"Votes for kids: why we should be giving children a say in elections
Many want the voting age to be lowered further, to 12 or even 6-year-olds. But any age higher than 0 leaves millions of child citizens without representation of their interests. That problem can be solved by giving children proxy votes from birth, to be cast by their primary carers. We can combine this with any voting age we deem right."
I have no particular evidence for this, but instinctively it feels like there would be a slightly higher tendency of deciding your children's votes for them among left wing parents.
Nah, it’ll be wealthy parents who would have the power.
DJT needs to win any four out of NV, AZ, WI, MI, PA and GA.
It's hard to see KH stopping that. On paper, she's got no fucking chance but she might able to save one of them with a shewd Veep pick.
Trump 47 will be a mega LOL, so at least we can enjoy that once the Centrist Dads get over being dickhurt.
Hence Harris should pick Shapiro the Pennsylvania governor and then Trump has to win Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and one of Michigan or Georgia if she holds Pennsylvania
I agree with you: I don't think Kelly would hold AZ for Harris, but I do think Shapiro wins Pennsylvania.
And Pennsylvania is a big state; it means that Trump has to nearly sweep the board of the other in play states.
Pennsylvania has basically taken over from Ohio and Florida as the swing state. It is very difficult to see a Harris win without it.
What issue will most vex a swing voter in Pennsylvania two months from now? Or rather, make them turn out rather than sit at home.
I don't know. It has done reasonably well, if not spectacularly, economically over the last few years. They currently have abortion to 24 weeks but do not allow state dollars to pay for it. Shapiro has been looking to change that by providing funding to the less well off. I suspect that will be a major dividing line, and not just in Penn.
I have only been there once and it was quite a long time ago. It seemed a very prosperous place to me then. Some excellent micro breweries as I recall.
I was there for a week last year. It’s a real mix. Some elegant small towns and beautiful countryside but then some true poverty and rustbelt blight
Pittsburgh looks kinda meh
That was where I went to the zoo one day when staying with my then US girlfriend who was in East Liberty (she was at work 10 days leave a year). Crossed the road and everyone was then black and oddly more friendly. Walked right through this area both ways no issues.
When she got home that evening "You walked through WHERE you were lucky not to be shot".
Appears the police enforced unofficial segregation by constable savage methods if they strayed out of their "block" into "respectable" areas.
"Votes for kids: why we should be giving children a say in elections
Many want the voting age to be lowered further, to 12 or even 6-year-olds. But any age higher than 0 leaves millions of child citizens without representation of their interests. That problem can be solved by giving children proxy votes from birth, to be cast by their primary carers. We can combine this with any voting age we deem right."
I have no particular evidence for this, but instinctively it feels like there would be a slightly higher tendency of deciding your children's votes for them among left wing parents.
Nah, it’ll be wealthy parents who would have the power.
My sister and her husband voted in the Brexit referendum based on their children's wishes.
"The right to vote is an inherent right of all citizens, and the first and most important marker of the capacity to participate in the setting of social priorities.
Children should be given that right from birth. But until they reach the age of majority it should be exercised by proxy with the custodial parent or parents given an extra vote for every child under their guardianship."
"My name is Miles Corak. I am a professor with The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, trained in labour economics, and working on child rights, poverty, immigration, social and economic mobility, unemployment, and social policy."
That is an interesting idea. I instinctively bridle against it but then realise I can't find any reasonable arguments against it. My main argument against reducing the voting age to 16 is lack of maturity and responsibility. But someone else exercising that vote on behalf of the minor removes those objections.
I would have to consider it more but I think my first instictive response was probably wrong.
So what are they saying? If a parent has five kids they get to have five votes?
I assume that is the natural conclusion of the argument. Obviously in our rather fractured society today there are lots of issues that would have to be resolved and it may well end up being impractical but I certainly don't think it should simply be ignored as a suggestion out of hand.
"Votes for kids: why we should be giving children a say in elections
Many want the voting age to be lowered further, to 12 or even 6-year-olds. But any age higher than 0 leaves millions of child citizens without representation of their interests. That problem can be solved by giving children proxy votes from birth, to be cast by their primary carers. We can combine this with any voting age we deem right."
I have no particular evidence for this, but instinctively it feels like there would be a slightly higher tendency of deciding your children's votes for them among left wing parents.
Nah, it’ll be wealthy parents who would have the power.
My sister and her husband voted in the Brexit referendum based on their children's wishes.
If so the ramifications for the US election will be huge
Nasdaq 100 is down 1650 points from its peak of 20,690 on July 10th. And last night
"Tokyo’s benchmark Nikkei 225 lost more than 1,000 points at one stage as pessimism set in around the so-called “Magnificent Seven” group of megacap companies on Wall Street.
The world’s only $3 trillion companies all dragged down markets, with Nvidia dropping 6.8pc, Apple down 2.9pc and Microsoft down 3.6pc. Tesla fell 12pc."
[The cause was Tesla and Alphabet (google) profits matching reality not insanity]
We will have to see. The US bond markets made some interesting moves yesterday, there was a massive move in the yield curve. 2Y is now above 10Y. But we have been here before many times.
Lots of chatter now that the Fed will cut this month.
I cannot see how Trumps isolationism and plans to weaponise the dollar through devalution could do anything positive.
Also whoever wins need to do something about the debt instead of just adding to it.
The political and economic volatility elsewhere is starting to make Britain look like a bit of a safe haven for investment, now the moron premium has gone and the dullness dividend kicks in. So says the Telegraph:
Yes, this was happening prior to the election as people and markets were factoring in a change of government,
Let's hope that Rachel Reeves is smart enough not to scare the horses. I think she is.
We have been undervalued for a while and if we don't value our businesses others will. Hence the bids for some from overseas.
One way that Labour are lucky is that if you are part of a group being chased by a crocodile, you don't need to be faster than the crocodile, just faster than the slowest person in the group.
Compared with the likes of France, our problems are minor and politics stable.
Sitting in the blissful sunshine of peaceful, almost Edenic Aveyron, the UK looks like a basket case of bad weather and brutal knife crime
It’s an unfair POV but it is hard to avoid
My daughter’s only experience of France til this summer was a depressing school trip to wintry Paris. She thought all of France was like that
Yesterday, after ten days touring Provence and Occitanie she spontaneously said “why is Britain so hideous. All our towns are ugly”
England is around 130k square km; Metropolitan France around 550k. That's half of the answer, I think ?
Yes. Plus the Industrial Revolution. Plus the Luftwaffe
But we have done an awful lot of it to ourselves. Far too much immigration adding to the overcrowding. Hideous post war architecture now compounded by hideous new town red brick Barratt home horrors. An apparent inability to make town centres “nice”.
Also an absurd political aversion to rebuilding bombed towns because “that’s pastiche”. Yet the French did it in st Malo and the poles in Warsaw and now we marvel at how beautiful they are
Britain has been governed by cretins (of all stripes) since about 1910
It was the industrial revolution which created the wealth that led to Victorian town halls, market places, museums and banks being built.
All those greco-roman style civic buildings which still look impressive in town centres.
Very true. Look at pictures of industrial revolution cities like Manchester or Leeds from the Edwardian era. A beautiful, fine, coherent streetscape. No plate glass windows at street level, no roll shutters, almost no graffiti or litter.
Mind you, some of the housing stock was hideous. We venerate Victorian terraces because it's the better ones which remain: many lived in truly awful conditions.
Even there, though, a mixed picture: this photo from Halifax in 1965 is currently doing the rounds. Yes, the women look prematurely old and haggard (this goes back to a conversation we had on here the other day). But marvel at how clean everything is.
Whereabouts in Halifax is that ? I don't recognise it.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
Call me a grumpy old cynic, but is suspect that in the Vance Version, separated parents have shown their unfitness to vote. Paterfamilias who are wealthy enough to have many many children, on the other hand...
"Votes for kids: why we should be giving children a say in elections
Many want the voting age to be lowered further, to 12 or even 6-year-olds. But any age higher than 0 leaves millions of child citizens without representation of their interests. That problem can be solved by giving children proxy votes from birth, to be cast by their primary carers. We can combine this with any voting age we deem right."
I have no particular evidence for this, but instinctively it feels like there would be a slightly higher tendency of deciding your children's votes for them among left wing parents.
Nah, it’ll be wealthy parents who would have the power.
My sister and her husband voted in the Brexit referendum based on their children's wishes.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
Call me a grumpy old cynic, but is suspect that in the Vance Version, separated parents have shown their unfitness to vote. Paterfamilias who are wealthy enough to have many many children, on the other hand...
That actually brings up some edge cases: who gets the vote in the case of separated parents, who might have joint custody and very different political views?
And what about children in care? Do they not get votes?
"The right to vote is an inherent right of all citizens, and the first and most important marker of the capacity to participate in the setting of social priorities.
Children should be given that right from birth. But until they reach the age of majority it should be exercised by proxy with the custodial parent or parents given an extra vote for every child under their guardianship."
"My name is Miles Corak. I am a professor with The Graduate Center of the City University of New York, trained in labour economics, and working on child rights, poverty, immigration, social and economic mobility, unemployment, and social policy."
That is an interesting idea. I instinctively bridle against it but then realise I can't find any reasonable arguments against it. My main argument against reducing the voting age to 16 is lack of maturity and responsibility. But someone else exercising that vote on behalf of the minor removes those objections.
I would have to consider it more but I think my first instictive response was probably wrong.
So what are they saying? If a parent has five kids they get to have five votes?
I assume that is the natural conclusion of the argument. Obviously in our rather fractured society today there are lots of issues that would have to be resolved and it may well end up being impractical but I certainly don't think it should simply be ignored as a suggestion out of hand.
I suppose you could say that if you have five children you have five times the stake in the future. It would radically alter the political dynamic though - think of all those child-benefit goodies the politicians would be showering on the electorate.
When I looked at the numbers, propensity to vote correlated with deprivation at a parliamentary seat level of r^2 = 0.7 - a more detailed analysis would likely imv reveal an even higher correlation. You can see which party racked up the really big numbers of eligible to vote in their seat - the Lib Dems whose seats are the most priveliged. I *think* Labour are 1 with Reform 2 in loads of deprived seats so if this effect isn't being taken into account in polling sufficiently the polls will overstate Labour and Reform, whilst understating the Conservatives generally except where they are facing the Lib Dems...
If so the ramifications for the US election will be huge
Nasdaq 100 is down 1650 points from its peak of 20,690 on July 10th. And last night
"Tokyo’s benchmark Nikkei 225 lost more than 1,000 points at one stage as pessimism set in around the so-called “Magnificent Seven” group of megacap companies on Wall Street.
The world’s only $3 trillion companies all dragged down markets, with Nvidia dropping 6.8pc, Apple down 2.9pc and Microsoft down 3.6pc. Tesla fell 12pc."
[The cause was Tesla and Alphabet (google) profits matching reality not insanity]
We will have to see. The US bond markets made some interesting moves yesterday, there was a massive move in the yield curve. 2Y is now above 10Y. But we have been here before many times.
Lots of chatter now that the Fed will cut this month.
I cannot see how Trumps isolationism and plans to weaponise the dollar through devalution could do anything positive.
Also whoever wins need to do something about the debt instead of just adding to it.
The political and economic volatility elsewhere is starting to make Britain look like a bit of a safe haven for investment, now the moron premium has gone and the dullness dividend kicks in. So says the Telegraph:
Yes, this was happening prior to the election as people and markets were factoring in a change of government,
Let's hope that Rachel Reeves is smart enough not to scare the horses. I think she is.
We have been undervalued for a while and if we don't value our businesses others will. Hence the bids for some from overseas.
One way that Labour are lucky is that if you are part of a group being chased by a crocodile, you don't need to be faster than the crocodile, just faster than the slowest person in the group.
Compared with the likes of France, our problems are minor and politics stable.
Sitting in the blissful sunshine of peaceful, almost Edenic Aveyron, the UK looks like a basket case of bad weather and brutal knife crime
It’s an unfair POV but it is hard to avoid
My daughter’s only experience of France til this summer was a depressing school trip to wintry Paris. She thought all of France was like that
Yesterday, after ten days touring Provence and Occitanie she spontaneously said “why is Britain so hideous. All our towns are ugly”
England is around 130k square km; Metropolitan France around 550k. That's half of the answer, I think ?
Yes. Plus the Industrial Revolution. Plus the Luftwaffe
But we have done an awful lot of it to ourselves. Far too much immigration adding to the overcrowding. Hideous post war architecture now compounded by hideous new town red brick Barratt home horrors. An apparent inability to make town centres “nice”.
Also an absurd political aversion to rebuilding bombed towns because “that’s pastiche”. Yet the French did it in st Malo and the poles in Warsaw and now we marvel at how beautiful they are
Britain has been governed by cretins (of all stripes) since about 1910
It was the industrial revolution which created the wealth that led to Victorian town halls, market places, museums and banks being built.
All those greco-roman style civic buildings which still look impressive in town centres.
Very true. Look at pictures of industrial revolution cities like Manchester or Leeds from the Edwardian era. A beautiful, fine, coherent streetscape. No plate glass windows at street level, no roll shutters, almost no graffiti or litter.
Mind you, some of the housing stock was hideous. We venerate Victorian terraces because it's the better ones which remain: many lived in truly awful conditions.
Even there, though, a mixed picture: this photo from Halifax in 1965 is currently doing the rounds. Yes, the women look prematurely old and haggard (this goes back to a conversation we had on here the other day). But marvel at how clean everything is.
Whereabouts in Halifax is that ? I don't recognise it.
It is definitely not Halifax.
I found this, which is presumably from the same series.
There are still quite a few cobbled terraces in Halifax, but much shorter, and built of sandstone. Though back in the 60s it would have been black from a century's smoke, as was the case for all the West Riding industrial towns and cities.
"Votes for kids: why we should be giving children a say in elections
Many want the voting age to be lowered further, to 12 or even 6-year-olds. But any age higher than 0 leaves millions of child citizens without representation of their interests. That problem can be solved by giving children proxy votes from birth, to be cast by their primary carers. We can combine this with any voting age we deem right."
I have no particular evidence for this, but instinctively it feels like there would be a slightly higher tendency of deciding your children's votes for them among left wing parents.
Nah, it’ll be wealthy parents who would have the power.
My sister and her husband voted in the Brexit referendum based on their children's wishes.
Me too
And my grandparents. The most ardent Brexiteers but knew they wouldn't live to see us leave the EU and/or the effect of it.
We are going to see a lot more of this. Trump says many truly bizarre and delusional things but Biden gave him cover by consistently losing the plot. He's going to find taking on someone 19 years his junior a lot tougher, not because of anything she says or does, but because he will be far more exposed.
I can't stand Trump, but his opponents do need to understand that sort of thing is him joking - and it's not a bad little one liner. He knows his own well-deserved reputation for braggadocio, and leans into it for comic effect. Opponents do risk appearing humourless by getting up in arms about it.
He is good at golf for his age though.
I hope that's a quip .
Just as owning the pageant 'allows' him to wander around inspecting the teenage girls getting dressed in the back, owning the golf-club lets him nobble the tournament - usually by creating a one man category.
His round with Bryson DeChambeau is currently a viral hit on YouTube:
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
Call me a grumpy old cynic, but is suspect that in the Vance Version, separated parents have shown their unfitness to vote. Paterfamilias who are wealthy enough to have many many children, on the other hand...
That actually brings up some edge cases: who gets the vote in the case of separated parents, who might have joint custody and very different political views?
And what about children in care? Do they not get votes?
Half vote deals with first case.
The children in care is more interesting. Haven't a clue.
We are going to see a lot more of this. Trump says many truly bizarre and delusional things but Biden gave him cover by consistently losing the plot. He's going to find taking on someone 19 years his junior a lot tougher, not because of anything she says or does, but because he will be far more exposed.
I can't stand Trump, but his opponents do need to understand that sort of thing is him joking - and it's not a bad little one liner. He knows his own well-deserved reputation for braggadocio, and leans into it for comic effect. Opponents do risk appearing humourless by getting up in arms about it.
He is good at golf for his age though.
I hope that's a quip .
Just as owning the pageant 'allows' him to wander around inspecting the teenage girls getting dressed in the back, owning the golf-club lets him nobble the tournament - usually by creating a one man category.
His round with Bryson DeChambeau is currently a viral hit on YouTube:
Some more of the the refurbs starting to come on stream.
The Netherlands and Denmark will hand over 14 Leopard 2A4 tanks to Ukraine by the end of this summer, which they bought last year, the Dutch Ministry of Defense reports.
Russia still has a large numerical advantage in terms of what they can reactivate from storage. But the mix is getting increasingly older, with the proportion of (eg) T62s seen on the front sharply increasing.
We are going to see a lot more of this. Trump says many truly bizarre and delusional things but Biden gave him cover by consistently losing the plot. He's going to find taking on someone 19 years his junior a lot tougher, not because of anything she says or does, but because he will be far more exposed.
I can't stand Trump, but his opponents do need to understand that sort of thing is him joking - and it's not a bad little one liner. He knows his own well-deserved reputation for braggadocio, and leans into it for comic effect. Opponents do risk appearing humourless by getting up in arms about it.
He is good at golf for his age though.
I hope that's a quip .
Just as owning the pageant 'allows' him to wander around inspecting the teenage girls getting dressed in the back, owning the golf-club lets him nobble the tournament - usually by creating a one man category.
His round with Bryson DeChambeau is currently a viral hit on YouTube:
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future. ...
And when they achieve their majority they can vote then. This is a stupid idea. Democracy is about counting (adult) heads, not weighting them. Childless head counts exactly the same as fecund head.
This is the picnic my daughter and I had last night. About five minutes walk from our lovely stone cottage. I can see why she feels Brent Cross lacks something in comparison
What’s more this is just a slice of the view. It was like that if not more magnificent to the left and right. And there are maybe 1000 square km of this is Aveyron. Ravishing valleys and gorgeous stone villages - entirely unspoiled - and pretty little towns with sunny piazzas and sparkling rivers. And plunging gorges and exquisite Templar citadels and roads with zero pot holes and BARELY ANY TOURISTS
Terrible restaurant food tho. That hasn’t improved (hence the picnics)
"Votes for kids: why we should be giving children a say in elections
Many want the voting age to be lowered further, to 12 or even 6-year-olds. But any age higher than 0 leaves millions of child citizens without representation of their interests. That problem can be solved by giving children proxy votes from birth, to be cast by their primary carers. We can combine this with any voting age we deem right."
I have no particular evidence for this, but instinctively it feels like there would be a slightly higher tendency of deciding your children's votes for them among left wing parents.
What happens when parents have differing political views, who decides the child's vote then ? I mean of course it should be discussed between the parents (It would be in our case) but if parents are separated and have different views, does the child's vote simply become an extension of whichever parent is the primary carer at the time ?
Indeed, life as usual tends to be complicated rather than straightforward.
My father was a tartan Tory SNP (prewoke edition) supporter who referred completely unironically to serving queen/king and country (both in his case) and loved Margaret Thatcher, my mother was a bohemian Labour voting Unionist who thought Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown were the bees knees. Unsurprisingly they seperated when I was quite young, and the thought of them discussing how my vote should be allocated gives me a headache.
However it has given me a rich smorgasbord of political views from which to draw sustenance.
This is the picnic my daughter and I had last night. About five minutes walk from our lovely stone cottage. I can see why she feels Brent Cross lacks something in comparison
What’s more this is just a slice of the view. It was like that if not more magnificent to the left and right. And there are maybe 1000 square km of this is Aveyron. Ravishing valleys and gorgeous stone villages - entirely unspoiled - and pretty little towns with sunny piazzas and sparkling rivers. And plunging gorges and exquisite Templar citadels and roads with zero pot holes and BARELY ANY TOURISTS
Terrible restaurant food tho. That hasn’t improved (hence the picnics)
Are you anywhere near Restaurant Bras in Lagouiole? Admittedly not affordable brasserie fare.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future. ...
And when they achieve their majority they can vote then. This is a stupid idea. Democracy is about counting (adult) heads, not weighting them. Childless head counts exactly the same as fecund head.
This isn't an argument. All you've done is define democracy as adults voting* and then said children voting violates this. Well yeah but so?
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future. ...
And when they achieve their majority they can vote then. This is a stupid idea. Democracy is about counting (adult) heads, not weighting them. Childless head counts exactly the same as fecund head.
This isn't an argument. All you've done is define democracy as adults voting* and then said children voting violates this. Well yeah but so?
If so the ramifications for the US election will be huge
Nasdaq 100 is down 1650 points from its peak of 20,690 on July 10th. And last night
"Tokyo’s benchmark Nikkei 225 lost more than 1,000 points at one stage as pessimism set in around the so-called “Magnificent Seven” group of megacap companies on Wall Street.
The world’s only $3 trillion companies all dragged down markets, with Nvidia dropping 6.8pc, Apple down 2.9pc and Microsoft down 3.6pc. Tesla fell 12pc."
[The cause was Tesla and Alphabet (google) profits matching reality not insanity]
We will have to see. The US bond markets made some interesting moves yesterday, there was a massive move in the yield curve. 2Y is now above 10Y. But we have been here before many times.
Lots of chatter now that the Fed will cut this month.
I cannot see how Trumps isolationism and plans to weaponise the dollar through devalution could do anything positive.
Also whoever wins need to do something about the debt instead of just adding to it.
The political and economic volatility elsewhere is starting to make Britain look like a bit of a safe haven for investment, now the moron premium has gone and the dullness dividend kicks in. So says the Telegraph:
Yes, this was happening prior to the election as people and markets were factoring in a change of government,
Let's hope that Rachel Reeves is smart enough not to scare the horses. I think she is.
We have been undervalued for a while and if we don't value our businesses others will. Hence the bids for some from overseas.
One way that Labour are lucky is that if you are part of a group being chased by a crocodile, you don't need to be faster than the crocodile, just faster than the slowest person in the group.
Compared with the likes of France, our problems are minor and politics stable.
Sitting in the blissful sunshine of peaceful, almost Edenic Aveyron, the UK looks like a basket case of bad weather and brutal knife crime
It’s an unfair POV but it is hard to avoid
My daughter’s only experience of France til this summer was a depressing school trip to wintry Paris. She thought all of France was like that
Yesterday, after ten days touring Provence and Occitanie she spontaneously said “why is Britain so hideous. All our towns are ugly”
I'd wonder about the completeness of her sample of British towns.
I think both Betjeman and Jenkins wrote of the attractiveness of "Northern Market Towns"; by and large I think they are right, and Jenkins is far better writing about things more than 50 years old, than harrumphing away like a Woosterite Great Uncle.
Yes, I believe you (@Leon) have plans to visit the North of England this Autumn? Maybe you could bring her with you. And show her, inter alia, Chester, Nantwich, Clitheroe, Lancaster, Lytham, Kendal, Port Sunlight, Knutsford, Buxton, Lymm, Kirkby Lonsdale, Sandbach, York, Harrogate, Knaresborough, Skipton, Pickering, Ripon, Bedale, Northallerton, Thirsk, Easingwold, Stokesley, Yarm, Richmond, Barnard Castle, Durham, Whitby, Beverley, Hexham and Alnwick. Plus also the Lake District, the Yorkshire Dales, the Peak District, the North York Moors and Northumberland National Parks. Britain still has a lot going for it!
There are a lot of very nice English towns, but there's a lot of crappy ones too. Horrible 1960s brutalism really messed up the country. We should really learn from Poland's beautification of their Cold War architecture.
Wasn’t just horrible 1960s brutalism. Just cheap poor quality design and planning that encouraged it. In my small Shropshire town, the old Victorian town hall was knocked down and replaced by a square flat roofed store. The memorial at the bottom of the High Street demolished. Still lots of nice Georgian and Victorian mansions left but where they disappeared it doesn’t feel like a great deal of thought went into the replacements.
Here's a question. To spend a fiver to clear off RFK at 200-1, or wait for him to go higher. Unlike Obama and Clinton (The other remaining float barnacles) there's no particular reason for him to head to 1000 (They probably won't lol) once the conventions are done. I've laid him at an average of 24 - so clearly for whatever reason some thought he must have had a chance earlier on in the race..
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future. ...
And when they achieve their majority they can vote then. This is a stupid idea. Democracy is about counting (adult) heads, not weighting them. Childless head counts exactly the same as fecund head.
This isn't an argument. All you've done is define democracy as adults voting* and then said children voting violates this. Well yeah but so?
If we are going to weigh the demos, how about 1 extra vote per £1k tax paid?
If you send your child up chimneys then they would get a vote.
We are going to see a lot more of this. Trump says many truly bizarre and delusional things but Biden gave him cover by consistently losing the plot. He's going to find taking on someone 19 years his junior a lot tougher, not because of anything she says or does, but because he will be far more exposed.
I can't stand Trump, but his opponents do need to understand that sort of thing is him joking - and it's not a bad little one liner. He knows his own well-deserved reputation for braggadocio, and leans into it for comic effect. Opponents do risk appearing humourless by getting up in arms about it.
He is good at golf for his age though.
I hope that's a quip .
Just as owning the pageant 'allows' him to wander around inspecting the teenage girls getting dressed in the back, owning the golf-club lets him nobble the tournament - usually by creating a one man category.
His round with Bryson DeChambeau is currently a viral hit on YouTube:
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
By this way of thinking shouldn't votes be adjusted by age so that as you get older (with less future and more past) your vote is downweighted?
Eg at 16 you get 10 votes, then lose one every 10 years until at 106 you have just the one. At 116 you wouldn't be able to vote at all but that seems harsh, so just stick with one at that point and forwards. Perhaps even go with two as a nice gesture - it won't impact many people after all.
"Votes for kids: why we should be giving children a say in elections
Many want the voting age to be lowered further, to 12 or even 6-year-olds. But any age higher than 0 leaves millions of child citizens without representation of their interests. That problem can be solved by giving children proxy votes from birth, to be cast by their primary carers. We can combine this with any voting age we deem right."
I have no particular evidence for this, but instinctively it feels like there would be a slightly higher tendency of deciding your children's votes for them among left wing parents.
Nah, it’ll be wealthy parents who would have the power.
My sister and her husband voted in the Brexit referendum based on their children's wishes.
Where I really lost it with my Old Man over Brexit was when he claimed he was voting out for the benefit of his Grandkids.
"Votes for kids: why we should be giving children a say in elections
Many want the voting age to be lowered further, to 12 or even 6-year-olds. But any age higher than 0 leaves millions of child citizens without representation of their interests. That problem can be solved by giving children proxy votes from birth, to be cast by their primary carers. We can combine this with any voting age we deem right."
I have no particular evidence for this, but instinctively it feels like there would be a slightly higher tendency of deciding your children's votes for them among left wing parents.
Nah, it’ll be wealthy parents who would have the power.
My sister and her husband voted in the Brexit referendum based on their children's wishes.
Where I really lost it with my Old Man over Brexit was when he claimed he was voting out for the benefit of his Grandkids.
I worked with someone who voted Brexit purely because it was the best for his kids future, in his view.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
I briefly had three children but none of them are alive now. Would I get the extra votes despite my children not being the future?
I can't think how painful that be, and am so so sorry for your loss.
It gets a bit raw in discussions like this I have to confess. The assumption that childless adults are voluntarily in that position and have an absence of empathy or interest in the future. Usually Tories like Leadsom and sundry other right wingers on here.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
By this way of thinking shouldn't votes be adjusted by age so that as you get older (with less future and more past) your vote is downweighted?
Eg at 16 you get 10 votes, then lose one every 10 years until at 106 you have just the one. At 116 you wouldn't be able to vote at all but that seems harsh, so just stick with one at that point and forwards. Perhaps even go with two as a nice gesture - it won't impact many people after all.
The reverse is de facto the case in the UK, 65+ turn out to vote 20% more than the young so in broad terms have 1.2 votes each and the advantage is enough to buy the triple lock. Your proposal would presumably have the inverse effect. Tempered by the fact that youngies eventually become oldies but not tempered very much because 16 year olds don't actually believe they are destined to be 66 year olds
We are going to see a lot more of this. Trump says many truly bizarre and delusional things but Biden gave him cover by consistently losing the plot. He's going to find taking on someone 19 years his junior a lot tougher, not because of anything she says or does, but because he will be far more exposed.
I can't stand Trump, but his opponents do need to understand that sort of thing is him joking - and it's not a bad little one liner. He knows his own well-deserved reputation for braggadocio, and leans into it for comic effect. Opponents do risk appearing humourless by getting up in arms about it.
He is good at golf for his age though.
I hope that's a quip .
Just as owning the pageant 'allows' him to wander around inspecting the teenage girls getting dressed in the back, owning the golf-club lets him nobble the tournament - usually by creating a one man category.
His round with Bryson DeChambeau is currently a viral hit on YouTube:
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
I briefly had three children but none of them are alive now. Would I get the extra votes despite my children not being the future?
I can't think how painful that be, and am so so sorry for your loss.
It gets a bit raw in discussions like this I have to confess. The assumption that childless adults are voluntarily in that position and have an absence of empathy or interest in the future. Usually Tories like Leadsom and sundry other right wingers on here.
Here's a question. To spend a fiver to clear off RFK at 200-1, or wait for him to go higher. Unlike Obama and Clinton (The other remaining float barnacles) there's no particular reason for him to head to 1000 (They probably won't lol) once the conventions are done. I've laid him at an average of 24 - so clearly for whatever reason some thought he must have had a chance earlier on in the race..
Decisions, decisions.
24 v 200 is a good close imo.
Btw I know a trick to place bets of less than £1 on betfair exchange if anybody's interested and doesn't already know.
We are going to see a lot more of this. Trump says many truly bizarre and delusional things but Biden gave him cover by consistently losing the plot. He's going to find taking on someone 19 years his junior a lot tougher, not because of anything she says or does, but because he will be far more exposed.
I can't stand Trump, but his opponents do need to understand that sort of thing is him joking - and it's not a bad little one liner. He knows his own well-deserved reputation for braggadocio, and leans into it for comic effect. Opponents do risk appearing humourless by getting up in arms about it.
He is good at golf for his age though.
I hope that's a quip .
Just as owning the pageant 'allows' him to wander around inspecting the teenage girls getting dressed in the back, owning the golf-club lets him nobble the tournament - usually by creating a one man category.
His round with Bryson DeChambeau is currently a viral hit on YouTube:
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
By this way of thinking shouldn't votes be adjusted by age so that as you get older (with less future and more past) your vote is downweighted?
Eg at 16 you get 10 votes, then lose one every 10 years until at 106 you have just the one. At 116 you wouldn't be able to vote at all but that seems harsh, so just stick with one at that point and forwards. Perhaps even go with two as a nice gesture - it won't impact many people after all.
The reverse is de facto the case in the UK, 65+ turn out to vote 20% more than the young so in broad terms have 1.2 votes each and the advantage is enough to buy the triple lock. Your proposal would presumably have the inverse effect. Tempered by the fact that youngies eventually become oldies but not tempered very much because 16 year olds don't actually believe they are destined to be 66 year olds
True. I didn't have a lifespan at all when I was 16. I was living forever.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
I briefly had three children but none of them are alive now. Would I get the extra votes despite my children not being the future?
I can't think how painful that be, and am so so sorry for your loss.
It gets a bit raw in discussions like this I have to confess. The assumption that childless adults are voluntarily in that position and have an absence of empathy or interest in the future. Usually Tories like Leadsom and sundry other right wingers on here.
Indeed, especially the assumption that there are no nieces or nephews.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
I briefly had three children but none of them are alive now. Would I get the extra votes despite my children not being the future?
I can't think how painful that be, and am so so sorry for your loss.
It gets a bit raw in discussions like this I have to confess. The assumption that childless adults are voluntarily in that position and have an absence of empathy or interest in the future. Usually Tories like Leadsom and sundry other right wingers on here.
It's pretty shitty stuff.
For context on Vance's views, there's also this.
J.D. Vance broke off talks on bipartisan childbirth plan amid VP search https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/07/24/jd-vance-bipartisan-child-plan-trump/ Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) broke off talks on bipartisan legislation to cut childbirth costs around the same time Donald Trump’s campaign intensified its consideration of Vance as a running mate, according to four people and a draft of the plan obtained by The Washington Post.
The plan would have prohibited insurance companies from charging new mothers co-pays or other expenses related to childbirth, marking a clear break with GOP orthodoxy. Although Vance’s team started working with the office of Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) on the bill in June 2023, talks stopped this June and have not resumed..
Are Reform trying to sound respectable, following the Nigel's maiden speech?
This is a good Q&A from my MP Lee Anderson, and the Health Secretary about our local hospital - which is highly rated. There's a bit of political prickle, but also useful information. https://x.com/LeeAndersonMP_/status/1815723186920526001
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
I briefly had three children but none of them are alive now. Would I get the extra votes despite my children not being the future?
I can't think how painful that be, and am so so sorry for your loss.
It gets a bit raw in discussions like this I have to confess. The assumption that childless adults are voluntarily in that position and have an absence of empathy or interest in the future. Usually Tories like Leadsom and sundry other right wingers on here.
Hear, hear!
I think most discussions that touch on the idea one segment of society is somehow worth more than another are fraught with danger. This is an example, and @DougSeal 's comment brings it home. There's a difference between proposals that are based on one group being underrepresented and therefore needing equal treatment, and those based on one group being more deserving and needing premium treatment.
My understanding of the role of voting and elections in a Democracy is not that they will always deliver the best rulers. It's that voting and elections provide consent, and without consent there is always an inherent contradiction in the way a nation is ruled. This also applies to extension of or changing of the franchise. It should be consensual.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
If you're going down that route then that would be a neat solution.
Obviously in Vance-world, Dad gets the kids' votes. And the wife's vote - or even wives' votes.
But what about Granddad, the patriarch? If one is denying adult females any agency, then one might as well go almost the whole Roman thing* and give Grandpaw all the votes.
*As shown in preferred architecture, senatorial constitution, and so on.
Are Reform trying to sound respectable, following the Nigel's maiden speech?
This is a good Q&A from my MP Lee Anderson, and the Health Secretary about our local hospital - which is highly rated. There's a bit of political prickle, but also useful information. https://x.com/LeeAndersonMP_/status/1815723186920526001
I didn't realise the PFI involved renaming the hospital after a bakery business. Innovative way to get private sector investment in.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
If you're going down that route then that would be a neat solution.
Obviously in Vance-world, Dad gets the kids' votes. And the wife's vote - or even wives' votes.
But what about Granddad, the patriarch? If one is denying adult females any agency, then one might as well go almost the whole Roman thing* and give Grandpaw all the votes.
*As shown in preferred architecture, senatorial constitution, and so on.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
If you're going down that route then that would be a neat solution.
Obviously in Vance-world, Dad gets the kids' votes. And the wife's vote - or even wives' votes.
But what about Granddad, the patriarch? If one is denying adult females any agency, then one might as well go almost the whole Roman thing* and give Grandpaw all the votes.
*As shown in preferred architecture, senatorial constitution, and so on.
"Votes for kids: why we should be giving children a say in elections
Many want the voting age to be lowered further, to 12 or even 6-year-olds. But any age higher than 0 leaves millions of child citizens without representation of their interests. That problem can be solved by giving children proxy votes from birth, to be cast by their primary carers. We can combine this with any voting age we deem right."
I have no particular evidence for this, but instinctively it feels like there would be a slightly higher tendency of deciding your children's votes for them among left wing parents.
Nah, it’ll be wealthy parents who would have the power.
My sister and her husband voted in the Brexit referendum based on their children's wishes.
Where I really lost it with my Old Man over Brexit was when he claimed he was voting out for the benefit of his Grandkids.
I worked with someone who voted Brexit purely because it was the best for his kids future, in his view.
Why else would people vote for Brexit? People didn't vote for it out of nihilism or spite. My view is that my kids and grandkids will be better off with the UK out of the EU. (Or, less simply, that the risk/reward balance of leaving is more favourable than the risk/reward balance of staying in.)
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
If you're going down that route then that would be a neat solution.
Obviously in Vance-world, Dad gets the kids' votes. And the wife's vote - or even wives' votes.
But what about Granddad, the patriarch? If one is denying adult females any agency, then one might as well go almost the whole Roman thing* and give Grandpaw all the votes.
*As shown in preferred architecture, senatorial constitution, and so on.
If we gave Grandpa the votes in my family the result would be almost exactly the same as the actual one. Could have saved us all a bit of time.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
I briefly had three children but none of them are alive now. Would I get the extra votes despite my children not being the future?
I can't think how painful that be, and am so so sorry for your loss.
It gets a bit raw in discussions like this I have to confess. The assumption that childless adults are voluntarily in that position and have an absence of empathy or interest in the future. Usually Tories like Leadsom and sundry other right wingers on here.
Even where it is voluntary I don't think it indicates a lack of concern for what happens in the future.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
I briefly had three children but none of them are alive now. Would I get the extra votes despite my children not being the future?
I can't think how painful that be, and am so so sorry for your loss.
It gets a bit raw in discussions like this I have to confess. The assumption that childless adults are voluntarily in that position and have an absence of empathy or interest in the future. Usually Tories like Leadsom and sundry other right wingers on here.
I'm sorry if I've opened up old wounds. I can't imagine what losing 3 kids feels like.
While I can't speak for Vance's intent, for me and others this is not about denigrating childless adults - it's a way of enabling true universal suffrage while also recognising the reality that young children are not actually capable of casting a vote yet - so they need parents/guardians to do it on their behalf.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future. ...
And when they achieve their majority they can vote then. This is a stupid idea. Democracy is about counting (adult) heads, not weighting them. Childless head counts exactly the same as fecund head.
This isn't an argument. All you've done is define democracy as adults voting* and then said children voting violates this. Well yeah but so?
If we are going to weigh the demos, how about 1 extra vote per £1k tax paid?
If you send your child up chimneys then they would get a vote.
It isn't about weighting the demos. This is a misunderstanding. It's giving a voice to children, not an extra voice to their parents.
"Votes for kids: why we should be giving children a say in elections
Many want the voting age to be lowered further, to 12 or even 6-year-olds. But any age higher than 0 leaves millions of child citizens without representation of their interests. That problem can be solved by giving children proxy votes from birth, to be cast by their primary carers. We can combine this with any voting age we deem right."
I have no particular evidence for this, but instinctively it feels like there would be a slightly higher tendency of deciding your children's votes for them among left wing parents.
Even without direct control, it has long been known that the major determinant of voting behaviour is which way their parents voted. Of course this also wraps up socio-economic status.
"Votes for kids: why we should be giving children a say in elections
Many want the voting age to be lowered further, to 12 or even 6-year-olds. But any age higher than 0 leaves millions of child citizens without representation of their interests. That problem can be solved by giving children proxy votes from birth, to be cast by their primary carers. We can combine this with any voting age we deem right."
I have no particular evidence for this, but instinctively it feels like there would be a slightly higher tendency of deciding your children's votes for them among left wing parents.
Nah, it’ll be wealthy parents who would have the power.
My sister and her husband voted in the Brexit referendum based on their children's wishes.
Where I really lost it with my Old Man over Brexit was when he claimed he was voting out for the benefit of his Grandkids.
I worked with someone who voted Brexit purely because it was the best for his kids future, in his view.
Why else would people vote for Brexit? People didn't vote for it out of nihilism or spite. My view is that my kids and grandkids will be better off with the UK out of the EU. (Or, less simply, that the risk/reward balance of leaving is more favourable than the risk/reward balance of staying in.)
But what's the difference between "best for my kids and grandkids" and "best for the country"?
How's everyone playing the (revised !) POTUS at the moment. I think Harris is the more attractive betting proposition at the moment, the risks at current prices (1.62/2.84) seem lopsided toward Trump for me. I've shifted my book toward Harris for the moment.
The nice thing is there's still miles to go - I'd have thought at some point Trump's price would rise even if he ultimately wins...
On the election night programmes, we could see the exit poll being updated as results flowed in. As with all polls, you can't fix bad sampling by weighting.
How's everyone playing the (revised !) POTUS at the moment. I think Harris is the more attractive betting proposition at the moment, the risks at current prices (1.62/2.84) seem lopsided toward Trump for me. I've shifted my book toward Harris for the moment.
The nice thing is there's still miles to go - I'd have thought at some point Trump's price would rise even if he ultimately wins...
Yes, I said I'm currently a buyer above 2.8 - and I've for now exhausted my limited firepower. I'd trade out under 2.2, but I think we're unlikely to see that without much stronger polling - at which point I likely wouldn't be a seller anyway...
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future. ...
And when they achieve their majority they can vote then. This is a stupid idea. Democracy is about counting (adult) heads, not weighting them. Childless head counts exactly the same as fecund head.
This isn't an argument. All you've done is define democracy as adults voting* and then said children voting violates this. Well yeah but so?
If we are going to weigh the demos, how about 1 extra vote per £1k tax paid?
If you send your child up chimneys then they would get a vote.
It isn't about weighting the demos. This is a misunderstanding. It's giving a voice to children, not an extra voice to their parents.
That simply isn't true. Giving additional votes to parents is giving the parents additional votes, not the children. Maybe a handful would take into their offspring's opinion, but I am certain vote-splitting would be minimal. In any event, young children (and many older ones) don't have political opinions.
The natural extension of this, for some Republicans, is absolutely guaranteed to be weighting based on "stake" in society as measured by tax, property ownership and so on. And there is, in reality, very little to distinguish the arguments.
DJT needs to win any four out of NV, AZ, WI, MI, PA and GA.
It's hard to see KH stopping that. On paper, she's got no fucking chance but she might able to save one of them with a shewd Veep pick.
Trump 47 will be a mega LOL, so at least we can enjoy that once the Centrist Dads get over being dickhurt.
Hence Harris should pick Shapiro the Pennsylvania governor and then Trump has to win Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and one of Michigan or Georgia if she holds Pennsylvania
I agree with you: I don't think Kelly would hold AZ for Harris, but I do think Shapiro wins Pennsylvania.
And Pennsylvania is a big state; it means that Trump has to nearly sweep the board of the other in play states.
Do you think Shapiro will make all the difference between her taking, or not taking PA ? I'm still unconvinced by that kind of argument.
I think the last VP that managed to deliver their state in a close election was LBJ in 1960. A lot of VPs have disappointed since then.
Gore delivered Tennessee in 1992 and 1996, although he lost it himself in 2000.
DJT needs to win any four out of NV, AZ, WI, MI, PA and GA.
It's hard to see KH stopping that. On paper, she's got no fucking chance but she might able to save one of them with a shewd Veep pick.
Trump 47 will be a mega LOL, so at least we can enjoy that once the Centrist Dads get over being dickhurt.
Hence Harris should pick Shapiro the Pennsylvania governor and then Trump has to win Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and one of Michigan or Georgia if she holds Pennsylvania
I agree with you: I don't think Kelly would hold AZ for Harris, but I do think Shapiro wins Pennsylvania.
And Pennsylvania is a big state; it means that Trump has to nearly sweep the board of the other in play states.
Do you think Shapiro will make all the difference between her taking, or not taking PA ? I'm still unconvinced by that kind of argument.
I think the last VP that managed to deliver their state in a close election was LBJ in 1960. A lot of VPs have disappointed since then.
Gore delivered Tennessee in 1992 and 1996, although he lost it himself in 2000.
Which raises the question whether he delivered it in the first place. Would Clinton have won there anyway ?
DJT needs to win any four out of NV, AZ, WI, MI, PA and GA.
It's hard to see KH stopping that. On paper, she's got no fucking chance but she might able to save one of them with a shewd Veep pick.
Trump 47 will be a mega LOL, so at least we can enjoy that once the Centrist Dads get over being dickhurt.
Hence Harris should pick Shapiro the Pennsylvania governor and then Trump has to win Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and one of Michigan or Georgia if she holds Pennsylvania
I agree with you: I don't think Kelly would hold AZ for Harris, but I do think Shapiro wins Pennsylvania.
And Pennsylvania is a big state; it means that Trump has to nearly sweep the board of the other in play states.
Do you think Shapiro will make all the difference between her taking, or not taking PA ? I'm still unconvinced by that kind of argument.
I think the last VP that managed to deliver their state in a close election was LBJ in 1960. A lot of VPs have disappointed since then.
Gore delivered Tennessee in 1992 and 1996, although he lost it himself in 2000.
Did he, though? Clinton was Governor of Arkansas, played on his Southern credentials, and won several nearby states that another Democrat wouldn't, including Missouri, Lousiana and Kentucky in addition to Tennessee. Gore won none of them, and indeed nor did Kerry or Obama (although they'd been trending away).
Here's a modest proposal for the new government's Health and Business Secretaries.
It's hypothesised that the new obesity drugs might bankrupt the health services of several western countries - to the extent that some are suggesting that governments actually but the pharmas that produce them, not entirely tongue in cheek:
To get a fair deal on Wegovy, buying Novo Nordisk might not be Medicare’s worst option https://www.statnews.com/2024/07/23/wegovy-medicare-medicaid-costs-why-not-buy-manufacturer-novo-nordisk/ Medicare and Medicaid are facing a familiar quandary: how to provide coverage for new weight loss drugs with price tags that could effectively bankrupt the federal government’s health care budget while simultaneously ensuring continuous coverage for all other health care services used by millions of Americans.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced in March 2024 that it would cover Wegovy (semaglutide), a new and expensive weight loss medication, for beneficiaries with cardiovascular disease and obesity. Efforts by the U.S. House of Representatives could nudge CMS to cover it more broadly for people with obesity alone.
That would have a huge cost impact. Wegovy’s current list price in the United States is $1,349 per month. Medicare spending on this class of drugs, called GLP-1s, has increased from $57 million in 2018 to $5.7 billion in 2022, while Medicaid spending for these drugs increased from $383 million to $1.8 billion in that time period. A report by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) estimates that treating even half of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries with obesity would cost $166 billion per year, nearly the cost of total spending on all prescription drugs in 2022 ($175 billion).
In contrast, the United Kingdom pays $92 per month and Denmark (where Novo Nordisk is headquartered) pays $186 per month. In an analysis one of us (M.B.) conducted with several colleagues, the estimated manufacturing costs for a biosimilar Wegovy would be no more than $13 per month — one-hundredth the selling price. That’s far from a fair deal for Medicare and Medicaid...
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
I briefly had three children but none of them are alive now. Would I get the extra votes despite my children not being the future?
I can't think how painful that be, and am so so sorry for your loss.
It gets a bit raw in discussions like this I have to confess. The assumption that childless adults are voluntarily in that position and have an absence of empathy or interest in the future. Usually Tories like Leadsom and sundry other right wingers on here.
Even where it is voluntary I don't think it indicates a lack of concern for what happens in the future.
A concern for the future is one of the reasons I don't have children.
To be fair, if we'd had that system here Boris Johnson could have made a bigger contribution to keeping the Tories in power.
By Dumbosaurus's argument, Johnson would have been honour-bound to vote against himself as, by most accounts, those of his children old enough to have formed an opinion think he's a f***ing prick.
"Votes for kids: why we should be giving children a say in elections
Many want the voting age to be lowered further, to 12 or even 6-year-olds. But any age higher than 0 leaves millions of child citizens without representation of their interests. That problem can be solved by giving children proxy votes from birth, to be cast by their primary carers. We can combine this with any voting age we deem right."
I have no particular evidence for this, but instinctively it feels like there would be a slightly higher tendency of deciding your children's votes for them among left wing parents.
Nah, it’ll be wealthy parents who would have the power.
My sister and her husband voted in the Brexit referendum based on their children's wishes.
Where I really lost it with my Old Man over Brexit was when he claimed he was voting out for the benefit of his Grandkids.
I worked with someone who voted Brexit purely because it was the best for his kids future, in his view.
Why else would people vote for Brexit? People didn't vote for it out of nihilism or spite. My view is that my kids and grandkids will be better off with the UK out of the EU. (Or, less simply, that the risk/reward balance of leaving is more favourable than the risk/reward balance of staying in.)
But what's the difference between "best for my kids and grandkids" and "best for the country"?
What is the first saying that the second isn't?
Well it's very slight. What's best for my kids and grandkids is in general also better for everyone else's. My kids are still young - I'm not voting with the knowledge of, e.g., my kids will work in oil and gas, or banking, or science - I just want them to grow up in a democracy with a sound economy. But then I find it slightly surprising to hear people admit to voting for an option which will make them personally better off even at the expense of making the country as a whole worse off. I know some people do - but I don't think that's how democracy is supposed to work!
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future. ...
And when they achieve their majority they can vote then. This is a stupid idea. Democracy is about counting (adult) heads, not weighting them. Childless head counts exactly the same as fecund head.
This isn't an argument. All you've done is define democracy as adults voting* and then said children voting violates this. Well yeah but so?
If we are going to weigh the demos, how about 1 extra vote per £1k tax paid?
If you send your child up chimneys then they would get a vote.
It isn't about weighting the demos. This is a misunderstanding. It's giving a voice to children, not an extra voice to their parents.
That simply isn't true. Giving additional votes to parents is giving the parents additional votes, not the children. Maybe a handful would take into their offspring's opinion, but I am certain vote-splitting would be minimal. In any event, young children (and many older ones) don't have political opinions.
The natural extension of this, for some Republicans, is absolutely guaranteed to be weighting based on "stake" in society as measured by tax, property ownership and so on. And there is, in reality, very little to distinguish the arguments.
This sounds like the arguments against giving women the vote (and indeed there are abusive relationships where the husband controls her vote, particularly since postal voting was made so easy).
Vote splitting doesn't have to be minimal at all. Why do we allow proxy voting? Plenty of anecdotes here of casting "cancelling" votes here with someone else.
I don't agree it's the same argument at all as a "stake" based argument, at least not where I'm coming from. And Republicans being lunatics is just what they do, they'll always find a reason.
To be fair, if we'd had that system here Boris Johnson could have made a bigger contribution to keeping the Tories in power.
By Dumbosaurus's argument, Johnson would have been honour-bound to vote against himself as, by most accounts, those of his children old enough to have formed an opinion think he's a f***ing prick.
Correct and I hope he would have done, if that was their genuinely expressed opinion.
Here's a modest proposal for the new government's Health and Business Secretaries.
It's hypothesised that the new obesity drugs might bankrupt the health services of several western countries - to the extent that some are suggesting that governments actually but the pharmas that produce them, not entirely tongue in cheek:
To get a fair deal on Wegovy, buying Novo Nordisk might not be Medicare’s worst option https://www.statnews.com/2024/07/23/wegovy-medicare-medicaid-costs-why-not-buy-manufacturer-novo-nordisk/ Medicare and Medicaid are facing a familiar quandary: how to provide coverage for new weight loss drugs with price tags that could effectively bankrupt the federal government’s health care budget while simultaneously ensuring continuous coverage for all other health care services used by millions of Americans.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced in March 2024 that it would cover Wegovy (semaglutide), a new and expensive weight loss medication, for beneficiaries with cardiovascular disease and obesity. Efforts by the U.S. House of Representatives could nudge CMS to cover it more broadly for people with obesity alone.
That would have a huge cost impact. Wegovy’s current list price in the United States is $1,349 per month. Medicare spending on this class of drugs, called GLP-1s, has increased from $57 million in 2018 to $5.7 billion in 2022, while Medicaid spending for these drugs increased from $383 million to $1.8 billion in that time period. A report by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) estimates that treating even half of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries with obesity would cost $166 billion per year, nearly the cost of total spending on all prescription drugs in 2022 ($175 billion).
In contrast, the United Kingdom pays $92 per month and Denmark (where Novo Nordisk is headquartered) pays $186 per month. In an analysis one of us (M.B.) conducted with several colleagues, the estimated manufacturing costs for a biosimilar Wegovy would be no more than $13 per month — one-hundredth the selling price. That’s far from a fair deal for Medicare and Medicaid...
So even if we can continue paying a tenth of what the US does, it's still going to be pretty expensive for the NHS.
The UK pharmas (GSK and Astra Zeneca) don't have any promising examples of this class of obesity drugs in development.
There are, however, a couple being developed by US biotechs, the most promising of which is from a company called Viking Therapeutics - which so far look as though it will be significantly better than what's on the market.
I propose our government goes 50/50 with one of our pharmas to buy the company, in exchange for a few supply of the drug, and a small share of the profits. It would be a bit of a gamble - but GSK and/or AZN need to take such gambles anyway - and for an invesment of maybe £10bn in total (half from government) could save us at least ten times that much.
DJT needs to win any four out of NV, AZ, WI, MI, PA and GA.
It's hard to see KH stopping that. On paper, she's got no fucking chance but she might able to save one of them with a shewd Veep pick.
Trump 47 will be a mega LOL, so at least we can enjoy that once the Centrist Dads get over being dickhurt.
Hence Harris should pick Shapiro the Pennsylvania governor and then Trump has to win Arizona, Nevada, Wisconsin and one of Michigan or Georgia if she holds Pennsylvania
I agree with you: I don't think Kelly would hold AZ for Harris, but I do think Shapiro wins Pennsylvania.
And Pennsylvania is a big state; it means that Trump has to nearly sweep the board of the other in play states.
Do you think Shapiro will make all the difference between her taking, or not taking PA ? I'm still unconvinced by that kind of argument.
I think the last VP that managed to deliver their state in a close election was LBJ in 1960. A lot of VPs have disappointed since then.
Gore delivered Tennessee in 1992 and 1996, although he lost it himself in 2000.
Which raises the question whether he delivered it in the first place. Would Clinton have won there anyway ?
Probably not. The 1992 swing in Tennessee was much higher than across the country at large, and it was increasingly Republican by the 1980s. The three Gore campaign elections were something of an aberration from that point of view. Since 2000 it hasn’t even been competitive.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future. ...
And when they achieve their majority they can vote then. This is a stupid idea. Democracy is about counting (adult) heads, not weighting them. Childless head counts exactly the same as fecund head.
This isn't an argument. All you've done is define democracy as adults voting* and then said children voting violates this. Well yeah but so?
If we are going to weigh the demos, how about 1 extra vote per £1k tax paid?
If you send your child up chimneys then they would get a vote.
It isn't about weighting the demos. This is a misunderstanding. It's giving a voice to children, not an extra voice to their parents.
That simply isn't true. Giving additional votes to parents is giving the parents additional votes, not the children. Maybe a handful would take into their offspring's opinion, but I am certain vote-splitting would be minimal. In any event, young children (and many older ones) don't have political opinions.
The natural extension of this, for some Republicans, is absolutely guaranteed to be weighting based on "stake" in society as measured by tax, property ownership and so on. And there is, in reality, very little to distinguish the arguments.
I thought it was a great idea until I read all the comments from PBers. It's a lovely feeling having your mind changed sometimes.
To be fair, if we'd had that system here Boris Johnson could have made a bigger contribution to keeping the Tories in power.
By Dumbosaurus's argument, Johnson would have been honour-bound to vote against himself as, by most accounts, those of his children old enough to have formed an opinion think he's a f***ing prick.
Correct and I hope he would have done, if that was their genuinely expressed opinion.
How's everyone playing the (revised !) POTUS at the moment. I think Harris is the more attractive betting proposition at the moment, the risks at current prices (1.62/2.84) seem lopsided toward Trump for me. I've shifted my book toward Harris for the moment.
The nice thing is there's still miles to go - I'd have thought at some point Trump's price would rise even if he ultimately wins...
I agree because based on the (limited) polling we’re seeing so far we’re seeing enough states falling within MOE to indicate it could really go either way.
The big question is whether Harris can sustain the bounce (or even build on it). That feels to me incredibly difficult to judge right now. There’s a part of me that feels that after the newness wears off people will still see someone from the Biden administration and remember their reasons for not liking Harris. But then on the other hand there’s the chance Trump can’t find a proper response to her and now she has come into her own people start to like what they see and she can build on the momentum.
How's everyone playing the (revised !) POTUS at the moment. I think Harris is the more attractive betting proposition at the moment, the risks at current prices (1.62/2.84) seem lopsided toward Trump for me. I've shifted my book toward Harris for the moment.
The nice thing is there's still miles to go - I'd have thought at some point Trump's price would rise even if he ultimately wins...
I agree because based on the (limited) polling we’re seeing so far we’re seeing enough states falling within MOE to indicate it could really go either way.
The big question is whether Harris can sustain the bounce (or even build on it). That feels to me incredibly difficult to judge right now. There’s a part of me that feels that after the newness wears off people will still see someone from the Biden administration and remember their reasons for not liking Harris. But then on the other hand there’s the chance Trump can’t find a proper response to her and now she has come into her own people start to like what they see and she can build on the momentum.
VP appointment, Dem convention, debate all chances for the odds to move toward Harris imo.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
I briefly had three children but none of them are alive now. Would I get the extra votes despite my children not being the future?
I can't think how painful that be, and am so so sorry for your loss.
It gets a bit raw in discussions like this I have to confess. The assumption that childless adults are voluntarily in that position and have an absence of empathy or interest in the future. Usually Tories like Leadsom and sundry other right wingers on here.
Even where it is voluntary I don't think it indicates a lack of concern for what happens in the future.
A concern for the future is one of the reasons I don't have children.
Yes there is that line of thinking. Or a lifestyle/job/circumstances not conducive. Or a rejection of expectations. Or many other reasons.
To have children is the more usual choice but it's not inherently more virtuous than not.
JD Vance seems a difficult politician to pigeon hole.
On the one hand he gets labelled “far right”. And yet his views on abortion and marriage equality are not far out of line with the private views of a number of prominent British MPs (not least, it is said, a recent leader of the Lib Dems).
The “childless cat lady” quote is crass in print of course. But is made in the context of supporting the nuclear family and the drastically declining birth rate. And there can’t be too many “far right nationalists” in seemingly happy mixed race marriages?
Now I dont share his most notable social positions. But it seems to me the labels applied to him say far more about the big shift in the Overton Window of European observers and US coastal liberals than it does him. I just wish there was more of an attempt to think through such ideological differences than throw around words such as insane, Nazi or far right. His one child one vote policy for example, doesn’t obviously sound like the brainchild of someone who seeks less democracy.
To be fair, if we'd had that system here Boris Johnson could have made a bigger contribution to keeping the Tories in power.
By Dumbosaurus's argument, Johnson would have been honour-bound to vote against himself as, by most accounts, those of his children old enough to have formed an opinion think he's a f***ing prick.
Correct and I hope he would have done, if that was their genuinely expressed opinion.
Do you expect he would have done though?
On the assumption they were say between 10 and 14, I think he would have done if they were voting Labour or Lib Dem, might have done if they were voting Green, and wouldn't have done if they were voting Workers' Party or whatever the equivalent was in that election.
Another parent/guardian of a Labour persuasion this election might have accepted a vote for Greens or Lib Dems, grudgingly allowed a Tory one, and refused a Reform one.
Which is exactly how it should work - a limited sort of freedom.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
I briefly had three children but none of them are alive now. Would I get the extra votes despite my children not being the future?
I can't think how painful that be, and am so so sorry for your loss.
It gets a bit raw in discussions like this I have to confess. The assumption that childless adults are voluntarily in that position and have an absence of empathy or interest in the future. Usually Tories like Leadsom and sundry other right wingers on here.
Even where it is voluntary I don't think it indicates a lack of concern for what happens in the future.
A concern for the future is one of the reasons I don't have children.
Yes there is that line of thinking. Or a lifestyle/job/circumstances not conducive. Or a rejection of expectations. Or many other reasons.
To have children is the more usual choice but it's not inherently more virtuous than not.
Virtue is a human conception. No children, no humans, no virtue.
JD Vance seems a difficult politician to pigeon hole.
On the one hand he gets labelled “far right”. And yet his views on abortion and marriage equality are not far out of line with the private views of a number of prominent British MPs (not least, it is said, a recent leader of the Lib Dems).
The “childless cat lady” quote is crass in print of course. But is made in the context of supporting the nuclear family and the drastically declining birth rate. And there can’t be too many “far right nationalists” in seemingly happy mixed race marriages?
Now I dont share his most notable social positions. But it seems to me the labels applied to him say far more about the big shift in the Overton Window of European observers and US coastal liberals than it does him. I just wish there was more of an attempt to think through such ideological differences than throw around words such as insane, Nazi or far right. His one child one vote policy for example, doesn’t obviously sound like the brainchild of someone who seeks less democracy.
JD Vance is not a difficult politician to pigeon hole. He's an opportunist who will say whatever he thinks people want to hear to get elected and get paid, and right now that means espousing extreme MAGA views.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
I briefly had three children but none of them are alive now. Would I get the extra votes despite my children not being the future?
I can't think how painful that be, and am so so sorry for your loss.
It gets a bit raw in discussions like this I have to confess. The assumption that childless adults are voluntarily in that position and have an absence of empathy or interest in the future. Usually Tories like Leadsom and sundry other right wingers on here.
Even where it is voluntary I don't think it indicates a lack of concern for what happens in the future.
A concern for the future is one of the reasons I don't have children.
Yes there is that line of thinking. Or a lifestyle/job/circumstances not conducive. Or a rejection of expectations. Or many other reasons.
To have children is the more usual choice but it's not inherently more virtuous than not.
Virtue is a human conception. No children, no humans, no virtue.
Not having children yourself doesn't mean no children anywhere else. Countries in living memory has sterilised parts of their population to prevent the wrong sort of children being born. If you don't want to pass on an inherited condition that is, in and of itself, potentially virtuous.
JD Vance says people with children should have more votes. The more children you have the more votes you should have.
Insane.
I haven't listened to the video but I don't think the idea is insane at all - children are the future.
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
I briefly had three children but none of them are alive now. Would I get the extra votes despite my children not being the future?
I can't think how painful that be, and am so so sorry for your loss.
It gets a bit raw in discussions like this I have to confess. The assumption that childless adults are voluntarily in that position and have an absence of empathy or interest in the future. Usually Tories like Leadsom and sundry other right wingers on here.
Even where it is voluntary I don't think it indicates a lack of concern for what happens in the future.
A concern for the future is one of the reasons I don't have children.
Yes there is that line of thinking. Or a lifestyle/job/circumstances not conducive. Or a rejection of expectations. Or many other reasons.
To have children is the more usual choice but it's not inherently more virtuous than not.
Virtue is a human conception. No children, no humans, no virtue.
Not having children yourself doesn't mean no children anywhere else. Countries in living memory has sterilised parts of their population to prevent the wrong sort of children being born. If you don't want to pass on an inherited condition that is, in and of itself, potentially virtuous.
Yes that’s true at the micro. I was merely winding up Kinabalu.
JD Vance seems a difficult politician to pigeon hole.
On the one hand he gets labelled “far right”. And yet his views on abortion and marriage equality are not far out of line with the private views of a number of prominent British MPs (not least, it is said, a recent leader of the Lib Dems).
The “childless cat lady” quote is crass in print of course. But is made in the context of supporting the nuclear family and the drastically declining birth rate. And there can’t be too many “far right nationalists” in seemingly happy mixed race marriages?
Now I dont share his most notable social positions. But it seems to me the labels applied to him say far more about the big shift in the Overton Window of European observers and US coastal liberals than it does him. I just wish there was more of an attempt to think through such ideological differences than throw around words such as insane, Nazi or far right. His one child one vote policy for example, doesn’t obviously sound like the brainchild of someone who seeks less democracy.
His statement that he would have acceded to Trump's request not to certify the vote on Jan 6, for example, sounds precisely like that.
Comments
The big difficulty is how you deal with the reality of so many parents being separated. Suppose you could give each parent half a vote per kid?
https://www.thetimes.com/article/16397d05-0b17-45a5-9646-9a0140608380?shareToken=4fc5dccf08945779f0c395d08e96d3e0
Exit poll was off as well (unusually).
When she got home that evening "You walked through WHERE you were lucky not to be shot".
Appears the police enforced unofficial segregation by constable savage methods if they strayed out of their "block" into "respectable" areas.
East Liberty has a cool busway too.
I found this, which is presumably from the same series.
https://www.lucy-bell.com/product/john-bulmer-manchester-94/
And that leads to the original source:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/North-John-Bulmer/dp/1908457082
And what about children in care? Do they not get votes?
Photo credit: Loic Venance, AFP France https://x.com/loicvenance
There are still quite a few cobbled terraces in Halifax, but much shorter, and built of sandstone.
Though back in the 60s it would have been black from a century's smoke, as was the case for all the West Riding industrial towns and cities.
Good people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Rb9b8rYhII
The children in care is more interesting. Haven't a clue.
Trump cheats at golf. That tells you all you need to know about him.
The Netherlands and Denmark will hand over 14 Leopard 2A4 tanks to Ukraine by the end of this summer, which they bought last year, the Dutch Ministry of Defense reports.
In 2023, both countries bought 14 used tanks that were reconstructed by the German concern Rheinmetall.
https://x.com/Hromadske/status/1816428374346138036
Russia still has a large numerical advantage in terms of what they can reactivate from storage. But the mix is getting increasingly older, with the proportion of (eg) T62s seen on the front sharply increasing.
https://x.com/elonmusk/status/1546679818959278081
"Elon Musk
@elonmusk
Trump would be 82 at end of term, which is too old to be chief executive of anything, let alone the United States of America.
If DeSantis runs against Biden in 2024, then DeSantis will easily win – he doesn’t even need to campaign.
3:16 AM · Jul 12, 2022"
What’s more this is just a slice of the view. It was like that if not more magnificent to the left and right. And there are maybe 1000 square km of this is Aveyron. Ravishing valleys and gorgeous stone villages - entirely unspoiled - and pretty little towns with sunny piazzas and sparkling rivers. And plunging gorges and exquisite Templar citadels and
roads with zero pot holes and BARELY ANY TOURISTS
Terrible restaurant food tho. That hasn’t improved (hence the picnics)
Robert Bennett
Northwestern University Law School"
https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=186071
My father was a tartan Tory SNP (prewoke edition) supporter who referred completely unironically to serving queen/king and country (both in his case) and loved Margaret Thatcher, my mother was a bohemian Labour voting Unionist who thought Alistair Darling and Gordon Brown were the bees knees. Unsurprisingly they seperated when I was quite young, and the thought of them discussing how my vote should be allocated gives me a headache.
However it has given me a rich smorgasbord of political views from which to draw sustenance.
If children are to have the vote let them vote for themselves.
Rise of the Children's Party anyone?
As I said earlier the practicalities of the idea may make it unimplementable. I don't have an answer to the care thing, for example.
In my small Shropshire town, the old Victorian town hall was knocked down and replaced by a square flat roofed store. The memorial at the bottom of the High Street demolished. Still lots of nice Georgian and Victorian mansions left but where they disappeared it doesn’t feel like a great deal of thought went into the replacements.
Thankfully there’s a few different versions of this one, suggesting that it was done the old fashioned way with angles and light. https://x.com/afpphoto/status/1815726052934816127
The next question is how long will it be before the reputable photo agencies get taken in by fake photos?
I've laid him at an average of 24 - so clearly for whatever reason some thought he must have had a chance earlier on in the race..
Decisions, decisions.
If you send your child up chimneys then they would get a vote.
Eg at 16 you get 10 votes, then lose one every 10 years until at 106 you have just the one. At 116 you wouldn't be able to vote at all but that seems harsh, so just stick with one at that point and forwards. Perhaps even go with two as a nice gesture - it won't impact many people after all.
If the polls are two weeks behind events Kamala is due a bounce.
Btw I know a trick to place bets of less than £1 on betfair exchange if anybody's interested and doesn't already know.
Which is why I'm happy to inflict Trump on them.
For context on Vance's views, there's also this.
J.D. Vance broke off talks on bipartisan childbirth plan amid VP search
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/07/24/jd-vance-bipartisan-child-plan-trump/
Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio) broke off talks on bipartisan legislation to cut childbirth costs around the same time Donald Trump’s campaign intensified its consideration of Vance as a running mate, according to four people and a draft of the plan obtained by The Washington Post.
The plan would have prohibited insurance companies from charging new mothers co-pays or other expenses related to childbirth, marking a clear break with GOP orthodoxy. Although Vance’s team started working with the office of Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) on the bill in June 2023, talks stopped this June and have not resumed..
This is a good Q&A from my MP Lee Anderson, and the Health Secretary about our local hospital - which is highly rated. There's a bit of political prickle, but also useful information.
https://x.com/LeeAndersonMP_/status/1815723186920526001
I'm not sure that was true of the old model.
My understanding of the role of voting and elections in a Democracy is not that they will always deliver the best rulers. It's that voting and elections provide consent, and without consent there is always an inherent contradiction in the way a nation is ruled. This also applies to extension of or changing of the franchise. It should be consensual.
*As shown in preferred architecture, senatorial constitution, and so on.
Kids failed everyday by financial shenanigans.
https://www.theguardian.com/education/article/2024/jul/25/5bn-debt-crisis-of-special-educational-needs-could-bankrupt-english-councils
While I can't speak for Vance's intent, for me and others this is not about denigrating childless adults - it's a way of enabling true universal suffrage while also recognising the reality that young children are not actually capable of casting a vote yet - so they need parents/guardians to do it on their behalf.
What is the first saying that the second isn't?
The nice thing is there's still miles to go - I'd have thought at some point Trump's price would rise even if he ultimately wins...
I'd trade out under 2.2, but I think we're unlikely to see that without much stronger polling - at which point I likely wouldn't be a seller anyway...
The natural extension of this, for some Republicans, is absolutely guaranteed to be weighting based on "stake" in society as measured by tax, property ownership and so on. And there is, in reality, very little to distinguish the arguments.
Would Clinton have won there anyway ?
It's hypothesised that the new obesity drugs might bankrupt the health services of several western countries - to the extent that some are suggesting that governments actually but the pharmas that produce them, not entirely tongue in cheek:
To get a fair deal on Wegovy, buying Novo Nordisk might not be Medicare’s worst option
https://www.statnews.com/2024/07/23/wegovy-medicare-medicaid-costs-why-not-buy-manufacturer-novo-nordisk/
Medicare and Medicaid are facing a familiar quandary: how to provide coverage for new weight loss drugs with price tags that could effectively bankrupt the federal government’s health care budget while simultaneously ensuring continuous coverage for all other health care services used by millions of Americans.
The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services announced in March 2024 that it would cover Wegovy (semaglutide), a new and expensive weight loss medication, for beneficiaries with cardiovascular disease and obesity. Efforts by the U.S. House of Representatives could nudge CMS to cover it more broadly for people with obesity alone.
That would have a huge cost impact. Wegovy’s current list price in the United States is $1,349 per month. Medicare spending on this class of drugs, called GLP-1s, has increased from $57 million in 2018 to $5.7 billion in 2022, while Medicaid spending for these drugs increased from $383 million to $1.8 billion in that time period. A report by the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions (HELP) estimates that treating even half of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries with obesity would cost $166 billion per year, nearly the cost of total spending on all prescription drugs in 2022 ($175 billion).
In contrast, the United Kingdom pays $92 per month and Denmark (where Novo Nordisk is headquartered) pays $186 per month. In an analysis one of us (M.B.) conducted with several colleagues, the estimated manufacturing costs for a biosimilar Wegovy would be no more than $13 per month — one-hundredth the selling price. That’s far from a fair deal for Medicare and Medicaid...
But then I find it slightly surprising to hear people admit to voting for an option which will make them personally better off even at the expense of making the country as a whole worse off. I know some people do - but I don't think that's how democracy is supposed to work!
Vote splitting doesn't have to be minimal at all. Why do we allow proxy voting? Plenty of anecdotes here of casting "cancelling" votes here with someone else.
I don't agree it's the same argument at all as a "stake" based argument, at least not where I'm coming from. And Republicans being lunatics is just what they do, they'll always find a reason.
The UK pharmas (GSK and Astra Zeneca) don't have any promising examples of this class of obesity drugs in development.
There are, however, a couple being developed by US biotechs, the most promising of which is from a company called Viking Therapeutics - which so far look as though it will be significantly better than what's on the market.
I propose our government goes 50/50 with one of our pharmas to buy the company, in exchange for a few supply of the drug, and a small share of the profits.
It would be a bit of a gamble - but GSK and/or AZN need to take such gambles anyway - and for an invesment of maybe £10bn in total (half from government) could save us at least ten times that much.
Any takers ?
The big question is whether Harris can sustain the bounce (or even build on it). That feels to me incredibly difficult to judge right now. There’s a part of me that feels that after the newness wears off people will still see someone from the Biden administration and remember their reasons for not liking Harris.
But then on the other hand there’s the chance Trump can’t find a proper response to her and now she has come into her own people start to like what they see and she can build on the momentum.
To have children is the more usual choice but it's not inherently more virtuous than not.
On the one hand he gets labelled “far right”. And yet his views on abortion and marriage equality are not far out of line with the private views of a number of prominent British MPs (not least, it is said, a recent leader of the Lib Dems).
The “childless cat lady” quote is crass in print of course. But is made in the context of supporting the nuclear family and the drastically declining birth rate. And there can’t be too many “far right nationalists” in seemingly happy mixed race marriages?
Now I dont share his most notable social positions. But it seems to me the labels applied to him say far more about the big shift in the Overton Window of European observers and US coastal liberals than it does him. I just wish there was more of an attempt to think through such ideological differences than throw around words such as insane, Nazi or far right. His one child one vote policy for example, doesn’t obviously sound like the brainchild of someone who seeks less democracy.
Another parent/guardian of a Labour persuasion this election might have accepted a vote for Greens or Lib Dems, grudgingly allowed a Tory one, and refused a Reform one.
Which is exactly how it should work - a limited sort of freedom.