ashbury

Guess I'm restating myself, but to me the best interpretation is "gets complicated in a hurry, innit?"

I'm Michelle Obama but not all my friends are tolerant so please keep this information to yourself.

Good point. As long as Google maintains a "Don't Be Evil" corporate purpose, I agree that a nuanced version of the bare outline I wrote would include tax credits (or whatever) for corporations providing the infrastructure I referred to when suggesting high marginal tax rates at the top. There's a lot to be said for encouraging free market solutions, where a stable equilibrium of informed decision making is possible. (Having gotten my first real taste of the health care industry earlier this year, I am prepared to go at length on giving examples of where in our economny informed decision making is not the norm.... )

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Not to be Ashbury One Note, or anything... This Yahoo news item today caught my eye. Anyone else thrilled with our future of driving cabs for one another and earning chump change (that $20 will cover your gas and depreciation too, right?) delivering where Amazon's drones can't fly? This item sums things up. Changed my mind: guys at the top of the food chain can damn well pay 90% marginal tax on their second ten million earned in a year, just out of Enlightened Self Interest.

Fair question, and since I used the term I'll agree that it's a vast oversimplification of what eventually is going to happen, which in my view is going to be stagnant poll numbers, mediocre showings in early primaries and particularly delegate counts, thus no path to the nomination and no path to being selected to be VP. Trump is above all a practical man, and if in addition he sees no further benefit to the Trump Brand, he bows out and throws support to Cruz (maybe a handshake deal is his one path to VP).

Back during Prohibition? I think it was considered to be a useful sedative, calming the jangled nerves, and so forth. At about the same level of medical competence as currently is willing to say give pot a try for what ails ya', son.

When you think in terms of "paths to the nomination", instead of poll numbers or ideological positions, Rubio is as strong as anyone. Rand Paul in particular seems to see a path to the nomination involving just staying the course and picking up support as others drop out, but any path that works for him seems identical but stronger for Rubio who is decidedly more mainstream in so many ways. Fiorino I see as having a different enough path to nomination than the others, as to have a decent shot also, although I expect a bigger risk of flameout as well. Trump's or Carson's only path to nomination, by contrast, seems like "a continually growing groundswell of support", which for relative political novices seems optimistic at best - one significant downdraft in the polls finishes either one as a contender with a serious path to the nomination. Horse race following is fun.

I'm not saying Cruz is odds-on to win the nomination. But right now the polls reflect more of "I want something unattainable", thus the support for Trump and Carson. A strong "I'd rather lose, with a candidate that stands for my principles, than win with a spineless establishment candidate". I think we are in for several more rounds of this kind of thinking, with various candidates ascendant and then falling, before electability starts to matter to a majority of primary/caucus voters. And I sense that Cruz will be the candidate that this idealism will ultimately center on - at which point the notion, "hey we could actually get stuck with this guy" (seen in a milder form with Trump now), will occur within the establishment wing of the party, resulting in a Stop Cruz movement.

Totally agree. We no longer live in the world of Adam Smith: of blacksmiths and shop owners and farmers, where the limit of most people's ability to earn an income extended as far as the reach of their own arms. We don't even live in the world of small businesses, of local chains of dry cleaners or bakeries and of professionals hiring a few office staff. Well, we do, in the sense that such businesses exist, but they are self-limiting because beyond a certain point the head-boss can't clone himself and the ability to keep growing the business dwindles because it's hard to find good help. No, we live in a world, at least where the majority of dollars are concerned, where massive leveraging means an individual or small group of people working together can corner some particular market and render obsolete hundreds or thousands or even millions of jobs people used to do. The advent of Amazon.com is a good example, where they do hire lots of minimum wage people but the vast number of middle-class jobs managing brick and mortar stores is now done by a relative handful of middle-managers at the home office. My own career in software benefited greatly from this world-wide leveraging as well, where labor to get a software product right can be done by a small team and then the product is sold everywhere at very little incremental effort. This wasn't overnight of course. The Industrial Revolution started it, and during the era of Robber Barons we saw how nationwide leveraging of efforts of small groups could pay off. But there has been a hockey-stick graph of this phenomenon with the Internet Age, sharply upward, where we are evolving ever closer to a day when (asymptotically and by only a little exaggeration) one person could provide all the needs of humanity, and will expect to be rewarded handsomely for doing so. "Your services are no longer requied," to the rest of us. Wealth tends to accumulate, and the current phase of income inequality is about to be followed soon by a prolonged era of wealth concentration beyond the imagination of anyone except pre-industrial kings. (As an aside, for another time, we need to think hard about how we tax, relative to each other, Income, Consumption, and Accumulated Wealth.) There was the old semi-joke that "the first million is always the hardest". It had currency even back when a million was a really lot of money. But the kernel of truth was there, and is more true now - if you figure out how to get global leverage, your earnings can multiply almost without effort. It's not that you don't work hard to get to that level, but after a certain point your income reflects past efforts only Trump is right to point to hedge fund managers, as an example of the leverage, but he misses the point by complaining that their long-term capital gains taxation is the problem - that's only a symptom. What's needed, then, as I finally get to my point about tax brackets, is that we need a total rethinking of how income is earned, and how then to tax it. My view is that if you have an Adam Smith kind of job, where your income is basically determined by how hard you are willing to work, the tax rate should be low - 0% for minimum wage, say, 10% above that. If it's an Information Age kind of job, but still individual, where the income is high 5-figures or low 6-figures, because you're benefiting from someone else's bright idea how to achieve leverage, maybe bracket it at 25%. If the job (and the resultant income) looks like the small business kind of ideal, where your revenues bring your income well into 6-figures, maybe a 35% bracket for income above the previous bracket. All this is sort of like now. What is needed, though, is a new bracket for income that is basically due to global leveraging of any sort. I'd let the economists wrangle over what the threshold for this is, but for discussion purposes I'll call it a million a year. If your income is over a million a year, good for you, but it's not because you worked extra hard, and it's almost certainly not because you "created" that much more wealth for society as whole than a butcher or baker did. Your income came because a layer of "cream" got skimmed off for your benefit, and it will be to your continuing benefit that some of this cream goes back into the infrastructure (roads, colleges, health care, etc) that made your "I did this all by myself" dream possible. 50% at a minimum. Above 5 million, maybe 75% marginal rate, I don't know. Basically going back to what we had during the administration of that well known Communist sympathizer, Dwight Eisenhower. The difference being, a completely new rationale for doing it, namely global leverage undreamed of in the 1950s. We're not punishing success by doing this, we are making similar success for your sons and daughters feasible. I've worked with some very creative and hard working entrepreneurs in my career, and they have well earned their millions. The first few millions, that is. Actually with more of this top income percolating back into the federal budget, the lower brackets could be lowered a bit further than I said above, if that's what's desired to make the change revenue neutral. That's the dirty little secret about all these tax-"simplification" plans, though. They are never INTENDED to be revenue neutral. It's all about Starving the Beast that is the fedrul gubmint. Sorry for the long winded thesis.

When Trump gets bored and pulls out, that support will coalesce around Cruz; their statements of mutual admiration suggest that to me. If Fiorina pulls out or loses support, I see her supporters gravitating to Cruz as well. I expect a "Stop Cruz" scenario to start to play out once he is seen as gaining real traction after the start of the new year.

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"These things have a way of working themselves out.." -- author unknown

But this amounts to the same scenario as when it was deemed wise to shop both Span and Revere because Hicks had had a good season in AA. (Actually Hicks 2012 numbers at New Britain were better than Polanco's 2015 in Chattanooga.)

Not quite of Kirk Gibson proportions. But, Yeah.

Let's set our sights a little higher. Excellent Jepsen, por favor.

Well, that's our shoe tonight. Goodnight everybody.

He pitched the 8th well. Do we let him exorcise some demons by going back out for a try at similar results in the 9th? / also ducking

In fairness, the ball hit him in a difficult spot.

You're still talking about force-feeding young players who aren't ready to achieve that level of offense quite yet. And few are higher on Polanco than I am. But a year at AAA should do his bat some good.

OK, I got one. Joe Mauer. / ducking

HDTV is not kind to Tommy Milone's complexion.

Counterweighing that, need to keep a tight rein on an underperforming bullpen.

Not that there's anything wrong with that....

This has a familiar ring to it - where was I when I read it before?