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Dear Motte, please help me place my vote.
I really want to support the Democratic Party. Biden's FTC, EPA, and NLRB all seem to be working in economic directions which will make my life and the life of my children better: open markets, cleaner air, better working conditions. I can't help but notice that Trump's previous court picks tend to work against my goals of regulating business, increasing vacation time for my family, and limiting the EPA's attempts to regulate fossil fuels.
But voting blue has some tradeoffs. Some of these I'm aware of, but they are less relevant to me: Immigration is high and crime is up, but immigration and crime are intensely local, and my locality is pretty safe, with lots of rich donors and its own competent police force.
I'm going to have a family soon. I would like my child to be able to enjoy a carefree childhood, without needles in the parks and bullies in the schools, and without the chance that they are brainwashed into values that won't give me grandchildren.
But then things happen which force me to reevaluate and acknowledge that I cannot support the Democratic party. For example, this exchange during the VP debate (Transcript from Matt Taibbi):
Matt makes the argument that Walz got the crowded theater analogy backwards, but even more than that what rings alarm bells in my head is the phrase "Or hate speech."
What do you mean hate speech isn't protected by the first amendment? How do you think the market of ideas is going to work?
This exchange was the last straw for me, and convinced me that, however much it may harm my short-term personal interests, I cannot cast a ballot for Walz and the group of people who think like him. No matter how shitty life might get without the EPA or FTC working in my best interest, it will get much more shitty, much faster if donors to the Democratic party (NPR listeners?) get to define contrarian thought as "hate speech".
So here are my options for presidential tickets:
Any ideas who has the most "Grey Tribe" values and best policies?
Important issues to me, in order of importance as far as I can tell:
Edit: formatting of candidate list
The issue imho has been misallocation of public resources. For example, why is so much healthcare spending on people who are at the end-of-life for example who have no hope of living much longer. Or so much education spending to bring laggards up to speed, who should go into the trades or drop out of school. Or too much credentialism. Many of these proposals seem like an expansion of the government or vague that will necessitate higher taxes or more deficit spending. The minimum wage is an example of 'labor rights', yet creates a barrier to work.
While your typical electrician or HVAC tech didn’t do well in school, this was because he either thought school was dumb or wasn’t willing to listen to his teachers. Guys that were genuinely not smart enough to handle the material usually aren’t smart enough to work in a regulated trade.
this is why the min. wage is harmful. there is a market for dumb workers; it's just not high enough to justify paying them
You would expect this to be true, but empirically it doesn't seem to be. The going rate for a sober, trustworthy worker with a 90 IQ and a good attitude is something like 2/3 of the going rate for a 100 IQ worker - in other words it is above any likely minimum wage. And the going rate for a 90 IQ worker who is drunken, lippy, violent or dishonest is comfortably negative.
The Problem of low wage work (and in today's society it is a capital-P problem - a lot of what tradcons hate about our society is downstream of it) is really a two-parter:
If you solved those problems then the going rate for 90 IQ male workers would be well above the sort of minimum wage levels that are within the Overton window, so the minimum wage would be largely irrelevant.
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