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tucker

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Posts posted by tucker

  1. The middle-class dream is moving beyond millennial reach

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    Years of low income growth and increasing prices have made the "squeezed middle" a reality for many, with new research showing young people’s prospects are among the hardest hit.

    The middle class is shrinking in most countries and represents an out-of-reach dream for younger generations, according to the OECD’s report Under Pressure: The Squeezed Middle Class. Just 60% of millennials – people born between 1983 and 2002 – are part of middle-income households in their twenties, compared with almost 70% of baby boomers.

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    “Slow progress in living standards and widening inequality have contributed to political polarization and erosion of social cohesion in many advanced and emerging economies,” the report says. “This has led to the emergence of a worldwide consensus on the need for a more inclusive and sustainable model of growth and development that promotes high living standards for all.”

    https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2019/04/middle-class-dream-out-of-reach-millennials/

  2. Quote

    The waiting game is over. Former Vice President Joe Biden is running for the Democratic presidential nomination, betting that a third time’s a charm.

    It worked out that way for Ronald Reagan, but not Bob Dole. How will Biden fare? He imploded in spectacular fashion during his strongest bid for the Democratic nod in 1988, amid a plagiarism scandal and a series of embarrassing false boasts about his resume. Twenty years later, Biden was an afterthought in a clash of the titans between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

    Now Biden is at the very least a co-frontrunner with Vermont socialist Bernie Sanders and perhaps better positioned than that. Eight years as Obama’s vice president enhanced his reputation with Democrats nationally—that’s why President Donald Trump says his predecessor rescued Biden from the trash heap—but a repeat of past disasters could erode his standing.

    Biden is still very much the same man Democrats rejected in 1988 and 2008, except older and more of a relic of a bygone political era. Even Bill Clinton’s retail politics skills deteriorated with age. With 20 major candidates, he, like Jeb Bush on the Republican side in 2016, has failed to clear the field. There are other precedents for how this could go badly. Rudy Giuliani spent most of 2007 leading national polls of Republican voters but then didn’t come close to winning a single primary.

    Yet if Harvey Mudd repeated his 1980 question to Ted Kennedy—“Why do you want to be president?”—Biden could muster an answer. Politics doesn’t have to be as nasty or as ugly as it has gotten in the Trump era. We can go back to the fabled time when Democrats and Republicans dined together. Biden can explicitly promise to bring back a bipartisan spirit while implicitly offering to slow down the Democratic Party’s leftward lurch.

    That could be a compelling message for a country weary of Trump’s Twitter outbursts, even if Biden has not always been Mr. Civility himself. What’s less certain is whether it is what Democrats will want in 2020. The appeal of South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg suggests that at least some of them do. Are there enough such voters to win the nomination?

    The Biden dilemma is that the rationale for his candidacy, a return to pre-Trump normalcy, reinforces his biggest liabilities. His back-slapping, which with women often degenerates into caressing and hair-sniffing, is suspect in the MeToo era. His respectful attitude toward the cultural conservatism of blue-collar voters—a major reason he has a good chance to win back the industrial states Trump turned red in 2016—is out of vogue. His career dates back to when liberals had to do business with segregationists inside the Democratic Party.

    Biden has already come under fire for his opposition to forced busing to achieve racial balance in de facto segregated public schools. There are perfectly legitimate reasons to object to busing, which objectively failed most places it was tried. But contemporary liberal discourse does not include the nuances necessary for such a discussion and it is unmistakably the case that genuine racists played a role in the 1970s anti-busing movement. Those are dangerous associations for a Democrat who eulogized Strom Thurmond to have.

    The New Political Bosses Come for Joe Biden
    Do Democrats Even Care About the Purple States?
    If Biden makes it to the general election, he is vulnerable on all the same issues that Trump used against Hillary Clinton: his vote for the Iraq war, support for various free trade agreements, his playing of a far greater role in the 1994 crime bill than Hillary, closeness to special interests. Trump will certainly try to use Biden’s handiness to negate his own problems with women.

    Sanders offers Democrats an appeal to working-class Pennsylvania voters without any of this baggage and a more thoroughgoing progressivism. Buttigieg adds diversity points to his pitch for civility. There are plenty of women in the field who do not have to explain their touching of women or treatment of Anita Hill during the 1991 Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings.

    Biden has to bet that there are enough older and more moderate Democrats to get him through the primaries. Then he must hope Trump’s failure to deliver on his more populist campaign promises will make some of the lines of criticism that derailed Hillary implausible. All while staying a step ahead of the cultural revolution—remember the erstwhile Defense of Marriage Act supporter actually preempted Obama by coming out in favor of gay marriage first—without joining it.

    Doable, certainly, but a tall order for an aging and undisciplined candidate. Biden accumulated political capital as Obama’s vice president. He is betting he has enough to spend to become president.

     

  3. 11 minutes ago, Dutchrudder said:

    Paywall site.

    So who would Exxon want to acquire?

        Jack Williams, a senior vice-president of Exxon, told analysts on a call to discuss the company’s first-quarter earnings that he “would be surprised if over time we did not pick up more Permian acreage”, either through small-scale purchases of assets or a larger acquisition.

    His comments show Exxon’s interest in further consolidation in the Permian region, which is at the centre of the takeover battle between Chevron and Occidental Petroleum for control of Anadarko Petroleum. 

    Chevron also reported earnings on Friday morning, and on their call with analysts its executives emphasised the merits of their agreed deal with Anadarko, including opportunities for cost savings.

    Mr Williams was speaking as Exxon reported a 50 per cent drop in earnings per share for the quarter to 55 cents, well below the average of analysts’ forecasts, as it was hit by “extremely challenging” conditions in its refining and chemicals operations.

    The group’s refining operations fell to a $256m loss in the quarter as their margins were crushed by oversupply in world gasoline markets. They also lost the benefit they had gained last year from some very low prices for Canadian crude, caused by a shortage of export pipeline capacity.

    In the chemicals division, profits dropped by 49 per cent to $518m, as the wave of investment in new capacity in recent years led to increased supplies and put downward pressure on prices.

    The upstream oil and gas production division was more resilient, but profits still fell 18 per cent at $2.88bn, hit by lower prices.

    In the Permian Basin, Exxon’s production is booming: it rose 126 per cent from the first quarter of 2018 to reach 226,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day, and is on course to reach the company’s target of 1m boe/d in 2024.

    However, Permian production is only about 6 per cent of the global total for Exxon. The group’s worldwide output rose by just 2 per cent in the first quarter to 3.98m boe/d, hit by declines at other fields.

    Exxon built its position in the Permian through a series of deals, culminating in the $6.6bn purchase of drilling rights on about 250,000 acres from the Bass family in 2017, but has since then put a brake on acquisitions.

    Mr Williams told analysts that Exxon did not need to buy any more assets to achieve its current projections for production growth in the Permian region, but suggested that it was still looking for further deals.

    He added that the company was not interested in buying assets that were already in production and generating cash, but was looking for reserves with development potential.
     

  4. Not sure if this belongs in AOC of Pelosi thread. Ds are trying to shut out reform. Anyone who thinks Pelosi, et al wants the country to move to the left is sadly mistaken. She and gang just made Trump is in power.

     

  5. 1 hour ago, BradInATX said:
    8 hours ago, tucker said:
    I enjoy the fake potential dem voter argument that is why dems need to support a centrist. That happen in 2016 and result of Clinton and Trump victory. 

    I enjoy the fake "Hillary lost because she's a centrist" argument. Hillary lost because she is terrible. Full stop.

    She can be a centrist and a shitty candidate. 

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