Benjamin Studebaker

July 20, 2017

The Rise of the “Hillary or Bust” Voter

Remember “Bernie or Bust”? Some Bernie Sanders supporters were very cross when Sanders did not win the Democratic Party nomination. They believed he should have won, both because he deserved to win and because some of them believed the DNC stole it from him. They were unwilling to support Clinton in the general election, and Clinton supporters let them have it. How could these Bernie supporters stand idly by and allow Donald Trump to because president? Don’t they care about the poor and working people, about the middle class, about people of color, about women, about LGBTs? How could they betray the groups they’re meant to care about like that? Sarah Silverman told them they were “being ridiculous”:

But the tables have turned. Today we see a new breed of Democrat–the “Hillary or Bust” voter.

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July 19, 2017

Arguments Against Minimum Wage Increases are Weaker Than Many People Think

Today I’d like to talk about the recent University of Washington study on the effects of the minimum wage increase in Seattle. The study claims to show that the increase in the wage from $11 an hour to $13 resulted in lower wages and job losses for workers at the bottom of the wage distribution. But this study–and the arguments surrounding it–kinda miss the point.

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July 15, 2017

Why Trump Cannot Bring Jobs Back With Tax Cuts

When I talk to President Trump’s supporters about how they anticipate the president will bring back lost manufacturing jobs, I tend to hear the same argument over and over. It goes something like this:

Trump will cut corporate tax and other taxes that primarily hit investors.
Firms and investment will return from abroad to take advantage of the low tax rates.

It is possible to demonstrate that this is false. Here’s how to do it.

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July 12, 2017

Angela Merkel is Not Fit to Lead the West

Each time there’s an international summit, I see the same articles over and over, arguing that America no longer leads the west–Germany does. It’s understandable why people make this argument–President Trump is rather uninspiring, to put it mildly, and Germany is the last of the major western powers to retain the leader it had before the 2008 financial crisis. Chancellor Merkel has been in power for nearly 12 years. In that time, the United States has had three presidents and Britain has had four prime ministers. Merkel seems to offer stability in a world that’s increasingly off its rocker. But seeming is not being–in truth, there is no western leader who has done more in the last decade to contribute to the political instability that has brought about Trump and Brexit than Angela Merkel.

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July 10, 2017

Morning Joe and CNN: How Trump Goads the Press Into Playing His Game

When President Trump was running, we talked about how he managed to force the media to give him free airtime by making himself ratings candy. Trump’s outlandish statements may have looked like gaffes, but they played an important role in helping him win, especially during the primaries. Was this deliberate or inadvertent? Either way, it worked. Since becoming president, Trump has continued to do the same kind of stuff–he’s gone after Morning Joe and CNN. This has resulted in a lot of pieces criticizing Trump for acting unpresidential, but relatively little consideration of how this kind of thing plays with Trump’s people. So let’s think about that.

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