Recent content by Brad Sallows

As I wrote, "utilitarian". Degree of responsibility is a multiplier.

It's hard to measure, isn't it. He hasn't turned a country (Iraq, Libya) into a shithole at the cost of tens of thousands of lives, and most of the things being proposed as "costs" are not direct responsibilities of the US.

I doubt many of those homes or properties are owned outright by the residents. Ownership matters. Plenty of owners let the condition of their properties deteriorate; less custodial motivation exists in renters or other non-owning occupants. Those conditions aren't unique to reserves.

Why so strict? A few days ago a parade (a kind of circus) was good enough to be evidence of fascism.

Define "okay". Mainstream Republican and Democrat government in the US includes renditions, detention away from US courts, drone assassinations, regime change, war-making without Congressional authorization. Using purely utilitarian measures, are more people in the world better off with Trump...

Boys in girls sports. Lax border controls and lenient welfare for people in the country illegally. Weak to no enforcement of some categories of crimes. Proposals to stack the USSC. Weakening of the 1A. Sure. These things are simultaneously true: 1. Those things are wrong. 2. Some of the...

I wouldn't characterize things as "bad". At root it's just all about money, with a dash of anti-Americanism thrown in. We prefer to spend on things other than defence; we preferred to protect whatever interests benefited from internal trade barriers; we prefer to seek new revenues elsewhere...

Fucking shame that people might have to be paid more. The proper living wage is somewhere above statutory minimum and below what the gentry want to pay their landscapers, nannies, and crop pickers. Doesn't everyone know that?

Something wrong is surely going on, but it's not incipient fascism. There are at least four big political struggles going on in the US right now: extreme left progressives vs moderates in the Democratic party (extreme left is still ascendant), neo-cons vs Trump in the Republican party (neo-cons...

Now just imagine what fish are doing in fresh and salt water.

That isn't going to go anywhere. Trump can antagonize people all he wants with that threat (which is part of his routine), but it'd get no meaningful support from agencies, Congress, or courts and I doubt he even tries. Mark it down. It'll be significant evidence that the US is not actually...

Okay. That's entirely different. There are different estimates, mostly from left-leaning sources, of how much it might cost low income earners annually, and how much high income earners might gain. They're including other welfare-related schemes affected by the bill. Go look at the link I...

How did you calculate that? I can't find anything that suggests increased tax rates on lower incomes. The TCJA rate changes (see here), which raised no bracket rates and reduced many, are made permanent. Some points summarized here.

I suppose it comes in an orange bottle?

You have to stretch pretty hard to find a malign intersection of subsidiarity - delegation of the power to deal with things at the lowest practical level and deference to the advantage of knowledge of circumstance - and foreign interference.