I agree. What still hasn’t evidenced is the analysis of the midterms for the establishment types. Some of them barely won. What’s his face loses in KS if McConnell doesn’t go to general quarters and saves his ass.
If the establishment believes they have a mandate, then the midterms were a pointless exercise. What I doubt is that they will look at the midterms as a wholesale repudiation of everything DC has tried to foist on us for the last 10 years. (yes, 10 - immigration).
You want to talk about timing? Paulson’s fix for the MBS mess gave rise to an even bigger bubble, exacerbated by the FedGov’s active pogrom on middle class jobs. The reason why there is a ‘minimum wage issue’ is because what few middle class jobs existed before the MBS mess are gone, either through attrition, technology, the ACA, the EPA, immigration, or record numbers of small businesses going the way of the dinosaur. McDonalds and WalMart ARE the only folks hiring. The jobs they offer USED to be jobs that STARTED a young person’s working life.
Now, they are all that remain.
What isn’t being talked about is the OTHER bubble that’s going to pop - education:
Record borrowing to build college palaces prior to 2007, and now enrollment in four year programs are dropping. Over $1T in outstanding educational loans, and probably an equal, if not bigger number in construction loans on college campuses that were offering extremely subsidized educations for majors that offer no prospect of getting a job after graduation. WSJ yesterday talked about how campuses are quietly closing facilities and buildings and trying to consolidate their facility cores. Unions are playing hell with them trimming staff, as is tenure.
That’s going to fall in all at once, not gradually. Junior colleges and vocational schools are booming. Also not a good sign. With the voc schools, the educations they are providing in the niches they cover are so underserved that they are giving MONEY-BACK GUARANTEES - you get a job after graduation (or before) OR YOUR MONEY BACK.
Many of us recall the sick feeling we had in our stomachs when the bail-out was initiated. Politics aside, it seems important in the current global marketplace that any concept of a free market be understood as limited to our domestic market and more effectively protected by import duties and such (it has been a while since my few college-level econ courses). And, of course, there is the argument our bankruptcy statutes should be honored as the law they are.
But for our current welfare system, we might have a lower class similar to that of China. It seems clear our welfare system which provides minimal existence, for the most part, does nothing more than simply feeds and nourishes a dependent voting bloc.
As for the education system, not many will shed tears if some of the top institutions are required to tighten their belts. IMO, junior colleges are a great investment for a number of reasons; but certainly because they tend to attract members of the local community to their faculty and thus tend to give it a more balanced political perspective.
Have a nice day.