who knows a fair bit of the business world from 25 years of management consulting, however, I laugh at the idea that this will drive job growth. It won’t, not even a tiny little bit.
Well I’d say you are mostly right, it will only marginally fuel job growth, but I think Trump’s plan is to cut the supply of cheap imported labor, not so much to boost the demand (which is extremely difficult).
Plan? He’s a simpleton. He has no real plan and you know this.
For many (most?) subjects this is perfectly true. However, the one place I am absolutely sure he actually has a plan is immigration, importing a large supply of low skill workers must negatively affect the market price for such labor.
If Trump was actually serious about this, he would be pushing a very strong, very secure version of Mandatory E-Verify, plus substantial penalties on illegal employers.
The economic engine driving the illegal immigration train is illegal employment, which is enabled by the laughably lax way we enforce our labor laws. For example, there is currently no requirement for employers to verify Social Security numbers, which makes illegal employment absurdly easy.
Changing that would actually have much more impact than border enforcement, b/c about 45% of unauthorized immigrants entered the country perfectly legally, then simply overstayed their visa b/c it is stupidly easy for them to be hired illegally and sustain themselves even without a valid work status. And the economic drivers of that are the employers who want low wage workers, no questions asked.
This is my litmus test for reality on unauthorized immigrants: if you really want to affect this issue, you have to look at employer level enforcement to reduce illegal employment. Locking up the border is a sideshow.
Thank you, Sharpe. What Trump is peddling is pure racism/xenophobia.
And BTW, in case anyone’s not paying attention, we need immigrants. Especially young ones. Our population nowadays has a median age of around 38, and we’re only getting older unless we allow more young people in, because our birth rate is not replacing the population.
I’m referring to legal immigration, of course. We need to increase the number of people allowed in and afford them all the rights of residency, and all the protections as well.
Yes, Trump plans to cut the supply of cheap imported labor by hiring cheap imported labor at his resort. It all makes sense now.
Yes for good and bad, his bill has almost nothing to do with Trump, or his most fanatical supporters.
It is pretty much entirely establishment Republican principals and give away to donors. Except for the blowing a hole in the budget part, that’s basics politician BS, give goodies to get a vote today, and stick the next generation with the bill and interest.
‘Must’? This is basically the ‘lump of labour fallacy’.
Simon Wren Lewis is an economist based at Oxford, and he recently wrote a very good blog post on this topic (mostly from a UK perspective, but the rationale is the same.)
That’s obviously not true. Consider the following example, with districticts of 100 voters distributed reasonably fairly:
Reds Blues Margin
40 60 -20
40 60 -20
60 40 +20
60 40 +20
60 40 +20
----------
Red voters: 260
Blue voters: 240
Red districts: 3, average margin 20 votes
Blue districts: 2, average margin 20 votes
Let’s gerrymander that:
Reds Blues Margin
35 65 -30
35 65 -30
30 70 -40
80 20 +60
80 20 +60
----------
Red voters: 260
Blue voters: 240
Red districts: 2, average margin 60 votes
Blue districts: 3, average margin 33 votes
There we go. More blue districts, and each one is safer than either of the ones they started with.
This is informative.