“Kamala Harris promises to preserve Biden’s legacy of letting Medicare actually fucking negotiate prescription drug prices.”
Isn’t this the IRA policy that’s just a back door for price controls? Which is already retarding drug innovation? As far as I can tell Trump has gone back and forth on this, but in office he’d probably defer to Republican orthodoxy and just do what’s good for the drug companies. (Which is incidentally the better policy.) Seems to me like this point goes to Trump.
Kamala is the more pro-immigration candidate. This matters a lot when it comes to helping people avoid lifetimes of poverty, misery, and/or oppression, even if in net global terms, the effect will be marginal. Still, Kamala could help re-push the Overton Window in regards to this in a more permissive direction.
The case for Trump is that Harris and the Democrats are waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing against ethnic Americans. For most Republican voters and leaners, that one issue is going to outweigh all the others.
Maybe Harris is good, but what about the people she will appoint? It’s my understanding that Dem judges, staffers, etc. tend to be more extreme than the individual candidate themselves. You can just look at liberal judges when it comes to economic decision making. Democrats also continue to be steamrolled by unions which are extremely horrendous institutions. Trump’s economic populism is really bad, and the only thing making me wary.
1. I think Trump thought he won, which mitigates this somewhat. This is still bad, though.
2. Trump didn't last time, because it would look bad. I see no reason for that to change. Meanwhile, the democrats are actually going after their political enemies right now—see the many legal attacks on Trump and Musk's companies. It's odd to me that people keep saying this.
3. This is true, with the caveat that Harris would also put ideologues in place.
4. True
5. This is not true. Trump is more worried about nuclear war than Harris. What you see Trump as thwarting doesn't stop the main threats of AI, which are AI-driven weaponry and totalitarianism.
6. I don't actually know how aggressive Trump's going to be with deportations. I certainly imagine it would start with those committing crimes, and new entrants.
7. Conceded, tarriffs are bad. But I do not concede the economics point. The one paper you linked to the last time you talked about this was not saying that Republicans are worse for the economy. It was saying specifically that Republican *presidents* are worse for the economy. And one of the reasons for that were better oil prices under democrat rule, where we would expect precisely the opposite in this election. (To make sure I'm being honest, among the other causes were foreign relations, where Trump would probably not be as good.) None of the reasons were better macroeconomic policy or whatever else. Meanwhile, your recession data is plainly at least partially by chance—which side of the election the 2008 crisis occurred, for example—and the governance under e.g. Clinton was a lot more moderate economically.
8. I'll yield that this would be bad.
9. I don't think Trump is going to default on the debt.
10a.both parties want more child tax credits.
b. You're really advocating for this (negotiating drug prices down)? This is terrible! There's been a massive decline in drug innovation after they started pushing the prices down. This is going to cost millions of lives.
c. Presidents don't build housing.
d. Everyone wants to protect voting rights. Only one party cares about having totally baseline requirements like requiring identification.
e. There are second order effects of providing illegal immigrants citizenship. While I'm cautiously in favor, I do worry about loss of the US's unique culture over time. The United States is the best country in the world, and we can't just swap out the populace and be confident it'll remain so.
f. This isn't anything prospective into the future.
g. This isn't about the future either. (Also, I'd net expect rule by Kamala to be less competent than rule by Biden.)
h. I don't remember if there were reasons to think that the lead exposure effects were somewhat inaccurate—I vaguely remember that the IQ stats may have been confounded by other variation with IQ (high IQ people tend to live in places with less lead) but that may have been totally wrong. Nevertheless, if we're talking about a private charity, that isn't going to end if the government cuts funding.
i. And…something about the past again.
11. The war in Gaza would end quickly under Trump. Hamas' entire strategy is international pressure, and it has been going as planned. With that failing, they'd fold.
12. You should at least have a high enough probability that abortion is, in many cases, murder, that you should treat it as a big deal. Anyway, yeah, Trump is way too okay with abortion. Nevertheless, he's obviously the better candidate on this issue. He's not going to be imprisoning people for anti-abortion protests. He's not going to be pushing suits trying to force states to allow abortions, the way that the current government is doing (see the Idaho case from this last SCOTUS term). On the other hand, if he loses, he's definitely going to blame it on abortion, as he did in the 2022 election. That's not good for the pro-life movement.
If you want big effects, look at 10b for some mass deaths. Unfortunately, I don't know that Trump will change that, but he has a higher chance of doing so.
Why would Trump believing he won mitigate anything? He was informed he lost, by people he previously trusted. If his psyche is so malformed he cannot believe it, that's what being a bad person is. Most terrible people aren't terrible because they're knowingly doing things they know are evil, they're terrible because they rationalize their actions and skew their perspective so that they're in the right no matter what.
Deluded righteous indignation and calculated unscrupulous conspiracy can both result in the same outcomes sure but are wildly different threat profiles. Dramatically changes rational expectations of future behavior and if is a "risk to democracy" ect or if that is just the usual political character smearing twisting into max uncharitable readings of events(and vice-versa).
Good post, but I simply can’t vote for Harris. Here is my one reason why: https://open.substack.com/pub/wollenblog/p/i-will-not-be-voting-for-harrisheres?r=2248ub&utm_medium=ios
“Kamala Harris promises to preserve Biden’s legacy of letting Medicare actually fucking negotiate prescription drug prices.”
Isn’t this the IRA policy that’s just a back door for price controls? Which is already retarding drug innovation? As far as I can tell Trump has gone back and forth on this, but in office he’d probably defer to Republican orthodoxy and just do what’s good for the drug companies. (Which is incidentally the better policy.) Seems to me like this point goes to Trump.
Yes I agree--just including it because I was quoting Ozy.
I voted for Harris last week, and while I'm resigned to the possibility of a second Trump term, I strongly hope that she wins. I guess we'll see!
One more reason:
Kamala is the more pro-immigration candidate. This matters a lot when it comes to helping people avoid lifetimes of poverty, misery, and/or oppression, even if in net global terms, the effect will be marginal. Still, Kamala could help re-push the Overton Window in regards to this in a more permissive direction.
The case for Trump is that Harris and the Democrats are waging a campaign of ethnic cleansing against ethnic Americans. For most Republican voters and leaners, that one issue is going to outweigh all the others.
Maybe Harris is good, but what about the people she will appoint? It’s my understanding that Dem judges, staffers, etc. tend to be more extreme than the individual candidate themselves. You can just look at liberal judges when it comes to economic decision making. Democrats also continue to be steamrolled by unions which are extremely horrendous institutions. Trump’s economic populism is really bad, and the only thing making me wary.
Her AI regulation is really good! Please, won't somebody talk about AI?
1. I think Trump thought he won, which mitigates this somewhat. This is still bad, though.
2. Trump didn't last time, because it would look bad. I see no reason for that to change. Meanwhile, the democrats are actually going after their political enemies right now—see the many legal attacks on Trump and Musk's companies. It's odd to me that people keep saying this.
3. This is true, with the caveat that Harris would also put ideologues in place.
4. True
5. This is not true. Trump is more worried about nuclear war than Harris. What you see Trump as thwarting doesn't stop the main threats of AI, which are AI-driven weaponry and totalitarianism.
6. I don't actually know how aggressive Trump's going to be with deportations. I certainly imagine it would start with those committing crimes, and new entrants.
7. Conceded, tarriffs are bad. But I do not concede the economics point. The one paper you linked to the last time you talked about this was not saying that Republicans are worse for the economy. It was saying specifically that Republican *presidents* are worse for the economy. And one of the reasons for that were better oil prices under democrat rule, where we would expect precisely the opposite in this election. (To make sure I'm being honest, among the other causes were foreign relations, where Trump would probably not be as good.) None of the reasons were better macroeconomic policy or whatever else. Meanwhile, your recession data is plainly at least partially by chance—which side of the election the 2008 crisis occurred, for example—and the governance under e.g. Clinton was a lot more moderate economically.
8. I'll yield that this would be bad.
9. I don't think Trump is going to default on the debt.
10a.both parties want more child tax credits.
b. You're really advocating for this (negotiating drug prices down)? This is terrible! There's been a massive decline in drug innovation after they started pushing the prices down. This is going to cost millions of lives.
c. Presidents don't build housing.
d. Everyone wants to protect voting rights. Only one party cares about having totally baseline requirements like requiring identification.
e. There are second order effects of providing illegal immigrants citizenship. While I'm cautiously in favor, I do worry about loss of the US's unique culture over time. The United States is the best country in the world, and we can't just swap out the populace and be confident it'll remain so.
f. This isn't anything prospective into the future.
g. This isn't about the future either. (Also, I'd net expect rule by Kamala to be less competent than rule by Biden.)
h. I don't remember if there were reasons to think that the lead exposure effects were somewhat inaccurate—I vaguely remember that the IQ stats may have been confounded by other variation with IQ (high IQ people tend to live in places with less lead) but that may have been totally wrong. Nevertheless, if we're talking about a private charity, that isn't going to end if the government cuts funding.
i. And…something about the past again.
11. The war in Gaza would end quickly under Trump. Hamas' entire strategy is international pressure, and it has been going as planned. With that failing, they'd fold.
12. You should at least have a high enough probability that abortion is, in many cases, murder, that you should treat it as a big deal. Anyway, yeah, Trump is way too okay with abortion. Nevertheless, he's obviously the better candidate on this issue. He's not going to be imprisoning people for anti-abortion protests. He's not going to be pushing suits trying to force states to allow abortions, the way that the current government is doing (see the Idaho case from this last SCOTUS term). On the other hand, if he loses, he's definitely going to blame it on abortion, as he did in the 2022 election. That's not good for the pro-life movement.
If you want big effects, look at 10b for some mass deaths. Unfortunately, I don't know that Trump will change that, but he has a higher chance of doing so.
Why would Trump believing he won mitigate anything? He was informed he lost, by people he previously trusted. If his psyche is so malformed he cannot believe it, that's what being a bad person is. Most terrible people aren't terrible because they're knowingly doing things they know are evil, they're terrible because they rationalize their actions and skew their perspective so that they're in the right no matter what.
Deluded righteous indignation and calculated unscrupulous conspiracy can both result in the same outcomes sure but are wildly different threat profiles. Dramatically changes rational expectations of future behavior and if is a "risk to democracy" ect or if that is just the usual political character smearing twisting into max uncharitable readings of events(and vice-versa).