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Guys, don't give money to political candidates. Every cycle we read about federal legislators loaning their campaigns money at 20% interest (which is legal) and pocketing your hard-earned cash.
Instead, put it in your investments: stocks, bonds, ETF's, whatever.
No matter who we elect they'll fight to keep your investments sound, so at least you get some representation.
No matter who you elect, they'll fight to rob blind 30-40% of those who didn't vote for them... so better try not to be in that demographic first, invest second.
True.
One of the first things Biden did was try to change bank regulations so they could target gig workers for taxation more easily.
These people do not care about you. They do care about the stock market though.
Taxation is one of the most baffling things about the US: between federal, state, and local taxes, Americans get around a 35% tax pressure, which is comparable to some of the "Communist" countries in Europe with a public health system... except the US doesn't have even that. Beats me on what do they spend those taxes; it sure is not to reduce the 135% GDP government debt.
Stock market cap is 185% GDP in the US, so at least that part makes sense.
Beats me on what do they spend those taxes
It's spent on what is by far the most powerful, expensive, and expansive military in the world, with funding about equivalent to the next ten militaries combined. All of Europe barely has any military spending by comparison; NATO is almost entirely propped up by the US military industrial complex. If US foreign policy wasn't so doggedly imperialist, we might have room for some healthcare.
That's not even getting into how medical corporations in the US are more or less financially unrestrained and allowed to make as much money as they want, paired with an insurance industry with the same conditions, and both industries becoming more and more consolidated, with all the big players participating in the stock market. The result is a race to the top in which everything is made far more expensive than it needs to be in order to please shareholders. In this environment, spending government money on US healthcare is substantially less efficient than the same spending would be in a European country.
Correction of these markets, as with housing, is likely to be financially devastating to the economic elite, but also critical to the prosperity of real people in this country.
US military spending is lower than Poland's... and yet Poland does have a universal healthcare system. Both countries are spending less than 4% GDP on their militaries.
If US foreign policy wasn't so doggedly imperialist
medical corporations in the US
a race to the top in which everything is made far more expensive than it needs to be in order to please shareholders
I wonder if the same applies to US military corporations.
So, less bang for the buck in all cases... except for "the shareholders", after discounting all the C-level salaries and benefits, the creative bookkeeping, and non-dividend reserves... meaning only for the "big" shareholders, not the average Joes.
Sounds like death by a ~~thousand cuts~~ million leeches.
How does more money mean more votes? Like, where does all this money go? Ads?
More detail on the topic https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/money-and-elections-a-complicated-love-story/
How strong is the association between campaign spending and political success? For House seats, more than 90 percent of candidates who spend the most win.
...
Money is certainly strongly associated with political success. But, “I think where you have to change your thinking is that money causes winning,” said Richard Lau, professor of political science at Rutgers. “I think it’s more that winning attracts money.”
...
Instead, he and Lau agreed, the strong raw association between raising the most cash and winning probably has more to do with big donors who can tell (based on polls or knowledge of the district or just gut-feeling woo-woo magic) that one candidate is more likely to win — and then they give that person all their money.
...
Money matters a great deal in elections,” Bonica said. It’s just that, he believes, when scientists go looking for its impacts, they tend to look in the wrong places. If you focus on general elections, he said, your view is going to be obscured by the fact that 80 to 90 percent of congressional races have outcomes that are effectively predetermined by the district’s partisan makeup
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But in 2017, Bonica published a study that found, unlike in the general election, early fundraising strongly predicted who would win primary races. That matches up with other research suggesting that advertising can have a serious effect on how people vote if the candidate buying the ads is not already well-known and if the election at hand is less predetermined along partisan lines.
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Another example of where money might matter: Determining who is capable of running for elected office to begin with. Ongoing research from Alexander Fouirnaies, professor of public policy at the University of Chicago, suggests that, as it becomes normal for campaigns to spend higher and higher amounts, fewer people run and more of those who do are independently wealthy. In other words, the arms race of unnecessary campaign spending could help to enshrine power among the well-known and privileged.
You'd be surprised how much people don't know about stuff. Every time I canvas, whether it's for a prop or a candidate, people just aren't aware. Not that I blame them either, life is hectic.
So, cold calling or doing door to door to inform people is one of the only really effective ways to actually get results. Which means paying people to do that, or relying on volunteers which just isn't realistic.
How do I get off these god damned call lists without confirming it’s a real number? I’m just flagging it as spam.
So, funny story. Phone numbers are public record, especially if you included it on your voter information. If you place your name on the National Do Not Call list, the political agencies and charities are pretty much exempt from them, though each, usually, has its own internal Do Not Call list.
There's no way to get off a political polling/informational call list, because your phone number is public record and the sole goal is to get you informed about their specific goal, usually regarding a candidate or proposition.
I get it's frustrating, but it's worth hearing out at least the ones that are about local policy. I understand not caring about wider election candidates, but the others can be genuinely informative. That aside, hearing them out doesn't get them to put you on a "call me again" list either, these aren't scam callers trying to get information or repeat callbacks. For the most part they just want to get a pledge of support for a local proposition, for internal polling numbers during the campaign. Basically, "we called 5,000 people, of the 2,000 that answered, 1,000 said they would vote for Prop 38" and we all cheer.
There's also polling call centers, which get company and government contracts to conduct these polls, which again use the public information and are exempt from the National Do Not Call list.
I really don’t need to hear their speech. They’ve already got my vote. Stop texting and calling me! 🤪
Essentially, yes, though not just literal ads only.
Ads, hiring local staffers in swing states to canvas, paying for campaign events, etc.
Name recognition and getting your message and policies into peoples' eyes and ears. Momentum builds momentum, because apathetic voters often need to feel like there are enough other people doing the same thing that they can be part of a winning team, to make taking the time to vote worth it (whether that is a sad reality for politics or not is another discussion).
This is absolutely true. We ran into a friend back into the day who said she was canvassing for Bernie...why don't we also go?
We nwver even thought about volunteering for a political campaign, yet we did.
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Hours earlier, Future Forward, the largest super PAC in Democratic politics, announced it had secured $150 million in commitments over the same period from donors who were “previously stalled, uncertain or uncommitted,” a senior adviser said.
Taken together, the fundraising explosion puts Harris in a dominant position to secure the Democratic Party’s formal presidential nomination at next month’s national convention — if not sooner.
The huge haul also ensures that Harris and her allies can compete with Donald Trump, who has generated stunning fundraising totals of his own in recent weeks as he fights to return to the White House following multiple felony convictions and an assassination attempt.
Nobody really knew what was happening,” said Michael Smith, an Los Angeles donor who, along with his partner James Costos, held numerous fundraisers for Biden.
Chad Griffin, a member of the campaign’s national finance committee and a top Democratic fundraiser in the Los Angeles area, said the party is lucky to have Harris “ready to finish the job she and President Biden started together.”
With Biden’s endorsement, Harris’ campaign appears to have inherited his sprawling national infrastructure and tens of millions of dollars that his team previously raised.
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