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kleinbl00  ·  948 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Andrew Yang to launch a third party

Politicians need to be able to lead, and Kamala Harris is a better leader than Andrew Yang. Yang has far more in common with Jeffrey Sachs or Henry Kissinger than he does with Franklin Roosevelt or Jimmy Carter. He's a back-room guy who stands in front of podiums when it's the most useful thing to do but I think he'd rather make other people implement his ideas than slog through the mud himself.

Dude is a calibrated triangulator. He plays the game the most advantageous way his skills and liabilities will let him. Being Democratic-adjacent is more useful at the moment than being a Democrat.

That's probably why he has such a bone to pick with disability. he's absolutely right - it's a 100% ghastly system. I've read like five books in the past two months that point out the current US penal system is basically slavery under another name but disability? It's a shitty misapplicaiton of deinstitutionalization. If it worked the way it was supposed to it'd basically be AFLAC but instead it's a "congratulations you spent two years in court you never have to work again but you also get to be three meals from homeless for the rest of your life."

Something like 60% of Biden's stimulus plan was gonna be paid for by enforcing tax law. That's how fucked up the system is. "I like your current system but - and here me out here - what if we didn't leave eighty percent of our earnings on the table?" And I mean, the reason nobody in this country gave a fuck about the Panama Papers is from a tax haven standpoint, the only thing that beats Nevada and Delaware are like Nauru and Sealand.

    Really disappointed Uncle Joe didn't give him an impactful job like Labor or Treasury.

I'm sure he was, too. But he's not ex-McKinsey, he toes the party line grudgingly and he actually wants to rock the boat. Uncle Joe is too busy cleaning up the Rec Room from the mess that last guy left after his bender to try something new, so Yang is out there attempting to stay relevant. I'm down.