This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
It seems to me politics are especially bad at countering inflation. People may be pissed off the "government isn't doing enough" to fix it. However, the levers the government can easily pull to fight inflation (raising taxes/interest rates, cut transfers/subsidies, lower consumption/wages) won't gain them any popularity points. Even worse, there are plenty of socially-desirable policies that'll make inflation worse: tax cuts, raises, loan forgiveness, more transfers. I'm grateful our system is even capable of doing unpopular things like raising interest rates. If monetary policy had heavier democratic influence, I'd worry high inflation would just be the long-term equilibrium.
Ontario's leader is under heavy fire for playing hardball and preventing educational workers from getting large raises. I don't know the details well, but couldn't one argue this is what fighting inflation looks like?
A recent YouGov poll showed that, regardless of support of opposition, 55% and 52% of Americans respectively believe that increasing domestic oil production and "investing in strengthening the supply chain" would lower inflation. Increasing domestic oil production may lower energy prices but this is the kind of thing that takes years. Companies are intentionally limiting their drilling operations to avoid having a crash like in 2014, and they aren't going to drill beyond their current long-term plans unless there's some kind of subsidy, which would be inflationary in the short term. I don't know what "investing in strengthening the supply chain" means but any time people talk about investing in a political context it normally means more government spending which, again, would be inflationary in the short term regardless of its long-term effects.
Next up, 47 and 44% of respondents, respectively, thought that fining companies for price gouging and having the government enforce limits on price increases would lower inflation. I won't comment on the appropriateness of price gouging laws generally, but those that do exist aim to prevent sharp price increases of goods in limited supply in situations where there are acute shortages. It's hard to argue that price increases of a few extra percentage points annually (or even 20% annually) is price gouging in the traditional sense. Enforcing price controls sounds good in theory until you go to the grocery store and discover they're out of half of the items on your list. Those price tags look good, though.
Those are actually fairly reasonable, though, because next we have a couple of real doozies. 38% of Americans believe that cutting taxes would decrease inflation, compared with only 19% who believe it would make it worse and 17% who believe there would be no change. And 35% believe that lowering interest rates would curb inflation, compared with 25% who think it would make matters worse and 14% who believe it would have no effect. I'll let those ones speak for themselves. On the other side of the coin, 31% believe raising interest rates actually helps inflation compared to 32% who think it makes matters worse. 29% believe that reducing the number of foreign imports would cut inflation compared to 22% who believe the opposite. The only semi-reasonable position on the whole list is that 33% believe reducing spending on social services would help, compared to 17% who believe it would make things worse.
Is this the same poll the_nybbler was complaining about below?
It can’t just be poor phrasing, because some of those beliefs are pretty unambiguous. It probably isn’t mere partisanship, because Have You Seen Gas Prices Lately has been universal, and partisan criticism has been focused on doing something/anything rather than on efficacy. There’s a case for economic illiteracy—raising rates means I pay more, so it must be inflationary, right?
Regardless, it’s depressing.
Yeah, it's the same poll, and it's totally economic illiteracy. I'm no fan of Biden but when I talk to conservatives about inflation they assume that Democratic "big government" spending policy is the cause of this mess and that it will abate as soon as Republicans take control of congress. While there's certainly an argument for less spending these people inevitably point to Trump-era pandemic policies that have already ended. I don't know how many times I heard that the labor shortage was caused by enhanced unemployment benefits months after those benefits had ended, or how the eviction moratorium was an issue even though the hated Democrat Tom Wolf signed an order ending it well before anyone was complaining about it.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link