Just scream and yell about dinner-table politics and a far-left guy will vastly punch over his weight class and probably peel off a lot of Trump-curious voters.
I think you have a weird conception of what it is that Shor suggests. The Shor prescription basically has three components:
- Electoral reform (voting rights, Puerto Rico/DC statehood, etc).
- Campaign on and pass your most popular ideas. Examples include drug price negotiation and minimum wage hikes.
- Shut the fuck up about losing issues for you (immigration, defund the police, climate change to some extent). This doesnât mean âdo nothing about those thingsâ. It means avoid them during campaigning.
At the moment Democrats are doing at most one of these (the last one). Itâs not Upholding Shor Thought to just be centrists. You have to actually pass things like drug negotiation. Here is a description of what the BBBA does about drug negotiation, which reads like an Unstuck satire of Democratic policy:
The BBBA would amend the non-interference clause by adding an exception that would allow the federal government to negotiate prices with drug companies for a small number of high-cost drugs covered under Medicare Part D (starting in 2025) and Part B (starting in 2027). The negotiation process would apply to no more than 10 (in 2025), 15 (in 2026 and 2027), and 20 (in 2028 and later years) single-source brand-name drugs or biologics that lack generic or biosimilar competitors. These drugs would be selected from among the 50 drugs with the highest total Medicare Part D spending and the 50 drugs with the highest total Medicare Part B spending. The negotiation process would also apply to all insulin products.
The legislation exempts from negotiation drugs that are less than 9 years (for small-molecule drugs) or 13 years (for biological products, based on the Managerâs Amendment) from their FDA-approval or licensure date. The legislation also exempts âsmall biotech drugsâ from negotiation until 2028, defined as those which account for 1% or less of Part D or Part B spending and account for 80% or more of spending under each part on that manufacturerâs drugs, as well as drugs with Medicare spending of less than $200 million in 2021 (increased by the CPI-U for subsequent years) and drugs with an orphan designation as their only FDA-approved indication.
Full disclosure, I stopped reading halfway through the second paragraph because my eyes were glazing over. And also, obviously, even this is probably not getting passed.
If thatâs all it is, then it seems like youâre not really against means testing. What youâre against is shitty means testing.
Iâm not convinced it has to be that way. However, if thatâs someoneâs entire concern, I wouldnât be able to say that itâs unwarranted and I suppose we agree more than we disagree.
When, I say Iâm for means-testing, thatâs what Iâm for.
I donât know if it would be 0.5%, but it would be very high and it would probably be some sort of graduated phase out as income increases. Iâve given almost no thought to details.
Sure. But there are a lot of people who come from modest backgrounds who become super-rich. They may not have been poor, but they needed to take loans. Then they go on to managing hedge funds or whatnot.
Iâm not convinced this has to be true, but given how inefficient our government is I think that itâs not unlikely, and it would be reason enough to avoid means testing.
Student loan forgiveness is almost by definition a benefit thatâs going mostly to middle and upper-middle classes and less to the working poor. Sort of silly to worry about means testing this of all programs.
Thatâs a whole other discussion. If the government is going to spend $X on student loan relief, isnât there a way they could spend that $X to benefit a greater number of people in greater need?
The obvious answer is âWhy not both?â. But there are at least token budgetary constraints that come into play and there is a finite amount of political capital to spend. If one is going to go HAM on getting something done, this doesnât seem like the very best option (though its not bad either).
I support student debt relief, but to be blunt, itâs not a program thatâs maximizing benefits to the neediest. By definition itâs going to people with the means to get a college education and thereby rack up debt. In terms of the Xâs and Oâs of politics, itâs a no-brainier for Dems, the middle class voters are the ones you pander to because they turn out to vote in larger numbers than the poor.
For people like this, means testing is an inferior solution to just forgiving their loans like everyone else, then increasing their taxes dramatically. Just taxing rich people is always a better option than creating a new means tested blah blah blah. We already have a mechanism for âmeans testingâ EVERYTHING. Itâs taxes!
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This is true, and itâs generally a poor approach to policy to decline to do something unless it only helps The People That Really Need It. Thatâs mostly a misdirection that conservatives use to oppose policy that helps anyone.
If universal student debt relief was passed with an offsetting tax increase like this, then I think that would be functionally the same thing. It would be a form of non-shitty means testing.
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While weâre talking about student loans, how is this problem addressed:
Letâs say we erase all current debt. What about debt going forward? Do those people just get fucked? Or will their debt be forgiven too. If it will be forgiven, what stops University of Phoenix from tripling itâs tuition and getting a bunch of loans for their students. They just tell the kids, âDonât worry about the loans, they will be forgiven.â So now what weâve done is create a massive subsidy for all institutions of higher education.
Fair enough. It wasnât clear to me that all the âfuck means testingâ folks meant above when they say âfuck means testingâ.
What about it
Yes, they get fucked
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Now you make it a recurring wedge issue and run on it
Yeah, I was wondering about this too. Do they just say âwell, latest generation of kids, no more loan forgiveness, so your job is to learn from the last generation and either donât get expensive worthless degrees, or do trade school or the whole community collegeâ>cheap state school thing, unless your family is richâ? I dunno.
Ideally weâd cancel debt and make education free.
That wonât happen so yeah weâll just cancel the debt every decade or so.
Sounds good to me.
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Just make it free. Anyone that wants to go to college can go to a taxpayer-funded university for free. If theyâd rather get gouged by University of Phoenix, fine, go for it.
These things seem impossible because HOW ARE WE GONNA PAY FOR IT!!! They wonât even collect taxes that rich people owe, let alone increase taxes on rich people. So debt slavery I guess?
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It wonât make a difference. It will be blamed on being too progressive and they will go further right. When need the olds to die off first and hope things change after that.
Pretty sure they knew the promise wasnât worth shit, they just knew Manchin and Cinema were willing to sink both bills because they donât give a shit if they pass. They passed it knowing BBB was probably dead, but figured it was better to get something rather than nothing. Plus the media/dems would have blamed them entirely for nothing passing.
Asking for student debt relief first seems smart though.