BBO Discussion Forums: Has U.S. Democracy Been Trumped? - BBO Discussion Forums

I've been a diesel mechanic. It's not a bad job at all.

If we only allowed people with As in that class to teach elementary school, half the elementary school classrooms in the country would go empty.

The worry is that diesel mechanic might be a job that almost doesn't exist in 30 years. It seems like one of those jobs where most of the more routine parts can be taken over by robots, leaving only jobs for master mechanics who can solve tougher problems (though I wonder how they'll get trained) and folks skilled at managing the robots. We might only need the 10-20% most skilled mechanics out of the ones we have today.

The folks who don't want to go to college because they don't want to be in a classroom and see other opportunities are probably okay. The ones who can't make it through college because they haven't figured out how to take in new information and use it to come up with solutions to problems not identical to ones they've seen before are the ones I worry about, because they won't make it as a master mechanic either.

The quality of teachers is a serious concern. Too many of our teachers are unable to do anything but regurgitate memorized information that might as well be Greek to them. The worst of them equate learning with memorizing mumbo jumbo. They are going to have trouble preparing their students to think for themselves, and they are also concentrated in the poorest schools. We can't replace them because there is no one better to replace them with.

I have colleagues who teach the mathematics classes required for people who want to become elementary school teachers. It is clear from all my conversations with them that anyone with less than an A in that class does not understand arithmetic, by which I mean that they may be able to carry out the standard procedure for adding or multiplying two whole numbers, but they have no idea what this procedure means or why it works, or even that the procedure has meaning. If we only allowed people with As in that class to teach elementary school, half the elementary school classrooms in the country would go empty.

The worry is that diesel mechanic might be a job that almost doesn't exist in 30 years. It seems like one of those jobs where most of the more routine parts can be taken over by robots, leaving only jobs for master mechanics who can solve tougher problems (though I wonder how they'll get trained) and folks skilled at managing the robots. We might only need the 10-20% most skilled mechanics out of the ones we have today.

The quality of teachers is a serious concern. Too many of our teachers are unable to do anything but regurgitate memorized information that might as well be Greek to them. The worst of them equate learning with memorizing mumbo jumbo. They are going to have trouble preparing their students to think for themselves, and they are also concentrated in the poorest schools. We can't replace them because there is no one better to replace them with.

I am angry because these schools are not drilling students in reading, writing and arithmetic.
I grant you can drill in many ways, that is ok...but I did not see in my local article any drilling.

I quibble with the idea that "teachers are the problem" when teachers, both when they were students and later, as teachers, are handicapped by the curriculum with which they must deal. How does one teach critical thinking when one must not corrupt the kids' established belief systems?

No doubt surprising many of the people watching the Democratic presidential debate, Bernie Sanders cited Denmark as a role model for how to help working people. Hillary Clinton demurred slightly, declaring that “we are not Denmark,” but agreed that Denmark is an inspiring example.

Such an exchange would have been inconceivable among Republicans, who don’t seem able to talk about European welfare states without adding the word “collapsing.” Basically, on Planet G.O.P. all of Europe is just a bigger version of Greece. But how great are the Danes, really?

The answer is that the Danes get a lot of things right, and in so doing refute just about everything U.S. conservatives say about economics. And we can also learn a lot from the things Denmark has gotten wrong.

Denmark maintains a welfare state — a set of government programs designed to provide economic security — that is beyond the wildest dreams of American liberals. Denmark provides universal health care; college education is free, and students receive a stipend; day care is heavily subsidized. Overall, working-age families receive more than three times as much aid, as a share of G.D.P., as their U.S. counterparts.

To pay for these programs, Denmark collects a lot of taxes. The top income tax rate is 60.3 percent; there’s also a 25 percent national sales tax. Overall, Denmark’s tax take is almost half of national income, compared with 25 percent in the United States.

Describe these policies to any American conservative, and he would predict ruin. Surely those generous benefits must destroy the incentive to work, while those high taxes drive job creators into hiding or exile.

Strange to say, however, Denmark doesn’t look like a set from “Mad Max.” On the contrary, it’s a prosperous nation that does quite well on job creation. In fact, adults in their prime working years are substantially more likely to be employed in Denmark than they are in America. Labor productivity in Denmark is roughly the same as it is here, although G.D.P. per capita is lower, mainly because the Danes take a lot more vacation.

Nor are the Danes melancholy: Denmark ranks at or near the top on international comparisons of “life satisfaction.”

It’s hard to imagine a better refutation of anti-tax, anti-government economic doctrine, which insists that a system like Denmark’s would be completely unworkable.

But would Denmark’s model be impossible to reproduce in other countries? Consider France, another country that is much bigger and more diverse than Denmark, but also maintains a highly generous welfare state paid for with high taxes. You might not know this from the extremely bad press France gets, but the French, too, roughly match U.S. productivity, and are more likely than Americans to be employed during their prime working years. Taxes and benefits just aren’t the job killers right-wing legend asserts.

Going back to Denmark, is everything copacetic in Copenhagen? Actually, no. Denmark is very rich, but its economy has taken a hit in recent years, because its recovery from the global financial crisis has been slow and incomplete. In fact, Denmark’s 5.5 percent decline in real G.D.P. per capita since 2007 is comparable to the declines in debt-crisis countries like Portugal or Spain, even though Denmark has never lost the confidence of investors.

What explains this poor recent performance? The answer, mainly, is bad monetary and fiscal policy. Denmark hasn’t adopted the euro, but it manages its currency as if it had, which means that it has shared the consequences of monetary mistakes like the European Central Bank’s 2011 interest rate hike. And while the country has faced no market pressure to slash spending — Denmark can borrow long-term at an interest rate of only 0.84 percent — it has adopted fiscal austerity anyway.

The result is a sharp contrast with neighboring Sweden, which doesn’t shadow the euro (although it has made some mistakes on its own), hasn’t done much austerity, and has seen real G.D.P. per capita rise while Denmark’s falls.

But Denmark’s monetary and fiscal errors don’t say anything about the sustainability of a strong welfare state. In fact, people who denounce things like universal health coverage and subsidized child care tend also to be people who demand higher interest rates and spending cuts in a depressed economy. (Remember all the talk about “debasing” the dollar?) That is, U.S. conservatives actually approve of some Danish policies — but only the ones that have proved to be badly misguided.

So yes, we can learn a lot from Denmark, both its successes and its failures. And let me say that it was both a pleasure and a relief to hear people who might become president talk seriously about how we can learn from the experience of other countries, as opposed to just chanting “U.S.A.! U.S.A.! U.S.A.!”

Stephen Harper is a goner, and humiliated, too, to the near-erotic ecstasy of Canada's chattering classes, who loathed him with such intensity it's hard to think of a comparison in modern politics.

Well, maybe Dick Cheney, George W. Bush's Darth Vader.

Suddenly, in Justin Trudeau we have a prime minister-designate who's banging on about hope and trust and inclusiveness and believing in yourself and being better and listening to everyone and diversity and all sorts of other happy thoughts. He even threw in tolerance for hijabs...

Over the last several weeks, there's been a lot of eager, nostalgic liberal talk about returning Canada to a nation of peacekeepers and neutral conciliators and environmentally concerned moderates. You know, the friendly world where travelers with little maple leaf flags on their backpacks drew instant affection and respect in even the nastiest foreign land.

The fellow who did win last night sort of promised all those things, at least in the subtext of his campaign speeches.

Real change was one of his slogans. That, and hope, and national reconciliation and uniting behind the common dreams of all Canadians.

Sound familiar?

There was another night, back in 2008, when American liberals were weeping with happiness, too.

Suddenly, their warmonger president was gone and America had a new leader, an inspiring master of gauzy rhetoric: "We are the ones we've been waiting for!" he would shout to delirious crowds.

No one knew what that meant, but it sounded great...

Change in tone

Our new prime minister might say he's going to sit down and negotiate with Canada's premiers "with deep respect," but wait until he gets a load of what's involved with that. His father knew.

What Trudeau can do, of course, is change the tone. That costs nothing, and a lot of Canadians want it to happen.

He can make Canada's positions abroad more nuanced, less absolutist and replace Canada's swagger at the UN with some actual diplomacy.

He can walk back the talk about how terrorists threaten us daily in our very homes, and perhaps speak honestly about the effectiveness of our combat mission in Iraq and Syria.

He may end up joining the rest of the Western world in supporting the nuclear deal with Iran, and perhaps even recognize that there are two sides to the question of Israel and the Palestinians.

But sweeping reversals of Stephen Harper's legacy? It's been almost a decade, and Harper changed the status quo. Even Trudeau himself seems to understand that.

Here's another Trudeau quote, uttered after Stephen Harper was closeted by security officers during the gunman's attack on Parliament Hill last year. He might want to keep the gist of it in mind:

"I think it's hard to know how one deals in situations of confrontation until you're actually in there, so I'm not going to speculate on what I would do."

Fox News is claiming that Biden is going to enter the race? This seems ridiculous. I find it really hard to believe that Biden is this delusional.

Other than dead relatives, I find it difficult to understand what he is planning to campaign on...

Justin Trudeau's turn to face the weight of expectations. Like Obama, Trudeau has been promising the kind of ineffable change that is so hard to deliver.


Justin Trudeau, the leader of the Liberal Party, celebrated his party's victory with his wife, Sophie Grégoire, in Montreal on Monday. Jim Young/Reuters