Is Covid a Death Tax on Stupidity?

No, because the non-stupid are also paying the tax.

Nice survey. Thanks for that and still avoiding main point in an attempt to score points as you have a tendency to do. I’ll give you another star.

SF is not clean :star:

Now I’ll repost for reference and see if you can address the main reason why your argument is BS.

If there is no empirical evidence to support some widespread decline brought by liberals, then the only conclusion is this is a hyper partisan tactic that serves no purpose than to blame everything on…“because Democrats”

If the majority of all cities are Democratic then it’s quite convenient to say any problem in cities is because Democrats. Don’t ya think?

Trump claimed he won in a landslide with 306 electoral votes (same as Biden) but lost the popular vote. Biden won the popular vote by the largest margin ever. There is no such thing as an “electoral mandate”. WTF does that mean? Only people can give a mandate as in the popular vote.

But I agree he won’t convince people like you. The last thing we need is a president that blames the other side for everything under the sun - forest fires, riots, covid, economy etc. A president that at least makes the attempt to bring people together is exactly what we need.

https://archive.is/8TdQp

Basically, the last article sums it up: the liberals in control have their hearts in the right place, but their policies often do the exact opposite of what they say they want. And instead of recognizing the disconnect, the have doubled down on those policies.

Ok so now your switching gears and talking about the entire state of California. So is this a democrat cities or democrat states argument? As I said with states, the argument falls apart very quickly. California’s fiscal crisis happened under a Republican governor. All across the South states are behind the national average in every metric. So not sure how your links prove anything?

These are all opinion pieces and the last one is a blog that looks like a kid in high school wrote it. I gave actual statistical analysis from an academic institution. This falls far short of that.

Show me how all democrat cities are declining. If you can’t then it proves it’s not the party affiliation, but specific policies specific to that locale as I’ve said all along. Blaming it on liberal policies has no merit as the booming highly educated economy of my state can attest to.

Wow you read fast. In less than 10 minutes, you’ve carefully digested everything in these articles and concluded that you’re right. What are the odds of that?

Funny. The article was a cross-post from Better Institutions.

http://www.betterinstitutions.com/about

Shane Phillips is an urban planner and policy expert based in Los Angeles. He is currently managing the UCLA Lewis Center Housing Initiative, writing a book about housing policy with the publisher Island Press, and teaching public policy as an adjunct instructor at the University of Southern California. Shane previously worked as the Director of Public Policy for Central City Association, a Downtown LA business advocacy organization, as well as roles with the Los Angeles Streetcar project and in City Hall. He’s also kept this blog for many years.

What are your credentials? That you went to SF and didn’t step in shit?

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They were all opinion pieces so of course I dismissed them. I read through the blog and stopped after paragraphs like this:

Liberal Ideology Liberal City Policy We are pro-environment… …but anti-growth and density We are pro-immigration… …but anti-migration We are pro-equity… …but anti-housing

Quick disclaimer: “Liberals” are not a monolithic group, and these views won’t be representative of every individual who identifies as liberal. That said, in my experience they are fairly representative of many if not most liberal city residents that I have met and discussed housing policy with. Your mileage may vary—though I doubt it will by much.

You do understand the difference between anecdotal and empirical right? And as I said, we were talking about democratic cities. Is it cities or states? And why only California? If it was party affiliation you’d figure you’d have more evidence. I don’t think you understand what type of research I am asking for. I wouldn’t quote an op-ed from WSJ in a college paper and I will quickly dismiss it here.

They were all opinion pieces that contained information not congruent with my opinion so of course I dismissed them.

FTFY

So you get all your news from opinions? No wonder you are not grasping the concept. I’ll repost what I did so you understand what an empirical study is:

This is an empirical study. Yours are opinions. I don’t need someone else to tell me what my opinion should be. I prefer empirical evidence. Its clear you don’t have an argument.

Cool study.

We use a new data set on mayoral elections to study the impact of political partisanship at
the local level in the United States. We collected information on 4,543 direct mayoral elections
between 1950 and 2005 in over 400 cities with populations of at least 25,000 residents as of the year 2000. This new data base allows the comparison of actual policy outcomes for elected chief executive officers of different parties, not just the voting behavior of representatives or the market expectation of a future presidential term. More specifically, we estimate the impact of whether the mayor is a Democrat or Republican on local policy outcomes such as the size of local government, the composition of local public expenditures, and the crime rate.

Between 1950 and 2005 - 15 to 70 years ago, an eternity in modern times. In 400 cities with as few as 25,000 residents. Only looking at mayors and not factoring for city councils, state policies, etc.

And:

Our empirical research design compares policy outcomes from cities where Democrats barely won an election with cities where Democrats barely lost an election to a Republican. This RD approach pioneered by Lee (2001, 2007) provides random variation in party winners across cities with narrow margins of victory. This deals with the endogeneity that exists due to unobserved factors (e.g., the true underlying political leanings of the voters) influencing electoral or political outcomes. A key identification assumption of this research design is that all relevant city characteristics that affect policy are continuous around the narrow margin of victory threshold.

Further along:

Although OLS estimates find no partisan differences in the allocation of those resources across functions such as police, fire, and parks and recreation, they do indicate that cities led by a Democrat mayor have higher violent and property crime rates. However, the more credible RD estimates typically are from 0-40 percent of the magnitudes of the OLS results, and in no case is the remaining estimated partisan gap in local policy outcome statistically different from zero.

The models you choose to use, and the assumptions underpinning those models, matter. If you’re going to throw “hey, here’s an empirical study” out there, you should at least read it thoroughly and understand the nature and recency of the data and the models used, what they actually do and what limitations they have based on the assumptions they’re built on.

Cool retort.

You’re just highlighting what you think proves your point and ignoring the rest of the paragraph, assuming I didn’t read it. I think Andrew already tried to call this out.

As in not stastically significant. Nice try. :joy: Now the burden of proof is still on you. Or would you like to post more op eds from WSJ?

You don’t seem to understand how studies like this work. They use models. Models make certain assumptions, and attempt to do certain things, and not others. They have limits. They’re not handed down by God.

The authors of this study chose to apply the RD approach, which produces a different result than the OLS approach. On data that’s 15-70 years old, only accounts for the party of the mayor, and looks at cities with as few as 25,000 people where mayoral races were won by narrow margins.

The reality is that when it comes to understanding why cities like SF, LA and Chicago have become slums, it’s pretty clear you could personally step on the answer and still refuse to smell it.

Either I don’t understand or you don’t have any empirical evidence. I think it’s pretty clear you glossed over and tried to find one sentence you thought agreed with your opinion when the entire study is saying there is no statistical significance at the local level.

Over 400 cities with at least 25K residents. That is how you should do it. Your sample size is LA, SF and Portland and you’re trying to argue a phenomenon across all democrat cities.

Quit trying to desperately score a point and buck up with some actual empirical evidence. All I’ve seen from you are partisan opinion pieces. I’ve provided you a study from the National Bureau of Economic Research and the best you can do are bunch of opinion pieces. You expect that to persuade anyone who isn’t already hyper partisan? Come on dude its a joke.

With data from 15-70 years ago and using models that you don’t understand.

I get it. The liberal policies of the people who have been running SF, LA, Portland, Chicago, etc. have nothing to do with the fact that they’ve become slums.

Wrong poster.

You don’t know my background but again nice try. It’s clear you didn’t understand when you ignored the main point of the paragraph.

Are you going to buck up with some empirical evidence or not? If not, I think this horse has been beaten enough.

You’re right. I don’t know your background, other than that you visited SF and found it to be very nice and very clean. And that because you respond so hastily (perhaps because you’re juggling work and Forumosa?), you mix up other posters and their arguments.

And you don’t know my background.

I responded quickly to your articles because you did not provide the type of evidence I was looking for. I am partial to statistical analysis and despise opinion pieces especially when discussing the impacts of policy. I don’t find them productive at all and laden with personal biases. There is a reason why RD is a superior method of statistical modeling when determining the impact of party affiliation in this case. The intent is to remove bias (statistical) in experiments that are not easily replicated.

If you can show something along the same lines then of course I would consider it. If you’re argument is just about policies specific to SF, LA or whatever…fine. But I still don’t think that is indicative of an entire party and find the singling out of a party to argue causation, or I think you said contribution, is really unproductive.

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Cities (with international airports) were hit hardest initially and rural communities later. Notice the chart conveniently begins in June.

Deaths are far more significant than cases. States like Utah have a lot of cases but relatively few deaths.

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Not disagreeing with your arguments in general, but having been a Democrat in CA for a couple decades, not sure that this statement is completely fair. The only Republican governor I can think of since I moved here is Arnold. That was when Grey Davis (Dem) got recalled in 2003 (which was a waste of taxpayer dollars), and he served till 2011. We were in a deep financial whole when he took over, and most of his efforts were derailed by unions and other special interest groups, as well as state legislature.

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Bringing it back to Covid, among friends and neighbors in my part of California, I see a definite political divide in terms of mask use and thoughts on the pandemic. But while people (often in MAGA wear) feel like they are exercising their rights by exposing nostrils in public and invading my 6 foot bubble, I am the one they are putting at physical risk. And by perpetuating transmission with these behaviours, they are limiting my social life and ability to travel. I voted no on the poll simply because there was no option for “tax on stupidity or ignorance, paid by all.”