Republicans were for the working class before they were against it.

[MAINEiac4434]

Cenk Uygur offered $10,000 for charity if Ted Cruz debated him.  

I do not care for Ted Cruz, but he does seem to have a sense of humor.

Ted "basketball ring" Cruz did not write this tweet.

[IceSpear]

I'm not an Ocasio-Cortez worshiper (I like her fine, though her near-celebrity status is a bit mystifying to me) but she is absolutely right in not wanting to debate Shapiro. The guy is a hack, and she would be wasting her time.

Cenk Uygur  is far more of a hack than Ben Shapiro is.

False. infinity = infinity

[Globalise Operation Rising Lion]

This whole debate thing is utterly baffling. Are political candidates now expected to respond to every random persons online personalities offer to debate? What a waste of everyones time

[IceSpear]

This whole debate thing is utterly baffling. Are political candidates now expected to respond to every random persons online personalities offer to debate? What a waste of everyones time

No, only right wing pundits are entitled to a response from Democrats. Republicans can ignore not only any debate challenge from left wing pundits, they can also ignore their own constituents by ducking town halls.

[Adam Griffin]

Am I the only one who wonders how old 01100011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01110101 01110100 01100101 01110010 00111000 00111001 will have to get before he develops more than a second grade-level understanding of economics and politics?

[Yank2133]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

This isn't surprising.

Conservatives only hate elitism when they don't validate them. But when they can use it to dunk on working class liberals, they will do so without hesitation. BTW, it is real rich for a Rutgers grad like Mandel to start talking ****.

Anyway, AOC is right not to debate Shapiro. For starters, he operates in bad faith and is only offering to do so to raise his profile. It is also dumb politics to elevate someone who is not on your level. This goes for Cruz and Cenk as well.

[Mr. Illini]

Republicans have never cared about the working class unless they thought they could win their votes by drumming up isolated, hot button cultural issues while continuing to screw them over in the wallet.

[136or142]

Am I the only one who wonders how old 01100011 01101111 01101101 01110000 01110101 01110100 01100101 01110010 00111000 00111001 will have to get before he develops more than a second grade-level understanding of economics and politics?

If you are referring to me, I challenge you to a debate on economics and politics.

[○∙◄☻¥tπ[╪AV┼cVê└]

This was the most recent tweet that seemed to be the reason for some of the replies

https://twitter.com/bethanyshondark/status/1027906922274533379

I bet she'd be willing to debate Obama.

[pbrower2a]

Without wealthy people, the amount of investment in the economy would go down dramatically.


Nope he says it many times on his show that I remember when the Republicans used to support cutting spending.


His economic ideas are not that different from many economists who are from the Chicago School of Economics.

1. Investment does not itself create jobs. Much investment is done to reduce payrolls, as with robotics.  Investment is made with profit, and not job-creation, as an objective. Job-creation is at most a side-effect.

The nexus between profits and jobs is slight. Unusually-high profits mean that money that the rich make can end up bidding up the value of artwork (the supply of old-master art is limited in the extreme despite the saying that there are only about 1000 original Vermeer paintings and Americans own 5000 of them. The rich can also bid up residential waterfront properties.   

It's the consumer sector that still creates the bulk of jobs. As more income goes to the super-rich, such entities as Sears, J C Penney, K-Mart, and Radio Shack that rely upon middle-income customers either die or approach death. There are indications that casual-service restaurants that have a largely middle-income clientele are in trouble.  OK, technology has its role in such, as anyone with a microwave oven can prepare foods as good as those in many such restaurants cheaply. Casual-service restaurants may be places of abysmal pay, but they hire lots of people.

2. Republicans used to support spending cuts. Now that they have nearly single-party government they find Big Government a wonderful means of enriching supporters. To be sure, Donald Trump has supported privatization of the public sector -- to profiteering monopolists who would then brutalize the economy. Big Government would of course enforce compliance by the masses with the will of monopolistic profiteers. In such a case, death solves all my problems.

3. The Chicago school is monetarist; it believes that the money supply is a tool for directing the economy in a competitive, free-market direction. This said, we can tell that President Trump has done little reading of any economic teaching -- not Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, or Milton Friedman.  Donald Trump sounds like an @$$hole who has devoted his free time over a few months to reading Atlas Shrugged... but he is more likely the sort of @$$hole who appears in Atlas Shrugged.

Donald Trump is not for competitive capitalism; he is for crony capitalism, a raw deal for everyone but the crony capitalists and their few well-paid retainers who indulge their excess and enforce their power.

[mvd10]

Without wealthy people, the amount of investment in the economy would go down dramatically.


Nope he says it many times on his show that I remember when the Republicans used to support cutting spending.


His economic ideas are not that different from many economists who are from the Chicago School of Economics.

1. Investment does not itself create jobs. Much investment is done to reduce payrolls, as with robotics.  Investment is made with profit, and not job-creation, as an objective. Job-creation is at most a side-effect.

The nexus between profits and jobs is slight. Unusually-high profits mean that money that the rich make can end up bidding up the value of artwork (the supply of old-master art is limited in the extreme despite the saying that there are only about 1000 original Vermeer paintings and Americans own 5000 of them. The rich can also bid up residential waterfront properties.   

It's the consumer sector that still creates the bulk of jobs. As more income goes to the super-rich, such entities as Sears, J C Penney, K-Mart, and Radio Shack that rely upon middle-income customers either die or approach death. There are indications that casual-service restaurants that have a largely middle-income clientele are in trouble.  OK, technology has its role in such, as anyone with a microwave oven can prepare foods as good as those in many such restaurants cheaply. Casual-service restaurants may be places of abysmal pay, but they hire lots of people.

2. Republicans used to support spending cuts. Now that they have nearly single-party government they find Big Government a wonderful means of enriching supporters. To be sure, Donald Trump has supported privatization of the public sector -- to profiteering monopolists who would then brutalize the economy. Big Government would of course enforce compliance by the masses with the will of monopolistic profiteers. In such a case, death solves all my problems.

3. The Chicago school is monetarist; it believes that the money supply is a tool for directing the economy in a competitive, free-market direction. This said, we can tell that President Trump has done little reading of any economic teaching -- not Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, or Milton Friedman.  Donald Trump sounds like an @$$hole who has devoted his free time over a few months to reading Atlas Shrugged... but he is more likely the sort of @$$hole who appears in Atlas Shrugged.

Donald Trump is not for competitive capitalism; he is for crony capitalism, a raw deal for everyone but the crony capitalists and their few well-paid retainers who indulge their excess and enforce their power.

To be honest I seriously doubt Trump has read Atlas Shrugged. I've read it and it's quite boring and way too long (1000 pages). No way that Trump has managed to read that. Imo Rand's ideas are somewhat relevant if you don't take everything she and her cronies say seriously and look at the big picture, but there is no doubt that Ayn Rand personally was a very nasty woman.

I wouldn't write off investment btw (no pun intended). Long-run growth is mainly caused by capital formation, increasing labour market participation and technological progress (and I assume human capital/education as well). Now boosting capital formation (or labour market participation) will inevitably end up doing less and less for growth because of the law of diminishing returns (technological progress actually is the #1 driver) but investment remains a very important driver of long-term growth. Boosting consumer spending is something you do when there is an output gap, but I wouldn't call it a viable long-term strategy.

[136or142]

Without wealthy people, the amount of investment in the economy would go down dramatically.


Nope he says it many times on his show that I remember when the Republicans used to support cutting spending.


His economic ideas are not that different from many economists who are from the Chicago School of Economics.

1. Investment does not itself create jobs. Much investment is done to reduce payrolls, as with robotics.  Investment is made with profit, and not job-creation, as an objective. Job-creation is at most a side-effect.

The nexus between profits and jobs is slight. Unusually-high profits mean that money that the rich make can end up bidding up the value of artwork (the supply of old-master art is limited in the extreme despite the saying that there are only about 1000 original Vermeer paintings and Americans own 5000 of them. The rich can also bid up residential waterfront properties.  

It's the consumer sector that still creates the bulk of jobs. As more income goes to the super-rich, such entities as Sears, J C Penney, K-Mart, and Radio Shack that rely upon middle-income customers either die or approach death. There are indications that casual-service restaurants that have a largely middle-income clientele are in trouble.  OK, technology has its role in such, as anyone with a microwave oven can prepare foods as good as those in many such restaurants cheaply. Casual-service restaurants may be places of abysmal pay, but they hire lots of people.

2. Republicans used to support spending cuts. Now that they have nearly single-party government they find Big Government a wonderful means of enriching supporters. To be sure, Donald Trump has supported privatization of the public sector -- to profiteering monopolists who would then brutalize the economy. Big Government would of course enforce compliance by the masses with the will of monopolistic profiteers. In such a case, death solves all my problems.

3. The Chicago school is monetarist; it believes that the money supply is a tool for directing the economy in a competitive, free-market direction. This said, we can tell that President Trump has done little reading of any economic teaching -- not Adam Smith, Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, Friedrich Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, or Milton Friedman.  Donald Trump sounds like an @$$hole who has devoted his free time over a few months to reading Atlas Shrugged... but he is more likely the sort of @$$hole who appears in Atlas Shrugged.

Donald Trump is not for competitive capitalism; he is for crony capitalism, a raw deal for everyone but the crony capitalists and their few well-paid retainers who indulge their excess and enforce their power.

1.In properly functioning and regulated free markets that should not be the case as investment which leads to greater productivity should lead to reduced prices (or, at least real reduced prices, I.E if inflation is 2% in a year, the prices of these goods don't increase.)  When that happens over enough markets, it means many people see a real increase in their earnings which means they can buy more stuff.  That in turn leads to growth in overall jobs.  Again, it's important to see economics as a process of first order effects, second order effects and so on, not just the initial effect.

According to the latest theories though there is a problem with too much monopsony and too much monopoly (or oligopoly.) So, when greater productivity occurs cost savings aren't passed on to consumers through real lower prices, but are, as you've pointed out. given to executives, directors and/or shareholders.  This results in greater real spending as well since it derives from real cost savings, but it also results in a greater concentration of wealth.

Monosponies and monopolies (and oligopolies) seem to be a much bigger problem than had been previously realized.

What you've pointed out with the rest of point one is certainly one of the many problems with large income inequality.

As I wrote initially though, whatever one thinks of the Chicago School, Ben Shapiro doesn't know their theories, he knows the Coles Notes version of their theories.  That alone is an enormous difference.

Edit to add: I just realized I think Coles was a  Canadian publisher/retailer.  I doubt most people know what I'm referring to. 'Coles notes' were short books that were explanations meant for students of works that were likely to be used in class.  So, there was a 'Coles notes' little book on Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

in this context, 'Coles notes' were a derisive term used by many high school teachers, instructors and professors as in 'I can see you didn't read the text, you read the Coles Notes on it. ' They were used derisively because the Coles Notes were regarded as being especially badly written with poor explanations.