Why Americans Are Becoming More Pessimistic When Americans look to the future, two mega-trends evoke the most optimism about the nation’s long-term trajectory, the latest Allstate/National Journal Heartland Monitor Poll has found. One of these trends, the onset of the digital revolution, evokes optimism in every major segment of society. But the second one, the nation’s growing racial and ethnic diversity, divides Americans along lines of race, generation, and, above all, partisanship, thereby illuminating some of the fault lines in modern American life. The new poll asked respondents to consider whether six of the social and economic dynamics that are crucial to the nation’s future make them “more optimistic or more pessimistic about the direction the country is headed.” The Great Recession upended expectations about economic security in the U.S. and changed the way we work and live. Submit your nominee to The Renewal Project
Will the Republican Party Survive the 2016 Election? The angriest and most pessimistic people in America aren’t the hipster protesters who flitted in and out of Occupy Wall Street. They aren’t the hashtavists of #BlackLivesMatter. They aren’t the remnants of the American labor movement or the savvy young dreamers who confront politicians with their American accents and un-American legal status. The angriest and most pessimistic people in America are the people we used to call Middle Americans. You can measure their pessimism in polls that ask about their expectations for their lives—and for those of their children. White Middle Americans express heavy mistrust of every institution in American society: not only government, but corporations, unions, even the political party they typically vote for—the Republican Party of Romney, Ryan, and McConnell, which they despise as a sad crew of weaklings and sellouts. They aren’t necessarily superconservative. You hear from people like them in many other democratic countries too. So …
This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind | Bloomberg Business - Business, Financial & Economic News, Stock Quotes This Is How Fast America Changes Its Mind By Alex Tribou and Keith CollinsUpdated: June 26, 2015 Eleven years after Massachusetts became the first state to allow same-sex couples to marry, the Supreme Court has now extended that right nationwide. We looked at six big issues—interracial marriage, prohibition, women’s suffrage, abortion, same-sex marriage, and recreational marijuana — to show how this has happened in the past, and may again in the very near future.
Sufficient Reason - Dear Liberal…Here’s Why I’m So Hostile Howard Dean: How to Move Beyond the Two-Party System Photo I stand with Hillary Clinton in the presidential race. Others will back Donald J. Trump. But polls suggest that almost one in 10 voters are making a different choice by supporting the Libertarian candidate, Gary Johnson, the Green Party candidate, Jill Stein, or another candidate. And so once again major party backers warn against wasting votes on “spoilers” and criticize minor party candidates for even running. We keep repeating this cycle. Question Five on the Maine ballot would establish ranked-choice voting in the 2018 primary and general elections for governor, Congress and State Legislature. It is fitting that Maine’s motto is “the way life should be.” Ranked-choice voting is already used by tens of millions of voters, including in Australia and Ireland’s national elections, London, Minnesota’s twin cities and eight other American cities when electing mayors. It’s as easy as 1-2-3. Ranked-choice voting represents the latter — and better — approach.
Ban On Gun Violence Research In Praise of Small Miracles Most of us don’t save enough. When governments try to encourage saving, they usually enact big policies to increase the incentives. But, in Kenya, people were given a lockable metal box — a simple place to put their money. After one year, the people with metal boxes increased savings by so much that they had 66 percent more money available to pay for health emergencies. It would have taken a giant tax reform to produce a shift in behavior that large. Too many people die in auto accidents. The heckling discouraged dangerous driving by an awesome amount. These are examples of a new kind of policy-making that is sweeping the world. For example, people hate losing things more than they like getting things, a phenomenon known as loss aversion. People are also guided by decision-making formats. The World Bank has just issued an amazingly good report called “Mind, Society and Behavior” on how the insights of behavioral economics can be applied to global development and global health.
Debunking 5 Phony Statistics Liberals Love To Toss Around - John Hawkins - Page full Liberals are all about emotions, not facts. Since that’s the case, liberals do a terrible job of coming up with any sort of evidence to support their agenda. More often than not, when they do come up with a great statistic that’s repeated over and over, it’s fake. If you want some examples, here are five phony statistics you’ll regularly hear from liberals. 1) One in five college-age women have been raped. The one-in-five figure is based on the Campus Sexual Assault Study, commissioned by the National Institute of Justice and conducted from 2005 to 2007. ...Fox and Moran also point out that the study used an overly broad definition of sexual assault. Defenders of the one-in-five figure will reply that the finding has been replicated by other studies. How many college-age women are raped according to the FBI? 2) Spousal abuse skyrockets on Super Bowl Sunday.
The Future of Liberalism and the Politicization of Everything - Niskanen Center January 25, 2017 by Samuel Hammond The ideals of liberalism seem increasingly under threat these days, so it’s worth reviewing what they are, where they come from, and why it’s essential that they make a comeback (a PDF version of this essay is available here). The first step is to recognize that they were not invented by some obsolete English philosopher. Rather, in their most general form, liberal principles have been rediscovered repeatedly and throughout history as practical tools for reconciling two basic social facts: Many of our deepest moral and metaphysical beliefs, like how to live a good life or which God to worship, are inherently contestable — reasonable people can and will disagree;We nonetheless all stand to benefit (on our own terms) from a social structure that enables peaceful cooperation. Take, for instance, our separation of church and state. Prior to the War of Independence, eight of the thirteen British colonies had official churches. The Essential Role of Reason
Why the Economic Fates of America’s Cities Diverged Despite all the attention focused these days on the fortunes of the “1 percent,” debates over inequality still tend to ignore one of its most politically destabilizing and economically destructive forms. This is the growing, and historically unprecedented, economic divide that has emerged in recent decades among the different regions of the United States. Until the early 1980s, a long-running feature of American history was the gradual convergence of income across regions. Yet the decline in regional equality wasn’t just about the rise of the “New South.” During this period, to be sure, many specific metro areas saw increases in local inequality, as many working- and middle-class families, as well as businesses, fled inner-city neighborhoods for fast-expanding suburbs. The rise of the broad American middle class in that era was largely a story of incomes converging across regions to the point that people commonly and appropriately spoke of a single American standard of living.
If Democrats Want to Challenge Trump, They Need a New Strategy The moment that Donald Trump was inaugurated as president of the United States, the Democratic Party became the weakest, in terms of elected offices held, it has been in the entire history of the United States. While Republicans in Congress have begun to show some interest in investigating the Trump campaign’s pre-election ties to Russia, it remains the case that party competition, not the checks and balances among branches of the government, is the most important restraint on the power of the president. That means that Democrats in Congress, weak as they might be, are the only major obstacle between Trump and total control of the United States government. I’m a political scientist and business school professor who has written a book on American presidents and “unfiltered” leaders exactly like Trump, so this situation presents an irresistible challenge. What Hasn’t Worked So far, Trump’s opponents have used three relatively ineffective strategies. Understanding Trump’s Pillars of Support
When Social Justice Isn’t About Justice Professor Melissa Click shouting at student reporters to leave a public space. 1.Good Intentions The recent spate of student protests that started at Yale and University of Missouri are self-evidently ominous. At Yale, students shouted down Yale professor Nicholas Christakis for failing to make them feel safe enough (“You should not sleep at night! There have been apologies at Yale, resignations at Missouri, and copy-cat protests (and resignations) are starting to spread to other schools. Would you be willing to talk with me sometime about these issues? Despite the dean’s obvious concern and goodwill, her use of the phrase “don’t fit our CMC mold” prompted two CMC students to threaten a hunger strike. I have a lot of good friends who are supportive of the protesters at Missouri, Yale, and elsewhere. I have come to this belief: when good intentions pave the path to Hell, it is because better principles have been allowed to fall by the wayside. 2.Liberal Intolerance 3. 4. 5.
Is the Democratic Party Relevant Anymore? (Image: Troy Page / t r u t h o u t; Adapted: samdupont / Flickr)Many Democrats examining what happened in the 2014 midterms are asking “what did the voters want?” But the right question is why did only 36.4 percent of potential voters bother to register and vote? Obviously Democrats did not give those voters a good enough reason to take the trouble. Is the Democratic Party relevant anymore? “New Coke” Democrats In 1985 Coca-Cola was the market leader, but Pepsi was gaining market share. Democrats were considered the majority party from the time of Roosevelt’s New Deal until the 1980s. In the 1970s corporations and conservatives launched a major marketing push, establishing a network of PR “think tanks” that pushed a neoliberal economic line. Instead of responding and countering this, most Democratic candidates and officeholders instead tried moving to where their pollsters perceived the pubic to be on an imagined political spectrum. Is Jim Webb The Answer? Identity (Sex and Race) vs.