5 ways to read the polls

[DittoHead]

But how does it matter if conservative whites outbreed liberal whites when minorities outbreed both of them combined and vote liberal?
Maybe I'm not asking the right question - why do (most) minorities vote Democrat and what needs to be done to change that?

[drewtam]

Mak, I think you have some overly optimistic assumptions.

For example, looking at France with ~50% tax rates and egregious gov't behavior against the individual. Their economy still bumbles along enough to draw investment and modest growth. Yes their GDP/capita PPP is about equal to Arkansas or Louisiana, but its enough to remain modern and distribute the wealth. Its also enough for African, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European immigrants to flood the country and cause trouble.

And with all of that, they still double down for a Socialist president!


I fear this is the most likely scenario for the US. Not collapse, not civil war, not self correcting market forces... just malaise.


There is one part I do agree though.

Conservatives will win, one way or the other.

The gods of copybook heading will not be mocked.
http://andstillipersist.com/2012/11/the-gods-of-the-copybook-headings-illustrated/
So yes, conservatives will eventually win, but [refering to 4th stanza and first pic] how many hundreds of years will it take first?

[TommyGunn]

.....There is one part I do agree though.The gods of copybook heading will not be mocked.
http://andstillipersist.com/2012/11/the-gods-of-the-copybook-headings-illustrated/
So yes, conservatives will eventually win, but [refering to 4th stanza and first pic] how many hundreds of years will it take first?

Rudyard Kipling's "Gods of the CopyBokk Headings."  Love that poem.  Hard hitting and strangely timely at this point in time.

I do think collapse is actually pretty likely, however.........maybe civil war, maybe not.....

[makattak]

So yes, conservatives will eventually win, but [refering to 4th stanza and first pic] how many hundreds of years will it take first?

Two generations.

You know, I think 40 years may have some significance in the bible, too.

[drewtam]

Two generations.

Please explain further...

[makattak]

Please explain further...

As I see it, we can no longer avoid collapse. Our debts are too high and our growth is too small.

After the collapse, the US ceases to be an attactive alternative to the third world. (How many immigrants does Argentina have?)

The liberals here will continue to see children as a burden and will continue to have them far below replacement rates.

The children that they do have will likely not have jobs (massive unemployment, especially of the youth) and will find their "benefits" do not compare to what it was like before the crash.

I'm not saying everything will be fixed in two generations. I'm saying it will take two generations befoer we can start to fix things. The demographics favor the socialists now. The socialism itself will reverse those demographics, though.

I could be wrong though. The prospect of being told "you just aren't worth spending the money on to save" might open a few more eyes. Of course, that's one of the problems with socialized healthcare. It seems wonderful until you REALLY need medical care.

And as most people don't REALLY need care until the end of their life, most people don't find out how badly it sucks until their demise is sped along by the "death panels". (NICE, for example. I really love that name for a death panel.)

[MicroBalrog]

By that time the concept of 'job' might be less relevant altogether.

[drewtam]

I don't see your theory playing out this way in other nations. What evidence do you have to be so optimistic?

Russia...
Gov't ownership of the means of production collapses after 70-80yrs of rule. One could also include the Czars before that.
Births rates have been dropping since well before the collapse.
The Russian people still vote for authoritarian statism.


France...
The people have been voting for more gov't ownership and protections since Charles de Gaulle. 40yrs has come and gone, no collapse, just a bumbling economy that treads water and maintains status quo.


UK...
I think England is center, but in combination with the other kingdoms, the UK leans very left and has been going that way since 1890's. Not quite as bad as France, but certainly further along than the US. The empire dispersed, peaceably, in the 50's and 60's, but no collapse for the UK. Birthrates have also dropped, but again 40yrs has come and gone, conservatism has not out bred, has not out weighed the immigration influx, and has not won the popular ideology battles. Again, since their economic policies are about half way between US and France, their economic success has been about half way as resilient [GDP/capita PPP].




India might be the only almost positive example in support of your theory...
Absorbed the leftist and outright Marxist ideology of the British rulers. After independence they sided with gov't ownership of the means of production. 40yrs have come and gone. Birthrates went from crazy to just high. They have made some movement towards freedom, but nothing overtly dramatic.

[longeyes]

As I see it, we can no longer avoid collapse. Our debts are too high and our growth is too small.

After the collapse, the US ceases to be an attactive alternative to the third world. (How many immigrants does Argentina have?)

The liberals here will continue to see children as a burden and will continue to have them far below replacement rates.

The children that they do have will likely not have jobs (massive unemployment, especially of the youth) and will find their "benefits" do not compare to what it was like before the crash.

I'm not saying everything will be fixed in two generations. I'm saying it will take two generations befoer we can start to fix things. The demographics favor the socialists now. The socialism itself will reverse those demographics, though.

I could be wrong though. The prospect of being told "you just aren't worth spending the money on to save" might open a few more eyes. Of course, that's one of the problems with socialized healthcare. It seems wonderful until you REALLY need medical care.

And as most people don't REALLY need care until the end of their life, most people don't find out how badly it sucks until their demise is sped along by the "death panels". (NICE, for example. I really love that name for a death panel.)

You are still thinking in terms of one nation.  That, in my view, is a mistake.  "We" cannot save "them" without destroying us.  

[MicroBalrog]

Gov't ownership of the means of production collapses after 70-80yrs of rule. One could also include the Czars before that.
Births rates have been dropping since well before the collapse.

No.

[drewtam]

Sorry, didn't realize it had bounced back up a few years ago. Still not sure what to conclude though, the results seem mixed. It did drop preceding the USSR collapse, but are doing moderately better now.

Fertility rate is still not up to replacement (~2.1?), but is slowly inching its way up. But is still noticeable depressed from the boom of the 50s, or the replacement rate plateau of the 80s.
Birth rate has not quite matched the death rate.


http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=d5bncppjof8f9_&ctype=l&strail=false&bcs=d&nselm=h&met_y=sp_dyn_tfrt_in&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=region&idim=country:RUS&ifdim=region&hl=en&dl=en&ind=false&q=russian+fertility+rate



Weirdly that same Forbes blogger has another plot where the US data doesn't match [the Russian data seems to match, just not the US data...]. Very odd.




I don't think this fundamentally changes my disagreement with makattak's idea. Namely, societal collapse and conservative birthrates will swing the direction of the US back in the enumerated & limited powers direction.

Whereas in this example, after USSR & Russian societal collapse, birthrate drops and partial recovery... they are still voting for Statism. Russians still think this is the best path for themselves.
I think that says a little to those who think catastrophe of economics in the US will get people to change their minds about big gov't. For at least in this one partly western nation, it didn't change the majority of minds.

[ronnyreagan]

I've got $300 bucks on Intrade riding on Romney, this is my gut reaction too and I put my money where my uh... gut is, but I will admit my frontal lobes are second-guessing this all the time.

The $800-odd will be nice if my gut was right though. 

I gotta say - I think Intrade is neat idea but people just can't seem to separate reality from what they want reality to be. Listen to your frontal lobes people!

[makattak]

Mak, I think you have some overly optimistic assumptions.

For example, looking at France with ~50% tax rates and egregious gov't behavior against the individual. Their economy still bumbles along enough to draw investment and modest growth. Yes their GDP/capita PPP is about equal to Arkansas or Louisiana, but its enough to remain modern and distribute the wealth. Its also enough for African, Middle Eastern, and Eastern European immigrants to flood the country and cause trouble.

And with all of that, they still double down for a Socialist president!


I fear this is the most likely scenario for the US. Not collapse, not civil war, not self correcting market forces... just malaise.


There is one part I do agree though.The gods of copybook heading will not be mocked.
http://andstillipersist.com/2012/11/the-gods-of-the-copybook-headings-illustrated/
So yes, conservatives will eventually win, but [refering to 4th stanza and first pic] how many hundreds of years will it take first?

Malaise isn't an option for the US.

If we don't grow, we cannot pay our debt. If we don't grow, Social Security and Medicare collapse in on themselves (that much faster).

If we cannot pay for Social Security and Medicare, we will SERIOUSLY cut our military budget.

If we seriously cut our military budget, the world will no longer be in such a state of peace. Easy trade between nations and generally free shipping lanes will deteriorate.

Without such free trade, the business model of nearly every major business in the world will collapse.

We're talking the thousand years of darkness Reagan talked about.

[drewtam]

@Makattak
I understand where your coming from, and I completely agree it is one realistic possible path.

But I also see other possible paths. There are paths to muddle through and yield malaise:

SS & Medicare can muddle through by combination of retirement age changes, broad tax increases, removing the contribution cap while adding means testing, cost of living freezes, rationing medical care, inflation, and debt purchased by the Fed Reserve. The Fed Res could purchase Fed Gov debt and then forgive it. Its not like they have much constraint on action to save whatever the gov't wants to save.

Cutting military spending does not mean complete withdrawal from the world. The Navy + Marines is only about 30% of the defense spending. So without cutting the Navy directly (except for joint service projects), we could theoretically cut defense spending in half.
[this would require withdrawing from all wars, and drastically cutting airforce and army. But up until the 80yrs of WW2+coldwar+korea+vietnam+iraq1+afghanistan+GWOT+iraq2 the US had maintained exactly that posture]

Plus an ascendant China is also interested in protecting world trade and projecting military power, just as much as we are. (How else will they continue to be ascendant in world political influence without doing both?)


So, I agree with you in part, but also see more likely scenarios.
-The malaise can last hundreds of years, until new thinking takes over again and we have a North American Renaissance.
-Or it can grind the nation down for decades until collapse or revolution or both.
-Or it could happen in a few short years.
-Or leftwing immigration [immigrating because of job, but bringing ideas of big gov't with them from home] could be reducing drastically on its own due to the huge wealth improvements of India, China, Canada, Mexico, Russia, Brasil, Chile, and many parts of Africa. Conservatives could out breed liberals. The culture of liberals could be crashing in on itself. Things can still turn around.


I have a hard time assigning the right probabilities to all these scenarios. Each of these scenarios have vastly different preparation paths. I just don't see any one of the paths as set in stone. I reserve the right to change my mind.