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The total number. We actually stop rendering comments past a certain amount of nesting; ever see a 'more' link where 'reply' would normally be? That's what that is.
How much does calculating the approx time of posting for every comment add to the total load?
If it’s significant then you could ship the UTC posting time to the client & calculate the displayed value in Javascript & eliminate that particular part of the load at least, which in turn might enable more caching internally.
The internet has been such a nasty place today and, similarly to the day of the Paris attacks, it's been really nice to find reasonably moderate discourse on HN.
As... curious as I personally find America's choices in presidency, I'm just as ashamed of some of my follower feeds on various social media. Seriously guys, don't demonize people, especially by association. Refusing to hear your political opponents out is a sure-fire way to lose.
It's tough. I've been trying to find a pen pal who can give me some reasonable arguments for Donald Trump for the last few weeks, to no avail.
Not living in the US, I don't really meet people who support Donald Trump. I'm probably living in a bubble, which isn't a great feeling--but at the same time, it's hard to credit the democratic process when you can't understand the alternative view.
No doubt this is a symptom of polarization. Maybe this is the famed "filter bubble". In an ideal world one would imagine social media would help bridge that gap, but I'm unsure it has.
It'll be like his campaign, only crazier. If he runs the country anything like he runs his businesses he'll smash and grab anything of value, then leave the smouldering ruins for someone else to clean up.
What has helped me in this regard has been actively likeing Trump stuff on facebook. I didn't see much of that world, but enough to get a glimpse into their mindset.
I heaetily suggest actively seeking out opposing views and training your filter bubble to give them to you. It's refreshing and often frustrating and upsetting, bud fundamentally a good thing.
I don't even use Facebook! But I primarily read mainstream (i.e. "liberal") newspapers like the New York Times, the Guardian, the New Yorker, and similar. And none of them have any opinion writers making a case for Trump!
So it's the traditional filter bubble, not the social media bubble.
Sorry, good point. What I meant initially was, "I thought the promise of social media was to drive down polarization." I think I'm not the only one who doesn't know anyone with the alternative view.
Did I read any pro-Brexit arguments? Hmm. I read a fair amount of fairly wonkish economic arguments--as with trade barriers, however, it seems that most professional policy experts (and most economists) are generally pro-free-trade and don't have much to say on this being good policy.
Again, maybe my perception is a bit off, but I see this as similar to climate change arguments: the science (especially when it comes to macroeconomics) is imperfect, but if you restrict yourself to those with some academic qualifications, you see a very different picture than if you read political opinion.
When Bernie competed against Clinton, I don't think there was anyone pro Clinton. Stuff happened.
You could've gone to /r/the_donald. Beside the memes, there were many threads for each podesta email-leak, linking specific comments/sentences for deplorable dnc doings.
I actually did spend a lot of time passively reading r/the_donald, but as you say, it seemed more into the other side (email leaks, etc) than into Trump's policy proposals or similar.
You're doing exactly what both sides have been complaining about: vilifying the other side and making assumptions. And you're doing it to someone replying to you in good faith.
There's "opposing views", as in "I think we should avoid TPP because it's harmful to our businesses" or as in "I'm not so sure government medical care is the way to go, the private insurance industry can step up" but the types of anti-Hillary vitriol were off the charts.
She's literally a demon! She's running a child trafficking ring! She's covering up multiple murders! Black helicopters! Mind control drugs! It's the Alex Jones shit that's infected people and they're not even in the same reality.
You can't have a rational discussion with an irrational person.
I've heard the alternative view, and do understand it somewhat (Disclaimer, I voted for Clinton).
This election wasn't about women. This election wasn't about immigration, or minorities. This election was about the working class (blue-collar folks) feeling like they're getting shafted by government.
I live in what's usually a heavily Democratic state, Michigan. This year it'll probably go for Trump. Not because of Muslims, not because of terrorism, but because of the economy.
For years, these people (mostly white, blue-collar workers) have been told the economy's doing great for most people, free trade is great for most people, unemployment is low for most people, and the ACA helps most people.
However, for these folks, they see themselves as not part of that most people that are benefiting from our economic policies. All they hear from the establishment is the same bullshit "promises" and corporatism that they've been given for the past 30 years.
They're sick of it. They're sick of Democrats and Republicans toeing the same line, deferring to "the market" and not doing anything about it.
Donald Trump had answers. Whether those are the right answers remains to be seen (my guess is they're not). Trump said what they wanted to hear, and wasn't afraid of pissing off the establishment along the way. That's what these folks want.
They didn't vote for Donald Trump the person, they voted for Donald Trump the personality.
Unfortunate as it may be, when you are not the target of bigotry or misogyny, it's much easier not to see those issues as a deal breaker, even if you disagree with them.
Remember that, when it's not self-interest, the only thing that makes those issues a deal breaker is empathy. Today's world has very little empathy; the US especially, with its corporate-centric philosophy.
Agreed that it's about priorities. I'm from a poor state that went to Trump in a landslide. I personally know many people who voted for him. Most were somewhat embarrassed by it. They were ones who lied to or ignored pollsters, who wavered until the last moment. They found Trump despicable, or at least not worthy of the presidency. To understand why they would vote for him anyway, I think about how my vote for Clinton was not an endorsement of her history of warmongering, her complicity with the evils of Wall Street, her failure to advocate strong enough solutions to certain social problems until pushed by Sanders...
(what follows isn't a disagreement with the above posters, just a remark for context)
I vehemently disagree with their reasons (such as they are) for voting for Trump, but reducing the explanation of their behavior to bigotry---the easiest, most accessible, most self-affirming, and most totalizing explanation available to isolated liberals---misplaces the real problems and thus opens to misguided solutions. Yes, the Trump supporters who make the news are terrible people, and there are many of them. But they aren't over half the country. Explaining Trump's success -primarily- in this way is a failure of empathy on the part of liberals, a failure to understand the majority of the country as decent, caring human beings just like you and I who have, in fact, gotten shafted. Almost all economic recovery the past few years has gone to major cities and life for rural communities is only getting worse. We all know here that Clinton had proposals for addressing this (a 500 billion injection into infrastructure for example), but, for better or for worse---okay, for worse---Trump is who connected on this sentiment.
Everyone knows Trump is a wild card---to put it kindly---who has no concrete policies, but it's worth remembering that the main focus of his victory speech last night was promising to bring back the New Deal, for a "socialist" program of government supported work, to distribute jobs across the whole country by fiat. Whether he will make good on his word and can then force it through the Republican establishment in Congress and whether it will then work all remains to be seen.
One striking observation to me is the lack of ideological purity in Trump's economic plan. You (correctly) describe it as socialist.
Similarly, Hitler's economic views were inconsistent or incoherent. He ran vehemently against "Marxist" socialists and against "Jewish" capitalists, arguing that the Marxists were acting as a front for the capitalists. Meanwhile, he inflated unemployment numbers, claimed the economy was doing worse than it was, and promised infeasible fixes devoid of specificity.
I'm not arguing all of Trump's supporters are primarily motivated by bigotry. But I think they're willing to tolerate bigotry in the name of economic progress, and unfortunately they may get the bigotry without the progress.
> Similarly, Hitler's economic views were inconsistent or incoherent. He ran vehemently against "Marxist" socialists and against "Jewish" capitalists, arguing that the Marxists were acting as a front for the capitalists.
This is a hallmark of Fascist ideology. There is no internal consistency or coherency, only political expediency and appeals to emotion/fear.
The problem is that stuff doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's not bigotry and misogyny vs. a house plant. It's bigotry and misogyny vs. lies, apparent technical incompetence, cronyism, disregard for the law, and everything else that Hilary's opponents see in her. Both sides are terrible, and no they're not equally terrible, but at some point some people throw up their hands and move past the personal/character issues and vote along with their interests and the person they perceive to stand up for those interests.
Disclaimer: I couldn't get over Trump's character issues personally, and I don't for a moment believe that even when he says exactly what I want him to say that he believes it and will act on it in a responsible manner. But I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what's in the minds of people who will vote for him, and these are things I've come to believe.
Great post. This view (not you specifically but voters in general) amazes me: "It's bigotry and misogyny vs. lies".
Trump set a new standard for blatantly lying about many issues - 51% vs 12% for Clinton according to Politifact. From what I have read/heard, voters either buy into the lie, don't care, or understand that Trump is just saying what he needs to say to get elected.
Fact checking was meant to end this behavior but instead we are reached the point where a candidate can have a 51% rating and still win.
It was about immigration in part. I've been hearing variations of your comment from many sources for a while now and I think it reflects the establishment's fears that Trump might actually fix immigration. And by fix, I mean "reduce to non-insane levels".
Anyway, he absolutely got the nomination by being the only credible candidate to denounce illegal immigration in particular, and if he doesn't deliver on that, there are going to be a lot of pissed-off Trump supporters, blue collar or otherwise.
...
Other people mention bigotry or whatever. As far as I'm concerned, in-force policies such as massive 3rd world immigration and affirmative action are institutional bigotry of the most brazen and damaging sort, aimed deliberately at this country's founding stock, including me. This isn't make-believe bigotry, or sticks-and-stones bigotry, but real life bigotry, with force of law. Liberals are mostly unable to process this kind of thinking in any coherent way, but try to understand it in the adage, "Even a worm may turn." And we're the worm.
I think more obvious examples of Trumpian bigotry are things like the claim that "thousands of Muslims" celebrated 9/11 in New Jersey.
That has little to do with how many generations you've had to live in the US before you qualify as "founding stock."
(Out of curiosity, though, where is your cut-off line? Is it only first-generation immigrants, or somewhere farther back? I haven't heard this "founding stock" argument before.)
I live in Greece. The US immigration is nowhere near insane levels. You guys have it easy! You have a lot of room, a solid immigration and integration process and a country generally very open to opportunities.
You simply have a job crisis. Everybody does, don't feel singled out :)
If you would like, PM me. I can give you a quick basic overview on at least my perception what some reasonable arguments for Donald Trump is. Another decent resource is blog.dilbert.com, where Scott Adams goes over some reasons why he believed Trump would win (going on for over a year) and why a lot of the criticisms about him were unfounded.
Whoops. For some reason I thought there was a PM function on this site, I guess I was wrong. Is there anything specific you'd like answered, or just my general opinions on the situation?
Hmm. My starting question in most cases has been, "What are the top reasons you think Trump is a good choice to be President, preferably without making it a negative argument about the opposition?"
There are a couple good reasons. Would like you to add your input here also.
1) Trump is easier to predict than Hillary. Based on a bunch of the email leaks and leaks about the Clinton foundation, she's getting lots of money from foreign countries, which might cause her to make decisions that are bad for the United States for reasons unknown to me. Trump likes power and money. I can understand those motivations and can work with them.
2) Clinton is generally a lot more hawkish than Trump. Forgive me for being crude, but I'd rather Trump grab hundreds of p*ssies than engage in sabre rattling with Putin. She has promised to retaliate against Russia with no definitive proof that it was Russian hackers or Russian attempts to monkey with the election. Trump on the other hand wants to make friends with Putin, and he has said that North Korea is China's problem, which I think is a really good way of dealing with the situation. Especially since Russia has just debuted an ICBM called the "Satan 2", which is able to destroy either Texas or France with just one missile.
3) Trump is against illegal immigration. A lot of people tend to think of the wall as a literal proposal, instead of just a metaphor of making illegal immigration more difficult. Trump has indicated recently that he wants to restrict deportations to illegal immigrants who commit crimes in the US, which seems eminently fair to me. Hillary doesn't really have as much of an answer except for sweeping amnesties.
4) LGBT issues. Trump took a lot of flak for supporting LGBT people from the republican party. He also proposes restricting immigration and "extreme vetting" from the countries that tend to export people who believe in sharia law and stone homosexuals and rape victims. I think it's ridiculous that we're up in arms about bathrooms in North Carolina, while one of the major candidates in our party gets millions from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
And one last point, which might count me as running down the other party.
I just don't like Clinton supporters. They're really shrill and righteous, and if you don't agree with them on everything you're automatically a racist and a bigot. It's difficult having a civil discussion with them, and I don't want to put myself in the same camp as them. Also, they're incredibly histrionic. "Trump is literally Hitler" and "I'm moving to Canada/Europe." And the best is "I can't believe half of this country is populated by xenophobic racist bigots. If you support Trump I want nothing to do with you." Last I checked, calling people names is not a good way to rally support to your cause.
Thanks for your response, I'm not the OP but I'm similarly trying to understand the reasons for Trump. My personal belief ( and talking with some of my own circle of friends that supported him ) leads me to believe it's a few thing:
1) the tough talking, america first attitude. I think this attracted a number of people simply due to the 'feeling' it gave them.
2) the desire for change. anti-establishment, anti-washington, anti-'what was before'. this was seen in Bernie's rise, and Brexit. so it almost didn't matter what Trump did or say at that point, he was the messenger of change and people were hungry for it.
3) blue collar workers & economy. If you feel like you've been left behind, and the govt isn't helping, well Trump's message definitely resonated better than HC.
So those are a bit of what I'm sensing at this early stage of my understanding. I'm sure more will reveal itself throughout the coming days, months, years. However, to your specific points as to why you supported Trump:
1) Trump is easier to predict? I find this truly hard to believe. He is almost entirely unpredictable at this point. He ran on the Republican ticket, but he's hardly your standard Republican. He says he's not free trade, yet wants to do things to help big business, yet wants to impose huge tariffs and taxes on businesses that outsource and offshore to save money. IMO, these are somewhat contradictory. I honestly feel like Trump just echo'ed the anger of a certain group in the country, regardless of what he personally believes, or thinks he can implement.
So on the case of predictable, I disagree strongly.
2) Clinton has been hawkish in the past, and generally leans towards US intervention, I'll give you that. However, there are also examples of her using actual diplomacy to achieve results ( Iran deal, like it or not ).
Trump has said some really outlandish things as it comes to foreign policy. Encouraging the proliferation of nuclear weapons, abandoning our allies, letting certain parts of the world fend for themselves. I personally think there's a fine balance between being imperialistic and trying to keep the world peace. To say it's China's problem to deal with North Korea, so South Korea/Japan/Taiwan can go fend for themselves is a very narrow view of the world. I think this type of inward behavior actually leads to bigger/larger potential wars down the road.
3. Illegal immigration, OK clearly he built his platform on this. But this is again an issue where nothing with him is clear. He never presented a clear proposal no what he intends to do on immigration besides being tough and building a wall. And to say HC wants sweeping amnesty is inflaming and misleading the debate rather than moving it forward.
4. This is just strange to use this as a reason for Trump. I mean he said a couple things on LGBT, but if you follow this through his SCOTUS noms will play a huge role on the rights and privileges of that demographic going forward.
I certainly am not trying to bash your entire premise for Trump, like I said in the beginning I am trying and reading to understand his rise, and some of it is becoming apparent.
And I do hope he leads from the center and backs away from his more extreme views. And I do hope he succeeds as a president. But I am honestly confused by some of your points, as much as they might match with his campaign rhetoric, they do seem to crumble upon examination.
> He ran on the Republican ticket, but he's hardly your standard Republican. He says he's not free trade, yet wants to do things to help big business, yet wants to impose huge tariffs and taxes on businesses that outsource and offshore to save money.
Well, he didn't get much out of his Republican alignment. The party rejected him. I don't think he's pro big business per se, as more protectionist. Viewed in that light, it makes perfect sense. American companies making products consumed in America should employ Americans. He's remarkably consistent when it comes to that.
> Trump has said some really outlandish things as it comes to foreign policy. Encouraging the proliferation of nuclear weapons, abandoning our allies, letting certain parts of the world fend for themselves.
Trump is a negotiator. He always comes to the table with outlandish proposals and expects to be talked down. I think that's one thing people don't seem to fully realize, how many caveats his statements have. China/Russia/Taiwan won't be offended at his statements, at least not enough to start a shooting war. They'll realize it as what it is, a negotiating gambit to try to stake out a stronger position at the table, and they know how to play the game.
> But this is again an issue where nothing with him is clear. He never presented a clear proposal no what he intends to do on immigration besides being tough and building a wall.
This is true. And also a source of misunderstanding. He won't take office until January. Why would you nail down policy proposals now that you might have thrown back in your face later if the situation changes? It'd be like saying in your job interview what you'd be doing at your job that you start 3 months for now. You'd probably say "These are the main goals I want to accomplish, I'll figure out the rest of it once I get the lay of the land".
> but if you follow this through his SCOTUS noms will play a huge role on the rights and privileges of that demographic going forward.
Nowhere in the Constitution are LGBT rights enshrined. The judicial branch interprets the law, the legislative branch passes the laws, and the executive branch enforces the laws.
Trump simply said that he supports LGBT people to the fullest extent of the law (or words to that effect). I prefer that over Clinton, who gets lots of money from regimes that prefer a harsh line against practicing homosexuality.
Thanks to both of you. I really do appreciate the thoughtful replies. I've been very disturbed by how polarized US politics are, so being able to talk things through like rational human beings makes me feel a bit better. :)
At a high level, I think the difference I see between jimmywanger's arguments and my own view (and probably dtien's) is, perhaps unfortunately, the starting assumptions about Trump as a person. Jimmy, you're arguing that Trump "is a negotiator" who "comes with outlandish proposals and expects to be talked down." Correct me if I'm mischaracterizing, but it seems like you, in general, assume the crazier things Trump has said aren't meant seriously, and that the man is for the most part a competent and rational actor.[4]
I've heard this other places, and often the conversation turns back to Trump's business career. Supporters seem to believe that he's not especially serious about the more extreme proposals he's made (a wall, a Muslim ban, pulling out of NATO); opponents believe he is. Supporters suggest that Trump's business career shows he is a serious, rational person; opponents believe his business career is mostly a sham. (This latter argument often involves doubts about his net worth[1], questions about his performance against the market[2], etc.)
I do think, Jimmy, that you're extending the benefit of the doubt to Trump in a way you don't to Clinton. Trump's public statements on LGBT rights are mixed-to-negative[3], whereas Clinton's are fairly clear. Yet because the Clinton Foundation takes Saudi contributions you assume Clinton is opposed to LGBT rights, and you assume otherwise about Trump?
To me, this is perhaps the heart of the matter, in the sense that Trump supporters seem, often, to (thankfully) not support some of the things Trump says at face value--but instead, they give him the benefit of the doubt that opponents do not.
I'm a bit too busy (and you can see I already wrote a fucking novel here) to go point-by-point, though I appreciate your detail. It sheds some light. There are a couple of specific issues I have questions on, I think:
1. Foreign policy: I think the aspect that worries me the most here is Trump's apparent "my way or the highway" view. Proponents view this as a negotiating tactic, but there are cases where this is genuinely concerning. Two stand out to me: the Paris environmental deal, and the Iran nuclear deal. In both cases, do you think that renegotiating these deals will lead to a better outcome? Congressional Republicans have been arguing for tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, which seems highly likely to make the world less safe.
2. Immigration: Trump is, presumably, in favor of greater restrictions on legal immigration and greater deportations[5]. Many Americans are, and so this may (for me) merely be a point of fundamental disagreement. But to be clear, do you merely support deporting "criminal" immigrants (i.e. felons), or do you believe it's necessary to deport as many undocumented residents as possible?
Finally, regarding the "Satan 2", to add some perspective: https://www.inverse.com/article/15826-why-you-shouldn-t-be-w.... There's a bit of posturing here, but to be clear, the nuclear balance between Russia and the US should not be viewed as changed.
Thanks again for your thoughtful replies. It makes me feel a lot better to talk to an actual human with whom I have some disagreements. (Happy to continue by email, by the way, but I don't want to post my email on HN, so you'll have to share one of yours. ;) )
> Two stand out to me: the Paris environmental deal, and the Iran nuclear deal. In both cases, do you think that renegotiating these deals will lead to a better outcome? Congressional Republicans have been arguing for tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, which seems highly likely to make the world less safe.
I think that renegotiating is always a good idea. Starting off on one extreme and then making concessions is one way of negotiating, and one that I think is the best. That way the person you're negotiating with doesn't quite know how far they can push you, and you might get concessions you might not otherwise get. And it's just renegotiating - nothing is set in stone. Once you start making definitive statements, you start painting yourself in a corner. Since renegotiations under Trump will start at the earliest in 3 months, why would you commit to a course of action now? Lots can change in 3 months, and you don't want your words thrown back in your face.
> But to be clear, do you merely support deporting "criminal" immigrants (i.e. felons), or do you believe it's necessary to deport as many undocumented residents as possible?
I would argue that semantically, all undocumented residents are "criminal", as in technically they're breaking the law being here. Now that being said, they do provide a large boost to our economy, so I guess the answer is "it depends". Not to sound too cold-blooded, but a lot of illegal immigrants seem to feel entitled to life in the United States while they are breaking the law. "We've lived here decades and worked very hard! We should be citizens." They fail to realize that they are uninvited guests in our country right now, and we are fully within our rights to send them back to their countries of origin. Once again, Trump has done a great job of not getting nailed down to one specific course of action, because like I said before, a lot can change in 4 months, and he'll get a lot more information once he becomes president.
> Yet because the Clinton Foundation takes Saudi contributions you assume Clinton is opposed to LGBT rights, and you assume otherwise about Trump?
Also she advocates for the intake of refugees from primarily fundamentalist Islamic countries, many of whom believe in Sharia law. Trump has softened his immigration stance on Muslims to be "extreme vetting" for countries known to be jihadi hotbeds. Those are the countries most oppressive to LGBT rights, and I think it's good that we restrict immigration from there.
Specifically regarding how immigration relates to LGBT rights: Is there any statistical link between anti-LGBT hate-crime and immigration from Muslim countries?
Perhaps more to the point, if LGBT activists (HRC in particular) don't feel the same way, how do you explain that? Do they not realize Trump is (despite opposing their marriage rights and opposing protecting them from discrimination) actually their ally? I find that claim startling.
Regarding illegal immigrants, it's a tough issue. I thought www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/untangling-the-immigration-debate was a good broad summary of thought here. I will say that I disagree with the criticism of "entitlement." It's hard to know what you would do in their shoes, but I think it's obvious that all humans have some entitlements to some rights, and, even if we find it necessary to enforce a certain law, we should be aware of the human motivations behind such actions.
Thanks for having a nice civil back and forth with me.
> Specifically regarding how immigration relates to LGBT rights: Is there any statistical link between anti-LGBT hate-crime and immigration from Muslim countries?
Not any studies I'm aware of. From a personal standpoint, no scientific basis, I do believe that if you immigrate to a country, you should be willing to accept that country's norms and prevailing beliefs. 52% of British Muslims believe that homosexuality should be illegal. (http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/11/europe/britain-muslims-survey/) If you take a look, certain countries have high percentages of muslims who think they should have sharia law implemented. (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/22/muslims-and-...) Should we prevent people from those countries from immigrating without severe checks? I personally think so.
> Do they not realize Trump is (despite opposing their marriage rights and opposing protecting them from discrimination) actually their ally? I find that claim startling.
Trump I don't think really cares one way or another. If you look at his previous interviews, he says that he doesn't care if you're gay as long as you're smart and tough, he'll hire you. And you might want to read some of Scott Adam's blog posts. He postulates that the Clinton campaign has been so effective as painting Trump as "literally Hitler" that you can sort of stick any sort of bad image about him to him easily. Hence the racism, bigotry, etc etc.
> I will say that I disagree with the criticism of "entitlement." It's hard to know what you would do in their shoes, but I think it's obvious that all humans have some entitlements to some rights, and, even if we find it necessary to enforce a certain law, we should be aware of the human motivations behind such actions.
I agree with the human motivations, but I am a bit more callous in that I don't really care. For me, illegal immigrants are a bit like squatters in properties they don't live in. Just because they took care of the house for a while doesn't mean that they can live there because they really really want to and they've done it for so long.
And just a little note. Trump does have a point that Mexico is not sending us their best and brightest in illegal immigrants. It's hard crossing the border, and quite dangerous. If you were educated and skilled, you'd probably stay in Mexico or try to emigrate legally. The people who are forced to try to immigrate illegally generally don't have much to offer the United States, sadly enough. Somehow that's racist?
To be clear, Trump has publicly come out both against gay marriage and against anti-discrimination laws. Sure, that's fairly mainstream as of ten years ago, but it's hardly "pro LGBT."
It's weird to me to characterize the candidate's willingness to ban people who might potentially be more anti-gay than the prior as a pro-LGBT position, especially in comparison to a candidate who supports laws that actually advance and protect gay rights.
(Anyway, what about gay immigrants from Muslim countries? Surely those coming from countries with repressive laws are most deserving of admission, no?)
In your reply, you sort of beat around this bush, I think. Yes, you can paint Trump a lot of ways (though I think much of that owes to what the man himself says), and yes, immigrants from conservative religious societies may be less prone to support liberal values, but the candidate himself also does not support those values. He opposes gay marriage. He opposes anti-discrimination legislation.
http://www.hrc.org/2016RepublicanFacts/donald-trump-opposes-....
Surely the candidate's own statements on policy matter, don't they?
Also, regarding immigration, I get the impression many anti-immigration advocates are also opposed to increased skilled immigration--expanded H1Bs, allowing graduates to convert student visas to work visas, etc. Yet the economic argument there is even more clear: expanding the skilled workforce brings competitive advantages (even if one, as Trump appears to do, takes a zero-sum view of economic growth).
I think accusations of racism are not made quite so lightly. But Trump did claim that he saw "thousands of Muslims celebrating" in New Jersey after 9/11. He did claim illegal immigrants are "rapists and murderers", when statistically they commit fewer violent crimes than the control. The anti-immigration arguments often do take a racial tone, as when people complain about "press 2 for Spanish" or when a (Hispanic, yes) Trump supporter warned of "taco trucks on every corner".
I doubt racism is your motivation, or that of many supporters. But I am surprised and worried when Trump supporters don't identify the ambiguously (or, in the case of David Duke, not so ambiguously) racist motivations of their comrades-in-arms or their candidate himself.
I guess there is no specific PM function. Is there anything specifically you want addressed, or just a general overview of some reasons why Clinton might have lost?
Hillary wanted to dramatically expand the H1B program (footnote). Whatever your stance on the issue, you should be able to understand how this upset some American tech workers.
There are similar stories in other sectors. Economic protectionism hasn't really been in either party's platform for a long time, and during that time American workers took a severe beating. Then Trump came along and started making promises.
* More precisely: Tim Kaine proposed a bill to double the size of the H1B program and Hillary has been in bed (donation-wise) with Tata, Wipro, and the like for the last decade at least. When asked for her position, she maintained strategic silence or dodged the question.
"I've been trying to find a pen pal who can give me some reasonable arguments for Donald Trump for the last few weeks, to no avail."
First off, I do not like Donald Trump and did not vote for him.
That said:
It's not "racist", "misogynist", or any other kind of "ist" for a factory worker in Ohio to believe that he shouldn't have to compete with Chinese slave labor.
Nor is it "racist", "misogynist", or any other kind of "ist" for an unemployed coal miner in West Virginia to take exception to being lectured on his "white male privilege" by an academic who's never done a hard day's labor in his life, or to be upset by seeing the industry that's employed his family for generations deliberately destroyed for no reason. The coal is still going to be mined and burned. It's just going to be mined and burned in countries with few, if any, environmental regulations.
Multiply those guys by a few million and you have Trump.
Will Trump actually help these people? Probably not, but he's listening to them. He's at least pretending to care about their concerns. The Democrats (supposedly the party of the working class), on the other hand, have been spending the last few decades demonizing them.
Hmm. I don't think I said it was racism or misogyny, but since we're talking about it:
I do think there was quite a lot of bigotry. In particular, I think the campaign repeatedly conflated Muslims with terrorists (to the point that a religious test for immigration was suggested). The candidate also said a number of things that could be construed as misogynistic, though I'm the first to admit that all of this "locker room talk" is probably as much the product of insecure posturing as it is a formulation of any particular view towards women per se--a product of a child-mind exposed to a misogynistic culture, not of a misogynist.
Part of my surprise is that that bigotry is not a deal breaker, as I said in reply to a different comment. Part of my surprise is that the electorate did not detect the unrealistic nature of the policy proposals (such as they are).
The message was directed towards those without a college education; I see college as a place where people are encouraged to develop their critical thinking skills. If you have underdeveloped critical thinking skills then you'll be more easily persuaded by unrealistic policy proposals that sound like what you want to hear.
I sometimes feel the democratic party uses similar tactics on under-educated minorities; Trump seems to be the first to have the gall to overtly use them to unabashedly target under-educated white males - and to great success.
There's a lot of processing going on when rendering HN threads. For logged-out users we can cache them, but for logged-in users everything's served from a single core running Arc in Racket.
I know I sound like a complete d--k, but my laptop from 2012 has eight cores that each run over 3 billion cycles a second. How do < 2000 comments make your servers more than blink? I'm guessing you have more than one server?
I get frustrated by sites not accepting HN's "hug of death". An now HN can't even stand its own hug...
Anyway, thanks for getting things running again! You guys are awesome!
We don't have more than one server and HN proper (not counting caches) runs on a single core.
Believe me, we hate slow software at least as much as you do and have put a lot of effort into addressing this. HN is a lot faster than it used to be on median load. It still falls short on excessive load. We'll get there!
Racket has green threads, which gives us non-blocking IO but that's about it. There's another concurrency mechanism that uses OS threads but Arc doesn't rely on it, and from the little I looked at, I don't think it would work with the HN software's design.
There are two parallelism approaches in Racket, both of which provide OS threads. The most useful one for web servers is called 'places', and is somewhat like Erlang -- you can only communicate immutable serializable data between different places, as well as OS resources like file handles. I know other people have used places to scale web applications, but I haven't looked at how HN's design would be affected.
If you have questions about using this, please feel free to email me about it.
Clearly, it depends on the architecture used. From what dang says, it seems like HN renders every single page view dynamically if you are logged in. I guess that has something to do with the voting mechanism; I would have thought that could be handled client-side instead.
Either way, it's not just down to the number of comments on a thread, as you imply, clearly the number of requests for that page plays a part. I'm guessing HN has been getting a huge amount of traffic, probably way more than your laptop could serve dynamic pages at.
True. But it could be a 'progressive dependency' - i.e. you could still do everything you can now without javascript, it would just be used to hide the voting buttons/links/whatever else is dynamic.
I'm very disappointed that the other thread was effectively buried. I kept looking on the first few pages and only clicked on this one by chance. Please spin up more resources? This is a major topic that will affect a huge number of people.
Does this not prove that "diverse" liberalism isn't so diverse after all? Shouldn't a diverse group of people have seen this coming?
Or is liberalism actually systematically excluding people by labelling them as "racist" and "sexist", when in fact they're just fiscal and social conservatives?
But one of the main "in-groups" of the Trump supporter base were the working class. In its current form "diversity" is nothing more than a weapon for classism.
We are completely fine understanding root causes and bias which may underlie racial or gender based observations, but conveniently turn a blind eye to well-studied drivers for phenomena like nativism.
A lot of the current form of diversity against the disenfranchised "in-group" amounts to "you're f'd for being poor and FU again for being unhappy about being poor".
It's acceptable (if short-sighted) to exclude people for being racist. It's not acceptable to exclude people for being poor and uneducated. The Democrats messed up by ignoring the pain of poor people, not by being insufficiently tolerant of racism.
The fact that Sanders was predicted to do significantly better than Clinton against Trump means that there's plenty of votes to be won by listening to poor people without being racist.
> Does this not prove that "diverse" liberalism isn't so diverse after all? Shouldn't a diverse group of people have seen this coming?
Even people on the GOP side seemed to accept that Trump was going to lose, so I'd say 'no'. Sometimes the polls are wrong, sometimes you just get surprising results.
It didn't surprise me. You have to look through the reality distortion field of the media and established politicians, because that only represents the views of a tiny and intellectually very non-diverse group of people. Consider the mismatch between what the media was reporting, and the undeniable fact that Trump's rallies attracted a far greater number of people than Clinton's. You also can't rely on the polls when you have a candidate whose voters are underrepresented in those polls because they've never voted before. Many polls sampled people as if this was Obama instead of Clinton. It's was clear that the number previous non-voters who would actually go out to vote for Clinton would be lower than for Obama, whereas from Trump it's the opposite.
> Consider the mismatch between what the media was reporting, and the undeniable fact that Trump's rallies attracted a far greater number of people than Clinton's.
By itself that doesn't mean anything. Sanders got way bigger rallies than Clinton too and still lost.
Interestingly the Trump campaign was complaining about those polls and used that as a basis for their "rigged" claims. So I'd be curious how they produced their numbers internally that showed them ahead in tossup states.
Trump is labeled racist, sexist and misogynistic because of his words and actions. As are most people.
And lots of people saw a Trump presidency as a possibility, like, everyone paying attention to the fact that there was a Republican presidential runner, and that person was Trump.
I'll bite. The majority of insults Trump hurled were targeted at individuals. Insulting someone even if race/sex/gender is included is not by itself racist, misogynistic or whatever. It is just hitting where you know it will hurt the most - which is good tactic IMO.
And he was careful never to insult big parts of the electorate - it was usually the left that generalized.
All of his big gaffes were either towards non citizens or specific citizens. He never had his basket of deplorables moment.
It was between him and Megyn Kelly, the latino judge, the khans.
And we get to the "grab them by the pussy" - and we end in the messy world of human courtship ... where we are all sexist and objectifying the objects of our desire. Both sexes included.
Of course the assaults are assaults ... and I won't defend them. Somehow they disappeared from the media in the last few days though.
Trump is a dirty fighter. But I think that the majority of his sexism, racism or wherever is mostly opportunistic strikes where he sees weakness.
>> Trump is labeled racist, sexist and misogynistic because of his words and actions. As are most people.
The difference is that he does not pretend to be non-racist, non-sexist and not-misogynistic. A lot of people do.
[edit] I am not american, but somehow I can understand that he won the election. He is a honest hustler among a bunch of good liars. He won't stab you in the back. Maybe in the chest. But you will see it coming.
He means that when rural white voters said that they think they're getting the short end of the stick when it comes to globalism, the Democrats blew them off as racists/ignorant/whatever. If the Democrat party was truly diverse this opinion would have been respected enough that it wouldn't be a surprise.
I think Sanders did a much better job of reaching that demographic, so I'd argue it was represented, but the Democrat party decided other priorities were more important by selecting Clinton.
This is exactly what I mean. Clinton really lost a lot of support by only going after social issues that, for all intents and purposes, have already been solved. Sure, there are a lot of racist people who voted for Trump! But there is ample law and policy in place to protect the rights of minorities and LGBT.
Trump went after issues that actually matter. Be careful, I'm not saying LGBT rights and racism don't matter, I'm just saying they aren't really the centerfold of America anymore.
> But there is ample law and policy in place to protect the rights of minorities and LGBT.
The degree to which people believe this is striking. The reality is that these protections are very recent developments and are today easily reversed, particularly by an administration that cares less than usual about the details of how the federal government is run.
How many actual federal legal protections exist now? To me it seems like there hasn't been much change in federal law, some at state levels, but in general it's that people are more accepting because they think Cam on Modern Family is funny.
Quite a lot of rests on the courts. The Supreme Court has a set of case law related to minority rights, which it could reverse--as it did with the Voting Rights Act.
The national legalization of gay marriage happened via the Supreme Court just last year. There is no reason at all it could not be reversed under a new court.
A lot more rests in Department of Justice policy. Look at what Justice has been doing to investigate and clean up racial bias in municipal police forces recently. They have consent decrees with Seattle, Cleveland, and others to try to change the way they do policing.
A new administration could easily abandon every one of those agreements, and the goal of removing racial bias from policing generally. It might even be likely--senior people in the Trump campaign have praised racial profiling as an effective and useful police tactic.
So it sounds like things haven't really been progressing through legislation as much as through judicial and executive action and maybe those things aren't as permanent as hoped?
>The national legalization of gay marriage happened via the Supreme Court just last year. There is no reason at all it could not be reversed under a new court.
Yes, there is; it's "stare decisis". Even Dred Scott has not been reversed because of it.
Hillary has been recorded to be racist herself. She also went from being pro civil union, no pro gay marriage to pro gay marriage - after the fact. Beyond that seems very weird. The lying about 'landing under sniper fire', her weird convulsion-like episodes and the fact that people are repeatedly fired from their jobs for talking about it.
Political donations are not supposed to be tax deductible and yet the Clinton Foundation carries on existence as a 501c3; double dipping so that a majority of her income as one of the most wealthy politicians comes in tax deductible while she pays not taxes on it.
In light of the blatant collusion and conflicts of interest released in her emails she should've been barred from running in the first place.
I don't mean this disrespectfully but I don't really understand your argument. It looks like there is a decent chance Clinton will win the popular vote and it seems like more a failure of statistics rather than diversity to not have been able to see her loss in a couple key states in the polls.
What does "socially conservative" mean in 2016 if not racist/sexist/homophobic? One of Trump's slogans was "Take America back"; that's not particularly subtle as to from who.
The line gets a bit muddier on the fiscal side. If you're all for cutting programs that disproportionately support the poor and the poor happen to be disproportionately minority is there a racial component? That's worth being aware of.
Pro-life, opposed to drug legalization, 2nd amendment rights, to name a few. Sorry, but if that's what you think of all conservatives you have as much prejudice as you think they do.
Pro-life is pretty tightly coupled to the idea women don't have the right to manage their reproductive health-> not very equalist[0].
The drug war was started by Nixon inorder to better control the black and hippie population, so not getting any points there[1].
You're left with gun rights which becomes a question of degree. It's thankfully largely divorced from the issues of sex and race, but pretty tightly coupled to regional culture more than anything else.
The fact that Trump won on the backs of uneducated white men certainly says a lot.
> "Take America back"; that's not particularly subtle as to from who.
Depends on the context really. If that was Sander's slogan, you'd immediately assume whom you'd be taking it back was the bankers & corporation.
It's one of those generic slogan that reflects the views of the beholder. Some will assume it means from the immigrants, others the bureaucrats. It's definitely smarter than the damp squibs that Clinton came up with.
It's a complex issue. Anecdotally some Obama voters broke for Trump, so it's hard to see them being 'racist'. But people like to discount the hurt in the working class and are happy to label them racist --just because this time they didn't agree with you.
My thoughts on some of it is that while the white working class (as well as the black working class) are happy to see America help others out, internationally, domestically; they are not happy to see America help others out but at the same time ignore them and belittle them. That can be in trade deals, acquiescing to illegal immigrants, talking down to them, etc. There are likely a sprinkling of racists on the Trump side, but I dare say, there is the same likelihood of reverse racists on the Clinton side ['white people are the devil'].
Instead of just starting another thread I would like to see the discussion broken down in separate topics. But I realize that's not what Hacker News is meant for.
Again, Republicans did this. Don't blame this on Hillary (hint: she won the popular vote). Don't blame this on Democrats. Accept responsibility.
As for likable, Hillary has been the most admired woman in America, 14 years straight. Trump ran the most negative fact free campaign ever to overcome her likability.
Because nothing underscores likeability quite like subverting the primary election and hiring an army of internet sockpuppets to shift public opinion in your favor.
This is going to happen again in 2020 unless the DNC realizes what they've done. Sanders would have handily won this election and they havr nobody to blame but themselves.
You keep repeating this. It doesn't seem to make sense to me. I voted for Clinton, and I'm a registered Democrat who voted for Sanders in the primary. I'm not sure what we're being asked to take responsibility for here. I feel that my party should take some responsibilty for nominating a candidate who could not prevail against such an unpopular and widely disliked opponent.
Because nothing underscores likeability quite like subverting the primary election and hiring an army of internet sockpuppets to shift public opinion in your favor.
This is going to happen again in 2020 unless the DNC realizes what they've done. Sanders would have handily won this election and they have nobody to blame but themselves.
Disagree here completely, DNC rigged the primary for HRC and gave away the independent vote with it. This was a very forseeable albeit depressing outcome.
Yes, the DNC leaned on the scales which really meant fundraising. If you look at Bernie's fundraising, it was about individual small donations. He did well there, well enough. The DNC had control of PAC money and lists.
This was a contributing factor but Democrats voted. If Democratic voters are as gullible as you're making us out to be then we deserved to lose. Democrats are a center left party. Bernie is progressive which is a little further left. Democrats voted.
Well I am not really calling out the fund raising. I am calling out:
1) The super delegate system that gave HRC a 500 delegate lead before the primaries started. (Watched millions of redditors turn on the DNC over this)
2) The media picking a horse before the primary started, and making it so painfully obvious that it was a slap to the face for Bernie supporters, this made it really challenging to take the media seriously on their Trump bashing (because they did it to Bernie too)
3) Day of primary voter manipulation and questionable practices (illegal) by the Clintons and their support teams.
That said I still find the idea of looking at Trump for the next 4 years as president really depressing, but hopefully this teaches the democrats a lesson, choose the impassioned base over the candidate who thinks it's their turn.
The superdelegate system was put in place in the 70s. Republicans also have superdelegates although they function differently. Superdelegates didn't tip the primary popular vote which Hillary won 16,914,722 to 13,206,428.
However, in light of the DNC email leaks, the Democrat Party's elite seemed to sandbag Bernie, who many believe (citing polls from before the primary) would have given Trump a run for his money. And honestly, this was the Democrats' election to lose, and they did nothing to win it. So I will blame them. I will blame them for going with a candidate that is firmly "establishment" when the general consensus among the public is that the "establishment" has overstayed their welcome. I will blame them for expecting the appeal of having "the first X president" to work the same as it did for Obama.
Trump won not only on a platform that was largely anti-globalization but also on the public mistrust of his opponent. Objectively, the electorate trust and like Sanders far more than Clinton and he has spent his career trying to make progress on the same issues that gave Trump the presidency. This election was about economic issues from the start and despite how demonized Trump was, Clinton didn't stand a chance because her campaign was orthogonal to what huge swaths of the population cared about.
I think the polls were so off this election cycle because Sanders lost the primary. Without him, Democrats lost their only chance to connect with voters that that are liberal but don't always vote based on social issues like abortion, gay marriage, etc (which are, along with minorities and unions, the bread and butter of the Democratic party).
Obviously this years polling was a disaster but Sanders' hypothetical matchup polls are by far the weakest argument for why he should have been the nominee.
A lot of people like to talk about his race, but I don't think it really mattered a lot. Obama won, not because he was black and people wanted to vote for that. Obama won because we had just had 8 years of Bush, the economy was in the tank, and he was young and charismatic.
The democratic nominee always had an uphill battle against a base of R's motivated for "Change", for the same reason that the party in power tends to fall behind during the midterms.
Because nothing underscores likeability quite like subverting the primary election and hiring an army of internet sockpuppets to shift public opinion in your favor.
This is going to happen again in 2020 unless the DNC realizes what they've done. Sanders would have handily won this election and they have nobody to blame but themselves.
This is just not true. Both Trump and Clinton had some of the most unfavorable ratings of a presidential candidate for a major party in recent history.
You are correct that favorables of both candidates were low. But when you run a negative campaign, and Trump ran the most negative campaign ever, you drag your own ratings down as well. It was his only chance.
Exactly, they're both unlikeable, and if either party had nominated someone who was likeable, they probably would've crushed, rather than the dead heat we got in the popular vote.
Yes, when Trump ran his negative campaign, Hillary's favorables declined. Cause and effect.
In fact, using your own cite, if you run that back to 2015 and before and she has net favorables. The only thing you've shown is that negative advertising works.
Yup. Remember Texts From Hillary? Back when we all thought she was cool and hip?
There was an orchestrated effort to portray Hillary as un-likeable and an out-of-touch elite. I remember this starting roughly with the Benghazi hearings, which is I think when it seemed like she was the likely Democratic candidate and politically worth attacking personally.
There was also an orchestrated phenomenon to portray many of the DNC backers of Hillary as unlikeable and an out-of-touch elite, which I think was quite legitimate, but rubbed off on the candidate herself.
(And, I suspect, there was an un-orchestrated phenomenon where Hillary happened to be less likeable than the very likeable Bernie. Which isn't to say that Hillary is un-likeable in any absolute sense.)
Most admired woman in America, winning that honor with a whopping 13% of respondents.
She got 60 million people to vote for her. It's not a surprise that some people liked her. The problem is that many people hated her. Winning that title doesn't disprove that in any way.
The people who hated her were told to hate her. Again and again. And again. If you told them her policies and put an R after her name, they'd celebrate Hillary as an American Maggie Thatcher.
Dragging her down into the ditch was the only thing Trump could do. He couldn't run on his business record (terrible) or personal character (worthless). He had only one path and that was to go negative against someone he'd praised over and over.
That's true, but that doesn't mean nominating her was a good choice. It may be the fault of Republicans that she's so hated, but it's the fault of the Democrats that they nominated someone so hated.
No, she wasn't so hated. In fact, she had net favorables midway through 2015. All you saw was a gutter campaign because really, Trump and the Republicans didn't have anything else to run on. Business record? Please. Personal character? Experience?
And we can see how reliable political polling is.... In any case, it doesn't matter if >50% of people see her favorably if they don't see her favorably enough to vote for her, and if the other side sees her unfavorably enough to vote against her.
I don't think that gutter campaign would have worked against someone who the Republicans hadn't spent two decades preparing for.
My claim was "many people hated her." It's not adding caveats and provisos to point out that this is compatible with being seen favorably by a majority.
You keep talking about the gutter campaign. What's your point there? Blame Republicans for running an effective campaign tailored to the weaknesses of their opponent?
My point is that a gutter campaign was all Republicans had. Obama had done well and Hillary was exceptionally qualified. So they motivated a scared base to win a gerrymandered election while losing the popular vote.
Why are you assuming I'm a Republican? I'm not registered with any party, and I voted for Hillary. But in the primary, I voted for (and donated to) Bernie. Sad that he lost.
The DNC did sabotage Sanders' nomination and (apparently) support Trump for the Republican nomination. Besides that, the American Left has been absolutely ruthless in dismissing and demonizing poor, white, and Christian people. I definitely think there is plenty of blame to go around.
>As for likable, Hillary has been the most admired woman in America, 14 years straight. Trump ran the most negative fact free campaign ever to overcome her likability.
I seem to recall a great amount of distaste to her, even coming from other Democrats (including Obama's and Biden's campaigns), in the 2008 election. Most liberals I knew disliked or even detested Hillary back then, and now detest her more now.
I could think of hundreds more American women who deserve the title "most admired".
Now that the voices of the disenfranchised blue collar workers have been heard, what actually can be done to help them? I'm less worried about the accusations of racism, etc. because it appears to me a majority are voting because their livelihoods have been lost and, despite economics saying globalization will bring new jobs, they aren't showing up in the critical areas where they are needed.
So, what policies can be put in place specifically to help this demographic? I genuinely don't know.
Which is unfortunate since many of these out-of-work Trump supporters who are never getting their factory jobs back would likely benefit from basic income.
Firstly, we don't have open borders. Secondly, why not? Lots of other social programs work with the present "border situation". No illegal immigrants are drawing social security or medicaid.
Robots will not be immediately cost-effective for all production and it may be 30 years before they permeate manufacturing. Until then humans will serve.
I've complained on HN about the low quality of many goods (e.g., nail clippers) and about how the supply chain to US consumers today is no better than it was in my youth more than 50 years ago. Most of you were not yet around to know what the supply chain was like 50 years ago so please suspend your disbelief.
QC in some countries appears impervious to consumer feedback; they couldn't produce a decent set of pliers 20 years ago and they cannot today. They may never succeed due to their unique social and political histories. Lack of communication and competitive feedback in non-free markets inhibits quality. In contrast USA manufacturers 50 years ago and earlier produced very high quality goods (many still in use!).
I expect the USA to bring back production of high-quality goods and a more robust supply chain. Until someone invents a Star Trek replicator, I expect JIT inventory management to be discarded in many industries; it's primary benefit was bigger bonuses for MBAs.
No education I know of available today will prepare youth for the future they face. Once machine learning and AI become widely embedded in manufacturing and commerce, skills required will be beyond the ability of most. Meanwhile grades are falling and testing becoming more lenient.
Someday almost no one will have a job. We should plan accordingly.
One thing that helps countries develop the expertise to produce high qualities, is selling to fickle and demanding foreigners.
Export led industrialization has worked well for the Asian Tigers, and the quality of their products is decent enough.
It's also instructive to look at Europe's industrialization in the 19th century. The Brits famously demanded Made in Germany to be marked on goods to allow the British customer to detect the inferior products. Turned out, they weren't inferior any more.
"QC in some countries appears impervious to consumer feedback; they couldn't produce a decent set of pliers 20 years ago and they cannot today. They may never succeed due to their unique social and political histories."
Would you provide some examples of the countries you're thinking of? My inclination is that it's more a function of demand for cheap products and unwillingness to pay more for better quality even while complaining about the quality of what some are willing to pay for. Also, the generalization that all (or most) products coming out of a country are of equal in quality. Two counter examples come to mind as well. Japan and China have both been a source of cheap, low-quality goods during the last century, and both also produce some very high quality goods as well. I've also purchased very low-quality "Made in USA" products.
And things change, including "unique social and political histories". Is it more accurate and useful to think of differences in QC in a general way or to look more closely at the incentives and circumstances at work?
If I've mischaracterized your views, please do point it out, as that's not my intent. Thanks!
Well, you're right they are places of disenfranchisement. We had one party this week work to make sure polling places in the city would have the longest waiting times they could get away with.
I'm not so sure. I'm in the Midwest, and housing shortages and gentrification are extremely prevalent problems here too, in almost every city with employers. It's a major problem even for some absolutely tiny towns - http://www.freep.com/story/money/real-estate/2015/12/21/hous...
Sure, the scale is way smaller than coastal cities. But if you adjust the prices to match the incomes, the unaffordability problem is roughly identical in terms of pain. A Michigan $300k urban condo is basically as unaffordable as a Seattle $600k condo, once you notice that Michigan incomes are roughly 50% lower than Seattle, on average.
Sprawl is cheap, that's absolutely true. But it's also sprawl -- with all the problems that entails. The only cities I know of with "huge housing surpluses", are cities that have majorly failed in some way (like Flint).
That is only going to help more wealthy people move to the cities and take more housing on their own firstly, especially because they will be advertising "new" apartments and thus ask for higher price points. There isn't a very large city without some kind of housing shortage right now. Hacker news seems predominantly upper-class but many articles complain about housing in SF/SV. It seems to me that if housing was reduced, it would just be more upperclass moving to SF/SV instead of the lowerclass. So I don't see how more housing would ultimately fix the issue. Maybe it would help, but fix?
Land Value Tax is the answer. Incidentally, it's biggest proponent, Henry George, who kicked of the late 19th century wave of Progressives hailed from SF.
Proponents of storing wealth in another mechanism other than basically land banking need to work out a more marketable and approachable explanation. I only found Georgism after a multi-decade circuitous, torturous inquiry into why the hell median income-based saving for a house was consistently outstripped by housing cost inflation in all top 50 US cities. In an era where economic value is increasingly defined by cognitive input per unit volume/mass (what I call "cognitive density"), it makes decreasing sense to imbue land with wealth store function.
That's a pretty weak consideration. Even if `give people the ability to store wealth' was an overriding imperative, what's wrong with letting them buy a lump of gold or Google stock?
I have nothing against vesting the wealth into gold. I'm not keen on relying upon secondary markets for wealth storage; bond markets for that purpose are more aligned to what I advocate. I'm on the fence with tying energy storage to wealth storage, still reading up on a thermodynamic basis of economic structures.
I see lots of negative externalities to using preferential credit instruments in a debt-backed monetary system securing land as a store of wealth, especially for late-stage generations like the Millenials and later are experiencing first-hand. The process takes many generations to play out the stage we're at, so it builds up vested interests until some final set of bag holders gets the sucker punch. They (Millenials and later) are on the wrong side of an asset inflation to wage inflation ratio curve function that looks ugly and not resolvable without tremendous disruption to world asset markets.
In an agrarian or even industrial development era, it makes sense that land is a large direct contributor to output profits, and to ascribe wealth storage to it as the improvements that sit on top are enhanced. To my unsophisticated and untrained layman's sense, this reasoning starts to fall apart as industrialization is increasingly mechanized and automated, but there is still a tiny shred of reasoning. I can't find even a slim reasoning for continuing the practice when the land itself doesn't contribute directly to the economic output, which I sense is the case when cognitive effort is the majority input to economic output. Land value then in a commercial real estate context starts to reflect a proximity to supply chain networks where the supply chain is for physically-located talent (SV). That makes sense, though I'm interested to see the impact if VR/AR matures and virtual offices with startlingly-realistic telepresence become feasible (I predict the first 3-6 generations of that tech won't have an impact, and only the later generations will).
Where the reasoning really decouples for me however, is residential real estate. There, I would have expected pricing to essentially follow median wages. Effectively modeling median housing prices as a put option: term length the duration of the median mortgage, strike price the wage earner's expected career earnings over that duration lining up with the house price (or some appropriate fraction thereof). That didn't happen, so I'm misinterpreting something, or don't understand something about using real estate as a store of value, or the market is just staying irrational longer than I am expecting.
I dunno, just rambling here, please correct what is certainly my poor interpretation of what's going on here. I'm just a layman trying to figure out why residential real estate prices seem decoupled from median local income in so many geographies at the same time. I started wandering down these ponderings when I realized that as a remote worker in the US, only some pretty far out places had escaped the residential real estate inflation, whereas in the 70's driving only an hour out of town led to a drastic 75%+ drop in per acre prices. I ended up staying pretty close to an urban area, and paying off my property as quickly as possible, but I feel terrible for the younger generations getting completely screwed.
We can not get an `ought' from `is` statements alone. But we can derive a complex or interesting `ought' from a simple `ought' and a bunch of `is' statements.
I want a tax system that can finance a welfare state without burdening the real economy. I care about real gdp, low unemployment and to a small extent equality of after-tax income. I don't care about `storage of wealth': the private sector takes care of that just fine.
Given those `oughts' and a bunch of standard orthodox text book economics, you get a free market laissez faire economy and a state financed by land value tax as a good first order answer. Land value taxes do not disturb the ecomony, since land is a perfectly inelasticly supplied good. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence for who actually ends up paying for taxes on goods and services, and for who can pass them on, and to what degree. It's all about elasticity.)
As a minor point, you want to add some sin taxes like eg carbon and alcohol tax, where you actually actively want the change to demand and supply that the tax causes: less carbon dioxide release, less alcohol consumed.
I don't see how agrarian or industrial development era makes a difference here. Eg Australia is an advanced economy, but relies on resource extraction and agriculture a lot, and a land value tax would make sense for them too. (They actually have one on the books, but it's mostly toothless with a small base and low rates.)
Ultimately, thermodynamics might be able to explain a lot about biology, society and economics. Alas, I don't think that science has advanced well enough for that grounding, yet; yet alone our laymen's understanding of it. Mostly, the thermodynamics that we have a good handle on is equilibrium thermodynamics, or at best near-equilibrium. Economies are thermodynamically very open systems with matter, energy and entropy flowing in and out. (Even in the confusingly similarly named `economic equilibrium'.)
And in any case, such a re-interpretation must `save the phenomena'. Ie just like the statistical mechanics explanation of thermodynamics makes the same predictions as the older macro-scale traditional thermodynamics.
> Where the reasoning really decouples for me however, is residential real estate. There, I would have expected pricing to essentially follow median wages.
I would expect land prices to follow basically average disposable income:
Basically, people use their income left over after taxes, groceries etc to bid up all available residential land for either paying rent or paying mortgages on. This sets the monthly cost of land, and a look at the prevailing interest rate on mortgages will tell you the value: monthly cost per square metre * 12 / yearly interest rate == capital value per square metre
(Where a eg 2% interest rate goes into the calculation as 0.02, ie a multiplicative factor of 50.)
Feel free to send me an email to continue the discussion. My address is in my profile.
If I wanted to live in a city, I would have moved into one years ago. I don't. I like where I live. I just want a job within less than an hours' commute of me.
That's fine, you can live wherever you want, but jobs are moving to cities and if we want to make life better for the people working those jobs then we should build housing for them in supply adequate to make it affordable.
Jobs have been moving to cities ever since the first city existed. It's a fact of physics and economics that cities simply have a higher density of jobs than rural areas - and that reduces costs of applying to jobs for people.
You can stick fingers in your ears and shout it isn't so or a law of nature, but that's just being deliberately economically illiterate.
Yes, let's decentralize our business. Scatter them throughout the country. Let's put some roadblocks on being able to co-mingle with other businesses
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I do semi-agree with you. I think remote work is the future but part of that equation is manufacturing jobs are gone. It doesn't matter if we shut down 100% of the jobs in China and Mexico and bring them here, manufacturing jobs are dying.
Anyone in manufacturing needs a way out. Either they need to find it or we need to help them but twiddling our thumbs and pretending like automation isn't coming is short-sighted.
I'm sure there are people that want to live in the wilds of Alaska, but have all of the benefits of living in NYC with regards to jobs, but that doesn't mean it's possible or even likely.
What you want and what reality is don't have to match up.
This will not help. You are supposing that the people who feel disenfranchised in the Rust Belt want to move to NYC where they can get cheap housing and work in the city. They don't want the China model of having a Foxconn that hires rural workers to work in the big city.
What these people want isn't fully rational; it's highly emotional. They want their 1950s-style old way of life back. They want their jobs in their towns that they grew up in, that they have lived in or raised families in, where they have their church and their community. They want to live in their IL farm town and work at the local union plant and make a living to pay for pensions and healthcare. It is not realistic in a globalized economy and will be less so in a fully domesticated one, but the math is not what matters here.
Urban areas in these places already have plenty of housing that nobody is in. See Detroit for example.
With this thought process it almost seems like you are saying we have to wait for a generation to die off before this problem is "fixed".
Not saying that you are wrong, but it is a sad idea that we can't fix it. Maybe instead of giving out "gov't handouts" we just give out VR headsets and give pple a Matrix like existance who can no longer bare the thought of their current living conditions. Sad.
I wish I could say it was this easy, but the problem isn't entirely generational. There are millions of young people out in these rural areas too. It's where they grew up, where they went to school, where their families are, where their churches are. If they went to college, they went to a minor in-state college/university and ended up not far from their original birthplace.
What these people are seeking in Trump's "make america great again" is a return to 1950s-1960s America, not as it was, but idyllic as it seems in movies and rosy retrospection.
What I see with the Trump win is that America is simply two Americas: the urban, cosmopolitan melting pot America that most of us here live in, where the wealth inequality problem is gentrification and housing supply is restricted. We are trying to get multitudes of races, religions, and socioeconomic backgrounds to be able to coexist in the cities. Many of us here are the "elites" even though none of us feel like it, and we take that for granted. That's the whole "white privilege" bit that we hear thrown about by SJWs, and to a large extent they are right in this regard. There is a marked lack of empathy for minorities and "poor" people in SF et al these days. People don't understand it, and it seems that when people go to "understand it" it's some type of socioeconomic tourism where you go hang out in Oakland with locked doors, or if you're in NYC you crawl up to Harlem for a chop cheese, because some rapper talked about it, and you wonder why the bodega has thick acrylic glass in front of the register.
Trump's America is semirural/exurban "American dream" idealism, where people want to "make America great again" by making it great for them in the way it used to be, when America felt white and Christian - that is, not so much talk of gays and minorities and political correctness - you got married, got a nice middle-class job nearby your house, oh, and owned a house and a car and the wife could stay at home. This is what they want; it is what they seem to believe they are promised. It is emotional and has absolutely nothing to do with the status quo; they're hoping by isolating the US from the rest of the world ("like it used to be") they will see this way of life restored.
What they don't understand is that the economics of this is not, and will never be, in their favor.
I feel that it's less about going to a 1950s ideal and more about giving more opportunities to the uneducated rural people who have been extremely hurt by globalism.
Even worse, the only reasons the mid-century was so great in America are 1) we had all the gold (from exporting during WW2), and 2) the productive capacity of most other developed countries was completely destroyed (by WW2). Even if globalization and automation were not issues, there would still be no way of life to go back to.
People _can't_ move away. A large portion of their net worth is tied up in their house. They don't have the cash they need to move. There's no way you can reduce prices of housing in urban areas to match what the empty suburbs are at already. Not to mention the psychological issues of telling people they won't have a lawn or a house any more.
I don't think you're wrong. But this is the same situation that "millennials" have been facing. They have no cash to move from their family home to chase opportunity. I'm sure many would love to keep their standard of living as-is and have a good job, but most accept smaller and more expensive housing with problems like traffic, crime, pollution in urban areas in return for employment.
The big difference I see is most millennials want to move to a big city and work hard at creating a new and better future.
This is the crux of why Trump's pandering to them was total bullshit. He can't do anything to help them because the jobs that left aren't coming back. In four years they will be in the same position they are now but they wont have a black man or a Democrat to blame for it and so they wont be quite as bitter about it.
And even if that somehow happens, those scenes from his rallies are not going away. The videos of people cheering racist rhetoric, cheering the idea of an entire religion being banned from the country, the idea of not giving a shit that someone confessed to sexual assault, is not going away. If anything, it's going to flourish.
This is what I fear the most. The rise of alt-right rhetoric making it's way into the mainstream. I guess the pendulum had to swing away from talk of global unity and progress and towards isolationism at some point - I just hope it swings back the other way before it's too late.
You do realize when you're talking about "global unity" that almost the whole rest of the world is more racist and sexist than the US, right? I come from a Muslim country. Replace "Muslims" with "Jews" and the worst things said at a Trump rally would be socially acceptable where I am from.
That's a shame, though I doubt you could objectively quantify and compare the sort of racism and sexism here with that of another given nation except at a surface level.
You don't even need an objective measure. It's so deeply ingrained people don't even think about it. For example, Americans will refer to someone from another country by their nationality. "He's Canadian" or "he's German." In Bangladesh, everyone not from Bangladesh is "bideshi"--"foreigner."
And if you're "bideshi" you'll never be "Bangladeshi." A white person can live in Bangladesh their whole life and never be "from there." But at least they generally respect white people. Hang around an immigrant community somewhere like Toronto and get folks talking about black people or Jewish people. Ask a girl's parents about how they would feel about her marrying a black person. You won't get a more negative reaction anywhere in Alabama.
As to the issue of sexism--I don't think it even needs saying.
There are lots of ways to objectively quantify racism and sexism. Just off the top of my head:
- Are women/minorities legally allowed to vote?
- Do women/minorities vote at the same rates as majority men?
- Are women/minorities represented in office at the same rates as majority men?
- Are there any legal restrictions against women/minorities that don't apply to majority men like the right drive, the right to own property, rules around dress or appearance?
- Are women/minorities paid as well for their work as majority men?
- Is abortion legal?
- Do women/minorities have equal access to education as majority men?
- Is interracial marriage legal? How common is it?
- How integrated is housing? Do people of different races tend to live near each other?
I'm sure this list isn't exhaustive. As I said, just a start off the top of my head.
The checks and balances are a republican controlled congress (House and Senate). And a supreme court where republicans will be able to select a majority of the members. The only check and balance left is via a Democratic filibuster.
Considering the majority in the house and senate, day 1 the ACA is going to get repealed - millions will lose their health coverage, and my employer's profitability is going to tank as a result as an increase of patients coming into the ER can't pay their medical bills and we end up sending them to collections before eventually writing it off.
At present, there are millions more people with health insurance in the USA than before Romneycare became the law of the land. Especially in the states that implemented the Medicaid expansion provisions.
The Medicaid expansion is a particular sore spot if the ACA gets repealed, a majority of our physicians are in California where Medi-Cal has had gobs of funding and covered an expanded population well before the ACA was implemented - but for those in states that did rely on the expansion funding I expect our collection rates are going to plummet as Medicaid patients continue to make up a large majority of those that utilize emergency department and urgent care facilities.
There's going to be a lot of people losing Medicaid if this happens that will become self-pay (aka, no money) patients. Not a good time to be in the billing industry.
They didn't necessarily lose their coverage, they just ended up with much worse coverage with much higher deductibles.
Those of us who have stuck with our pre-Obamacare plans are paying dearly for the privilege. That's OK, I understand that Obamacare was supposed to fail from day one, in order to pave the way for single-payer coverage.
But it's becoming increasingly apparent that we're going to get the first part without the second.
Republicans already had a majority in the house and senate, and have tried to repeal the ACA many times. They still don't have a supermajority in the senate, though, so I expect Democrats will continue to filibuster any attempts to repeal.
They passed a reconciliation bill[1], which needed only a simple majority in both houses and is filibuster-proof. The only thing that stopped that bill from going through was a Presidential veto. The ACA is going to be repealed.
Before the ACA, no one would sell me health insurance. Several years ago, I had my gallbladder out. So whenever I'd try to buy health insurance, "pre-existing condition" would kick in, even though I'm perfectly healthy.
So, I'm scared now, to once again be a self-employed adult without access to medical care. At least I'm in pretty good health. I know a few people who rely on their health care who, if they end up getting kicked off of their insurance plans, may not live very long. That's scary to think about, too.
Without the Medicaid expansion, they likely won't be able to afford any private insurance as well. The ultimate outcome is going to be uninsured people flooding the ER, who by law has to stabilize them. But maintenance drugs will be out of reach of many.
Repeal and replace. I'm sure Trump's solution will not leave you in the cold. It would be wreckless to repeal without ensuring people like you keep your insurance.
The current insurance market is not a permanent thing. If you look at the ACA marketplace, the list of plans changes year by year and that's the same thing that happens on the private market. In that context, what does keep your insurance even mean? Yes, I highly doubt we'll get dropped from our insurance plans in the middle of the year, but those of us on the independent market almost always have to buy a new plan every year. As such, the question of whether or not we can obtain a new plan is extremely important.
A few years ago I read an article in the online version of some magazine -- Fortune, maybe -- that was attempting to rebut the argument that the GOP opposed the ACA but had never offered a coherent counterproposal. The author listed maybe a dozen plans that had been put forth by various Republican legislators.
I commented on the piece that a dozen plans is no plan. The GOP needed, I argued, to settle on a single plan to go to the voters with and say, "Here, this is what we should do instead of the ACA." Nothing like that has ever happened.
Well, now they'll have their chance to repeal the ACA with or without a replacement in hand. I won't be surprised at all if they don't replace it with anything, and we'll be back to where we were. -- Which will really put a damper on people over 45 or so quitting their jobs to do startups.
> I'm sure Trump's solution will not leave you in the cold.
I hope you're right, but I don't know how you can possibly be sure.
I feel for you. Working in the medical industry I feel the ACA is one of the most important (if not what many of us would have wanted) steps towards providing care to everyone we have taken, the fact that it's going to end up vanishing is going to have a huge impact - one that unfortunately is likely to only be felt years from when it happens.
I'm in a similar boat. I'm a cancer survivor, in my early thirties, and run a technology business. Without government intervention, I can not buy health insurance.
Even if you want to remove the compassion for it, eliminating the ability obtain medical insurance is terrible for the economy. I waited for years to separate from my last employer until I was confident that I could obtain health insurance. There are a ton of risks when starting a new company and the last thing you want to think about is whether or not you can pay medical bills if something were to happen again.
Rather than working on my business, I now need to setup a meeting with the state's high-risk insurance pool to figure out whether they're finally going to eliminate the program and then compare that with the paltry list of plans left on ACA as well as what a broker can find me. To be clear, ACA has massive issues. That said, it meant that I could buy insurance, even if it wasn't the perfect insurance that I wanted.
What would you say to thousands of people with decent health whose premiums and deductibles have gone up and who are forced to keep paying it to avoid the penalty?
While it seems fair to subsidize the costs of your particular problem, does it also seem fair to ask of them to subsidize the costs associated with obesity and palliative care of the old?
These people do not have software developer salaries either. The income cut-off for being offered some sort of a discount on the plans is rather low, so it really eats into the budgets of their families.
Prior to ACA, people who were old or obese could still buy insurance. Prior to ACA, people like me who were cancer survivors could not, in any way shape or form, buy health insurance outside of government programs. If you are asking whether or not I believe it to be fair that premiums have gone up because in order to cover the uninsurable, absolutely.
And, to be clear, even now health insurance is not cheap for me. I did better in my business than I ever did before and I still budget for and spend 9% of my gross income on healthcare, which is split between premiums and my out of pocket max.
ACA is absolutely, positively not a perfect law. However, ACA has allowed me to start a business. ACA has given me the possibility of starting a family. I am not alone. If the cost of that is the requirement that I muster enough compassion to cover the costs associated with subsidizing the obese and old, then that is absolutely worth it.
I think it is fair to ask healthy people to subsidize health care for unhealthy people.
I think the best means of structuring society's relationship to medical care is to make it available to everyone within that society, spreading the costs across all parts of society.
That, to me, is the most sensible approach, even when some people pay more than they use, or some people use more than they pay for.
Pooled costs and guaranteed access to shared resources is one of the things that society is/does. Medical care doesn't seem different from roads, schools, police, the FCC, whatever.
Whether the ACA does a good job spreading the costs around or getting people access to medical care, that's a separate discussion. But whether it should at all, not a question for me. It should.
The same he always does: Blaming things on others. This is what worries me the most: Trump won't get anything done but blame it, yet again, on some minority. And, yet again, chances are people will believe him.
I think this is a bit dismissive of the issue --and the thinking that sunk the Hillary's campaign.
In terms of trade, the US typically like to pay it forward --it lets trade partners have a slight advantage so long as it sees a net positive (see China) presumably Trump would ask for equal benefits.
So rather than asking is this good for the global economy his administration might instead ask, is this good for the US economy? While the answer to the questions often overlap, at times the current answer does not optimize of the US economy.
> In terms of trade, the US typically like to pay it forward --it lets trade partners have a slight advantage so long as it sees a net positive (see China) presumably Trump would ask for equal benefits.
That's a weird language. It's to the best benefit of the country to just adopt unilateral free trade. No need to bargain.
Of course, politically, that's not feasible.
But there's no `benefit' that comes at a cost to the country when allowing your citizens to freely trade with other countries citizens.
>It's to the best benefit of the country to just adopt unilateral free trade. No need to bargain
I'm not seeing Brazil, Japan or China adopt this philosophy --even the EU. If you were to start unilateral free trade what happens is others will protect themselves and you are left holding the deficit bag. Your consumers will be happy (yay consumerism!), but your wage-earners will not be happy.
Europe has a trade surplus, they aren't doing so well.
Australia has been running a deficit for ages. They have been doing splendidly.
Also, often a trade deficit is just a statistical artefact: if the Chinese ship a billion t-shirts to the US, and in return get a skyscraper in Manhattan, that skyscraper-for-t-shirts trade will show up as contributing to the trade-deficit, just because the skyscraper doesn't move.
(Some for them buying some silicone valley company instead of the skyscraper. And America is good at producing lots of those companies.)
Your statement does not provide support for their being a silent majority for Trump. But I hope people consider what you said when someone talks about how Hillary or the media or whatever is part of the corrupt "Establishment".
It doesn't matter whether there was a "silent majority" for Trump or anyone else because we don't attach any importance to a majority vote at the national level. Nor should we. If we did, three metropolitan areas in New York and California would dictate the outcomes of our Presidential elections.
But I hope people consider what you said when someone talks about how Hillary or the media or whatever is part of the corrupt "Establishment".
That, on the other hand, is no longer questionable.
Good thing the rules are agreed to before the competition. BTW, the popular vote hasn't been completely counted, and probably never will be. Absentee ballot, which generally favor Republicans, will not be counted in any of the states that didn't have a close margin of error(read: most of the red states). In a close election like this, you really have no ground complaining about popular vote.
It's interesting reading through comments and seeing "them" mentioned. A lot of it will be because HN has a lot of international posters, but descriptions of Clinton voters don't read like this.
You have it backwards. She was trying to differentiate his racist support from his "we're worried about our jobs" support. Read the text of her speech.
"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it.
[...]
But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroine, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."
She called 50% of Trump's supporters racists, homophobes, etc. How is that not exactly what the quote is made out to be? If she had said "some of Trump's supporters" you'd be right.
I'll agree that she worded that poorly and was unkind. Even Clinton apologized for that part. " “I regret saying ‘half’ -- that was wrong." [1] That's one of the differences between the candidates.
In support of her defense of the statement: "to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half". That sounds very vague to me. She even referred to "you could put half" as "grossly generalistic".
Then in the rest of her statement she got to empathizing with the people that aren't voting because we have too many Muslims and brown people make me squeeamish.
You'd think by now politicians --- you have one job! --- would learn that this message always loses. Attack the candidate, never the candidate's supporters. Trump offers a corollary, which is simply "if you're attacking someone other than the candidate, just be super specific about who you're attacking".
The "deplorable" thing cost Clinton. The attacks on the Khan family don't seem to have cost Trump much at all.
If you say something like that and expect anyone to keep listening or reading after your first sentence, you have no business -- or future -- in politics.
Imagine you're a poorly educated working class person who's struggling.
You hear both candidates speak. Hillary says "We need to have empathy for those people," a phrase that's clearly referring to you by the surrounding context. She's obviously not talking to you, she's talking about you.
Trump says "I LOVE THE POORLY EDUCATED!!! And I know you're struggling and I'm going to fix it!"
He's talking directly to you.
Who do you vote for?
Does it even matter what she says at that point about empathy? No. She clearly doesn't even consider the possibility that a poorly educated person who's leaning Trump would even be in the audience. Does "We need to understand you people and empathize with you" sound inclusive? If you're in Camp Hillary it might. If you're not in Camp Hillary, well, those words are pretty much an admission that the in-crowd doesn't relate to you at all, or consider you one of them.
And that's the complete arrogance and obliviousness that allowed the left to lose an election to an extremely weak opponent.
I feel like you're inventing a story here where one candidate talked to people but the other talked about them. It doesn't hold up. Not just beacuse none of your quotes were actually quotes. Nor just because Trump voters had a higher-than-average income.
"We need to have empathy for those people" because of "those people" is exclusive, but "We need to understand you people and empathize with you" is also exclusive. Is it the "you people"? Or should she have lied and said "I'm one of you". I don't know if it matters because she didn't say that anyway. Then the "I love the poorly educated", which is also a "[them]" is inclusive.
"She clearly doesn't even consider the possibility that a poorly educated person who's leaning Trump would even be in the audience."
She made that speech at a fundraiser. Why would she speak to someone who maybe was there isntead of the people that were? What did Trump say at his private fundraisers? Should we compare stump speeches?
Did your hypothetical voter hear Trumps speeches where he constantly mentions how rich he is, how much money he makes in real estate deals, and all the fancy stuff he does? How many golf courses did he talk about in a day? I don't see why it's arrogant to not believe in Trump as a populist. Or to see irony in the claim that one candidate better cares about, relates to, or understands the poorly educated when his party wants to limit social safety nets, unions, health care, and the ability of poor people and minorities to vote.
As to the left's obliviousness, our candidate get more votes.
There's no "story," this is a post-mortem. She lost, we get to figure out why. That takes a bit of humility.
My lasting impression here was that the DNC's goal was not to win the presidency, it was to get Hillary Clinton elected to the presidency. There's a difference, and in this case, it was a vital one. During the Democratic caucuses I watched a lot of people vote for Hillary because it was assumed "she has the best chance of beating Trump." But the numbers at the time didn't even bear it out, and here we are.
What bit the DNC in the ass in a big way last night was that they completely miscalculated the importance of a large portion of the electorate that Trump actively courted, nominated a candidate that had almost no chance of swaying these voters, and ignored and denigrated them for the entire campaign. Whoops. Calling this a 'blind spot' would probably be an understatement.
Michael Moore called this one months ago. I hope the lesson of this election is not lost on anyone.
>What bit the DNC in the ass in a big way last night was that they completely miscalculated the importance of a large portion of the electorate that Trump actively courted, nominated a candidate that had almost no chance of swaying these voters, and ignored and denigrated them for the entire campaign. Whoops. Calling this a 'blind spot' would probably be an understatement.
Yes to humility. I'm fine with the party doing some self-analysis and changing how they do things. I just don't think the math supports this narrative. Did Trump actually bring in new voters to his party? That was the story in the primary (and apparently now) but I don't think the data matched it then. It seems he did well with Republicans. Would any Democratic candidate have swayed rural white voters, or any white voters?
And suppose we take away the arguments about Trump's racist stuff. Say all these portion of voters really did vote because they had been ignored and are worried about their jobs and economic uncertainty. I don't think Trump's stated policies will help them. I think they're wrong to think trade policies and immigration are causing their problems. And if the story about this populist uprising is true, these don't seem to want a social safety net, expanded access to health care, environmental regulation, or unions, as much as they want a wall to keep out Mexicans. The DNC doesn't need to sway these voters. They're Republicans.
And finally, she got more votes. How terrible could Hillary have been if she got more votes? We need to keep this election in perspective. It was very very close. There are still a lot of people that want Democrats in office.
Maybe these people would rather be lied to by a con artist than to be made the punchline of every joke by every liberal blogger, pundit and late night host on a daily basis.
This election taught us that one of the parties is peddling very divisive rhetoric, and it's not the one you may think it is.
In my experience, those people aren't looking to Trump to "fix" their problems. As you said, in many cases those jobs simply aren't coming back.
The difference is that Trump said "I'll do everything I can to put things back together" (while not making any specific promises), while Clinton said "You're sexist and deplorable if you vote for that guy".
Trump recognized that the problems existed. He was the first presidential candidate to do even that.
Interesting that right around that number the Obamacare subsidies fade away and are replaced by fines. These are the people getting the short end of the stick in regards to the ACA.
Don't know why you're being downvoted- there has always been a bubble where you're too rich to get help, too poor to afford all the responsibilities you currently have. These are the people who voted Trump- they think they don't need the government to help them, they just need the government to stop hurting them.
Unless they had health issues, acute or chronic. In which case the ~6K out of pocket limit was helping them. It provided a ceiling to help keep people from going bankrupt.
Without Obamacare we are probably going to see a return of unlimited out of pocket, no drug coverage and a maximum lifetime benefit (Don't get cancer). So those people are going to get the short end of the stick still as they age.
They can't take your house to repay medical bills. For many people in that bracket "going bankrupt" is essentially having a black mark on their credit score for 7 years. It simply isn't cost effective nor affordable for those people. If it was you would of seen a different outcome yesterday.
> They can't take your house to repay medical bills.
I'm not American. I was under the impression that you can be refused treatment (medicine specifically) if you don't have the money? I've heard stories of people selling their house to buy treatment for ill children.
It's not a matter of "We don't want this product", it is simply unaffordable for a great number of people. For many paying for insurance would essentially mean living like a Chinese peasant farmer, eating ramen noodles every night. Given that it covers essentially nothing until 10k or so, it's not a sacrifice that they are not willing to make.
That said we have a funny system here, when people get to a certain age (when they actually cost money to insure) we give them socialized medicine. Same thing happens if you get really sick and go on disability. It's a nice deal the insurance companies have, they get to privatize the gains and socialize the losses.
The short end of the stick from the ACA/Obamacare or the short end of the stick for a failure to meaningfully reform health care from successive administrations?
My health insurance bill has been going up 5-10% for the last 10 years. Between my employer and I it's now $14,000 just for insurance. That's nearly double the average total income taxes back in my country of birth.
Trump has been harping on infrastructure spending the whole election. That certainly seems like the modern version of the CCC. Hopefully some of that money goes towards national parks and the like.
There's almost a 100% chance that the country will be at war by the time Trump's first term is up. It's going to be his only shot at a second term given that he won't be able to run on nonsensical rhetoric anymore.
Problem is you can't help them, they are self destructive. You need to change their culture of "learned helplessness". Read the book Hillbilly Elegy for a good perspective.
Jobs that can't be exported are safe from movement. Hairdressing and cleaning for instance. That doesn't mean the person doing it can't be an immigrant, though, so perhaps by restricting immigration you reduce competition for it.
Jobs that compete with similar jobs in other countries can potentially benefit from trade barriers. Make foreign cars expensive and there will be substitution with local cars. Long term it's worth thinking about whether there's a dependency created on that tariff.
Higher minimum wage has been mentioned. In so far as demand from the firms is inelastic you improve the lot of the minimum wage workers. Question is whether it is. Moving from 7 to 12 sounds like a big jump, and will be very dependent on what part of the country it is.
All these things depend on econometric measurement whose results I haven't come across.
> Make foreign cars expensive and there will be substitution with local cars.
This is quite true, but the problem is those cars will be a lot more expensive. That means a small number of people employed making the cars benefit, while the vastly larger number of people buying them lose out in higher costs. This never works out to the benefit of the country as a whole and low wage earners are the ones that lose out the most. For every car those workers make, they buy dozens of other goods which, if more expensive due to trade barriers, more than soak up any increased wages they might have.
Actually it's worse than that, because often many of those workers could have been gainfully employed is other industries. Only a small minority of our theoretical car workers would actually have been unemployed in a globalized world.
It's the same with Brexit. The vote was driven by working class people on low incomes, but the impact of inflation from the fall of the pound and further economic problems when we do actually leave the EU will predominantly fall on them. Middle class people like me have enough marginal income to absorb the hit. People on low income don't.
The incremental improvements in averages aren't what's driving people to vote, though. We need to look hard at the situation in the rust belt, and figure out how we pull these people up, who have consistently lost in the game of averages and aggregation.
We currently have crazy import tariffs on Chinese made automobile tires. The result has been 1,200 jobs saved and consumers paid an extra billion dollars for tires.
And those 1,200 jobs are just the visible ones. The extra billion dollars probably came with further negative effects somewhere else.
(German coal mining was (or still is?) in similar territory: the subsidy necessary to keep a few mining jobs around was way higher than what those guys got paid.)
This fits into a general patterns of political problems, where small groups benefit greatly at the expense of much larger groups who all suffer very slightly. It's like the plot in Superman to steal fraction of a penny from everyone.
If you can negotiate a tax-break for your industry then it'll give you millions, but millions or even billions divided up amongst the whole nation is hard to spot for an individual.
>That means a small number of people employed making the cars benefit
But those small number of people who benefit plus the whole of people in their supply chain, people that also drive demand for whatever the other people paying more for cars are offering.
The point I'm trying to make is that international trade doesn't give any multiplying magic. Simply separate the states in your country and whatever trade between them will become "international". It would be the same trade as before with the only difference that now you don't get to tax whoever is benefiting the most, one gets to play tricks with the currency, etc. etc.
American cars are generally less expensive than foreign cars, not more. German cars are generally much more expensive than comparable American cars, and Japanese cars are usually a bit more expensive too. Both these nations have tried reducing costs by moving some of their production to places like Thailand, Mexico, and the USA (!). Labor rates in Germany and Japan are probably the highest in the world.
Making foreign cars more expensive will only make American cars a bit more expensive, due to higher demand, but in general will just raise prices for everyone.
People don't buy foreign cars these days because of cost. They buy them because of perceived higher quality, styling/performance preferences, brand cachet, etc. If they start selling Chinese-made cars here, maybe that'll change, but for now, saving money is not the reason you buy a foreign car. If you want a cheap-ass car, you buy something like a Chevy Spark or Ford Fiesta. (Worse, those cars might be made in Mexico anyway. I'm guessing the cheapest American-made car is probably a Honda Fit or some Toyota maybe.)
Re higher minimum wage. (using real numbers here, for the Netherlands)
For a support job, I want to employ a uneducated person. Just answering calls and clicking some buttons. (Could also be a student, no need for any experience etc) Costs me maybe 10 euros per hour. Why a student? Is relatively cheap and it gets the job done nicely.
Now, if the minimum wage would go to 14 or more, what would happen? Would I still employ this student for the same task? Maybe (probably?) not. Maybe I will instead get a 20 euro worker with an education that can not only do support but also some development and can bring knowledge into the company.
Saying that increasing minimum wage solves problems directly is, I think, wrong, because everything might shift.
My experience is otherwise. I remember entering the job market thinking that like my parents had experienced you'd get some low/no-skill entry level job somewhere and work your way 'from the mail room' up a position of actual skill. That it was possible to 'get your foot in the door' and then get a better job based on being a known good worker and then showing you also had the skills to do more.
That doesn't work because companies outsource entire stacks of tasks. There isn't an "entry level" job anymore. There's no path inside when everyone wants experienced workers.
So what would happen is probably a 'Google customer service' level of customer service. Simply much less with the same people they already want.
Or they change the "entry level" jobs to "intern" or "recent grad" jobs. Still no experience needed, but if you don't fit the right demographic you're out of luck.
> Make foreign cars expensive and there will be substitution with local cars.
Many "foreign" cars are built in the US. Some even more so than the American brands. "The Toyota Camry is, apparently, the most American vehicle on sale in the U.S." http://fortune.com/2015/06/29/cars-made-in-america/
Sure, with fewer immigrants there is less competition for hairdresser jobs.... but there is also less demand for haircuts. Immigrants aren't just competition for jobs, they are also new customers.
> Jobs that compete with similar jobs in other countries can potentially benefit from trade barriers. Make foreign cars expensive and there will be substitution with local cars. Long term it's worth thinking about whether there's a dependency created on that tariff.
Alas, that strategy of forced import substitution didn't work for India or Brazil, did it? (Or other poor countries in the 20th century?)
Education. It's what Obama was emphasizing his entire presidency. Those jobs are never coming back, and even more are going to be automated. The education gap between rich and poor (and white and minority) is getting larger because of hoodlum-fearing mothers who support segregated neighborhoods and schools. Plus the poor-parent schools stay poor and the rich-parent schools stay rich.
All of these factors together (which Democrats are actually interested in addressing) are growing an underclass of under-educated, unconnected people who can't make it in the world of the middle and upper class, so violence may become more frequent and jails will fill up. I doubt that the Trump administration and Congress have a plan that could come close to fixing this.
Education helps the young, at least as our systems are built.
The people vocalizing their opinion by voting for Trump are beyond the age where education can be the key (old dogs and new tricks, etc.). There isn't a will to go to an educational program. There is a will to work and support yourself, but no work for them to do...
/because we can't get our shit together and fund infrastructure programs
> The people vocalizing their opinion by voting for Trump are beyond the age where education can be the key
I hate seeing this meme. It is ageist and makes older people less likely to be hired for even their same jobs.
Old people can still learn to do new things. The problem I see is that a lot of older people do not want to learn new things. Also, old people tend to have obligations such as family/child expenses, residence costs, etc. that they want to be compensated for even at an entry level.
Rural conservatism has a lot to do with preserving tradition, that is, making sure things don't change from the old status quo you loved before.
I didn't mean to imply that older people are incapable of learning.
However, there are substantial barriers to that demographic to return to an education program precisely because it is a "return". Those barriers are far more social than anything else, yet they remain.
I'm not sure which meme is more offensive. That old people can't learn or that old people don't want to learn.
The real problem is that for many old people it's certain they'll never be able to get back to the status (financial, social and professional) they have now if they have to start all over again. As long as there is any promise of them being able to keep doing what they have experience in, that's what they'll aim for.
I speak from anecdote here from my time traveling around middle America, not from an armchair, but I agree that the statement was probably a little too broad.
> As long as there is any promise of them being able to keep doing what they have experience in, that's what they'll aim for.
That's the real education that needs to happen. That job is gone and they're not going to get there. It's gone because the world has changed, the economy has changed. Holding out hope is holding that person back. I had to learn this early in my life, and now I live in two different countries depending on where I'm finding work.
The biggest tragedy in all this is that technological advance harms those it help the most by eliminating unnecessary work. For humankind it is progress, for individual humans it is ruin.
There is never an age where education can't help you. It might not lead you into a new career, but it can broaden and deepen your understanding of the situation to help you make better choices. At it's, education could help the blue collar worker understand why his job is not coming back, and that he does need to do something else. Right now, those people believe Trump will someone bring those jobs back.
While I agree with the principle, I wonder if a harder economic calculation of ROI on rapidly inflating student tuitions bears that out. Higher education wouldn't seem to work out as it's already at the point that students at the beginning of their lives have a difficult time working off the debts acquired in their education - and certainly not in a way that doesn't dampen their finances in a serious way. Slicing time off the returns doesn't improve that calculation any. So you're left with occupational education - and I think that's a lot less clear ROI and employers very unwilling to actually train people.
That's a very idealized view of "education". The value of spending 40 hours in any given class is highly variable based on the subject matter, teacher, and perhaps most of all the other students. Online Ed is trying to change this dynamic but there are many worthless classes one can take that cost more than they are worth. And I would guess the free community classes rank on the low-end of the subject matter/teacher/student spectrum.
Today, for the first time I've heard someone speak about education being the key to Democrats trying to take over. Most young educated voters are left leaning - and I was told today that apparently it's because of the education brainwashing students to become government dependent...has anyone else heard about this before?
A little late, but yes, this is a common complaint among conservatives. Most colleges teach things like science, diversity, and critical thinking, which are at odds with the Christian nationalism that pervades conservatism.
Yeah. I expected the populist insurgency to come in the form of a progressive agenda, but this is the way it went instead.
The problem is, people who used to make a livelihood don't want a minimum wage job, no matter how high the minimum wage. They're adults used to providing for themselves and possibly a family, for god's sake! They don't want some elementary retraining program to make them barely capable of doing a modern job. They want to feel productive and useful on their own, like most of us.
do they not bear any responsibility for failing to gain useful skills or education? white people just feel entitled to the past where they could do nothing and be lazy and refuse to learn and still have a nice life.
I'm German. My grandfather was a professional photographer. Pictures he shot covered the front pages of major magazines in my country. He wasn't a celebrity but he worked with several who were.
At the peak of his career he realized technology would kill the industry with the quality of amateur photography improving and technical skills becoming less important, he would often compete with people with barely any talent and be undercut on price. It was still sustainable at the time but he was sure better cameras, film and postproduction processes would kill his business.
He went back to school and became a homeopathy practitioner. My personal opinions of homeopathy aside, I have to acknowledge he was an expert at what he was doing and he was even regularly invited to give lectures. He kept doing that until the day he died, almost twenty years ago.
It's never to late to switch career paths. The bigger problem in the US seems to be that it is amazingly hard to do so unless you've built up a fortune to cover the cost of doing so.
Even someone approaching retirement age can start over and be productive if they have the chance, financial means, mental health and determination to do it.
That's interesting, but coming from the art side, I would argue that while the bottom would continue to fall, the middle & top-end still would need a professional. Running a photography business isn't just about taking the photos. The pre-production, post-production and business/marketing involved is what is necessary for a sustainable photography business.
I think this challenge of the race to the bottom exists in virtually every industry.
Oh, sure. There are still professional photographers but the industry is nothing like it was when my grandfather started in his late teens (post-war Germany, a period of massive growth). And we're talking about a freelancer (with an assistant), not someone working for a large agency. The industry changed a lot for people like him.
That nearly every industry developed like that is precisely on point: that your job is currently a safe bet doesn't mean it's something you'll be able to do all your life, no matter how good you are. There may never be a "Bitrot Belt" but the job market simply isn't static and never has been.
The entire point of the anecdote was that he had a successful career doing one thing well past his thirties, things changed, and he switched to a completely unrelated career and was pretty good at that too. The details are just flavouring because it's a personal story.
If you want something more blue collar: my father-in-law had a long career as truck driver, then changed paths to work in logistics/manufacturing. Plus I think he worked as a mechanic at some point. Sure it's mostly centred around working with vehicles but those are still three different jobs before he reached retiring age.
The bigger problem in the US though might be location. The Rust Belt is dead because the jobs went away and there are not enough new jobs in the region to replace them. People actually have to uproot and relocate to find a new job and a new home -- that can be jarring.
> The bigger problem in the US seems to be that it is amazingly hard to do so unless you've built up a fortune to cover the cost of doing so.
That's... really just not true at all. US labor mobility is higher than in pretty much any other developed country by pretty much whatever metric you want to pick. Measures like those in Germany (or whatever else you pick) would help at the margins but they would not do much to change the labor demographics of the midwest working class white community, which by broad historical standards are fairly good already.
Fundamentally this was an election about identity. Nate Cohn said it best in a tweet last night when he pointed out that working class whites (and not their minority compatriots who share the same economic problems) had suddenly started behaving like a minority group and skewed hard for one candidate from their historical positions.
It's about racism, and social change, and fear, and maybe sexism. "Economic Anxiety" is a myth that needs to die.
Trump lost support slightly among whites relative to Romney. In the northern and midwestern working class areas where Trump made big gains, Obama did well and won many areas that HRC lost. Obama won non college educated whites in Iowa by a substantial margin. Those people didn't vote for Trump this time around because they're now racists.
What about the angle that sexism is actually a stronger driver of all this than sexist? It would certainly make the Obama->Trump conversion more explainable.
You are persistently trying to come up with a narrative that tars nearly half the voters in a democratic election as stupid and evil.
If rayiner proves it cannot be racism then possibly it is sexism...
Talk about spreading hate.
I'm no big fan of Trump but I have reason to be thankful for Americans.
And if Americans who live with American politicians year after year decides Trump is their best hope then A) it must be pretty bad IMO B) it is their choice and I respect it.
My claim is that racism and sexism played a very big part in this election. All the news are full of it. All the twitters are full of it. rayiner did not conclusively prove otherwise. Dismissing the issue as 'tarring' half the electorate as racist or sexist is not very useful. It's like saying 'it can't be true that so many people are sexist or racist' when the swing vote between people who always vote republican no matter what and the democrats who stayed at home because they're pissed is actually not that big.
Honestly I find it very strange how strongly people on hacker news are pushing against this idea, how deeply they are insulted by the idea that Trump has brought open sexism into the mainstream.
>Fundamentally this was an election about identity. Nate Cohn said it best in a tweet last night when he pointed out that working class whites (and not their minority compatriots who share the same economic problems)
I'm not sold on that. I think the main difference is that those economic problems have been felt by minorities their entire lives. Not that it's fair, but that's been the reality for them. So it's not any bigger of an issue this election than any other. But the economic pains felt in the white working class haven't been felt since pre-WWII. They were the middle class of this country but now they are feeling the declines. Even if working class whites are now on somewhat equal footing with other minorities, they've been in decline in comparison to what they had. And that definitely leads to "Economic Anxiety".
How did you get from "whites behaving like a minority group" to "racism, social change, fear, and sexism"? Are these whites racist for "behaving like a minority group"? Or are whites "behaving like a minority group" because they're the victims of someone else's racism? Or is the "behaving like a minority group" a red herring, and it's merely racist to vote against the folks who are constantly demonizing people who look like you?
And that's one problem I'm struggling with. Ultimately a lot of the suggestions I see to help the "left behind" in this thread might fail due to this very sort of politics alone. So many of the social help programs in the US have been demonized in the past by focusing on this in coded terms. Think "welfare queens" and the negative reaction to just the "Obamacare" nickname for some of the most direct and obvoius examples.
"Racism, social change, fear, sexism"... that can be overcome. The real problem is how these emotions are used as a political weapon now. No attempted solution will work if an opposition that hates it can transform it into some sort of identity politics battle. Especially now that we've found out that identity politics through a megaphone is actually more effective than "dog whispers".
It is possible for Donald Trump to surprise me, and one way he could surprise me is if he actually is more friendly to a stronger government with the goal of helping these people out. Donald Trump dose not make the laws, however, Congress does. So I expect no change.
As a side note, in a way, it was a shame it wasn't Bernie Sanders vs. Donald Trump for that reason. It would have been fascinating to see if economic policy really could out-trounce the Southern Strategy this time...
The resistance to safety nets is easy to understand: they are not optional (like an insurance, let's say) and usually the same people are paying for the same other people that are receiving. It is not a safety net, it is a transfer of wealth imposed by law.
The irony is that if he was not able to so easily change careers, a few of his ardent fans might have gotten real medical advice instead and had their lives saved (hypothetically).
Luckily the German healthcare system is solid enough that it's exceedingly rare for people to end up in life-threatening situations because of quack doctors. And in his defence, he did send people to real doctors if they had real medical issues.
Look, I grew up with this nonsense. My grandparents even believed in new age non-sense like "earth rays" and astrology. If you just want to get out some witticisms about how pseudoscience is obviously pseudoscience that's fine by me. But I'm not sure you're adding anything to the conversation by ragging on my dead grandfather.
If you want to be outraged about something, how about being outraged that social public healthcare in Germany actually pays for homeopathic "medicine" (i.e. products with no active ingredients and no valid studies) and that pharmacies are allowed to claim these so-called remedies can actually alleviate specific symptoms.
because we can't get our shit together and fund infrastructure programs
In Trump's acceptance speech he explicitly mentions this:
We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.
I'm just hoping the government becomes more efficient at completing those infrastructure projects. Here in (western) Massachusetts we have simple projects like replacing a 30' concrete bridge over a creek that take 9 to 12 months to complete. They setup Jersey barriers that funnel traffic down to one lane, rip up the barricaded side and then do no work on it. In the 1930's they were able to start and finish a 782' three span iron bridge in one year (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_King_Bridge).
Ask the residents of Central Texas about what happened when they privatized the toll system. Personal data leaks, false charges sent to collections, terrible customer service. It was only after widespread outcry for government oversight(!) by Republicans that anything got done about it.
Education, educated IS work, and profitable, but apparently not the kind of preferred work. Just wondering aloud, how will Mr Trump satisfy the wealthy, wall street, and the fiscally conservative to do prevailing-wage infrastructure? The skilled trades were always ready and could have been doing this all along if it was valued by congress. How has anything changed?
You know, I used to think the same way --education. But Europe, Germany in particular, stresses education, and that has not saved them from having overqualified people and too few jobs for them. It also minimizes the fact that not all people have the aptitude to learn and obtain higher degrees. It's a race to the top and in that race there will always be people below who feel left out. So education can only offer so much --not all.
To add, educated people without a job feel even worse than undereducated people who don't have a job because they believed education would insulate them from these issues when it might not.
I'm sure that's true, but it still doesn't solve your employment issues, and you are just hurting wages for all existing plumbers. There are only about half a million plumbers in the US [1]. Even if you managed to triple the number, you're not making much of a dent in overall employment.
Sure, my point was just that if vocational jobs are naturally X% of the US economy, you're (largely) not 'creating jobs' just by making it easier for people to get trained for those vocations, you're just creating more competition within that sector and driving down wages of existing workers in the process.
That said, it might still be a worthwhile policy to pursue, since vocational education has been neglected for decades in favor of 'college for all', which IMO is misguided.
Vocational training is certainly part of your toolkit to increase jobs prospects for unemployed underemployed people who are willing to work, but it's not the whole toolkit. It helps, but you need more than that.
Definitely. The trades only make as money as they do because the supply of skilled tradesmen is intentionally limited by selective apprenticeships being the barrier to entry. Today, one can not become an electrician or plumber without said apprenticeship.
Increase the number of electricians or plumbers 10-fold and their wages would plummet.
Those are also highly rigorous jobs that can put a toll on the human body. Not many people really want to retire with pain. That being said, I'm not sure what the alternative for some individuals are. Maybe being on your feet a lot increases your overall well being, I'm not the expert on that.
This is a key conceit - trades don't mean one is less intelligent. A great plumber is easily as intelligent as a great software dev. The left behind are the people who could provide value before, but now can't, and no amount of reeducation will solve that.
I feel that it is very easy to get trapped in the mindset that I am owed something based on my prior experience. Reluctance to think beyond past experience, fear of leaving behind what I worked hard to learn, or fear of failure in a new area are all things that have held me back in my own life.
I would disagree that people can not provide value beyond what they did before. Except in cases of physical or mental disability, it's more likely a self-imposed barrier.
This is a key conceit - trades don't mean one is less intelligent. A great plumber is easily as intelligent as a great software dev. The left behind are the people who could provide value before, but now can't, and no amount of reeducation will solve that.
> [...] and that has not saved them from having overqualified people and too few jobs for them.
They had labour market inefficiencies and weak demand.
The US labour market is a bit more flexible. And since they are issuing their own currency, they can always print more to stoke demand. (Ideally, the Fed would target nominal GDP.)
Good news: the Germans are having a much lower unemployment rate these days than in the late 90s.
As someone on the employer side of the table I see two frequent problems with university educated candidates that generally don't land the job:
1) irrelevant or (professionally) useless degrees. These would be fine but because they have a degree these candidates generally think they deserve a higher wage which I can't afford (before you say "but general knowledge is valuable as well" remember that self-taught candidates with similarly well-rounded knowledge generally demand less despite often having actual job experience)
2) complete lack of practical knowledge or skills. Even if a degree is job-related that doesn't mean they are capable of doing the job or have the frame of mind required to do the job properly. This is especially a problem with people who picked their majors based on what industry currently provides the best salaries rather than what they are actually interested in doing.
These are especially problems for people who went into university without knowing what they want to do professionally. TINSTAAFL but even if you just get a degree to orient yourself and pass time until you have figured out what you actually want to do with your life that can affect your employability.
I am talking about entry level jobs. And I'm not even talking about my own company in particular. I've seen this in enough other companies and heard it from enough other people to be certain this is more than purely anecdotal.
There is a false impression in Germany that a university degree increases the chance of finding a job. But it's neither necessary (depending on the industry) nor sufficient.
The kind of companies that can and are willing to pay inflated salaries for graduates with no practical experience or useless degrees are oversaturated and the rest just can't afford them because it's not profitable.
Another way this problem manifests itself is students thinking they can or should specialise in niches when the only jobs that don't require experience require them to be generalists (because if you're going to specifically hire a one-trick pony you probably want a good one).
I've literally seen a fresh graduate apply to become a "colour consultant" in a full-service marketing agency. Sure, they might need someone who really knows their colour theory well but the scale at which a company can justify making that task a full-time job AND giving that job to a fresh graduate with no hands-on experience is pretty implausible.
As someone on the employer side of the table I see two frequent problems with university educated candidates that generally don't land the job
As someone who has sat on both sides of this table, let me point out that pathologies in hiring are very, very hard for a company to spot. After all, who is going to advocate the contrarian position? The ones not hired aren't there. Observers who are there often don't have anything immediate to gain and lots of political capital to potentially lose.
complete lack of practical knowledge or skills.
If those skills are valuable and hard to find, then it's an advantage to be able to impart those, for both a company and a country.
> If those skills are valuable and hard to find, then it's an advantage to be able to impart those, for both a company and a country.
Sure, but as a small company we can't afford to pay someone a "graduate level" salary when the best we can they need "unskilled level" training before becoming productive at all.
I'm not speaking of a Fortune 500 company or a AAA-level VC-funded startup. We have tight profit margins yet we try to take paid interns and students (which is a net loss for us because we actually train them rather than simply abusing them as cheap labour) because that's the right thing to do.
I'm also speaking from my experience of working closely with people running similar companies (let's say up to ~10 permanent employees) in Germany.
That said, in many cases someone with 3 years of actual job experience is more productive (in the short-to-mid term) than a recent graduate with 3 years of university (with no practice). Yet the graduate will often cost you more in Germany because of inflated salary expectations (partially caused by people reading about US startups and thinking the numbers transfer 1-to-1).
Germany, the Bundesbank and their FinMin have a very flawed view of macroeconomics. They seem to have a hard time understanding how money recycling works or there is more than pure economics at play.
The German political class has been keeping wages lower then they should be on purpose. While export corporations have boosted their profits the last 15 years, wages have been kept much lower than they ought to be, killing the competition elsewhere and destroying a sort-of natural recycling mechanism which should protect the other members of their Eurozone: A worker in Germany should be paid 4 to 5 times more than a worker in Portugal.
Indeed the current German surplus is a major problem in EU's economy. Y. Varoufakis, M. Draghi and B. Bernanke have spoken about this openly time and again (see links).
By definition in a monetary union, your surplus[3] is someone else's deficit, but if you take a look at the rhetoric PIIGS are to blame for their poor financial track-record. Someone is simply having his cake and eating it, but not for long.
It's funny that with a 12.1B in surplus the AfD (right-wing nazi-friendly political party) is on the raise in Germany, isn't it?
It's even worse in places where government, either directly or through unions, set the base salaries for people with certain education levels. Then you have higher education, no job, and are unable to be hired doing less education demanding jobs because otherwise they would be forced to pay you an absurd salary for your position.
You're basically fucked. But then government comes to the rescue again giving handouts! Yay... thanks for temporarily solving a problem that you shouldn't have created in the first place.
> The education gap between rich and poor (and white and minority) is getting larger because of hoodlum-fearing mothers who support segregated neighborhoods and schools.
I see this brought up a lot, as if those mothers are pearl clutching villains. Are you of the impression that hoodlums don't exist, or that they're not more common in poor communities? Or do you just take exception with people wanting what is best for their own children, at the expense of others? What argument would you make to those mothers that would convince them it is in their, or their children's, best interest to not seclude themselves away from poorer populations?
Just to make it a bit clearer, this smacks of the exact same kind of thinking that was just dealt a blow in the election. Selfishness is human nature, and shaming people over it might make them quiet, but it won't make them agree with you.
I'm far from a Trump supporter, but this kind of constant holier-than-thou thinking has to end or there will never be any semblance of unity in this country.
Unemployment has been steadily dropping, because more and more people are dropping out of the working economy - or entering the service industry. Those jobs offer little stability and poor pay.
I can think of several things, from cultural long term changes, rhetoric and acknowledge of human struggle, to smaller changes on the local level.
We could start by not calling them privileged, demeaning them in their struggle. Acknowledging peoples struggle in life is often the first step in helping a demographic, be that women, black, white, immigrant, American born, or what have you.
As cultural changes, one would be to lower the harm from being unemployed. For men, too much of social value and social opportunity is tied to being employed and having a high earning potential.
> We could start by not calling them privileged, demeaning them in their struggle.
We don't call them privileged. Rather, they hear the insults and put-downs they want to hear by tuning in to customized news and propaganda that confirm their deepest insecurities.
> As cultural changes, one would be to lower the harm from being unemployed. For men, too much of social value and social opportunity is tied to being employed and having a high earning potential.
Re-engineering the social brain so that status doesn't matter? Wow. I doubt you'd have anything like homo sapiens after that.
>Re-engineering the social brain so that status doesn't matter?
Status will always matter, but you can change the signifiers of status. There are plenty of places in, for example, rural China where women do most of the work while the men mostly stay home, and yet the men do not lack for status because of that.
The Mosuo (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mosuo) are the most well known, but many ethnic groups in the southwest operate in similar ways. I grew up in a family belonging to one of them, so it always seemed strange to me when people claim women can't do physically demanding tasks.
I remain skeptical that anyone can be content contributing nothing. The Mosuo Cultural Development Association, which works directly with the Mosuo, has this to say:
"It is true that, traditionally, Mosuo women tend to take on most of the labour duties at home. They take care of the animals, tend the fields, etc. However, this is due to a historic division of responsibilities where Mosuo men were mostly traders, traveling long distances by caravan to trade with other groups. Since the men were frequently gone from home, the women were left to take care of the work. However, when the men were at home, they would also share in the duties there.
In modern times, the practice of having trading caravans has effectively ceased; with the result that one of the primary male roles has been rendered irrelevant. It is true, therefore, that you may often find men lounging around while women work hard; however, this is not universal (I've visited many homes where the men share in these duties equally with the women); and does not necessarily mean that Mosuo men are lazy…it indicates, rather, the need to define a viable new “male” role within the modern realities of Mosuo culture."
What it shows is that signifiers of status can and do change with culture. In some places, the only status that matter for women is children. Most people do not view women like that any more, and culturally we have moved on while remaining part of the human race.
If culture can change so female status is not solely based on their ability to raise chilren, culture can change so male status is not solely based on their ability to support children.
True, but now I realize we're getting far afield of the original point of contention.
The issue is that US rural men are unemployed. But the US rural economy will continue to decline until it reaches a balance with global commerce; protectionism, at best, is only a temporary measure. The US rural economy has even more to fall over the next decade.
Can we really think a solution is to teach rural men to find value in contributing nothing? A sinking economy gives nothing to do; even family-raising is a dismal prospect with poor schools and declining healthcare. The best and only plausible scenario is that rural men pack up their familes and move to the cities where jobs are plentiful. Indeed, this is the worldwide trend.
I don't know about this one. I'm able-bodied and have 0 problems with being called privileged for being able bodied. I can hear well, I can see fine, I don't need any machines or devices to help me move around. In this respect I'm very privileged. I don't feel like I'm being demeaned by acknowledging this. It is actually to me acknowledging that other people struggle in ways that I do not.
Similarly, I struggle to see why accusations of white privilege are terrible. I don't believe that because someone is white they can't suffer. I believe the statement is because someone is white they don't have to go through or experience certain things.
Like I don't have to experience the struggle of taking public transport as a person in a wheelchair, because I don't need a wheelchair, does not mean I don't have my own problems. I just don't have the specific problems of someone who has a mobility impairment.
I don't see how acknowledging this is demeaning. It's just looking at reality. White people can struggle, just not with race. Able bodied people can struggle, just not with being disabled. Is that demeaning to white or able bodied people to recognize this? I genuinely don't know.
The message focus and the message it sends to people is wrong. The signal is that there are systemic problems that can't be changed because people in power are guilty of having power. "White privilege" falls into a mentality that I call victimization, where instead of people looking at things through the lens of "how can I change myself and be better", they look at it through the lens of "how can others change themselves to help me be better". This is a hopeless signal that doesn't help anyone.
What we should be saying to people is that they should strive to be better because that's the only sure way they can hope to improve their situations. Waiting for other people to help you isn't going to do anything. The only thing you have control over is your own life. If the public discourse around these issues focuses solely on how other people have control and how you have no control, then the situation only becomes worse because then people have an excuse to not try, and they don't.
The problem isn't with the concept of privilege itself. The problem is that the concept and the word have been weaponized into an insult instead of the admonishment to recognize one's advantages that it should be. That, and too much emphasis has been put on racial privilege and not enough on class privilege, or at least social class privilege.
>I'm able-bodied and have 0 problems with being called privileged for being able bodied.
It is not being called privileged that's the problem. It's being shamed or put in some hierarchy of oppression that is the problem.
>I don't see how acknowledging this is demeaning.
I'm sorry if this comes across as rude, but, obviously this conversation isn't about you. Many Americans they have seen this as demeaning. And for what it's worth, I know many people who do demean white, able-bodied, cis-gendered people for their "lack of" oppression.
If you want to start a war, you need to tell people they are under attack: "Naturally, the common people don't want war ... the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country."
This works the same for culture wars, or "war on christmas" etc. People are fundamentally nice, they don't want to stop gay people from marrying, so you need to frame it as "an attack on traditional marriage" to get people riled up with righteous fury.
Pointing out the obvious fact that white people have advantages needs to be twisted too. By for example pointing out that a poor white man has problems that a rich non-white man doesn't. Totally ignoring the obvious comparison point being two poor men, or two poor women, or two rich men/women with different skin colors. Not getting the point becomes imperative, to maintain the illusion of it being an attack.
Because words are supposed to have their specific, well-understood meaning. By your logic, a guy with one arm and one leg is privileged too; there are certainly people out there that have it much worse than him.
My (laymen's) understanding of the word 'privilege' was always more along the line of "Mozart was his piano teacher". But it looks like at some point the word was redefined to some incredibly technical meaning whereby a broke--but white, and male--coal miner is also privileged.
"White privilege" as a phrase vastly oversimplifies the cultural hierarchy.
It is probably rather insulting to a unemployed rust belt white man with no degree, who is getting by on social assistance, to be tagged by some well-off person on the coasts with a professional degree, that they are suffering from "white male privilege".
For a start, such "privilege" is not terribly applicable in this case. Regardless of whether the professional is not white and/or not male, the professional with the degree is in the "higher caste" in American society compared to the unemployed white man with no degree.
Many articles that use such phrases as "white privilege" tend to be accusatory and overly moralizing. If that's not insulting, at the very least you are not going to change any minds. (As an example from the "other side", my brother works at Citigroup. Guess what I start thinking of a person's argument when they start descending into an "evil Wall Street elite" meme?)
I agree that "white privilege" exists but there are better ways to phrase this -- at the very least, acknowledge and understand the other side.
As a community we need to create more tools like WordPress that decentralize wealth creation and create jobs. We need to create fewer tools like Medium that centralize wealth creation and eliminate jobs.
I appreciate your passion for decentralization, but these issues go a bit beyond what kinds of software we write. The issues this election raised aren't going to be solved by writing code.
If you want to start steering political life according to your values, next election cycle, pick a candidate for city/state/federal/whatever, or cause that matters to you, and give them 10 hours a week of your time.
They might win, and you might have your issue or values better represented at your city/state/federal/whatever.
If they lose, you get up and do it again the next election cycle.
>The issues this election raised aren't going to be solved by writing code.
I agree, but I would say that actively selecting what kind of code you will write using criteria that value wide economic utility -- much wider, say, than the goals of the average me-too unicorn chasing project -- is a healthy and all-too-rare thing.
It's not just the kind of software, it's the kind of business model we enable with our software. The only way to create local jobs in communities across the United States is to empower people across communities in the United States.
If we look at mature technologies like plumbing we see an industry around them that enables small, local businesses. Yes a relatively few companies make plumbing components, but hundreds of independent plumbers are able to use those components distributed through local shops to solve local problems.
WordPress has done that for software. Through it's decentralized design it enables jobs for consultants, plug-in vendors, theme vendors, designers, web hosts, and content authors. This industry around WordPress employs many, many people. Further, it creates an opportunity for geographically targeted businesses to be built around WordPress.
The architecture of the tools systematizes the business models those tools enable.
I think it's an interesting issue because Trump pretty much stands for nothing that could help those people. Maybe the nth time is a charm and the incoming tax breaks for the wealthy will eventually trickle down, but I doubt it.
Solar, wind, repairing of roads and bridges and building and tightening of low skill immigration.
There is a load of blue collar work that can (and urgently needs to) be done in USA. Building a single wind turbine are dollars for R&D, truckers, manufacturers, maintainers, people that install and pour concrete, electricians, miners and so on ...
And also maintaining and repairing the old stuff. The North Dakota oil boom showed that if there is work to be done, blue collar's willingness to do it is there.
I thought we would get an infrastructure boom from Obama during the Great Recession. We went through 2 huge rounds of spending that mostly went to "shovel ready" projects. From my understanding, today's construction budgets are tied up in capital costs like heavy machinery and materials. There isn't much need for labor anymore with automation and specialized equipment.
There is also the issue of planning out infrastructure improvements. With environmental reviews that can take decades and lawsuits that occur after that, it is extremely difficult to pull the same type of "New Deal" programs that happened during the 1930s.
My guess is for all the spending, very few people would end up employed. Is the goal employment at any cost, or providing people without jobs welfare?
Trump has years of experience in real estate development. I am sure he can pass project trough the regulators.
The critical variable is what is the Congress willing to do - if the Republicans embrace the blue collar workers - a lot can be accomplished.
Right now republicans have a chance to shape the country for a generation. And I hope they will see how rewarding the working class could benefit their big corporate donors - because america need a new middle class that can consume everything that corporate america produces.
And infrastructure spending is hard to resist to - it will benefit even Democratic districts.
reddit user TPKM's comment on the sanders-would-have-won-thread:
"Support for Trump, much like Brexit, was based upon an extremely widespread feeling that average people are not getting their fair share of the benefits of globalisation. This is neither a specifically Democrat or Republican problem, and people have been saying it one way or another for years.
It was also the foundation of Sanders' campaign. The difference is that Sanders blamed deregulation and big corporate bonuses while Trump blamed immigration and open borders. I'm sure that there are elements of truth to both of these positions."
i'm sceptical that trump, as a big corp owner, will do much to regulate and reign big corps in; if that's really the case we'll now see if curbing immigration is an actual solution to the problem.
(personally, i doubt it - it has failed in other countries already)
so, let trump do what he promised and see how it works out. if it doesn't, try the other method next. for me it's easy to say because i'm not an u.s. citizen and have no desire to move there (i think my country will be in the same situation in a couple of weeks though); it's not like it wouldn't affect me, but i can't change it anyway.
> curbing immigration is an actual solution to the problem.
Curbing immigration won't be a solution to the problem; it's just a highly visible one. Each immigrant that is looking for a job in the US is taking one away from the supply for an American. That is how the Trumpistas see things.
Economically, sure, that's true. The immigrants take jobs from the labor supply. What people don't see is that aside from ones on skilled visa programs is that these jobs are either 1. underpaid by minimum wage or 2. not jobs that these people actually want anyway, so at worse you will see a lot of inflation, or a lot of open job positions. It doesn't make sense, but it won't really make sense.
Personally, I wouldn't mind inflation if all workers are paid a decent wage as a result. For far too long inflation has been too low and confined to precisely the wrong sectors (i.e. land, health care, education). It's time for workers to get their share of the action.
True if the inflation is driven by supply shocks (mid-late 1970s) or savings gluts (today). Not if the inflation is wage-driven, as in the late 1960s and early 1970s in the US.
> 2. not jobs that these people actually want anyway, so at worse you will see a lot of inflation, or a lot of open job positions. It doesn't make sense, but it won't really make sense.
Is it your intuition that the labor market would not adjust to a lower supply by becoming more desirable? If not, why?
The average salary of an undocumented immigrant is $36,000[1], which is far below that of the average trump voter, a median American above $50K although he did OK with people in the $40K bracket. The only group likely to see wage increases from mass deportation are high school dropouts [2]. From Wikipedia:
Research by George Borjas found that the influx of immigrants (both legal and illegal) from Mexico and Central America from 1980 to 2000 accounted for a 3.7% wage loss for American workers (4.5% for black Americans and 5% for Hispanic Americans). Borjas found that wage depression was greatest for workers without a high school diploma (a 7.4% reduction) because these workers face the most direct competition with immigrants, legal and illegal. [3]
Assuming ALL recent-ish immigrants are all mass deported and the economy adjusts immediately, you will see a ~7.4% shift of real wages for high school dropouts making the low end of <$36K, most of which voted for Clinton anyway. You'll see almost no issue with those above this rate because they are not competing with illegal immigrants. (This makes it more likely capitalists who see wage increases for non-service positions (eg manufacturing) will automate faster to reduce costs, but I think this is a side point considering that most jobs in the US today are in the service sector and not as easily automated away.)
Of course, you could also give the suppressed income bracket a 7% tax cut and end up in roughly the same spot without mass deportation; the undocumented immigrants aren't paying income tax anyway, and this would be HIGHER than necessary because the above study takes into account legal immigration as well.
In equilibrium, people get paid according to their productivity. (That's why eg China saw such huge wage raises over the last decades.)
So, just excluding or including some more people won't change the level of pay, as a first order effect.
There's no constant demand for labour. It expands and shrinks with supply. (And even then, the federal reserve can make arbitrary large amouts of demand. They can literally print money.)
>In equilibrium, people get paid according to their productivity
But where and when has there ever been this magical equilibrium?
In the real world people get paid whatever they can get away with, and some people can get away with more than others. Telecommunications execs can price gouge you and get a bonus for it.
>For the economy as a whole, abstracting away imports and exports, we can only eat what we sow.
Exactly. And "we" after all is another abstraction. And "I" can eat what "you" sowed.
If corporations have record-high profits, while workers get stagnating salaries while housing prices raise, someone is going to realize what "we" entices after all.
And I suspect that for skilled visa programs, labour demand is actually somewhat elastic, so that one additional skilled worker creates some fraction of a new job. The supply of jobs isn't fixed.
Consider a company like Google, who doesn't hire on quotas, but just grabs all the talented engineers they can. In what sense is a visa worker taking a job away from an American, when Google will gladly hire both?
I'd mostly agree with you on this point and it's divergent from the one that the Trumpistas care about.
That said, I have seen companies that were "H-1B dependent", ie, they have paid the fees for visas to hire from outside the country, because they were able to get lower salaries from doing so even after paying the legal fees. Clearly not the Googles of the world, but they do exist.
Yeah they definitely exist. And the ratio of those vs. the Googles will affect how elastic it is. Anywhere between 0.1 and 0.9 for the elasticity sounds plausible to me (not an economist, I could be not even using the right concepts, so take that for what it's worth).
Yeah they definitely exist. And the ratio of those vs. the Googles will affect how elastic it is. Anywhere between 0.1 and 0.9 for the elasticity sounds plausible to me (not an economist, I could be not even using the right concepts, so take that for what it's worth).
I don't think anybody is sitting at home unemployed because Google's $140k offer wasn't good enough for them.
Yes, Google might be able to hire more employees with higher salaries by poaching them from elsewhere. But that just shifts the labor shortage to some other company, it doesn't get rid of it.
The way I see it, it's bad for everyone (the employer, the Indian, the American taxpayer) when an American $100k job opportunity stays unfilled and a willing qualified Indian is working at an Indian company for $30k instead because they won't let him into the USA.
Come on, I think it was clear that by "jobs locals don't want anyway" OP was talking about low wage-low status jobs filled by immigrants instead, that would otherwise offer higher and higher salaries until the supply curve met the demand one if interest group didn't inject immigrants into the supply -at least that's kind of the trump supporter angle-.
And in your deal I can see someone getting the short end of the stick:
The employer gets lower costs and higher profits. The Indian gets a higher salary and access to infrastructure he didn't have to pay for. The local gets a lower salary, and the rest of taxpayers get one more body consuming the public services he had to pay, more people competing for housing and ~40$K less in demand for whatever he has to offer.
I often question if anyone on HN actually grew up blue collar...
Locals want those jobs. I worked them when they actually made a relatively decent wage. Now they simply are not worth my time even as side jobs they pay so little.
I was making $22/hr at 16 years old in the mid-90's as a landscaping laborer. This pay range was quite common for such jobs, and most of my co-workers were 20 and 30 somethings supporting families. Good luck getting even half that today, 20 years later.
If you started paying roofers $50/hr, you would have an unlimited pool of labor willing to take those jobs. At $10/hr I'm not interested because I can barely make a living at that rate, so it's certainly not worth the wear and tear on my health.
Unskilled immigration is largely a wealth transfer from the most vulnerable in our society to the most privileged. There is very little to be gained in these practices for the typical underskilled American - most all the benefits are accrued elsewhere in the economy.
Immigrants really don't take jobs from those who live here. They end up in jobs most natives never look for in the first place. So who do they really displace? Low skilled immigrants work more than low skilled natives, they commit less crime, they use less welfare, and they tend to marry more.
> Economically, sure, that's true. The immigrants take jobs from the labor supply.
That's not actually true, though. Every immigrant who comes here and becomes employed is, of course, filling a slot that is no longer available to a native-born citizen. However, he or she will also be one more person who needs to be fed, clothed, housed, entertained, protected, and supported. All of those create demand that adds up to substantially more than one job (about 1.2, to be exact [1]).
If there's one thing I'm taking away from this campaign and election, it's that people have big problems reasoning about systems where costs are acute and centralized and benefits are diffuse, even if on the whole they personally benefit substantially from those systems. This seems true for immigration, for climate change, for free trade, for healthcare reform.
Well yes, people lose they jobs and have to seek new opportunities. And that's good in the larger scheme of thing.
Just let's not downplay the effect it can have to have to rethink the way you earn your livelihood, it's nothing short of a personal crisis. Some people have a really hard time adapting, others not so much. But that doesn't mean government should protect you from that.
I'm sorry if this is a really stupid question but if each person, just by being alive and buying things, creates 1.2 jobs, then why do we still have unemployment?
Shouldn't everyone be able to have a job, even if it's not one they want to do? Is the problem just that they lack the qualifications for the jobs?
I don't know the answer to your question, but I don't think it's stupid. We should trust our sniff tests on these types of studies more often, especially when there is a potentially not-too-distant political, economic, or social consequence attached to the conclusion.
I personally think this is a common tactic by academics -- put out something that has a clearly false-as-phrased conclusion and then get lost in a maze of dense data and opaque language, come out disoriented, and make some conclusion like this that's pretty clearly invalid if you're willing to step away. The authors somehow convince themselves that the obvious conclusion is incorrect (often by redefining words) and then accuse anyone who dares to point out that the conclusion is a sham of being a luddite and anti-intellectual.
> All of those create demand that adds up to substantially more than one job (about 1.2, to be exact [1]).
So, what would an opponent in good faith say against that? Is this a well known thing among Real Economists, which is just brushed under the rug when a politician wants to appeal to people with an anti-immigration policy? Or is there more to it?
It seems to be really low hanging fruit to explain that and have massive economic boons by increasing immigration, right? Or is that not the conclusion? Because what you said is really intuitive and some politician should be able to just easily use that. Why don't Clinton/Obama say that when explaining why they're letting illegal immigrants stay?
My guess (and this is only a guess) is that this is the power of anecdote. Within certain communities, everyone knows someone who lost their job or had their business close due to direct competition with someone being paid under the table illegally. Any politician who claimed that it was a good thing would read as so clearly out of touch with lived experience that it's not worth the trouble to look past the soundbite.
It's the same sort of difficult argument as globalization and free trade. It hits you somewhere very easy to notice, so you feel like you're worse off even while you're sitting on your brand new couch watching whatever you want on demand on your 60" TV and eating your steak dinner. Making the link that all those other good things are a result of the same policy requires a small but not automatic intellectual leap that a lot of people clearly aren't prepared to make if they feel like the initial assertion doesn't pass the smell test.
Are those 1.2 jobs all domestic? For each resident in the US, do we create 1.1 jobs in China and 0.1 jobs in the US? I honestly don't know this (and I don't want to look it up right now), so I'm not trying to make a counterargument. Just curious.
I think you mean they fill labor demand or that they diminish the supply of jobs by providing labor. This however incorrectly assumes that the demand for labor is fixed. That demand is affected by supply + cost of labor and demand for goods and services. Immigrants consumer goods and pay of services so more immigrants means more aggregate consumer demand, which leads to higher demand for labor. In the end immigrants result in a net labor demand increase due to consumption. Immigrants no matter how frugal still get haircuts, buy groceries, see doctors, pay for tax help, call plumbers, by pants, go to bars, buy used cars etc.
When people are looking for jobs is great, America was founded upon immigrants looking for good working conditions. Some people will end up unemployed because they aren't able to adapt, yep, but that in the end makes production cheaper and more competitive.
The problem happens when government burdens a group of people with taxes and makes their livelihood more expensive, and becomes the cause of such inability to compete in the market. Limiting immigration is the dumb man's solution to that problem, the real solution would be a yuge cutting of expenses in order to reduce tax burden, and consequently the size of government.
While I think there is at least some validity to the "immigrants take local jobs" argument, it's really not the core of Trump's immigration platform. At the moment, the "took our jorbs" element is primarily being addressed by criticism of free trade.
First, Trump is not anti-immigrant. Two of his wives have been immigrants and the new First Lady-elect (?) is an immigrant with a very noticeable accent.
Trump is not anti-immigrant, he's anti-illegal-immigrant.
Let me first say I sympathize with the plight of Central Americans and if I was in that position, either pay $20k and wait 5 years for approval, I would probably take the chances and run the border too, especially knowing my children would be U.S. citizens automatically. However, there are risks incumbent in doing that.
Illegal immigration removes our ability to process and distribute new migrants. It makes it so we can't track whether they're having a disparate or unexpected economic impact, either on the nation as a whole or on specific areas. Illegal immigrants may have trouble finding jobs without SSNs, which may cause them to resort to crime, become dependent on welfare programs, or both. An insecure border allows people with impure motives, like terrorism, to enter. There can be substantial differences in social and cultural norms, which can affect their employability and ability to assimilate. While these people are illegally crossing the border, they're already committing a major repudiation to the social order of their intended new home by mocking rule of law and entering the country without authorization.
All of these things need to be managed and that's why immigration law exists. Americans in border towns are getting overrun and there's no reason they should have to be. They're sick of it.
People usually won't admit to this because SJWs come in and accuse them of being racist for wanting to preserve their traditions, social norms, employability, and language. The election of Trump is a resounding rejection of that hostile sentiment from the self-righteous elite class.
Most Americans have no problem at all with immigrants from other cultures, races, religions, etc., as long as they are given the tools to manage, understand, and direct it so that it's not disruptive to the existing social and economic order.
What all this really boils down to is something that both Republicans and Democrats agree on: our current immigration system is clunky, slow, and expensive, and badly needs rectification. Let's focus on fixing that instead of getting at each other's throats.
The reason people don't feel they are getting the benefits of globalization is because the benefits are not as direct as the costs. When prices for goods are lower, it is not obvious to the average person that this is because of globalization. When your factory job is shipped overseas, the cost is readily apparent. No one makes the connection between the lower costs for things and globalization.
Not true on food.[1] CPI for food has fallen off a cliff in the last year+ compared to core CPI (ex food and energy). It is even negative currently, so yes food prices are decreasing. It seems to have been moderately lower on net since the end of the great recession.
You're right about food, which yo-yos like other commodities and is somewhat tied to energy.
Housing, health care, and college tuition are the great Satans of the economy for the middle and working classes. These have inflated without bound regardless of what wages or employment are doing.
Sure people do make the connection. But no amount of lower costs across the board will help a newly unemployed person. For that person, the costs and benefits just don't match up.
Structural unemployment is an inevitable result of globalization, we need ways to mitigate this. Trade from the POV of rich countries is often a redistribution from the poor (uncompetitive labor) to the wealthy (multinational corporations), justified by the "gains from trade". We must be willing to aggressively redistribute these resulting gains back to the disenfranchised or see populist backlash.
I'm generally for free trade, but there has to be a more equitable arrangement than what we've got now.
If the USA is enforcing environmental regulations for their factories, this will obviously cost more than just dumping used chemicals outside in a pit. So the cost of goods in another country will be less if it doesn't have good (or any) environmental regulations. This is separate from labor prices.
So it is not fair to the USA, and it isn't fair to the people living in countries without good environmental regulations.
ignoring environmental protection costs for monetary success is mostly short-term planning and will - i'm a software developer, so i'll take this as a comparison - have the same consequences as short term planning and accumulating technical debt in software development. see it as an indirect investment in infrastructure that ultimately benefits everyone (but also you). you can't run a factory without government funded roads and railways, aka funded by your tax payer money.
it's the same for environmental expenses: skimp now, and you might not have a market to sell to in a decade.
so, if you outsource to another country it wont help in the long term because climate is global.
that much is clear. the rest is sufficiently explained by dawkins stable dove-hawk systems. you might want to try to gamble the system for personal gain, but if everyone does it, it'll collapse and everyone dies. so you shouldn't and protest transgression by others, otherwise the system might collapse.
i'm convinced you can play fair and still make a profit.
The way to ensure that these profits are "redistributed" back to the people of the host country is to eliminate free trade. If the items you sell in America must be produced by an American workforce, then the money is pumping back into the economy as Republicans always claim. If the money is being taken from Americans at the point-of-sale and then shipped out to China, Americans lose.
Trump is proposing that we put a cost-prohibitive tariff on foreign-built goods so that Americans will only buy them if there is truly no decent American competitor.
Sanders and Trump are approximating the same root cause here -- corporate greed is depriving the American worker. They're just extracting the value that belongs to the American worker at a different point of the transaction. It's debatable which is superior, but Trump's approach is more compliant with conventional American laissez-faire capitalism.
Eliminating free trade is precisely the wrong direction to go, in my opinion.
> "If the money is being taken from Americans at the point-of-sale and then shipped out to China, Americans lose."
You can't only look at one side of the equation. American grown soybeans and American manufactured aircraft are being bought in China, and billions of dollars worth of their hard earned yen are being "shipped out" to America. The point of free trade is for everyone to specialize in what they have a comparative advantage in, because this will expand the production frontier overall.
Putting cost prohibitive tariffs on goods the Chinese are better at producing (let's just say commodity electronics) may prop up US commodity electronics makers. But we would be subsidizing inefficiency. And if the Chinese put similar tariffs on American exports like commercial aircraft in return, everybody loses. Yes, you can just eliminate free trade, but the point of free trade is to grow the pie. You just have to cut it fairly after it's grown.
There are also swathes of evidence that most of the costs associated with running a typical household have gone up.
So while the goods that are mostly part of discretionary spending (think clothes and electronics) are cheaper, the essentials that can't be outsourced have also increased in price (education, healthcare, housing)
He also blamed the tax code, claiming many times to have taken advantage of it, and boasting of paying insanely low taxes on his businesses. This was seen as horrible by a lot of the left in this country - proof that "he doesn't want to shoulder his fair share of the burden"- but served as evidence to what a lot of middle America has suspected for years, that the tax increases Democrats proposed to pay for welfare programs weren't effecting the rich and were being paid for by the middle class. (Yes, this is a simplification of the issue.) Trump's 'I broke it and I know how to fix it' approach to the tax code the reason a lot of people who don't trust corporations voted for a tycoon.
Trump won despite his status as a corporate tycoon because the people basically believe he's a double-agent. A corporate tycoon born with the heart of a worker. I think there's an argument that could be made there: Trump has a long history of being looked down upon by high society.
Trump's also credible, because as someone whose attempted many different lines of business, he's seen what it takes to be competitive, and as someone with the heart of a worker, he didn't like it and wanted to even the playing field.
Trump is the epitome of "Don't hate the player, hate the game". Trump was in a very unique position, shared perhaps only by a few dozen other living souls, to see the game, hate it, and be able to make a credible attempt to fix it.
You can do what the democrats have talked about, which we have successfully done in Nordic countries which is to spend a lot of money on re-educating the workforce and making sure those at the bottom get decent skills.
I grew up in a rustbelt like industrial town in Norway. We has shipyards, glass factory, paper mill, textile industry, lock systems etc. Almost all of it got closed down and moved overseas as I grew up.
But we never ended up in the deep pit blue collar America ended up in, because government took a very active stance early to fight this with active policies. In towns where factories died, they moved public sector jobs from the capital.
People got a lot of retraining for new jobs. There is a strong system for vocational training in technical jobs like Germany so people could get skills for more advance jobs which was easier to keep when competing against asian industrial giants.
Our government offers free university education, so even less well off blue collar families could send their kids to good schools. And when economic times got harder it never hit blue collar works as hard as in America because we have free universal health care, heavily subsidized childcare, good pensions for everybody.
Basically the welfare system we built up saved our blue collar workers. Yet Americans pretend that there is no solution to this problem except attacking minorities, Mexico, China etc.
It is rich people like Trump and their agenda, which has made sure that blue collar workers in America have felt the influence of globalization harder than many other blue collar workers in the west.
Yes it can. According to Wikipedia, Sweden has lower economic inequality than Norway does. [0] And the percentage of income held by the poorest 10% is nearly the same across Nordic countries. [1]
I have quite a few friends from the Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland) and they are quick to tell you that things aren't perfect there, but I think you can say that government policies can create a more equal society even in countries without petromoney (e.g. Sweden).
The key complaint many will have against the various progressive policies in Scandinavia when applied to the US is not the petromoney but the reality of a more homogeneous and educated citizenry.
Despite AWS' claims otherwise, you can't just extend a service designed for 10 million to 320 million and expect even remotely the same performance.
The Nordic model we know today was developed and implemented in the 1970s.
Obviously this kind of transformation takes time, and I have heard from Finnish friends that the education system quality is falling (it used to be within top-3 in the world for test scores, now they're only top-10).
I'm sure when people thought of the model in the '70s, there were many people saying it would never work for a country of 5 million people, but 40 years later it still mostly works.
> Despite AWS' claims otherwise, you can't just extend a service designed for 10 million to 320 million and expect even remotely the same performance.
Are you saying the cost is too high, or it is simply infeasible to improve the lives of this many people?
For the improvement of quality of life, see India's current efforts. Which I would argue are even more ambitious (e.g. bring water and electricity to nearly half a billion people) and, while not perfect, are going about as well as anticipated.
For the financial argument, well there's a reason why everything in the Nordic countries is very expensive and people complain about the high taxes.
>Are you saying the cost is too high, or it is simply infeasible to improve the lives of this many people?
I'm saying a system designed for 10 million users cannot simply be extended to 320 million, particularly when that larger population is substantially more diverse.
Consider a social science study looking at the same populations. Would you really expect any given finding in the Scandinavian populations to map to the US?
Implement policies in the State level then? Wasn't that the original idea of United States of A?
Only 10 of your States has more people than Sweden.
Roughly 20 states has a population more than 5.5 million, which is the ballpark where Denmark, Finland and Norway are. So 30 States have less population than a typical Nordic country.
Sweden is likely more diverse than at least 15-20 of your states - a bit hard to compare due to different kind of demography statistics.
And we have free movement of workforce in EU/Schengen, so that ain't too different from US.
Democrats don't want to let individual states decide for themselves (Republicans for the most part don't want to either). They want national control over as much as they can get.
That is a political problem - totally different (and fixable if people want) than claimed issue that the Nordic model couldn't work in the US because difference in the size of population
That's part of it. The other part is that people are in favor of local control, even down to the most local level--until the local government and/or local voters (especially if it's their government and/or local voters) do something that they strongly disagree with.
>Implement policies in the State level then? Wasn't that the original idea of United States of A?
Yes, it was. That's why they had a confederation, not a union, organized under the Articles of Confederation. It was an abject failure. Nothing was able to get done because the states couldn't agree on anything, and the central government wasn't powerful enough to force them to do anything.
That's why the Constitution was invented instead.
It's a bit similar to the EU: the central government is too weak to force the members to adhere to its policies, so it's falling apart.
The Finnish government is cutting the education budget pretty heavily (especially higher education). I would still say that the fall in education rankings during the past years is more due to many Asian countries getting better and better instead of Finland getting worse.
Ok, lets assume that the benefits of economies of scale don't apply here and take that it doesn't work for systems with hundreds of millions of people as a premise.
We know it works for systems of up to ~50m people because those are the larger EU countries. In that case I submit that it would also work at state level in the US. I feel that you can't even make a good argument that the reason it can't work at state level is because of the federal government because we're also a de facto federation within the EU and it works for the most part.
edit: I'm likely missing or wildly underestimating something here but I just can't shake the impression that what prevents the US from having all the nice things we get are cultural and historical issues, not economical ones.
The biggest obstacle that prevents humans from doing anything is their own culture. Resources can be found if there is a will.
Here is no different. Many people hate the very concept of public education, let alone throwing more money at it. And when people do agree that we should do it, they inevitably disagree on the hows and the whats.
The issue with scale isn't logistical or so... metric based. It is as simple (and insurmountable) as getting such a diverse population to agree at all.
You don't deserve the downvotes. This is one of the main reasons, if the not the main reason that this kind of economics is hard. You can't, in general, take the institutions from one place, apply them to another and expect the same result -- or even similar results.
The Nordic countries have as much problems with right-wing populists as any other country. Not having a job is not the problem. Or at least: having a job does not stop them from voting for right-wing populists.
USA does not have an oil fund that amounts do $150k per capita to pay for "free everything" (university education, universal health care, childcare) and good pensions for everybody.
Norway generates more revenue with oil than the entires US of A, for 5 million people, and is third worldwide exporter for Natural Gas just behind Qatar and Russia, again with only 5 million people to serve (less than the population of New York)
The policies you enjoy are paid for by those revenue, and are not applicable to "regular" countries.
I admit tho that your politician did a good job at ensuring that those revenue are used for the good of the general population and are managed with the future in mind.
You've also got a top marginal personal income tax rate approaching 60% which is nearly twice that of the US and political suicide.
I'm not making a judgment for or against high marginal taxes, I'm just saying "the US could do it too" ignores, well... the very core of economic and tax policy in the US.
Well, it's important to engage the political realities. Doesn't make it impossible, but a hybrid proposal or smaller first step might be more practical, given the politics.
Yes, in the US, the taxation of the Nordic countries won't work and the socialist approach to services is also not accepted by half of the country.
Two key ideas, however, could be implemented:
--- IDEA 1 - REALLY EDUCATE people on WHY they need to get new vocational training.
Currently too many people are being given false promises of the return of working class jobs that are not coming back. It's not just globalization that has caused the loss of these jobs, but also technology advances that have made many of these jobs obsolete.
Your blue collar worker today isn't going to get a job moving metal equipment from one place to another because a machine can do it much more efficiently 24/7. Our capitalistic society means that a corporation will seek to create maximum efficiency to generate maximum profit. Corporations aren't in the business of maximizing the number of employees, but rather maximizing the return per resources invested in the organization. And that means, excuse my somewhat callous statement, that people are viewed as resources to the organizations, a means to generating profit. If a machine is able to perform a function faster, longer, for less overall money than an employee, a corporation will seek for that alternative.
So when many politicians make promises of bringing back good jobs. They AREN'T telling people WHAT JOBS are coming back. In fact, when you look at manufacturing jobs in the US, we currently CAN'T FILL THEM.
The problem is that your blue collar worker still expects a manual, low skill manufacturing job. But the job the US corporation wants is a manufacturing person who has a math or CS degree who can program or operate a high-end automation machine. Who can manage the CNC process or who can input the specifications for highly detailed technical operations. This requires specific training, math, engineering, or certifications.
This is the truth that more politicians need to hammer home to the people, then government follows up making sure that there is an incentive for educational institutions to allocate resources to teach these people.
But today, we're still stuck in: politicians claim that it's federal government's fault that they don't have a job, and that electing them instead will magically bring these low skill jobs back.
--- IDEA 2 - DECENTRALIZE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES (Move them out of Washington D.C.
The capital, Whitehouse, and some executive services would remain in D.C., but many of the key departments would be moved to different regions of the country.
For example:
-The Veterans Administration in Phoenix
-The IRS in Dallas
-Treasury Department in NYC
-FBI in SLC
-The EPA in Portland or Seattle
-Department of Agriculture in Iowa
and so forth. Federal government jobs move to other places around the country bringing it closer to the people so they get a more personal connection with the government since it actually supplies jobs to the people they know. It also moves these departments into locations that cost less than the high prices of the D.C. beltway.
Is there some loss of more interpersonal meetings between departments and cabinets? Sure, but high speed Internet access is readily available in ALL metropolitan areas around the country. We have video conferencing technology which eliminates the need for us to have the requirement of so many in-person meetings. It's a trade-off, but one that is greatly benefiting the people of the country.
And as the Federal government this is a big win because today, much of the sentiment is that the Federal government DOESN'T DO anything for me...
We (Norway) did just that a few years ago; mostly, it was a success once the dust settled.
For instance, the coastal administration moved from the capital Oslo to Ålesund which is smack in the middle of a world-renowned maritime cluster; fisheries agency. moved to our #2 city (or #1 if you ask the locals) Bergen, historically the major export hub for the coastal fisheries, etc.
The key benefit is that it ensures there is a need for highly skilled labour also outside the capital; also, as you mention, it provides for more closeness to government - the sectors affected by the whims of a government agency has said agency within spitting distance, which helps.
The only thing I would point out (see my comment a little further down about US budget) is that our current level of taxation supports comparable levels of spending to Nordic countries. I would guess, not doing an in depth analysis, that this is partly or even mostly due to the much larger relative size of the US GDP.
And in the case of healthcare, we are flat out spending more, both in real dollars and per capita measurements, and getting less. So I view tax arguments as more or less red herrings: We already spend as much or more, instead we should ask what is wrong with our system? Changes to our systems should not require increases in our taxation (necessarily).
But it's also why I really like your ideas since they are systemic in nature.
The second idea is also a great idea from a strategic perspective. At the risk of sounding doomsdayish, by spreading the federal government's agency headquarters around the country, it minimizes the risk of a single city-wide or even state-wide catastrophe (sea level rise, nuclear carbomb, Giant Meteor delivering on its one campaign promise, etc.) eradicating the leadership of most/all federal agencies.
I can't say those agencies are specifically "in touch" with citizens. I'd rather say, they might be more hellish if they were all centralized in Berlin.
Take the other example of Belgium whose tax level is more or less equivalent but is scaling down on basically everything. People there complain that they pay a lot now, but are almost certain that when their turn come, they will not get anything.
We are in a context where you can't predict the outcome of the next election a single day before, who will trust to current generation of politician with policies in 30 years ?
Also, that's not just a question of egoism. I don't mind paying today so that people get unemployment benefit and a good pension. The problem is that if it goes the other way when I reach retirement age, I will neither receive the pension nor the year of tax cut to make up for it.
The largest portion of our budget is mandatory spending (~65%). Of our mandatory spending, the largest portion of that is spent on Social Services (Social security, medicare and health, etc) and yet we still have worse services than almost any other western country (IMO).
You start looking at percentages and an even more sinister picture starts to take shape:
> "Canada spends 6.3 percent of its total yearly budget on military spending. The United States spends 19.3 percent of its budget on military expenses. Mexico uses 3.3 percent of its budget for military spending."
> "Canada spends 17.9 percent of its total yearly budget on health care. The United States spends 19.3 percent of its budget on health care expenses. Mexico uses 11.8 percent of its budget for health care."
> "Norway spends 17.9 percent of its budget on health care spending, while its neighbor Sweden spends 13.8 percent of its budget on health care."
> "In France, health care spending is 16.7 percent of Frances yearly budget."
This article needs citation, but see this report that seems to at least tangentially support some of the trends voiced:
> "The United States is, by far, the country that spends the most on health as a share
of its economy (with 16.9% of its GDP allocated to health in 2012)"
So at this point we can conclude that the US spends roughly the same share, or more, of it's GDP on Health care as other countries...even those "socialist" ones...yet we have a much worse standard/level/cost of care.
Even at our "lower" tax rates our GDP is by far and away the largest:
But moreover, our PER CAPITA GDP is one of the highest in the world (higher than Norway and Sweden).
So at the end of the day, America:
* Spends more on healthcare in flat dollar terms than almost any other nation
* Spends more on healthcare PER CAPITA than almost any other nation
and yet we still have far worse levels of care.
So this problem has nothing to do with economic or tax policy in the US. The question is: Where is the enormous sums of money we are ALREADY pouring into the system going?
>So this problem has nothing to do with economic or tax policy in the US. The question is: Where is the enormous sums of money we are ALREADY pouring into the system going?
The pockets of the oligarchy represented by Clinton and Trump.
> ...industry supplies the bulk of the funds devoted to research and development, the public sector—primarily the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—supports most of the nation’s basic biomedical research.
I wonder what would happen if the U.S. passed a law requiring that drug prices in the U.S. be no higher than anywhere else in the world. That is the drug company is free to set any price, but they cannot sell at a lower price outside the U.S.
Wouldn't it be dramatically easier to just allow Americans to buy their drugs from other first world countries at the prices they pay? If American drug companies have to compete with extra-national pricing, I'm guessing they'll figure out a way to.
On top of that, you're not forcing anybody to do anything.
No I mean specifically from the private sector. You have to front that cost somehow. Whether you're seeing the cost as more expensive drugs or whatever, you're still paying it. R&D is factored into the cost.
The negotiation process is just different than when other countries are negotiating with US pharmaceutical companies.
Corruption, lack of a single payer system that dramatically increases efficiency in the "socialist" countries. Insane health insurance system (ties into corruption).
It's doubtful they can/will fix any of this.
America is a country controlled by lobbyists.
The politicians don't matter at the end of the day, look at Obama, had the right idea, could only implement a relatively mediocre system because anything good was politically untenable.
The fact that politics can trump (lol) the health of the nation is enough for me to never want to live there.
Most Western health systems are universal and more or less exclusively government-funded. This means that the entire population is in the same risk pool, reducing costs for the more vulnerable users and increasing the incentives to implement more preventative medical practices. As de facto monopolies, these systems can do a much better job of controlling the costs of salaries, equipment, and drugs. And, because the systems don't need to turn a profit, they can operate at cost.
Our private health care system, however, has a cycle of perverse incentives -- employers, insurers, patients, and doctors -- that leads to spiraling costs with no increased benefits. The populations with the highest health risks (i.e. costs) are shoved onto the public rolls, in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA. Meanwhile, the lowest-risk populations are forced to pay into private, for-profit insurance schemes. Specialists have outsized bargaining power, which leads to grossly outsized salaries. Equipment and drug manufacturers can play hospitals and systems off of each other to bid up prices. And, of course, shareholders want a return on their investment.
This problem has everything to do with economic and tax policy in the US.
I think the point I was trying to address was the implied claim that we "can't afford" health care systems akin to other western examples. Arguments like:
> "Your tax rate is so high America would never vote for a similar tax."
> "Percentage wise those countries spend a lot more on health care than the US."
I would agree that our private health care system has perverse incentives. Combined with the degree of separation between cost and consumer due to our insurance system, this has resulted in general market failure.
Neither of these are directly economic or tax policy related (IMO). We already are being taxed and paying for health care...the issue is where is our health system failing to deliver value-per-dollar spent. Which generally might involve some economic policy overlap as far as market regulation, but I don't think it is the whole (or even the majority) of the story.
American healthcare is run by the private sector with pretty much zero accountability compared to say, the UK, where the NHS is for the most part, a public organisation with open books.
Nordic countries pay significantly more in taxes any way you look at it. You'd get laughed out of the room if you talked to someone like Donald Trump about paying a 40% marginal tax rate.
We could anyway imo. Our "very core" of economic and tax policy is actually pretty flexible. Just look at how the markets have developed over the last several decades. Yes there will be pain, but I'd trade a little short-term pain with long-term benefit over short-term relief with long-term decline anyday.
Not to say Scandinavia has the best of everything, but regardless... Jag skulle vilja bo i skandinavien istället USA
And isn't anymore. If you want to argue that it should be, I'll listen to that, but you can't just throw out a link to graph about tax rates 50+ years ago and think that settles it and the US can be just like Norway.
But it was, not not too long ago. 35 years ago it was 50%. 40 years ago it was 70%. Just saying it ignores the core of economic and tax policy in the US ignores, well... the the recent history of the economic and tax policy of the US. Rather than a rank dismissal of the idea, why not explain what's so different than now from then that makes it impossible?
> you can't just throw out a link to graph about tax rates 50+ years ago and think that settles it and the US can be just like Norway.
I didn't. I just meant to show that your reason for dismissing it seems poorly founded, or at least poorly explained.
70 decades ago, if I were a billionaire, I'd have no choice but to stay in the US and pay that tax rate. Europe is rebuilding from a war, Asia is an agrarian back-water and South America is about to start experimenting with Communism. Yeah, where am I going to run to, Mars?
Now it's different. I'll be laughing with my other billionaire buddies about your tax rate plans while snorting coke of a hooker's tits on my private yacht and watching the Monaco F1 GP from the harbor. I've got all the luxuries I need over there, and in fact, everywhere, that I previously could only enjoy in the US. I can talk with who I need to talk to over Skype, I can do my business, banking, everything, remotely.
It's not like other countries don't have equal or better infrastructure. It's not like I can get clean water and food only in the US that would somehow make this a magical place I'd never leave.
So why would I just sit quietly and let you tax me at 90%, exactly?
Except, jokes on you, you may still owe the US taxes even if you don't live there but you get income from there, and they expect you to fill out your worldwide income and file taxes if you're a US citizen.
> So why would I just sit quietly and let you tax me at 90%, exactly?
Extradition treaties and/or freezing of your bank accounts, businesses and resources within the US.
This talking point of once-sky-high marginal tax rates gets a lot of airplay, but it's very misleading. Almost no one paid those rates. Tax receipts as percentage of GDP have been remarkably stable over time:
> Tax receipts as percentage of GDP have been remarkably stable over time
That may be true, but since the sources you listed contradict each other, I'm left confused. I can find supporting evidence of the graph[1], but not of the wikipedia entry. The world bank apparently thinks they are all wrong[2]. Then there's a report that Norway is actually doing it with much less taxes than Denmark and Sweden[3], but that might be likely due to oil revenue. I'm left to conlcude that without a lot of research to look into the specifics, there's quite a few ways to measure this, and I'm not sure which are most relevant to the discussion at hand.
"You've also got a top marginal personal income tax rate approaching 60% which is nearly twice that of the US and political suicide."
That's only true if you count Federal Income Taxes alone. By the time you're done with Social Security, Medicare, state and city taxes (esp in NY, CA), the top marginal tax rate here approaches 50%.
Everyone ignores this when talking about taxes. I had an accountant do the math for me out of curiosity if I were to move to the Netherlands - and my marginal tax rate would have increased a whopping 7%.
I would have saved more than that in health care related expenses, so it was more or less a wash with that included.
People that say the US is low taxed are simply not paying attention. I pay comparable "all in" taxes as my Canadian co-workers.
In New Zealand we have free public healthcare, education subsidies (though tertiary education is not free), and a top tax rate of 33%, while we still make most of our money from primary industries like beef, dairy and wood[1].
Public healthcare allows us to have a huge single buyer for our pharmaceuticals - Pharmac[2] - which brings a lot of power to negotiate good deals.
It might not be reasonable for the US to become like the Nordic countries, but things could certainly be better.
Things can be made better in a way that's consistent with American principles of merit and competition. That's what Trump represents -- a return to the pre-Bush style of government that put reasonable economic restrictions in place and tried to provide an even playing field for everyone without introducing artificial government dependence.
GHWB and Bill Clinton sold this country into servitude for the elite by allowing them to freely export their labor overseas where it costs less than a dollar per hour. GWB and Obama continued that. That's 28 years of policy that have seriously exacerbated the economic condition of the average American while the fat cats at the top have gotten ever-richer.
Trump wants to make sure American money is used to help and employ Americans. That's good! There's no reason that all the money has to go overseas.
If people are so generous over there, why the need to put that burden to government and instead make funds so people can use what they need, and if a fund goes into corrupt hands you can always create a new one and vote with your wallet.
Yes, BUT these small countries do not pay the heavy Global Police tax to keep the world safe for example from Terrorism..we DO! Thus its not the same thing fits both small and big countries..
The US causes terrorism by steam rolling third world countries, but more or less has to do it now since these third world countries already hate the US enough to require this kind of policing.
Whenever someone tells me about the "nordic blessings" I tell them to "junte" the "law" up.
Smaller, more homogenic countries compare badly to more populated heterogenic ones.
Also: norway's oil example holds up since the once poorer than Swedes Norse outperformed the Swedes because of this. 1-2 generations earlier, "nordicly blessed" Norse were the house maids and guest workers for the Swedes. Nowadays it's Swedish students doing Norway's dishes.
Also Sweden maybe high rated in terms of social mobility, but only until the highest income percentiles are reached. Above that it's way way harder to reach compared to other first world countries. So while you can climb up more easily than normal the social latter, it's steps mean less than normal and you'll almost never make it into Sweden's 1%. A category that is the most open in the US of A.
Of course not easy. But doable compared to Sweden. You have to look at the statistics. The top Swedish percentile is made up more than normal of inherited wealth (48% in Sweden, 12% in the US). The US doesn't have a Wallenberg family that owns 42% of the country's stocks.
Of course you're right, but it doesn't mean anything.
It's like saying that you should buy people lottery tickets instead of healthcare.
I once heard that the US citizens most vehemently against raising taxes for the rich were the homeless, because they didn't want THEIR taxes raised once THEY became rich.
Once the population is "well educated" they will start to ask intelligent questions which will then prevent them for voting for someone like Trump (or most republicans in general).
So it's in his/their best interest to keep them uneducated.
Perhaps he is, I've no idea. I, however, do live in Denmark and am able to point out that we get all that. Hell, if I spend money on health in Europe I get it returned by the state when I come back.
Does my being physically present at some point on this planet make the original argument any more or less valid?
Sure, we have many problems but actually getting good benefits and seeing our taxes put to use at our isn't one of them.
That's probably the one thing I actually agree with Trump on: when he said the whole "NATO, we have to talk" comments. We're all living under the US umbrella when it comes to defense and it's pathetic that we don't fulfil the terms of the agreement we made.
> USA does not have an oil fund that amounts do $150k per capita to pay for "free everything" (university education, universal health care, childcare)
The US federal government pays more per capita for health care than Norway, for one! The fact the US manages to pay so much per capita for healthcare and not have universal health care is actually quite an achievement.
It's the price of having to wait months in order to see a doctor I guess. That is if government thinks you are worth treating and you don't have to resort to medical tourism.
So Nordic patients are paying less for the same treatments, and/or getting less aggressive care. (I don't know which or how much of both)
To the extent Norway pays less for the same drugs/treatments, they are funding a smaller share of the profits of biotech & pharmaceutical companies.
The US pays a significantly higher share of pharma/biotech profits than any other country (citation needed). We therefore contribute the most to the new research, new drugs and treatments developed by those same firms. I actually think this is one of the greatest things we do as a country.
Some people call this "overpaying" but I think of it differently.
Even if this is true, it's a horrible way to fund the companies. If we want the US to fund drug companies, we sould do it through some sort of progressive tax, not through a raised cost in base level care, which affects everyone, and when it gets high enough effectively means poor people can't pay, and the middle class feels it as a large burden.
$3000 or more a year in healthcare costs is not felt the same by someone that makes $50k a year as someone who makes $150k a year. And that's for an individual. Many people are trying to cover a whole family at these rates.
But that's not how people actually pay for care... Insurance cost, copays, and deductibles are all set based on household income. In Medicaid Expansion states, if you make less than FPL and you pay literally nothing - it's the best insurance money can't buy. As you make more the subsidies taper off and you pay more in premiums and more in OOP costs. The cost is absolutely socialized through progressive taxation.
On the supply side, the price of care is set roughly in the market's ability to compete, but the price is absolutely back stopped by government policies like patents and Medicare reimbursement rates.
Take an inside look at how these firms bring new treatments to market and you know it's intensely competitive. The level of investment is commensurate to the potential payoff.
> Insurance cost, copays, and deductibles are all set based on household income.
Isn't it more accurate to say discounts to these are all set based on household income? At a certain point, you're paying regular plan costs. All this amounts to is a separate way to tax people for the costs, which means it can use a different schedule than the regular tax code. If the US is funding these companies, there should be a better way to do so that the craziness that is this.
> Take an inside look at how these firms bring new treatments to market and you know it's intensely competitive. The level of investment is commensurate to the potential payoff.
I've yet to be convinced that the massive cost of R&D due to trials and marketing which needs to be recouped by massive prices isn't at least in part the result of a runaway feedback loop. We require lots of testing to protect the populace which necessitates a lot of money to develop the drugs which means that if it's a dud or has negative effects it's in the interest of the company to occasionally cover that up because it cost so much which leads to drugs on the market that cause problems which leads to more stringent testing which leads to increased cost which leads to increased need for success which leads to....
We need to drastically decrease the cost of trials while making the cost of taking a bad drug to the general market more. That's a tall order, but it's what's needed.
This is one of those situations where we want the market to solve it, but we probably aren't prepared for what a totally unencumbered market response would be. We've likely over (or at least poorly) regulated drug development, and since most things are cyclical, it will probably swing the other way at some point. That's probably good, as long as it doesn't swing too far. I want a more efficient system, but not necessarily at the expense of a few million casualties from cascading mistakes.
Unfortunately, since it has to do with people being hurt, or the possibility of people being hurt, I think it's unlikely we'll get legislation or a majority of politicians that are willing to look at it rationally. It's too easy to drum up emotional support for some aspect or another for personal gain.
Hell, most of these kinds of policies were enacted on the outset of WWII, not exactly a time of greatness and plenty. For an other example, the UK enacted the NHS just a few years after the war ended.
You're being glib with the term 'immigrant'. He was an upper middle class professional who moved to the west in order to obtain health treatment for his kid that was unavailable in iraq.
> Norway generates more revenue with oil than the entires US of A, for 5 million people
I find this hard to believe. The US generates what looks to be close to 5x the barrels of oil per year as Norway, and since oil is globally prices, that should lead to approximately 5x the revenue. It will obviously be less per-capita, but that's not what you said.
> and is third worldwide exporter for Natural Gas just behind Qatar and Russia
Your facts are also slanted here. The US is the worlds largest natural gas producer[2], at over 6x the production of Norway, and 25% more than the second place, which is Russia.
That said, it's not like the US is a poor country, or doesn't have credit available to finance anything it wants. Training jobless workers would be a net benefit to the economy after a few years, and would pay itself off. We could easily finance that if we decided to. It's a matter of will, not capability.
You are mixing up production and export.
US produces more Oil and natural gas, but is low on exports.
Norway on the other hand has a low domestic consumption (because of a low population) and is able to generate more revenue on exports.
Because for this argument they are irrelevant. Domestic consumption is money you aren't spending to buy gas on the market, at market prices. If Norway had a use for 100% of it's oil, it would be saving the equivalent amount from the global market as it would be gaining in revenue.
The bigger difference is that one is state owned, and the other is mostly privatized. Then again, for the larger picture, this is only relevant if the countries in question are constrained to the income available from this system. Neither are. If the US wanted to issue a few hundred billion in bonds, they could do so with little trouble if it was politically feasible. Or they could literally just make the money out of thin air, if they weren't concerned with or were willing to accept the possible inflation.
It's hard to overstate just how much economic and monetary power the US can bring to bear.
> US produces more Oil and natural gas, but is low on exports.
For now, the US are exporting more natural gas than Norway. However, with the completion of Cheniere's project at Sabine pass, this will be the opposite [1]. Actually, this November, the US are going to export more than twice the volume of Norway.
Höpö-höpö. The rest of the Nordic block - Finland, Sweden, Denmark, Iceland - doesn't have oil, and we all have very similar policies that Norway has.
It doesn't fully protect us from effects of globalization and we have similar situation with the population in rural areas and small old industrial towns not doing that well and turning against immigrants because of that.
But it seems that the situation is much worse in the US.
When an immigrant or anyone your tribe doesn't particularly care for comes along and is willing to do the same work for less, it breeds resentment. Unfortunately, that's human nature.
The U.S. has had to deal with this problem on a greater scale compared to countries that grew over millennia because of a liberal immigration policy and economic freedoms afforded to immigrants, and the aftermath of slavery. It's remarkable that this experiment has worked as well as it has (thank you, geography). But the ruling class dropped the ball over the last 20 years and ignored the rapid increase of those marginalized by immigration & trade side-effects, even though there still is a widely-held regard for the "melting pot", so now we got Trump.
It's worth noting that the current wave of immigrants is by no means the first to be marginalized, either. Irish immigrants in the 1800's, for example, faced very overt persecution for many of the same reasons (notably: "stealing" the jobs of non-immigrants), especially at the height of emigration from Ireland due to the Great Famine.
In the long run, we'll likely look back at all this fuss as another chapter in our history books, but I'm sure there'll be some other ethnic group immigrating in droves. The melting pot is a continual process. Slow and frustrating sometimes, but it works for the better in the long-term.
Out of curiosity, what's the proportion of rural or small-town population v. urban population in those countries? I find that tends to be the big dividing line here in the US, and am curious as to whether or not the same can be said elsewhere (i.e. if a lower rural:urban population ratio correlates with a higher probability for Nordic-style policy).
It's probably not the only variable at play here (economic development and education levels could be additional factors), but it might be influencing those variables in subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways.
your whole nordic block has a population of 26.6 million. That's similar to Texas, not the us. in other words, what is applicable to those places may not translate to such a big country. if you start expanding it to be similar in size to the US, you'd need to take very problematic areas in, like Russia. similarly it can be noted that northern places in the us tend to have lower income inequalities in general (northernmost state, alaska ranks second within us, northernmost country, iceland ranks first within europe). nearly all states that border canada do well on poverty measures (the exception being new york).
I seriously doubt that /everyone/ would be on the 'free everything' plans. Just like right now not /everyone/ is in jail (but those that are still cost us QUITE a bit both in jail fees and in public court fees of various kinds).
Wouldn't a social safety net to prevent destroyed families, to prevent crimes driven by desperation and/or drug abuse, and to fund the enrichment of workers in to higher skill cogs in the machine that is society be a wiser investment than in more police, prosecutors and jails?
That's utter nonsense. I live in Canada, and there is no way someone like Trump could be elected here. The message simply wouldn't resonate. Harper was considered extreme and he was left of Hilary.
You know what goes a long way to eliminating blue collar angst? Healthcare. There's a policy that the US would have no issue implementing if the will existed. Hell it would be cheaper than what you currently spend.
You know another policy that would help? Subsidized maternity leaves.
Do you want a third? A government run pension program.
A forth? Controlled college tuition.
All of these are well within the US's power to implement, provided the will is there. But the will not being there has nothing to do with the ability of a nation to implement these things.
Well, Europe isn't Canada, and 1933 isn't 2016. One of the major differences between Canada and any other country on the planet is the level of multiculturalism that is not only supported, but encouraged. It keeps all sorts of extremism at bay. I'm personally think it goes too far, but I have to concede that this is a benefit.
That comment however wasn't that someone like Trump could never be elected here, it's that the current environment, along with that of the foreseeable future, would have to change dramatically for it to be the case.
You're right, but not for the reasons you think. What's keeping xenophobia at bay is not multiculturalism but a reasonably strong economy and social safety net. If these start to fail you will see the xenophobia ramp up as people look for someone to blame for their misery.
I recently visited my family in Alberta where many are struggling due to the crash in oil prices and xenophobia is definitely on the rise. Pretending that "it can't happen" is exactly what allows it to happen.
Do you think that most Germans are, at their core, antisemitic? I don't think they are, but the economic conditions of a 1933 Germany made it easy for many people to blame a specific "other" for their situation with devastating results.
The rise of the demagogues is a known core bug of the system called democracy, and what triggers it is fear and anger without a clear, objective, immediately identifiable cause.
If the cause is clear and straightforward (invasion by a foreign army), then fear strengthens society, and the whole system responds effectively with unity and determination.
If fear and anger exist, but the cause is complex and remote (globalization, automation, progress), and seems beyond the grasp of the everyman, then the masses turn to demagogues for "help", and are invariably wrong. That's what happened in the '30s. This is what is happening now - hopefully not with the same end result.
but a reasonably strong economy and social safety net.
Which was exactly what I said in my first comment.
You're correct, but then again we have some built in safeguards that mitigate these events. One of them being FPTP, which is why I'm personally in no great rush to get rid of it.
It's harder to find groups to rally against when many of those groups are part of the general populace. The more diverse the culture, the less likely it is to be xenophobic when times get tough. That's why major population centres in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal voted Trudeau last time around - the Conservative message that leaned towards "dealing with" Muslims was utterly rejected.
Heh, but the propaganda machine is working as intended and those who pay for it have made sure at least half of the American population think government run healthcare, pensions and anything else is close to pure fucking evil. You do it on your own or you're not a proper American. Amazing, really.
Yeah buddy, I don't know where you live, but I grew up in northern Manitoba, lived in Winnipeg, and in other parts of rural southern Manitoba. I have family throughout Alberta and Saskatchewan, and on the east coast. They have been following, promoting and loving Trumps message. If you don't think Trumps message resonated with blue collar folks in Canada, you better break out your filter bubble and take a look around, and think about what you want the political landscape of the country to look like after the next election.
The difference is that the U.S. is a heavily rural country, whereas Canada is the second most urbanized country in the world. Our hinterland is not sufficiently populous to elect a Trump-like figure.
A lot of QC is made of run down blue collar workers who are on hard economic times, and somewhat xenophobic. I'm wouldn't be so quick to say Trumps policy would fail here.
The problem for them though is that they are also French, so things like the ADQ are tied to the inevitable "we'd be better on our own" and don't ever leave the province.
"It can't happen _here_.
It can't happen _here_.
I'm telling you my dear, that it can't happen _here_...
Who could imagine that they would freak out somewhere in Wisconsin?
Who could imagine that they would freak out in Michigan?
Who could imagine that they would freak out in Washington DC?
Who could imagine?..."
Um, the US has been completely divided right down the middle since Bill Clinton was in office.
Not only is all of that possible to imagine, it should be almost expected. Canada is a completely different beast, with a completely different governmental structure.
What about him? He's not only dead, he never went beyond Mayor. Mayors are notoriously loony because only special interest groups vote in municipal elections.
USA has plenty of money for its military its bases abroad and its wars. Maybe that money could be put at good use and USA should stop thinking it's so exceptional. Let USA concentrate on domestic policies instead of the middle east.
It's a question of priorities. It's easy to get into a war thinking it'll be short and easy then once you're in it's poisonous politically to not fund the war because it gets spun as not supporting the troops. Then it's hard to pull out of place like Iraq even if you don't want to keep funding the war because now it'll just become an broiling pot of lawless extremism because it's hard to rebuild a state and impose outside political systems at the same time.
Also a lot of the larger bases like those in Japan and South Korea are partially paid for by the countries there as part of getting US troops for defense.
Yet we do have the funds to pay for perpetual war in the Middle East and the military industrial complex? The money we spent on the Iraq war alone would have paid for years of free college.
We just don't have a system like that. I grew up in Appalachia the county next to mine has yet to get cell phones or the internet. There is no viable economic activity their and everyone who could has left. Those that stay cling to the idea that coal will create jobs again.
We don't even have a basic agreement on how and what kids should be taught, and since we don't have public healthcare or social insurance for all its a big risk to move in order to search for better economic activity.
> You can do what the democrats have talked about, which we have successfully done in Nordic countries which is to spend a lot of money on re-educating the workforce and making sure those at the bottom get decent skills.
One of the issues with this is that while yes, you can get the people to become more skilled/educated, ultimately the jobs that take advantage of that skills and education are in cities, not in small towns or rural areas where so many of these people currently live. And that's probably not gonna change.
Now, you could say, "well that's fine, we can give them moving stipends or something" but a lot of people are reluctant to leave what they've known as homes for so long. Such a strategy essentially puts these areas into hospice mode. That's an uncomfortable thought for probably most Americans.
And moving public sector jobs, while it might work, is probably politically untenable in America; the areas that are dying are the same ones that are generally hostile to government.
"One of the issues with this is that while yes, you can get the people to become more skilled/educated, ultimately the jobs that take advantage of that skills and education are in cities, not in small towns or rural areas where so many of these people currently live."
Somehow, our companies have become experts at enabling remote working 12 time zones away, but can't manage to pull off the same thing for someone in the rural US.
> Somehow, our companies have become experts at enabling remote working 12 time zones away
Debatable. Most companies don't really have that many individual remote workers. Yes, they may have geographically distinct offices, but that's different.
The issues of worker dissatisfaction in the U.S. is very similar to the ones in China, which was ironically built on economic equality.China, like Sweden and Norway, is ethnically homogeneous, but unlike Scandinavia its population is quite large. The larger the population, the more difficult it is to administer equal access to economic prosperity. China's revenues are technically built on capitalist models to maximize productivity, and it uses socialist ideals to do what it can with wealth redistribution, and yet is failing miserably. Socialism falls apart when the population far exceeds its ability to manage monetary policy. The U.S. is in a similar quandary without the socialist infrastructure; if China cannot do it, what are the chances the U.S. can?
The U.S. must innovate a different approach built to scale and support a population of 1 billion people. It's like management 101: managing a workforce of 20 to prosperity is much different than managing a workforce of 10,000.
This is all right on, but I would add one important point. Which is that some people cannot be retrained. It's the rare fifty year old who can adapt to a whole new field, learn all the theory and practice all the application, and then successfully compete against people half his age to land those entry-level jobs.
If our economic system puts people in such a position through no fault of their own and they cannot escape it despite their best efforts, they need to be taken care of, for life if need be.
There's another thread on HN right now where it is being taken as a given that OUR OWN PARENTS cannot be expected to use a computer without breaking it (filling it with malware, etc.)
I find that premise debatable, but if it is true, then how can they be retrained for technical jobs?
>> spend a lot of money on re-educating the workforce and making sure those at the bottom get decent skills.
It is the height of snobbery to move the lesser skilled jobs out of the country and tell everyone they need to be smarter. There will always be a distribution of skills and it is not for the well educated to say "you just need to be like us". All the US needs to do is stop signing 900 page "free trade" agreements and start adjusting import taxes to bring manufacturing back. Call it what you will, but taking care of your own first is not a bad thing.
What makes you think these jobs will ever come back in significant numbers? Even if the companies were forced to come back from overseas there would probably be a significantly smaller labor force because of automation. This problem is only going to get worse so it makes sense to go to a solution that is long term.
>There will always be a distribution of skills and it is not for the well educated to say "you just need to be like us".
This is akin to saying, "It's not for the doctor to tell you how to live your life." True enough; but you ignore their advice at your own peril.
That an education is a path to economic stability and mobility is not a matter of opinion. To write this off as snobbery is shooting the messenger.
There will always be a distribution of skills. And that distribution of skills required by the market needs to match the education of the populace. "Smart" is a superlative; "educated in a particular field" is merely an attribute.
Manufacturing is not coming back. We need to move on, and soon.
The real problem is these jobs are never coming back. Why is Wal-Mart the biggest company in the USA? Because the American public wants cheap crap. That's it. No matter what folks say they will pay $2 less for something from China vs. a more expensive product made in the USA.
Until you can convince Americans as a whole that they will have to pay more for goods made in the USA to employ Americans, jobs which were once done in the USA but are now cheaper to be done overseas will never see a return. Trade wars or import taxes won't fix that it will only exacerbate the problem.
It can come back.... by having a trade war with China, by raising the tax on Chinese Imports. I lived in China, a pair of Levis made by factory down a block is 100 bucks(and chinese make way less monthly), but when it export to USA, its 60 a pair.
What happens when tariff is raised and a pair of Levis from China now have to sell 120 bucks a pair? and if you produce that in US, since you dont have tariff, its 60 bucks a pair? what you think factory is going to do?
Trade wars are a horrible idea, won't work and will just harm the overall economy. Nearly every economist agrees that free trade is a net gain for everyone involved. Moving to something like a trade war which defies all rational economic sense is a terrible idea and I hope Trump is not dumb enough to do something that drastic.
every economist also said market was going to crash yesterday. Free trade is a horrible idea, specially when your trade partner dont play on the same rule you play on.
One of the reasons those jeans are $60 is because the labor is cheap. Import tariffs might bring back jobs, but no way you'll be able to pay the workers the wage they're looking for and keep the cost of goods the same.
My question is if the cost of goods will rise enough to make wage gains irrelevant, or if the effect won't be strong enough and we'll see real wage gains.
you didnt see my point, Chinese put heavy tariff on the import to protect their local economy. therefore a pair of jeans thats created locally going to sell more expensive then it is oversea.
when you have a 100 bucks a pair Levis vs 5 bucks a pair of local made jean (which came out of same factory), Chinese are most likely to buy the 5 bucks one, and therefore Chinese govt effectively protect their local business, took job from USA and helped every local economy with American investing dollars.
So every country should manufacture all their own stuff? Why does that make any sense?
And what happens to the cost of goods once everything is manufactured in the US, paying workers a living wage? In increase in the price of all products hurts the poorer and middle classes the most.
And what happens when more and more automation takes over? Then all the import tariffs in the world will be of no help to the welders and sewers you chose to let stagnate instead of improving their access to education and training.
Education and training for what? This is the question people like you never answer. Welders are already trained--for welding. What are they supposed to do now? Retail sales? You can't support a family on that. And what do you do when the checkout clerks and other low-end jobs get automated away? What are you going to retrain these people for?
I honestly have always been a pro "total free trade" with even the notion of protective tariffs being totally dismiss-able...but I think it's time to look at things with more of a nuanced approach.
When it comes to jobs, there is significant value provided to society as a whole from jobs that do not require a high degree of workforce re-education. Sometimes, people need a job that they can comfortably walk into and walk out of while they are between jobs. Walmart and McDonald's are the places providing that type of think because jobs that could be done cheaper elsewhere while importing the product were shipped off.
What we are seeing is that by offloading "no training" jobs to other cheaper countries and retaining "heavy education" jobs here in the US we're creating an additional cost to work that now REQUIRES paying for school, investing time in learning a skill and then hoping the market for that skill remains viable so you don't have to then re-invest in a new skill later on in life.
It makes me sincerely wonder if certain tariffs are more justified just to protect that type of work because it seems that the cost of not having it available is far higher than most people have accounted for. I live in the south east, an area that was highly dependent on the textile economy before it went belly up with the removal of protective tariffs. The effect was fairly devastating and it took many years to recover. Some areas never did while others flourished.
Just makes me want to understand all the factors more.
Our government offers free university education, so even less well off blue collar families could send their kids to good schools. And when economic times got harder it never hit blue collar works as hard as in America because we have free universal health care, heavily subsidized childcare, good pensions for everybody.
Does your system contain costs on these benefits better than the US, or do you have the inflation and pay it with tax increases? In the US all the benefits you mentioned have painful inflation. How does the government keep up with the costs?
In the US much of this is supplied by the market, which seeks to increase its profits every year to provide value for stockholders. The government, having no need to profit, is able to provide services to its citizens much more affordably.
"Our government offers free university education, so even less well off blue collar families could send their kids to good schools."
Here in the US, we actually have a decent Community College system which, while not free, tend to be very reasonably priced. Obama proposed leveraging this system as a low cost option for people who don't want to run up massive education debt.
The problem is we are thinking about it the wrong way, with all this advances in technologies, who said everyone should work? everyone in the society should benefit from advancement in technology not only %0.001 of population.
why Zuckerberg should have this many billions, did he contributed 1,000,000 times more than a 1000th Facebook employee to the society?
problem is with Tax system and how US spends it's budget. money comes out of people's pocket and goes to corporations bank accounts.
for example with only $16B we can give shelter to all the homeless in this country. $16B is peanut compare to federal budget. it is a shame to have half a million homeless in the richest country in the word.
I can't find it on Google, but there was a famous political quote around the 1988 election: "Every time a Democrat mentions retraining, they lose another 100,000 votes."
The USA lost 2 million industrial jobs during the 1980s. It was, at the time, the worst decade for deindustrialization. The Democrats felt the answer was retraining. The Republican reply amounted to the assertion that the USA needed a strong dollar.
And the Republicans won re-election in 1988.
From this, the Democrats learned that they would be punished for mentioning retraining. So it lost ground as an idea in USA politics.
The problem stemmed to policies that started back in the 70's, which kept getting expanded, which allowed for cheaper imports. This of course had the US companies jumped on, since hell, those people over seas work for 2 cents a day vs my skilled employees that turn out a quality product want $50K a year!
I would not consider the Nordic re-education system successful. Cynically speaking, it's designed to strike the unemployed from official counts, and the unemployment rate still ends up being higher than in the US. (Sweden 7.8%, US 4.9%)
Trump is for cutting taxes and spending, so how would he re-educate the workforce and make sure they get decent skills? His party is the same, they don't want to help anybody except the rich and profitable corporations who fund their campaigns, and want you to just pull yourself up by your bootstraps and work harder.
The Republicans were part of Congress' gleeful global corporate sell-out, and support international corporations getting more tax cuts and handing out jobs to the cheapest people in other countries even more than the Democrats do; the only things both parties can agree on are more war and more money to the rich and corporations at the expense of the worker.
Well first, the DNC needs to stop sucking up to Wall Street and Silicon Valley elites. They should've gone with Sanders and stop tipping the scales for the Clintonistas just because they got connections with the elites. Hillary had her shot in 2008 and that should've been that. So they need to pull left...HARD. No more limousine liberalism.
As for the RNC, they really really really really need to stop propping up the evangelical vote. Mike Pence and his ilk need to stop forcing their faith onto the rest of us (who still support things like gay marriage) have decided on a decade ago. Gay marriage is here to stay. Us "trannies" are gonna use the restroom that best fits our gender identity (man, woman, neutral, whatever). And the RNC really needs to stand by the promise of standing up for the Rust Belt workers. It doesn't have to be some protectionist claptrap that Trump spewed but something practical and reasonable. Especially something that'll pay for the healthcare that's sorely needed not only for the poor but the elderly who voted for them (whether they like it or not many of those folks won't be able to pay for their insulin, heart bypass surgeries, and the like from their 401ks).
Sorry for the crude language. I'm just annoyed by what I've seen in social media from liberals and conservatives on this. It's time for real change and not the smoke and mirrors they've been playing since Bill Clinton.
"Sorry for the crude language. I'm just annoyed by what I've seen in social media from liberals and conservatives on this."
I think a lot of people are. I know I am. A lot of that is due to the language people are using, especially when things get heated. Working on civil discourse, trying our best to refrain from saying things we might at other times regret not phrasing better. One of the benefits of forums is that we can take that moment before pressing submit to decide whether it's really something we want to send as written.
It might be what "should" be done but given the election results last night I'm not sure it's a winning recipe for electoral success. A big part of the country is not down with pulling harder to the left.
There are different axes of "left"-ness at play here. A large portion of the country doesn't like hearing about how urban liberals are the only moral human beings on the planet. Much the same portion of the country wants their goddamned labor unions back.
unfortunately, for the RNC, the evangelical vote is still a significant portion of the population and people are still voting on issues like gay-marriage & abortion.
I asked my gramps in-law why he voted for Trump and it was purely due to anti-abortion & gay-marriage. Non internet-connected gramps has no idea that Trump would only have those positions because it's an RNC position, not because Trump's actions show said beliefs.
> unfortunately, for the RNC, the evangelical vote is still a significant portion of the population
Trump has exposed that the evangelical voters are hypocrites who don't practice what they preach. Their goal is to impose their religion on us.
They are totally enamored with a candidate who has profited off strip clubs, cheated on his wife, married multiple times, sexual assaulted women and bragged about it, and appeared on the cover of the nation’s pre-eminent porn magazine. But they are offended by Beyonce's songs.
This is an opportunity for GOP to move away from evangelical appeasement, but no... they will double down on it.
I live in a relatively small suburb of Seattle. I'm a software developer. There are no jobs for me where I live. None. None within 20 miles. The only job for me is in Seattle or Bellevue or Redmond, an hour-long commute. I love where I live, and I don't want to live in Seattle (which I could barely afford anyway-- I like owning a house). I also don't want to exclusively work-from-home and be cut-off socially from my co-workers. It sucks.
(And as I've griped before, this is only true of a couple professions, and software developer happens to be one of them. If I had become a lawyer, I could work in any town in the US. Or a plumber, or a doctor, or a school administrator, or a tow truck driver, or a...)
I'd just be happy with some policy that spreads these companies out a bit. Maybe a tax benefit for opening office space in communities under a certain population size. I'm not sure how it would work. All those angel investors propping up tech companies could also be propping up small town economies merely by moving their offices outside of Seattle, Bellevue, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc.
The last company I worked for had 55 employees, about a dozen of which were software developers. That 55-person company means nothing to Seattle. Not even to the South Lake Union neighborhood. It's not even a blip. But it'd be part of the lifeblood in a smaller town. It'd also help cut the commute for everybody, be able to recruit technical workers like myself who don't want to live in a big city, etc.
Anyway, just a thought, hopefully relevant to this site. Meanwhile I go back to the jobs site, sigh heavily, and judge positions on how close they are to the bus stops...
>The only job for me is in Seattle or Bellevue or Redmond, an hour-long commute
I don't mean to belittle your situation but..an hour seems like fantastic commuting time. Most people I work with take an hour to an hour and a half to get to work. Up until our office moved there was two guys that had a 2 hour trip into work every day. Most people I know would kill to have an hour commute.
Have to agree with you -- jeez, it used to take me 2 hours to get home and it was just from one side of Phoenix to the other using freeways. Currently, I live in Barcelona, and it takes me about 45 minutes when you add up walking to the metro, taking the metro, etc.
You obviously don't live in the Seattle area. You can't move closer, because real estate is literally twice as expensive as where you currently live, and you can't change jobs because all the jobs are in the same places with the crummy commutes. About the only factor you can optimize is picking jobs that are along mass transit routes.
Uh, I think you're being very dismissive here. There are many rational reasons for urban business.
Being able to get rental real estate for your business. In the suburbs you now need a loan, credit, collateral, 30% down, etc to build your own building as there generally isn't a rash of empty floors on skyscrapers like cities do.
Being able to have face to face meetings frequently with your investors, board members, and bankers and other people who hold your pursestrings.
Being able to find investors in the first place. Picture two similar business plans. One by a group in the far out suburbs and one nearby. As an investor, which one would you lean towards, especially if you expect yourself to do any hands on work or attend board meetings?
Being able to get to the airport and mass transportation hubs quickly.
Being able to wine and dine investors and customers in places that will impress them.
Being able to court youngsters and urban professionals who want a city life and won't even interview in the suburbs. (Hi! This is me and almost everyone I know.)
Being near urban universities for the above reasons and job fairs.
Being near your competitors to help you poach their staff.
Being able to work with a local government that understands business needs and not being subjected to a 'board of elders' of out of touch 70 year old suburban retirees who will bikeshed the shit out of any proposal of yours and NIMBY you to death.
Being able to quickly expand by taking more office space instead of, you guessed it, building another fucking building.
Being able to order 1gb fiber and have in here in 30 days as opposed to 360 days in the suburbs and that's on top of paying tens of thousands of dollars for that last mile to your office, which they will need to dig up just for you.
...and yes, maybe some perks of city life as you mention. Work life should have pleasant parts and it helps attract talent.
I am living and working in Central London. Thank you.
Why can't you move? If real estate is twice as expensive, just pick a place half the size?
Don't you value your own time---wasted in commuting---at any positive dollar figure at all? If you spend an hour commuting each way for 21 days a month, that's 52 hours a month extra that you spend on `work', even if your employer doesn't gain anything from it.
He is not. He is wrong when he wants the government to force companies to bring jobs to his front door ("influencing companies", if you like smooth talk).
It is his choice to live in a good place OR next to a good job. It is not government's problem in any case.
That's not really doublespeak. And it doesn't have to be less efficient to own a house. Can't put solar panels on my apartment roof. Can't plant much of a garden to localize some of my consumption.
If you were really eco-conscious you could probably get more gains out of owning your own house. Especially since most houses have already been built, whereas most of the new construction I see in my city (Baltimore) is going towards mixed-use condos/apartment towers for all the trendy folks wanting to live downtown. If they really cared about the environment and efficiency they'd be fixing-up the thousands of run-down homes.
That's pretty small relative to the extra energy consumption from having to commute farther, and the land that you might live on could be used for solar power regardless of whether you live there.
Guess I was thinking more of my situation than the OP's in Seattle. I can commute downtown Baltimore in about 30 mins (~8 miles) from my suburban house. Leaf does it on a single charge. Guess I would have to do the math, but I'd think the drop in electricity consumption, especially in the summer heat, is enough to offset my commute.
It's definitely not typical since I'm in the minority of solar panel and electric car owners who are within commute range on a single charge. But there you have it. It's at least possible.
The subthread OP (antisthenes) was referring to the global (system level) inefficiency of large-home far-out living, not the inefficiency for a household's budget (which is distorted by policy).
For purposes of that calculation, it's double-counting to include the solar panel energy, because we can already put a solar panel at that location regardless of whether you live and commute from there; your choice to live there did not expand our solar energy capability, and you're still avoidably drawing down the supply of clean energy.
Just to clarify: I'm not criticizing your decision, only justifying why it's not an argument against this being a systemic inefficiency.
Sure, but I guess my point was that systematically we aren't building solar panels and creating the greatest possible efficiency of the overall system. You're kind of describing an ideal efficient system where we coordinated together perfectly. But that's not really how we as humans or a society work. If I moved out of my house into an apartment it's unlikely anyone will put up extra solar panels to offset the loss. My consumption would fall back onto the norm of the grid, which is mostly fossil fuels. But as an individual I can make choices which will create the greatest net efficiency.
But I guess I'm really getting into the definition of efficiency. I suppose in my mind I'm considering clean energy as more efficient even though from an economic POV fossil fuels are still more efficient based on price (though probably not for long).
So in conclusion, you're right. I'd just add the caveat that faced with the reality of a mostly uncoordinated system run by large groups of people with competing interests, you can possibly find higher efficiency (depending on how you look at it) from making your own intelligent individual decisions while living in a large home away from the city center.
I wasn't referring to price efficiency, but the general efficiency of the system's use of resources. And I agree that given the house, you are improving that efficiency by adding the solar panel. The point was, the system had to significantly distort the resource scarcity signals to make it look appealing to build the house to begin with, and adding some solar energy doesn't change that calculus.
But most the houses are already built. I live in a house that was built in the 30s. So in my mind the resource cost has already been sunk into homes across the country. Instead a lot of folks are moving into new developments being built in downtown areas.
Perhaps repairing the houses would be less efficient than building new apartment blocks, I'm really getting well beyond my knowledge or expertise. But I'd somewhat presume that instead of building new high rise apartments downtown it would be more efficient overall if we refurbished some of the crumbling residential areas.
Course that only applies to older cities mostly on the East Coast.
Building houses is relatively cheap. The housing stock on top of the land isn't what's so expensive in cities. It's the land underneath.
The cost of the housing stock is of minor importance in these arguments, and nobody suggest tearing down existing houses just for the sake of efficiency. That wouldn't make any sense.
(A house build and paid for once can stand for hundred years or more, but only with a constant expense on maintenance in either money or sweat.)
What we want is denser urban cores. That way there will be less sprawl, and even the country pumpkins would have shorter commutes, because the countryside could start so much closer to the city centres: given the same or even larger number of people in them cities, they would take up less space.
Guess I would have to do the math, but I'd think the drop in electricity consumption, especially in the summer heat, is enough to offset my commute.
Fully charging the Leaf should be about the same as my Fiat 500e, and that's roughly equivalent to running a space heater for 18 hours. I'd conservatively estimate your commute takes 1/8th to 1/4th that power. (There are lots of details I don't know that could affect that.) It is roughly the same going by that.
Yeah, it is pretty easy to offset that with a solar panel. On a sunny day, it would probably only take about 4 panels to do it for such a small commute.
I think there are a couple of forces at work here that aren't clear cut.
Perhaps there are families out there that need more space, would like to be self-sufficient especially in emergency situations and feel happier outside of an urban center.
I think if we build these types of communities/houses, we should have a way of sustaining them. This man wants to work and is not asking for a handout. This should be celebrated and the person should be given work to do to earn his keep.
It would be nice, if that person can find work. But I don't know what you mean by `should be given work'. I don't think we should force anyone to employ them.
Well, it's doublespeak for not wanting to actually trade-off personal lifestyle factors. Of course, nobody ever wants to do that, but we generally regard it as a Mature Adult Thing to do it anyway.
Those 52 hours of "work" can buy you a home, neighborhood and school district your children, spouse, (and you) enjoy living in. Whether or not those 52 hours are worth it is up to each family.
This is false. Go to NYC and you'll find some poor children that did, in fact, grow up in one-room efficiencies, or lower-middle-class families in Tokyo. Their houses become places to sleep, and the entire city becomes the house most of the time otherwise. It is not common in America but it is certainly doable. Whether or not it is desirable to the children or the parents is a different story.
That's the really annoying thing: there's no really good reason cities can't build more decent housing in high-rises. I suspect the problem is bad zoning laws and developers able to make more profit doing other things. Ideally, cities should be able to get developers to build lots of high-rises with moderately-priced condos and apartments, to pack more people in, which would also increase the efficiency of public transit. And these units should have a decent amount of space, by building up, so families can have a reasonable amount of living space. They just need to take action to clear out older, smaller buildings taking up valuable space (probably with punitive property taxes), and encourage development of high-rises (with property taxes which punish buildings that are too small).
This is why I've suggested economic measuring well-being with the metric "discretionary income per hour lost to work" (DIPHLoW).
discretionary income: income minus taxes and base housing costs
hour lost to work: time at work plus time commuting or otherwise stuff you wouldn't otherwise have to do
That metric captures dynamics like "yeah there are jobs, but with much higher cost of living, so it cancels out the DIPHLoW" and "yeah you can live where it's cheaper but you have to commute an extra 90 minutes, which eliminates the impact on DIPHLow".
Heh, that's the best I can come up with; just aimed for it being pronounceable (diff-flow). No pun intended, except maybe that it's the "difference" you keep that "flows" to stuff you can actually enjoy?
Edit: Also thought of "discretionary income per UnFree hour" (DIPUPH) ... not sexy either though.
(DIPHLoW). sounds like Diplo, one of the most popular musical artists on the global top 50 (https://twitter.com/diplo)....
so I think the abbreviation already 'fits' into popular cultures vocabulary of pronunciation, it just has to now tie in a new meaning to the word instead of 'Hugely Successful DJ'
Thinking some more about, it would also make sense to look at some isotonic function of disposable income and disposable hours left (after work, commute, etc).
This is to capture that increasing working hours from 8h to 24h a day even when pay would be more than tripled, would leave you with a very sad life.
(Shadow) price of time would be a good one, too? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_price) In some sense, that's the same as marginal cost of your time, expressed in dollars or some `utils' or `hedons'.
Then you can say, eg taking a longer commute for a cheaper house would value my time at 30 hedons per hour---but spending time with my daughter is worth at least 50 hedons per hour. So it would be bad trade-off.
Yeah, but... doesn't that suck for everybody? Commuting time is wasted. (Maybe on public transit, if it's not so crowded you can pull out a laptop, you can get a bit of work done.) It's American productivity going straight into the toilet.
But you're also kind of missing the point of my post, focusing on one small tree and forgetting there's a whole forest out there. Whether it's an hour, or an hour and a half, or 45 minutes isn't the point-- the point is we should optimizing it as close to zero as possible.
Commuting time is a reserved time, which makes it less useful because it's inflexible, but it isn't necessarily wasted. I have quite a few podcasts I listen to, and there's some I'm interested in listening to more than all but the most interesting TV shows on. I have a short commute, just 20 minutes or so each way, and I only do it three times a week, but I find myself happy to run errands after work because it gives me more time when I can listen to the shows I want, as I'm at that point where they stack up faster than I can listen to them, and that's with me aggressively culling the ones I never seem to get to because there are so many I like slightly more so I never have time for them.
Commuting can be a wasted time or you can try to use it for what it is, a block of time where you have limited options, and try to make the best of those options.
> Oh yeah, I love commuting listening to music and livestreams, but you can't assume everyone does.
I agree, but that's not all there is. There are audio books, serialized fiction, narrated short stories in every medium you can think of, extended learning, and I'm sure more I can't think of. Finding something to do in this time is less a problem of content and more a problem of knowing it exists.
It of course doesn't negate that it does take time away you could choose to do something else, but it can make the time less onerous.
> Public transit shouldn't be reserved for major east-coast cities and for poor people.
Public transit doesn't change the equation all that much though. It means you need to be less actively involved in the process, so there's more available to you (visual mediums), but it's still time that is reserved for commuting. You aren't physically playing with your children during that time, or visiting with family.
Quick access routes to economic hubs might easy associated problems somewhat (double digit percentages if you're lucky), but it doesn't actually change the equation that is at play here, which is that dense groups of people have many benefits, and living close to that is desirable, and we all know what happens when demand outstrips supply.
The biggest gains you'll probably ever see in this area are likely to be had by putting less restrictions on an entirely different dimension of travel. Group your population up, not just out.
If we want to stop wasting so much valuable time commuting, we need to be building the SkyTran system.
There's natural network effects to people congregating in larger cities rather than small towns (at least towns too far from cities to commute). There's a reason most industry is located in cities. Instead of trying to fight these natural effects, you need to concentrate on using technology to counter the downsides.
Yeah, it takes me about 1:15-1:20 each way, but most of it is on public transportation and I can get work done / play Pokemon / read / relax. I don't want to pay $4K a month to live in SF.
I don't generally understand this train of thought. For employees that are full-time exempt (And most are), as long as you work a day, you are paid for 8 hours of work.
Whether your commute takes 3 hours or 3 minutes, you are paid the exact same because you can't work an extra hour instead of commuting for that $77.
Others folks that are on H-1Bs can't even work on side-hustles because of immigration law so what are they really missing out on?
That's just a yardstick for how much it personally sucks (econ: "disutility") for you to go without that extra hour, estimated from your current pay. You could come up with a different value by deriving it a different way[1], but somehow you have to put a value on the time lost for purposes of comparison.
The existence of this opportunity cost doesn't require that you literally be able to put in an extra hour for extra pay.
[1] For example, you could go based on "how much would I pay for an extra hour to spend doing XYZ?"
I do the same calculations simply to figure out if something is worth it.
For instance, laundry. I hate laundry. I could walk 100 steps to the laundromat, pay ~$5 to wash it. Or I could pay someone $15 to walk up to my door, take my laundry, wash it, fold it and return it to my door.
Ehhh... not that hard of a choice. The pain is worth $10.
I used to commute 1.5 hours every day and it was so incredibly painful, so I shopped around and found a cheap(-ish) place close to my work. My life is so much better now and I am much happier.
Looking at your pay per hour is just a decent yardstick for when you should trade off time vs money. No need to find an outside job for the yardstick to be applicable.
Eg should you order groceries online, or go to the shop, or plant vegetables in your own garden? It's all a matter of time and money, and also hassle vs enjoyment---since some people dread going grocery shopping, and some people enjoy gardening.
It also takes me about an hour each way, and all of it is on public transit so I can't do anything except hold the overhead rail and try to keep balance or, on the rare occasion I get a seat, lean away from the laptop-using neighbor's elbow which is otherwise sitting in my lap.
As a subjective experience, crowded public transit and public transit with sufficient seating are entirely different things.
Typical commute times are 30 or less. There are a few areas/jobs where that is not true, and it's a heavy cost for the people there.
I've read the above several places, but anecdotally, I live in Raleigh (technically Garner) commute 25-30 minutes to work, and have one of the longer commutes of people I work with.
I believe you simply made a choice. I live in the bay area, but my commute is hour long,30 miles away from my house, and I don't have any jobs that I want to do near my house. That's a choice I made.
At the time I made the choice, I didn't know that this industry was so concentrated in only large urban areas. In fact, I was basically hearing the opposite: "tech is HUGE, those jobs will be EVERYWHERE in 10 years!" Well. It's been 20 years, and they aren't.
So, yes, I made a choice to get into software development. It wasn't an informed choice.
How about we come at it from the reverse angle: why are all those 55-person tech companies founded in Seattle? They pay more taxes. They pay more for office space and pretty much everything else. They create a longer commute for everybody by centralizing all the work. What's the problem with spreading-out a bit?
Anyway, the question was how to help blue-collar workers, and I just gave an answer that amounts to basically, "move jobs where they are".
Assume that the people funding the companies are not total idiots. So there must be good reason to fund companies in these hot cities---especially given all the down sides yous mentioned. What could they be?
Companies are (generally speaking) founded by people with type-A "go go go!" personalities, who love to be in the center of large cities with all kinds of hustle and bustle. The kind of people who couldn't even imagine living anywhere else.
That's not to say they're idiots, of course not. But it might be to say that the reasons for placing their company in the center of a large city aren't very rational or well-considered.
The country pumpkins are free to start their own companies, if they like it better there.
And lots of them do. See all the startups in decidedly suburban Silicon Valley. (And yes, I am being a bit snarky here in equating everything outside of cities, be that suburban sprawl or proper countryside.)
I'm in the opposite situation. Been living somewhere I hate for a long time now. No interest in a traditional family and always wanted to live in the city. If I had a savings, I would gladly dump it into living in the city. For now, I at least have a computer...
They are in Seattle because that's where the talent is. The talent is there because it's where all the jobs are. People want to be near jobs because they want to be able to move jobs easily. They want to be able to move jobs because that gives them negotiation leverage and also because jobs are less stable than they used to be.
This is all interconnected, and nothing is going to change it in the foreseeable future. I'm sorry, it's just the reality. You can commute, work remote, move to the city, struggle to put together a teeny company in a small town, or do some other kind of work. That's just modern reality.
So you're proposing a massive tax[1] increase on urban workers who live with urban compromises (traffic, higher prices on goods, higher real estate prices, crime, terrible schools, high taxes, pollution, etc) to be near work so that other workers in the suburbs can enjoy big lawns and beautiful single-family homes?
Well, that's been our strategy with these red state rust belts for decades and it doesn't work. These states receive much more in taxes than they pay. These get doled in various ways, and some ways very close to what you're proposing[2]. It didn't work. Unemployment and wages are still poor.
The larger issue here is why do you get that wonderful suburban home and I get a tiny condo and yet somehow I'm taxed extra so you can live, and lets be frank here, a wasteful and high-carbon footprint lifestyle? Urban migration, telework, and re-training are the real solutions here. Everything else is just welfare with 'make work' jobs that will evaporate the second those tax credits get cut or the company in question has a bad quarter and realizes it can just eliminate that office, that only really exists as a tax shelter, for cost savings.
Lastly, the "come to the suburbs for savings" is a staple in business. Every suburban mayor is constantly flirting with urban companies to move jobs there as he's empowered to give significant tax sweetheart deals and other incentives. In fact, this is one of the main policy platforms for suburban mayors: bring in jobs. This is a normal part of suburban political life. Its not a new idea, its the status quo. One of my previous employers moved from downtown Chicago to the suburbs exactly for this. Ultimately, you can only poach so many jobs, so its not some magical solution for suburban and rural unemployment.
[1] Because thats where the money ultimately comes from, we wont cut medicare or SS or our military in half to pay for this, we'll just raises taxes on the middle class.
[2] Tax credits for creating jobs in poor areas are common public policy on both the state and federal levels. For example and were vastly increased after the 2008 meltdown. These were so popular many corporations not only didn't pay tax but received free money from the government for it! Worse, they're easily abused eve before they create jobs (if they even do, its easy to take these credits for new offices you were planning on opening anyway):
I'm not proposing anything. This is a casual conversation on a web forum, not drafting a party platform.
> a massive tax[1] increase
I'm definitely not proposing anything massive.
> on urban workers who live with urban compromises (traffic, high prices, crime, etc) to be near work so that other workers in the suburbs can enjoy big lawns and beautiful single-family homes?
I live in the suburbs and I have to deal with all of those things. Remember: my exact gripe is I have to commute into the city to be employed. While I'm there, I'm subjected to the same traffic, high prices, crime, etc. as all other city dwellers are. And I get even more traffic coming and going.
And I don't see anything wrong with people who want to own a lawn or a single-family home being able to own one.
> Well, that's been our strategy with these red state rust belts for decades
No it hasn't.
You know what? Nevermind. I don't want to get into any more political discussion right now. Just relax a bit. It's just a casual conversation on a web form, I don't run the RNC or anything and I wasn't drafting a law and I don't need to be yelled at for how wrong I am.
In a non-argumentative tone though, that poster's point was that your ideas have been tried, are being used, and it isn't a viable solution. As someone in a red rust belt state, it HAS been the approach. There is constant attempts to attract companies out of the hubs but it just doesn't work because you can't find the correct mix of people for X location.
Related to the hollowing out of the middle class is the insane super-concentration of opportunity into cities. Even some suburbs around hot cities are now no-go zones.
[quote]If I had become a lawyer, I could work in any town in the US. Or a plumber, or a doctor, or a school administrator, or a tow truck driver, or a...[/quote]
As a fellow software developer, you do bring up a good point and I agree with you, but I think he's referring to more blue collar jobs. We have white collar jobs and are pretty well off. You have a job and own a home which is far more than what it sounds like the rust belt that voted for Trump has.
This is a part of modern life: You have to go where the jobs are. Apologies if this comes off as antagonistic, but why would you complain about having to an hour commute to a job when you have the benefit of living exactly where you want to live? Do you really expect to have everything exactly the way you want it? I get complaining about a four or six hour commute, but an hour each way/option to live at home for a great career and a great life seems like something most people would be really, really grateful for.
> This is a part of modern life: You have to go where the jobs are.
There's a kind of unfairness in small communities creating safe and nurturing environments for families, educating children well, then waving farewell as their young adults move to a city far away. It's especially unfair if the young adults would just as soon stay in their hometowns given comparable opportunities.
That's why I'm happy my son is attending an urban high school.
He's part of the college track, where it's not uncommon for students to graduate and attend Ivies or other good universities.
But he also gets to interact with people across racial, religious, and socio-economic groups. So he won't freak out and be terrified to leave his insular, closed little community and experience the bigger world.
Whether or not something is fair is a subjective statement, and when stated like this it reads like nothing more than a veneer on entitlement.
At the end of the day, "fairness" is a quaint ideal held by people that wish that power structures were different than they are. Life is not fair; it is ruled by politics, power and leverage in a Hobbesian fashion. While I enjoy urban living, I did not choose to play the emigrate-everywhere version of "modern life". I did what I needed to because the economics of the situation demanded it.
This is why the rural complaint rings hollow to me. The economy decides where you go and what you do, not some suburban ideal.
I was pointing out that there's a tragedy of the commons when small communities pour resources into the youth without reaping the benefits (fewer educated, driven, and ambitious community members).
Also, if calling it unfair is subjective, so is calling it fair. Urban areas could just as easily be the entitled ones in this narrative. There is concern about ethical trade when buying goods from third world countries, but there is no concern when swaths of Appalachia and the Upper Midwest resemble a third world country in many respects. We have cosmopolitan types fretting about Whole Foods exporting the entire Andean quinoa crop, leaving locals little to eat. But there isn't similar concern about whether American towns are being likewise exploited.
The flipside is that there probably aren't enough of you to fulfill the needs of companies that need a specialized technical or creative workforce.
I was recently talking with a former software company founder who started his company in Boise, Idaho in the late-90s.
The first few years, their product was a success and they doubled or more in size every year. Then, they started to plateau even though demand was still through the roof.
They couldn't keep up with demand, because they ran out of developers who lived in or were willing to move to Boise. In the words of the founder, "Every qualified developer within 100 miles of us got a job-offer, until there weren't any left."
The obvious solution would have been for them to move to Seattle or San Francisco. But all the founders were from Boise, and were committed to keeping the company in their home town.
At the end, they were paying qualified developers Silicon Valley wages, in addition to signing bonuses equivalent to a year's salary just to get them to move to Boise. As you can imagine, that severely hampered their ability to compete.
Finally, they sold to Microsoft. The founders assumed that the cache of Microsoft's name would be enough to draw developers, but Microsoft had the same problem. After a few years, Microsoft moved the whole operation back to Redmond.
All that to say, you (and I coincidentally) are in the minority. Most creative and technical professionals want to live in nice, big cities. The great thing for those of us that don't fit that mold, is that it's easier than ever to work remotely.
i was just reading an article about a company with offices near St Louis. They took the tax incentives to open an office, promised like 150 jobs, and now they're all but shuttering it and laying off the 77 IT workers they had.
And contracting their jobs to a company in India.
The tax incentives are definitely there. But the incentive to keep the jobs there isn't, when offshoring is so in vogue still.
> I don't want to live in Seattle (which I could barely afford anyway-- I like owning a house).
My understanding is that if companies were more spread out, then compensation would also be lower because there's less competition for employees. With compensation also being lowered, wouldn't you just be in the same situation because while real estate is more expensive in Seattle, salaries are higher too?
As salaries increase, the real estate near those companies will naturally increase. I don't see why having companies be spread farther out would change this relationship.
I live in Seattle but grew up in the suburbs and also sometimes miss living in a house (mainly because I play piano). But even my friends who live in the suburbs are struggling to save up to own a house, so as far as I can tell it's not any different. If anything, it's even better working in the city because as far as I can tell it's easier to save money since even if you save the same percentage of income you would make more.
"(which I could barely afford anyway-- I like owning a house)"
First world problems indeed. I can own a dwelling much larger than the vast majority of people living in the world can afford, on a spacious lot, or can live in a much smaller dwelling with much more convenient access to my place of work, but can't have both!
Sorry, but you're not ranking high on my list of people in desperate need of government intervention to fix your problem.
I believe you're incorrect in asserting that the election was about "disenfranchised blue collar workers". My daughter and her husband make about $200k per year and they voted for Trump.
She's describes Trumps win as a great big middle finger to career politicians.
I suppose in this case I might be wrong. At $200k annual income they are probably well positioned to benefit from his policies, as opposed to his lower income supporters.
His relatives voted? How are they Trolls? It might have to get worse, before it gets better? They apparently voted for Trump because they don't believe in career politicians. They did not just sit, and complain. Sometimes, the biggest complainer in the village brings on change.
(I'm really tired of the word Troll. We need to stop using this Interweb speak. It's just played out. The slightest critism, "She's a Troll!" It's done. Let's put these words away? Let's leave them to the Wayback Machine?)
I would say it's more along the lines of giving people the benefit of the doubt, and (naturally) assuming that most decent people wouldn't vote for someone who espouses the racist, mysoginistic and generally hateful views of Trump.
Of course, history shows that people are quite capable of voting in people like that.
There doesn't really seem to be much substance to Trump's actual policies. He insists Mexico is going to pay for the wall, but there is fuck all chance of that. Congress isn't going to pay for it either. Even if he did build a wall, it would have zero effect (the smugglers are already quite capable of building very long and deep tunnels), so it would be a huge waste of money.
It seems to be mostly hot air, showmanship, and negative campaigning. If you listen to the reasons why people are voting, you generally hear things like "Clinton is a crook", "email scandal", "make America great". He really just did an excellent job of running his campaign.
You say that as if you think that is prima facie a bad thing. It's that sort of categorization which has poisoned political discourse in this country.
I hope Trump's shock to both the major parties encourages them to reconsider the war for power they wage day and night. But I'm not going to hold my breath.
Why would? It's a victory for one of them, and proof to the other that they aren't fighting hard enough. It might cause the latter to reconsider strategy, but why would it cause either to question the struggle itself?
You think it's a victory for the republican party? Given how many from the establishment publicly disowned Trump, or simply failed to support him as the party's nominee, it's a bit of a stretch to say the republican party won.
> You think it's a victory for the republican party?
Clearly so. It's perhaps, within the party, a defeat for sone establishment figures in terms of relative internal influence, but clearly the absolute and total lock on all organs of federal power they've secured is a major victory for the party.
And it's not like the party establishment suffered major reverses, either. Had Trump won despite the Republicans losing the Senate or facing unexpectedly large loss of seats in the House, that might be a different story.
I'm not saying being a republican is a bad thing, I'm saying this statement "She's describes Trumps win as a great big middle finger to career politicians." makes even less sense coming from a republican or someone that's likely to benefit from republican policies.
The only way that statement makes sense is if the person saying it would be negatively affected and/or Trump weren't affiliated with either party.
> She's describes Trumps win as a great big middle finger to career politicians.
Other than Trump himself not being a career politician, it seems most likely to merely alter which career politicians are rewarded, not the extent to which such politicians are rewarded, which isn't a big blow tout "career politicians" in any general sense.
The Democrats used to own the south, and the Republicans freed the slaves. The two parties traded constituents since then. They might do so again. Or one of them might implode---like the earlier antagonist of the Democrats did before the Republicans came around.
Honestly I am hoping Donald Trump is more centrist than many people expect. While he touts protectionism to the point of blocking access to the country his other ideas are pretty much down the middle of the road with regards to rebuilding the country itself.
A lot of his ideas are not hard right Republican. He openly embraces gays and will make many of them in the Republican party feel more welcome. He has allies of all races and even pulled in record Hispanic votes.
So the first signs will be, who composes his cabinet? Who will be his advisors be? How much of a role will Pence play? Will he give equal time to leadership from both parties? With both parties approach with hostility or be willing to give it a try?
Still when I view the race, I really want to know if Democrats think it was worth it to become a party whose candidates are selected on what they are first compared to what they believe. Why was the "party of the people" the side with the least number of candidates? I would ask the Republican party, why do you continuously try to for far right cultural view points and such candidates when conservatives want you out of our personal and financial lives both?
Sadly no candidate championed privacy and freedom of self but there is a chance that change might have actually finally reached the White House
> when conservatives want you out of our personal and financial lives
Do they really? There are a lot of people that view the Republican Party as their ticket back to an idealized Leave It to Beaver world, which is definitely NOT the government getting out of your personal life (make homosexuality illegal, bring back "separate but equal", make sure that minorities "know their place", etc). Still others see it as a the path forward to a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. The same people that eat up Bill O'Reilly's "The War on Christmas" segments and get outraged that Christmas is "under attack" by the evil Liberals that want to destroy Christian values.
These sentiments come from an extremely-well-organized, but minority faction of the party. If these were majority sentiments, then legislation pushing those sentiments would have progressed far faster than they have.
Back in the 60's, the evangelicals started to learn the ropes of party machinery, primarily crystallizing around the abortion single-issue. During the 70's, they started to take up positions throughout the party and attempt to dominate it, but the Rockefeller Republicans trounced them. To their credit, they licked their wounds, learned their lessons, and kept coming back spoiling for another fight. In the 80's they consolidated their power. Today in the largest state Republican party, they absolutely control all the chokepoints of power, they vote virtually in lock-step, but they don't have the numbers to completely dictate policy and seed their own hand-picked and -groomed candidates at the national level. The parliamentarian is an evangelical, most times the convention chairman is either evangelical or strongly allied to them, and key committee chairmen who have a lot of control over which party members participate in the committees and advance to the next convention level are evangelicals. Your level of participation in the party is contingent upon passing one or more litmus test(s): for certain key levels, you are interviewed to state your positions on their hot button topics (abortion is a favorite).
While small in numbers, they carry a huge stick, and they're utterly ruthless political knife fighters, as many Ron Paul supporters found out. They're very tightly coordinated and highly prepared: as an example, they come to district and state conventions prepared with earbud FRS radios so they can confer upon split-second decisions on the floor. While they don't quite have the numbers to be the party unto itself, they dominate the voting plans of the congregations that send them to the party, so they make a formidable voting bloc.
The end result is they can exert enough pressure to force the Republican party to adopt objectively terrible policy planks (no-abortion-no-exception even in medically-dire situations where both mother and fetus can die, really?), that then don't make it into national legislation. But just like before, they keep trying, learning, and adapting.
I think the only decent destiny left for the unskilled undemanded worker is one of welfare, but those same voters have vicious attitudes about welfare and those on welfare.
It's not reasonable to retrain this coincidental generation of unskilled undemanded workers, especially not when our nation still has a bad education resource problem. Pedagogical expenditure should go to those who are most likely to experience the largest impact, and that's children. Also because any training program you develop has to work <fast> and <soon>. Also because there are no fast and easy training programs that have high efficacy rates.
Trump and some laborers have talked about bringing manufacturing back to the US. But this is by far the most impossible demand. Tariffs on Mexico and China won't persuade a metaphorical Foxconn to bring a Shenzhen analogue to the US. Shenzhen works because China and the rest of the Chinese people are okay with Shenzhen style workers breaking their back for the rest of the nation, and China can quash any worker malcontent, union, or any collective action.
There's no way that people would be okay with that here.
And with all the companies of the world racing towards robotic labor and domain applied machine learning, the kinds of US manufacturing job growth here will be few, high paying, and highly technical. But these innovations will mean net fewer manufacturing jobs, even as manufacturing may go up.
And the fact that driving is one of the most frequent jobs in most states of the US, and with Uber having made an automated truck delivery of beer recently... there's no way that manufacturing jobs will keep pace with job loss.
These people are screwed without welfare, and after welfare, there's nothing else to be done for them.
They're a $100 barrel of oil in the ground that costs $105 to extract.
The argument could be made to role back the clock make import tariffs very high and limit automation. If I'm unskilled why would I not join a political revolt to limit the effects of my future irrelevance.
If you're an unskilled and undemanded worker, you cannot simply join a political revolt in <one> nation. Every major company in the world is racing for robotic manufacturing and machine learning-applied services and products.
A robotic future is very amenable to elite interests in all corners of the globe.
> And with all the companies of the world racing towards robotic labor and domain applied machine learning, the kinds of US manufacturing job growth here will be few, high paying, and highly technical. But these innovations will mean net fewer manufacturing jobs, even as manufacturing may go up.
> And the fact that driving is one of the most frequent jobs in most states of the US, and with Uber having made an automated truck delivery of beer recently... there's no way that manufacturing jobs will keep pace with job loss.
> These people are screwed without welfare, and after welfare, there's nothing else to be done for them.
You've pointed out that automation, particularly of the trucking industry, has the potential to lead to extraordinary job loss.
I agree that automated cars are the future, and I look forward to the day when all cars on the road are automated.
There's also an extraordinary amount of money to be made in this space. But it's likely going to be made by private companies.
If there were a way that workers (rather than capital investors) could primarily reap the financial benefits of this new technology, I would think that would help ease the job phase-out.
Obviously, it's unrealistic to expect worker-owned cooperatives to catch up to those private companies at this point. But could there be an alternate way?
I wonder if the federal government could do something similar to the auto-company bailouts of a few years back.
It essentially purchased shares of the companies, and then later sold them at a profit.
I wonder if it might somehow institute a way to purchase shares of automated-trucking companies on behalf of truck drivers, so that when automated trucking causes job loss, the truck drivers would have a cushion of investment income. Perhaps it could be on a subsidization basis, where the government matches investments.
There are probably terrible problems with that idea. Just spitballing. But I don't want to say, "meh, welfare" until more creative solutions have been exhausted.
There is plenty of demand for unskilled labor in the USA, just look at the farm industry (especially fruits and vegetables) or in other areas (landscaping). Most USA citizens, however, aren't keen on working long hours, in back-breaking conditions, for low pay. And so the migrants come to fill those roles.
If we had better pay and working conditions for those industries, more citizens would take those jobs, and there'd be less for illegal immigrants.
But there was such a stink about raising the minimum wage... I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. No one cares about the farm workers it seems.
>There is plenty of demand for unskilled labor in the USA, just look at the farm industry (especially fruits and vegetables) or in other areas (landscaping). Most USA citizens, however, aren't keen on working long hours, in back-breaking conditions, for low pay. And so the migrants come to fill those roles.
This is a microcosm of moving a factory to China. It's not that no Americans are willing to do those jobs, it's that companies hire illegal immigrants instead because they'll work for sub-minimum-wage and never contact the Labor Board about anything because they fear deportation. Illegal immigrants are also unlikely to complain about under-the-table cash payments that allow the employer to skirt tax law.
I have direct, personal knowledge of an establishment in middle America, in a place that doesn't have many undocumented immigrants, that routinely turns away American teenagers seeking employment because they'd rather pay illegal immigrants $2/hr and never have to worry about overtime.
>But there was such a stink about raising the minimum wage... I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. No one cares about the farm workers it seems.
It's funny you mention minimum wage and migrant workers in the same comment because an artificially high minimum wage is precisely what creates a market for underground labor. Employers are willing to pay because it's much cheaper for them; migrants, but not Americans, are willing to work in bad conditions for well below the minimum wage because without a SSN, under-the-table wages are their only way to make money, and if the authorities find out about them (e.g. during the course of investigating a complaint to the state's labor board), they may end up deported.
Yes, so part of all this is that we need to do a better job of enforcing the existing labor regulations. But the businesses don't want that, they don't want more oversight and investigation.
> Now that the voices of the disenfranchised blue collar workers have been heard, what actually can be done to help them?
You are 100% correct. Trump wont do anything about it, but now that the message has been sent and heard I think the next election in 4 years is where we will see this being addressed an hopefully some change for these people. The people want change, now they've been heard. Both political parties were decimated in this election, I think they'll try harder next time for the people.
You can stop incentivising off-shoring of jobs - it's too easy for companies to close down profitable activities and move them abroad to make more profit
If you drive out of any city in US or EU you'll see the devastation that has caused
You're talking about a demographic who, by and large, distrust experts, scientists, educated people, and any information that doesn't agree with their biases. They chose to be this way.
If central banks of the western world had run countercyclical monetary policy meaning higher than average inflation when unemployment was high, these people would have had almost uninterrupted jobs and careers, not just people in educated urban centers.
I know people don't grasp this because it is all very mathematical but hawkish monetary policy was a massive factor in this.
I am an engineer, not an economist or policy wonk, but I feel like I got a lot of insight on issues like this (and a lot of other modern, political/economic issues) from reading "Connectivity" by Parag Khanna
Whatever it is, you do to help, you cannot do it without a cost. And I think the problem in the US is less about what can one do to help and more about nobody wanting to be burdened with the cost.
And then people say that economic inequality is not a problem. This is exactly why economic inequality is a problem. Because you end up in situations where 1/3 of the country needs to be taxed to help the other 2/3 and that 1/3 does not feel like helping because they don't see any gain from it.
1. I think degruglation in a lot of industries might help this demographic. I think his administration will make doing things in this society easier. My hope is his administration makes building that house easier. (I hope he come down hard on these little town/counties--that make doing anything complicated/expensive.). My hope is his administration will lift restrictions on the little guy. A lot of hope.
2. That's it, "I don't know either".
I do know the current status quo was unacceptable for a lot of "disenfranchised blue collar" workers. I'd be careful with the "blue collar" label. The typical IT guy is a blue collar worker. Most people in tech are just a body. It's a profession that doesn't have a huge barrier to entry; just like a lot of blue collar workers. It becomes so true once you hit 35. "On to the next self-taught young, hungry person." The eletism in this current, oh so changing industry, is hard to take some days. Every one of you should be saving money. The party doesn't last long. I'll get heat for this; I know too many former Programmers that are literally homeless.
3. My hope is if things don't get better, it's only four years. My hope is the senate, and house become democratic. We then vote for someone like, a less liberal Bernie Sanders.
(This is my biggest hope.)
4. I'm leary much will change because money will still control politics. Keep up the heat Wikileaks.
The payoffs to education are huge [0]. People need to be prepared for the new economy which requires college degrees and has fewer low-skill jobs.
The left laid the groundwork for Trump's victory (assuming Blue color Whites are really the cause, I think it's not the only factor myself) by promoting the idea that the new economy is unfair. Of course they mainly meant unfair to blacks and hispanics but whites got the message anyway.
If we want to help people thrive in capitalism, we need to avoid leftist narratives that are wrong, i.e. the narrative that education won't improve one's situation because capitalism always screws the little guy.
> what policies can be put in place specifically to help this demographic?
The overall tenor of change in recent decades is flat-out throwing them under the bus. In almost every way, the global society moves in directions that conspire to make this whole class of people extinct.
Short of stopping global progress, I see no long-term "solution" for them.
The problem is automation and technology is getting so good that we don't need that many people working anymore. Autonomous vehicles have a very good shot of displacing a lot of jobs in a few decades. You can't also tell people in their 50s and 60s that you'll educate them for a new profession.
I remember an MIT economist Zhou Lin said this would be one of the big problems of our generation. I suspect Basic Income would have helped in the interim.
The unemployment rate in the US has shrunk from about 10% in 2009 to 4.9% in 2016. The homicide and violent crime rates has also continued to shrink from a peak in 1992. By any statistical measure you can think of, the US population is doing better today than in 2008.
Except that 4.9% rate is a) an average across the country, and b) not reflective of the true rate of unemployment. ShadowStats suggests the real rate (including those who have given up on finding work) is more like 23%. In certain areas of the country (the rust belt, for example), it's higher than that.
I've only made a cursory glance, but the statistics on that site appears to be the work of an MBA named John Williams. A lot of other sites claims to have debunked ShadowStats.com and that their data is flawed. In addition to that, no other source claims that the US employment rate has stayed constant since 2010.
Oh, and to explore the data he is using to draw the graphs you need to be a SGS subscriber which costs $89 for six months.
In Pennsylvania (which I think is the center of the Rust belt) unemployment has decreased from a high of 8.7% to 5.3%. It is important to note that even if you believe the numbers are fudged, they aren't more fudged today than they were in 2008. Even if the real unemployment rate is double, that just means the decrease is from 17.4% to 10.6% instead.
> It is important to note that even if you believe the numbers are fudged, they aren't more fudged today than they were in 2008.
No, it's certainly possible that more and more people have given up finding work since 2008, widening the spread between real unemployment and reported unemployment.
But where is the evidence for that? Btw, there are statistics that takes the "giving up rate" into account and they also show that the unemployment rate has decreased!
I don't know anything about that site, but the employment rate has remained roughly constant since 2010, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as of 2013 (when I last looked). The unemployment rate had declined by 3% since 2010, but the employment rate hadn't budged.
This was a puzzling stat. NPR(?) did an expose on how states were moving the long-term unemployed into disability programs to get them off the states' budgets and onto the federal government's rolls. Their investigation into the private companies that states outsource this to seemed to show that this practice accounted for much of the decline in the unemployment rate. The rest was people simply giving up the search.
So yes, the numbers are fudged more than they were in 2008. By shuffling employable people from one (state) agency to another (federal) agency, the politicians in power can brag that they've lowered unemployment without ever having to show any evidence of increasing employment. And states got to make room in their cramped budgets.
I didn't think of that. But look at the stats here: http://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx?DatasetCode=LFS_SEXAGE_I_R# When employment rate was at its lowest it 2009, it was 67.6% but for the last year they have numbers which is 2015 it was 68.7%. So even by that metric things have gotten better.
Over that same time period [1], unemployment fell by 4%, which means that we shifted up to 2.9% of the eligible working population onto long-term disability, effectively paying them not to work. And not paying them much, either. Disability benefits are depressingly inadequate to survive on.
So, in effect, we've taken a population that was capable of productive labor and banned them from participating in the labor force, locking them in poverty. We've increased taxpayer burden while simultaneously reducing the number of taxpayers. And we've done this in the middle of a massive demographic shift that's already piling citizens on the wrong side of the contributor-recipient equation.
So no, I don't see how that's an improvement on anything. It's a net negative in terms of productivity, tax base, and individual quality of life.
[1]: The OECD data doesn't seem to correlate precisely with the BLS data, but the trends are the same.
But how do you know everyone who is isn't employed anymore is on disability? Do you have a source for that? Because I think it could also be that a lot of adults choose to study more years in college. Some may opt for paternity leave or (however unlikely) feel that they can afford to live on their spouses salary.
Either way, 68.7% > 67.6% so my point about the US doing better is correct.
Yeah, that's why I said "up to". Apologies for overstating the case. The truth is that it's hard to pinpoint the exact value.
SSDI applicants accounted for around 30% of the drop in the labor force participation rate, according to a couple of studies. That means that around 1% of the working population was shifted onto disability. Two estimates I've read by researchers suggest that about half of all applicants to SSDI were sufficiently physically disabled to prevent them from working. The other half were economic refugees. So if half of that 1% did so for economic -- not physical -- reasons, then we've just shifted around 0.5% of the workforce since 2010 onto a federal welfare program that's going bankrupt.
And disturbingly few analyses of employment data discuss the many elephants in the room: The workforce is rapidly aging, the social safety net is massively underfunded, health care costs keep rising, and wages have been stagnant for a decade or more. This means that each retiree/disabled worker/kid on SSDI costs more to take care of at exactly the same time that each additional job in the economy pays less. And while these problems aren't as pronounced in the US as they are in Japan and Germany, they're exacerbated by spiraling health care costs.
So no, the US isn't necessarily doing better because the picture is bigger and more nuanced than "68.7% > 67.6%". Your employment rate numbers simply mean that a greater percentage of Americans are working than were before. The tax revenue and value produced by that 1.1% who have found a new spot in the workforce does not necessarily offset the costs produced by the 0.5% who have been permanently placed on disability, collecting a monthly stipend and having their medical costs covered. In fact, I'd argue it's probably a net negative.
But now you are talking a lot of "points" without citing any statistics. Like "the social safety net is massively underfunded". I grant you that that can be true, but is it more underfunded today than it was in 2008? This is the point I'm trying to make; you can make a lot of talk about things are getting worse, but when you look at the numbers they are getting better (or at least aren't getting worse).
> Like "the social safety net is massively underfunded". I grant you that that can be true, but is it more underfunded today than it was in 2008?
The Social Security trustees themselves noted in their last several reports that the retiree trust fund would be cashflow negative by 2028 and totally insolvent by 2034. And as recently as 2015 the SSDI fund was projected to run out by December 2016. So last year, to prevent catastrophe, Congress quietly transferred some case from the retirement fund into the disability fund.
I'm sure you can see why this might be a problem.
They made a few minor (but important!) changes to the eligibility rules for disability, but no structural changes. As things stand, this means that they negligibly lengthened the viability of SSDI by removing the runway for Social Security. Both programs -- Social Security and SSDI -- are now slated to be insolvent within a decade or so. And many economists and demographers think that the trustees are being optimistic.
With several wars ongoing and rising medical costs, programs like the VA and Medicare are also chewing through funds at a faster rate than projected. By last estimate, Medicare funds run out in 2028. Feel free to read the always sobering Trustees Summary for this year: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/
So yeah, the social safety net is massively underfunded. As things stand, we can expect to completely lose federal retirement assistance, disability assistance, and medical aid within the next 15 years. Any attempts to revive these programs would require sweeping changes to their structures and a huge tax increase.
> But now you are talking a lot of "points" without citing any statistics.
I'm sorry if I'm not doing a good job of providing stats to back up these points, but I assumed they were common knowledge. I'll try to cite my sources better.
> This is the point I'm trying to make; you can make a lot of talk about things are getting worse, but when you look at the numbers they are getting better (or at least aren't getting worse).
Please show me the numbers that show things are getting better. Otherwise, you're running the risk of me using your own quote against you. ;-)
Regardless, we're discussing a prognosis for the future.
Another prognosis is about Global Warming. Climate scientists now in 2016 believe the world will be warmer in 2040 than what they believed in 2008. The prognosis has indeed gotten worse.
In sharp contrast to the prognosis about how much funds will exist in Social Security. No serious economist in 2016 believes that Social Security in 2040 will be in a worse shape than what they believed in 2008.
> > This is the point I'm trying to make; you can make a lot of talk about things are getting worse, but when you look at the numbers they are getting better (or at least aren't getting worse).
> Please show me the numbers that show things are getting better. Otherwise, you're running the risk of me using your own quote against you. ;-)
I cited three: unemployment, homicide and violent crime rate. I could cite more, like infant mortality rate, education level, subjective happiness rating, life expectancy.. Really don't think it will change your mind :)
FYI, I don't care about your stupid American presidents. A lot of things got better during Bush's eight years presidency too.
I'm so happy to see this at the top of the comments. It gives me hope that more people recognize that a vote for Trump in many cases wasn't a vote for the man, but rather a vote for some amount of hope that someone, somewhere recognized that their towns and cities were hurting and that they saw some path forward out of their situation.
I don't know what the solutions are, but I have to believe that if we can talk about sending people to live on Mars and make cars that drive themselves, that we can come up with solutions to get jobs and economic prosperity to areas of the country that have been badly hurt over the last decade.
> I'm less worried about the accusations of racism
Why? They elected a guy endorsed by the KKK and white supremacists. At the very least this is a kick in the pants to minority voters (although 8% of black voters and 29% of latino voters went for trump).
Education is the way to prosperity. We can look at Trump's win a loud scream from citizens that are in financial pain. The current government has not met their needs and they spoke out loud with their vote. The greatness of our constitution is that every so often governmental changes happen without bloodshed. We can thank the wisdom of our founding fathers for that.
The government's job now is to make sure that all it's citizens prosper as the global economic system changes. The tragedy of this election cycle is that the focus was not on how to make education available to all. We have a K to 12 system that does not produce a person that's ready for the workforce. It's expected that college is the next step. Yet college is such a financial burden on young adults that it becomes a problem rather than a benefit. First, we can't let that continue for the benefit of all. We need to make sure that education reform becomes the priority. Reform in terms of getting a person ready for the future rather than babysit them in schools.
People like to focus on spending more money and adding technology but that's not the solution. It's a deeper problem in the structure of the education system and parental support. I hope for our good the new president can see that and move forward with reform.
Neoliberal capitalism isn't work. Why not take the wealth from the very wealthy and give it to those who don't have it? Income and wealth redistribution>
Want to have some fun? Read Alexis de Tocqueville on early American inheritance law.
Using the law to redistribute, as a preventive measure against generational accumulation of wealth (and thus power), was woven into the fabric of the United States early on. Being against this type of redistribution, or deriding it as "sophomoric", is the new and non-traditional thing in America.
I'd entertain a discussion that it was a policy problem and we should have had plans as we engaged in freer trade and globalization and saw imports starting to eat away at these jobs.
I don't think there is a policy to put the genie back in the bottle now and I don't think these people want anything else but that. (to speak in gross generalizations)
The old school manufacturing base provided jobs where a single earner with no notable education could buy a home, raise a family, maybe send his kids to college. And he had a union. It's hard to imagine it being that way ever again. You can re-train them but they aren't going to just become knowledge workers; worse they have to want retraining and this election sure didn't make it sound like they want that..
Capitalism and competition can be rough. Ways of life, jobs, ways of doing things, products, all that stuff can go away with ruthless efficiency in a free market.
Now that the voices of the disenfranchised blue collar workers have been heard, what actually can be done to help them?
My advice to progressive and left-leaning 20-something, 30-something people in the Bay Area: Stop denigrating that demographic! Donald Trump was a stealth 3rd party candidate, fueled by the dissatisfaction of huge swath of the US public whose fortunes are falling from majority middle class to minority lower class. Denigrating them only serves to divide our society further. The Democratic party needs to think of such people as constituents -- as it had once in the past.
If you dump on them, they're of course going to dump back. It's only the upper 1% that benefits from that. It's called "divide and conquer."
The big northern European takeaway is the principle of "protect the worker, not the job."
Ironically, at this point, the Scandinavians are better free marketers than Americans, because they're willing to let entire companies go under if the market so dictates. The social safety net protects the workers, but not their jobs.
Meanwhile, we get into so many interventionist contortions protecting COMPANIES, that our version of the free market is a sick joke.
Well, you could roll back globalisation and implement some form of protectionism, which is precisely what Trump has suggested.
Outside the ivory tower of economic models, it does actually make sense. If a country is severely restricted in its capacity to import (an exception being made for raw materials), and has to produce most types of goods itself, then the economy tends to approach something like full employment. Meaning that although overall GDP is not maximised, but everyone has a job, and every industrial sector thrives.
An additional advantage of protectionism is that it would put the brakes on global economic growth, which is the major driver of climate change and ecosystem destruction, but without the side effect of mass unemployment which would be inevitable if free trade remained operative.
This is going to rapidly become an image problem for the Bay Area and the tech industry as workers in other places and industries become obsolete. So it may well be in our own best interest to take the initiative.
Is it possible for the tech world to seize the issue of worker retraining and a general safety net like it did with net neutrality? Brand and promote the hell out of it? I don't think the existing strategy of trying to fly under the radar will work for long.
Karl Marx have put a great deal of time thinking about this. He's ideas are the basis of the Soviet Union. I believe he's analysis of our current system/economy is a real mind-opener and a must-read. Here's a quick intro on it:
Imo, this is the system we need + human humility (e.g. to prevent corruption). Implementing it tho, will need everyone's cooperation; hence my writing of this comment.
That was projected, though. It was a big issue that Clinton wasn't driving as significant African American turnout because they go 95% Democrat, whereas Hispanics were about 70% Democrat so you'd need a lot more of them to make up the difference.
Until the generation that is driving it dies off, so probably ~20 years.
I'm being flippant, but--look at the vote splits by age. Young voters in the UK overwhelmingly voted against Brexit. Young voters in the U.S. overwhelmingly voted against Trump.
The voice of populism today is the voice of economic and cultural disenfranchisement. It is difficult to re-employ millions of 60-year-old folks whose skills are out of date. It is difficult to get 60-year-old folks who have spent their lives in a homogeneous town, to accept multicultural diversity.
They are crying out for help and success again, and we'll continue down this course as a society until we either give it to them, or they leave us.
Yes, in terms of financial conservatism (they have more to lose), and in terms of not keeping up with social progress (fearing young activists). That's them getting relatively more conservative, compared to the moving society around them.
But people don't generally slide back from what they experienced as kids. A LOT of 18- to 25-year-olds today grew up as a kid in a society where it is acceptable to have friends from lots of ethnic backgrounds, to have friends who are gay or trans, to believe that women should be equal to men in society, etc. They're not going to lose that as they age. That's their base concept of "normal."
Those factory jobs are not coming back. The wall will not get built and it would not even work. What we will have is some NYC cronyism and wealth inequality increases. We may even have a recession if they decided to touch any trade agreement or increase tariffs ( based on debt load private and public institutions have). Whomever inherited the white house was going to have a bad time, this will just have to go on Trumps shoulders. :) 2018 you'll see a democrat majority in Congress.
A very flawed argument above. I assume it's to mean that since Clinton won a majority of votes from lower income people, which factory workers would fall under, the only factory workers that voted for Trump are high-paid ones, which would code in MATLAB.
As an outsider, it is painfully clear that I should not try to move my business to the US at this point. Europe's looking better than ever now for tech startups.
Perhaps? I'm not sure what you're alluding to. Regardless, startups are often attuned to many social issues much more closely than traditional companies, and I can't help but agree that this is a huge discouragement for forward-looking businesses.
By making access to workers more difficult or by repealing trade agreements that protect your startup's intellectual property and access to international markets?
Trump has only ever been against ILLEGAL immigrants. If you come here legally through a visa program or other legal method, than you are fine. Its the border jumpers and people who overstay their legal welcome that he has always had the problem with.
I've read his books, watched his speeches, interacted with his supporters, and I've seen very little anti-foreigner sentiment. Its all anti-illegal-foreigner sentiment, which is fundamentally different.
As an American, I'm looking at Canada and Germany. I have a Canadian work permit and I'm looking at their startup visa. I was offered German/EU residency last night.
I honestly have no idea. I've lived/worked in Switzerland (Geneva) and Italy before. I wasn't expecting it and I really haven't had the time to let this sink in.
I'd look into Berlin and Hamburg. Berlin is changing rapidly with a lot of opportunity and Hamburg is already quite wealthy with a ton of resources available to it.
And if you ask many Germans, the economic situations in both have their own problems as well. No where is perfect, instead of uprooting, people that want change need to become a part of the movement rather than waiting for others to do it for them.
I'm not directing this at you, just making the comment.
I've been leaning away from Silicon Valley for awhile. It's expensive here; SV used to be the only game but now startups can legitimately be anywhere. SV doesn't especially offer anything that can't be found/done elsewhere. Indeed it feels oversubscribed here.
When I was there, the Berkeley EECS Undergraduate Handbook (basically your graduation contract) said that the prestige of a Berkeley degree increases with distance. Translated into English that means get out of Dodge. Similarly, an SV pedigree counts for something elsewhere, maybe more than it does here.
I agree with you. I came to SV in 2012 to study and loved it here up until 2015 or so. Ever since then I got tired of the life here and how crowded it is everywhere. If I wanted to stay here, I would also need a visa after I am graduating in Spring 2017.
So, right now my plan is to use what I already have (a European Passport) and move back and take advantage of the stuff Europe offers me!
With the Brexit, many Euro companies near to defaulting and Russia moving troops to its western boarders, you really think Europe is a better place? USA has its fair share of problems, but I would not go so far as to say anywhere else is more ideal for startups (or living). yet.
As much bad emotions as their are going around this election, we don't kill buissness leaders who oppose us (russia) kill political leaders who dissagre us (n. korea), have civil wars taking the lives of thousands (many countries in africa), kill drug users in the streets (PH) or have mass civilaian graves from cartel wars (mexico)
I'd have agreed with you if you had not included the "(or living)" part. How can one say living in Europe is not ideal if one's #1 priority is not wealth?
>don't... kill political leaders who [disagree with] us
But Hillary said she wanted to drone Assange and Obama assassinated two US Citizens abroad, one a minor.
Not to mention the leaked audio revealing that Clinton wanted to rig the 2006 Palestinian election. And she said that to foreign reporters with tape recorders, not CIA suits in a bunker.
Really: "With the Brexit, many Euro companies near to defaulting"? Didn't know this was a fact already? Besides, most "Euro companies" are not located in the UK and I doubt the effects of the Brexit is only contained to or affects Euro companies.
I would argue that many countries in Europe is better for living (family time, vacations, work-hours, gender equality, free education, healthcare, freedom of own body (abortion)...) and have been for some time.
However, I suppose that depends on who you are and where you come from (and whether you care about/agree with any of these things I list) - home is home after all. Also Europe is not one country: Spain is different (not worse - different) from Sweden (but then again: New York is different from Rockport, Texas too).
There seems to be less VC money in Europe, but maybe that's where we're going either way. Again, some places are better (Geneva, Switzerland VS <Small-City>, Greece) off than others (just like Silicon Valley is better than many, but maybe not all (?), places in the US). But, I'll give you that.
Who's to say it's not going to change though? As you pointed out: Brexit had a huge effect. To me this election feels like a much bigger deal.
Anxious to see how the market in general reacts when Trump either: a) does what he said he'd do (wall, nato, ...) or b) fails to do what he said he'd do. Let's hope it's only me who's anxious though. If not, I suspect there will be a negative reaction in the market: anxiety = uncertainty = risk after all.
In any case: the chance of this happening (market reacting negatively) combined with the effects of it (economically, jobs) >> the chance of Russia invading "Europe" (which I assume is what you're alluding to) combined with the, albeit devastating, effects on the lives of the people living there.
I'm don't even feel like going to the US on vacation anymore before somebody figures how to fix the police violence, the guns, the endless suing and the racially biased incarceration. Being afraid of the people around you, has a crippling effect on my life quality. And I don't seeing it becoming better under Trump. I'm willing to admit I am particular in my views here though.
My point here is that: you might be missing out if you truly believe that the US is an absolute better place than Europe. In some aspects, I'll be surprised if you didn't feel that it was the opposite.
Do it in the spirit of those who hold the office of U.S. Presidency: be civil and courteous, make sure you don't disparage anyone's ethnicity or gender, and make sure you don't make wild and unfounded accusations, amiright?
Your veiled sarcasm wasn't fooling anyone, and arguing with the moderators (who honestly have enough to do) is tiresome. Please be sincere, if you're going to comment at all.
How would you know that? There's nothing cynical about that! As an Australian we hold the U.S. up as a model of civility. You've got no idea how uncivil our parliament is. Let me give you an example of one of our former Prime Ministers in parliament time:
Another Prime Minister said an opposition MP should "beaten with a blow torch".
So don't tell me when I'm being sincere or not. I have watched Bush, Obama, Clinton, old clips of Reagan and Carter and they might have had unsavoury policies, but they made sure they gave dignity to the Presidency. And sure, they often tussled and sometimes they forgot themselves, or skirted the edges of what is considered acceptable for that role, but they largely remained civil and showed some level of courtesy and respect for the populace and their opponents.
So I fully stand behind my comment. Whether you want to impune my motives or my sincerity, oh you who I've never met or spoken to or interacted with in any other way, well you feel free to do so but I know what I said was right, and something I think we should all try to aspire to.
I respect your opinion. However, expressing yourself in such a backhanded way tends to raise the emotional temperature, especially online. It's better to make your points directly and not to work in a political needle through the back door as it were.
Backhanded? Unless you actually think that the presidency isn't something that should be used as a model for discussions and debates, there's nothing backhanded about it at all.
Perhaps you could get off your high horse and stop saying my motives are less than pure? Right now I feel you are lecturing me like an errant schoolboy. You, after all, are the one telling me I have "veiled" sarcasm. I'm telling you I don't and I thought my opinion - even if you disagree with it - was something constructive I could bring to this thread.
So, perhaps try to ascribe less to my motives given I have no idea who you are and I have never interacted with you before, not to mention my comment history shows I tend to be a pretty serious minded poster. It's hardly respectful to impune my motives when you have no real evidence to the contrary to inform your suspicions.
In fact, the only temperature that's being raised right now is mine, given you appear to be attacking my character. And that's a tad hypocritical.
I'd argue you are clueless. Trump has been sued several times for the discrimination against black people, he fired black people from his casinos and moved them to the back, he INSISTS TO THIS DAY that the Central Park Five are guilty despite DNA evidence, he jokes and also brags about literally molesting women.
People like you disgust me. Stop acting like his words and actions don't matter.
Doesn't matter if you're personally racist or not. You voted for a racist who has used racism as a substantial part of his campaign. You've done your part to give a racist power.
@gragas I think to some extent, all of us are racist. Plus, unconscious bias is pretty much ubiquitous. I think you have to be more specific that saying that you are not racist.
Yes, you're a racist because you extrapolated your interpretation of the behaviour of a handful of people (i.e. those who sued Trump and are black) to an entire race.
I did no such thing. I extrapolated his undetailed version of events. It goes both ways, you can say that means "black people" are in the right, or you can say Donald Trump is in the right because there are no facts to support either side.
I recommend you cross examine liberal and conservative news sources, since, we have a fundamentally polarized and biased media system. Furthermore, you could just read the primary sources since they are all publicly available at the courthouse - for a price.
That's not what I'm asking. I'm asking what sources you trust and recommend. You're specifically dismissing the NYT. I think it's fair to ask you to make specific recommendations.
It's unrealistic to ask everyone to check primary sources. We don't have the time. It doesn't scale.
Also, there are people who don't trust court documents, or the courts, either. I think this issue of shared trusted sources is very real. Just dismissing sources reinforces this. How do you recommend we resolve this?
I gave a specific recommendation - but I'm not playing your game. I won't live by your assertion that some mythical news source is wholly trustworthy or without self interest or outside incentive.
I'm sorry you think I'm playing a game. I'm legitimately concerned that we have no shared trusted source for information. I find it very frustrating when I see people dismiss things out of hand without providing any context. It's not constructive. I think it's actively destructive, because it increases the distrust.
It's not workable to begin from first principles in every discussion, and to expect people to do so is unrealistic. I made no assertion that there is some wholly trustworthy new source, though I can understand why you might think so, given it seems like so many are just out to score some imaginary political points. I don't think there are any that are infallible. I do think we can usefully make judgements that some are better than others, at least within certain domains.
How about a news source that you trust regarding the topic at hand? (Any topic at hand. I'm uninterested in wading into discussions of racism at this point). If someone provides a source, and you choose to disregard it, do you feel no obligation to also provide some sources? At least they put forward some effort.
Are you willing to give people the benefit of the doubt when they're having a discussion with you? What's the alternative? How are we going to move forward? The vote was nearly evenly split on the presidential election. Looks like we need to find some common ground if we're going to get anything worthwhile done.
Given that you're engaged in this discussion, it seems to me that this is something you're concerned about as well. Do you think its useful to discuss difficult issues? How do we find common ground? What parts of what I've presented do you take issue with or think are unfair? What can be improved? I'm honestly interested, because as I've said, I think this is an important issue, particularly in light of the recent campaign and election.
Well, the original source was in support of calling myself and President Trump racists. If you read the article or do some studying on the subject, there are very few actual facts. None of which support the claim that I am racist or Donald Trump is racist. It is tenuous, at best, to link racist business practices of some employees to the business owner.
I can't answer all of your questions, but I believe most Americans are tired of being called, racist, sexist, homophobic, bigot, etc., when they take PAINS to avoid any personal racism or appearance of such. That is why Donald Trump just won the election. It's Americans saying we don't care what you call us any more, and we don't actually care to find common ground with people like you(and by you, I'm talking about cancerous Social Justice people).
He did not attack specific people or clearly identifiable subgroups or minorities. He attacked a broad category of people for holding certain views. I think that is well within what is acceptable in online debate.
If you are going to attack this argument, then you might as well say it is unacceptable to call people who favor cutting off hands of thieves for barbaric. Sure you characterize people with a mean word "barbaric", but it you are not singling out particular people only those holding such views.
> well within what is acceptable in online debate.
I don't know about 'online debate', but "People like you disgust me" is not acceptable on HN. Indeed it's well below the minimum acceptable, so this ought to be obvious.
Step back for a second and consider how many millions voted for him despite those remarks and issues.
Perhaps if you are so disgusted by half of the citizens in your country, you should seriously consider emigrating somewhere else, if that's truly an issue for you.
But I suspect, like most comments on the Internet, it's nothing more but empty posturing.
Actually, I'm not going anywhere because I'm staying in the US to fight for what I believe is right, just, and true - namely the sanctity of rights for all people, regardless of skin color, gender, religion, or sexual orientation. See you there.
The Senate and the House are Republicans and the Supreme court will lean republican after his appointment.
What do you guys think he is going to follow through on and the effects if he does or doesn't?
And please note that lots of people thought he could not become president and now he is. So any of these things are possible now. Do not just dismiss any of these things. They are all possible.
The rest of the republic party is going to be less eager to burn everything to the ground. There's a chance that they'll choose to just ignore obamacare as there's not much to be gained by attempting to repeal it.
It's like 1930s Germany all over again, except that Muslims are the new Jews. You'd think we would have learned from last time a racist, populist demagogue gained control of a nation.
(Yes, I'm aware that "Godwin's Law invoked". In this case, it's actually relevant.)
Except, you know, we don't have an Article 48, any proposed Enabling Act would be filibustered to hell, and our society is nowhere near as authoritarian as it used to be, much less 1930s Germany.
Well, let's see what happens in the next four years. I hope you're right.
One potential danger is that Trump will now be indirectly in charge of the entire country's mass surveillance apparatus. That's a powerful system that could be potentially be weaponized against sections of the population that Trump deems undesirable.
Hitler started out in a relatively powerless position, and got his Enabling Act afterwards. You say it wouldn't happen, but I think all it would take is one big terrorist attack and the people would be clamoring for it.
Hitler had a united party, a divided opposition including a party who didn't care what happened as long as the interests of a particular institution were protected, an actual Communist party to blame, and a pliant, senile boss with enormous reserve powers. Sure, the possibility of a machtergreifung are non-zero, but then again they're non-zero in any country. Even the most locked-down USA would be more open than 1970s USSR or China today, much less 1930s Germany.
> It's like 1930s Germany all over again, except that Muslims are the new Jews.
Considering how a certain segment of the population interpreted Trump campaign's last ad and cheered at that interpretation I wouldn't "worry", Muslims are more Jew+ than new Jews: the old ones are still going in the oven.
He is not going to follow through on absolutely any of those things. They were just campaign 'promises' that are going to be broken. It seems people forget really fast how politicians always renege on their promises--e.g. how Obama promised revolutionary change and the most transparent administration, yet turned out to be pro-surveillance, etc. It's almost like it was a different person who made the original promises, and the new one is left off the hook.
Trump is very pragmatic and he's also a seasoned reality TV personality who knows what to say in order to appeal to some of his voters' basest instincts and beliefs. As far as actual policies go, I wouldn't really expect anything too radical from him though. I guess many of his blue-collar voters will be disappointed, but then lots of others will be relieved...
1 - no way to do this that isn't suicide for foreign relations.
2 - there won't be a deportation "force". undocumented/illegal immigrants aren't going to get auto-citizenship, and there may be additional requirements put on employers to verify citizenship.
3 - possible
4 - I'm not convinced Trump actually knows what countries and regions are affected by NAFTA. unlikely.
5 - sweet jesus I hope not.
6 - likely
7 - not possible. if he tries it's auto impeachment (or a vote for it anyway)
8 - also potential auto-impeachment. abuse of powers.
9 - I would like to see this happen, but the only way it could work is MASSIVE tax breaks to offset more expensive labor. It won't happen in 4 years, but some groundwork might be laid.
10 - "goes on camera and says something horribly offensive and xenophobic to leaders/citizens of a foreign country that seriously damages us": 10/10 will happen.
In all honesty: almost none. He just wanted to be president. Most of his time will be spend enriching himself by selling banal access and bloviating on the world stage. That's pretty awful, but not apocalypse-level awful.
Of your list:
The wall is a technical impossibility that everyone can recognize. There's no funding for a deportation force and the political optics of goon squads rounding people up is something congress won't do. No one actually wants to yank medical coverage from millions of voters (they'll just let the democrats filibuster it in the senate). There's nothing meaningful to renegotiate in NAFTA, no serious stakeholders have suggestions there. Coal hasn't really gone away, and permiting and regulation changes are going to take longer than four years anyway. "Bring back american companies" is just a fairy tale. Global economics simply doesn't work like that and there's nothing a chief executive can do.
That leaves: Muslim ban. Maybe, at least in some symbolic way. Tax cuts for the rich. Yeah, duh. But that's a republican staple and we've survived it before. US deficit spending is actually not nearly so serious a problem as people believe.
>That's pretty awful, but not apocalypse-level awful.
My main concern is foreign policy. The House can drive domestic policy and hopefully not make a mess of it, but foreign policy is all Trump's domain. He's vain and temperamental, this provides two powerful levers that manipulative foreign powers like China and Russia are free to push and pull as they like. He's also notoriously bad at taking advice. Frankly, it's not looking good.
Same here! As someone who went to school for International Relations, this is so sickening. I live abroad and let me tell you, people are very upset around the world.
> The wall is a technical impossibility that everyone can recognize
Right, and it won't get funded. And in 2020 when the same poor people are still poor, he'll claim it's not his fault, it's because he didn't get to build the wall.
Doesn't the USA have the most prisoners/criminals in the world? They could force them to build and guard the wall instead of the death penalty/prison time. Lets call them the Nights Watch.
I'm guessing that it requires a ton more expensive staff to secure prisoners that are not constrained by cheap walls, barbed wire, bars, and watch towers.
I don't think you understand how ego works. He wants to be more than just president, he wants to be a great president, that's in his nature. I truly believe he'll do what it takes to make himself into a great president. Do you think he wants to be remembered more as a George W. Bush or a Ronald Reagan?
I'm about as worried about a Trump presidency as I am worried that I'll remember how to breath at night.
Human Nature says he'll strive to be the best and I have faith in that.
And yet millions of Americans have a lot of anxiety about what a Trump presidency will bring because of the colour of their skin, the religion they practice, or the gender of the person they love.
If Trump wants to be remembered as a great President then he needs to step up and address these fears.
I think in a way he already did at his acceptance speech last night, but how many liberals scoffed and turned off their televisions? Perhaps it's liberals and people of color who need to stop the hate, I think there was a lot more hate towards Trump and his supporters than there ever was towards minorities in this election.
I could not agree more. People really need to let go of the provocative candidate Trump (the stock market did today) and focus on the impact that's coming.
As much as his path to the nomination and then the presidency is a surprise, his call for unity was more presidential than he's ever been. I think it would be short-sighted to immediately discount his presidency as a failure without seeing the people and actions that he puts into place.
> He wants to be more than just president, he wants to be a great president, that's in his nature.
I'm not sure that I buy that from his history. His life is one of chasing adulation and attention. He built gaudy hotels in big cities, he never chased the real estate growth market in housing. He ran a reality show, not a media network.
He's a narcissist, not a despot. Fill his cabinet with fawning sycophants and give him a media organization or two at which to direct his rage and I'll bet anything he just sits on his ass in the oval office and waits out his four years.
I guess that's what passes for optimism today. But it's the story I'm sticking to.
When you get a new job as a software engineer most people just want to be considered good at their jobs, while some select few strive to be considered great. maybe not so much for adulation and attention but to feel like they've mastered something and can thus offer advice to others, it's what drives us. In that pursuit of our definition of greatness we study constantly and try to improve our skills in every area and thus our need to be great drives the sharpening of our skills and leads to a self fulfilling prophecy (Our desire to become great leads to us pursuing more knowledge to become better and thus in time we become great)
Donald Trump's definition of great is clearly being admired and in the spot light. But I think he also defines greatness as being a leader, I think he also associates greatness with quality.
I'm not worried about this presidency one bit, his need to be great will drive him to be great by all definitions.
Road to hell is paved with great intentions.
A man with subpar intelligence and understanding of the issues, will most likely make the wrong decision, even if it's with the noblest of intentions.
If you think Trump has subpar intelligence, how do you explain his victory when the best and brightest politicians, journalists, etc. were fighting against him?
For extra points, provide an explanation that doesn't demonize or insult a large swath of the population.
That's bad logic. There are always dozens of candidates and activists trying lots of different tacts and strategies to get votes and drive opinions. One of those turns out to win in certain circumstances. That doesn't necessarily mean its author was a genius to have thought of it, just that they got lucky.
It's a darwinian thing. We don't credit the lobe finned fish for being such geniuses to have developed limbs which could hold them out of the water.
Are you willing to claim that intelligence isn't correlated with success at achieving one's goals? You can make that case, and certainly they don't always match up, but then what is intelligence?
I appreciate the evolutionary metaphor, but its also important to remember that candidates can (and do) change strategies and adapt to circumstances. Indeed, I would expect an intelligent candidate to try various different strategies throughout their campaign (and be better at it than their competition). Clinton and Trump both did. Clinton also had arguably much more help from very powerful allies, and had much more funding.
Also, developing limbs is not a choice; campaign strategy is.
How are you judging whether Trump is intelligent or not? Just because his words/actions seem irrational to you doesn't mean they are irrational. Scott Adams was pretty good at predicting Trump's behavior, so Trump's decision made sense to at least someone.
If only that was all it took: "do what it takes to make himself into a great president". Do you think George W. Bush didn't want to be a great president? If it was that simple, just pick a random person from the street.
The man, by his own account, doesn't read books. He gets his information from cable TV. He has the attention span of a gnat (couldn't be bothered to prepare for the debates; it showed). This is the man, back in 1984, who wanted to be the one to handle the nuclear arms negotiations with the Soviets. "It would take an hour-and-a-half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles."[1] In 2016 he didn't know what the nuclear triad was.
His gaffes on foreign policy the last year and a half include: suggesting that the national debt in negotiable, support of Nato allies is not guaranteed, Japan should get Nukes, countries in Asia should feel free to nuke each other if they want to, "if we have the nukes, why can't we use them?". Those are just some of the things I can remember off the top of my head.
The best we can hope for is that he gets bored being a president very quickly and doesn't screw up too much in the meantime.
His entourage doesn't exactly inspire confidence either.
I mean "the wall" as an immigration enforcement mechanicsm. A fence in the middle of the desert does nothing. People have tried to sit down and sketch out what would be needed to actually catch immigrants everywhere, and the law enforcement costs are ridiculous (and in pursuit of an action which would objectively hurt the economy, no less).
I'm not all that worried about Trump enacting any of his specific policies. I am worried about Trump legitimizing sexual assault and violence towards POC and Muslims. White men are going to get through the next four years just fine, women and minorities will very likely not.
Sexual assault is already legitimized. You can rape someone and you will almost certainly not be arrested, and suffer no real social consequences. Trump didn't change that he just made it more obvious.
- @POTUS twitter account is going to start tweeting at 3AM
- I think illegal immigration enforcement could see the most drastic and immediate change. To my knowledge the status quo is not legislated in any way, and was created by preventing enforcement rather than any legal means. When low-skill unemployment bottoms out the motivation will start to weaken.
- whatever was done by Obama by executive order, I presume will be quickly undone, they will probably have reams of documents ready to be signed on day 1.
- Hillary Clinton: in order to prosecute Trump will need to nominate a new Attorney General to the DOJ, and then ask the FBI to re-assess I guess? I don't think she will go to jail, in some countries when power changes the losers get jailed but it hasn't been the case in America, and I don't think high level politicians want it to become the case. For all practical purposes I think Clinton will continue to be above the law.
- The WALL ... boy I don't know. I will be fascinating to watch if he tries to do this. The only utility will be economic stimulus.
- Trade war: I think the American dollar will go to a lower level which will decrease imports and increase exports.
- Muslim ban: I think he will disallow visas from active conflict areas and nearby. I don't think i.e. Malaysia will be effected, or Indian muslims for example. Maybe countries that aren't functional enough to carry out a criminal background check will be disallowed.
EDIT:
Also, I don't think Trump+GOP will enact or seek to promote any racist or sexist policies, I don't think they will mount an attack on the recent marriage equality ruling. I think the following people will suffer financially:
- undocumented immigrants
- industries that depend on a close relationship with the government: the guard is changing -- if you had relationships with the Bushes and the Clintons, you've had access to the most powerful organization to ever exist in the world for the past 27 years, that may or may not continue.
This is if Trump lives all four years. All of the above doesn't apply to Pence, I think Pence could do some real damage.
They have literally announced they're going to try to undo Roe v. Wade and repeal all LGTBQ protections they can. Like, that literally already happened. So I think we're already past the "[won't] enact or seek to promote any racist or sexist policies". I suspect that's because Trump has effectively delegated the entire office of President to Pence.
No mention of ending abortion. I agree that it would be sexist and catastrophic if it happens, especially given the state of american health insurance coverage.
EDIT: from this document it looks like he plans to target undocumented immigrants who have a criminal record -- the process will probably be very disruptive, I think this is the single policy of Trump that could cause the most human misery, but it seems possible that the process could give the others a more secure status.
Also I should mention: that is my prediction as someone who wouldn't be effected (I'm Canadian). If it were otherwise, I would be preparing for the worst -- for abortion that would take the form of looking at international travel options, and thinking about how to conceal it.
Mexico pay for the wall - yes, this is now a sure thing. A number of prominent Mexican politicians badly insulted Trump early in his campaign and are now in a very awkward position. My guess is that they have undermined their position at the bargaining table with this and are likely to end up 'paying' for the wall in some way, shape or form. We've never had a president as adamant as dealing with the immigration issue as Trump. Even Bush/McCain wanted some partial amnesty programs. Remember that we already have a partial wall with Mexico. Completing that wall and increasing border security is now likely a done deal.
Deportation on day one - this will never happen. There is a large complex body of laws dealing with immigration that will not be superseded by some desire to deport people without a hearing.
Repeal Obamacare - yes this will happen is some part. We already have the news stories of the massive increase in premiums coming and that combined with a stacked, house, senate, judiciary and executive branch makes it look very very likely that the worst parts of obamacare are going to go. It's not clear wether or not some of the more popular reforms (pre-existing conditions, kids under 26) will stay as part of some other reform bill.
Renegotiate NAFTA - yes. A president that has the cost of everything on his mind combined with the lack of decorum from the Mexican government might very well trigger this. This is especially true if the Mexican government continues to behave badly towards the new government.
Bring back coal - I have news for you - coal never left. West Virginia elected a Democrat for governor but was one of the first states to elect Trump last night. Coal has never forgotten Al Gore/Bill Clinton. Last night they made the point again. I think more seriously subsidies for green energy might decrease (with the exception of ethanol with is all produced in red states).
Reduce taxes for the rich - personal income tax no, corporate taxes yes. Corporate taxes in the US are the highest in the world and Trump will work to fix that to allow companies to come back to US soil to operate.
Ban muslims - no. Trump wanted to slow or stop immigration from Syria in particular until the people are better vetted for links to terrorism. This has been simplified to 'ban muslims'. Muslim immigration will not be prevented but it might be slowed to allow for better vetting.
Prosecute Hillary Clinton - yes. Trump will appoint a justice apartment head and a FBI director that is likely to reopen the case into the emails. It's not clear what the outcome of this might be. Ultimately the truth will prevail here.
All but maybe #5 and #8 require legislation and thus the cooperation of congress (including 60 votes in the Senate to defeat a potential Democrat filibuster).
My view is that the most important job of the President is to ensure the effective functioning of the executive branch agencies. This involves selecting good department heads and pursuing effective policies through the exercise of discretion in rule-making and executive orders.
This is vital, but largely esoteric and technical stuff. It's also an embodiment of the "system" and the "elites" that Trump campaigned against.
I see three possibilities as to how he handles this part of his job:
1. He doesn't actually care and entirely delegates it to people that do, likely the existing right-wing policy apparatus of pro-business, anti-regulation ideologues. The tenor of the agencies changes much as it did under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, some qualified people leave, but the essential machinery of government continues operating.
2. He delegates the "boring stuff" (SEC, FAA, FDA, IRS, DOE, etc.) per 1 but uses the executive branch machinery to pursue projects that are personally and politically important to him, e.g. leaning on the DoJ to "lock her up" or destroying the EPA. The boring agencies continue to function, but others become plagued by strife and a loss of morale.
3. He blunders, has a health issue, or a serious scandal emerges that politically paralyzes him and nothing happens till he is replaced. Remember, while he's spent a long time in the public eye, he's escaped the usual scrutiny that has been given to the health and financial affairs of post-Nixon candidates.
After further reflection on his election night cabinet announcements, I'll add #4: he nominates "the best people," i.e. individuals selected on the basis of their public notoriety or prior fealty to his organization rather than their expertise or political leanings. This causes a delegation within the agencies to lower-level administrators and career personnel and some blend of the outcomes in scenario 1 and 2.
Trump is going to erase the entire Obama administration, a decent amount of Obama's impact was felt through executive order, all it takes is a signature to erase that.
Live by the sword, die by the sword. Or pen, in this case.
I'm not excited about a Trump presidency. But from 2009-2011 Democrats held majorities in both the House and Senate. Then was the time to get the major work done, legislatively, that could not be undone by another Executive Order.
Lieberman comes to mind. Senate Democrats needed 60 votes to overcome Republican filibusters on anything. This meant Lieberman, the Senator from Hartford, had veto power over anything. Obama campaigned for his re-election and Lieberman campaigned for McCain.
The sun will rise in the east and set in the west. We will keep moving forward. We have systemic issues we need to address in the country and if they don't get addressed in this cycle it'll get worse in the next. We have major income inequality. We have an issue with tax avoidance and we have a problem with US Companies dumping workers for foreign labor. We also have a healthcare issue that needs to be solved. I doubt this Republican majority will be able to touch any of it but these are still problems and will remain so until we find a solution.
The issue I have is that most of our progress will be undone. The Paris Climate Accord rejected. Obamacare dismantled. Dodd Frank repealed.
It's easier to destroy the world than it is to save it.
Not even mentioning the existential crisis we face knowing that Donald J. Trump, a man who has stated the most important thing in life is to get even, has his finger on the nuclear button and there's nothing any of us can do to stop him.
As this election shows many in the middle class aren't fans of Obamacare. Maybe it isn't a boon to them as many people claim. The middle class are finding high deducable plans that increase in price by 25% each year and when it becomes too unaffordable for them, they are forced to drop it and they are fined. You'd be pissed off too.
Sure but I don't think the solution is to get rid of Obamacare, the solution is to fix it. And even getting rid of only Obamacare would be preferable compared to all the damage he could do.
The Democrats passed the ACA essentially without any Republican support. They had the power to create almost any bill they wanted. Why would anyone reasonably believe they would fix it? It is functioning exactly as designed and is enriching their donors as expected.
They really only had control for a couple of months. Abuse of the filibuster meant that they needed 60 votes in the Senate to get anything done. With Kennedy sick and Al Franken's election disputed, they didn't have 60 votes initially. After Kennedy died, the special election was won by a Republican, so they really only had 60 votes while Kennedy's interim replacement was in office. The ACA is what could be haphazardly slapped together and passed in that brief time.
Until the sun is obscured by vast clouds of dust as we sink into nuclear winter.
That probably won't happen, but it honestly worries me. The guy is far too unstable and vindictive for the kind of responsibility he's being handed.
If not that, then after all the talk of not accepting the election results, I'm worried he won't go quietly once his term or terms are over, or that he'll set a precedent for the next guy to work outside the system.
If it were just policy differences, no matter how deep, I wouldn't be a tenth as worried as I am.
Its crazy to me how different the information bubbles you and I exist in are: Everything I've seen over the course of this election pointed to Clinton being the one who would likely start WW3 and end the world in armageddon, while it would seem that you believe the exact opposite.
The basis for saying that about Clinton seems to be her somewhat more interventionist stance regarding places like Syria and Libya.
My basis for saying it about Trump is his extreme insecurity, and saying things like "When you're in business, you get even with people that screw you. And you screw them 15 times harder." or "And by the way, with Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats and they make gestures that our people -- that they shouldn't be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water."
It sure looks to me that the things people say about Clinton are mostly inferences they've drawn, whereas the things people say about Trump are just things Trump said.
> By biasing its internal electoral market the DNC selected the less competitive candidate defeating the purpose of running a primary.
Hillary, the DNC, and all their cronies deserved this. I would've voted for any Democrat who won the primary fair and square, but I couldn't bring myself to vote for someone who stole an election (and from one of the most well-liked candidates of all time, no less). Many of my friends felt the same way -- they either stayed home, voted 3rd party, or voted without selecting a presidential candidate.
The fact that they tried to bully/guilt everyone into voting for her didn't help much either.
How did she steal the election, and how was her opponent, who received nearly 4 million fewer votes, one of the most well-liked candidates of all time? The data does not support your story.
That email chain was about how to deal with Sanders attacking the DNC for enforcing pre-agreed-upon rules in the Nevada convention. It had nothing to do with working against Sanders and everything to do with stopping Sanders from attacking the party heads for following the rules. http://www.politifact.com/nevada/statements/2016/may/18/jeff...
Both of these links are about the same email chain that I already explained above in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12915266. Which email shows the DNC helping Clinton win the primary? They would have every reason to favor the candidate from their own party, but the emails show that they played it fairly.
Moreover, none of the emails show the Clinton campaign influencing the DNC to rig the election, which is what was originally claimed (that she somehow stole the primaries to the tune of a 4 million vote victory).
You may believe that the DNC wasn't 100% fair in the primaries, but nothing in their emails suggests they applied their own biases to changing the rules in favor of Clinton, so that belief is not supported by evidence.
There is a secondary issue that maybe Sanders would have performed better in the general election than Clinton did. It's hard to do this kind of counterfactual analysis, but I disagree. Despite the media's horse race story, Clinton was so far ahead in votes and polling that she was never in danger of losing the primaries and so didn't throw the kitchen sink of "scandals" at Sanders. Had the race been closer, you would have seen these "scandals," and you certainly would have seen them had Sanders run against Trump (https://www.google.com/amp/amp.slate.com/articles/news_and_p...). More than that though, if progressive icon Russ Feingold couldn't win in Wisconsin, Sanders didn't stand a chance either.
I should clarify, I meant more popular than trump.
Clinton did win most of the votes in the primary but I'm not going to give her the benefit of the doubt that she didn't use her connections to help her campaign. That article by the way came out in June, before the DNC leaks in July.
Yes, I think it is hard to play "what if" history. It's been a few days and I've basically accepted President Trump. It'll help a lot of folks in this country, even if those folks aren't me.
Correct me if I'm wrong here...the Brazile debate questions in question are from Democratic primary debates on March 6 and March 13, and Bernie was part of both, right?
You're right; however, Brazile was not the DNC chair at the time she did that (not until July), so she would have been allowed to help one candidate over another without it being the DNC rigging anything. Feeding Clinton questions is still bad but not an indication that the DNC rigged the primary against Sanders.
He is one of the most well-liked candidates of all time, yes. I believe that he would have won an honest primary also.
How did he lose 4 million votes? Most of that can be found in the DNC emails, among other places. There was a huge media campaign smear against him (led by the DNC itself), massive amounts of donations were funneled in ethically questionable manners into the Hillary campaign, stealing money from state tickets. People were hired in a black flag op to discredit his supporters.
I'm sure the list goes further.
However, I do think one of his biggest issues was that he wasn't a member of the team. I saw it first hand at the caucus; members making references to the fact that she was a life-long democrat, as if it was actually important. Republicans certainly got over that quickly.
Still, if the DNC had played fair with Bernie, I think that two million votes flipping isn't so far fetched.
> There was a huge media campaign smear against him (led by the DNC itself)
There is no evidence of the DNC running a smear campaign against Sanders.
> Massive amounts of donations were funneled in ethically questionable manners into the Hillary campaign.
You're presumably referring to the Hillary Victory Fund here. You can see on the donation page (still up: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/donate/go/) that the first $X of contributions goes to the Clinton primary campaign, the next $Y goes to the Clinton general campaign, the next $Z goes to the DNC, and the final money gets distributed to the state committees. The issue wasn't that the money was going into the Clinton campaigns but that it was going to the DNC instead of the state committees. The DNC's excuse was that they were using it to build common campaign infrastructure for use by the state committees.
> People were hired in a black flag op to discredit his supporters.
There is no evidence of a black flag or false flag operation against Sanders.
In summary, there is no evidence that the DNC sabotaged Sanders, yet he still lost by millions of votes, so the claim that he is one of the most well-liked candidates of all time goes against the actual voting data.
In what way was Clinton dishonest and crooked enough to prevent Sanders from facing Trump? It was Sanders's 4 million vote deficit in the primaries that did that.
I can't help but think how this election will look tame in comparison to what is to come. AI and Automation will continue to savage employment. Environment will continue to degrade. Millions of more in America and around the world will feel like they have been left behind.
Indeed, and with regards to the environment, it's particularly worrying that Trump intends to reverse all the progress made so far in the US on addressing climate change.
(Though to be honest, that's one of my lesser worries concerning a Trump presidency. Along with increasing discrimination and divisiveness within the US, it's likely his proposed foreign policy changes will enable Putin to annex further regions of Eastern Europe.)
As someone who's actively vocalized his support for Trump in the past, both here[1] and in my meat space life, I'm ecstatic with the results of this election.
Not just the POTUS, but the trifecta of the house and senate as well. That's as loud of a mandate as can be expected from a strongly divided country. On top of all that, with the SCOTUS picks that are expected in the next few years, this election is going to be felt for many years to come.
I just hope that as we move forward with the transition to the new government, both sides can leave behind the incessant name calling and hate that's plagued this election. It's done, it's over, and the people have spoken. Now let's move forward on the direction that's been chosen and go about discussing it constructively.
Politicians know the electoral college decides the election. If the candidates had been campaigning for the popular vote, presumably Trump would campaign harder for more votes in large states like California and New York.
Clinton couldn't gain as much support because she already has most of the likely voters, and a lot of Republicans think, why bother, she's a lock for the electoral votes.
Whatever, with no data to back up your claim this is just hot air. Maybe she would've gotten more support from people that now decided to vote third party or didn't bother to vote at all. You can basically rationalize every outcome outcome if you don't have to rely on data.
It's about the people, not the politicians. The fact that campaign strategy matters more than campaign platform is a huge weakness in the current system.
It's like that by design. Representative democracy is intended to limit the ability of the majority to shoehorn the minority -- in this case the coastal population centers vs. the rest of the country.
>Representative democracy is intended to limit the ability of the majority to shoehorn the minority
That is a benefit of certain aspects of our political system, but not the electoral college. The electoral college only serves to introduce bizarre volatility into the elections.
This is a nice sound bite (kind of), but doesn't bear out the actual facts. The EC was designed specifically to ensure that States (in the big-S, Constitutional meaning) decide the President, not the people.
Allowing states to control the elections is a mean not an end. Given that the vote of states are determined by a popular vote within the state, the only end that is accomplished by the EC is introducing volatility.
Right, and it was up to the state to decide how the electors were elected. The intended goal is the same -- a midpoint between State-level republicanism and populist democracy.
Was discussing this earlier, how many countries are actually ruled by popular vote? The recent Iceland election brings in mind, where the six constituencies makes a vote in Reykjavík count less than any other vote. The reason for that is if they didn't, citizens of Reykjavík would have a majority on their own in any national election.
Similar, Sweden have a similar system where a vote from the small island of Gotland has 50% more impact compared to any other vote. The reason for that is that otherwise the island would only have 2 politicians in the parliament and the Swedish government wanted to have one more party representing the island than just the two major parties (which, based on those rules, means that the top 3 parties in Gotland is more or less guarantied one seat each).
I don't think any citizen's vote should count more than another just because they're part of a minority, geographic or otherwise. Imagine the uproar that would ensue if a politician suggested that a racial, ethnic, or religious minority group would have their votes count for more.
I am more split on the issue. geographical votes result that problems and needs in one area don't get overlook because of population statistics. In the worst case this could lead to countries splitting up into smaller parts, just so that each area which its own special problems and needs can govern themselves.
To take a practical example, the European parliament. Seats are allocated to each state according to population using degressive proportionality, which mean that Luxembourgish voters have roughly 10x more influence per voter than citizens of the six large countries. The alternative would be that Luxembourgish have practically no vote, since their population would be too small to even get a single seat, meaning their vote would have 0 influence. Which one is more fair?
I agree with you about the European parliament example, but speaking of the U.S. situation specifically, we already have a bicameral legislature with disproportionate representation for lower population states in one of its houses. We also have federal courts to step in when any laws are stepping on the rights of minority populations.
You've also touched on one of the longest-running debates in American politics: should we treat states as independent and semi-autonomous or allow the federal government to dictate policy direction for the nation. You can probably tell what side I'm on. People still claim that the American civil war was about the South defending "states' rights" when I, and many others, feel that it was about defending the rights of many people actually in those states.
That might be a little off topic. Anyway it's an interesting debate, but it's just hard to see how a candidate for national office can win more votes across the country and come out the loser.
Yes. We have states which gerrymander the Senate then we have gerrymandered House districts.
Wyoming (pop. 584,153) has two Senators. California (pop. 38.8 million) has two Senators. CA is 66 times the population. Alaska (pop. 736,732), two Senators.
I can't fathom you interpreting the result as a "loud mandate." The presidential race has been extremely tight with ~200,000 separating the two. Is that a clear mandate?
No, it is a clear indication of the divisions in our country.
>> Not just the POTUS, but the trifecta of the house and senate as well. That's as loud of a mandate as can be expected from a strongly divided country
> I can't fathom you interpreting the result as a "loud mandate." The presidential race has been extremely tight with ~200,000 separating the two. Is that a clear mandate?
> No, it is a clear indication of the divisions in our country.
Yes, the country is divided. A single party taking all three major government divisions is as loud a mandate as you can expect in a strongly divided country.
> ...as loud a mandate as you can expect in a strongly divided country
Only true if the way voting happened didn't disenfranchise voters. Yet we know that the way voting happened, with gerrymandering and discriminatory rules in some states, did disenfranchise voters.
They didn't take over all three major government branches. They "took over" one via the Presidency. They maintained their majorities in the legislature. They will maintain a hold on the Supreme Court by virtue of the Presidency, not public mandate.
In a strongly divided country, interpreting anything as a clear public mandate can be disastrous.
How do you reconcile your desire to leave behind hate when you cast a vote for a candidate who's core positions were one of hate? If Trump does not continue a platform of hate, how would you not view that as a slap in the face as a supporter? He promised you hate, you said "Yes, I'll take one of those", and now say don't do that? You can not have it both ways, your vote is one for hate whether you bury your head in the sand about that point or not.
After his BS speech did you see him going down the line of people, kissing each woman on the left cheek, every one except the last one that is. She was about to pucker up and had to awkward kiss the guy next to her instead. Not racist? Yeah right. C'mon man she was at least a 7!
He called for a ban on Muslim immigrants, said illegal Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists, and suggested that his supporters should assassinate his opponent. That's just off the top of my head.
This has been a constant theme in this election. I criticize Trump based on something he said. A supporter tells me I'm taking it out of context. I look up the context and it either doesn't change anything or just plain makes it even worse.
"...until we find out what the heck is going on" doesn't help. Hate doesn't stop being hateful when you say it's temporary, and neither does blatantly violating the Constitution become OK.
"And some, I assume, are good people." This immediately follows "They’re rapists." So, what does it mean? Some of the rapists are good people? Or he meant to say that some of them are rapists? Even there, "some" implies not huge amount, so "some are good people" implies most of them aren't. So, OK, he only called most illegal Mexican immigrants rapists, that's not much better.
Finally, let me guess, you believe his followup damage control that "second amendment people" meant their superior abilities at political organization?
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Mr. Trump said, as the crowd began to boo. He quickly added: “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”
How is that not an allusion to assassination? He is talking about a situation in which Hillary has won and appointed a judge. How else do people suspect "second amendment people" are going to stop her at that point?
Yeah, the explanation they followed up with makes no sense. Supreme Court judges with lifetime appointments don't care about your political activism, no matter how good you are at it.
He mocked a disabled reporter, he bragged about sexual assault, and he ran an ad that showed pictures of Jews with a voiceover talking about global special interests controlling the levers of power. Also off the top of my head.
I wish the people who voted for Trump would just be honest and take ownership of the hate, instead of trying to gaslight everyone by playing dumb.
Yeah, it's subtle, but there is a definite hum of anti-semitism going on in the background of Trump's inner political circle.
First there was that poster with a six-pointed "sheriff" star on a pile of money, which (to me at least) didn't seem definitively anti-semitic. But in conjunction with hiring Steve Bannon (who has said he doesn't want his kids going to a school with too many Jews), running the "global special interests" ad, and retweeting white nationalists, it all starts to add up.
>I wish the people who voted for Trump would just be honest and take ownership of the hate, instead of trying to gaslight everyone by playing dumb
I'm Canadian, so I didn't vote for anybody.
I'm simply not blinded by rhetoric and political leanings like most in the US are. It may surprise you, but many in the rest of the world think both sides are nuts.
Don't forget that his rallies regularly featured people chanting "hang that bitch". "We" just elected a politician that openly condones violence against someone with different political views. Hopefully it ends now but that is a dangerous path to go down and is the total opposite of what makes America "great".
>Don't forget that his rallies regularly featured people chanting "hang that bitch". "We" just elected a politician that openly condones violence against someone with different political views.
Condones violence? You know that Hilary has been behind actual violence, right? Voting for bombing other countries and such things? She voted to go into Iraq. How many people have died? Is she not accountable in any way?
Honest question if you're concerned about violence: who has more blood on their hands, Trump or Clinton?
>You know, when he advocated committing a war crime?
How about when your candidate actually did participate in things that other people consider war crimes, like bombing hospitals and DWOB encampments in the middle east?
I don't agree with the approach, but do you understand why he said this? The idea was to vet people coming into the country to prevent homegrown terror. It's a real thing, and people are concerned about it. I doubt that it'll work, the problem is more nuanced, but it's not a ridiculous idea.
>said illegal Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists
No, he said that Mexico sends their worst, not that all Mexican immigrants are criminals.
>and suggested that his supporters should assassinate his opponent
I understand why Trump called for a ban on Muslim immigrants. Do you understand why such a thing would be grossly unconstitutional and is against everything this country should stand for?
For Mexicans, he said "they're rapists" without limiting the number. He then said some of them are good people, which is confusing and contradictory. Deciding what he really meant is a matter of interpretation and you'll never know if you have the right answer or not. This is, of course, a constant theme with the Trump campaign: say something outrageous, but with just enough wiggle room to explain it away as something else.
As for assassination: "If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know." This was later explained as a reference to the pro-gun political power, but that makes no sense: Supreme Court justices with lifetime appointments don't care about political activism.
I think his rhetoric is pretty hateful. I don't see how you could say it isn't, as though it's just misunderstood, when it's been a huge boon to the alt-right - which is _all_ about hate. I fear we will see more of that kind of rhetoric in the mainstream.
What are the milestones and key metrics for the "direction that has been chosen"?
In four years, if the rural mine workers are still out of work and iPads are still made in China, will you concede that the experiment failed?
I can't see Trump doing that. Deflecting blame has been a theme of his career. Therefore I'm frightened that he's going to need new scapegoats for his lack of achievements pretty soon... And considering the rhetoric he's used, there just is no telling who he might pick to receive the blame.
That's what I'm wondering about this whole thing - by what metrics can we test MAGA? I'm beginning to feel like this is Obama 2.0 when it comes to a revolution - in 4 to 8 years we will look back and go "huh, pretty much business as normal". I'm not worried about a random scapegoat, but I do just see this fizzling, and the anger and division being there again in 4 years time.
> In four years, if the rural mine workers are still out of work and iPads are still made in China, will you concede that the experiment failed?
That's like saying that because people still have to pay for insurance in the US that Obamacare failed and he's a failed President and should feel bad about himself.
Obamacare failed and he's a failed President and should feel bad about himself
Isn't that exactly what Republicans were saying? Trump wants to repeal Obamacare first and then replace it with something "much better, believe me".
In good and bad, ACA was a big part of Obama's legacy. What are the yardsticks that should be applied to the Trump presidency?
How many coal mines will be back in business and turning a profit? By what date will Apple be forced to bring back manufacturing into USA? When will American airports and roads become the best in the world?
Those are a few of his most clearly defined goals, like healthcare reform was Obama's.
Seems extremely disingenuous that Trump supporters of all people would criticize hate and name calling when Trump's campaign was run on those issues, but I guess it's always easier to strike a conciliatory tone when you've won.
I'm not a Trump supporter by any stretch but mother of god if "crooked" which is literally just an adjective and is pretty appropriate when applied to Hillary Clinton is now considered a slur all these angry white people might just be on to something.
See that Trump and Trump supporters largely limited their name calling to Hillary, whereas Hillary and Hillary supporters largely blasted on Trump as well as his supporters.
Given that the campaign was so divisive and acrimonious, what makes you think the losing side is just going to say 'ok' and get on board?
If they think he's going to be as bad as they say surely they should do everything to frustrate him? Same as the Republicans did to Obama.
It's naive to think that just because the vote is in that it's over, look at the UK and Brexit.
Can you explain to me what direction the country voted to move in? I'm really really trying to understand but all I see for the Trump voters is more economic pain under Trumps policies and I think will ultimately lead to more division as they dig their heels in as more time passes where they don't see the change they want. Trump supporters were sold the idea that illegal immigrants, legal immigrants, non-white people, muslims and gay people were a threat to the country and their livelihood. Removing these "threats" as Donald Trump has proposed will only benefit those at the top. So where does that leave us? Putting the screws to the perceived threats even more?
Now let's move forward on the direction that's been chosen
I guess one of the bigger problems is that it's utterly unclear what direction has been chosen.
I think it's fair to say—do correct me if you think I'm wrong—that most of the policies that were advocated by Trump prior to the election will not be put into practice. There are a few reasons for that – many of them are practically unworkable, or contradictory, or will be objectively harmful. It seems that the actual policies that will take effect will be markedly different from those of the campaign.
This is similar to Brexit in the UK, which was a campaign fought in a similar way – quite a few half-truths with no clear idea of what policy was being voted for.
To me, this seems like a dangerous situation. Practically speaking, it is unlikely that Trump with 'make America great again' by solving all of the problems that his supporters face – not because he's a liar, but because that's an astonishingly difficult task to achieve. What happens in a couple of years when relatively limited progress has been made? Trump has no political barriers within the US, so who will be blamed for his inability to deliver on his promises? I worry that such a situation is a breeding ground for nationalism of the worst kind.
This was a rejection of the political establishment, rejection of neo-liberal economics, and a rejection of both the neo-conservative and (to a lesser degree) the libertarian wings of the republican party.
Serious question (and I think the source of the confusion as to what direction has been chosen): if all those philosophies have been rejected, what exactly are we left with? What was being advocated?
rejecting neoconservatism, and libertarianism, leaves you with traditional conservatism and cultural conservatism, or religious conservatism.
On the social side, things like abortion, (anti) gay rights, etc.
On the legal / economic side, actual pro-small business type changes, think 1950s republican.
As for rejecting neo-liberal economics, there are tons of options. Without throwing out ideologies, though, I think the most likely things we'd see in America would be:
Well, if bernie was elected I'd say things like trying to reform college tuition costs, expanding medicare, ensuring the stability of social security, new worker protections and federally promoted retraining of laid off / out of work workers, etc. guaranteed paid family leave, etc.
From the conservative viewpoint, the people would probably want more focus on closing immigration loopholes used by businesses to avoid hiring domestically (h1bv, j1bv reform), actively enforcing punishments for employers utilizing illegal immigrants, retooling international trade agreements to favor small businesses and local producers as opposed to larger corporate interests, tax subsidies and encouragements for businesses that produce locally, etc.
There is no mandate here, and there will be no coming together; she's going to win the popular vote, dems win more votes in the house yet because of the electoral college and gerrymandering republicans carry the win. Nothing has happened here but a clear signal of how badly the system is broken when the will of the majority loses to a hateful minority due to a fucked up system.
Don't think that is possible. If I was a democrat today I'd do like the Republicans have been doing the last 8 years and do my outmost to make the Trump Presidency be a major failure.
The way the republicans have played this game is so dirty, that you can't expect people to forgive. We can not reward such a divisive character like Donald Trump with his racism, xenophobia, mysogny, insults and bullying with a successful presidency.
Honestly I think the democrats should do the best the sabotage him and make sure everything he does fails. It should teach them a lesson that there is no reward in playing dirty and confrontational.
If we reward this behavior it will only get worse.
It is sad to say, but for the long term benefit of America it is probably better if it gets run to the ground over these four years. Then America will be spared for such leaders in the future.
> It is sad to say, but for the long term benefit of America it is probably better if it gets run to the ground over these four years. Then America will be spared for such leaders in the future.
I heard this EXACT phrase said about Obama 8 years ago! We always get what we deserve. Hope, change, make america great again.
> If I was a democrat today I'd do like the Republicans have been doing the last 8 years and do my outmost to make the Trump Presidency be a major failure.
Good luck with that. GOP now has majorities and will probably pick up more in 2018. So be it.
> The new rules remove the requirement of 60 votes in order to begin debate on legislation and allow the minority two amendments to measures that reach the Senate floor, a change implemented as a standing order that expires at the end of the current term. In the new rules, the amount of time to debate following a motion to proceed has been reduced from 30 hours to four. Additionally, a filibuster on the motion to proceed will be blocked if a petition is signed by eight members of the minority, including the minority leader.
Won't this just devolve into a vicious circle, where the politically expedient thing to do is to utterly sabotage the other side, and teach the voters a less each election cycle?
I don't think they should act like the Republicans did under Obama and vote against things they actually believed in just to make him ineffective. If they genuinely vote for things they believe in, maybe Trump will feel more of a reason to compromise instead of digging his heels into the dirt further and further and stomping on them anyway. It's because they did this that the country got further divided and less bipartisan.
But yes, Democrats better do whatever they can to stop anything that's outrageous or they don't believe in even a little bit. No "Oh, the people have spoken, so we better go along with it" shit. Republicans pulled every dirty trick they could with Obama, so they should feel free to do the same.
> do like the Republicans have been doing the last 8 years and do my outmost to make the Trump Presidency be a major failure.
I think I'd modify that just a little. Our too-few representatives in Congress should do everything to thwart the Trump agenda, but only because that agenda is itself a failure. By opposing it, we make America a success. Very different than what the Republicans have been doing.
They quite explicitly said the exact opposite the day after Obama was elected. They didn't just want Obama's policies to fail. They were willing to accept failures that hurt people, so that those people would associate the pain with Obama and vote the other way next time. That's the level of obstructionism I'm suggesting we not pursue.
> They quite explicitly said the exact opposite the day after Obama was elected. They didn't just want Obama's policies to fail. They were willing to accept failures that hurt people, so that those people would associate the pain with Obama and vote the other way next time.
I don't see anything about them being okay with hurting the country, but I see a lot about them wanting President Obama to fail, and fail badly. Do you blame them? Do you not think that Democrats want Mr. Trump to fail badly, and are having these same conversations?
If X is your number one priority, then Y - e.g. helping the American people, doing what's right, etc. - is not. What's telling is not that they said right out that they were willing to accept collateral damage - of course they didn't, because it would be political suicide - but that they said nothing at all about it. Didn't acknowledge its existence. By contrast, look at what Sanders said.
“To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him."
That explicitly acknowledges an obligation toward the American people - something we never got from the "oppose Obama at all costs" crowd. So yes, there is a difference between today's loyal opposition and 2008's treasonous opposition. I reject your false equivalence.
> Honestly I think the democrats should do the best the sabotage him and make sure everything he does fails.
I don't think this is necessary. With Obama, his policies were ultimately shaped, designed and compromised to benefit centrist to left-leaning voters, and so he was sharply opposed by the right and extreme right. With Trump, his policies will be ultimately shaped, designed and compromised to benefit Trump, so it is far from clear that this will give advantage to any class of voter at all.
I actually think we are facing real daily crises that need to be addressed. So no, I'm not going to try to sabotage my country in order to try to tarnish the Republican brand. I have work to do.
How can you expect the millions of marginalized people to just "sit back and move in the direction that has been chosen" when that direction is one that believes they should not exist?
> both sides can leave behind the incessant name calling and hate that's plagued this election
Trump ran his campaign on incessant name calling and hate. If you voted for him, that means you're OK with letting the incessant name calling and hate continue.
Calling someone a xenophobe isn't name calling. Calling someone a bitch or a nigger is name calling. The difference is whether the word us a critique of specific behavior, or just a general slur on the person or their identity.
"Now let's move forward on the direction that's been chosen and go about discussing it constructively."
A few thoughts on this:
- First, roughly half (and the majority of the votes) did not agree with this direction. That isn't much of a mandate.
- Second, the party that won has repeatedly shown that they don't want to work on compromise, or follow standard procedure such as allowing a sitting President to get a hearing for a nominee for the Supreme Court.
As a person that feels that this trifecta will change the country for years to come (as you rightly point out), my hope is that the Dems do exactly to Republicans what they've done for the last 4 years - obstruct in any way possible. I'm tired of one side feeling that they have to play by the rules and the other feeling they can ignore them. And I hope that Ruth Ginsburg serves at least for the first term.
> allowing a sitting President to get a hearing for a nominee for the Supreme Court.
Let's talk about George W. Bush's nominees...
Politics is politics and to pretend that one side or the other plays them "dirty" and the other side plays them "clean" is naiveté of an astounding level.
I'm not naive enough to think that Dems never play dirty, but what's astonishing that you seem to give the Republicans a complete pass with regard to their actual behavior by making a false equivalency: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/mar/...
> What do you have to say about the women who voted for Trump. Do they support molesting themselves?
They are feeling relatively safe from molestation. That good. They like to think it's because they are keeping themselves safe. If it's their doing then they're in control. So it feels good to them to blame women for their assaults and to believe that men like Trump aren't doing anything. It makes the world feel safer.
The liberal position, that men like Trump do sexually assault people, and that rape is common, and your friends might do it to you, and you should probably believe rape accusations by default, is much scarier. Many women would rather not believe it if they can avoid it.
Women with a LOT of privilege can safely believe it because they can use their prvilege (money etc) to stay safe. Women who are forced to be in unsafe positions can believe it, because they see how common sexual assault is. They are on the front line. Those two groups make up the feminist core.
But there are a lot of women who are just trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the rape scene, and for them it's a bit of an abstract matter.
I'm actually happy for you. And I'm scared about some things (mostly health care access and wars due to climate change) but I am also excited to see how some of these conservative policies pan out in practice. I hope it moves the dialog forward.
That said, your mandate claim is kind of absurd. More people voted for Romney than Trump.
And Obama got almost 10% more votes than Trump did. So it's not nearly "as loud as can be". Turnout was very low.
Since the GOP now holds both Congress and the Presidency, with a likelihood of continued Supreme Court majority, they may enact some protectionist policies to appease the voters. However, these could in fact make the economic situations worse and some people would start to blame other things.
Could the backlash spill to the technology and related sectors as well (e.g. a neo-Luddite movement might get started)?
Note: I did not grow up in the US, so I would like to hear your opinions on this, especially from Americans.
> Since the GOP now holds both Congress and the Presidency, with a likelihood of continued Supreme Court majority, they may enact some protectionist policies to appease the voters.
That would ignite a civil war in the Republican party between the populists and the upper-class free-trade establishment, and while the populists have a good chance of winning, it's not a done deal.
> Could the backlash spill to the technology and related sectors as well (e.g. a neo-Luddite movement might get started)?
Unlikely, since anyone who gives up technology will be at a severe competitive disadvantage and screw themselves over.
So, I voted for DJT (I like calling him that, for some reason). I didn't vote for him because I agreed with any of his policies (as best I can tell he never actually presented any during the course of his campaign) or because I thought he was the best representative for the people of this country. I did so for a couple of reasons:
1. I like a good underdog story. The people that support him, for a multitude of reasons, feel neglected by the ruling class in this country. Now I don't know who started all the name calling, but I personally dislike the way they're demeaned and patronized by the Democrats/Liberals as racists and deplorable. There is absolutely no respect from the left given to these people and their opinions. Yeah, there are some loud one saying some ridiculous things, but I refuse to believe that close to half the country hates people of color and wants to completely isolate us from the rest of the world by closing our borders. It just can't be true. I lived in Germany for the last year and was just stunned at how quickly the word Xenophobia was used to label anyone that disagreed with Merkel's policy regarding the refugees. If your opinions were so immediately dismissed with such a strong word, you're going to start harboring some pretty strong feelings of animosity towards those who so quickly judge.
2. I believed he was the candidate with the biggest chance of winning that would bring about the biggest amount of disruption and change. (By this account, I should have voted for Obama in 2007 instead of writing in Ron Paul. But goddamn if Ron Paul didn't seem to have the most reasonable, compassionate and "real" voice I've ever heard in politics.) This, I believe, is inline largely with why Peter Thiel was backing him. I don't know if any of that change or disruption is going to be good or bad for me or the rest of America, but things are certainly going to be interesting for the next four years. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are going to be in complete turmoil as they scramble to figure out what the hell just happened. I think we were all ready to talk about the, sort of, civil war that was about to erupt in the Republican party after this election, but we might end up talking more, initially, about the same thing happening in the Democratic party. Obviously things aren't rosy with the Republicans just because they won everything, but the Democrats really have nothing to do but try and figure out what went wrong and fix it. I, also, don't believe he can really do anything too awful that we can't recover from; I have some faith in the checks and balances laid out by the constitution that will prevent DJT, himself, from doing too much harm. Unlike the Brexit vote, a DJT presidency isn't permanent. We'll be back in four years to do it all over again.
> . Yeah, there are some loud one saying some ridiculous things, but I refuse to believe that close to half the country hates people of color and wants to completely isolate us from the rest of the world by closing our borders. It just can't be true.
You've never been to the deep south, much the south, have you?
> 2. I believed he was the candidate with the biggest chance of winning that would bring about the biggest amount of disruption and change
Anyone who believes Trump can change things is delusional and has very little, if any grasp, of how power works. Obama was voted in on the promise of change, as all we got was a watered down health care bill and the ability for gays to get married. The ACA probably won't be repealed any time because the Republicans do not have complete control. He will do a few things, and non-White, nonchristian people will suffer, but by in large things will stay the same. The simple fact is that the people who get you elected are not the same people you need to work with to enact legislation.
Please tell me how non-white Americans will suffer from the policies of Trump. I'd think, what with 65k Syrian refugees flooding in and flocking to places like California (where I live) and backed up by policies in to land them unskilled jobs, the minority demo would suffer much more than, for instance, some Americans having their illegal relatives deported for example.
To expand, the Republican party now endorses conversion therapy for homosexuals, voter ids (in other words, voter suppression), denies climate science and evolution, a flat tax rate, and tax cuts for the wealthy (because trickle down economics works so well!). I can continue on, but those policies don't help the poor, who are overwhelming minority.
> Obama was voted in on the promise of change, as all we got was a watered down health care bill and the ability for gays to get married.
While I agree with the general sentiment, specially since they had majorities and they couldn't get a much better health care bill, we got more than that. For instance:
You do realize that a black man was just elected as president twice, by a respectable margin each time?
So...like the parent said, most Americans don't hate colored people. I do think most Americans are frustrated by Obamacare, haphazard foreign involvement, and bailouts.
> So...like the parent said, most Americans don't hate colored people. I do think most Americans are frustrated by Obamacare, haphazard foreign involvement, and bailouts.
Yes, I've read similar sentiments. The problem is, regardless of your desire for "change", the man that was elected waged a campaign full of racism and xenophobia and was endorsed by the KKK. Voting for him is implicitly supporting those views.
> You've never been to the deep south, much the south, have you?
I have been to the south (maybe not the "deep south") but your general assumption that I don't have a great understanding of the people that reside there is accurate. I do understand that there actually are people who truly hate people of color. What I was really taking issue with is the label of bigotry being so readily applied to anyone who supports Trump. I just find it unfair.
Regarding your last point, I wasn't necessarily trying to say that the change and disruption would happen specifically within government or by way of the laws we might pass. I apologize if that wasn't entirely clear. The most obvious place, as I mentioned, where we might see some of this is within both of the major parties themselves and how they operate outside of government. The Democrats will start that process immediately as they were the biggest losers and the Republicans will put that on hold as they do have some control over government, but clearly their party isn't in great shape either.
> I have been to the south (maybe not the "deep south") but your general assumption that I don't have a great understanding of the people that reside there is accurate. I do understand that there actually are people who truly hate people of color. What I was really taking issue with is the label of bigotry being so readily applied to anyone who supports Trump. I just find it unfair.
Talk is cheap, actions are what define you. If you vote for someone who wages a racist, xenophobic campaign, someone who was endorsed by KKK and has riled up white supremacist views, you implicitly support them.
"If you vote for someone who wages a racist, xenophobic campaign, someone who was endorsed by KKK and has riled up white supremacist views, you implicitly support them."
This cuts both ways. Voters had effectively a binary choice. Given the dismal favorability ratings of both major party candidates, I think we do everyone a disservice by assuming they subscribe to every view or position either candidate has ever taken or changed. People have different values and different priorities for the values that they do share with others. We don't get to mix and match our candidates.
Given how split the country is, we likely have a lot of things we can find agreement on. We need to work on finding our common goals so we can move forward and make progress.
Edit to add: I myself struggle with determining where to draw the line. What views and/or actions are intolerable? Are they context dependent? At what point do our associations taint us? Too much for this thread perhaps, but worth keeping in mind when working with people who don't hold exactly the same views as we do; in other words, living in the real world.
> You've never been to the deep south, much the south, have you?
Even still, the left has treated the center and right like klansmen for the last decade. Perhaps the left's fatal flaw was failing to distinguish between actual racists and those who simply didn't drink the identity-politics kool-aid.
I'm not a Trump supporter, but it has been really frustrating to watch the Buzzfeed crowd paint all Trump supporters as misogynist racists. My facebook feed has been loaded with articles about how white men failed the feminist movement and all sorts of other crap that misses the point. I thinks Trumps popularity is best explained by saying that people are sick and tired of politics as usual. It's really not because half the country hates minorities.
I can see how people might think of Trump supporters as misogynist racists. Some people have argued that it is taking things out of context, but every time I look the context is worst than I imagined.
He denies rape by saying the accuser is too ugly to rape. (Would he rape if she were cute?)
He seems to think that "grabbing women by the pussy" is a good thing. Most politicians I'd give a pass on an event like this - it happened a long time ago, and most politicians would disclaim such behavior (compare Clinton's response to her email server during the debates).
He accuses a judge of not being able to do his job because he is "from Mexico", even though said judge was born as an American.
He attacks (seemingly) muslims at Hillary's DNC speech - for reasons I'm not entirely certain why.
So I think that there are a few options: you are either saying Trumps sexism and racism is worth it for his other qualities, or blatantly ignoring it, or actively supporting it. To me it's not hard to see how people would come to the conclusion that people are actively supporting it, because for a lot of people that is an issue that would trump other issues (bad pun not intended but now that it's there I'm leaving it).
> I refuse to believe that close to half the country hates people of color and wants to completely isolate us from the rest of the world by closing our borders. It just can't be true.
I have to agree with the other commenter who asks if you lived in the Deep South. I grew up in Louisiana. In the early '90s, we had David Duke (whose name you may recognize from this campaign), an actual, genuine, Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, be a state senator, run a very close to successful campaign for US Senate, and run a very close to successful campaign the following year for governor. Wikipedia recounts the vote totals for the gubernatorial election:
[Edwin] Edwards received 1,057,031 votes (61.2%), while Duke's 671,009 votes represented 38.8% of the total. Duke nevertheless claimed victory, saying, "I won my constituency. I won 55% of the white vote," a statistic confirmed by exit polls.
We can argue about what "hates people of color" means, precisely, but if 40% of voters, and 55% of white voters, are willing to put a KKK Imperial Wizard in charge of the state, it's not an implausible claim. Maybe not half the country. Maybe a quarter. Maybe the majority in some states and not others. Maybe the core constituency of some but not all senators. Is that okay?
And given this country's recent history of explicit anti-black political actions by people in power (see e.g. George Wallace's "segregation forever" and Lee Atwater's candid statement of the Southern Strategy), it's hard to argue that that all evaporated since then.
> I don't know if any of that change or disruption is going to be good or bad for me or the rest of America, but things are certainly going to be interesting for the next four years.
There are a lot of people (e.g., me, presumably you) who can deal just fine with four "interesting" years. There are a lot of people who can't. My LGBT friends are freaking out, for instance, and with a vice president who believes in torturing the gay away, I don't blame them. My capable-of-being-pregnant friends are freaking out. My non-citizen friends on valid visas are freaking out.
Disruption to force change is a fine way to solve some problems, like Netflix's infrastructure being reliant on AWS not shutting down machines. But this isn't Netflix's infrastructure, this is people's lives. I know plenty of people who aren't asking whether to uproot their lives but how, and they're pretty uninterested in having an interesting four years.
If you think DJT will change anything you are sadly mistaken. That's not how the American government works. And American economy is deeply entrenched with the global economy, so nothing will be changed. Also, some of the things Peter Thiel mentioned are often labeled as "Big Government" spending - e.g., space, healthcare, education etc. Be sure that Trump's party is categorically against Big Govt spending. So none of that will come to fruition as well.
> winning that would bring about the biggest amount of disruption and change
This is an interesting point. I've toyed with the notion lately that maybe the American political system is "antifragile"[0]. It's plausible, at least, to me that the system as a whole is stronger when it receives major shocks that disrupt the ossified structure in there. If you have the same politicians with the same policies as normal, then you get ties between the government and industry, and handouts and a ruling elite, etc. Now I don't think Trump is all that much of an outsider or has that much chance of disruption here (I voted Johnson, partly in this hope), but it's interesting to me you raise it as a reason.
I think there is probably some truth to the antifragile theory, but we should remember that the system is made up of individual people and their choices to act within that system. Too many rogue players and there is no system.
I'm transgender and my people are in mourning. This might seem like a game to you, but there are very real consequences that will felt by vulnerable groups of people. He's already promised to repeal LGBT protections.
Protection against healthcare discrimination, housing discrimination, and bathroom use. Under Obama, I was also able to get a passport with the correct gender marker, which I wouldn't have been able to do before without being forced to have expensive surgery.
A number of these were done through executive action, and Trump has said he will overturn them in office. Yes, laws still apply. But not if they aren't laws anymore. Pence was the one who signed Indiana's controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law, and has advocated reparative therapy (brainwashing the gay out of you), which is ineffective and incredibly damaging.
I'll probably stop working for a while. I really don't want to support these creepy people in small town and rural america. They should no longer get my tax money to prop up their almost non-existent economies, and they certainly shouldn't enjoy a 1st world lifestyle on my back. No more 60-hour weeks for me. I'm retiring.
I hope other follow. Maybe they'll finally get off their couch, turn off breitbart, and actually do something positive and productive with their lives.
Addendum:
To the down-voters: I thought part of this 'movement' was to get rid of political correctness. So, please let me take advantage of my new found right to say what I really think - what many people have been secretly thinking but have been too polite to actually say. Let's put it all out on the table. Wasn't that one of the big motivations to begin with?
Many of these rural people aren't looking for you to prop up their economies. They are eager for you to stop outsourcing their jobs, demeaning their existence, lowering their wages so executives can get large bonuses, and in general acting like you are much better/above them. Even more so they are eager to get to work and have a representative government that listens to them and isn't trying to push an elitist globalist agenda onto them.
With all due respect, what specific policy changes do you expect that will address their job outsourcing, demeaning of existence, and lowered wages (?!? seriously?).
I see democrats with specific answers to all of these questions and none from Trump. I mean, OK: we lost, you won. But that also means you need to govern now and not just shitpost. Wat do?
I would like to see a reduction in H1B's and the ability of companies to move their manufacturing operations offshore when the driving factor is just reducing wages.
Your first suggestion is "raise wages for programmers". That's not remotely the demographic being discussed and you know it.
I'd be curious about your suggestions for implementing the second, because it sounds a lot like Bernie Sanders. No way is a republican congress going to regulate manufacturing like that.
I agree that specifics are still needed, but H-1B reform was in fact a conservative issue this cycle[-], and Trump spent a lot of energy promising to broadly regulate manufacturing and trade.
1. I'm unclear how H1B's relate to 'outsourcing' jobs since by definition the people come here. You don't need an H1B to hire a company in India or China to do work.
2. I'm curious how reducing H1B's is supposed to affect blue collar or rural jobs.
This. The grandparent is one of the most condescending comments I've read in the last 12 hours, and that's saying something.
The suburban and rural people who grow America's food, get its energy out of the ground, and manufacture what hasn't been outsourced yet don't want anything from people like him. They have too much pride for that—the good kind, not the kind the grandparent has.
I didn't vote for Trump, but I know a lot of people who did, and every single one of them is a decent, hard-working human being. Upon seeing, reading, and hearing the things being said about Trump voters this morning, my brother, a self-employed furniture maker who did for Trump, said, "I didn't know I was a racist. I just thought I wanted affordable health insurance."
The country's political elites dismissed people like him. The outcome of this election is the result. The attitude of the grandparent is how we got here.
And there the working class disparagers go again, saying they know the true motivations of people like my brother. This, right here, is the willful blindness I'm talking about.
Maybe—just maybe—people like my brother viewed Hillary as Obama's third term? He doesn't particularly trust Trump; he just trusted Hillary less. If Democrats really wanted to fix ObamaCare, he reasons, they had plenty of time to do it.
If you want to lose an entire voting bloc, call them racists and question their motivations instead of listening to their frustrations. It has just been proven to work.
I want to listen to your concerns. So you tell me: Affordable healthcare is the deciding factor. I look to the facts and say "No, that doesn't make sense. That can't be it. What are you not telling me?"
You assume that I assume that his "True feelings" are racist.
We could get in to why he considers a third term of Obama's policies to be bad. A blanket statement of "Everything Obama did is terrible forever" also doesn't help describe your brother's true feelings.
On the issue of trust, the choice between "Career Politician" and "80's Businessman" is kind of a toss up. So again, we would need to go in to detail.
I really don't think there has been 'plenty of time' to fix the Affordable Care Act. It was enacted in 2010, majorly phased in in 2014, and will continue to phase in in 2020. So, the magnitude and reach of this is going to take some serious time come to grips with in order to find and fix the problems.
Obviously he is innocent until proven guilty. But an unfounded rejection of the candidate who's message is based on inclusiveness looks a lot like evidence that he is guilty.
So, how do we get the discussion of whether his objections are unfounded?
Except that they are expecting California and New York and other states to pay for their federal government services, while our own states lose money.
> Dominated by Republican voters who profess their distaste for the federal government and its social programs, these are the very states that rank highest on the dependency index.
This attitude of categorizing large amounts of ppl "creepy ppl in small town" and refusing to see / accept that they have legitmate issues and greivanes is exactly why HRC lost. We can not just cut of or forget about a large portion of our nation bc we do not agree with them or we are not better than the Donald.
Of all ppl, HN should see this as an opprotunity. Large pain points of rural america = massive startup opprotunites.
Sorry, that's plain false. I grew up in one of these places. Many of my schoolmates are people who supported this man. I've tried for years to be accepting of them and their ideas. They're friends of mine. I've tried hard to understand what they even want. I've joined their facebook groups; I've gone to their shooting ranges. But, literally 80% or more of what they say is hate and rage and paranoia. I would love to see evidence otherwise.
I think that city folks were derisive of the rural and older voters but never really considered them as the enemy, while on the other side it was clear for the anti-abortion/protectionist/etc people that cities and their liberalism were the enemy.
This changed today I think. I wouldn't be surprised if the next democratic campaign is composed by an alliance of the standard socially progressive base with a populist base that favors poor people from swing states, while treating dark-red states with actual hostility (instead of indifference for their woes)
I'm sure you think it's hilarious to play at this - but you just wait until it becomes acceptable on national TV to call for people's murder like in ex-Yugoslavia or Pakistan. That's where even your joking is heading if you are just tossing this shit out on HN.
No jokes, got it. Good job moderator, you are doing a great job cleaning up. Make sure you fire any coworkers who incited hate speech by voting for Trump.
This is the kind of elitist, holier-than-thou, attitude that created a silent majority in the first place. There's probably a middle ground here that you're alienating by using such crude stereotypes.
They do not have a majority, silent or not, she will win the popular vote. Stop this nonsense of pretending they're a majority, they are not. Trump won the electoral college, not the majority of votes.
No, it isn't semantics; more people voted for Clinton, therefore there is no silent majority voting for Trump; that is a fact. Yes polling overlooked a big chunk of people who voted for Trump, but that chunk is not a silent majority by any stretch of the imagination.
Is that a real question? Because do please show me where I'm insulting 50% of the country. Are you claiming that me saying they aren't a majority constitutes an insult? That's pretty bold, yet that's all I've said so you really can't be referring to anything else.
I think the election of Trump is also a backslash against the PC, SJW, safe-space, trigger-warning, micro aggression tendencies that have been spreading in the U.S. for the last couple of years. This has become too much and millions of Americans are fed up with it, they have now spoken out.
I agree, although I did not support Trump I hope this shows supporters of PC and SJW culture that attacking people not their ideas doesn't enact real change. More importantly the notion that ethics and morals are separate from opinions and feelings.
How else can a bunch of very different people work together and be productive together without some level of decorum and safety? So, we get rid of 'political correctness' (i.e. respectfulness), and what then?
Many people don't like their co-worker's or neighbor's personal beliefs or behaviors. I can't see that letting people be persecuted openly will end well or fruitfully for anyone.
Addendum:
It's interesting that my other comments are getting downvoted or even detached. Wasn't part of this big 'movement' to get rid of political correctness? I guess I don't understand. But, I'll be done. Sorry.
The problem with SJW culture is not that they want respect, it's the utterly disrespectful, hostile, and dogmatic way they go about demanding it, and defining it.
>How else can a bunch of very different people work together and be productive together without some level of decorum and safety? So, we get rid of 'political correctness' (i.e. respectfulness), and what then?
Live and let live.
(Which is exactly what "safe spaces" and "check your privilege" and the political correctness under threat of ostracism _isn't_.)
It is the flavour of the year political topics maintained by a small percentage of college students. It'll soon fade from those buzzwords and take on a new ideology. Due to the internet, it seems like much bigger of an issue than it really is.
PC means politically correct. According to wikipedia[0], this is defined as "used to describe language, policies, or measures that are intended primarily not to offend or disadvantage any particular group of people in society." In short, thinking before you speak because words have consequences and can make people feel things.
SJW means social justice warrior. It carries a negative connotation, being defined[1] as "[carrying] implications of pursuing personal validation rather than any deep-seated conviction, and being engaged in disingenuous social justice arguments or activism to raise personal reputation."
A safe space is somewhere "individuals who feel marginalized [can] come together to communicate regarding their experiences with their perceived marginalization."[2] This originated so that members of the lgbt+ community could talk freely and not feel like they would be persecuted for doing so. People today sometimes use the term to refer to places where they cannot be openly hateful, citing a violation of free speech.
A trigger is something that can cause someone to recall a previous trauma that they have experienced. Examples could be descriptions or portrayals of rape, graphic violence, suicide, or blood. Not all triggers are this directly connected to what people have experienced, but these are what people usually use in trigger warnings. Trigger warnings are little things saying "hey, there's some material following that may potentially trigger memories of trauma."
Microaggressions refer to actions that are not directly aggressive to a member of a marginalized group, but are still hurtful. They can be defined[3] as "rooted in racism, sexism, or discrimination based on nationality or sexual orientation. [They] can be delivered casually or even unconsciously." Examples could be sexist jokes, purposeful discrimination based on race, or misgendering trans people.
Some people use these terms to say that people today are so sensitive, it's just words, etc. Most of those people are not members of any marginalized groups.
> trigger-warning=just google it. there are people that go in panic when they hear certain stuff (kinda insane really)
There are people who experience panic disorder/ptsd. Being "triggered" into a panic attack can literally require hospitalization. Just because you are fortunate enough to not experience this doesn't mean that all people are.
I'm not disagreeing with you, panic/ptsd triggers are a real and terrible thing, but in this context I think the use of "triggered" is referencing the current-internet-pop-culture-meme usage of the word.
Some examples:
"Have a nice day ma'am"
"Did you just assume my gender?!?"
(paraphrased from Tropic Thunder)
"What is it with you people?"
"What do you mean 'YOU people'?"
http://i.imgur.com/l2tY2wf.jpg
http://i.imgur.com/4Kw9O5g.png
http://i.imgur.com/199QTf6.jpg
Which is ironic since Trump's supporters are the most PC, safe-space, triggered people I've seen. Clinton called some of them "deplorables" and there was such hue and cry. Point out that it's racist to criticize a judge based on his ancestry, or to propose banning immigrants based on their religion, and they got so tremendously offended.
This is spot on. "PC" "safe-space" and "SJW" are simply labels for specific people, but the same tendencies behind them exist everywhere.
The same people complaining about PC-culture and SJWs are the same people who are outraged about Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem.
And the same people who fear their religious liberty is under attack because gay people can get married or because Starbucks says "happy holidays" on the side of their green cup.
> Clinton called some of them "deplorables" and there was such hue and cry
I think this was Hillary's single biggest mistake. It was exactly what they were waiting for -- the "Washington Elite" telling them they were less than. It gave the outsiders a rallying call.
> It definitely was a bad move. I can't say I disagree with the sentiment, but it was not a smart thing to say.
That sounds like you think getting caught saying something like that was the issue, not the comment itself.
It's not the first time she's used language like that to refer to Trump's supporters. She was saying things like that repeatedly, in smaller audiences, throughout the campaign. I'm convinced she said it because deep down she's an elitist who really doesn't give a damn about anything besides money and power.
I think a lot of Trump supporters are actually deplorable. I base this on their actions and their words. It's not good to say so, and especially not when you're running for high office, but that's what I mean when I say I don't disagree with the sentiment.
I think you're making a false equivalency here. Both sides are very thin-skinned, no doubt, but one is a direct insult ("you are deplorables") and one is taking general offense on behalf of other people for perceived slights.
I think you're right. It's not really about insults it's about free speech. If you say something white supremacist like "our company hires mostly white people because there are fewer qualified people of color in the workforce" and I say "you're a white supremacist", what will happen?
1) you'll accuse me of name calling, even though I just gave an accurate description of your political platform
2) you'll accuse me of trying to curtail your free speech, even though I was just exercising mine
3) you'll try to invalidate what I'm saying by invoking the "you may not campaign for the rights of others" rule you cited
All of which just serves you avoiding actually addressing my words, which are clear and direct: you are a white supremacist.
If I'm lucky you'll try to defend yourself by rattling through the list of your racist beliefs and then we can have a real discussion.
But most anti-SJW types are so triggered by words like "racism" and "xenophobia" that we never get that far.
You couldn't fit more reactionary buzzwords in there if you tried. Jesus... PC culture is not being able to call out Trump supporters for being bigots or else their feelings will get hurt.
I don't see much evidence that these things matter outside of loud minorities.
That and all societies have these things. In Saudi Arabia it is illegal to insult the prophet and they have declared what amounts to a "safe space" for Islam. That's one extreme and clear example but every society has taboos and ways of enforcing those taboos.
I have a lot of thoughts, but here's one: Hillary focused her entire campaign on why people should stop Trump, at the expense of talking about why she should be president. In general, making the case against someone else rather than the affirmative case for yourself doesn't work. It's reaction versus action.
It's undoubtably true now that there was a very real populist anger towards the existing political order, and as a corollary, the political and economic elites. Instead of harnessing that energy and attempting to create a movement (see: Sanders, Bernie), the Democratic party anointed a candidate who is the definition of establishment.
The results are showing that Hillary lost, at least in large part, due to lower voter turnout, especially among liberal-leaning populations. With all else equal, Podesta, DWS, Neera Tanden, and the rest of the DNC cutup squad ignored the people and ran on the "man, Dangerous Donald, obviously you're not gonna vote for him!" platform. That, and shaming Bernie/Stein supporters about their support for a candidate who can't win - rather than explaining how Clinton's policies would be good. Well, the Democrats and 'moderates' didn't vote for Trump, but they sure didn't have a reason to vote for Clinton either.
> at the expense of talking about why she should be president.
Hillary couldn't make that argument because it would've drawn more attention to her most damning flaw: The fact that she's a textbook demagogue who was on the wrong side of every progressive issue until she found it politically expedient to "evolve".
That's why so many people were so passionate about Sanders. You could go back to C-SPAN videos from 1992 and hear him saying the exact same things he said throughout the whole primary season.
> That's why so many people were so passionate about Sanders. You could go back to CSPAN videos from 1992 and hear him saying the exact same things he said throughout the whole primary season.
This was this the exact same case with Ron Paul 4 years ago but it seemed to hardly matter
Yes, and the same thing happened to Ron Paul. The RNC colluded to ensure he didn't get the nomination. They actually changed rules during the convention to make sure that couldn't happen.
I'm sure if we had wikileaks of the RNC during that time, it would have revealed much of the same type of insider corruption.
> They actually changed rules during the convention to make sure that couldn't happen.
Those knife fights over party rules (especially 40 (b)) made it possible for Trump to get into the running for the nomination, according to many GOP observers. See [1] for an explanation of how.
These election results are a political pressure relief valve: significant swathes of the electorate have been systematically excluded and ignored, then they tried to organize in different ways. First culminating in Ron Paul's bid, then a different wave in Bernie Sanders' bid, and enough formed coalitions behind Trump this time around to cost both parties' establishments their desired outcomes. Ignoring such large groups of the electorate for much longer would have cost us much more in the future. There are very big chunks of the population in a lot of pain for going on decades now, and effectively ignoring that is no longer much of an option going forward.
I see China possibly facing a similar issue with their rural population at some point in the far future.
This! As an example, she had her staff draft a tweet, and it goes through a chain of 12 people to approve before it goes live, I am not sure she knew how to connect with real people.
She doesn't. Her mistake, and the mistake of everyone around her, including the media which defended and parroted everything she said was to believe they would fool people into thinking she is genuine.
A lot of people who voted for her are Democrats -- people she thought she had already in her pockets.
Trump wasn't a top candidate, he wasn't the popular one, has said stupid stuff, and yet people disliked Hillary so much, they still voted for him.
I looked through some emails, it was entertaining (even though CNN said it is illegal to look through them and only media was special and had to interpret them for us). There was very little in those emails of "Hey how does this help ordinary people, let's do something for them" or "You know, we should just tell the truth, let's not really spin this at all".
It is all about how do fool this block "Women, ok, she is a woman, that's easy". Black voters, those are easy... what should we do for them? Organized a rap concert, of course. Because that's not condescending... Let's call Jay-z so he can drop a few N-bombs at them, I hear they like that. She is like the awkward rich person trying to find common ground with peasant that she usually would never associates with and it just looks so fake and stupid... and now more people can see that.
She fought a near perfect 1970s campaign. She got every Columbia school of journalism grad eating out of her hand, total control and ally to the legacy main stream media. Newspapers. Radio. Every academic in the country shilling for her or they lose their position. She had nothing fundamentally new that a 60s radical wouldn't have recognized. There's simply no way she could have lost in 1976.
Of course its 2016 so Trump has approx 5 million NEETs on /POL/ shitposting insane memes about nazi frogs into every normies facebook feed on the planet while epic trolling social and legacy media and releasing all the proof of her corruption via email thru hacked servers on wikileaks. He was the only candidate talking about 2010s issues like the result of 1960s immigration reform or the marginalization and hatred of the white working class. He fought a pretty good 2016 campaign.
This being 2016 and not 1976 its no great surprise which strategy won.
The "R" side needs to take notes that the "D" are likely to make this mistake precisely once. The battles in 2020 and 2024 are not going to be baby boomers still stuck in the '70s losing to '10s millennials again.
Also she hates half the country and calls them deplorables. Somehow, oddly, her despising them didn't magically translate into votes. The sense of entitlement is strong with that one...
People remember! The 47% comment did not do well for Romney neither did the basket of deplorables comment from Hillary. Note to future candidates, don't make these comments. Please run for office only if you are genuinely passionate about serving people.
They have the identification of a common problem in common, but their solutions are the complete opposites ends of the spectrum and mutually exclusive. I don't think a 3rd party could exist that met both their goals.
They agree fully on criminal justice reform and the removal of money from politics, at the very least. If I recall correctly, their stances on government surveillance are similar as well.
It would match up quite well with a party platform based on decentralization of power. Libertarian at the federal level, Republican for large states, Democrat for small states and big cities / metro areas, and liberal for small cities or towns.
This would allow for a lot of social services, but keep them more localized, so they can serve the population better and be held more accountable.
And it would avoid a lot of the problems with big government at the federal level.
If you can't open it, it's an exchange between Gimli and Legolas from the LoTR movie.
Gimli (wearing Bernie hat): I never thought I'd be fighting side by side with a trumpster.
Legolas (with MAGA hat): What about side by side with a deplorable?
Gimli (wearing Bernie hat): Aye.
Gimli (wearing Hillary for Prison 2016 hat): I could do that.
Ordinarily if the choice is bad I'd vote third party, but I really didn't want Hillary in and I was pretty sure this wouldn't be the election when the third party wins it.
Having the same opinion for 24 years is not a virtue.
In the (probably apocryphal) words of Keynes:
> When someone persuades me that I am wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?
It's not a sign of vice either; I'm sure he's been believing that the Earth is round for 24+ years, and that's fine. What matters is accuracy, and updating in the face of new evidence, not consistency. Consistency in the face of new evidence is called faith.
> Having the same opinion for 24 years is not a virtue.
But being right for 24 years is.
She adopted his ideas one by one and then tried to pretend they'd been hers all along. Unfortunately (for her), Democrats aren't that gullible. It was clear that she was only saying what voters wanted to hear, while Bernie truly believed everything he'd been saying for that past 25+ years.
Correct, but being right is orthogonal to consistency. If you are exposed to new evidence, and it points in a different direction than your prior belief, being right means changing your mind; if there is no new evidence, or the weight of new evidence points in the same direction, being right means keeping the same belief.
All I'm saying is, you can't tout keeping the same idea for years as an unqualified good thing, you have to look at the idea and history in detail, and show that it was a good idea all along.
(I'm not objecting to the object-level argument that Clinton does whatever is politically expedient, I'm objecting to the line of argument that it's good for a politician to hold an opinion for a long time, without also showing that the idea is good, and that it was good all along.)
> you can't tout keeping the same idea for years as an unqualified good thing
If that's the critique you hear when comparing Sanders to Clinton, you're not listening very well.
To restate, Sanders didn't just tout the same idea. He's fought for the same core principles throughout his whole career, even when in the clear minority. Overtime, the rest of our culture came around to those ideas (bringing Clinton with it).
His virtue isn't his tenacity. It's his progressive thinking.
But consistently having to change your position is not a good sign. It's good to be able to change your mind. But it's hard to trust someone who changes a lot of their positions.
I don't think the OP was criticizing her lack of consistency. (S)He was criticizing her lack of being on the right side of the issues the first time (in the way that Bernie has been on many issues). It's easy to switch sides when everyone does, and nobody should criticize someone for doing that. But to many people, greatness is being on the right side of the issue before everyone else, and convincing people of its rightness.
I think you need both. You need the uncompromising Bernies, to act as visionaries and point out what the future should be. And, you also need the unprincipled politicians who can compromise, and adapt, and win elections. If Bernie had run in all previous elections, you would have probably gotten presidents Dole, McCain, and Romney. And, who knows, maybe Trump too.
I am not convinced those presidents would have been bad. Can we say that they were all acting in the same way as "unprincipled politicians who can compromise, and adapt, and win elections" or maybe did they believe something earnestly that is just different from what you believe?
Would you rather have an ethically malleable liberal than a principled conservative? In most cases I would rather have the principled politician because they will have some kind of goal to benefit some segment of Americans. Can we really say that any ethically malleable politician, of any flavor, will always help some segment of Americans?
Then as a counter to all this. Nixon did found the EPA.
I agree that maybe those presidents would not have been necessarily bad. Maybe, if Dole would have won, G.W. Bush would have never been elected, and the world would now be a very different (and better) place.
I think malleable politicians are malleable because they try to benefit the largest section of the population that they can. Conservatives, lately, have focused on benefiting a very small segment of the population directly, expecting the benefits to trickle down.
However, the trickle down has not worked. I know very little about economics, but, I remember, headlines in newspapers eight years ago were mainly about unemployment, and the growth of the National debt. The euro was $1.30 (now it buoys around $1.10).
I think the American economy is much better now than it was eight years ago, and a larger section of the population has benefited from that, than when principled conservatives were in the government. (And this is just from an economic point of view, which is a small part of the benefits).
Ya don't get me wrong. I wouldn't totally castigate her for that. I was just trying to explain the criticism. You definitely need both kinds of people for different things at different times.
To boil this down farther, We are looking for a leader, not a follower. Hillary is a follower.
She has demonstrated over her career that she will vote for whatever is popular, lean on "think of the children" issues, and only vote progressively to catch up with the times. In a time where Congressional approval is so low, the American people couldn't stomach electing the epitome of a career politician who seems to have so many skeletons in her closet the door is about to burst (real or imaginary, the impression is there).
We ended up with Trump, which I am absolutely not thrilled about, but at least this will send the Democrats back to the drawing board to come up with something better than "Less Evil." I just pray to the FSM that the Republican House, Senate, Cabinet, and Supreme Court don't turn our great nation into a chop shop in the next 2 / 4 years. We are in for a bumpy ride.
> you can't tout keeping the same idea for years as an unqualified good thing
You're missing the point completely.
I'm not praising Sanders' stubbornness, I'm praising his foresight and vastly superior judgment. He knew what this country needed to do 20 years before Hillary, and he was willing to vehemently defend his opinions despite the overwhelming opposition. The fact that you're trying to turn this into some kind of debate about consistency vs. facts is frankly baffling. It's clear that he was right all along and she was late to the party on every issue that liberals and progressives care about.
And do you really believe she changed her opinion on those issues where she claimed to have "evolved"? I sure don't. We know she still wants TPP to pass, we know she still secretly supports DOMA, we know she had no interest in reigning in Wall Street, we know she (and Chelsea) were halfheartedly pretending to support medical marijuana, etc. etc.. The Hillary Clinton presented to the public was a fictional character designed for one purpose: To win the presidency.
His opinions were sound and his predictions were prescient. He was right. That's it. He was right about Iraq, he was right about financial deregulation, he was right about civil liberties.
Having the same opinion in and of itself is not a virtue, but having wisdom and foresight and conviction and true ground level initiative all at once is far more than just virtuous.
That may be true, but he's also a terrible role model that says extremely racist/sexist things. I couldn't quote president Trump at work without being fired from my job because of his lewd language.
“But If Everybody's Watching, You Know, All Of The Back Room
Discussions And The Deals, You Know, Then People Get A Little Nervous, To Say The Least. So, You Need Both A Public And A Private Position.”
I'm not commenting on the specifics of Berns and Hilary. I don't particularly like Hilary. I'm objecting to this type of argument in general.
Like, what if someone shows up and shows that Trump has had the same opinions all along? Is that a positive for him?
If the ideas are shitty, it doesn't matter how consistent or inconsistent they are. If they're good, I don't care if the person only adopted them 3 years ago, as long as they did for the right reasons, (e.g. not political expediency, I agree.)
I agree that the fact that he's held the same opinions for a long time is evidence that Berns doesn't act out of political expediency, but to me that point is far overshadowed by whether the ideas are any good.
If someone holds a private and public"shitty" opinion and another holds a public opinion as a demagogue and privately holds the same "shitty" opinions, who would you rather? The one open and honest with their opinions or the dishonest one who will lie and say anything to win the popular vote?
>but to me that point is far overshadowed by whether the ideas are any good
Mind telling me where his ideas are bad? Most of his beliefs are both long held, progressive, and in my opinion, largely agreeable.
>>Having the same opinion for 24 years is not a virtue.
It is if they were good opinions the whole damn time. Being for marriage equality for 24 years is a virtue. Being for an improved social safety net for 24 years is a virtue. Being for universal healthcare for 24 years is a virtue.
Yep, the key about these is moral consistency. He was morally consistent the whole time, which shows integrity. Now, whether his positions were the right ones is another story...
You're the only one repeatedly using the word "consistency" and then claiming that word is bad, which is kind of funny. That's because its a mistake you've made. That's OK. The correct word to use is "coherent". He's a believer in a complete and wide ranging logical philosophical system explaining the world resulting in a set of mutually compatible coherent opinions on all kinds of issues. That's why he's a statesman who's earned the respect of people even like me who disagree with him but can see a logical deeply reasoning fellow rational mind. And you try to compare that to someone who's idea of a philosophy, of the right systemic way to live a life, is to look at the polls, see X, Y, and Z are leading, well, guess I'm temporarily a supporter of X, Y, and Z. They're so dissimilar its almost impossible to compare the two.
You speak of faith and belief a lot. Bernie is like a wise theological scholar. Personally I think he's wrong about quite a few things, but I recognize the strong morals and ethics, the personal virtue, the deep rational thought, the coherent inter relatedness behind his system. He's a personification of sometimes wise people are wrong, but they still remain wise. He's not for me personally, I like other folks, but I'm proud he's an American and if he were the leader I could respect him despite disagreement. And his female opponent is like a televangelist seeking ratings and pledge drives, a faith healer, a fake messiah. And people somehow wonder how she lost. Doesn't her show have the highest ratings? Doesn't she make the best promises in her sermons? Don't our holiest people fall all over themselves to celebrate and show off their own holiness in supporting her? How could a charlatan like her not win, indeed?
> Having the same opinion for 24 years is not a virtue.
You are deliberately misinterpreting the statement. Of course having the same opinion for 24 years by itself is not a virtue! The point is: he has had the same public stance on things that matter : gay marriage, healthcare, etc. In today's climate, when politicians change their views based on the most recent polling, this is indeed a virtue.
Bernie's viewpoints were so far left that he had to hammer on them for 40+ years until the stars aligned and we all began to recognize the pearls of truth they held. Twenty years ago I could not have considered his viewpoint but now with more age and empathy driven into me I can get behind (most of) his viewpoint. Thank God for Bernie and hopefully we can rebirth a new democratic party that can integrate some of his views to help recapture a large part of the 59,000,000 people that felt compelled to vote for Trump.
As crazy as it might seem the USA has been right of center for a long (since WW2) and it is generally working well for us (we are so rich we don't even understand it). It is clearly not perfect (healthcare) but it does often work in unintuitive way (decade on decade carbon release decrease).
EDIT - Even though I think Trump is an existential threat to the USA, so have many of our leaders. Maybe 'us' wouldn't be the US if we weren't just a bit crazy. I must accept that I might be wrong about Trump be universally bad and see what happens.
> Having the same opinion for 24 years is not a virtue.
That was not what GP was saying at all. He was saying that Bernie has always stood for what he believes is the right thing to do, whereas Hillary would pick a stance based on its political value.
There's a dependency tree required to get to the point of "vote", and you have to pass thru "respect" first.
I disagree with, but respect, Sanders, Stein, Warren, Feingold (and some other lefties). Hillary equals revulsion, repulsion. I can't be talked from "respect" to "vote" with someone I can't even respect first.
The D party worked very hard on converting "respect" people to "vote" people. I think they achieved 100% success. The problem is most of the country can never respect her, and there was zero effort put into making her respectable (perhaps it was recognized as impossible?)
There's something fundamentally wrong internally with the D party when the ground seems to be crawling with respectable (possibly votable!) candidates but instead we get a movie caricature of Lex Luther combined with a slightly more chicken hawk bloodthirsty Joker from a sequel rejected in the 90s. There's something just horribly fundamentally wrong with how people gain political power inside the D party, resulting in the wrong leaders at the wrong times.
She'll be within one percentage point of Trump in the end in overall votes (and it looks like she'll beat him actually). All of these commentators seem to be making broad generalizations about the state of politics and how the strategy is obviously going to fail but the reality is that if the election was very slightly different in ways that neither campaign could really control it would've gone the other way. Maybe I'm wrong but all this just reminds me of all of the BS narratives that ESPN concocts to fill air time after football games.
That seems very "ends justify the means". Aren't you concerned that pragmatically the Democratic party is objectively unable to effectively govern itself? Given a choice of respectable statesmen something necrotic is instead selecting failure-prone sociopaths instead? Do you have a theoretical model where competent leadership somehow would result in worse end results? Wouldn't competent leadership, for a change, result in a permanent Democratic majority which theoretically would be a good "ends"?
Most of her troubles were difficult to predict ahead of time, especially the email server and the leaks. Besides those she's actually a pretty good candidate for the party. The DNC pushed against Bernie the same way that the RNC pushed against Trump (and in previous election people like Ron Paul) and the difference was at the end of the day Bernie just didn't have the support. I'm not the biggest fan of the DNC but I'm not seeing how the leadership did anything this election different than any other election.
The popular vote is irrelevant for actually winning - what matters is how states at the margins vote. Look at Michigan. Look at Ohio. Look at Pennsylvania. For the Democrats, Hillary was an unmitigated disaster in all of those areas.
Also, keep in mind that most of the electorate votes against party lines, even if the party were to nominate Satan. She completely failed the margins.
I agree with you but a lot of the troubles that she had were difficult to see ahead of time, especially the email server and the leaks. It's easy to slap on a narrative after the fact but at the time Hillary really was the choice most likely to win the the election. I'm not saying that she didn't do an exceptionally poor job in certain areas but all she needed to do was one or two percent better and there would be the narrative of it being a landslide the other way.
> a lot of the troubles that she had were difficult to see ahead of time, especially the email server
Sorry, this is a totally facetious argument. She should have known before that server went up that using a personal email address to circumvent FOIA (not to even get into classified info mishandling) was "wrong". She knew this years ago. She didn't care. She didn't think she'd get caught, and now that she has, she might even get away with it.
That people found out about it before the election is the silver lining here. The stormcloud is, every even remotely well-armed government hacked her server at some point during her tenure as SoS and has everything on it.
But to not put a polarizing, inexperienced politician like Trump away easily is what makes the commentators (and me) think there are larger trends at work.
I agree that there are trends at work but many of the criticisms of her were only apparent in the last few months so saying that the DNC and democrats in general should've known somehow that she wasn't a good candidate and that their picking of leadership was fundamentally flawed seems odd to me.
Maybe if she had divorced and denounced Bill before the campaign run... They were not exactly free of scandal when Bill was in office. Her secretary of state term was... memorable. The situation was only unpredictable to maybe the youngest Millennials.
She was pretty unfazed by most of those scandals in the end, though. I think part of the reason they liked her is because she has been through so many scandals and was still the political force that she was. In the end they were wrong but a year ago it wasn't that unreasonable.
The reason you don't respect her is not from her doing or the doing of the DNC. It is because there has been a plurality of the political community that has been working for literal decades to destroy her reputation. If you repeat a lie loud enough and long enough it becomes true. In reality she is in the normal range of candidate. I grant you she is closer to the bad side than the good (at least in most people's mind), but she is no more corrupt or politically calculating than your average member of Congress.
But that's not what people believe! The Democratic party could have accepted that the right wing press had done a character assassination, and nominated somebody else, but they didn't see how they could lose.
I can't really disagree with you, but it is a sad state of affairs that we are asking one of this country's political parties to bow to the propaganda of the other.
To win a battle, you need to choose the right tactics for the battlefield you are actually fighting on, not the ideal battlefield you think you are entitled to fight on.
Or, to adapt from Donald Rumsfeld, you go into an election with the electorate you have, not the electorate you wish you had.
I know it's sad and upsetting. But propaganda these days is extremely powerful and I don't know how to counter it. If I oppose this kind of propaganda, do I try to counter it with my own propaganda? What are the other choices?
The problem with that conspiracy theory is it doesn't explain why her. Its clearly not gender or we've be getting the two minutes hate on Warren and Stein. Its clearly not simply being high profile because even pres Obama doesn't catch as much heat as Hillary. It's as if there's something about the Clintons. Sometimes a criminal is just a criminal, simple as that.
There could have been a vast conspiracy to frame the Unibomber or Al Capone or John Dillinger or Nixon. No one can explain why them. Therefore I think it infinitely more likely they were just crooks.
Because she has been in politics for for 30 something years, been on the national stage for 20 something years, and has been "the next president" for roughly 10 years. This wasn't one hit job, this was decades of concentrated work that eventually broke the camel's back.
That's because nobody gave a shit about Bernie until he tried to run for president. He was never a threat to anyone or a challenge to the status quo (like having a female president is).
"challenge to the status quo (like having a female president is)"
How is "I'll do exactly what the establishment tells me to do, just like the last couple figureheads, except in a $10K Chairman Mao pantsuit" a challenge to much of anyone?
The country has a not so comfy history with black folks, yet men and women have lived together for eternity, so why didn't Obama get it perhaps 100 or 10000 times worse? Surely you're not a racism denialist? Perhaps no one accused Obama of being a criminal because... he isn't? I mean I never voted for him but I can respect him, he's a wise constitutional scholar who probably deserves a supreme court appointment to an empty liberal seat when this is all over. I disagree with him on many issues but he's no crook and he's reasonably wise. He got teased, essentially, about a technicality of being born in a foreign country and being muslim which frankly don't matter and never turned out to be a problem and never went past offending people on twitter.
Palin was hated in the mainstream media, but it was just a generic Quayle style two minutes hate. How come no one provided any evidence of her crimes? Perhaps... there were none? Could there possibly be any hatred hotter than the DNC controlled MSM's hatred toward Palin, yet there's nothing but sophistry against her because she's clean? I wouldn't describe Palin as being a bright bulb or a beacon of wisdom yet I voted for her, she's not that bad.
Palin is the perfect comparison to Clinton because there was just as much smoke around her. For example Troopergate[1] is the exact kind of non-serious controversy that has hounded Clinton her entire career. Except no one really cares when Palin did this because she never was that close to actual power. Meanwhile if this happened to Clinton there would be endless discussion of it.
Warren has little power and Stein even less. No one bothers to villify women until they get real power. Everyone was cordial to Hillary until she started pushing for health care reform in Congress as a First Lady. It's about people stepping outside of their perceived place.
Hillary didn't need any help destroying her reputation.
As a matter of public record, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated in her FBI interview that she could not recall briefings at the State department pertaining to handling classified information, nor could she give an example of how information might be classified.
Now this is either a lie, or a self-admission that disqualifies a person to hold the position of commander-in-chief of the armed forces, privy to the most sensitive information in the government.
How can you fault a voter who observes these facts and casts their vote for someone else?
Except that all is normal politician CYA type doublespeak. That isn't a good trait and it is something Clinton is certainly guilty of doing, but it is something almost all politicians are guilty of doing. Like I said, Clinton isn't a great candidate without faults. However a large group of this country has worked tirelessly to make these common politician flaws appear as if they are completely abnormal and disqualifying for the presidency.
The Republicans dislike Obama just as much as Clinton, yet his presidency has been virtually scandal-free and he remains quite popular. Clinton's problem is that Democrats and Independents who aren't politically predisposed to dislike her have legitimate concerns about her trustworthyness.
I like your optimism, but do you remember what first brought our new president elect into the political sphere? It certainly wasn't to praise Obama for his clean and scandal free record.
People did not think she was genuine. They disliked her so much, that they picked a TV personality, said stupid stuff and off-color remarks. That says a lot about the level of disconnectedness between what she/her team/media thought of her and what a lot of people, even traditionally voting Democrats thought of her.
I guess nobody around her who had an inkling dared to raise their hand. Can't even imagine what they'd say "Ma'am, people don't believe what you are saying, can you be more genuine a bit?"...
>I guess nobody around her who had an inkling dared to raise their hand. Can't even imagine what they'd say "Ma'am, people don't believe what you are saying, can you be more genuine a bit?"...
Check out of some of the leaked emails. I'm not sure if they said it to her directly, but they regularly remarked on how insincere and artificial she came across as.
Ah, interesting. So people were warning her, she just didn't listen. It was probably like large ship at that point, it was full of steam (donations and promises), moving ahead and there was just no stopping or turning it around easily.
Actually, my impression is she tried to listen... she just didn't have it in her. There were many moments through the campaign where she tried to come across as organic and authentic, but even that seemed awkward and forced.
She just has almost no charisma or jovial presence, unlike Trump.
This was actually what I thought was Clinton's best quality. I believe it's called "triangulation" and it means figuring out what compromise can be achieved in the current political circumstances and going with that rather that what you believe to be the one true right answer, if that would lead to less pragmatic progress.
Basically, "the perfect is the enemy of the good" applied to politics.
e.g. "Don't ask, don't tell" is a crappy policy compared with letting gay people serve openly, but it's an improvement on the status quo at that time which was setting up sting operations to catch out gay servicemen and throw them out of the army.
I guess I'm condoning her fighting for something she doesn't truly believe is right, as long as it's better than what's currently the case. Does that make me bad? Does it make her bad?
This Benghazi thing; it's a perfect example of the double standards as applied to Clinton. Prior to Benghazi, were there 13 attacks on embassies and 60 deaths under President George W. Bush. Where was the outrage then? Where were the hearings then?
Bush wasn't elected by progressives. Being pro-war isn't going to earn you progressive votes. The progressives sat out this election because Hillary wasn't progressive enough. There were 4M fewer votes cast this year than in 2008.
It should have. And it would have if he belonged to the party that contains a majority portion of anti-war/pacifist types. Can't sell out the major beliefs of your base and expect them to show up at the polls.
The Iran deal is huge. True it's early to tell how well it will work, but still it's there.
Then there's Cuba. Not a big deal in global terms, but a watershed in America's history. Although the payoffs for these mainly accrue to Kerry, it was Hilary who made them happen.
You don't have to qualify your statements anymore. The veil of illusion has come down and the sock puppet masters have ended their contracts, so you won't be attacked unfairly for pointing out the truth.
This was actually what I thought was Clinton's best quality. I believe it's called "triangulation" and it means figuring out what compromise can be achieved in the current political circumstances and going with that rather that what you believe to be the one true right answer, if that would lead to less pragmatic progress.
Basically, "the perfect is the enemy of the good" applied to politics.
A valid point, in spirit.
But the basic problem with the Clintonian philosophy (a term which was coined during Bill's tenure, actually) is that they both took "triangulation" to such an extreme (and made so many 180-degree flip-flops on basic issues, which really should have been principle gut calls -- Hillary's gay rights being a classic example) that the end, you could never get a fix on, let alone believe them what they stood for. It's like nailing jello to a wall, basically.
To be truly successful in politics -- the stance to take (which I hope this election proves) is not "triangulation at all costs" (a.k.a. Standard Clintonianism). Nor is it "perfection at all costs". But it does require a keen sense of judgement to know when, exactly, to make a proper gut call between the two -- and stand up for the right thing, and say the right thing. Even if it seems the majority is against you, or no one is listening to your speeches on C-PAN.
That, and a sense for not letting one's self be "played" (in the sense that Hillary appears to have genuinely believed both the Bush's administration line about the imminent threat of WMD in Iraq, and his private assurances -- albeit not encoded in the resolution that she tragically voted for -- that he wouldn't invade unless all diplomatic avenues had been exhausted; or in the sense that both of the Clintons allowed themselves to be played, for decades, by the Christian Right).
It's interesting how my own political positions change over time and are completely unrecognizable compared to 20 years ago. I consider it a strength. Yet for a politician it's associated with hypocrisy or triangulation.
I'm a big fan of Bernie, but I'm not sure I want a politician with early 90s views of everything...
It's a matter of fundamental core values applied to situational matters. Opinions and preferences shift as time goes by. The populace sees this in the politicians of today. Bernie's actions are lauded not because they are the same, but because they represent an integrity to the core values of human life & equality. Politicians claim to value life & equality, but manifest their hypocrisy by going to war and endangering soldier's lives for profit. This is the disingenuity of the status-quo politicians.
There are emotional and rational ways to make any particular argument. She just chose to focus on arguments that only her staffers care about, rather than appealing to the (obviously) very real populist energy and anger.
Facts do matter, and I think it's disingenuous to really argue that they don't, even to the American electorate. I think the overriding truth is that politics is about engagement, and it's a battle - just because you have the 'right' ideas doesn't mean you will win. You need to engage, encourage, and motivate people to vote for you - which the Clinton campaign could not do.
Obviously. I think the point being made though is that they seem to matter less than many people thought. Trump ran a campaign that was light on facts, and in many cases used misinformation in lieu of facts. The fact that this is less important than what, if it's true, amounts to a very slight level of corruption in the other candidate (I'm unsure why I should have considered the idea that money given to a charity would get you semi-favorable treatment with regard to an audience as the horrible thing it was presented as) is something I find upsetting.
I understand that people are upset with their governance, but the only thing that comes to mind when I think of this situation is "to cut off your nose to spite your face."
So? It's not like she's taking it out to buy herself houses and cars? At most, I think you could make a case that she's used the profile of the charity to boost her political career. If that's the case, and the charity gets income that it spends on worthy causes and she gets clout, well that's not the best outcome, but it's sure far from the worst.
> 2. charity or "charity"? - valid question, given large percentage of its income is spent on overhead
I'm fairly sure this has been thoroughly debunked. The amount of income to that charity that goes to overhead is average by all accounts I've seen that are reputable[1]. I've looked, because this has come up before. If you have a source that says otherwise that is not some random blog that references some other random blog[2], I would be happy to read it.
2: I'm way too tired of debunking what people consider a valid source once they've decided that all the mainstream media is biased and untrustworthy. It's hard to tell whether in some cases the errors are due to incompetence, negligence or with purpose. Undoubtedly a useful feature to some.
I realise it's probably too late to correct facts, and it doesn't seem to matter much anyway, but a large percentage of the charity donations did not go on overhead. They operation was very highly rated by charity watchdogs.
The soundbite you often hear is about X% spent on salaries and only Y% donated to charity. Which is true, but misleading because the Foundation actually pays people to administer medicine. It's not the type of charity that just hands the money to other groups.
How do you figure 2. ? The foundation's 990 and audited financials[1] show ~90% of FY2104 revenues ($217mm) going to program services, with the majority of that ($143mm) going to provide healthcare overseas via [2], and the rest disbursed over a collection of other programs.
> Facts do matter, and I think it's disingenuous to really argue that they don't, even to the American electorate.
Facts matter, but emotion matters more. Foe example, some Trump supporters believe that parts of the US are now governed by Sharia law. The fact is wrong, but the underlying fear and racism is real and so much more powerful. The fact doesn't really matter.
Contrast her making her candidacy a Feminist (and by absurd extrapolation LGBTQ and diversity) issue with Obama's campaign. Yes, everybody felt good about having elected a black president when it was over but he didn't offer "black cards" for download on his website and show grandiose self-promoting videos about the Black Man's Struggle.
A large part of Hillary's campaign (both officially and via her supporters on social media) was actively shaming people into voting for "the woman" instead of "the bigot". Unsurprisingly that seems to have backfired, leaving many liberals flabbergasted how "Women for Trump" was ever a thing.
I would have been upset with either candidate winning but the entire candidacy showed the worst side of American election cycles: mudslinging, character assassination and trying to convince everyone the other guy is literally the devil. Trump's accusations of Clinton being "a liar" and "a criminal" (IOW a typical career politician) were pretty harmless compared to the hyperbole (deserved or not) hauled at him.
Agreed. Ideas are only as strong as the arguments defending them, and the problem with feminism as identity politics is that it takes a bunch of unconnected ideas and packages them in such a way that if you attack the ideas then you're attacking women. This makes it so that bad ideas and bad arguments don't get weeded out and just keep getting repeated.
For whatever barriers Clinton faced due to her gender, she also wasn't held accountable early enough for a lot of legitimately bad things that she's done, which came back to hurt her in the end.
> Trump's accusations of Clinton being "a liar" and "a criminal" (IOW a typical career politician) were pretty harmless compared to the hyperbole (deserved or not) hauled at him
I'm sorry but that makes no sense to me. Now maybe it's my liberal tendencies talking but the things that have come out of his mouth are flat out dangerous for a person who has that much power (now). Not much of it was hyperbole because it didn't have to be. He was already after foreigners, women, "the washington elite", the internet etc. before any of the media got involved. He was addicted to the cycle coverage but he still said all of those things and you can't wish that away.
In politics, as in real life, it is important to judge people on what they do not what they say.
While Clinton mastered the "experienced, competent" persona, what she actually did was mostly driven by her ambition to become the first female president.
Trump, who has been accused of being a bigot, has always been very liberal towards LGBT (see his interview for Rolling Stone from a few years ago), while Hillary had been strongly against gay marriage until it became very clear public opinion changed in favor of it.
How can one be liberal towards LGBT folks while picking Pence as a running mate?
I can see him being apathetic towards them: if they get married, that's not my problem, but if they get "conversion therapy," that's also not my problem.
Now, I'm not sure that bigotry is the right word for that. But it is something at least as monstrous.
(Also, as a tangent: let's please not confuse gay marriage with "LGBT" as a whole. Trump has come down firmly on the evangelicals' side about trans people and bathrooms. If we mean "LGB" or "gay marriage", we should say what we mean.)
Yes, Pence's position is unfortunate, but he was brought in to please the religious supporters.
I believe Trump's administration will focus on pressing trade/economics and foreign policy issues, not bathroom identification issues, which affect 0.3% of the population.
To people disappointed with his victory, the consoling fact should be that Trump is not a religious nut. Yes, he said things about Supreme Court/abortion - as a Republican, you have to, to win the primaries.
Well, one would have hoped that the federal government would have stepped in and voided the laws being made by religious nuts at the state/local level. Obama was trying to do that. It seems exceedingly unlikely that Trump will continue trying to do that.
Also, while these issues directly affect 0.3% of the population, it is a subset of the 99.7% of the population that's calling for these bills. Perhaps enough of a subset that he'll continue wanting to please the religious supporters.
Yes, I remember that. I would not have called 2004 Obama liberal on LGBT issues.
Also, and maybe I'm missing something because I'm not personally affected by this, but I think there's quite a difference between telling two adults they can't get married, and telling a child that they're going to be miserable and flawed their whole life if they don't figure out how to be straight, and we'll give you electric shocks to condition you out of being gay.
Or between telling two adults they can't get married, and telling an adult they can't use the bathroom. (Which is the effective result of the bathroom bills: a trans person is legally unwelcome in one restroom and socially unwelcome, to the point of causing legal trouble until a judge looks at their birth certificate, in another.) I would much prefer never to be able to get legally married than never to be able to use a public restroom.
There are plenty of anti-gay-marriage people, even evangelicals, who don't support "conversion therapy" and who don't believe that government should be regulating which bathroom you're using. I would be very willing to call someone liberal on LGBT issues despite picking, say, Obama of 2004 as their running mate.
I'm not defending either candidate here. I have no skin in this game (and besides, it's all decided now anyway).
But I've never before seen a candidate -- and especially that candidate's supporters -- be so viciously attacked as Trump was in this election campaign. I know certain liberal groups think "tone policing" is fallacious but I don't agree with this and neither do half of the American voters apparently (please excuse the tired phrase).
Throughout this campaign I've seen HRC supporters lump in abstainees and third party voters with Trump supporters in a way that only reminds me of George W Bush's "with us or against us" rhetoric. I've seen HRC supporters sever ties with family members who announced they would vote for Trump. I've seen them shame and ridicule anyone saying they would do anything other than vote for HRC. I've even seen them call for boycotts of companies run by alleged Trump supporters.
It's not that Trump isn't a disagreeable character, its that he has been singled out and denounced with every imaginable slur and every single accusation levelled at him was taken at face value.
I know this is not solely the work of Clinton's campaign and that the election unfortunately coincided with the BLM movement, various Islamist attacks in the West (including the massacre in Orlando) and the peak of SJW conflicts at American universities but this was a despicable crapshoot and you know it.
If a family member said the things Trump has said, our relationship would be very strained.
If a company's CEO or owner said the things Trump has said, I would call for boycotting the company until that person no longer ran it.
That has nothing to do with the Democratic party, nor his running for president (I'm not even allowed to vote): It's because Trump's ideas are today's equivalent to being opposed to interracial marriage back then.
I think the personal attacks on Clinton were far, far worse: 'crooked Hillary', 'such a nasty woman', 'lock her up' (or 'hang that bitch' from the Trump supporters) without any due process, attacking her for her husbands infidelities, Comey sends an ambiguously worded letter to congress and it becomes 'she will surely be prosecuted', she is 'rigging the election',...
Not to specifically defend the people you mentioned, but democracy really is twisted that way.
People associate "democracy" with "fairness". With "representation". They associate it with "everybody's voice is heard". When 40+% of the people vote for something, and that something doesn't come through, that's 40+% of the voices being ignored. Don't disregard those simply because they didn't break the 51% barrier.
We can also agree that Trump played the entire electorate. He strategically chose to run as republican, he played the media like puppets to have a free platform to shout from, etc. Those things don't feel fair.
In fact, the entire election really seemed to be a pissing context at times. People also associate democracy with "elevated discourse" and I don't think anyone can claim this happened.
And of course, the US democratic system is really poor compared to other countries (France has one of the best, by comparison: two round voting and none of that electoral college nonsense). But that's another topic.
To me, this is the advantage of a Republic (which is what the US federal gov't really is). It can have some of the same issues of the tyranny of the majority, but ultimately you have a human being in charge who needs to listen to what others say. If we simply voted on every issue at hand it would quickly devolve into emotional appeals for everything, rather than letting a representative listen to expert opinion on the consequences of a decision.
If you can run a Republic with little hatred and division, a nifty opportunity opens up if the nomination process proposes wise and respectable candidates. For example I dislike Obamas ideas but I can respect the guy as someone who's not a crook and has a solid brain on his head and a bit of wisdom. So if the guy who agrees with me wins, I'm chill because we have a comfy echo chamber. If the other guy wins I'm a little bummed but I'm still chill because the have a who's wrong about some things, but wise enough to keep us out of complete disaster.
That's the tragedy of not running Bernie. He's respectable and wise and no crook. I voted for Trump and I'm glad he won, but if Bernie won, I'd be chill enough till next time.
Sort of like mate selection, where kids childishly try to find an appropriate gender photocopy of themselves, whereas once you're over a certain age, its more important to find a mate who's wise. Its OK if my wife likes my hobbies when we were young, but now that we're old its OK if she doesn't, because we respect each other and think each other are wise enough that it'll be OK.
This time around I don't think the right could trust Hillary so it was win at all costs. Meanwhile we "have to" social signal the opposite, but the left pretty much trusts Trump because lets face it, if you think he's an idiot or lunatic, make sure you mention your billion dollar self made net worth first to even qualify... lets face it, a guy who's worked successfully side by side with corporations and banks and unions and politicians for decades resulting in a billion bucks can certainly navigate a giant complex country pretty darn well; he's proven over a couple decades that he's wise enough that its gonna be OK, even if you disagree with everything he believes in and everything he's ever said. So I simply don't think the left wanted it as bad as the right.
It fundamentally comes down to you've got one candidate that wants to do to the entire USA what they did to New York, which is pretty darn cool, and another that wants to do to the entire USA what they did to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Benghazi, ... so obviously one side is a little more motivated than the other.
First of all, how do you know his net worth? Are you taking his word for it? He said that his net worth fluctuates “with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings” [1]. Any accountant will tell you that a person's net worth does not fluctuate with the feelings of that person.
Unfortunately, we will probably never know, because he hasn't released his tax returns (which would at least have given us a partial picture).
The Economist tried to compare his financial performance with the S&P 500 [2] and is not impressed: on the longest timeframe (since 1986) he grossly underperforms the S&P 500.
Then there is the question of how he got his money. He seems to have left a long string of investors, banks, suppliers and partners that he essentially conned [3]. In the latter part of his carreer no American bank wanted to do business with him anymore (one of the reasons he switched to licensing his name instead of developing projects himself).
Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet's partner at Berkshire Hathaway, a staunch republican and a man of brilliant insights who knows a thing or two about business (he made his fortune by evaluating companies and their management) says this about Trump [4]: "Do I consider Donald Trump an ideal decision maker or manager of anything? And the answer is no. The last person almost I'd want as the president of the US".
If you voted for this man because of his business acumen, I'm afraid you are the latest in a long line of people he successfully conned.
It fundamentally comes down to you've got one candidate that wants to do to the entire USA what they did to New York, which is pretty darn cool, and another that wants to do to the entire USA what they did to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Benghazi, ...
You are grossly misrepresenting the facts and policies of both candidates. It's hard to take any of the rest of your post seriously when it closes with that paragraph.
This comment started off well and went off the rails pretty quickly. My main point is that whoever wins regardless of your party affiliation, there's a real person in charge and we aren't subject to the will of the majority.
People associate "democracy" with "fairness". With
"representation". They associate it with "everybody's
voice is heard".
Which is really a matter of perspective. The people claiming that "democracy is dead" would be crowing about the "power of the people" if they were in the 51% and not the 49%.
Fairness doesn't mean "I get my way". And unfortunately, it's binary. Your candidate wins or loses. A loss feels like being ignored, not representation of your 49%.
That's a feature of specific choices about the electoral system and system for government. One'such which are not universal among modern democracies and which empirically lead to lower satisfaction with government and less effectively representative government.
To which we have to look at ourselves. We continue to set ourselves up for these binary choices. Where are the moderates that appeal to 80% of the population, not 40% at each extreme?
Part of this is due to the fact, I think, that Hillary won the popular vote. In fact, the Dems have won the popular vote 3 elections in a row, and 4 of the last 5. But they only have Obama's 2 terms to show for it.
My guess is that is where some of the "broken democracy" language comes from.
A difference of 0.2% (around 250k votes) in popular vote is not conclusive.
If USA chose the president by popular vote, the campaigns would have been run differently, and some people especially in "sure" states could have had different voting behavior.
I do agree that the US Electoral College system feels obsolete and should be modernized.
Well, let's not forget that Hillary won the popular vote and lost the electoral college. More Americans wanted Hillary than Trump. And given all the flaws with the electoral college that are well documented (and the overwhelming majority of Americans that want to abolish the system), it's hard not to feel slighted. Especially when this happened before in 2000 and it appears it will continue to happen.
Democracy is not just voting (which the US is doing badly at, given it's system).
It's also respect for the rule of law (Rechtsstaat), democratic processes, democratic institutions, respect for minorities, women, separation of church and state, accepting dissent, and a pluralism of opinions.
Trump is not very good at these.
And the voting itself may become an issue in itself - now with total control by Republicans, they can increase the voter suppression to keep old white men in power for a couple more decades.
The "RIP Democracy" bit is maybe a bit dramatic, but the concern for the already weak democracy is very real.
This election results, the way I see it, is a big middle finger to the political establishment. Again, this has happened in my own country's capital citiy's election, an outsider won majority. If he does anything +ve is not the question, politicians need to stop acting as the elite, that's the underlying problem.
If the majority of your electorate allow themselves to be manipulated by a blatant demagogue; whose stated policy goals are clearly ruinous; who blatantly disrespects women, veterans, and non-whites; and who not-so-subtley advocates violence against his political opponents...
...then yes, your democracy might as well be dead.
> What I find truly amazing is how people say "RIP Democracy" (not all of them), when it were the people of the US who elected Trump, didn't they?
The plurality winner of the popular vote was Hillary Clinton; Trump's victory is directly dependent on the ways America's Presidential election system defies democracy.
> This campaign was all about emotion, not rationality.
Keep thinking that and you'll lose the next election as well. Amongst Trump supporters I know it was about jobs, the economy, the wars and a feeling that politicians no longer represented them.
I have no doubt there are some Trump supporters who are racist and sexist, but that doesn't win you the middle swing states and the rust belt (especially those states that voted Obama but went against Clinton)
> Amongst Trump supporters I know it was about jobs, the economy
Aren't unemployment and the economy doing better now than 8 years ago? My impression is Trump just fueled the emotion of pessimism (things are awful, they were great before), without neither the facts to back it (because he didn't care) nor a plan beyond the old "the more you cut taxes, the better the economy".
Even for the people that think the economy is important enough that the racism and sexism should be ignored, that's still playing to their emotion.
> Hillary focused her entire campaign on why people should stop Trump
Until now I thought that wasn't a bad strategy against Trump as he had said and done so many repulsive things far far beyond what I would of thought the voting population would of tolerated.
For example, "grabbing women by the p*y" I would of thought would have alienated the entire female voting population.
For some reason, some women voters seemed to of tolerated this. It should of been easy win for Hilary.
But consider, "got 'em by the balls" is a commonly used expression. If Hillary had said that she had got Col Ghaddafi "by the balls" no-one would have batted an eyelid. It certainly would not have alienated the entire male voting population. The double standard meant that focussing on this one line, undermined Hillary's campaign.
If you're unfamiliar with the context, Trump was actually talking about grabbing women.
This is a false equivalence- Hillary would have to say that she wanted to "walk up to ghaddafi and open-hand grab his testicles" for this to be a proper analogy.
And that she did it so that she could enjoy the feeling of those balls without care for gadhaffi's feelings -- and replace gadhaffi with "any man, including those for whom subjugation is unlikely to be generally seen as deserved"
The objectionable thing about the "grab them by the pussy" tape is NOT that Trump dared to use the word "pussy" in a private conversation that ended up being recorded.
The objectionable thing is that it indicates that Trump has, on multiple occasions, grabbed women's genitalia without their consent, purely because he's a celebrity and nobody stops him.
If Hillary had said that she had gotten Col. Ghaddafi "by the balls", I agree that nobody would have batted an eyelid because everybody would have understood that she was not discussing a situation in which she habitually sexually assaulted men and was able to get away with it because she was the Secretary of State.
Yeah, this is a lot of why I am rejecting the easy answers. John Edwards was one of the most populist Democratic candidates we've seen in a while, and his political career ended because he had an affair. I can't really blame anyone for thinking that Trump's sexual misadventures would be a serious weakness.
I think this analysis is incorrect. Edwards' affair was a problem because it told people he wasn't a trustworthy or professional guy. He brought his mistress along on the campaign trail. Meanwhile he depicted himself as a standup guy. It outed him as a phony with bad judgement.
> In general, making the case against someone else rather than the affirmative case for yourself doesn't work. It's reaction versus action.
Well that's blatantly false.
That was Trump's entire campaign. All I've heard all year was "Benghazi", "emails" and "crooked", all of which were just rephrasing of the same thing, repeated in perpetuum. It most definitely worked.
> All I've heard all year was "Benghazi", "emails" and "crooked"
It's true, that's all you heard, but that's not all that he was saying and the part that you didn't hear ... that's why he won. Those who voted for him heard a different message, one specific to their economic circumstances. It's always the economy. And while the aggregate macro picture looks good, we are going through some major shifts underneath those numbers.
Well your problem is you are using the wrong news sources then. I'm not even American and I know at the very least that Trump started out with a very bombastic and completely un-Republican plan that immediately got the people's attention.
He promised huge tax cuts, a reformed health care system which is more accessible and tariffs that brought back manufacturing jobs. He promised a lot of other things but I'm mentioning what attracted the working class towards him.
That's one piece of the puzzle though. I wouldn't say he won only on that platform. He also won on platforms of change, law and order, and a return to old school America. I personally thought it was a disgusting campaign that used fear mongering and hate to vilify numerous parts of the nation, but I would not say his only platform was "don't vote for Hillary". But for Hillary I would definitely say the opposite was her strongest message, perhaps even her only one.
Anecdotally I think I have to agree with you. Most of my friends are the sort of college educated millennials that voted overwhelmingly for Clinton but even when talking about her there seemed to be a social stigma to saying that Clinton is a good candidate. She made a very good case for being the lesser of two evils but it seems that she failed to convince even many of her supporters that she was actually good.
The best argument I heard for her was that she was the most uniquely qualified for the job. She had experience at both the congressional and executive levels, plus she was the first lady for 8 years to boot. That was the argument my girlfriend gave me every time we talked about it and I respected it. But that message got lost when you dug too deep. There were a lot of mistakes made during her time as senator and secretary of state and so they never pressed on the experience platform much. It hurt her quite a bit in the long run.
You're in a bubble. No worries, we all are, I think New York Times had that "Clinton win probability" meter at >90% for many many months. It slipped to >80% or so on election day.
I've come to realize that all their statistics foo is just peddled propaganda in opaque packaging. Utterly worthless.
Yeah, I had a lot of faith in that opaque package (more specifically 538's than the NYT, and at least he was "only" giving Clinton a 73% chance) and I'm left wondering why. Even if Nate's model was right and we just landed in the 27% side of things... what good would faith in the model do me in the end?
I disagree with you entirely on your first point. Trump's entire campaign was based on hate and that's why he won. It was all about building the base of people who hate the other side more.
The next four years is going to be very confusing for you if you can't ask yourself objective questions about your opposition and resist the reflex to paint them as a cartoon villain.
Trump condoned crowds chanting "Hang that bitch" at his rallies. Regardless of how you feel about the usual left vs right arguments - tapping into anger in this fashion is playing with fire.
On the other hand, Trump focused his campaign on populist anger against Clinton, which seems very similar to making the case against someone else. "The woman, Hillary, it would be a disaster if she was elected and I can save you from her."
* investing in infrastructure
* solar energy
* expanding broadband access
* more technical education, with the strong implication that there are other reasonable paths beside the elite four year college path
* moratorium on student debt
* public health funding
It's not accurate to say she didn't talk about why she should be president.
I sat out as a Sanders supporter. I am sure I am not alone.
EDIT:
1. I viewed Sanders support of Clinton as forced/coerced, as in "We let you compete in the Democratic primary, now you owe us". EDIT 2: By agreeing to support Clinton, she adopted some of his left leaning policies (in show only though, such as not supporting fracking or the TPP).
2. Of course I voted down ballot.
EDIT 3: Getting really tired of these HN throttling limits.
After Hillary became the Democratic candidate, what was Sander's incentive for doing endorsing and continuing to support Hillary? What leverage would force/coerce him? He had at least two other options: remain silent, or endorse Trump.
This is true, she didn't make a strong positive case for what her policies would look like. And if she did then she didn't spend her time effectively trying to convey this. (can't actually remember even a single policy of hers except for easier abortions and confrontation with Russia over Syria)
But what I feel is problematic is that Trump was painted as some kind of Hitler, which is ludicrous if you spent a few hours watching some of his rallies. He says things he shouldn't say, and some might say he's an a-hole, but he certainly doesn't come across as a Hitler, a fascist or a Nazi.
Why is it so problematic for everyone? It increases the likelihood of violence, not just against Trump and his family, but against everyone showing public support for him.
In some way not only the people engaging in violence are to blame, but also the media and the campaigns, because when you somehow convince a large chunk of the population that a candidate is literally like Hitler then many will use violence believing it's justified in order to prevent a new Holocaust.
Also the Hitler comparison is used today too often. I believe we currently have 4 Hitlers according to the political establishment: Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Duterte
I remember the leaks mentioned something about reinforcing the "Trump = Hitler" idea.
This was all manufactured by the DNC and it didn't work. I wouldn't be surprised if they're currently planning ways to disrupt Trumps inauguration or other events during the next 4 years to see if he snaps and they can use that as ammo for the next election.
At the end of the day it's politics and playing dirty is expected but now that one side has been exposed it's hard to brush it off thinking everybody does it.
I agree that it is a normal (but nasty) part of politics to paint an unfavourable picture of an opponent (both candidates did that), but inciting violence is where it goes too far for me.
I imagine how many people in the US are now fearing for their lives because the DNC made them believe that Trump will probably build forced labour camps. And how many of them are not just frightened but even read to use violence.
When I check my Facebook newsfeed it's full of posts from friends who seem to be very afraid about what has happened.
If something terrible happens then it might be that the DNC has created the illusion which justified the violence.
He says things he shouldn't say, and some might say he's an a-hole
I voted for Obama in previous elections. But I also remember how he'd said denigrating things about people who "cling to guns or religion." I suspect people voted for Trump because they thought he didn't put on one face for one public and put on another one for a different public. (Which I doubt is the reality.)
Our media "elites" aren't elites anymore, and they're very out of touch with walk of life lower on the socioeconomic ladder. Denigration and painting with a broad brush are now accepted as the "reality" of politics, the news media, and social media. The "savvy" line to to accept and skirt such things. This is done by both the right and the left.
I believe we currently have 4 Hitlers according to the political establishment: Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Duterte
Fox News made various comparisons of Obama to Hitler.
In a book from the 90's, Eric Drexler proposed that a networked world would save society and make it easier to disseminate the truth. In 2016, one finds that instead the internet has given the loudest voices to the coarsest, most hateful, and stupidest among us. (And by this, I don't mean Trump, but rather online activists on both the right and left.)
I fully agree, though I didn't know that Fox News compared Obama to Hitler (I'm in the EU so I don't watch US TV) - which is equally unacceptable.
But I'm a more of an optimist regarding the Internet and the availability of platforms to share information and express views.
While it is certainly true that some of the loudest voices are indeed the most hateful (Comments on HRC's and DJT's Twitter posts were unbelievable vicious) I also see that there is organically dissent organising on all kinds of issues which we didn't have to such a degree in the pre Internet era.
Of course dissenters also existed before the Internet, but it was much harder to reach an audience. And not all dissent is just hateful and stupid, a lot is legitimate.
I upvoted (or rather, anti-downvoted) your comment because (even though it does seem you could use a better historical perspective on things) it was undoubtedly sincere and civil.
But what I feel is problematic is that Trump was painted as some kind of Hitler, which is ludicrous if you spent a few hours watching some of his rallies.
The thing about Trump is that he's better classified as a "proto-" or "quasi-fascist", rather than anything of the old school, early 20th-century sort. For exactly the reasons you describe -- Middle America in 2016 doesn't particularly have an appetite for jackboots or Nuremberg-style rallies, and most likely never will.
But blatant anti-intellectualism, incessant emotionalism, button-pushing, and finger-pointing, combined with a healthy dose of naked bigotry and not-so-subtly implied threats of violence? "You betcha". Those are the seeds of fascist and authoritarian thinking. And they are at the very heart and core of what Trump and his people are about.
> Hillary focused her entire campaign on why people should stop Trump
I don't believe that. It might be what you saw but that's because the media wouldn't cover anything substantive. She tried; it just got drowned out by all the smears (including those against Trump) and horse-race coverage.
The results are showing that Hillary lost, at least in large part, due to lower voter turnout, especially among liberal-leaning populations
I can't help but think of the similarity to the 2012 election where rank-and-file middle-class conservative voters were being asked to support a Republican candidate who built his fortune firing Americans and off-shoring their jobs. They didn't vote for Obama, but they sure didn't vote for Romney either.
I have heard something on the radio that rigs true: The Democrats used to be party for blue collar workers but they have totally abandoned them. At least Trump said the right things.
I agree that Clinton never made a case for electing her other than being there for some reason. In general, the Republicans have the courage to take clear positions no matter right or wrong. Whereas the Democrats and especially Clinton are super wishy-washy.
In what way has the Democratic Party abandoned blue collar workers? By supporting labor unions? By supporting labor laws? By supporting anti-discrimination laws?
I agree with you that the Democratic Party is horrible at communicating with voters.
Wow, this is eerily prescient and the best explanation I've seen so far of the Trump phenomenon. Great read for someone like me who like so many others, didn't know a single person voting for Trump.
This is very similar to what happened in the UK with Brexit; the remain campaign focused their arguments on the negatives / fear of leaving rather than the positives of being part of the EU.
With how close it was it's disingenuous to look for reasons why she lost. People simply didn't think the entire rural population would vote enmasse and they underestimated the size of that voting block. Full stop.
I agree. Combine that with her pretty much saying what she thinks people want to hear, and no real history of standing for anything, she really sucked as a candidate.
I also believe that the Dems suppressed Bernie in order to have Hillary as their nominee. I don't think Trump had a chance against Bernie. I am hopeful that this will be a blow to the 2 party system where we're forced to vote for lesser evil.
1,777 comments
[ 2.4 ms ] story [ 447 ms ] threadIf you do intend to comment, please take extra care to do so civilly and substantively, in the spirit of this site. Most people in the mammoth thread did do that (especially relative to what one might expect), so today we're a little more proud of the community and a little less proud of our software.
That mammoth thread at least tells us where the brick wall is: at about two 'who is hiring's.
If it’s significant then you could ship the UTC posting time to the client & calculate the displayed value in Javascript & eliminate that particular part of the load at least, which in turn might enable more caching internally.
(You’ve probably looked at this already though.)
The internet has been such a nasty place today and, similarly to the day of the Paris attacks, it's been really nice to find reasonably moderate discourse on HN.
As... curious as I personally find America's choices in presidency, I'm just as ashamed of some of my follower feeds on various social media. Seriously guys, don't demonize people, especially by association. Refusing to hear your political opponents out is a sure-fire way to lose.
Not living in the US, I don't really meet people who support Donald Trump. I'm probably living in a bubble, which isn't a great feeling--but at the same time, it's hard to credit the democratic process when you can't understand the alternative view.
No doubt this is a symptom of polarization. Maybe this is the famed "filter bubble". In an ideal world one would imagine social media would help bridge that gap, but I'm unsure it has.
Tapping into, encouraging and formenting the groundswell of American anger - mostly against demonized minority groups - is, sadly, his modus operandi.
My only hope for America is that his presidency is nothing like his campaign.
I heaetily suggest actively seeking out opposing views and training your filter bubble to give them to you. It's refreshing and often frustrating and upsetting, bud fundamentally a good thing.
So it's the traditional filter bubble, not the social media bubble.
Did I read any pro-Brexit arguments? Hmm. I read a fair amount of fairly wonkish economic arguments--as with trade barriers, however, it seems that most professional policy experts (and most economists) are generally pro-free-trade and don't have much to say on this being good policy.
Again, maybe my perception is a bit off, but I see this as similar to climate change arguments: the science (especially when it comes to macroeconomics) is imperfect, but if you restrict yourself to those with some academic qualifications, you see a very different picture than if you read political opinion.
You could've gone to /r/the_donald. Beside the memes, there were many threads for each podesta email-leak, linking specific comments/sentences for deplorable dnc doings.
But you instead went to cnn, where it is illegal to think for yourself. ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DcATG9Qy_A )
Now, it will be the Hillary supporters that need to create new accounts to defend her.
I don't watch CNN. Not a big fan of TV news.
Knock it off.
Knock it off.
She's literally a demon! She's running a child trafficking ring! She's covering up multiple murders! Black helicopters! Mind control drugs! It's the Alex Jones shit that's infected people and they're not even in the same reality.
You can't have a rational discussion with an irrational person.
This election wasn't about women. This election wasn't about immigration, or minorities. This election was about the working class (blue-collar folks) feeling like they're getting shafted by government.
I live in what's usually a heavily Democratic state, Michigan. This year it'll probably go for Trump. Not because of Muslims, not because of terrorism, but because of the economy.
For years, these people (mostly white, blue-collar workers) have been told the economy's doing great for most people, free trade is great for most people, unemployment is low for most people, and the ACA helps most people.
However, for these folks, they see themselves as not part of that most people that are benefiting from our economic policies. All they hear from the establishment is the same bullshit "promises" and corporatism that they've been given for the past 30 years.
They're sick of it. They're sick of Democrats and Republicans toeing the same line, deferring to "the market" and not doing anything about it.
Donald Trump had answers. Whether those are the right answers remains to be seen (my guess is they're not). Trump said what they wanted to hear, and wasn't afraid of pissing off the establishment along the way. That's what these folks want.
They didn't vote for Donald Trump the person, they voted for Donald Trump the personality.
I find some of that quite surprising.
Unfortunate as it may be, when you are not the target of bigotry or misogyny, it's much easier not to see those issues as a deal breaker, even if you disagree with them.
Remember that, when it's not self-interest, the only thing that makes those issues a deal breaker is empathy. Today's world has very little empathy; the US especially, with its corporate-centric philosophy.
It's not that surprising.
(what follows isn't a disagreement with the above posters, just a remark for context)
I vehemently disagree with their reasons (such as they are) for voting for Trump, but reducing the explanation of their behavior to bigotry---the easiest, most accessible, most self-affirming, and most totalizing explanation available to isolated liberals---misplaces the real problems and thus opens to misguided solutions. Yes, the Trump supporters who make the news are terrible people, and there are many of them. But they aren't over half the country. Explaining Trump's success -primarily- in this way is a failure of empathy on the part of liberals, a failure to understand the majority of the country as decent, caring human beings just like you and I who have, in fact, gotten shafted. Almost all economic recovery the past few years has gone to major cities and life for rural communities is only getting worse. We all know here that Clinton had proposals for addressing this (a 500 billion injection into infrastructure for example), but, for better or for worse---okay, for worse---Trump is who connected on this sentiment.
Everyone knows Trump is a wild card---to put it kindly---who has no concrete policies, but it's worth remembering that the main focus of his victory speech last night was promising to bring back the New Deal, for a "socialist" program of government supported work, to distribute jobs across the whole country by fiat. Whether he will make good on his word and can then force it through the Republican establishment in Congress and whether it will then work all remains to be seen.
One striking observation to me is the lack of ideological purity in Trump's economic plan. You (correctly) describe it as socialist.
Similarly, Hitler's economic views were inconsistent or incoherent. He ran vehemently against "Marxist" socialists and against "Jewish" capitalists, arguing that the Marxists were acting as a front for the capitalists. Meanwhile, he inflated unemployment numbers, claimed the economy was doing worse than it was, and promised infeasible fixes devoid of specificity.
I'm not arguing all of Trump's supporters are primarily motivated by bigotry. But I think they're willing to tolerate bigotry in the name of economic progress, and unfortunately they may get the bigotry without the progress.
This is a hallmark of Fascist ideology. There is no internal consistency or coherency, only political expediency and appeals to emotion/fear.
Disclaimer: I couldn't get over Trump's character issues personally, and I don't for a moment believe that even when he says exactly what I want him to say that he believes it and will act on it in a responsible manner. But I've spent a lot of time trying to figure out what's in the minds of people who will vote for him, and these are things I've come to believe.
Trump set a new standard for blatantly lying about many issues - 51% vs 12% for Clinton according to Politifact. From what I have read/heard, voters either buy into the lie, don't care, or understand that Trump is just saying what he needs to say to get elected.
Fact checking was meant to end this behavior but instead we are reached the point where a candidate can have a 51% rating and still win.
http://www.politifact.com/personalities/donald-trump/ http://www.politifact.com/personalities/hillary-clinton/
It was about immigration in part. I've been hearing variations of your comment from many sources for a while now and I think it reflects the establishment's fears that Trump might actually fix immigration. And by fix, I mean "reduce to non-insane levels".
Anyway, he absolutely got the nomination by being the only credible candidate to denounce illegal immigration in particular, and if he doesn't deliver on that, there are going to be a lot of pissed-off Trump supporters, blue collar or otherwise.
...
Other people mention bigotry or whatever. As far as I'm concerned, in-force policies such as massive 3rd world immigration and affirmative action are institutional bigotry of the most brazen and damaging sort, aimed deliberately at this country's founding stock, including me. This isn't make-believe bigotry, or sticks-and-stones bigotry, but real life bigotry, with force of law. Liberals are mostly unable to process this kind of thinking in any coherent way, but try to understand it in the adage, "Even a worm may turn." And we're the worm.
That has little to do with how many generations you've had to live in the US before you qualify as "founding stock."
(Out of curiosity, though, where is your cut-off line? Is it only first-generation immigrants, or somewhere farther back? I haven't heard this "founding stock" argument before.)
You simply have a job crisis. Everybody does, don't feel singled out :)
1) Trump is easier to predict than Hillary. Based on a bunch of the email leaks and leaks about the Clinton foundation, she's getting lots of money from foreign countries, which might cause her to make decisions that are bad for the United States for reasons unknown to me. Trump likes power and money. I can understand those motivations and can work with them.
2) Clinton is generally a lot more hawkish than Trump. Forgive me for being crude, but I'd rather Trump grab hundreds of p*ssies than engage in sabre rattling with Putin. She has promised to retaliate against Russia with no definitive proof that it was Russian hackers or Russian attempts to monkey with the election. Trump on the other hand wants to make friends with Putin, and he has said that North Korea is China's problem, which I think is a really good way of dealing with the situation. Especially since Russia has just debuted an ICBM called the "Satan 2", which is able to destroy either Texas or France with just one missile.
3) Trump is against illegal immigration. A lot of people tend to think of the wall as a literal proposal, instead of just a metaphor of making illegal immigration more difficult. Trump has indicated recently that he wants to restrict deportations to illegal immigrants who commit crimes in the US, which seems eminently fair to me. Hillary doesn't really have as much of an answer except for sweeping amnesties.
4) LGBT issues. Trump took a lot of flak for supporting LGBT people from the republican party. He also proposes restricting immigration and "extreme vetting" from the countries that tend to export people who believe in sharia law and stone homosexuals and rape victims. I think it's ridiculous that we're up in arms about bathrooms in North Carolina, while one of the major candidates in our party gets millions from Saudi Arabia and Qatar.
And one last point, which might count me as running down the other party.
I just don't like Clinton supporters. They're really shrill and righteous, and if you don't agree with them on everything you're automatically a racist and a bigot. It's difficult having a civil discussion with them, and I don't want to put myself in the same camp as them. Also, they're incredibly histrionic. "Trump is literally Hitler" and "I'm moving to Canada/Europe." And the best is "I can't believe half of this country is populated by xenophobic racist bigots. If you support Trump I want nothing to do with you." Last I checked, calling people names is not a good way to rally support to your cause.
1) the tough talking, america first attitude. I think this attracted a number of people simply due to the 'feeling' it gave them.
2) the desire for change. anti-establishment, anti-washington, anti-'what was before'. this was seen in Bernie's rise, and Brexit. so it almost didn't matter what Trump did or say at that point, he was the messenger of change and people were hungry for it.
3) blue collar workers & economy. If you feel like you've been left behind, and the govt isn't helping, well Trump's message definitely resonated better than HC.
So those are a bit of what I'm sensing at this early stage of my understanding. I'm sure more will reveal itself throughout the coming days, months, years. However, to your specific points as to why you supported Trump:
1) Trump is easier to predict? I find this truly hard to believe. He is almost entirely unpredictable at this point. He ran on the Republican ticket, but he's hardly your standard Republican. He says he's not free trade, yet wants to do things to help big business, yet wants to impose huge tariffs and taxes on businesses that outsource and offshore to save money. IMO, these are somewhat contradictory. I honestly feel like Trump just echo'ed the anger of a certain group in the country, regardless of what he personally believes, or thinks he can implement.
So on the case of predictable, I disagree strongly.
2) Clinton has been hawkish in the past, and generally leans towards US intervention, I'll give you that. However, there are also examples of her using actual diplomacy to achieve results ( Iran deal, like it or not ).
Trump has said some really outlandish things as it comes to foreign policy. Encouraging the proliferation of nuclear weapons, abandoning our allies, letting certain parts of the world fend for themselves. I personally think there's a fine balance between being imperialistic and trying to keep the world peace. To say it's China's problem to deal with North Korea, so South Korea/Japan/Taiwan can go fend for themselves is a very narrow view of the world. I think this type of inward behavior actually leads to bigger/larger potential wars down the road.
3. Illegal immigration, OK clearly he built his platform on this. But this is again an issue where nothing with him is clear. He never presented a clear proposal no what he intends to do on immigration besides being tough and building a wall. And to say HC wants sweeping amnesty is inflaming and misleading the debate rather than moving it forward.
4. This is just strange to use this as a reason for Trump. I mean he said a couple things on LGBT, but if you follow this through his SCOTUS noms will play a huge role on the rights and privileges of that demographic going forward.
I certainly am not trying to bash your entire premise for Trump, like I said in the beginning I am trying and reading to understand his rise, and some of it is becoming apparent.
And I do hope he leads from the center and backs away from his more extreme views. And I do hope he succeeds as a president. But I am honestly confused by some of your points, as much as they might match with his campaign rhetoric, they do seem to crumble upon examination.
Well, he didn't get much out of his Republican alignment. The party rejected him. I don't think he's pro big business per se, as more protectionist. Viewed in that light, it makes perfect sense. American companies making products consumed in America should employ Americans. He's remarkably consistent when it comes to that.
> Trump has said some really outlandish things as it comes to foreign policy. Encouraging the proliferation of nuclear weapons, abandoning our allies, letting certain parts of the world fend for themselves.
Trump is a negotiator. He always comes to the table with outlandish proposals and expects to be talked down. I think that's one thing people don't seem to fully realize, how many caveats his statements have. China/Russia/Taiwan won't be offended at his statements, at least not enough to start a shooting war. They'll realize it as what it is, a negotiating gambit to try to stake out a stronger position at the table, and they know how to play the game.
> But this is again an issue where nothing with him is clear. He never presented a clear proposal no what he intends to do on immigration besides being tough and building a wall.
This is true. And also a source of misunderstanding. He won't take office until January. Why would you nail down policy proposals now that you might have thrown back in your face later if the situation changes? It'd be like saying in your job interview what you'd be doing at your job that you start 3 months for now. You'd probably say "These are the main goals I want to accomplish, I'll figure out the rest of it once I get the lay of the land".
> but if you follow this through his SCOTUS noms will play a huge role on the rights and privileges of that demographic going forward.
Nowhere in the Constitution are LGBT rights enshrined. The judicial branch interprets the law, the legislative branch passes the laws, and the executive branch enforces the laws.
Trump simply said that he supports LGBT people to the fullest extent of the law (or words to that effect). I prefer that over Clinton, who gets lots of money from regimes that prefer a harsh line against practicing homosexuality.
At a high level, I think the difference I see between jimmywanger's arguments and my own view (and probably dtien's) is, perhaps unfortunately, the starting assumptions about Trump as a person. Jimmy, you're arguing that Trump "is a negotiator" who "comes with outlandish proposals and expects to be talked down." Correct me if I'm mischaracterizing, but it seems like you, in general, assume the crazier things Trump has said aren't meant seriously, and that the man is for the most part a competent and rational actor.[4]
I've heard this other places, and often the conversation turns back to Trump's business career. Supporters seem to believe that he's not especially serious about the more extreme proposals he's made (a wall, a Muslim ban, pulling out of NATO); opponents believe he is. Supporters suggest that Trump's business career shows he is a serious, rational person; opponents believe his business career is mostly a sham. (This latter argument often involves doubts about his net worth[1], questions about his performance against the market[2], etc.)
I do think, Jimmy, that you're extending the benefit of the doubt to Trump in a way you don't to Clinton. Trump's public statements on LGBT rights are mixed-to-negative[3], whereas Clinton's are fairly clear. Yet because the Clinton Foundation takes Saudi contributions you assume Clinton is opposed to LGBT rights, and you assume otherwise about Trump?
To me, this is perhaps the heart of the matter, in the sense that Trump supporters seem, often, to (thankfully) not support some of the things Trump says at face value--but instead, they give him the benefit of the doubt that opponents do not.
I'm a bit too busy (and you can see I already wrote a fucking novel here) to go point-by-point, though I appreciate your detail. It sheds some light. There are a couple of specific issues I have questions on, I think:
1. Foreign policy: I think the aspect that worries me the most here is Trump's apparent "my way or the highway" view. Proponents view this as a negotiating tactic, but there are cases where this is genuinely concerning. Two stand out to me: the Paris environmental deal, and the Iran nuclear deal. In both cases, do you think that renegotiating these deals will lead to a better outcome? Congressional Republicans have been arguing for tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, which seems highly likely to make the world less safe.
2. Immigration: Trump is, presumably, in favor of greater restrictions on legal immigration and greater deportations[5]. Many Americans are, and so this may (for me) merely be a point of fundamental disagreement. But to be clear, do you merely support deporting "criminal" immigrants (i.e. felons), or do you believe it's necessary to deport as many undocumented residents as possible?
Finally, regarding the "Satan 2", to add some perspective: https://www.inverse.com/article/15826-why-you-shouldn-t-be-w.... There's a bit of posturing here, but to be clear, the nuclear balance between Russia and the US should not be viewed as changed.
Thanks again for your thoughtful replies. It makes me feel a lot better to talk to an actual human with whom I have some disagreements. (Happy to continue by email, by the way, but I don't want to post my email on HN, so you'll have to share one of yours. ;) )
1: http://www.vanityfair.com/news/2016/05/donald-t...
> Two stand out to me: the Paris environmental deal, and the Iran nuclear deal. In both cases, do you think that renegotiating these deals will lead to a better outcome? Congressional Republicans have been arguing for tearing up the Iran nuclear deal, which seems highly likely to make the world less safe.
I think that renegotiating is always a good idea. Starting off on one extreme and then making concessions is one way of negotiating, and one that I think is the best. That way the person you're negotiating with doesn't quite know how far they can push you, and you might get concessions you might not otherwise get. And it's just renegotiating - nothing is set in stone. Once you start making definitive statements, you start painting yourself in a corner. Since renegotiations under Trump will start at the earliest in 3 months, why would you commit to a course of action now? Lots can change in 3 months, and you don't want your words thrown back in your face.
> But to be clear, do you merely support deporting "criminal" immigrants (i.e. felons), or do you believe it's necessary to deport as many undocumented residents as possible?
I would argue that semantically, all undocumented residents are "criminal", as in technically they're breaking the law being here. Now that being said, they do provide a large boost to our economy, so I guess the answer is "it depends". Not to sound too cold-blooded, but a lot of illegal immigrants seem to feel entitled to life in the United States while they are breaking the law. "We've lived here decades and worked very hard! We should be citizens." They fail to realize that they are uninvited guests in our country right now, and we are fully within our rights to send them back to their countries of origin. Once again, Trump has done a great job of not getting nailed down to one specific course of action, because like I said before, a lot can change in 4 months, and he'll get a lot more information once he becomes president.
> Yet because the Clinton Foundation takes Saudi contributions you assume Clinton is opposed to LGBT rights, and you assume otherwise about Trump?
Also she advocates for the intake of refugees from primarily fundamentalist Islamic countries, many of whom believe in Sharia law. Trump has softened his immigration stance on Muslims to be "extreme vetting" for countries known to be jihadi hotbeds. Those are the countries most oppressive to LGBT rights, and I think it's good that we restrict immigration from there.
Specifically regarding how immigration relates to LGBT rights: Is there any statistical link between anti-LGBT hate-crime and immigration from Muslim countries?
Perhaps more to the point, if LGBT activists (HRC in particular) don't feel the same way, how do you explain that? Do they not realize Trump is (despite opposing their marriage rights and opposing protecting them from discrimination) actually their ally? I find that claim startling.
Regarding illegal immigrants, it's a tough issue. I thought www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/10/31/untangling-the-immigration-debate was a good broad summary of thought here. I will say that I disagree with the criticism of "entitlement." It's hard to know what you would do in their shoes, but I think it's obvious that all humans have some entitlements to some rights, and, even if we find it necessary to enforce a certain law, we should be aware of the human motivations behind such actions.
> Specifically regarding how immigration relates to LGBT rights: Is there any statistical link between anti-LGBT hate-crime and immigration from Muslim countries?
Not any studies I'm aware of. From a personal standpoint, no scientific basis, I do believe that if you immigrate to a country, you should be willing to accept that country's norms and prevailing beliefs. 52% of British Muslims believe that homosexuality should be illegal. (http://www.cnn.com/2016/04/11/europe/britain-muslims-survey/) If you take a look, certain countries have high percentages of muslims who think they should have sharia law implemented. (http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2016/07/22/muslims-and-...) Should we prevent people from those countries from immigrating without severe checks? I personally think so.
> Do they not realize Trump is (despite opposing their marriage rights and opposing protecting them from discrimination) actually their ally? I find that claim startling.
Trump I don't think really cares one way or another. If you look at his previous interviews, he says that he doesn't care if you're gay as long as you're smart and tough, he'll hire you. And you might want to read some of Scott Adam's blog posts. He postulates that the Clinton campaign has been so effective as painting Trump as "literally Hitler" that you can sort of stick any sort of bad image about him to him easily. Hence the racism, bigotry, etc etc.
> I will say that I disagree with the criticism of "entitlement." It's hard to know what you would do in their shoes, but I think it's obvious that all humans have some entitlements to some rights, and, even if we find it necessary to enforce a certain law, we should be aware of the human motivations behind such actions.
I agree with the human motivations, but I am a bit more callous in that I don't really care. For me, illegal immigrants are a bit like squatters in properties they don't live in. Just because they took care of the house for a while doesn't mean that they can live there because they really really want to and they've done it for so long.
And just a little note. Trump does have a point that Mexico is not sending us their best and brightest in illegal immigrants. It's hard crossing the border, and quite dangerous. If you were educated and skilled, you'd probably stay in Mexico or try to emigrate legally. The people who are forced to try to immigrate illegally generally don't have much to offer the United States, sadly enough. Somehow that's racist?
It's weird to me to characterize the candidate's willingness to ban people who might potentially be more anti-gay than the prior as a pro-LGBT position, especially in comparison to a candidate who supports laws that actually advance and protect gay rights.
(Anyway, what about gay immigrants from Muslim countries? Surely those coming from countries with repressive laws are most deserving of admission, no?)
In your reply, you sort of beat around this bush, I think. Yes, you can paint Trump a lot of ways (though I think much of that owes to what the man himself says), and yes, immigrants from conservative religious societies may be less prone to support liberal values, but the candidate himself also does not support those values. He opposes gay marriage. He opposes anti-discrimination legislation. http://www.hrc.org/2016RepublicanFacts/donald-trump-opposes-.... Surely the candidate's own statements on policy matter, don't they?
I think accusations of racism are not made quite so lightly. But Trump did claim that he saw "thousands of Muslims celebrating" in New Jersey after 9/11. He did claim illegal immigrants are "rapists and murderers", when statistically they commit fewer violent crimes than the control. The anti-immigration arguments often do take a racial tone, as when people complain about "press 2 for Spanish" or when a (Hispanic, yes) Trump supporter warned of "taco trucks on every corner".
I doubt racism is your motivation, or that of many supporters. But I am surprised and worried when Trump supporters don't identify the ambiguously (or, in the case of David Duke, not so ambiguously) racist motivations of their comrades-in-arms or their candidate himself.
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-on...
The most concise and clearest explanation I've read, also written before the result.
There are similar stories in other sectors. Economic protectionism hasn't really been in either party's platform for a long time, and during that time American workers took a severe beating. Then Trump came along and started making promises.
* More precisely: Tim Kaine proposed a bill to double the size of the H1B program and Hillary has been in bed (donation-wise) with Tata, Wipro, and the like for the last decade at least. When asked for her position, she maintained strategic silence or dodged the question.
First off, I do not like Donald Trump and did not vote for him.
That said:
It's not "racist", "misogynist", or any other kind of "ist" for a factory worker in Ohio to believe that he shouldn't have to compete with Chinese slave labor.
Nor is it "racist", "misogynist", or any other kind of "ist" for an unemployed coal miner in West Virginia to take exception to being lectured on his "white male privilege" by an academic who's never done a hard day's labor in his life, or to be upset by seeing the industry that's employed his family for generations deliberately destroyed for no reason. The coal is still going to be mined and burned. It's just going to be mined and burned in countries with few, if any, environmental regulations.
Multiply those guys by a few million and you have Trump.
Will Trump actually help these people? Probably not, but he's listening to them. He's at least pretending to care about their concerns. The Democrats (supposedly the party of the working class), on the other hand, have been spending the last few decades demonizing them.
I do think there was quite a lot of bigotry. In particular, I think the campaign repeatedly conflated Muslims with terrorists (to the point that a religious test for immigration was suggested). The candidate also said a number of things that could be construed as misogynistic, though I'm the first to admit that all of this "locker room talk" is probably as much the product of insecure posturing as it is a formulation of any particular view towards women per se--a product of a child-mind exposed to a misogynistic culture, not of a misogynist.
Part of my surprise is that that bigotry is not a deal breaker, as I said in reply to a different comment. Part of my surprise is that the electorate did not detect the unrealistic nature of the policy proposals (such as they are).
I sometimes feel the democratic party uses similar tactics on under-educated minorities; Trump seems to be the first to have the gall to overtly use them to unabashedly target under-educated white males - and to great success.
You have to remember that the other side has spent the last 30 or 40 years calling those guys toothless, ignorant sister-screwing yokels.
Maybe they're tired of only one side being permitted to call people vile names?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pADHLsECWxY
That is hardly the first thread to experience performance issues.
HN has always set a pretty good benchmark for minimalist developers.
Does HN run on a raspberry Pi or something?
I know I sound like a complete d--k, but my laptop from 2012 has eight cores that each run over 3 billion cycles a second. How do < 2000 comments make your servers more than blink? I'm guessing you have more than one server?
I get frustrated by sites not accepting HN's "hug of death". An now HN can't even stand its own hug...
Anyway, thanks for getting things running again! You guys are awesome!
Believe me, we hate slow software at least as much as you do and have put a lot of effort into addressing this. HN is a lot faster than it used to be on median load. It still falls short on excessive load. We'll get there!
If you have questions about using this, please feel free to email me about it.
Well, then. That is rather impressive.
(Though I suggest adding a processor/server. Probably small compared to your existing Cloudflare costs.)
Either way, it's not just down to the number of comments on a thread, as you imply, clearly the number of requests for that page plays a part. I'm guessing HN has been getting a huge amount of traffic, probably way more than your laptop could serve dynamic pages at.
It could be, but that would add a JavaScript dependency that HN currently doesn't have.
Said so... 2k comments, uncached render for logged in users and no pagination are a very low bar in 2016, especially for a YCombinator website.
edit: saw dang's comment below and wanted to make sure this doesn't come through as harsh :)
For now I'm using dev tools.
Does this not prove that "diverse" liberalism isn't so diverse after all? Shouldn't a diverse group of people have seen this coming?
Or is liberalism actually systematically excluding people by labelling them as "racist" and "sexist", when in fact they're just fiscal and social conservatives?
We are completely fine understanding root causes and bias which may underlie racial or gender based observations, but conveniently turn a blind eye to well-studied drivers for phenomena like nativism.
A lot of the current form of diversity against the disenfranchised "in-group" amounts to "you're f'd for being poor and FU again for being unhappy about being poor".
Even people on the GOP side seemed to accept that Trump was going to lose, so I'd say 'no'. Sometimes the polls are wrong, sometimes you just get surprising results.
By itself that doesn't mean anything. Sanders got way bigger rallies than Clinton too and still lost.
Trump is labeled racist, sexist and misogynistic because of his words and actions. As are most people.
And lots of people saw a Trump presidency as a possibility, like, everyone paying attention to the fact that there was a Republican presidential runner, and that person was Trump.
And I mean that with no sarcasm. I would genuinely like to see you make the case that he is not racist, sexist and/or misogynistic.
And he was careful never to insult big parts of the electorate - it was usually the left that generalized.
All of his big gaffes were either towards non citizens or specific citizens. He never had his basket of deplorables moment.
It was between him and Megyn Kelly, the latino judge, the khans.
And we get to the "grab them by the pussy" - and we end in the messy world of human courtship ... where we are all sexist and objectifying the objects of our desire. Both sexes included.
Of course the assaults are assaults ... and I won't defend them. Somehow they disappeared from the media in the last few days though.
Trump is a dirty fighter. But I think that the majority of his sexism, racism or wherever is mostly opportunistic strikes where he sees weakness.
The difference is that he does not pretend to be non-racist, non-sexist and not-misogynistic. A lot of people do.
[edit] I am not american, but somehow I can understand that he won the election. He is a honest hustler among a bunch of good liars. He won't stab you in the back. Maybe in the chest. But you will see it coming.
I think Sanders did a much better job of reaching that demographic, so I'd argue it was represented, but the Democrat party decided other priorities were more important by selecting Clinton.
Trump went after issues that actually matter. Be careful, I'm not saying LGBT rights and racism don't matter, I'm just saying they aren't really the centerfold of America anymore.
The degree to which people believe this is striking. The reality is that these protections are very recent developments and are today easily reversed, particularly by an administration that cares less than usual about the details of how the federal government is run.
The national legalization of gay marriage happened via the Supreme Court just last year. There is no reason at all it could not be reversed under a new court.
A lot more rests in Department of Justice policy. Look at what Justice has been doing to investigate and clean up racial bias in municipal police forces recently. They have consent decrees with Seattle, Cleveland, and others to try to change the way they do policing.
A new administration could easily abandon every one of those agreements, and the goal of removing racial bias from policing generally. It might even be likely--senior people in the Trump campaign have praised racial profiling as an effective and useful police tactic.
Edit to add: in general, social progress must be continuously defended. Nothing is every "done" in a democracy.
Yes, there is; it's "stare decisis". Even Dred Scott has not been reversed because of it.
Political donations are not supposed to be tax deductible and yet the Clinton Foundation carries on existence as a 501c3; double dipping so that a majority of her income as one of the most wealthy politicians comes in tax deductible while she pays not taxes on it.
In light of the blatant collusion and conflicts of interest released in her emails she should've been barred from running in the first place.
The line gets a bit muddier on the fiscal side. If you're all for cutting programs that disproportionately support the poor and the poor happen to be disproportionately minority is there a racial component? That's worth being aware of.
You're left with gun rights which becomes a question of degree. It's thankfully largely divorced from the issues of sex and race, but pretty tightly coupled to regional culture more than anything else.
The fact that Trump won on the backs of uneducated white men certainly says a lot.
[0] http://www.patheos.com/blogs/lovejoyfeminism/2012/10/how-i-l...
[1] http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/23/politics/john-ehrlichman-richa...
Depends on the context really. If that was Sander's slogan, you'd immediately assume whom you'd be taking it back was the bankers & corporation.
It's one of those generic slogan that reflects the views of the beholder. Some will assume it means from the immigrants, others the bureaucrats. It's definitely smarter than the damp squibs that Clinton came up with.
My thoughts on some of it is that while the white working class (as well as the black working class) are happy to see America help others out, internationally, domestically; they are not happy to see America help others out but at the same time ignore them and belittle them. That can be in trade deals, acquiescing to illegal immigrants, talking down to them, etc. There are likely a sprinkling of racists on the Trump side, but I dare say, there is the same likelihood of reverse racists on the Clinton side ['white people are the devil'].
All of the shocked media people and here on HN live in a bubble and have no idea what it's like to live in a working class community.
As for likable, Hillary has been the most admired woman in America, 14 years straight. Trump ran the most negative fact free campaign ever to overcome her likability.
This is going to happen again in 2020 unless the DNC realizes what they've done. Sanders would have handily won this election and they havr nobody to blame but themselves.
This is going to happen again in 2020 unless the DNC realizes what they've done. Sanders would have handily won this election and they have nobody to blame but themselves.
This was a contributing factor but Democrats voted. If Democratic voters are as gullible as you're making us out to be then we deserved to lose. Democrats are a center left party. Bernie is progressive which is a little further left. Democrats voted.
1) The super delegate system that gave HRC a 500 delegate lead before the primaries started. (Watched millions of redditors turn on the DNC over this)
2) The media picking a horse before the primary started, and making it so painfully obvious that it was a slap to the face for Bernie supporters, this made it really challenging to take the media seriously on their Trump bashing (because they did it to Bernie too)
3) Day of primary voter manipulation and questionable practices (illegal) by the Clintons and their support teams.
That said I still find the idea of looking at Trump for the next 4 years as president really depressing, but hopefully this teaches the democrats a lesson, choose the impassioned base over the candidate who thinks it's their turn.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_Democratic_Pa...
The media is not the DNC.
Day of primary doesn't add up to 3.7 million votes.
I voted for Bernie and I'm damn proud of that vote.
Surely, after last night, citing polls is the least convincing way to argue about hypothetical election outcomes.
I think the polls were so off this election cycle because Sanders lost the primary. Without him, Democrats lost their only chance to connect with voters that that are liberal but don't always vote based on social issues like abortion, gay marriage, etc (which are, along with minorities and unions, the bread and butter of the Democratic party).
Obviously this years polling was a disaster but Sanders' hypothetical matchup polls are by far the weakest argument for why he should have been the nominee.
The democratic nominee always had an uphill battle against a base of R's motivated for "Change", for the same reason that the party in power tends to fall behind during the midterms.
This is going to happen again in 2020 unless the DNC realizes what they've done. Sanders would have handily won this election and they have nobody to blame but themselves.
http://www.gallup.com/poll/187922/clinton-admired-woman-reco...
In fact, using your own cite, if you run that back to 2015 and before and she has net favorables. The only thing you've shown is that negative advertising works.
There was an orchestrated effort to portray Hillary as un-likeable and an out-of-touch elite. I remember this starting roughly with the Benghazi hearings, which is I think when it seemed like she was the likely Democratic candidate and politically worth attacking personally.
There was also an orchestrated phenomenon to portray many of the DNC backers of Hillary as unlikeable and an out-of-touch elite, which I think was quite legitimate, but rubbed off on the candidate herself.
(And, I suspect, there was an un-orchestrated phenomenon where Hillary happened to be less likeable than the very likeable Bernie. Which isn't to say that Hillary is un-likeable in any absolute sense.)
Take a poll on Michelle Obama vs Hillary.
She got 60 million people to vote for her. It's not a surprise that some people liked her. The problem is that many people hated her. Winning that title doesn't disprove that in any way.
Dragging her down into the ditch was the only thing Trump could do. He couldn't run on his business record (terrible) or personal character (worthless). He had only one path and that was to go negative against someone he'd praised over and over.
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/trump-files-many...
And it worked for him.
http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/other/clinton_favora...
I don't think that gutter campaign would have worked against someone who the Republicans hadn't spent two decades preparing for.
Fact is that Hillary is a well thought of Yale law grad, partner, Walmart board member, First Lady, Senator and Secretary of State.
The only thing that will beat that is a gutter campaign.
You keep talking about the gutter campaign. What's your point there? Blame Republicans for running an effective campaign tailored to the weaknesses of their opponent?
I seem to recall a great amount of distaste to her, even coming from other Democrats (including Obama's and Biden's campaigns), in the 2008 election. Most liberals I knew disliked or even detested Hillary back then, and now detest her more now.
I could think of hundreds more American women who deserve the title "most admired".
So, what policies can be put in place specifically to help this demographic? I genuinely don't know.
We need a sociological solution. Perhaps base income?
The reason they want Trump is he promised that he will make it where they can help themselves.
Robots will not be immediately cost-effective for all production and it may be 30 years before they permeate manufacturing. Until then humans will serve.
I've complained on HN about the low quality of many goods (e.g., nail clippers) and about how the supply chain to US consumers today is no better than it was in my youth more than 50 years ago. Most of you were not yet around to know what the supply chain was like 50 years ago so please suspend your disbelief.
QC in some countries appears impervious to consumer feedback; they couldn't produce a decent set of pliers 20 years ago and they cannot today. They may never succeed due to their unique social and political histories. Lack of communication and competitive feedback in non-free markets inhibits quality. In contrast USA manufacturers 50 years ago and earlier produced very high quality goods (many still in use!).
I expect the USA to bring back production of high-quality goods and a more robust supply chain. Until someone invents a Star Trek replicator, I expect JIT inventory management to be discarded in many industries; it's primary benefit was bigger bonuses for MBAs.
No education I know of available today will prepare youth for the future they face. Once machine learning and AI become widely embedded in manufacturing and commerce, skills required will be beyond the ability of most. Meanwhile grades are falling and testing becoming more lenient.
Someday almost no one will have a job. We should plan accordingly.
Just for fun, see the movie "Idiocracy ":
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1
Thread on IMDB discussing the relevance of "Idiocracy" to Trump's victory today:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/board/nest/257141945?ref...
Export led industrialization has worked well for the Asian Tigers, and the quality of their products is decent enough.
It's also instructive to look at Europe's industrialization in the 19th century. The Brits famously demanded Made in Germany to be marked on goods to allow the British customer to detect the inferior products. Turned out, they weren't inferior any more.
Would you provide some examples of the countries you're thinking of? My inclination is that it's more a function of demand for cheap products and unwillingness to pay more for better quality even while complaining about the quality of what some are willing to pay for. Also, the generalization that all (or most) products coming out of a country are of equal in quality. Two counter examples come to mind as well. Japan and China have both been a source of cheap, low-quality goods during the last century, and both also produce some very high quality goods as well. I've also purchased very low-quality "Made in USA" products.
And things change, including "unique social and political histories". Is it more accurate and useful to think of differences in QC in a general way or to look more closely at the incentives and circumstances at work?
If I've mischaracterized your views, please do point it out, as that's not my intent. Thanks!
http://science.time.com/2013/07/23/in-town-versus-country-it...
Sure, the scale is way smaller than coastal cities. But if you adjust the prices to match the incomes, the unaffordability problem is roughly identical in terms of pain. A Michigan $300k urban condo is basically as unaffordable as a Seattle $600k condo, once you notice that Michigan incomes are roughly 50% lower than Seattle, on average.
Sprawl is cheap, that's absolutely true. But it's also sprawl -- with all the problems that entails. The only cities I know of with "huge housing surpluses", are cities that have majorly failed in some way (like Flint).
I see lots of negative externalities to using preferential credit instruments in a debt-backed monetary system securing land as a store of wealth, especially for late-stage generations like the Millenials and later are experiencing first-hand. The process takes many generations to play out the stage we're at, so it builds up vested interests until some final set of bag holders gets the sucker punch. They (Millenials and later) are on the wrong side of an asset inflation to wage inflation ratio curve function that looks ugly and not resolvable without tremendous disruption to world asset markets.
In an agrarian or even industrial development era, it makes sense that land is a large direct contributor to output profits, and to ascribe wealth storage to it as the improvements that sit on top are enhanced. To my unsophisticated and untrained layman's sense, this reasoning starts to fall apart as industrialization is increasingly mechanized and automated, but there is still a tiny shred of reasoning. I can't find even a slim reasoning for continuing the practice when the land itself doesn't contribute directly to the economic output, which I sense is the case when cognitive effort is the majority input to economic output. Land value then in a commercial real estate context starts to reflect a proximity to supply chain networks where the supply chain is for physically-located talent (SV). That makes sense, though I'm interested to see the impact if VR/AR matures and virtual offices with startlingly-realistic telepresence become feasible (I predict the first 3-6 generations of that tech won't have an impact, and only the later generations will).
Where the reasoning really decouples for me however, is residential real estate. There, I would have expected pricing to essentially follow median wages. Effectively modeling median housing prices as a put option: term length the duration of the median mortgage, strike price the wage earner's expected career earnings over that duration lining up with the house price (or some appropriate fraction thereof). That didn't happen, so I'm misinterpreting something, or don't understand something about using real estate as a store of value, or the market is just staying irrational longer than I am expecting.
I dunno, just rambling here, please correct what is certainly my poor interpretation of what's going on here. I'm just a layman trying to figure out why residential real estate prices seem decoupled from median local income in so many geographies at the same time. I started wandering down these ponderings when I realized that as a remote worker in the US, only some pretty far out places had escaped the residential real estate inflation, whereas in the 70's driving only an hour out of town led to a drastic 75%+ drop in per acre prices. I ended up staying pretty close to an urban area, and paying off my property as quickly as possible, but I feel terrible for the younger generations getting completely screwed.
We can not get an `ought' from `is` statements alone. But we can derive a complex or interesting `ought' from a simple `ought' and a bunch of `is' statements.
I want a tax system that can finance a welfare state without burdening the real economy. I care about real gdp, low unemployment and to a small extent equality of after-tax income. I don't care about `storage of wealth': the private sector takes care of that just fine.
Given those `oughts' and a bunch of standard orthodox text book economics, you get a free market laissez faire economy and a state financed by land value tax as a good first order answer. Land value taxes do not disturb the ecomony, since land is a perfectly inelasticly supplied good. (See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_incidence for who actually ends up paying for taxes on goods and services, and for who can pass them on, and to what degree. It's all about elasticity.)
As a minor point, you want to add some sin taxes like eg carbon and alcohol tax, where you actually actively want the change to demand and supply that the tax causes: less carbon dioxide release, less alcohol consumed.
I don't see how agrarian or industrial development era makes a difference here. Eg Australia is an advanced economy, but relies on resource extraction and agriculture a lot, and a land value tax would make sense for them too. (They actually have one on the books, but it's mostly toothless with a small base and low rates.)
Ultimately, thermodynamics might be able to explain a lot about biology, society and economics. Alas, I don't think that science has advanced well enough for that grounding, yet; yet alone our laymen's understanding of it. Mostly, the thermodynamics that we have a good handle on is equilibrium thermodynamics, or at best near-equilibrium. Economies are thermodynamically very open systems with matter, energy and entropy flowing in and out. (Even in the confusingly similarly named `economic equilibrium'.)
And in any case, such a re-interpretation must `save the phenomena'. Ie just like the statistical mechanics explanation of thermodynamics makes the same predictions as the older macro-scale traditional thermodynamics.
> Where the reasoning really decouples for me however, is residential real estate. There, I would have expected pricing to essentially follow median wages.
I would expect land prices to follow basically average disposable income:
Basically, people use their income left over after taxes, groceries etc to bid up all available residential land for either paying rent or paying mortgages on. This sets the monthly cost of land, and a look at the prevailing interest rate on mortgages will tell you the value: monthly cost per square metre * 12 / yearly interest rate == capital value per square metre
(Where a eg 2% interest rate goes into the calculation as 0.02, ie a multiplicative factor of 50.)
Feel free to send me an email to continue the discussion. My address is in my profile.
You can stick fingers in your ears and shout it isn't so or a law of nature, but that's just being deliberately economically illiterate.
---
I do semi-agree with you. I think remote work is the future but part of that equation is manufacturing jobs are gone. It doesn't matter if we shut down 100% of the jobs in China and Mexico and bring them here, manufacturing jobs are dying.
Anyone in manufacturing needs a way out. Either they need to find it or we need to help them but twiddling our thumbs and pretending like automation isn't coming is short-sighted.
What you want and what reality is don't have to match up.
What these people want isn't fully rational; it's highly emotional. They want their 1950s-style old way of life back. They want their jobs in their towns that they grew up in, that they have lived in or raised families in, where they have their church and their community. They want to live in their IL farm town and work at the local union plant and make a living to pay for pensions and healthcare. It is not realistic in a globalized economy and will be less so in a fully domesticated one, but the math is not what matters here.
Urban areas in these places already have plenty of housing that nobody is in. See Detroit for example.
Not saying that you are wrong, but it is a sad idea that we can't fix it. Maybe instead of giving out "gov't handouts" we just give out VR headsets and give pple a Matrix like existance who can no longer bare the thought of their current living conditions. Sad.
What these people are seeking in Trump's "make america great again" is a return to 1950s-1960s America, not as it was, but idyllic as it seems in movies and rosy retrospection.
What I see with the Trump win is that America is simply two Americas: the urban, cosmopolitan melting pot America that most of us here live in, where the wealth inequality problem is gentrification and housing supply is restricted. We are trying to get multitudes of races, religions, and socioeconomic backgrounds to be able to coexist in the cities. Many of us here are the "elites" even though none of us feel like it, and we take that for granted. That's the whole "white privilege" bit that we hear thrown about by SJWs, and to a large extent they are right in this regard. There is a marked lack of empathy for minorities and "poor" people in SF et al these days. People don't understand it, and it seems that when people go to "understand it" it's some type of socioeconomic tourism where you go hang out in Oakland with locked doors, or if you're in NYC you crawl up to Harlem for a chop cheese, because some rapper talked about it, and you wonder why the bodega has thick acrylic glass in front of the register.
Trump's America is semirural/exurban "American dream" idealism, where people want to "make America great again" by making it great for them in the way it used to be, when America felt white and Christian - that is, not so much talk of gays and minorities and political correctness - you got married, got a nice middle-class job nearby your house, oh, and owned a house and a car and the wife could stay at home. This is what they want; it is what they seem to believe they are promised. It is emotional and has absolutely nothing to do with the status quo; they're hoping by isolating the US from the rest of the world ("like it used to be") they will see this way of life restored.
What they don't understand is that the economics of this is not, and will never be, in their favor.
(Detroit is not a functioning city.)
The big difference I see is most millennials want to move to a big city and work hard at creating a new and better future.
http://www.economist.com/blogs/freeexchange/2015/04/land-val...
Dems across the board stayed home. And 9% of registered Dems voted for Trump.
And even if that somehow happens, those scenes from his rallies are not going away. The videos of people cheering racist rhetoric, cheering the idea of an entire religion being banned from the country, the idea of not giving a shit that someone confessed to sexual assault, is not going away. If anything, it's going to flourish.
And if you're "bideshi" you'll never be "Bangladeshi." A white person can live in Bangladesh their whole life and never be "from there." But at least they generally respect white people. Hang around an immigrant community somewhere like Toronto and get folks talking about black people or Jewish people. Ask a girl's parents about how they would feel about her marrying a black person. You won't get a more negative reaction anywhere in Alabama.
As to the issue of sexism--I don't think it even needs saying.
- Are women/minorities legally allowed to vote?
- Do women/minorities vote at the same rates as majority men?
- Are women/minorities represented in office at the same rates as majority men?
- Are there any legal restrictions against women/minorities that don't apply to majority men like the right drive, the right to own property, rules around dress or appearance?
- Are women/minorities paid as well for their work as majority men?
- Is abortion legal?
- Do women/minorities have equal access to education as majority men?
- Is interracial marriage legal? How common is it?
- How integrated is housing? Do people of different races tend to live near each other?
I'm sure this list isn't exhaustive. As I said, just a start off the top of my head.
Investors believe that drug prices and healthcare costs will reap increasing profits to shareholders in the next four years.
There's going to be a lot of people losing Medicaid if this happens that will become self-pay (aka, no money) patients. Not a good time to be in the billing industry.
Those of us who have stuck with our pre-Obamacare plans are paying dearly for the privilege. That's OK, I understand that Obamacare was supposed to fail from day one, in order to pave the way for single-payer coverage.
But it's becoming increasingly apparent that we're going to get the first part without the second.
1. https://www.congress.gov/bill/114th-congress/house-bill/3762
Before the ACA, no one would sell me health insurance. Several years ago, I had my gallbladder out. So whenever I'd try to buy health insurance, "pre-existing condition" would kick in, even though I'm perfectly healthy.
So, I'm scared now, to once again be a self-employed adult without access to medical care. At least I'm in pretty good health. I know a few people who rely on their health care who, if they end up getting kicked off of their insurance plans, may not live very long. That's scary to think about, too.
God help us if any of us get cancer.
Shit.
Because that is what has been asked of me and some folks I know.
Serious question. Are you in a position where your access to health care rests on "repeal and replace" working out?
A few years ago I read an article in the online version of some magazine -- Fortune, maybe -- that was attempting to rebut the argument that the GOP opposed the ACA but had never offered a coherent counterproposal. The author listed maybe a dozen plans that had been put forth by various Republican legislators.
I commented on the piece that a dozen plans is no plan. The GOP needed, I argued, to settle on a single plan to go to the voters with and say, "Here, this is what we should do instead of the ACA." Nothing like that has ever happened.
Well, now they'll have their chance to repeal the ACA with or without a replacement in hand. I won't be surprised at all if they don't replace it with anything, and we'll be back to where we were. -- Which will really put a damper on people over 45 or so quitting their jobs to do startups.
> I'm sure Trump's solution will not leave you in the cold.
I hope you're right, but I don't know how you can possibly be sure.
Even if you want to remove the compassion for it, eliminating the ability obtain medical insurance is terrible for the economy. I waited for years to separate from my last employer until I was confident that I could obtain health insurance. There are a ton of risks when starting a new company and the last thing you want to think about is whether or not you can pay medical bills if something were to happen again.
Rather than working on my business, I now need to setup a meeting with the state's high-risk insurance pool to figure out whether they're finally going to eliminate the program and then compare that with the paltry list of plans left on ACA as well as what a broker can find me. To be clear, ACA has massive issues. That said, it meant that I could buy insurance, even if it wasn't the perfect insurance that I wanted.
While it seems fair to subsidize the costs of your particular problem, does it also seem fair to ask of them to subsidize the costs associated with obesity and palliative care of the old?
These people do not have software developer salaries either. The income cut-off for being offered some sort of a discount on the plans is rather low, so it really eats into the budgets of their families.
And, to be clear, even now health insurance is not cheap for me. I did better in my business than I ever did before and I still budget for and spend 9% of my gross income on healthcare, which is split between premiums and my out of pocket max.
ACA is absolutely, positively not a perfect law. However, ACA has allowed me to start a business. ACA has given me the possibility of starting a family. I am not alone. If the cost of that is the requirement that I muster enough compassion to cover the costs associated with subsidizing the obese and old, then that is absolutely worth it.
I think the best means of structuring society's relationship to medical care is to make it available to everyone within that society, spreading the costs across all parts of society.
That, to me, is the most sensible approach, even when some people pay more than they use, or some people use more than they pay for.
Pooled costs and guaranteed access to shared resources is one of the things that society is/does. Medical care doesn't seem different from roads, schools, police, the FCC, whatever.
Whether the ACA does a good job spreading the costs around or getting people access to medical care, that's a separate discussion. But whether it should at all, not a question for me. It should.
In terms of trade, the US typically like to pay it forward --it lets trade partners have a slight advantage so long as it sees a net positive (see China) presumably Trump would ask for equal benefits.
So rather than asking is this good for the global economy his administration might instead ask, is this good for the US economy? While the answer to the questions often overlap, at times the current answer does not optimize of the US economy.
That's a weird language. It's to the best benefit of the country to just adopt unilateral free trade. No need to bargain.
Of course, politically, that's not feasible.
But there's no `benefit' that comes at a cost to the country when allowing your citizens to freely trade with other countries citizens.
I'm not seeing Brazil, Japan or China adopt this philosophy --even the EU. If you were to start unilateral free trade what happens is others will protect themselves and you are left holding the deficit bag. Your consumers will be happy (yay consumerism!), but your wage-earners will not be happy.
If people want to give us goods and services in exchange for green bills that we can print at will, all the better.
Australia has been running a deficit for ages. They have been doing splendidly.
Also, often a trade deficit is just a statistical artefact: if the Chinese ship a billion t-shirts to the US, and in return get a skyscraper in Manhattan, that skyscraper-for-t-shirts trade will show up as contributing to the trade-deficit, just because the skyscraper doesn't move.
(Some for them buying some silicone valley company instead of the skyscraper. And America is good at producing lots of those companies.)
But I hope people consider what you said when someone talks about how Hillary or the media or whatever is part of the corrupt "Establishment".
That, on the other hand, is no longer questionable.
https://www.google.com/#safe=off&q=pied+piper+candidates+wik...
"You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic — you name it. [...] But the other basket — and I know this because I see friends from all over America here — I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas — as well as, you know, New York and California — but that other basket of people are people who feel that the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures, and they’re just desperate for change. It doesn’t really even matter where it comes from. They don’t buy everything he says, but he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won’t wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroine, feel like they’re in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well."
EDIT: The transcript I pulled this from: http://time.com/4486502/hillary-clinton-basket-of-deplorable...
In support of her defense of the statement: "to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half". That sounds very vague to me. She even referred to "you could put half" as "grossly generalistic".
Then in the rest of her statement she got to empathizing with the people that aren't voting because we have too many Muslims and brown people make me squeeamish.
[1]: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2016/09/10/clinton-says-regr...
The "deplorable" thing cost Clinton. The attacks on the Khan family don't seem to have cost Trump much at all.
You hear both candidates speak. Hillary says "We need to have empathy for those people," a phrase that's clearly referring to you by the surrounding context. She's obviously not talking to you, she's talking about you.
Trump says "I LOVE THE POORLY EDUCATED!!! And I know you're struggling and I'm going to fix it!"
He's talking directly to you.
Who do you vote for?
Does it even matter what she says at that point about empathy? No. She clearly doesn't even consider the possibility that a poorly educated person who's leaning Trump would even be in the audience. Does "We need to understand you people and empathize with you" sound inclusive? If you're in Camp Hillary it might. If you're not in Camp Hillary, well, those words are pretty much an admission that the in-crowd doesn't relate to you at all, or consider you one of them.
And that's the complete arrogance and obliviousness that allowed the left to lose an election to an extremely weak opponent.
"We need to have empathy for those people" because of "those people" is exclusive, but "We need to understand you people and empathize with you" is also exclusive. Is it the "you people"? Or should she have lied and said "I'm one of you". I don't know if it matters because she didn't say that anyway. Then the "I love the poorly educated", which is also a "[them]" is inclusive.
"She clearly doesn't even consider the possibility that a poorly educated person who's leaning Trump would even be in the audience." She made that speech at a fundraiser. Why would she speak to someone who maybe was there isntead of the people that were? What did Trump say at his private fundraisers? Should we compare stump speeches?
Did your hypothetical voter hear Trumps speeches where he constantly mentions how rich he is, how much money he makes in real estate deals, and all the fancy stuff he does? How many golf courses did he talk about in a day? I don't see why it's arrogant to not believe in Trump as a populist. Or to see irony in the claim that one candidate better cares about, relates to, or understands the poorly educated when his party wants to limit social safety nets, unions, health care, and the ability of poor people and minorities to vote.
As to the left's obliviousness, our candidate get more votes.
My lasting impression here was that the DNC's goal was not to win the presidency, it was to get Hillary Clinton elected to the presidency. There's a difference, and in this case, it was a vital one. During the Democratic caucuses I watched a lot of people vote for Hillary because it was assumed "she has the best chance of beating Trump." But the numbers at the time didn't even bear it out, and here we are.
What bit the DNC in the ass in a big way last night was that they completely miscalculated the importance of a large portion of the electorate that Trump actively courted, nominated a candidate that had almost no chance of swaying these voters, and ignored and denigrated them for the entire campaign. Whoops. Calling this a 'blind spot' would probably be an understatement.
Michael Moore called this one months ago. I hope the lesson of this election is not lost on anyone.
http://michaelmoore.com/trumpwillwin/
Yes to humility. I'm fine with the party doing some self-analysis and changing how they do things. I just don't think the math supports this narrative. Did Trump actually bring in new voters to his party? That was the story in the primary (and apparently now) but I don't think the data matched it then. It seems he did well with Republicans. Would any Democratic candidate have swayed rural white voters, or any white voters?
And suppose we take away the arguments about Trump's racist stuff. Say all these portion of voters really did vote because they had been ignored and are worried about their jobs and economic uncertainty. I don't think Trump's stated policies will help them. I think they're wrong to think trade policies and immigration are causing their problems. And if the story about this populist uprising is true, these don't seem to want a social safety net, expanded access to health care, environmental regulation, or unions, as much as they want a wall to keep out Mexicans. The DNC doesn't need to sway these voters. They're Republicans.
And finally, she got more votes. How terrible could Hillary have been if she got more votes? We need to keep this election in perspective. It was very very close. There are still a lot of people that want Democrats in office.
This election taught us that one of the parties is peddling very divisive rhetoric, and it's not the one you may think it is.
The difference is that Trump said "I'll do everything I can to put things back together" (while not making any specific promises), while Clinton said "You're sexist and deplorable if you vote for that guy".
Trump recognized that the problems existed. He was the first presidential candidate to do even that.
Without Obamacare we are probably going to see a return of unlimited out of pocket, no drug coverage and a maximum lifetime benefit (Don't get cancer). So those people are going to get the short end of the stick still as they age.
I'm not American. I was under the impression that you can be refused treatment (medicine specifically) if you don't have the money? I've heard stories of people selling their house to buy treatment for ill children.
That said we have a funny system here, when people get to a certain age (when they actually cost money to insure) we give them socialized medicine. Same thing happens if you get really sick and go on disability. It's a nice deal the insurance companies have, they get to privatize the gains and socialize the losses.
My health insurance bill has been going up 5-10% for the last 10 years. Between my employer and I it's now $14,000 just for insurance. That's nearly double the average total income taxes back in my country of birth.
Jobs that compete with similar jobs in other countries can potentially benefit from trade barriers. Make foreign cars expensive and there will be substitution with local cars. Long term it's worth thinking about whether there's a dependency created on that tariff.
Higher minimum wage has been mentioned. In so far as demand from the firms is inelastic you improve the lot of the minimum wage workers. Question is whether it is. Moving from 7 to 12 sounds like a big jump, and will be very dependent on what part of the country it is.
All these things depend on econometric measurement whose results I haven't come across.
This is quite true, but the problem is those cars will be a lot more expensive. That means a small number of people employed making the cars benefit, while the vastly larger number of people buying them lose out in higher costs. This never works out to the benefit of the country as a whole and low wage earners are the ones that lose out the most. For every car those workers make, they buy dozens of other goods which, if more expensive due to trade barriers, more than soak up any increased wages they might have.
Actually it's worse than that, because often many of those workers could have been gainfully employed is other industries. Only a small minority of our theoretical car workers would actually have been unemployed in a globalized world.
It's the same with Brexit. The vote was driven by working class people on low incomes, but the impact of inflation from the fall of the pound and further economic problems when we do actually leave the EU will predominantly fall on them. Middle class people like me have enough marginal income to absorb the hit. People on low income don't.
There is no free lunch with trade.
https://www.google.com/amp/www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-ta...
And those 1,200 jobs are just the visible ones. The extra billion dollars probably came with further negative effects somewhere else.
(German coal mining was (or still is?) in similar territory: the subsidy necessary to keep a few mining jobs around was way higher than what those guys got paid.)
If you can negotiate a tax-break for your industry then it'll give you millions, but millions or even billions divided up amongst the whole nation is hard to spot for an individual.
But those small number of people who benefit plus the whole of people in their supply chain, people that also drive demand for whatever the other people paying more for cars are offering.
The point I'm trying to make is that international trade doesn't give any multiplying magic. Simply separate the states in your country and whatever trade between them will become "international". It would be the same trade as before with the only difference that now you don't get to tax whoever is benefiting the most, one gets to play tricks with the currency, etc. etc.
Making foreign cars more expensive will only make American cars a bit more expensive, due to higher demand, but in general will just raise prices for everyone.
People don't buy foreign cars these days because of cost. They buy them because of perceived higher quality, styling/performance preferences, brand cachet, etc. If they start selling Chinese-made cars here, maybe that'll change, but for now, saving money is not the reason you buy a foreign car. If you want a cheap-ass car, you buy something like a Chevy Spark or Ford Fiesta. (Worse, those cars might be made in Mexico anyway. I'm guessing the cheapest American-made car is probably a Honda Fit or some Toyota maybe.)
For a support job, I want to employ a uneducated person. Just answering calls and clicking some buttons. (Could also be a student, no need for any experience etc) Costs me maybe 10 euros per hour. Why a student? Is relatively cheap and it gets the job done nicely. Now, if the minimum wage would go to 14 or more, what would happen? Would I still employ this student for the same task? Maybe (probably?) not. Maybe I will instead get a 20 euro worker with an education that can not only do support but also some development and can bring knowledge into the company.
Saying that increasing minimum wage solves problems directly is, I think, wrong, because everything might shift.
That doesn't work because companies outsource entire stacks of tasks. There isn't an "entry level" job anymore. There's no path inside when everyone wants experienced workers.
So what would happen is probably a 'Google customer service' level of customer service. Simply much less with the same people they already want.
Many "foreign" cars are built in the US. Some even more so than the American brands. "The Toyota Camry is, apparently, the most American vehicle on sale in the U.S." http://fortune.com/2015/06/29/cars-made-in-america/
Alas, that strategy of forced import substitution didn't work for India or Brazil, did it? (Or other poor countries in the 20th century?)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Import_substitution_industrial...
All of these factors together (which Democrats are actually interested in addressing) are growing an underclass of under-educated, unconnected people who can't make it in the world of the middle and upper class, so violence may become more frequent and jails will fill up. I doubt that the Trump administration and Congress have a plan that could come close to fixing this.
The people vocalizing their opinion by voting for Trump are beyond the age where education can be the key (old dogs and new tricks, etc.). There isn't a will to go to an educational program. There is a will to work and support yourself, but no work for them to do...
/because we can't get our shit together and fund infrastructure programs
//Not bitter.
I hate seeing this meme. It is ageist and makes older people less likely to be hired for even their same jobs.
Old people can still learn to do new things. The problem I see is that a lot of older people do not want to learn new things. Also, old people tend to have obligations such as family/child expenses, residence costs, etc. that they want to be compensated for even at an entry level.
Rural conservatism has a lot to do with preserving tradition, that is, making sure things don't change from the old status quo you loved before.
However, there are substantial barriers to that demographic to return to an education program precisely because it is a "return". Those barriers are far more social than anything else, yet they remain.
The real problem is that for many old people it's certain they'll never be able to get back to the status (financial, social and professional) they have now if they have to start all over again. As long as there is any promise of them being able to keep doing what they have experience in, that's what they'll aim for.
> As long as there is any promise of them being able to keep doing what they have experience in, that's what they'll aim for.
That's the real education that needs to happen. That job is gone and they're not going to get there. It's gone because the world has changed, the economy has changed. Holding out hope is holding that person back. I had to learn this early in my life, and now I live in two different countries depending on where I'm finding work.
That is also ageist. I see it here on HN all the time - "companies don't want to hire older people because they want too much money".
The problem is, people who used to make a livelihood don't want a minimum wage job, no matter how high the minimum wage. They're adults used to providing for themselves and possibly a family, for god's sake! They don't want some elementary retraining program to make them barely capable of doing a modern job. They want to feel productive and useful on their own, like most of us.
At the peak of his career he realized technology would kill the industry with the quality of amateur photography improving and technical skills becoming less important, he would often compete with people with barely any talent and be undercut on price. It was still sustainable at the time but he was sure better cameras, film and postproduction processes would kill his business.
He went back to school and became a homeopathy practitioner. My personal opinions of homeopathy aside, I have to acknowledge he was an expert at what he was doing and he was even regularly invited to give lectures. He kept doing that until the day he died, almost twenty years ago.
It's never to late to switch career paths. The bigger problem in the US seems to be that it is amazingly hard to do so unless you've built up a fortune to cover the cost of doing so.
Even someone approaching retirement age can start over and be productive if they have the chance, financial means, mental health and determination to do it.
I think this challenge of the race to the bottom exists in virtually every industry.
That nearly every industry developed like that is precisely on point: that your job is currently a safe bet doesn't mean it's something you'll be able to do all your life, no matter how good you are. There may never be a "Bitrot Belt" but the job market simply isn't static and never has been.
The entire point of the anecdote was that he had a successful career doing one thing well past his thirties, things changed, and he switched to a completely unrelated career and was pretty good at that too. The details are just flavouring because it's a personal story.
If you want something more blue collar: my father-in-law had a long career as truck driver, then changed paths to work in logistics/manufacturing. Plus I think he worked as a mechanic at some point. Sure it's mostly centred around working with vehicles but those are still three different jobs before he reached retiring age.
The bigger problem in the US though might be location. The Rust Belt is dead because the jobs went away and there are not enough new jobs in the region to replace them. People actually have to uproot and relocate to find a new job and a new home -- that can be jarring.
That's... really just not true at all. US labor mobility is higher than in pretty much any other developed country by pretty much whatever metric you want to pick. Measures like those in Germany (or whatever else you pick) would help at the margins but they would not do much to change the labor demographics of the midwest working class white community, which by broad historical standards are fairly good already.
Fundamentally this was an election about identity. Nate Cohn said it best in a tweet last night when he pointed out that working class whites (and not their minority compatriots who share the same economic problems) had suddenly started behaving like a minority group and skewed hard for one candidate from their historical positions.
It's about racism, and social change, and fear, and maybe sexism. "Economic Anxiety" is a myth that needs to die.
What about the angle that sexism is actually a stronger driver of all this than sexist? It would certainly make the Obama->Trump conversion more explainable.
If rayiner proves it cannot be racism then possibly it is sexism...
Talk about spreading hate.
I'm no big fan of Trump but I have reason to be thankful for Americans.
And if Americans who live with American politicians year after year decides Trump is their best hope then A) it must be pretty bad IMO B) it is their choice and I respect it.
Honestly I find it very strange how strongly people on hacker news are pushing against this idea, how deeply they are insulted by the idea that Trump has brought open sexism into the mainstream.
I'm not sold on that. I think the main difference is that those economic problems have been felt by minorities their entire lives. Not that it's fair, but that's been the reality for them. So it's not any bigger of an issue this election than any other. But the economic pains felt in the white working class haven't been felt since pre-WWII. They were the middle class of this country but now they are feeling the declines. Even if working class whites are now on somewhat equal footing with other minorities, they've been in decline in comparison to what they had. And that definitely leads to "Economic Anxiety".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy
And that's one problem I'm struggling with. Ultimately a lot of the suggestions I see to help the "left behind" in this thread might fail due to this very sort of politics alone. So many of the social help programs in the US have been demonized in the past by focusing on this in coded terms. Think "welfare queens" and the negative reaction to just the "Obamacare" nickname for some of the most direct and obvoius examples.
"Racism, social change, fear, sexism"... that can be overcome. The real problem is how these emotions are used as a political weapon now. No attempted solution will work if an opposition that hates it can transform it into some sort of identity politics battle. Especially now that we've found out that identity politics through a megaphone is actually more effective than "dog whispers".
It is possible for Donald Trump to surprise me, and one way he could surprise me is if he actually is more friendly to a stronger government with the goal of helping these people out. Donald Trump dose not make the laws, however, Congress does. So I expect no change.
As a side note, in a way, it was a shame it wasn't Bernie Sanders vs. Donald Trump for that reason. It would have been fascinating to see if economic policy really could out-trounce the Southern Strategy this time...
Look, I grew up with this nonsense. My grandparents even believed in new age non-sense like "earth rays" and astrology. If you just want to get out some witticisms about how pseudoscience is obviously pseudoscience that's fine by me. But I'm not sure you're adding anything to the conversation by ragging on my dead grandfather.
If you want to be outraged about something, how about being outraged that social public healthcare in Germany actually pays for homeopathic "medicine" (i.e. products with no active ingredients and no valid studies) and that pharmacies are allowed to claim these so-called remedies can actually alleviate specific symptoms.
In Trump's acceptance speech he explicitly mentions this:
We are going to fix our inner cities and rebuild our highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, schools, hospitals. We’re going to rebuild our infrastructure, which will become, by the way, second to none. And we will put millions of our people to work as we rebuild it.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/11/04/donald_trump_...
Ask the residents of Central Texas about what happened when they privatized the toll system. Personal data leaks, false charges sent to collections, terrible customer service. It was only after widespread outcry for government oversight(!) by Republicans that anything got done about it.
To add, educated people without a job feel even worse than undereducated people who don't have a job because they believed education would insulate them from these issues when it might not.
A plumber or electrician in Seattle can pull in 100k/year and they are booked out for weeks to months.
If you tried to scale this up in practice, you'd quickly find that you don't need 3x the number of plumbers that exist now.
If there were twice the plumbers, the rate per hour would not be halved. There's demand that can't afford these services at the current rate.
[1] http://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/plumbers-...
But you don't just offer training for a single vocation as that would be silly.
That said, it might still be a worthwhile policy to pursue, since vocational education has been neglected for decades in favor of 'college for all', which IMO is misguided.
Increase the number of electricians or plumbers 10-fold and their wages would plummet.
I feel that it is very easy to get trapped in the mindset that I am owed something based on my prior experience. Reluctance to think beyond past experience, fear of leaving behind what I worked hard to learn, or fear of failure in a new area are all things that have held me back in my own life.
I would disagree that people can not provide value beyond what they did before. Except in cases of physical or mental disability, it's more likely a self-imposed barrier.
They had labour market inefficiencies and weak demand.
The US labour market is a bit more flexible. And since they are issuing their own currency, they can always print more to stoke demand. (Ideally, the Fed would target nominal GDP.)
Good news: the Germans are having a much lower unemployment rate these days than in the late 90s.
1) irrelevant or (professionally) useless degrees. These would be fine but because they have a degree these candidates generally think they deserve a higher wage which I can't afford (before you say "but general knowledge is valuable as well" remember that self-taught candidates with similarly well-rounded knowledge generally demand less despite often having actual job experience)
2) complete lack of practical knowledge or skills. Even if a degree is job-related that doesn't mean they are capable of doing the job or have the frame of mind required to do the job properly. This is especially a problem with people who picked their majors based on what industry currently provides the best salaries rather than what they are actually interested in doing.
These are especially problems for people who went into university without knowing what they want to do professionally. TINSTAAFL but even if you just get a degree to orient yourself and pass time until you have figured out what you actually want to do with your life that can affect your employability.
There is a false impression in Germany that a university degree increases the chance of finding a job. But it's neither necessary (depending on the industry) nor sufficient.
The kind of companies that can and are willing to pay inflated salaries for graduates with no practical experience or useless degrees are oversaturated and the rest just can't afford them because it's not profitable.
Another way this problem manifests itself is students thinking they can or should specialise in niches when the only jobs that don't require experience require them to be generalists (because if you're going to specifically hire a one-trick pony you probably want a good one).
I've literally seen a fresh graduate apply to become a "colour consultant" in a full-service marketing agency. Sure, they might need someone who really knows their colour theory well but the scale at which a company can justify making that task a full-time job AND giving that job to a fresh graduate with no hands-on experience is pretty implausible.
As someone who has sat on both sides of this table, let me point out that pathologies in hiring are very, very hard for a company to spot. After all, who is going to advocate the contrarian position? The ones not hired aren't there. Observers who are there often don't have anything immediate to gain and lots of political capital to potentially lose.
complete lack of practical knowledge or skills.
If those skills are valuable and hard to find, then it's an advantage to be able to impart those, for both a company and a country.
Sure, but as a small company we can't afford to pay someone a "graduate level" salary when the best we can they need "unskilled level" training before becoming productive at all.
I'm not speaking of a Fortune 500 company or a AAA-level VC-funded startup. We have tight profit margins yet we try to take paid interns and students (which is a net loss for us because we actually train them rather than simply abusing them as cheap labour) because that's the right thing to do.
I'm also speaking from my experience of working closely with people running similar companies (let's say up to ~10 permanent employees) in Germany.
That said, in many cases someone with 3 years of actual job experience is more productive (in the short-to-mid term) than a recent graduate with 3 years of university (with no practice). Yet the graduate will often cost you more in Germany because of inflated salary expectations (partially caused by people reading about US startups and thinking the numbers transfer 1-to-1).
The German political class has been keeping wages lower then they should be on purpose. While export corporations have boosted their profits the last 15 years, wages have been kept much lower than they ought to be, killing the competition elsewhere and destroying a sort-of natural recycling mechanism which should protect the other members of their Eurozone: A worker in Germany should be paid 4 to 5 times more than a worker in Portugal.
Indeed the current German surplus is a major problem in EU's economy. Y. Varoufakis, M. Draghi and B. Bernanke have spoken about this openly time and again (see links).
By definition in a monetary union, your surplus[3] is someone else's deficit, but if you take a look at the rhetoric PIIGS are to blame for their poor financial track-record. Someone is simply having his cake and eating it, but not for long.
It's funny that with a 12.1B in surplus the AfD (right-wing nazi-friendly political party) is on the raise in Germany, isn't it?
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jul/24/germany-sur...
[2] https://www.brookings.edu/blog/ben-bernanke/2015/04/03/germa...
[3] http://www.wsj.com/articles/german-government-achieves-histo...
You're basically fucked. But then government comes to the rescue again giving handouts! Yay... thanks for temporarily solving a problem that you shouldn't have created in the first place.
I see this brought up a lot, as if those mothers are pearl clutching villains. Are you of the impression that hoodlums don't exist, or that they're not more common in poor communities? Or do you just take exception with people wanting what is best for their own children, at the expense of others? What argument would you make to those mothers that would convince them it is in their, or their children's, best interest to not seclude themselves away from poorer populations?
Just to make it a bit clearer, this smacks of the exact same kind of thinking that was just dealt a blow in the election. Selfishness is human nature, and shaming people over it might make them quiet, but it won't make them agree with you.
I'm far from a Trump supporter, but this kind of constant holier-than-thou thinking has to end or there will never be any semblance of unity in this country.
Cutting the working week to 30 hours, on the other hand...
http://www.tradingeconomics.com/united-states/unemployment-r...
http://www.businessinsider.com/gap-between-unemployment-amon...
We could start by not calling them privileged, demeaning them in their struggle. Acknowledging peoples struggle in life is often the first step in helping a demographic, be that women, black, white, immigrant, American born, or what have you.
As cultural changes, one would be to lower the harm from being unemployed. For men, too much of social value and social opportunity is tied to being employed and having a high earning potential.
We don't call them privileged. Rather, they hear the insults and put-downs they want to hear by tuning in to customized news and propaganda that confirm their deepest insecurities.
> As cultural changes, one would be to lower the harm from being unemployed. For men, too much of social value and social opportunity is tied to being employed and having a high earning potential.
Re-engineering the social brain so that status doesn't matter? Wow. I doubt you'd have anything like homo sapiens after that.
Status will always matter, but you can change the signifiers of status. There are plenty of places in, for example, rural China where women do most of the work while the men mostly stay home, and yet the men do not lack for status because of that.
"It is true that, traditionally, Mosuo women tend to take on most of the labour duties at home. They take care of the animals, tend the fields, etc. However, this is due to a historic division of responsibilities where Mosuo men were mostly traders, traveling long distances by caravan to trade with other groups. Since the men were frequently gone from home, the women were left to take care of the work. However, when the men were at home, they would also share in the duties there.
In modern times, the practice of having trading caravans has effectively ceased; with the result that one of the primary male roles has been rendered irrelevant. It is true, therefore, that you may often find men lounging around while women work hard; however, this is not universal (I've visited many homes where the men share in these duties equally with the women); and does not necessarily mean that Mosuo men are lazy…it indicates, rather, the need to define a viable new “male” role within the modern realities of Mosuo culture."
http://www.mosuoproject.org/myths.htm
The idea that any person can be content to contribute nothing meaningful to a family/group/village/society completely misunderstands human nature.
If culture can change so female status is not solely based on their ability to raise chilren, culture can change so male status is not solely based on their ability to support children.
The issue is that US rural men are unemployed. But the US rural economy will continue to decline until it reaches a balance with global commerce; protectionism, at best, is only a temporary measure. The US rural economy has even more to fall over the next decade.
Can we really think a solution is to teach rural men to find value in contributing nothing? A sinking economy gives nothing to do; even family-raising is a dismal prospect with poor schools and declining healthcare. The best and only plausible scenario is that rural men pack up their familes and move to the cities where jobs are plentiful. Indeed, this is the worldwide trend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urbanization
Similarly, I struggle to see why accusations of white privilege are terrible. I don't believe that because someone is white they can't suffer. I believe the statement is because someone is white they don't have to go through or experience certain things.
Like I don't have to experience the struggle of taking public transport as a person in a wheelchair, because I don't need a wheelchair, does not mean I don't have my own problems. I just don't have the specific problems of someone who has a mobility impairment.
I don't see how acknowledging this is demeaning. It's just looking at reality. White people can struggle, just not with race. Able bodied people can struggle, just not with being disabled. Is that demeaning to white or able bodied people to recognize this? I genuinely don't know.
What we should be saying to people is that they should strive to be better because that's the only sure way they can hope to improve their situations. Waiting for other people to help you isn't going to do anything. The only thing you have control over is your own life. If the public discourse around these issues focuses solely on how other people have control and how you have no control, then the situation only becomes worse because then people have an excuse to not try, and they don't.
It is not being called privileged that's the problem. It's being shamed or put in some hierarchy of oppression that is the problem.
>I don't see how acknowledging this is demeaning.
I'm sorry if this comes across as rude, but, obviously this conversation isn't about you. Many Americans they have seen this as demeaning. And for what it's worth, I know many people who do demean white, able-bodied, cis-gendered people for their "lack of" oppression.
This works the same for culture wars, or "war on christmas" etc. People are fundamentally nice, they don't want to stop gay people from marrying, so you need to frame it as "an attack on traditional marriage" to get people riled up with righteous fury.
Pointing out the obvious fact that white people have advantages needs to be twisted too. By for example pointing out that a poor white man has problems that a rich non-white man doesn't. Totally ignoring the obvious comparison point being two poor men, or two poor women, or two rich men/women with different skin colors. Not getting the point becomes imperative, to maintain the illusion of it being an attack.
My (laymen's) understanding of the word 'privilege' was always more along the line of "Mozart was his piano teacher". But it looks like at some point the word was redefined to some incredibly technical meaning whereby a broke--but white, and male--coal miner is also privileged.
It is probably rather insulting to a unemployed rust belt white man with no degree, who is getting by on social assistance, to be tagged by some well-off person on the coasts with a professional degree, that they are suffering from "white male privilege".
For a start, such "privilege" is not terribly applicable in this case. Regardless of whether the professional is not white and/or not male, the professional with the degree is in the "higher caste" in American society compared to the unemployed white man with no degree.
Many articles that use such phrases as "white privilege" tend to be accusatory and overly moralizing. If that's not insulting, at the very least you are not going to change any minds. (As an example from the "other side", my brother works at Citigroup. Guess what I start thinking of a person's argument when they start descending into an "evil Wall Street elite" meme?)
I agree that "white privilege" exists but there are better ways to phrase this -- at the very least, acknowledge and understand the other side.
If your life happens to actually truly suck, it's hard to not resent those who want to make it even worse.
If you want to start steering political life according to your values, next election cycle, pick a candidate for city/state/federal/whatever, or cause that matters to you, and give them 10 hours a week of your time.
They might win, and you might have your issue or values better represented at your city/state/federal/whatever.
If they lose, you get up and do it again the next election cycle.
Though, the vote that you can do that has the most influence on you is the vote with your feet.
I agree, but I would say that actively selecting what kind of code you will write using criteria that value wide economic utility -- much wider, say, than the goals of the average me-too unicorn chasing project -- is a healthy and all-too-rare thing.
If we look at mature technologies like plumbing we see an industry around them that enables small, local businesses. Yes a relatively few companies make plumbing components, but hundreds of independent plumbers are able to use those components distributed through local shops to solve local problems.
WordPress has done that for software. Through it's decentralized design it enables jobs for consultants, plug-in vendors, theme vendors, designers, web hosts, and content authors. This industry around WordPress employs many, many people. Further, it creates an opportunity for geographically targeted businesses to be built around WordPress.
The architecture of the tools systematizes the business models those tools enable.
There is a load of blue collar work that can (and urgently needs to) be done in USA. Building a single wind turbine are dollars for R&D, truckers, manufacturers, maintainers, people that install and pour concrete, electricians, miners and so on ...
And also maintaining and repairing the old stuff. The North Dakota oil boom showed that if there is work to be done, blue collar's willingness to do it is there.
Is is mostly a matter of will.
There is also the issue of planning out infrastructure improvements. With environmental reviews that can take decades and lawsuits that occur after that, it is extremely difficult to pull the same type of "New Deal" programs that happened during the 1930s.
My guess is for all the spending, very few people would end up employed. Is the goal employment at any cost, or providing people without jobs welfare?
The critical variable is what is the Congress willing to do - if the Republicans embrace the blue collar workers - a lot can be accomplished.
Right now republicans have a chance to shape the country for a generation. And I hope they will see how rewarding the working class could benefit their big corporate donors - because america need a new middle class that can consume everything that corporate america produces.
And infrastructure spending is hard to resist to - it will benefit even Democratic districts.
"Support for Trump, much like Brexit, was based upon an extremely widespread feeling that average people are not getting their fair share of the benefits of globalisation. This is neither a specifically Democrat or Republican problem, and people have been saying it one way or another for years.
It was also the foundation of Sanders' campaign. The difference is that Sanders blamed deregulation and big corporate bonuses while Trump blamed immigration and open borders. I'm sure that there are elements of truth to both of these positions."
i'm sceptical that trump, as a big corp owner, will do much to regulate and reign big corps in; if that's really the case we'll now see if curbing immigration is an actual solution to the problem.
(personally, i doubt it - it has failed in other countries already)
so, let trump do what he promised and see how it works out. if it doesn't, try the other method next. for me it's easy to say because i'm not an u.s. citizen and have no desire to move there (i think my country will be in the same situation in a couple of weeks though); it's not like it wouldn't affect me, but i can't change it anyway.
Curbing immigration won't be a solution to the problem; it's just a highly visible one. Each immigrant that is looking for a job in the US is taking one away from the supply for an American. That is how the Trumpistas see things.
Economically, sure, that's true. The immigrants take jobs from the labor supply. What people don't see is that aside from ones on skilled visa programs is that these jobs are either 1. underpaid by minimum wage or 2. not jobs that these people actually want anyway, so at worse you will see a lot of inflation, or a lot of open job positions. It doesn't make sense, but it won't really make sense.
Personally, I wouldn't mind inflation if all workers are paid a decent wage as a result. For far too long inflation has been too low and confined to precisely the wrong sectors (i.e. land, health care, education). It's time for workers to get their share of the action.
Is it your intuition that the labor market would not adjust to a lower supply by becoming more desirable? If not, why?
Research by George Borjas found that the influx of immigrants (both legal and illegal) from Mexico and Central America from 1980 to 2000 accounted for a 3.7% wage loss for American workers (4.5% for black Americans and 5% for Hispanic Americans). Borjas found that wage depression was greatest for workers without a high school diploma (a 7.4% reduction) because these workers face the most direct competition with immigrants, legal and illegal. [3]
Assuming ALL recent-ish immigrants are all mass deported and the economy adjusts immediately, you will see a ~7.4% shift of real wages for high school dropouts making the low end of <$36K, most of which voted for Clinton anyway. You'll see almost no issue with those above this rate because they are not competing with illegal immigrants. (This makes it more likely capitalists who see wage increases for non-service positions (eg manufacturing) will automate faster to reduce costs, but I think this is a side point considering that most jobs in the US today are in the service sector and not as easily automated away.)
Of course, you could also give the suppressed income bracket a 7% tax cut and end up in roughly the same spot without mass deportation; the undocumented immigrants aren't paying income tax anyway, and this would be HIGHER than necessary because the above study takes into account legal immigration as well.
[1] http://www.pewhispanic.org/2009/04/14/a-portrait-of-unauthor...
[2] http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5312900
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_impact_of_illegal_imm...
[4] http://catalog.flatworldknowledge.com/bookhub/reader/2992?e=...
So, just excluding or including some more people won't change the level of pay, as a first order effect.
There's no constant demand for labour. It expands and shrinks with supply. (And even then, the federal reserve can make arbitrary large amouts of demand. They can literally print money.)
But where and when has there ever been this magical equilibrium?
In the real world people get paid whatever they can get away with, and some people can get away with more than others. Telecommunications execs can price gouge you and get a bonus for it.
This applies to the average Joe, too, by the nature of how averages work. (But might not apply to the median Joe.)
Yes, there's some pricing power for some people. And there's weird things like Baumol's cost disease. But those are second and higher order effects.
Exactly. And "we" after all is another abstraction. And "I" can eat what "you" sowed.
If corporations have record-high profits, while workers get stagnating salaries while housing prices raise, someone is going to realize what "we" entices after all.
Consider a company like Google, who doesn't hire on quotas, but just grabs all the talented engineers they can. In what sense is a visa worker taking a job away from an American, when Google will gladly hire both?
That said, I have seen companies that were "H-1B dependent", ie, they have paid the fees for visas to hire from outside the country, because they were able to get lower salaries from doing so even after paying the legal fees. Clearly not the Googles of the world, but they do exist.
... for the offered salary.
The way I see it, "inorganically" adding to the labor supply hinders the natural price discovery of the market.
Yes, Google might be able to hire more employees with higher salaries by poaching them from elsewhere. But that just shifts the labor shortage to some other company, it doesn't get rid of it.
The way I see it, it's bad for everyone (the employer, the Indian, the American taxpayer) when an American $100k job opportunity stays unfilled and a willing qualified Indian is working at an Indian company for $30k instead because they won't let him into the USA.
And in your deal I can see someone getting the short end of the stick:
The employer gets lower costs and higher profits. The Indian gets a higher salary and access to infrastructure he didn't have to pay for. The local gets a lower salary, and the rest of taxpayers get one more body consuming the public services he had to pay, more people competing for housing and ~40$K less in demand for whatever he has to offer.
Locals want those jobs. I worked them when they actually made a relatively decent wage. Now they simply are not worth my time even as side jobs they pay so little.
I was making $22/hr at 16 years old in the mid-90's as a landscaping laborer. This pay range was quite common for such jobs, and most of my co-workers were 20 and 30 somethings supporting families. Good luck getting even half that today, 20 years later.
If you started paying roofers $50/hr, you would have an unlimited pool of labor willing to take those jobs. At $10/hr I'm not interested because I can barely make a living at that rate, so it's certainly not worth the wear and tear on my health.
Unskilled immigration is largely a wealth transfer from the most vulnerable in our society to the most privileged. There is very little to be gained in these practices for the typical underskilled American - most all the benefits are accrued elsewhere in the economy.
http://dailycaller.com/2016/03/16/harvard-economist-immigrat...
That's not actually true, though. Every immigrant who comes here and becomes employed is, of course, filling a slot that is no longer available to a native-born citizen. However, he or she will also be one more person who needs to be fed, clothed, housed, entertained, protected, and supported. All of those create demand that adds up to substantially more than one job (about 1.2, to be exact [1]).
If there's one thing I'm taking away from this campaign and election, it's that people have big problems reasoning about systems where costs are acute and centralized and benefits are diffuse, even if on the whole they personally benefit substantially from those systems. This seems true for immigration, for climate change, for free trade, for healthcare reform.
[1] http://www.nber.org/papers/w21123
Just let's not downplay the effect it can have to have to rethink the way you earn your livelihood, it's nothing short of a personal crisis. Some people have a really hard time adapting, others not so much. But that doesn't mean government should protect you from that.
Shouldn't everyone be able to have a job, even if it's not one they want to do? Is the problem just that they lack the qualifications for the jobs?
I personally think this is a common tactic by academics -- put out something that has a clearly false-as-phrased conclusion and then get lost in a maze of dense data and opaque language, come out disoriented, and make some conclusion like this that's pretty clearly invalid if you're willing to step away. The authors somehow convince themselves that the obvious conclusion is incorrect (often by redefining words) and then accuse anyone who dares to point out that the conclusion is a sham of being a luddite and anti-intellectual.
So, what would an opponent in good faith say against that? Is this a well known thing among Real Economists, which is just brushed under the rug when a politician wants to appeal to people with an anti-immigration policy? Or is there more to it?
It seems to be really low hanging fruit to explain that and have massive economic boons by increasing immigration, right? Or is that not the conclusion? Because what you said is really intuitive and some politician should be able to just easily use that. Why don't Clinton/Obama say that when explaining why they're letting illegal immigrants stay?
It's the same sort of difficult argument as globalization and free trade. It hits you somewhere very easy to notice, so you feel like you're worse off even while you're sitting on your brand new couch watching whatever you want on demand on your 60" TV and eating your steak dinner. Making the link that all those other good things are a result of the same policy requires a small but not automatic intellectual leap that a lot of people clearly aren't prepared to make if they feel like the initial assertion doesn't pass the smell test.
I think you mean they fill labor demand or that they diminish the supply of jobs by providing labor. This however incorrectly assumes that the demand for labor is fixed. That demand is affected by supply + cost of labor and demand for goods and services. Immigrants consumer goods and pay of services so more immigrants means more aggregate consumer demand, which leads to higher demand for labor. In the end immigrants result in a net labor demand increase due to consumption. Immigrants no matter how frugal still get haircuts, buy groceries, see doctors, pay for tax help, call plumbers, by pants, go to bars, buy used cars etc.
Yes, I do. Thank you for the clarification.
The problem happens when government burdens a group of people with taxes and makes their livelihood more expensive, and becomes the cause of such inability to compete in the market. Limiting immigration is the dumb man's solution to that problem, the real solution would be a yuge cutting of expenses in order to reduce tax burden, and consequently the size of government.
First, Trump is not anti-immigrant. Two of his wives have been immigrants and the new First Lady-elect (?) is an immigrant with a very noticeable accent.
Trump is not anti-immigrant, he's anti-illegal-immigrant.
Let me first say I sympathize with the plight of Central Americans and if I was in that position, either pay $20k and wait 5 years for approval, I would probably take the chances and run the border too, especially knowing my children would be U.S. citizens automatically. However, there are risks incumbent in doing that.
Illegal immigration removes our ability to process and distribute new migrants. It makes it so we can't track whether they're having a disparate or unexpected economic impact, either on the nation as a whole or on specific areas. Illegal immigrants may have trouble finding jobs without SSNs, which may cause them to resort to crime, become dependent on welfare programs, or both. An insecure border allows people with impure motives, like terrorism, to enter. There can be substantial differences in social and cultural norms, which can affect their employability and ability to assimilate. While these people are illegally crossing the border, they're already committing a major repudiation to the social order of their intended new home by mocking rule of law and entering the country without authorization.
All of these things need to be managed and that's why immigration law exists. Americans in border towns are getting overrun and there's no reason they should have to be. They're sick of it.
People usually won't admit to this because SJWs come in and accuse them of being racist for wanting to preserve their traditions, social norms, employability, and language. The election of Trump is a resounding rejection of that hostile sentiment from the self-righteous elite class.
Most Americans have no problem at all with immigrants from other cultures, races, religions, etc., as long as they are given the tools to manage, understand, and direct it so that it's not disruptive to the existing social and economic order.
What all this really boils down to is something that both Republicans and Democrats agree on: our current immigration system is clunky, slow, and expensive, and badly needs rectification. Let's focus on fixing that instead of getting at each other's throats.
[1] http://imgur.com/a/p0ELF
Housing, health care, and college tuition are the great Satans of the economy for the middle and working classes. These have inflated without bound regardless of what wages or employment are doing.
I think they do. I'm pretty sure most people know all the implications MADE IN CHINA carry.
They see they are getting 1 unit of benefit for 2 units of hindrance.
Losing a job is a biiiig lump. Paying a bit less on various items is a bunch of hard to measure little wins.
Structural unemployment is an inevitable result of globalization, we need ways to mitigate this. Trade from the POV of rich countries is often a redistribution from the poor (uncompetitive labor) to the wealthy (multinational corporations), justified by the "gains from trade". We must be willing to aggressively redistribute these resulting gains back to the disenfranchised or see populist backlash.
If the USA is enforcing environmental regulations for their factories, this will obviously cost more than just dumping used chemicals outside in a pit. So the cost of goods in another country will be less if it doesn't have good (or any) environmental regulations. This is separate from labor prices.
So it is not fair to the USA, and it isn't fair to the people living in countries without good environmental regulations.
it's the same for environmental expenses: skimp now, and you might not have a market to sell to in a decade.
so, if you outsource to another country it wont help in the long term because climate is global.
that much is clear. the rest is sufficiently explained by dawkins stable dove-hawk systems. you might want to try to gamble the system for personal gain, but if everyone does it, it'll collapse and everyone dies. so you shouldn't and protest transgression by others, otherwise the system might collapse.
i'm convinced you can play fair and still make a profit.
Trump is proposing that we put a cost-prohibitive tariff on foreign-built goods so that Americans will only buy them if there is truly no decent American competitor.
Sanders and Trump are approximating the same root cause here -- corporate greed is depriving the American worker. They're just extracting the value that belongs to the American worker at a different point of the transaction. It's debatable which is superior, but Trump's approach is more compliant with conventional American laissez-faire capitalism.
> "If the money is being taken from Americans at the point-of-sale and then shipped out to China, Americans lose."
You can't only look at one side of the equation. American grown soybeans and American manufactured aircraft are being bought in China, and billions of dollars worth of their hard earned yen are being "shipped out" to America. The point of free trade is for everyone to specialize in what they have a comparative advantage in, because this will expand the production frontier overall.
Putting cost prohibitive tariffs on goods the Chinese are better at producing (let's just say commodity electronics) may prop up US commodity electronics makers. But we would be subsidizing inefficiency. And if the Chinese put similar tariffs on American exports like commercial aircraft in return, everybody loses. Yes, you can just eliminate free trade, but the point of free trade is to grow the pie. You just have to cut it fairly after it's grown.
So while the goods that are mostly part of discretionary spending (think clothes and electronics) are cheaper, the essentials that can't be outsourced have also increased in price (education, healthcare, housing)
He also blamed the tax code, claiming many times to have taken advantage of it, and boasting of paying insanely low taxes on his businesses. This was seen as horrible by a lot of the left in this country - proof that "he doesn't want to shoulder his fair share of the burden"- but served as evidence to what a lot of middle America has suspected for years, that the tax increases Democrats proposed to pay for welfare programs weren't effecting the rich and were being paid for by the middle class. (Yes, this is a simplification of the issue.) Trump's 'I broke it and I know how to fix it' approach to the tax code the reason a lot of people who don't trust corporations voted for a tycoon.
Trump's also credible, because as someone whose attempted many different lines of business, he's seen what it takes to be competitive, and as someone with the heart of a worker, he didn't like it and wanted to even the playing field.
Trump is the epitome of "Don't hate the player, hate the game". Trump was in a very unique position, shared perhaps only by a few dozen other living souls, to see the game, hate it, and be able to make a credible attempt to fix it.
I grew up in a rustbelt like industrial town in Norway. We has shipyards, glass factory, paper mill, textile industry, lock systems etc. Almost all of it got closed down and moved overseas as I grew up.
But we never ended up in the deep pit blue collar America ended up in, because government took a very active stance early to fight this with active policies. In towns where factories died, they moved public sector jobs from the capital.
People got a lot of retraining for new jobs. There is a strong system for vocational training in technical jobs like Germany so people could get skills for more advance jobs which was easier to keep when competing against asian industrial giants.
Our government offers free university education, so even less well off blue collar families could send their kids to good schools. And when economic times got harder it never hit blue collar works as hard as in America because we have free universal health care, heavily subsidized childcare, good pensions for everybody.
Basically the welfare system we built up saved our blue collar workers. Yet Americans pretend that there is no solution to this problem except attacking minorities, Mexico, China etc.
It is rich people like Trump and their agenda, which has made sure that blue collar workers in America have felt the influence of globalization harder than many other blue collar workers in the west.
Yes it can. According to Wikipedia, Sweden has lower economic inequality than Norway does. [0] And the percentage of income held by the poorest 10% is nearly the same across Nordic countries. [1]
I have quite a few friends from the Nordic countries (Norway, Sweden, Finland) and they are quick to tell you that things aren't perfect there, but I think you can say that government policies can create a more equal society even in countries without petromoney (e.g. Sweden).
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality
[1] http://www.viewsoftheworld.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/Eu...
Despite AWS' claims otherwise, you can't just extend a service designed for 10 million to 320 million and expect even remotely the same performance.
Obviously this kind of transformation takes time, and I have heard from Finnish friends that the education system quality is falling (it used to be within top-3 in the world for test scores, now they're only top-10).
I'm sure when people thought of the model in the '70s, there were many people saying it would never work for a country of 5 million people, but 40 years later it still mostly works.
> Despite AWS' claims otherwise, you can't just extend a service designed for 10 million to 320 million and expect even remotely the same performance.
Are you saying the cost is too high, or it is simply infeasible to improve the lives of this many people?
For the improvement of quality of life, see India's current efforts. Which I would argue are even more ambitious (e.g. bring water and electricity to nearly half a billion people) and, while not perfect, are going about as well as anticipated.
For the financial argument, well there's a reason why everything in the Nordic countries is very expensive and people complain about the high taxes.
I'm saying a system designed for 10 million users cannot simply be extended to 320 million, particularly when that larger population is substantially more diverse.
Consider a social science study looking at the same populations. Would you really expect any given finding in the Scandinavian populations to map to the US?
Only 10 of your States has more people than Sweden.
Roughly 20 states has a population more than 5.5 million, which is the ballpark where Denmark, Finland and Norway are. So 30 States have less population than a typical Nordic country.
Sweden is likely more diverse than at least 15-20 of your states - a bit hard to compare due to different kind of demography statistics.
And we have free movement of workforce in EU/Schengen, so that ain't too different from US.
If there is a will, there's a way.
Yes, it was. That's why they had a confederation, not a union, organized under the Articles of Confederation. It was an abject failure. Nothing was able to get done because the states couldn't agree on anything, and the central government wasn't powerful enough to force them to do anything.
That's why the Constitution was invented instead.
It's a bit similar to the EU: the central government is too weak to force the members to adhere to its policies, so it's falling apart.
We know it works for systems of up to ~50m people because those are the larger EU countries. In that case I submit that it would also work at state level in the US. I feel that you can't even make a good argument that the reason it can't work at state level is because of the federal government because we're also a de facto federation within the EU and it works for the most part.
edit: I'm likely missing or wildly underestimating something here but I just can't shake the impression that what prevents the US from having all the nice things we get are cultural and historical issues, not economical ones.
Here is no different. Many people hate the very concept of public education, let alone throwing more money at it. And when people do agree that we should do it, they inevitably disagree on the hows and the whats.
The issue with scale isn't logistical or so... metric based. It is as simple (and insurmountable) as getting such a diverse population to agree at all.
If anything you'd think the oil would cause higher inequality rather than lower.
The policies you enjoy are paid for by those revenue, and are not applicable to "regular" countries.
I admit tho that your politician did a good job at ensuring that those revenue are used for the good of the general population and are managed with the future in mind.
It's not about oil, it's about realizing that a healthy, well educated and happy population is an investment that pays itself over time.
I'm not making a judgment for or against high marginal taxes, I'm just saying "the US could do it too" ignores, well... the very core of economic and tax policy in the US.
Isn't that a little too simple?
"No, we can't do that because we don't want to."
Yes, in the US, the taxation of the Nordic countries won't work and the socialist approach to services is also not accepted by half of the country.
Two key ideas, however, could be implemented:
--- IDEA 1 - REALLY EDUCATE people on WHY they need to get new vocational training.
Currently too many people are being given false promises of the return of working class jobs that are not coming back. It's not just globalization that has caused the loss of these jobs, but also technology advances that have made many of these jobs obsolete.
Your blue collar worker today isn't going to get a job moving metal equipment from one place to another because a machine can do it much more efficiently 24/7. Our capitalistic society means that a corporation will seek to create maximum efficiency to generate maximum profit. Corporations aren't in the business of maximizing the number of employees, but rather maximizing the return per resources invested in the organization. And that means, excuse my somewhat callous statement, that people are viewed as resources to the organizations, a means to generating profit. If a machine is able to perform a function faster, longer, for less overall money than an employee, a corporation will seek for that alternative.
So when many politicians make promises of bringing back good jobs. They AREN'T telling people WHAT JOBS are coming back. In fact, when you look at manufacturing jobs in the US, we currently CAN'T FILL THEM.
The problem is that your blue collar worker still expects a manual, low skill manufacturing job. But the job the US corporation wants is a manufacturing person who has a math or CS degree who can program or operate a high-end automation machine. Who can manage the CNC process or who can input the specifications for highly detailed technical operations. This requires specific training, math, engineering, or certifications.
This is the truth that more politicians need to hammer home to the people, then government follows up making sure that there is an incentive for educational institutions to allocate resources to teach these people.
But today, we're still stuck in: politicians claim that it's federal government's fault that they don't have a job, and that electing them instead will magically bring these low skill jobs back.
--- IDEA 2 - DECENTRALIZE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT AGENCIES (Move them out of Washington D.C.
A CNN op-ed suggested this as a way to bring the Federal government closer to the people in the country. (http://www.cnn.com/2016/09/06/opinions/government-department...)
The capital, Whitehouse, and some executive services would remain in D.C., but many of the key departments would be moved to different regions of the country.
For example:
-The Veterans Administration in Phoenix -The IRS in Dallas -Treasury Department in NYC -FBI in SLC -The EPA in Portland or Seattle -Department of Agriculture in Iowa
and so forth. Federal government jobs move to other places around the country bringing it closer to the people so they get a more personal connection with the government since it actually supplies jobs to the people they know. It also moves these departments into locations that cost less than the high prices of the D.C. beltway.
Is there some loss of more interpersonal meetings between departments and cabinets? Sure, but high speed Internet access is readily available in ALL metropolitan areas around the country. We have video conferencing technology which eliminates the need for us to have the requirement of so many in-person meetings. It's a trade-off, but one that is greatly benefiting the people of the country.
And as the Federal government this is a big win because today, much of the sentiment is that the Federal government DOESN'T DO anything for me...
For instance, the coastal administration moved from the capital Oslo to Ålesund which is smack in the middle of a world-renowned maritime cluster; fisheries agency. moved to our #2 city (or #1 if you ask the locals) Bergen, historically the major export hub for the coastal fisheries, etc.
The key benefit is that it ensures there is a need for highly skilled labour also outside the capital; also, as you mention, it provides for more closeness to government - the sectors affected by the whims of a government agency has said agency within spitting distance, which helps.
The only thing I would point out (see my comment a little further down about US budget) is that our current level of taxation supports comparable levels of spending to Nordic countries. I would guess, not doing an in depth analysis, that this is partly or even mostly due to the much larger relative size of the US GDP.
And in the case of healthcare, we are flat out spending more, both in real dollars and per capita measurements, and getting less. So I view tax arguments as more or less red herrings: We already spend as much or more, instead we should ask what is wrong with our system? Changes to our systems should not require increases in our taxation (necessarily).
But it's also why I really like your ideas since they are systemic in nature.
I can't say those agencies are specifically "in touch" with citizens. I'd rather say, they might be more hellish if they were all centralized in Berlin.
Take the other example of Belgium whose tax level is more or less equivalent but is scaling down on basically everything. People there complain that they pay a lot now, but are almost certain that when their turn come, they will not get anything.
We are in a context where you can't predict the outcome of the next election a single day before, who will trust to current generation of politician with policies in 30 years ?
Also, that's not just a question of egoism. I don't mind paying today so that people get unemployment benefit and a good pension. The problem is that if it goes the other way when I reach retirement age, I will neither receive the pension nor the year of tax cut to make up for it.
https://www.nationalpriorities.org/budget-basics/federal-bud...
The largest portion of our budget is mandatory spending (~65%). Of our mandatory spending, the largest portion of that is spent on Social Services (Social security, medicare and health, etc) and yet we still have worse services than almost any other western country (IMO).
You start looking at percentages and an even more sinister picture starts to take shape:
https://visualeconomics.creditloan.com/how-countries-spend-t...
> "Canada spends 6.3 percent of its total yearly budget on military spending. The United States spends 19.3 percent of its budget on military expenses. Mexico uses 3.3 percent of its budget for military spending."
> "Canada spends 17.9 percent of its total yearly budget on health care. The United States spends 19.3 percent of its budget on health care expenses. Mexico uses 11.8 percent of its budget for health care."
> "Norway spends 17.9 percent of its budget on health care spending, while its neighbor Sweden spends 13.8 percent of its budget on health care."
> "In France, health care spending is 16.7 percent of Frances yearly budget."
This article needs citation, but see this report that seems to at least tangentially support some of the trends voiced:
http://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/Briefing-Note-NORWAY-...
> "The United States is, by far, the country that spends the most on health as a share of its economy (with 16.9% of its GDP allocated to health in 2012)"
So at this point we can conclude that the US spends roughly the same share, or more, of it's GDP on Health care as other countries...even those "socialist" ones...yet we have a much worse standard/level/cost of care.
Even at our "lower" tax rates our GDP is by far and away the largest:
https://www.google.com/search?q=list+of+countries+by+GDP&oq=...
But moreover, our PER CAPITA GDP is one of the highest in the world (higher than Norway and Sweden).
So at the end of the day, America:
* Spends more on healthcare in flat dollar terms than almost any other nation
* Spends more on healthcare PER CAPITA than almost any other nation
and yet we still have far worse levels of care.
So this problem has nothing to do with economic or tax policy in the US. The question is: Where is the enormous sums of money we are ALREADY pouring into the system going?
The pockets of the oligarchy represented by Clinton and Trump.
Still kind of ridiculous that the amount we spend still amounts to most of the population getting shafted.
> ...industry supplies the bulk of the funds devoted to research and development, the public sector—primarily the National Institutes of Health (NIH)—supports most of the nation’s basic biomedical research.
http://content.healthaffairs.org/content/30/2/332.full
This quote seems to indicate the majority of R&D is coming out of the private sector.
Moreover, this overhead of medical R&D from the public sector doesn't explain price differences in drugs between US and other developed nations:
http://usuncut.com/news/us-drug-prices-in-the-us-are-literal...
http://www.wsj.com/articles/why-the-u-s-pays-more-than-other...
There are deeper, systemic issues IMO.
On top of that, you're not forcing anybody to do anything.
The negotiation process is just different than when other countries are negotiating with US pharmaceutical companies.
It's doubtful they can/will fix any of this. America is a country controlled by lobbyists.
The politicians don't matter at the end of the day, look at Obama, had the right idea, could only implement a relatively mediocre system because anything good was politically untenable. The fact that politics can trump (lol) the health of the nation is enough for me to never want to live there.
Our private health care system, however, has a cycle of perverse incentives -- employers, insurers, patients, and doctors -- that leads to spiraling costs with no increased benefits. The populations with the highest health risks (i.e. costs) are shoved onto the public rolls, in the form of Medicare, Medicaid, and the VA. Meanwhile, the lowest-risk populations are forced to pay into private, for-profit insurance schemes. Specialists have outsized bargaining power, which leads to grossly outsized salaries. Equipment and drug manufacturers can play hospitals and systems off of each other to bid up prices. And, of course, shareholders want a return on their investment.
This problem has everything to do with economic and tax policy in the US.
> "Your tax rate is so high America would never vote for a similar tax."
> "Percentage wise those countries spend a lot more on health care than the US."
I would agree that our private health care system has perverse incentives. Combined with the degree of separation between cost and consumer due to our insurance system, this has resulted in general market failure.
Neither of these are directly economic or tax policy related (IMO). We already are being taxed and paying for health care...the issue is where is our health system failing to deliver value-per-dollar spent. Which generally might involve some economic policy overlap as far as market regulation, but I don't think it is the whole (or even the majority) of the story.
Nordic countries pay significantly more in taxes any way you look at it. You'd get laughed out of the room if you talked to someone like Donald Trump about paying a 40% marginal tax rate.
USA Citizens pay more overall. Just not through "taxes." per -say.
Not to say Scandinavia has the best of everything, but regardless... Jag skulle vilja bo i skandinavien istället USA
Hardly. It was the core of the tax policy for a very long time.[1]
1: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Historical_Marginal_...
But it was, not not too long ago. 35 years ago it was 50%. 40 years ago it was 70%. Just saying it ignores the core of economic and tax policy in the US ignores, well... the the recent history of the economic and tax policy of the US. Rather than a rank dismissal of the idea, why not explain what's so different than now from then that makes it impossible?
> you can't just throw out a link to graph about tax rates 50+ years ago and think that settles it and the US can be just like Norway.
I didn't. I just meant to show that your reason for dismissing it seems poorly founded, or at least poorly explained.
Now it's different. I'll be laughing with my other billionaire buddies about your tax rate plans while snorting coke of a hooker's tits on my private yacht and watching the Monaco F1 GP from the harbor. I've got all the luxuries I need over there, and in fact, everywhere, that I previously could only enjoy in the US. I can talk with who I need to talk to over Skype, I can do my business, banking, everything, remotely.
It's not like other countries don't have equal or better infrastructure. It's not like I can get clean water and food only in the US that would somehow make this a magical place I'd never leave.
So why would I just sit quietly and let you tax me at 90%, exactly?
> So why would I just sit quietly and let you tax me at 90%, exactly?
Extradition treaties and/or freezing of your bank accounts, businesses and resources within the US.
Nobody expects the Spa.. I mean IRS.
That's something you can opt out of. In fact, some do: http://fortune.com/2016/08/11/us-citizens-renounce/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hauser%27s_law#/media/File:U.S...
Total tax revenue in the US is 27% of GDP. In Sweden, it's 46%:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_reven...
That may be true, but since the sources you listed contradict each other, I'm left confused. I can find supporting evidence of the graph[1], but not of the wikipedia entry. The world bank apparently thinks they are all wrong[2]. Then there's a report that Norway is actually doing it with much less taxes than Denmark and Sweden[3], but that might be likely due to oil revenue. I'm left to conlcude that without a lot of research to look into the specifics, there's quite a few ways to measure this, and I'm not sure which are most relevant to the discussion at hand.
1: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/statistics/source-revenue-sha...
2: http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/GC.TAX.TOTL.GD.ZS
3: http://www.thelocal.no/20151204/norway-leading-the-field-for...
Dismissing solutions as too hard or those won't for us.
That's only true if you count Federal Income Taxes alone. By the time you're done with Social Security, Medicare, state and city taxes (esp in NY, CA), the top marginal tax rate here approaches 50%.
I would have saved more than that in health care related expenses, so it was more or less a wash with that included.
People that say the US is low taxed are simply not paying attention. I pay comparable "all in" taxes as my Canadian co-workers.
Public healthcare allows us to have a huge single buyer for our pharmaceuticals - Pharmac[2] - which brings a lot of power to negotiate good deals.
It might not be reasonable for the US to become like the Nordic countries, but things could certainly be better.
[1] https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/eb/2014_New...
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pharmac
GHWB and Bill Clinton sold this country into servitude for the elite by allowing them to freely export their labor overseas where it costs less than a dollar per hour. GWB and Obama continued that. That's 28 years of policy that have seriously exacerbated the economic condition of the average American while the fat cats at the top have gotten ever-richer.
Trump wants to make sure American money is used to help and employ Americans. That's good! There's no reason that all the money has to go overseas.
The US causes terrorism by steam rolling third world countries, but more or less has to do it now since these third world countries already hate the US enough to require this kind of policing.
Smaller, more homogenic countries compare badly to more populated heterogenic ones.
Also: norway's oil example holds up since the once poorer than Swedes Norse outperformed the Swedes because of this. 1-2 generations earlier, "nordicly blessed" Norse were the house maids and guest workers for the Swedes. Nowadays it's Swedish students doing Norway's dishes.
Also Sweden maybe high rated in terms of social mobility, but only until the highest income percentiles are reached. Above that it's way way harder to reach compared to other first world countries. So while you can climb up more easily than normal the social latter, it's steps mean less than normal and you'll almost never make it into Sweden's 1%. A category that is the most open in the US of A.
It's like saying that you should buy people lottery tickets instead of healthcare.
I once heard that the US citizens most vehemently against raising taxes for the rich were the homeless, because they didn't want THEIR taxes raised once THEY became rich.
So it's in his/their best interest to keep them uneducated.
It's not about oil, it's about realizing that a healthy, well educated and happy population is an investment that pays itself over time.
Please stop astro-turfing.
Does my being physically present at some point on this planet make the original argument any more or less valid?
Sure, we have many problems but actually getting good benefits and seeing our taxes put to use at our isn't one of them.
So, we're effectively pulling your weight in that.
The US federal government pays more per capita for health care than Norway, for one! The fact the US manages to pay so much per capita for healthcare and not have universal health care is actually quite an achievement.
To the extent Norway pays less for the same drugs/treatments, they are funding a smaller share of the profits of biotech & pharmaceutical companies.
The US pays a significantly higher share of pharma/biotech profits than any other country (citation needed). We therefore contribute the most to the new research, new drugs and treatments developed by those same firms. I actually think this is one of the greatest things we do as a country.
Some people call this "overpaying" but I think of it differently.
$3000 or more a year in healthcare costs is not felt the same by someone that makes $50k a year as someone who makes $150k a year. And that's for an individual. Many people are trying to cover a whole family at these rates.
On the supply side, the price of care is set roughly in the market's ability to compete, but the price is absolutely back stopped by government policies like patents and Medicare reimbursement rates.
Take an inside look at how these firms bring new treatments to market and you know it's intensely competitive. The level of investment is commensurate to the potential payoff.
Isn't it more accurate to say discounts to these are all set based on household income? At a certain point, you're paying regular plan costs. All this amounts to is a separate way to tax people for the costs, which means it can use a different schedule than the regular tax code. If the US is funding these companies, there should be a better way to do so that the craziness that is this.
> Take an inside look at how these firms bring new treatments to market and you know it's intensely competitive. The level of investment is commensurate to the potential payoff.
I've yet to be convinced that the massive cost of R&D due to trials and marketing which needs to be recouped by massive prices isn't at least in part the result of a runaway feedback loop. We require lots of testing to protect the populace which necessitates a lot of money to develop the drugs which means that if it's a dud or has negative effects it's in the interest of the company to occasionally cover that up because it cost so much which leads to drugs on the market that cause problems which leads to more stringent testing which leads to increased cost which leads to increased need for success which leads to....
We need to drastically decrease the cost of trials while making the cost of taking a bad drug to the general market more. That's a tall order, but it's what's needed.
Or a corollary, the amount of money the market would pay for cheaper methods of safe drug development is immense. Market, meet unsolved problem.
Unfortunately, since it has to do with people being hurt, or the possibility of people being hurt, I think it's unlikely we'll get legislation or a majority of politicians that are willing to look at it rationally. It's too easy to drum up emotional support for some aspect or another for personal gain.
www.thepublicinterest.com/archives/2001winter/article1.html
socialized health care may not be required.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.ft.com/content/99680a04-92a...
That's very different from the people that (some in) the west are afraid of having come over.
Norwegian GNP per capita was among the top in Europe from the early 20th century and on.
The wealth was unevenly distributed, wages were low and there was poverty, but the country wasn't poor.
I find this hard to believe. The US generates what looks to be close to 5x the barrels of oil per year as Norway, and since oil is globally prices, that should lead to approximately 5x the revenue. It will obviously be less per-capita, but that's not what you said.
> and is third worldwide exporter for Natural Gas just behind Qatar and Russia
Your facts are also slanted here. The US is the worlds largest natural gas producer[2], at over 6x the production of Norway, and 25% more than the second place, which is Russia.
That said, it's not like the US is a poor country, or doesn't have credit available to finance anything it wants. Training jobless workers would be a net benefit to the economy after a few years, and would pay itself off. We could easily finance that if we decided to. It's a matter of will, not capability.
1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_oil_produ...
2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_natural_g...
> Oil : http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?t=10&v=95&l=en
> Natural Gas : http://www.indexmundi.com/g/r.aspx?t=10&v=138&l=en
Because for this argument they are irrelevant. Domestic consumption is money you aren't spending to buy gas on the market, at market prices. If Norway had a use for 100% of it's oil, it would be saving the equivalent amount from the global market as it would be gaining in revenue.
The bigger difference is that one is state owned, and the other is mostly privatized. Then again, for the larger picture, this is only relevant if the countries in question are constrained to the income available from this system. Neither are. If the US wanted to issue a few hundred billion in bonds, they could do so with little trouble if it was politically feasible. Or they could literally just make the money out of thin air, if they weren't concerned with or were willing to accept the possible inflation.
It's hard to overstate just how much economic and monetary power the US can bring to bear.
For now, the US are exporting more natural gas than Norway. However, with the completion of Cheniere's project at Sabine pass, this will be the opposite [1]. Actually, this November, the US are going to export more than twice the volume of Norway.
[1]: http://imgur.com/a/uyBiZ
Disclosure: I work in an intelligence company, but I'm not a market expert.
Edit:
> USA does not have an oil fund that amounts do $150k per capita to pay for "free everything"
No, but they certainly have other ways of funding a "free everything" that don't rely on fossil fuel. Let's call that "taxes".
It doesn't fully protect us from effects of globalization and we have similar situation with the population in rural areas and small old industrial towns not doing that well and turning against immigrants because of that.
But it seems that the situation is much worse in the US.
The U.S. has had to deal with this problem on a greater scale compared to countries that grew over millennia because of a liberal immigration policy and economic freedoms afforded to immigrants, and the aftermath of slavery. It's remarkable that this experiment has worked as well as it has (thank you, geography). But the ruling class dropped the ball over the last 20 years and ignored the rapid increase of those marginalized by immigration & trade side-effects, even though there still is a widely-held regard for the "melting pot", so now we got Trump.
In the long run, we'll likely look back at all this fuss as another chapter in our history books, but I'm sure there'll be some other ethnic group immigrating in droves. The melting pot is a continual process. Slow and frustrating sometimes, but it works for the better in the long-term.
It's probably not the only variable at play here (economic development and education levels could be additional factors), but it might be influencing those variables in subtle (and not-so-subtle) ways.
Wouldn't a social safety net to prevent destroyed families, to prevent crimes driven by desperation and/or drug abuse, and to fund the enrichment of workers in to higher skill cogs in the machine that is society be a wiser investment than in more police, prosecutors and jails?
You know what goes a long way to eliminating blue collar angst? Healthcare. There's a policy that the US would have no issue implementing if the will existed. Hell it would be cheaper than what you currently spend.
You know another policy that would help? Subsidized maternity leaves.
Do you want a third? A government run pension program.
A forth? Controlled college tuition.
All of these are well within the US's power to implement, provided the will is there. But the will not being there has nothing to do with the ability of a nation to implement these things.
Early 20th century European history is looking at you in disbelief.
I agree with the rest.
That comment however wasn't that someone like Trump could never be elected here, it's that the current environment, along with that of the foreseeable future, would have to change dramatically for it to be the case.
You're right, but not for the reasons you think. What's keeping xenophobia at bay is not multiculturalism but a reasonably strong economy and social safety net. If these start to fail you will see the xenophobia ramp up as people look for someone to blame for their misery.
I recently visited my family in Alberta where many are struggling due to the crash in oil prices and xenophobia is definitely on the rise. Pretending that "it can't happen" is exactly what allows it to happen.
Do you think that most Germans are, at their core, antisemitic? I don't think they are, but the economic conditions of a 1933 Germany made it easy for many people to blame a specific "other" for their situation with devastating results.
The rise of the demagogues is a known core bug of the system called democracy, and what triggers it is fear and anger without a clear, objective, immediately identifiable cause.
If the cause is clear and straightforward (invasion by a foreign army), then fear strengthens society, and the whole system responds effectively with unity and determination.
If fear and anger exist, but the cause is complex and remote (globalization, automation, progress), and seems beyond the grasp of the everyman, then the masses turn to demagogues for "help", and are invariably wrong. That's what happened in the '30s. This is what is happening now - hopefully not with the same end result.
Which was exactly what I said in my first comment.
You're correct, but then again we have some built in safeguards that mitigate these events. One of them being FPTP, which is why I'm personally in no great rush to get rid of it.
It's harder to find groups to rally against when many of those groups are part of the general populace. The more diverse the culture, the less likely it is to be xenophobic when times get tough. That's why major population centres in Toronto, Vancouver and Montreal voted Trudeau last time around - the Conservative message that leaned towards "dealing with" Muslims was utterly rejected.
I mean, I'm not saying we are as multicultural as Canada, just that political environment can change breathtakingly fast.
ON and QC can each double that amount.
I hate to say it, but what people in Manitoba and Sask. think is entirely irrelevant to the country.
(Also, let's just put aside for a second that SK is a traditional NDP stronghold)
Who could imagine that they would freak out somewhere in Wisconsin? Who could imagine that they would freak out in Michigan? Who could imagine that they would freak out in Washington DC? Who could imagine?..."
- Frank Zappa (mutatis mutandis)
Not only is all of that possible to imagine, it should be almost expected. Canada is a completely different beast, with a completely different governmental structure.
That's what we thought...
Also a lot of the larger bases like those in Japan and South Korea are partially paid for by the countries there as part of getting US troops for defense.
We don't even have a basic agreement on how and what kids should be taught, and since we don't have public healthcare or social insurance for all its a big risk to move in order to search for better economic activity.
One of the issues with this is that while yes, you can get the people to become more skilled/educated, ultimately the jobs that take advantage of that skills and education are in cities, not in small towns or rural areas where so many of these people currently live. And that's probably not gonna change.
Now, you could say, "well that's fine, we can give them moving stipends or something" but a lot of people are reluctant to leave what they've known as homes for so long. Such a strategy essentially puts these areas into hospice mode. That's an uncomfortable thought for probably most Americans.
And moving public sector jobs, while it might work, is probably politically untenable in America; the areas that are dying are the same ones that are generally hostile to government.
Somehow, our companies have become experts at enabling remote working 12 time zones away, but can't manage to pull off the same thing for someone in the rural US.
I wonder why?
Debatable. Most companies don't really have that many individual remote workers. Yes, they may have geographically distinct offices, but that's different.
The U.S. must innovate a different approach built to scale and support a population of 1 billion people. It's like management 101: managing a workforce of 20 to prosperity is much different than managing a workforce of 10,000.
If our economic system puts people in such a position through no fault of their own and they cannot escape it despite their best efforts, they need to be taken care of, for life if need be.
I find that premise debatable, but if it is true, then how can they be retrained for technical jobs?
It is the height of snobbery to move the lesser skilled jobs out of the country and tell everyone they need to be smarter. There will always be a distribution of skills and it is not for the well educated to say "you just need to be like us". All the US needs to do is stop signing 900 page "free trade" agreements and start adjusting import taxes to bring manufacturing back. Call it what you will, but taking care of your own first is not a bad thing.
One can hope that a government will consider its people "their own". Though that is not always the case.
This is akin to saying, "It's not for the doctor to tell you how to live your life." True enough; but you ignore their advice at your own peril.
That an education is a path to economic stability and mobility is not a matter of opinion. To write this off as snobbery is shooting the messenger.
There will always be a distribution of skills. And that distribution of skills required by the market needs to match the education of the populace. "Smart" is a superlative; "educated in a particular field" is merely an attribute.
Manufacturing is not coming back. We need to move on, and soon.
Until you can convince Americans as a whole that they will have to pay more for goods made in the USA to employ Americans, jobs which were once done in the USA but are now cheaper to be done overseas will never see a return. Trade wars or import taxes won't fix that it will only exacerbate the problem.
What happens when tariff is raised and a pair of Levis from China now have to sell 120 bucks a pair? and if you produce that in US, since you dont have tariff, its 60 bucks a pair? what you think factory is going to do?
My question is if the cost of goods will rise enough to make wage gains irrelevant, or if the effect won't be strong enough and we'll see real wage gains.
when you have a 100 bucks a pair Levis vs 5 bucks a pair of local made jean (which came out of same factory), Chinese are most likely to buy the 5 bucks one, and therefore Chinese govt effectively protect their local business, took job from USA and helped every local economy with American investing dollars.
And what happens to the cost of goods once everything is manufactured in the US, paying workers a living wage? In increase in the price of all products hurts the poorer and middle classes the most.
And what happens when more and more automation takes over? Then all the import tariffs in the world will be of no help to the welders and sewers you chose to let stagnate instead of improving their access to education and training.
When it comes to jobs, there is significant value provided to society as a whole from jobs that do not require a high degree of workforce re-education. Sometimes, people need a job that they can comfortably walk into and walk out of while they are between jobs. Walmart and McDonald's are the places providing that type of think because jobs that could be done cheaper elsewhere while importing the product were shipped off.
What we are seeing is that by offloading "no training" jobs to other cheaper countries and retaining "heavy education" jobs here in the US we're creating an additional cost to work that now REQUIRES paying for school, investing time in learning a skill and then hoping the market for that skill remains viable so you don't have to then re-invest in a new skill later on in life.
It makes me sincerely wonder if certain tariffs are more justified just to protect that type of work because it seems that the cost of not having it available is far higher than most people have accounted for. I live in the south east, an area that was highly dependent on the textile economy before it went belly up with the removal of protective tariffs. The effect was fairly devastating and it took many years to recover. Some areas never did while others flourished.
Just makes me want to understand all the factors more.
Does your system contain costs on these benefits better than the US, or do you have the inflation and pay it with tax increases? In the US all the benefits you mentioned have painful inflation. How does the government keep up with the costs?
Here in the US, we actually have a decent Community College system which, while not free, tend to be very reasonably priced. Obama proposed leveraging this system as a low cost option for people who don't want to run up massive education debt.
why Zuckerberg should have this many billions, did he contributed 1,000,000 times more than a 1000th Facebook employee to the society?
problem is with Tax system and how US spends it's budget. money comes out of people's pocket and goes to corporations bank accounts.
for example with only $16B we can give shelter to all the homeless in this country. $16B is peanut compare to federal budget. it is a shame to have half a million homeless in the richest country in the word.
The USA lost 2 million industrial jobs during the 1980s. It was, at the time, the worst decade for deindustrialization. The Democrats felt the answer was retraining. The Republican reply amounted to the assertion that the USA needed a strong dollar.
And the Republicans won re-election in 1988.
From this, the Democrats learned that they would be punished for mentioning retraining. So it lost ground as an idea in USA politics.
The Republicans were part of Congress' gleeful global corporate sell-out, and support international corporations getting more tax cuts and handing out jobs to the cheapest people in other countries even more than the Democrats do; the only things both parties can agree on are more war and more money to the rich and corporations at the expense of the worker.
As for the RNC, they really really really really need to stop propping up the evangelical vote. Mike Pence and his ilk need to stop forcing their faith onto the rest of us (who still support things like gay marriage) have decided on a decade ago. Gay marriage is here to stay. Us "trannies" are gonna use the restroom that best fits our gender identity (man, woman, neutral, whatever). And the RNC really needs to stand by the promise of standing up for the Rust Belt workers. It doesn't have to be some protectionist claptrap that Trump spewed but something practical and reasonable. Especially something that'll pay for the healthcare that's sorely needed not only for the poor but the elderly who voted for them (whether they like it or not many of those folks won't be able to pay for their insulin, heart bypass surgeries, and the like from their 401ks).
Sorry for the crude language. I'm just annoyed by what I've seen in social media from liberals and conservatives on this. It's time for real change and not the smoke and mirrors they've been playing since Bill Clinton.
I think a lot of people are. I know I am. A lot of that is due to the language people are using, especially when things get heated. Working on civil discourse, trying our best to refrain from saying things we might at other times regret not phrasing better. One of the benefits of forums is that we can take that moment before pressing submit to decide whether it's really something we want to send as written.
I asked my gramps in-law why he voted for Trump and it was purely due to anti-abortion & gay-marriage. Non internet-connected gramps has no idea that Trump would only have those positions because it's an RNC position, not because Trump's actions show said beliefs.
Trump has exposed that the evangelical voters are hypocrites who don't practice what they preach. Their goal is to impose their religion on us.
They are totally enamored with a candidate who has profited off strip clubs, cheated on his wife, married multiple times, sexual assaulted women and bragged about it, and appeared on the cover of the nation’s pre-eminent porn magazine. But they are offended by Beyonce's songs.
This is an opportunity for GOP to move away from evangelical appeasement, but no... they will double down on it.
(And as I've griped before, this is only true of a couple professions, and software developer happens to be one of them. If I had become a lawyer, I could work in any town in the US. Or a plumber, or a doctor, or a school administrator, or a tow truck driver, or a...)
I'd just be happy with some policy that spreads these companies out a bit. Maybe a tax benefit for opening office space in communities under a certain population size. I'm not sure how it would work. All those angel investors propping up tech companies could also be propping up small town economies merely by moving their offices outside of Seattle, Bellevue, Los Angeles, San Francisco, etc.
The last company I worked for had 55 employees, about a dozen of which were software developers. That 55-person company means nothing to Seattle. Not even to the South Lake Union neighborhood. It's not even a blip. But it'd be part of the lifeblood in a smaller town. It'd also help cut the commute for everybody, be able to recruit technical workers like myself who don't want to live in a big city, etc.
Anyway, just a thought, hopefully relevant to this site. Meanwhile I go back to the jobs site, sigh heavily, and judge positions on how close they are to the bus stops...
I don't mean to belittle your situation but..an hour seems like fantastic commuting time. Most people I work with take an hour to an hour and a half to get to work. Up until our office moved there was two guys that had a 2 hour trip into work every day. Most people I know would kill to have an hour commute.
Why don't people just move closer, or change jobs?
Being able to get rental real estate for your business. In the suburbs you now need a loan, credit, collateral, 30% down, etc to build your own building as there generally isn't a rash of empty floors on skyscrapers like cities do.
Being able to have face to face meetings frequently with your investors, board members, and bankers and other people who hold your pursestrings.
Being able to find investors in the first place. Picture two similar business plans. One by a group in the far out suburbs and one nearby. As an investor, which one would you lean towards, especially if you expect yourself to do any hands on work or attend board meetings?
Being able to get to the airport and mass transportation hubs quickly.
Being able to wine and dine investors and customers in places that will impress them.
Being able to court youngsters and urban professionals who want a city life and won't even interview in the suburbs. (Hi! This is me and almost everyone I know.)
Being near urban universities for the above reasons and job fairs.
Being near your competitors to help you poach their staff.
Being able to work with a local government that understands business needs and not being subjected to a 'board of elders' of out of touch 70 year old suburban retirees who will bikeshed the shit out of any proposal of yours and NIMBY you to death.
Being able to quickly expand by taking more office space instead of, you guessed it, building another fucking building.
Being able to order 1gb fiber and have in here in 30 days as opposed to 360 days in the suburbs and that's on top of paying tens of thousands of dollars for that last mile to your office, which they will need to dig up just for you.
...and yes, maybe some perks of city life as you mention. Work life should have pleasant parts and it helps attract talent.
Why can't you move? If real estate is twice as expensive, just pick a place half the size?
Don't you value your own time---wasted in commuting---at any positive dollar figure at all? If you spend an hour commuting each way for 21 days a month, that's 52 hours a month extra that you spend on `work', even if your employer doesn't gain anything from it.
Which is doublespeak for him feeling entitled to live in a huge and inefficient property for no reason other than him liking it.
If you were really eco-conscious you could probably get more gains out of owning your own house. Especially since most houses have already been built, whereas most of the new construction I see in my city (Baltimore) is going towards mixed-use condos/apartment towers for all the trendy folks wanting to live downtown. If they really cared about the environment and efficiency they'd be fixing-up the thousands of run-down homes.
That's pretty small relative to the extra energy consumption from having to commute farther, and the land that you might live on could be used for solar power regardless of whether you live there.
It's definitely not typical since I'm in the minority of solar panel and electric car owners who are within commute range on a single charge. But there you have it. It's at least possible.
For purposes of that calculation, it's double-counting to include the solar panel energy, because we can already put a solar panel at that location regardless of whether you live and commute from there; your choice to live there did not expand our solar energy capability, and you're still avoidably drawing down the supply of clean energy.
Just to clarify: I'm not criticizing your decision, only justifying why it's not an argument against this being a systemic inefficiency.
But I guess I'm really getting into the definition of efficiency. I suppose in my mind I'm considering clean energy as more efficient even though from an economic POV fossil fuels are still more efficient based on price (though probably not for long).
So in conclusion, you're right. I'd just add the caveat that faced with the reality of a mostly uncoordinated system run by large groups of people with competing interests, you can possibly find higher efficiency (depending on how you look at it) from making your own intelligent individual decisions while living in a large home away from the city center.
Perhaps repairing the houses would be less efficient than building new apartment blocks, I'm really getting well beyond my knowledge or expertise. But I'd somewhat presume that instead of building new high rise apartments downtown it would be more efficient overall if we refurbished some of the crumbling residential areas.
Course that only applies to older cities mostly on the East Coast.
The cost of the housing stock is of minor importance in these arguments, and nobody suggest tearing down existing houses just for the sake of efficiency. That wouldn't make any sense.
(A house build and paid for once can stand for hundred years or more, but only with a constant expense on maintenance in either money or sweat.)
What we want is denser urban cores. That way there will be less sprawl, and even the country pumpkins would have shorter commutes, because the countryside could start so much closer to the city centres: given the same or even larger number of people in them cities, they would take up less space.
Fully charging the Leaf should be about the same as my Fiat 500e, and that's roughly equivalent to running a space heater for 18 hours. I'd conservatively estimate your commute takes 1/8th to 1/4th that power. (There are lots of details I don't know that could affect that.) It is roughly the same going by that.
Perhaps there are families out there that need more space, would like to be self-sufficient especially in emergency situations and feel happier outside of an urban center.
I think if we build these types of communities/houses, we should have a way of sustaining them. This man wants to work and is not asking for a handout. This should be celebrated and the person should be given work to do to earn his keep.
In essence, the paper argues that highly-leveraged homeownership causes NIMBYs.
Also, in most localities in the US, good luck getting custody of any kids if they don't have a separate bedroom.
On a policy level, we can make almost arbitrary amounts of rooms in cities: just build up.
discretionary income: income minus taxes and base housing costs
hour lost to work: time at work plus time commuting or otherwise stuff you wouldn't otherwise have to do
That metric captures dynamics like "yeah there are jobs, but with much higher cost of living, so it cancels out the DIPHLoW" and "yeah you can live where it's cheaper but you have to commute an extra 90 minutes, which eliminates the impact on DIPHLow".
(Or am I not getting a pun here?)
Edit: Also thought of "discretionary income per UnFree hour" (DIPUPH) ... not sexy either though.
This is to capture that increasing working hours from 8h to 24h a day even when pay would be more than tripled, would leave you with a very sad life.
(Shadow) price of time would be a good one, too? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shadow_price) In some sense, that's the same as marginal cost of your time, expressed in dollars or some `utils' or `hedons'.
Then you can say, eg taking a longer commute for a cheaper house would value my time at 30 hedons per hour---but spending time with my daughter is worth at least 50 hedons per hour. So it would be bad trade-off.
But you're also kind of missing the point of my post, focusing on one small tree and forgetting there's a whole forest out there. Whether it's an hour, or an hour and a half, or 45 minutes isn't the point-- the point is we should optimizing it as close to zero as possible.
Yes.
> Commuting time is wasted.
Commuting time is a reserved time, which makes it less useful because it's inflexible, but it isn't necessarily wasted. I have quite a few podcasts I listen to, and there's some I'm interested in listening to more than all but the most interesting TV shows on. I have a short commute, just 20 minutes or so each way, and I only do it three times a week, but I find myself happy to run errands after work because it gives me more time when I can listen to the shows I want, as I'm at that point where they stack up faster than I can listen to them, and that's with me aggressively culling the ones I never seem to get to because there are so many I like slightly more so I never have time for them.
Commuting can be a wasted time or you can try to use it for what it is, a block of time where you have limited options, and try to make the best of those options.
Public transit shouldn't be reserved for major east-coast cities and for poor people.
I agree, but that's not all there is. There are audio books, serialized fiction, narrated short stories in every medium you can think of, extended learning, and I'm sure more I can't think of. Finding something to do in this time is less a problem of content and more a problem of knowing it exists.
It of course doesn't negate that it does take time away you could choose to do something else, but it can make the time less onerous.
> Public transit shouldn't be reserved for major east-coast cities and for poor people.
Public transit doesn't change the equation all that much though. It means you need to be less actively involved in the process, so there's more available to you (visual mediums), but it's still time that is reserved for commuting. You aren't physically playing with your children during that time, or visiting with family.
Quick access routes to economic hubs might easy associated problems somewhat (double digit percentages if you're lucky), but it doesn't actually change the equation that is at play here, which is that dense groups of people have many benefits, and living close to that is desirable, and we all know what happens when demand outstrips supply.
The biggest gains you'll probably ever see in this area are likely to be had by putting less restrictions on an entirely different dimension of travel. Group your population up, not just out.
There's natural network effects to people congregating in larger cities rather than small towns (at least towns too far from cities to commute). There's a reason most industry is located in cities. Instead of trying to fight these natural effects, you need to concentrate on using technology to counter the downsides.
As a general yard stick of how you implicitely value your time:
$4k / 52h <= $77
Now, your current place probably costs money too, and your commute won't be cut to zero. You can plug in the numbers yourself:
($4k - current rent) / (52h - commute from apartment in SF) =: implicit value of one of your hours.
I hope you are making more than 77 dollar an hour as a programmer (?) in SF.
(Yes, I know, taxes complicate the picture. But only by at most a multiplier of 2.)
Whether your commute takes 3 hours or 3 minutes, you are paid the exact same because you can't work an extra hour instead of commuting for that $77.
Others folks that are on H-1Bs can't even work on side-hustles because of immigration law so what are they really missing out on?
The existence of this opportunity cost doesn't require that you literally be able to put in an extra hour for extra pay.
[1] For example, you could go based on "how much would I pay for an extra hour to spend doing XYZ?"
I do the same calculations simply to figure out if something is worth it.
For instance, laundry. I hate laundry. I could walk 100 steps to the laundromat, pay ~$5 to wash it. Or I could pay someone $15 to walk up to my door, take my laundry, wash it, fold it and return it to my door.
Ehhh... not that hard of a choice. The pain is worth $10.
I used to commute 1.5 hours every day and it was so incredibly painful, so I shopped around and found a cheap(-ish) place close to my work. My life is so much better now and I am much happier.
Looking at your pay per hour is just a decent yardstick for when you should trade off time vs money. No need to find an outside job for the yardstick to be applicable.
Eg should you order groceries online, or go to the shop, or plant vegetables in your own garden? It's all a matter of time and money, and also hassle vs enjoyment---since some people dread going grocery shopping, and some people enjoy gardening.
As a subjective experience, crowded public transit and public transit with sufficient seating are entirely different things.
I've read the above several places, but anecdotally, I live in Raleigh (technically Garner) commute 25-30 minutes to work, and have one of the longer commutes of people I work with.
So, yes, I made a choice to get into software development. It wasn't an informed choice.
How about we come at it from the reverse angle: why are all those 55-person tech companies founded in Seattle? They pay more taxes. They pay more for office space and pretty much everything else. They create a longer commute for everybody by centralizing all the work. What's the problem with spreading-out a bit?
Anyway, the question was how to help blue-collar workers, and I just gave an answer that amounts to basically, "move jobs where they are".
That's not to say they're idiots, of course not. But it might be to say that the reasons for placing their company in the center of a large city aren't very rational or well-considered.
And lots of them do. See all the startups in decidedly suburban Silicon Valley. (And yes, I am being a bit snarky here in equating everything outside of cities, be that suburban sprawl or proper countryside.)
Also see SAP in Walldorf.
I think there are quite a few companies which will accept remote workers, so in some sense, you can work in tech literally anywhere.
This is all interconnected, and nothing is going to change it in the foreseeable future. I'm sorry, it's just the reality. You can commute, work remote, move to the city, struggle to put together a teeny company in a small town, or do some other kind of work. That's just modern reality.
Well, that's been our strategy with these red state rust belts for decades and it doesn't work. These states receive much more in taxes than they pay. These get doled in various ways, and some ways very close to what you're proposing[2]. It didn't work. Unemployment and wages are still poor.
The larger issue here is why do you get that wonderful suburban home and I get a tiny condo and yet somehow I'm taxed extra so you can live, and lets be frank here, a wasteful and high-carbon footprint lifestyle? Urban migration, telework, and re-training are the real solutions here. Everything else is just welfare with 'make work' jobs that will evaporate the second those tax credits get cut or the company in question has a bad quarter and realizes it can just eliminate that office, that only really exists as a tax shelter, for cost savings.
Lastly, the "come to the suburbs for savings" is a staple in business. Every suburban mayor is constantly flirting with urban companies to move jobs there as he's empowered to give significant tax sweetheart deals and other incentives. In fact, this is one of the main policy platforms for suburban mayors: bring in jobs. This is a normal part of suburban political life. Its not a new idea, its the status quo. One of my previous employers moved from downtown Chicago to the suburbs exactly for this. Ultimately, you can only poach so many jobs, so its not some magical solution for suburban and rural unemployment.
[1] Because thats where the money ultimately comes from, we wont cut medicare or SS or our military in half to pay for this, we'll just raises taxes on the middle class.
[2] Tax credits for creating jobs in poor areas are common public policy on both the state and federal levels. For example and were vastly increased after the 2008 meltdown. These were so popular many corporations not only didn't pay tax but received free money from the government for it! Worse, they're easily abused eve before they create jobs (if they even do, its easy to take these credits for new offices you were planning on opening anyway):
http://www.thefiscaltimes.com/Articles/2014/08/11/1B-Tax-Cre...
I'm not proposing anything. This is a casual conversation on a web forum, not drafting a party platform.
> a massive tax[1] increase
I'm definitely not proposing anything massive.
> on urban workers who live with urban compromises (traffic, high prices, crime, etc) to be near work so that other workers in the suburbs can enjoy big lawns and beautiful single-family homes?
I live in the suburbs and I have to deal with all of those things. Remember: my exact gripe is I have to commute into the city to be employed. While I'm there, I'm subjected to the same traffic, high prices, crime, etc. as all other city dwellers are. And I get even more traffic coming and going.
And I don't see anything wrong with people who want to own a lawn or a single-family home being able to own one.
> Well, that's been our strategy with these red state rust belts for decades
No it hasn't.
You know what? Nevermind. I don't want to get into any more political discussion right now. Just relax a bit. It's just a casual conversation on a web form, I don't run the RNC or anything and I wasn't drafting a law and I don't need to be yelled at for how wrong I am.
There are software jobs outside of Seattle.
There's a kind of unfairness in small communities creating safe and nurturing environments for families, educating children well, then waving farewell as their young adults move to a city far away. It's especially unfair if the young adults would just as soon stay in their hometowns given comparable opportunities.
He's part of the college track, where it's not uncommon for students to graduate and attend Ivies or other good universities.
But he also gets to interact with people across racial, religious, and socio-economic groups. So he won't freak out and be terrified to leave his insular, closed little community and experience the bigger world.
Whether or not something is fair is a subjective statement, and when stated like this it reads like nothing more than a veneer on entitlement.
At the end of the day, "fairness" is a quaint ideal held by people that wish that power structures were different than they are. Life is not fair; it is ruled by politics, power and leverage in a Hobbesian fashion. While I enjoy urban living, I did not choose to play the emigrate-everywhere version of "modern life". I did what I needed to because the economics of the situation demanded it.
This is why the rural complaint rings hollow to me. The economy decides where you go and what you do, not some suburban ideal.
Also, if calling it unfair is subjective, so is calling it fair. Urban areas could just as easily be the entitled ones in this narrative. There is concern about ethical trade when buying goods from third world countries, but there is no concern when swaths of Appalachia and the Upper Midwest resemble a third world country in many respects. We have cosmopolitan types fretting about Whole Foods exporting the entire Andean quinoa crop, leaving locals little to eat. But there isn't similar concern about whether American towns are being likewise exploited.
I was recently talking with a former software company founder who started his company in Boise, Idaho in the late-90s.
The first few years, their product was a success and they doubled or more in size every year. Then, they started to plateau even though demand was still through the roof.
They couldn't keep up with demand, because they ran out of developers who lived in or were willing to move to Boise. In the words of the founder, "Every qualified developer within 100 miles of us got a job-offer, until there weren't any left."
The obvious solution would have been for them to move to Seattle or San Francisco. But all the founders were from Boise, and were committed to keeping the company in their home town.
At the end, they were paying qualified developers Silicon Valley wages, in addition to signing bonuses equivalent to a year's salary just to get them to move to Boise. As you can imagine, that severely hampered their ability to compete.
Finally, they sold to Microsoft. The founders assumed that the cache of Microsoft's name would be enough to draw developers, but Microsoft had the same problem. After a few years, Microsoft moved the whole operation back to Redmond.
All that to say, you (and I coincidentally) are in the minority. Most creative and technical professionals want to live in nice, big cities. The great thing for those of us that don't fit that mold, is that it's easier than ever to work remotely.
i was just reading an article about a company with offices near St Louis. They took the tax incentives to open an office, promised like 150 jobs, and now they're all but shuttering it and laying off the 77 IT workers they had. And contracting their jobs to a company in India.
The tax incentives are definitely there. But the incentive to keep the jobs there isn't, when offshoring is so in vogue still.
My understanding is that if companies were more spread out, then compensation would also be lower because there's less competition for employees. With compensation also being lowered, wouldn't you just be in the same situation because while real estate is more expensive in Seattle, salaries are higher too?
As salaries increase, the real estate near those companies will naturally increase. I don't see why having companies be spread farther out would change this relationship.
I live in Seattle but grew up in the suburbs and also sometimes miss living in a house (mainly because I play piano). But even my friends who live in the suburbs are struggling to save up to own a house, so as far as I can tell it's not any different. If anything, it's even better working in the city because as far as I can tell it's easier to save money since even if you save the same percentage of income you would make more.
First world problems indeed. I can own a dwelling much larger than the vast majority of people living in the world can afford, on a spacious lot, or can live in a much smaller dwelling with much more convenient access to my place of work, but can't have both!
Sorry, but you're not ranking high on my list of people in desperate need of government intervention to fix your problem.
She's describes Trumps win as a great big middle finger to career politicians.
It's all just trolling. It's not to gain anything. It's to make things worse for everyone else.
(I'm really tired of the word Troll. We need to stop using this Interweb speak. It's just played out. The slightest critism, "She's a Troll!" It's done. Let's put these words away? Let's leave them to the Wayback Machine?)
Of course, history shows that people are quite capable of voting in people like that.
There doesn't really seem to be much substance to Trump's actual policies. He insists Mexico is going to pay for the wall, but there is fuck all chance of that. Congress isn't going to pay for it either. Even if he did build a wall, it would have zero effect (the smugglers are already quite capable of building very long and deep tunnels), so it would be a huge waste of money.
It seems to be mostly hot air, showmanship, and negative campaigning. If you listen to the reasons why people are voting, you generally hear things like "Clinton is a crook", "email scandal", "make America great". He really just did an excellent job of running his campaign.
I hope Trump's shock to both the major parties encourages them to reconsider the war for power they wage day and night. But I'm not going to hold my breath.
Clearly so. It's perhaps, within the party, a defeat for sone establishment figures in terms of relative internal influence, but clearly the absolute and total lock on all organs of federal power they've secured is a major victory for the party.
And it's not like the party establishment suffered major reverses, either. Had Trump won despite the Republicans losing the Senate or facing unexpectedly large loss of seats in the House, that might be a different story.
The only way that statement makes sense is if the person saying it would be negatively affected and/or Trump weren't affiliated with either party.
Other than Trump himself not being a career politician, it seems most likely to merely alter which career politicians are rewarded, not the extent to which such politicians are rewarded, which isn't a big blow tout "career politicians" in any general sense.
Are the Demnocrats a party of elites and the Republicans a populist party now?
A lot of his ideas are not hard right Republican. He openly embraces gays and will make many of them in the Republican party feel more welcome. He has allies of all races and even pulled in record Hispanic votes.
So the first signs will be, who composes his cabinet? Who will be his advisors be? How much of a role will Pence play? Will he give equal time to leadership from both parties? With both parties approach with hostility or be willing to give it a try?
Still when I view the race, I really want to know if Democrats think it was worth it to become a party whose candidates are selected on what they are first compared to what they believe. Why was the "party of the people" the side with the least number of candidates? I would ask the Republican party, why do you continuously try to for far right cultural view points and such candidates when conservatives want you out of our personal and financial lives both?
Sadly no candidate championed privacy and freedom of self but there is a chance that change might have actually finally reached the White House
Do they really? There are a lot of people that view the Republican Party as their ticket back to an idealized Leave It to Beaver world, which is definitely NOT the government getting out of your personal life (make homosexuality illegal, bring back "separate but equal", make sure that minorities "know their place", etc). Still others see it as a the path forward to a fundamentalist Christian theocracy. The same people that eat up Bill O'Reilly's "The War on Christmas" segments and get outraged that Christmas is "under attack" by the evil Liberals that want to destroy Christian values.
Back in the 60's, the evangelicals started to learn the ropes of party machinery, primarily crystallizing around the abortion single-issue. During the 70's, they started to take up positions throughout the party and attempt to dominate it, but the Rockefeller Republicans trounced them. To their credit, they licked their wounds, learned their lessons, and kept coming back spoiling for another fight. In the 80's they consolidated their power. Today in the largest state Republican party, they absolutely control all the chokepoints of power, they vote virtually in lock-step, but they don't have the numbers to completely dictate policy and seed their own hand-picked and -groomed candidates at the national level. The parliamentarian is an evangelical, most times the convention chairman is either evangelical or strongly allied to them, and key committee chairmen who have a lot of control over which party members participate in the committees and advance to the next convention level are evangelicals. Your level of participation in the party is contingent upon passing one or more litmus test(s): for certain key levels, you are interviewed to state your positions on their hot button topics (abortion is a favorite).
While small in numbers, they carry a huge stick, and they're utterly ruthless political knife fighters, as many Ron Paul supporters found out. They're very tightly coordinated and highly prepared: as an example, they come to district and state conventions prepared with earbud FRS radios so they can confer upon split-second decisions on the floor. While they don't quite have the numbers to be the party unto itself, they dominate the voting plans of the congregations that send them to the party, so they make a formidable voting bloc.
The end result is they can exert enough pressure to force the Republican party to adopt objectively terrible policy planks (no-abortion-no-exception even in medically-dire situations where both mother and fetus can die, really?), that then don't make it into national legislation. But just like before, they keep trying, learning, and adapting.
It's not reasonable to retrain this coincidental generation of unskilled undemanded workers, especially not when our nation still has a bad education resource problem. Pedagogical expenditure should go to those who are most likely to experience the largest impact, and that's children. Also because any training program you develop has to work <fast> and <soon>. Also because there are no fast and easy training programs that have high efficacy rates.
Trump and some laborers have talked about bringing manufacturing back to the US. But this is by far the most impossible demand. Tariffs on Mexico and China won't persuade a metaphorical Foxconn to bring a Shenzhen analogue to the US. Shenzhen works because China and the rest of the Chinese people are okay with Shenzhen style workers breaking their back for the rest of the nation, and China can quash any worker malcontent, union, or any collective action.
There's no way that people would be okay with that here.
And with all the companies of the world racing towards robotic labor and domain applied machine learning, the kinds of US manufacturing job growth here will be few, high paying, and highly technical. But these innovations will mean net fewer manufacturing jobs, even as manufacturing may go up.
And the fact that driving is one of the most frequent jobs in most states of the US, and with Uber having made an automated truck delivery of beer recently... there's no way that manufacturing jobs will keep pace with job loss.
These people are screwed without welfare, and after welfare, there's nothing else to be done for them.
They're a $100 barrel of oil in the ground that costs $105 to extract.
A robotic future is very amenable to elite interests in all corners of the globe.
> And the fact that driving is one of the most frequent jobs in most states of the US, and with Uber having made an automated truck delivery of beer recently... there's no way that manufacturing jobs will keep pace with job loss.
> These people are screwed without welfare, and after welfare, there's nothing else to be done for them.
You've pointed out that automation, particularly of the trucking industry, has the potential to lead to extraordinary job loss.
I agree that automated cars are the future, and I look forward to the day when all cars on the road are automated.
There's also an extraordinary amount of money to be made in this space. But it's likely going to be made by private companies.
If there were a way that workers (rather than capital investors) could primarily reap the financial benefits of this new technology, I would think that would help ease the job phase-out.
Obviously, it's unrealistic to expect worker-owned cooperatives to catch up to those private companies at this point. But could there be an alternate way?
I wonder if the federal government could do something similar to the auto-company bailouts of a few years back.
It essentially purchased shares of the companies, and then later sold them at a profit.
I wonder if it might somehow institute a way to purchase shares of automated-trucking companies on behalf of truck drivers, so that when automated trucking causes job loss, the truck drivers would have a cushion of investment income. Perhaps it could be on a subsidization basis, where the government matches investments.
There are probably terrible problems with that idea. Just spitballing. But I don't want to say, "meh, welfare" until more creative solutions have been exhausted.
If we had better pay and working conditions for those industries, more citizens would take those jobs, and there'd be less for illegal immigrants.
But there was such a stink about raising the minimum wage... I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. No one cares about the farm workers it seems.
This is a microcosm of moving a factory to China. It's not that no Americans are willing to do those jobs, it's that companies hire illegal immigrants instead because they'll work for sub-minimum-wage and never contact the Labor Board about anything because they fear deportation. Illegal immigrants are also unlikely to complain about under-the-table cash payments that allow the employer to skirt tax law.
I have direct, personal knowledge of an establishment in middle America, in a place that doesn't have many undocumented immigrants, that routinely turns away American teenagers seeking employment because they'd rather pay illegal immigrants $2/hr and never have to worry about overtime.
>But there was such a stink about raising the minimum wage... I don't think that's going to happen any time soon. No one cares about the farm workers it seems.
It's funny you mention minimum wage and migrant workers in the same comment because an artificially high minimum wage is precisely what creates a market for underground labor. Employers are willing to pay because it's much cheaper for them; migrants, but not Americans, are willing to work in bad conditions for well below the minimum wage because without a SSN, under-the-table wages are their only way to make money, and if the authorities find out about them (e.g. during the course of investigating a complaint to the state's labor board), they may end up deported.
You are 100% correct. Trump wont do anything about it, but now that the message has been sent and heard I think the next election in 4 years is where we will see this being addressed an hopefully some change for these people. The people want change, now they've been heard. Both political parties were decimated in this election, I think they'll try harder next time for the people.
If you drive out of any city in US or EU you'll see the devastation that has caused
If your job can't provide poverty-level income, you aren't helping.
I know people don't grasp this because it is all very mathematical but hawkish monetary policy was a massive factor in this.
This graph summarizes the situation:
https://twitter.com/kocherlakota009/status/79619007692137676...
Here is my attempt at an explanation:
https://medium.com/@b.essiambre/the-world-deserves-a-pay-rai...
But also taking a more sociological perspective, if you haven't seen it, this Cracked analysis is worth a read:
http://www.cracked.com/blog/6-reasons-trumps-rise-that-no-on...
As well as this older Scott Alexander post:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i-can-tolerate-anything...
And then people say that economic inequality is not a problem. This is exactly why economic inequality is a problem. Because you end up in situations where 1/3 of the country needs to be taxed to help the other 2/3 and that 1/3 does not feel like helping because they don't see any gain from it.
1. I think degruglation in a lot of industries might help this demographic. I think his administration will make doing things in this society easier. My hope is his administration makes building that house easier. (I hope he come down hard on these little town/counties--that make doing anything complicated/expensive.). My hope is his administration will lift restrictions on the little guy. A lot of hope.
2. That's it, "I don't know either".
I do know the current status quo was unacceptable for a lot of "disenfranchised blue collar" workers. I'd be careful with the "blue collar" label. The typical IT guy is a blue collar worker. Most people in tech are just a body. It's a profession that doesn't have a huge barrier to entry; just like a lot of blue collar workers. It becomes so true once you hit 35. "On to the next self-taught young, hungry person." The eletism in this current, oh so changing industry, is hard to take some days. Every one of you should be saving money. The party doesn't last long. I'll get heat for this; I know too many former Programmers that are literally homeless.
3. My hope is if things don't get better, it's only four years. My hope is the senate, and house become democratic. We then vote for someone like, a less liberal Bernie Sanders. (This is my biggest hope.)
4. I'm leary much will change because money will still control politics. Keep up the heat Wikileaks.
5. So--we will see.
The left laid the groundwork for Trump's victory (assuming Blue color Whites are really the cause, I think it's not the only factor myself) by promoting the idea that the new economy is unfair. Of course they mainly meant unfair to blacks and hispanics but whites got the message anyway.
If we want to help people thrive in capitalism, we need to avoid leftist narratives that are wrong, i.e. the narrative that education won't improve one's situation because capitalism always screws the little guy.
[0] http://inequality.stanford.edu/publications/20-facts-about-u...
The overall tenor of change in recent decades is flat-out throwing them under the bus. In almost every way, the global society moves in directions that conspire to make this whole class of people extinct.
Short of stopping global progress, I see no long-term "solution" for them.
I remember an MIT economist Zhou Lin said this would be one of the big problems of our generation. I suspect Basic Income would have helped in the interim.
Oh, and to explore the data he is using to draw the graphs you need to be a SGS subscriber which costs $89 for six months.
In Pennsylvania (which I think is the center of the Rust belt) unemployment has decreased from a high of 8.7% to 5.3%. It is important to note that even if you believe the numbers are fudged, they aren't more fudged today than they were in 2008. Even if the real unemployment rate is double, that just means the decrease is from 17.4% to 10.6% instead.
No, it's certainly possible that more and more people have given up finding work since 2008, widening the spread between real unemployment and reported unemployment.
This was a puzzling stat. NPR(?) did an expose on how states were moving the long-term unemployed into disability programs to get them off the states' budgets and onto the federal government's rolls. Their investigation into the private companies that states outsource this to seemed to show that this practice accounted for much of the decline in the unemployment rate. The rest was people simply giving up the search.
So yes, the numbers are fudged more than they were in 2008. By shuffling employable people from one (state) agency to another (federal) agency, the politicians in power can brag that they've lowered unemployment without ever having to show any evidence of increasing employment. And states got to make room in their cramped budgets.
It's statistical slight of hand.
So, in effect, we've taken a population that was capable of productive labor and banned them from participating in the labor force, locking them in poverty. We've increased taxpayer burden while simultaneously reducing the number of taxpayers. And we've done this in the middle of a massive demographic shift that's already piling citizens on the wrong side of the contributor-recipient equation.
So no, I don't see how that's an improvement on anything. It's a net negative in terms of productivity, tax base, and individual quality of life.
[1]: The OECD data doesn't seem to correlate precisely with the BLS data, but the trends are the same.
Either way, 68.7% > 67.6% so my point about the US doing better is correct.
SSDI applicants accounted for around 30% of the drop in the labor force participation rate, according to a couple of studies. That means that around 1% of the working population was shifted onto disability. Two estimates I've read by researchers suggest that about half of all applicants to SSDI were sufficiently physically disabled to prevent them from working. The other half were economic refugees. So if half of that 1% did so for economic -- not physical -- reasons, then we've just shifted around 0.5% of the workforce since 2010 onto a federal welfare program that's going bankrupt.
And disturbingly few analyses of employment data discuss the many elephants in the room: The workforce is rapidly aging, the social safety net is massively underfunded, health care costs keep rising, and wages have been stagnant for a decade or more. This means that each retiree/disabled worker/kid on SSDI costs more to take care of at exactly the same time that each additional job in the economy pays less. And while these problems aren't as pronounced in the US as they are in Japan and Germany, they're exacerbated by spiraling health care costs.
So no, the US isn't necessarily doing better because the picture is bigger and more nuanced than "68.7% > 67.6%". Your employment rate numbers simply mean that a greater percentage of Americans are working than were before. The tax revenue and value produced by that 1.1% who have found a new spot in the workforce does not necessarily offset the costs produced by the 0.5% who have been permanently placed on disability, collecting a monthly stipend and having their medical costs covered. In fact, I'd argue it's probably a net negative.
The Social Security trustees themselves noted in their last several reports that the retiree trust fund would be cashflow negative by 2028 and totally insolvent by 2034. And as recently as 2015 the SSDI fund was projected to run out by December 2016. So last year, to prevent catastrophe, Congress quietly transferred some case from the retirement fund into the disability fund.
I'm sure you can see why this might be a problem.
They made a few minor (but important!) changes to the eligibility rules for disability, but no structural changes. As things stand, this means that they negligibly lengthened the viability of SSDI by removing the runway for Social Security. Both programs -- Social Security and SSDI -- are now slated to be insolvent within a decade or so. And many economists and demographers think that the trustees are being optimistic.
With several wars ongoing and rising medical costs, programs like the VA and Medicare are also chewing through funds at a faster rate than projected. By last estimate, Medicare funds run out in 2028. Feel free to read the always sobering Trustees Summary for this year: https://www.ssa.gov/oact/trsum/
So yeah, the social safety net is massively underfunded. As things stand, we can expect to completely lose federal retirement assistance, disability assistance, and medical aid within the next 15 years. Any attempts to revive these programs would require sweeping changes to their structures and a huge tax increase.
> But now you are talking a lot of "points" without citing any statistics.
I'm sorry if I'm not doing a good job of providing stats to back up these points, but I assumed they were common knowledge. I'll try to cite my sources better.
> This is the point I'm trying to make; you can make a lot of talk about things are getting worse, but when you look at the numbers they are getting better (or at least aren't getting worse).
Please show me the numbers that show things are getting better. Otherwise, you're running the risk of me using your own quote against you. ;-)
Cheers.
Regardless, we're discussing a prognosis for the future.
Another prognosis is about Global Warming. Climate scientists now in 2016 believe the world will be warmer in 2040 than what they believed in 2008. The prognosis has indeed gotten worse.
In sharp contrast to the prognosis about how much funds will exist in Social Security. No serious economist in 2016 believes that Social Security in 2040 will be in a worse shape than what they believed in 2008.
> > This is the point I'm trying to make; you can make a lot of talk about things are getting worse, but when you look at the numbers they are getting better (or at least aren't getting worse).
> Please show me the numbers that show things are getting better. Otherwise, you're running the risk of me using your own quote against you. ;-)
I cited three: unemployment, homicide and violent crime rate. I could cite more, like infant mortality rate, education level, subjective happiness rating, life expectancy.. Really don't think it will change your mind :)
FYI, I don't care about your stupid American presidents. A lot of things got better during Bush's eight years presidency too.
I don't know what the solutions are, but I have to believe that if we can talk about sending people to live on Mars and make cars that drive themselves, that we can come up with solutions to get jobs and economic prosperity to areas of the country that have been badly hurt over the last decade.
Except they just voted against all that.
"Yet voters in Arizona, Colorado, Maine and Washington all look set to approve ballot initiatives raising their states’ minimum wages" http://fivethirtyeight.com/live-blog/2016-election-results-c...
Why? They elected a guy endorsed by the KKK and white supremacists. At the very least this is a kick in the pants to minority voters (although 8% of black voters and 29% of latino voters went for trump).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cL_wh-d1pP4&feature=youtu.be
Rebuilding infrastructure. Construction (and associated services) jobs.
The government's job now is to make sure that all it's citizens prosper as the global economic system changes. The tragedy of this election cycle is that the focus was not on how to make education available to all. We have a K to 12 system that does not produce a person that's ready for the workforce. It's expected that college is the next step. Yet college is such a financial burden on young adults that it becomes a problem rather than a benefit. First, we can't let that continue for the benefit of all. We need to make sure that education reform becomes the priority. Reform in terms of getting a person ready for the future rather than babysit them in schools.
People like to focus on spending more money and adding technology but that's not the solution. It's a deeper problem in the structure of the education system and parental support. I hope for our good the new president can see that and move forward with reform.
Neoliberal capitalism isn't work. Why not take the wealth from the very wealthy and give it to those who don't have it? Income and wealth redistribution>
Using the law to redistribute, as a preventive measure against generational accumulation of wealth (and thus power), was woven into the fabric of the United States early on. Being against this type of redistribution, or deriding it as "sophomoric", is the new and non-traditional thing in America.
https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/_landings/contract/O-TRU- 102316-Contractv02.pdf
I'd entertain a discussion that it was a policy problem and we should have had plans as we engaged in freer trade and globalization and saw imports starting to eat away at these jobs.
I don't think there is a policy to put the genie back in the bottle now and I don't think these people want anything else but that. (to speak in gross generalizations)
The old school manufacturing base provided jobs where a single earner with no notable education could buy a home, raise a family, maybe send his kids to college. And he had a union. It's hard to imagine it being that way ever again. You can re-train them but they aren't going to just become knowledge workers; worse they have to want retraining and this election sure didn't make it sound like they want that..
Capitalism and competition can be rough. Ways of life, jobs, ways of doing things, products, all that stuff can go away with ruthless efficiency in a free market.
My advice to progressive and left-leaning 20-something, 30-something people in the Bay Area: Stop denigrating that demographic! Donald Trump was a stealth 3rd party candidate, fueled by the dissatisfaction of huge swath of the US public whose fortunes are falling from majority middle class to minority lower class. Denigrating them only serves to divide our society further. The Democratic party needs to think of such people as constituents -- as it had once in the past.
If you dump on them, they're of course going to dump back. It's only the upper 1% that benefits from that. It's called "divide and conquer."
Ironically, at this point, the Scandinavians are better free marketers than Americans, because they're willing to let entire companies go under if the market so dictates. The social safety net protects the workers, but not their jobs.
Meanwhile, we get into so many interventionist contortions protecting COMPANIES, that our version of the free market is a sick joke.
Outside the ivory tower of economic models, it does actually make sense. If a country is severely restricted in its capacity to import (an exception being made for raw materials), and has to produce most types of goods itself, then the economy tends to approach something like full employment. Meaning that although overall GDP is not maximised, but everyone has a job, and every industrial sector thrives.
An additional advantage of protectionism is that it would put the brakes on global economic growth, which is the major driver of climate change and ecosystem destruction, but without the side effect of mass unemployment which would be inevitable if free trade remained operative.
Is it possible for the tech world to seize the issue of worker retraining and a general safety net like it did with net neutrality? Brand and promote the hell out of it? I don't think the existing strategy of trying to fly under the radar will work for long.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWF_0lkBhjY&list=PLvoAL-KSZ3...
Imo, this is the system we need + human humility (e.g. to prevent corruption). Implementing it tho, will need everyone's cooperation; hence my writing of this comment.
I think the NYT article glosses over the real story this election: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2016/11/09/why-the-lat... ("Hispanic voters were supposed to be one of Clinton’s blue firewalls—but one in three ended up splitting for Trump.")
[0] https://research.hks.harvard.edu/publications/getFile.aspx?I... [pdf]
I'm being flippant, but--look at the vote splits by age. Young voters in the UK overwhelmingly voted against Brexit. Young voters in the U.S. overwhelmingly voted against Trump.
The voice of populism today is the voice of economic and cultural disenfranchisement. It is difficult to re-employ millions of 60-year-old folks whose skills are out of date. It is difficult to get 60-year-old folks who have spent their lives in a homogeneous town, to accept multicultural diversity.
They are crying out for help and success again, and we'll continue down this course as a society until we either give it to them, or they leave us.
Many a 20 year old communist is something else at 30 and then again at 60.
don't people get more conservative as they age?
But people don't generally slide back from what they experienced as kids. A LOT of 18- to 25-year-olds today grew up as a kid in a society where it is acceptable to have friends from lots of ethnic backgrounds, to have friends who are gay or trans, to believe that women should be equal to men in society, etc. They're not going to lose that as they age. That's their base concept of "normal."
http://i.imgur.com/RAaGDnW.jpg
I've read his books, watched his speeches, interacted with his supporters, and I've seen very little anti-foreigner sentiment. Its all anti-illegal-foreigner sentiment, which is fundamentally different.
That's why he criticized an American-born judge for having Mexican heritage, right?
Are you trying to say attacking an American-born judge for having Mexican heritage isn't racism?
So Trump didn't attack an American-born judge for having Mexican heritage isn't racism?
Trump didn't ban blacks from renting in his apartments, even after the justice department sued him for it?
Trump didn't ban blacks from renting in his apartments, even after the justice department sued him for it, again?
Trump didn't retweet obscure white supremacists to millions of people?
Trump didn't call Mexicans rapists?
Trump didn't believe that Obama was born in Kenya?
As an American, I'm looking at Canada and Germany. I have a Canadian work permit and I'm looking at their startup visa. I was offered German/EU residency last night.
Which area of Germany are you planning to go to?
I'm not directing this at you, just making the comment.
When I was there, the Berkeley EECS Undergraduate Handbook (basically your graduation contract) said that the prestige of a Berkeley degree increases with distance. Translated into English that means get out of Dodge. Similarly, an SV pedigree counts for something elsewhere, maybe more than it does here.
So, right now my plan is to use what I already have (a European Passport) and move back and take advantage of the stuff Europe offers me!
As much bad emotions as their are going around this election, we don't kill buissness leaders who oppose us (russia) kill political leaders who dissagre us (n. korea), have civil wars taking the lives of thousands (many countries in africa), kill drug users in the streets (PH) or have mass civilaian graves from cartel wars (mexico)
But Hillary said she wanted to drone Assange and Obama assassinated two US Citizens abroad, one a minor.
Not to mention the leaked audio revealing that Clinton wanted to rig the 2006 Palestinian election. And she said that to foreign reporters with tape recorders, not CIA suits in a bunker.
I would argue that many countries in Europe is better for living (family time, vacations, work-hours, gender equality, free education, healthcare, freedom of own body (abortion)...) and have been for some time. However, I suppose that depends on who you are and where you come from (and whether you care about/agree with any of these things I list) - home is home after all. Also Europe is not one country: Spain is different (not worse - different) from Sweden (but then again: New York is different from Rockport, Texas too).
There seems to be less VC money in Europe, but maybe that's where we're going either way. Again, some places are better (Geneva, Switzerland VS <Small-City>, Greece) off than others (just like Silicon Valley is better than many, but maybe not all (?), places in the US). But, I'll give you that.
Who's to say it's not going to change though? As you pointed out: Brexit had a huge effect. To me this election feels like a much bigger deal.
Anxious to see how the market in general reacts when Trump either: a) does what he said he'd do (wall, nato, ...) or b) fails to do what he said he'd do. Let's hope it's only me who's anxious though. If not, I suspect there will be a negative reaction in the market: anxiety = uncertainty = risk after all.
In any case: the chance of this happening (market reacting negatively) combined with the effects of it (economically, jobs) >> the chance of Russia invading "Europe" (which I assume is what you're alluding to) combined with the, albeit devastating, effects on the lives of the people living there.
I'm don't even feel like going to the US on vacation anymore before somebody figures how to fix the police violence, the guns, the endless suing and the racially biased incarceration. Being afraid of the people around you, has a crippling effect on my life quality. And I don't seeing it becoming better under Trump. I'm willing to admit I am particular in my views here though.
My point here is that: you might be missing out if you truly believe that the US is an absolute better place than Europe. In some aspects, I'll be surprised if you didn't feel that it was the opposite.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12911042 and marked it off-topic.
This is an unmitigated bit of bastardry, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=lEsN4-XLE2k
Another Prime Minister said an opposition MP should "beaten with a blow torch".
So don't tell me when I'm being sincere or not. I have watched Bush, Obama, Clinton, old clips of Reagan and Carter and they might have had unsavoury policies, but they made sure they gave dignity to the Presidency. And sure, they often tussled and sometimes they forgot themselves, or skirted the edges of what is considered acceptable for that role, but they largely remained civil and showed some level of courtesy and respect for the populace and their opponents.
So I fully stand behind my comment. Whether you want to impune my motives or my sincerity, oh you who I've never met or spoken to or interacted with in any other way, well you feel free to do so but I know what I said was right, and something I think we should all try to aspire to.
Perhaps you could get off your high horse and stop saying my motives are less than pure? Right now I feel you are lecturing me like an errant schoolboy. You, after all, are the one telling me I have "veiled" sarcasm. I'm telling you I don't and I thought my opinion - even if you disagree with it - was something constructive I could bring to this thread.
So, perhaps try to ascribe less to my motives given I have no idea who you are and I have never interacted with you before, not to mention my comment history shows I tend to be a pretty serious minded poster. It's hardly respectful to impune my motives when you have no real evidence to the contrary to inform your suspicions.
In fact, the only temperature that's being raised right now is mine, given you appear to be attacking my character. And that's a tad hypocritical.
dang, on the other hand, has no such excuse.
People like you disgust me. Stop acting like his words and actions don't matter.
I am so damn sick of people trying to wiggle out of the "racist" label.
Economic anxiety is not an excuse for racism.
That may say more about black people than it says about Trump. Call me a racist - I dare you.
It's unrealistic to ask everyone to check primary sources. We don't have the time. It doesn't scale.
Also, there are people who don't trust court documents, or the courts, either. I think this issue of shared trusted sources is very real. Just dismissing sources reinforces this. How do you recommend we resolve this?
It's not workable to begin from first principles in every discussion, and to expect people to do so is unrealistic. I made no assertion that there is some wholly trustworthy new source, though I can understand why you might think so, given it seems like so many are just out to score some imaginary political points. I don't think there are any that are infallible. I do think we can usefully make judgements that some are better than others, at least within certain domains.
How about a news source that you trust regarding the topic at hand? (Any topic at hand. I'm uninterested in wading into discussions of racism at this point). If someone provides a source, and you choose to disregard it, do you feel no obligation to also provide some sources? At least they put forward some effort.
Are you willing to give people the benefit of the doubt when they're having a discussion with you? What's the alternative? How are we going to move forward? The vote was nearly evenly split on the presidential election. Looks like we need to find some common ground if we're going to get anything worthwhile done.
Given that you're engaged in this discussion, it seems to me that this is something you're concerned about as well. Do you think its useful to discuss difficult issues? How do we find common ground? What parts of what I've presented do you take issue with or think are unfair? What can be improved? I'm honestly interested, because as I've said, I think this is an important issue, particularly in light of the recent campaign and election.
Thanks for taking the time to read through this.
I can't answer all of your questions, but I believe most Americans are tired of being called, racist, sexist, homophobic, bigot, etc., when they take PAINS to avoid any personal racism or appearance of such. That is why Donald Trump just won the election. It's Americans saying we don't care what you call us any more, and we don't actually care to find common ground with people like you(and by you, I'm talking about cancerous Social Justice people).
You can't comment like this on HN, regardless of how right you are and how strongly you feel. Personal attacks in particular are not ok.
Comments need to get more civil as the topic grows more contentious, or else our hope of substantive discussion goes up in flames.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12911145 and marked it off-topic.
If you are going to attack this argument, then you might as well say it is unacceptable to call people who favor cutting off hands of thieves for barbaric. Sure you characterize people with a mean word "barbaric", but it you are not singling out particular people only those holding such views.
I don't know about 'online debate', but "People like you disgust me" is not acceptable on HN. Indeed it's well below the minimum acceptable, so this ought to be obvious.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
Perhaps if you are so disgusted by half of the citizens in your country, you should seriously consider emigrating somewhere else, if that's truly an issue for you.
But I suspect, like most comments on the Internet, it's nothing more but empty posturing.
1- Build the wall and make Mexico pay for it
2- Deportation Force on day one
3- Repeal obamacare
4- Renegotiate NAFTA
5- Bring back coal
6- Reduce taxes for the rich
7- Ban muslims
8- Prosecuting Hillary Clinton
9- Bring back American companies to the USA
10- Etc.
The Senate and the House are Republicans and the Supreme court will lean republican after his appointment.
What do you guys think he is going to follow through on and the effects if he does or doesn't?
And please note that lots of people thought he could not become president and now he is. So any of these things are possible now. Do not just dismiss any of these things. They are all possible.
It would seem with a republican congress that it would be easy. Why do you think otherwise?
Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reconciliation_(United_States_...
(Yes, I'm aware that "Godwin's Law invoked". In this case, it's actually relevant.)
One potential danger is that Trump will now be indirectly in charge of the entire country's mass surveillance apparatus. That's a powerful system that could be potentially be weaponized against sections of the population that Trump deems undesirable.
Considering how a certain segment of the population interpreted Trump campaign's last ad and cheered at that interpretation I wouldn't "worry", Muslims are more Jew+ than new Jews: the old ones are still going in the oven.
Trump is very pragmatic and he's also a seasoned reality TV personality who knows what to say in order to appeal to some of his voters' basest instincts and beliefs. As far as actual policies go, I wouldn't really expect anything too radical from him though. I guess many of his blue-collar voters will be disappointed, but then lots of others will be relieved...
2 - there won't be a deportation "force". undocumented/illegal immigrants aren't going to get auto-citizenship, and there may be additional requirements put on employers to verify citizenship.
3 - possible
4 - I'm not convinced Trump actually knows what countries and regions are affected by NAFTA. unlikely.
5 - sweet jesus I hope not.
6 - likely
7 - not possible. if he tries it's auto impeachment (or a vote for it anyway)
8 - also potential auto-impeachment. abuse of powers.
9 - I would like to see this happen, but the only way it could work is MASSIVE tax breaks to offset more expensive labor. It won't happen in 4 years, but some groundwork might be laid.
10 - "goes on camera and says something horribly offensive and xenophobic to leaders/citizens of a foreign country that seriously damages us": 10/10 will happen.
Of your list:
The wall is a technical impossibility that everyone can recognize. There's no funding for a deportation force and the political optics of goon squads rounding people up is something congress won't do. No one actually wants to yank medical coverage from millions of voters (they'll just let the democrats filibuster it in the senate). There's nothing meaningful to renegotiate in NAFTA, no serious stakeholders have suggestions there. Coal hasn't really gone away, and permiting and regulation changes are going to take longer than four years anyway. "Bring back american companies" is just a fairy tale. Global economics simply doesn't work like that and there's nothing a chief executive can do.
That leaves: Muslim ban. Maybe, at least in some symbolic way. Tax cuts for the rich. Yeah, duh. But that's a republican staple and we've survived it before. US deficit spending is actually not nearly so serious a problem as people believe.
My main concern is foreign policy. The House can drive domestic policy and hopefully not make a mess of it, but foreign policy is all Trump's domain. He's vain and temperamental, this provides two powerful levers that manipulative foreign powers like China and Russia are free to push and pull as they like. He's also notoriously bad at taking advice. Frankly, it's not looking good.
Right, and it won't get funded. And in 2020 when the same poor people are still poor, he'll claim it's not his fault, it's because he didn't get to build the wall.
I'm about as worried about a Trump presidency as I am worried that I'll remember how to breath at night.
Human Nature says he'll strive to be the best and I have faith in that.
If Trump wants to be remembered as a great President then he needs to step up and address these fears.
As much as his path to the nomination and then the presidency is a surprise, his call for unity was more presidential than he's ever been. I think it would be short-sighted to immediately discount his presidency as a failure without seeing the people and actions that he puts into place.
I'm not sure that I buy that from his history. His life is one of chasing adulation and attention. He built gaudy hotels in big cities, he never chased the real estate growth market in housing. He ran a reality show, not a media network.
He's a narcissist, not a despot. Fill his cabinet with fawning sycophants and give him a media organization or two at which to direct his rage and I'll bet anything he just sits on his ass in the oval office and waits out his four years.
I guess that's what passes for optimism today. But it's the story I'm sticking to.
When you get a new job as a software engineer most people just want to be considered good at their jobs, while some select few strive to be considered great. maybe not so much for adulation and attention but to feel like they've mastered something and can thus offer advice to others, it's what drives us. In that pursuit of our definition of greatness we study constantly and try to improve our skills in every area and thus our need to be great drives the sharpening of our skills and leads to a self fulfilling prophecy (Our desire to become great leads to us pursuing more knowledge to become better and thus in time we become great)
Donald Trump's definition of great is clearly being admired and in the spot light. But I think he also defines greatness as being a leader, I think he also associates greatness with quality.
I'm not worried about this presidency one bit, his need to be great will drive him to be great by all definitions.
For extra points, provide an explanation that doesn't demonize or insult a large swath of the population.
It's a darwinian thing. We don't credit the lobe finned fish for being such geniuses to have developed limbs which could hold them out of the water.
I appreciate the evolutionary metaphor, but its also important to remember that candidates can (and do) change strategies and adapt to circumstances. Indeed, I would expect an intelligent candidate to try various different strategies throughout their campaign (and be better at it than their competition). Clinton and Trump both did. Clinton also had arguably much more help from very powerful allies, and had much more funding.
Also, developing limbs is not a choice; campaign strategy is.
How are you judging whether Trump is intelligent or not? Just because his words/actions seem irrational to you doesn't mean they are irrational. Scott Adams was pretty good at predicting Trump's behavior, so Trump's decision made sense to at least someone.
The man, by his own account, doesn't read books. He gets his information from cable TV. He has the attention span of a gnat (couldn't be bothered to prepare for the debates; it showed). This is the man, back in 1984, who wanted to be the one to handle the nuclear arms negotiations with the Soviets. "It would take an hour-and-a-half to learn everything there is to learn about missiles."[1] In 2016 he didn't know what the nuclear triad was.
His gaffes on foreign policy the last year and a half include: suggesting that the national debt in negotiable, support of Nato allies is not guaranteed, Japan should get Nukes, countries in Asia should feel free to nuke each other if they want to, "if we have the nukes, why can't we use them?". Those are just some of the things I can remember off the top of my head.
The best we can hope for is that he gets bored being a president very quickly and doesn't screw up too much in the meantime.
His entourage doesn't exactly inspire confidence either.
[1] http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/433623/donald-trump-col...
Please explain how building a wall is impossible. There are walls and fences everywhere.
> A voyage across the US-Mexico border, stitched together from 200,000 satellite images.
You have to judge those people by their track record, actual actions, not just empty words... which leaves both with very poor credentials.
What can possibly go wrong?!
- @POTUS twitter account is going to start tweeting at 3AM
- I think illegal immigration enforcement could see the most drastic and immediate change. To my knowledge the status quo is not legislated in any way, and was created by preventing enforcement rather than any legal means. When low-skill unemployment bottoms out the motivation will start to weaken.
- whatever was done by Obama by executive order, I presume will be quickly undone, they will probably have reams of documents ready to be signed on day 1.
- Hillary Clinton: in order to prosecute Trump will need to nominate a new Attorney General to the DOJ, and then ask the FBI to re-assess I guess? I don't think she will go to jail, in some countries when power changes the losers get jailed but it hasn't been the case in America, and I don't think high level politicians want it to become the case. For all practical purposes I think Clinton will continue to be above the law.
- The WALL ... boy I don't know. I will be fascinating to watch if he tries to do this. The only utility will be economic stimulus.
- Trade war: I think the American dollar will go to a lower level which will decrease imports and increase exports.
- Muslim ban: I think he will disallow visas from active conflict areas and nearby. I don't think i.e. Malaysia will be effected, or Indian muslims for example. Maybe countries that aren't functional enough to carry out a criminal background check will be disallowed.
EDIT:
Also, I don't think Trump+GOP will enact or seek to promote any racist or sexist policies, I don't think they will mount an attack on the recent marriage equality ruling. I think the following people will suffer financially:
- undocumented immigrants
- industries that depend on a close relationship with the government: the guard is changing -- if you had relationships with the Bushes and the Clintons, you've had access to the most powerful organization to ever exist in the world for the past 27 years, that may or may not continue.
This is if Trump lives all four years. All of the above doesn't apply to Pence, I think Pence could do some real damage.
No mention of ending abortion. I agree that it would be sexist and catastrophic if it happens, especially given the state of american health insurance coverage.
EDIT: from this document it looks like he plans to target undocumented immigrants who have a criminal record -- the process will probably be very disruptive, I think this is the single policy of Trump that could cause the most human misery, but it seems possible that the process could give the others a more secure status.
Deportation on day one - this will never happen. There is a large complex body of laws dealing with immigration that will not be superseded by some desire to deport people without a hearing.
Repeal Obamacare - yes this will happen is some part. We already have the news stories of the massive increase in premiums coming and that combined with a stacked, house, senate, judiciary and executive branch makes it look very very likely that the worst parts of obamacare are going to go. It's not clear wether or not some of the more popular reforms (pre-existing conditions, kids under 26) will stay as part of some other reform bill.
Renegotiate NAFTA - yes. A president that has the cost of everything on his mind combined with the lack of decorum from the Mexican government might very well trigger this. This is especially true if the Mexican government continues to behave badly towards the new government.
Bring back coal - I have news for you - coal never left. West Virginia elected a Democrat for governor but was one of the first states to elect Trump last night. Coal has never forgotten Al Gore/Bill Clinton. Last night they made the point again. I think more seriously subsidies for green energy might decrease (with the exception of ethanol with is all produced in red states).
Reduce taxes for the rich - personal income tax no, corporate taxes yes. Corporate taxes in the US are the highest in the world and Trump will work to fix that to allow companies to come back to US soil to operate.
Ban muslims - no. Trump wanted to slow or stop immigration from Syria in particular until the people are better vetted for links to terrorism. This has been simplified to 'ban muslims'. Muslim immigration will not be prevented but it might be slowed to allow for better vetting.
Prosecute Hillary Clinton - yes. Trump will appoint a justice apartment head and a FBI director that is likely to reopen the case into the emails. It's not clear what the outcome of this might be. Ultimately the truth will prevail here.
My view is that the most important job of the President is to ensure the effective functioning of the executive branch agencies. This involves selecting good department heads and pursuing effective policies through the exercise of discretion in rule-making and executive orders.
This is vital, but largely esoteric and technical stuff. It's also an embodiment of the "system" and the "elites" that Trump campaigned against.
I see three possibilities as to how he handles this part of his job:
1. He doesn't actually care and entirely delegates it to people that do, likely the existing right-wing policy apparatus of pro-business, anti-regulation ideologues. The tenor of the agencies changes much as it did under George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, some qualified people leave, but the essential machinery of government continues operating.
2. He delegates the "boring stuff" (SEC, FAA, FDA, IRS, DOE, etc.) per 1 but uses the executive branch machinery to pursue projects that are personally and politically important to him, e.g. leaning on the DoJ to "lock her up" or destroying the EPA. The boring agencies continue to function, but others become plagued by strife and a loss of morale.
3. He blunders, has a health issue, or a serious scandal emerges that politically paralyzes him and nothing happens till he is replaced. Remember, while he's spent a long time in the public eye, he's escaped the usual scrutiny that has been given to the health and financial affairs of post-Nixon candidates.
I'm not excited about a Trump presidency. But from 2009-2011 Democrats held majorities in both the House and Senate. Then was the time to get the major work done, legislatively, that could not be undone by another Executive Order.
That's on Obama.
That Lieberman.
That probably won't happen, but it honestly worries me. The guy is far too unstable and vindictive for the kind of responsibility he's being handed.
If not that, then after all the talk of not accepting the election results, I'm worried he won't go quietly once his term or terms are over, or that he'll set a precedent for the next guy to work outside the system.
If it were just policy differences, no matter how deep, I wouldn't be a tenth as worried as I am.
interesting.
My basis for saying it about Trump is his extreme insecurity, and saying things like "When you're in business, you get even with people that screw you. And you screw them 15 times harder." or "And by the way, with Iran, when they circle our beautiful destroyers with their little boats and they make gestures that our people -- that they shouldn't be allowed to make, they will be shot out of the water."
It sure looks to me that the things people say about Clinton are mostly inferences they've drawn, whereas the things people say about Trump are just things Trump said.
0 results. Hadn't Hilary been dishonest and, as much as I hate the word, crooked enough to not allow Bernie to face Trump, this wouldn't have happened.
I could also see an Elizabeth Warren / Joe Biden ticket doing well against Trump.
This article in Current Affairs turns out to be prophetic: http://static.currentaffairs.org/2016/02/unless-the-democrat...
> By biasing its internal electoral market the DNC selected the less competitive candidate defeating the purpose of running a primary.
Hillary, the DNC, and all their cronies deserved this. I would've voted for any Democrat who won the primary fair and square, but I couldn't bring myself to vote for someone who stole an election (and from one of the most well-liked candidates of all time, no less). Many of my friends felt the same way -- they either stayed home, voted 3rd party, or voted without selecting a presidential candidate.
The fact that they tried to bully/guilt everyone into voting for her didn't help much either.
But that article I linked is literally full of email chains which show the DNC clearly favoring Clinton. http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/features/dnc-leak-shows...
The DNC played favorites from the beginning, and sanders supporters aren't too thrilled. Let's not forget that the DNC chief resigned over this.
Moreover, none of the emails show the Clinton campaign influencing the DNC to rig the election, which is what was originally claimed (that she somehow stole the primaries to the tune of a 4 million vote victory).
Also, yes, Clinton did win most of the votes. And as of now it looks like she won the popular vote too. I don't doubt that she's more popular.
But take a look at the states where Sanders did well vs where Clinton did well...
http://www.nytimes.com/elections/2016/national-results-map
Then take a look at which states she lost to Trump...
You may believe that the DNC wasn't 100% fair in the primaries, but nothing in their emails suggests they applied their own biases to changing the rules in favor of Clinton, so that belief is not supported by evidence.
There is a secondary issue that maybe Sanders would have performed better in the general election than Clinton did. It's hard to do this kind of counterfactual analysis, but I disagree. Despite the media's horse race story, Clinton was so far ahead in votes and polling that she was never in danger of losing the primaries and so didn't throw the kitchen sink of "scandals" at Sanders. Had the race been closer, you would have seen these "scandals," and you certainly would have seen them had Sanders run against Trump (https://www.google.com/amp/amp.slate.com/articles/news_and_p...). More than that though, if progressive icon Russ Feingold couldn't win in Wisconsin, Sanders didn't stand a chance either.
Clinton did win most of the votes in the primary but I'm not going to give her the benefit of the doubt that she didn't use her connections to help her campaign. That article by the way came out in June, before the DNC leaks in July.
Yes, I think it is hard to play "what if" history. It's been a few days and I've basically accepted President Trump. It'll help a lot of folks in this country, even if those folks aren't me.
How did he lose 4 million votes? Most of that can be found in the DNC emails, among other places. There was a huge media campaign smear against him (led by the DNC itself), massive amounts of donations were funneled in ethically questionable manners into the Hillary campaign, stealing money from state tickets. People were hired in a black flag op to discredit his supporters.
I'm sure the list goes further.
However, I do think one of his biggest issues was that he wasn't a member of the team. I saw it first hand at the caucus; members making references to the fact that she was a life-long democrat, as if it was actually important. Republicans certainly got over that quickly.
Still, if the DNC had played fair with Bernie, I think that two million votes flipping isn't so far fetched.
There is no evidence of the DNC running a smear campaign against Sanders.
> Massive amounts of donations were funneled in ethically questionable manners into the Hillary campaign.
You're presumably referring to the Hillary Victory Fund here. You can see on the donation page (still up: https://www.hillaryclinton.com/donate/go/) that the first $X of contributions goes to the Clinton primary campaign, the next $Y goes to the Clinton general campaign, the next $Z goes to the DNC, and the final money gets distributed to the state committees. The issue wasn't that the money was going into the Clinton campaigns but that it was going to the DNC instead of the state committees. The DNC's excuse was that they were using it to build common campaign infrastructure for use by the state committees.
> People were hired in a black flag op to discredit his supporters.
There is no evidence of a black flag or false flag operation against Sanders.
In summary, there is no evidence that the DNC sabotaged Sanders, yet he still lost by millions of votes, so the claim that he is one of the most well-liked candidates of all time goes against the actual voting data.
Where do we go from here?
(Though to be honest, that's one of my lesser worries concerning a Trump presidency. Along with increasing discrimination and divisiveness within the US, it's likely his proposed foreign policy changes will enable Putin to annex further regions of Eastern Europe.)
It is terrifying to consider the message he would send to Putin and other Dictators if he carried through on his foreign policy changes.
Not just the POTUS, but the trifecta of the house and senate as well. That's as loud of a mandate as can be expected from a strongly divided country. On top of all that, with the SCOTUS picks that are expected in the next few years, this election is going to be felt for many years to come.
I just hope that as we move forward with the transition to the new government, both sides can leave behind the incessant name calling and hate that's plagued this election. It's done, it's over, and the people have spoken. Now let's move forward on the direction that's been chosen and go about discussing it constructively.
[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12728645
Is not winning the popular vote really a strong mandate? http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/11/09/501393501/...
That is a benefit of certain aspects of our political system, but not the electoral college. The electoral college only serves to introduce bizarre volatility into the elections.
Similar, Sweden have a similar system where a vote from the small island of Gotland has 50% more impact compared to any other vote. The reason for that is that otherwise the island would only have 2 politicians in the parliament and the Swedish government wanted to have one more party representing the island than just the two major parties (which, based on those rules, means that the top 3 parties in Gotland is more or less guarantied one seat each).
To take a practical example, the European parliament. Seats are allocated to each state according to population using degressive proportionality, which mean that Luxembourgish voters have roughly 10x more influence per voter than citizens of the six large countries. The alternative would be that Luxembourgish have practically no vote, since their population would be too small to even get a single seat, meaning their vote would have 0 influence. Which one is more fair?
You've also touched on one of the longest-running debates in American politics: should we treat states as independent and semi-autonomous or allow the federal government to dictate policy direction for the nation. You can probably tell what side I'm on. People still claim that the American civil war was about the South defending "states' rights" when I, and many others, feel that it was about defending the rights of many people actually in those states.
That might be a little off topic. Anyway it's an interesting debate, but it's just hard to see how a candidate for national office can win more votes across the country and come out the loser.
Wyoming (pop. 584,153) has two Senators. California (pop. 38.8 million) has two Senators. CA is 66 times the population. Alaska (pop. 736,732), two Senators.
No, it is a clear indication of the divisions in our country.
> I can't fathom you interpreting the result as a "loud mandate." The presidential race has been extremely tight with ~200,000 separating the two. Is that a clear mandate?
> No, it is a clear indication of the divisions in our country.
Yes, the country is divided. A single party taking all three major government divisions is as loud a mandate as you can expect in a strongly divided country.
Only true if the way voting happened didn't disenfranchise voters. Yet we know that the way voting happened, with gerrymandering and discriminatory rules in some states, did disenfranchise voters.
Because I see the candidate that clamored loudest about the system being rigged won.
And a more recent article that reviews how the election went: https://www.thenation.com/article/the-gops-attack-on-voting-...
Look at who Trump is appointing, who his policies will hurt, and tell me who you think the system is rigged for?
Can you find any articles about white, Republican voters unable to vote? I'm going to keep trying and will post back if I can.
In a strongly divided country, interpreting anything as a clear public mandate can be disastrous.
"In a strongly divided country, interpreting anything as a clear public mandate can be disastrous."
Can you point to where he actively promoted or promised "hate"?
>You can not have it both ways, your vote is one for hate
You assume those with whom you disagree are below you morally. This mentality is why Trump is president.
1. "ban on Muslim immigrants"
"...until we find out what the heck is going on"
2. "illegal Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists"
"When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. .... And some, I assume, are good people."
3. I won't even touch the "assassination" thing.
"...until we find out what the heck is going on" doesn't help. Hate doesn't stop being hateful when you say it's temporary, and neither does blatantly violating the Constitution become OK.
"And some, I assume, are good people." This immediately follows "They’re rapists." So, what does it mean? Some of the rapists are good people? Or he meant to say that some of them are rapists? Even there, "some" implies not huge amount, so "some are good people" implies most of them aren't. So, OK, he only called most illegal Mexican immigrants rapists, that's not much better.
Finally, let me guess, you believe his followup damage control that "second amendment people" meant their superior abilities at political organization?
“If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks,” Mr. Trump said, as the crowd began to boo. He quickly added: “Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know.”
How is that not an allusion to assassination? He is talking about a situation in which Hillary has won and appointed a judge. How else do people suspect "second amendment people" are going to stop her at that point?
I wish the people who voted for Trump would just be honest and take ownership of the hate, instead of trying to gaslight everyone by playing dumb.
First there was that poster with a six-pointed "sheriff" star on a pile of money, which (to me at least) didn't seem definitively anti-semitic. But in conjunction with hiring Steve Bannon (who has said he doesn't want his kids going to a school with too many Jews), running the "global special interests" ad, and retweeting white nationalists, it all starts to add up.
I'm Canadian, so I didn't vote for anybody.
I'm simply not blinded by rhetoric and political leanings like most in the US are. It may surprise you, but many in the rest of the world think both sides are nuts.
Condones violence? You know that Hilary has been behind actual violence, right? Voting for bombing other countries and such things? She voted to go into Iraq. How many people have died? Is she not accountable in any way?
Honest question if you're concerned about violence: who has more blood on their hands, Trump or Clinton?
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/02/politics/donald-trump-terroris...
How about when he made fun of a disabled person?
How about all of the other hateful and demeaning stuff he said to various women?
How about when your candidate actually did participate in things that other people consider war crimes, like bombing hospitals and DWOB encampments in the middle east?
He really did call for a ban on muslims in the US. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-politics/wp/2016/07...
He did say mexicans bring crime, drugs and rapists. http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2015/07/04/trump-stands-by-v...
He advocated a "second amendment solution" if Hillary were to be allowed to pick supreme court judges. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/10/us/politics/donald-trump-h...
That's not what that says. Quote it. I'm so sick you liars.
I don't agree with the approach, but do you understand why he said this? The idea was to vet people coming into the country to prevent homegrown terror. It's a real thing, and people are concerned about it. I doubt that it'll work, the problem is more nuanced, but it's not a ridiculous idea.
>said illegal Mexican immigrants are criminals and rapists
No, he said that Mexico sends their worst, not that all Mexican immigrants are criminals.
>and suggested that his supporters should assassinate his opponent
Source?
For Mexicans, he said "they're rapists" without limiting the number. He then said some of them are good people, which is confusing and contradictory. Deciding what he really meant is a matter of interpretation and you'll never know if you have the right answer or not. This is, of course, a constant theme with the Trump campaign: say something outrageous, but with just enough wiggle room to explain it away as something else.
As for assassination: "If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks. Although the Second Amendment people — maybe there is, I don’t know." This was later explained as a reference to the pro-gun political power, but that makes no sense: Supreme Court justices with lifetime appointments don't care about political activism.
In four years, if the rural mine workers are still out of work and iPads are still made in China, will you concede that the experiment failed?
I can't see Trump doing that. Deflecting blame has been a theme of his career. Therefore I'm frightened that he's going to need new scapegoats for his lack of achievements pretty soon... And considering the rhetoric he's used, there just is no telling who he might pick to receive the blame.
That's like saying that because people still have to pay for insurance in the US that Obamacare failed and he's a failed President and should feel bad about himself.
Isn't that exactly what Republicans were saying? Trump wants to repeal Obamacare first and then replace it with something "much better, believe me".
In good and bad, ACA was a big part of Obama's legacy. What are the yardsticks that should be applied to the Trump presidency?
How many coal mines will be back in business and turning a profit? By what date will Apple be forced to bring back manufacturing into USA? When will American airports and roads become the best in the world?
Those are a few of his most clearly defined goals, like healthcare reform was Obama's.
not insulting btw just describing your opinions :^)
It's naive to think that just because the vote is in that it's over, look at the UK and Brexit.
I guess one of the bigger problems is that it's utterly unclear what direction has been chosen.
I think it's fair to say—do correct me if you think I'm wrong—that most of the policies that were advocated by Trump prior to the election will not be put into practice. There are a few reasons for that – many of them are practically unworkable, or contradictory, or will be objectively harmful. It seems that the actual policies that will take effect will be markedly different from those of the campaign.
This is similar to Brexit in the UK, which was a campaign fought in a similar way – quite a few half-truths with no clear idea of what policy was being voted for.
To me, this seems like a dangerous situation. Practically speaking, it is unlikely that Trump with 'make America great again' by solving all of the problems that his supporters face – not because he's a liar, but because that's an astonishingly difficult task to achieve. What happens in a couple of years when relatively limited progress has been made? Trump has no political barriers within the US, so who will be blamed for his inability to deliver on his promises? I worry that such a situation is a breeding ground for nationalism of the worst kind.
On the social side, things like abortion, (anti) gay rights, etc.
On the legal / economic side, actual pro-small business type changes, think 1950s republican.
As for rejecting neo-liberal economics, there are tons of options. Without throwing out ideologies, though, I think the most likely things we'd see in America would be:
Well, if bernie was elected I'd say things like trying to reform college tuition costs, expanding medicare, ensuring the stability of social security, new worker protections and federally promoted retraining of laid off / out of work workers, etc. guaranteed paid family leave, etc.
From the conservative viewpoint, the people would probably want more focus on closing immigration loopholes used by businesses to avoid hiring domestically (h1bv, j1bv reform), actively enforcing punishments for employers utilizing illegal immigrants, retooling international trade agreements to favor small businesses and local producers as opposed to larger corporate interests, tax subsidies and encouragements for businesses that produce locally, etc.
The way the republicans have played this game is so dirty, that you can't expect people to forgive. We can not reward such a divisive character like Donald Trump with his racism, xenophobia, mysogny, insults and bullying with a successful presidency.
Honestly I think the democrats should do the best the sabotage him and make sure everything he does fails. It should teach them a lesson that there is no reward in playing dirty and confrontational.
If we reward this behavior it will only get worse.
It is sad to say, but for the long term benefit of America it is probably better if it gets run to the ground over these four years. Then America will be spared for such leaders in the future.
I heard this EXACT phrase said about Obama 8 years ago! We always get what we deserve. Hope, change, make america great again.
> If I was a democrat today I'd do like the Republicans have been doing the last 8 years and do my outmost to make the Trump Presidency be a major failure.
Good luck with that. GOP now has majorities and will probably pick up more in 2018. So be it.
This is a real test of the spine of the democratic party. Will they pull the same stunts the GOP did back then? Who knows
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filibuster_in_the_United_State...
> The new rules remove the requirement of 60 votes in order to begin debate on legislation and allow the minority two amendments to measures that reach the Senate floor, a change implemented as a standing order that expires at the end of the current term. In the new rules, the amount of time to debate following a motion to proceed has been reduced from 30 hours to four. Additionally, a filibuster on the motion to proceed will be blocked if a petition is signed by eight members of the minority, including the minority leader.
But yes, Democrats better do whatever they can to stop anything that's outrageous or they don't believe in even a little bit. No "Oh, the people have spoken, so we better go along with it" shit. Republicans pulled every dirty trick they could with Obama, so they should feel free to do the same.
I think I'd modify that just a little. Our too-few representatives in Congress should do everything to thwart the Trump agenda, but only because that agenda is itself a failure. By opposing it, we make America a success. Very different than what the Republicans have been doing.
What was the exact quote?
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2012/8/10/1118614/-Biden-Mitch...
“To the degree that Mr. Trump is serious about pursuing policies that improve the lives of working families in this country, I and other progressives are prepared to work with him."
http://www.sanders.senate.gov/newsroom/press-releases/sander...
That explicitly acknowledges an obligation toward the American people - something we never got from the "oppose Obama at all costs" crowd. So yes, there is a difference between today's loyal opposition and 2008's treasonous opposition. I reject your false equivalence.
Trump's got a lot more experience playing that game than they do.
I don't think this is necessary. With Obama, his policies were ultimately shaped, designed and compromised to benefit centrist to left-leaning voters, and so he was sharply opposed by the right and extreme right. With Trump, his policies will be ultimately shaped, designed and compromised to benefit Trump, so it is far from clear that this will give advantage to any class of voter at all.
The alternative is even more extreme.
Trump ran his campaign on incessant name calling and hate. If you voted for him, that means you're OK with letting the incessant name calling and hate continue.
Which is what, exactly?
A few thoughts on this:
- First, roughly half (and the majority of the votes) did not agree with this direction. That isn't much of a mandate.
- Second, the party that won has repeatedly shown that they don't want to work on compromise, or follow standard procedure such as allowing a sitting President to get a hearing for a nominee for the Supreme Court.
As a person that feels that this trifecta will change the country for years to come (as you rightly point out), my hope is that the Dems do exactly to Republicans what they've done for the last 4 years - obstruct in any way possible. I'm tired of one side feeling that they have to play by the rules and the other feeling they can ignore them. And I hope that Ruth Ginsburg serves at least for the first term.
Let's talk about George W. Bush's nominees...
Politics is politics and to pretend that one side or the other plays them "dirty" and the other side plays them "clean" is naiveté of an astounding level.
Why do you deny climate change?
Why do you support molesting women?
Why do you think black people need to be stopped and frisked?
Why do you hate gay people?
Why do you think all Muslims are bad?
Why do you think more religion in our government and schools is a good thing?
Why do you hate women's reproductive rights?
Why do you think we should actively consider using nuclear weapons?
Why do you want to allow health care providers to deny coverage to some people essentially signing their death warrant?
That's not name calling you voted for the guy and his running mate who think that way.
What the fuck? What do you have against my gay friends who just want health care? What have they ever done to you?
What about the black people that voted for Trump?
What about the gay people that voted for Trump?
What about the Muslim people that voted for Trump?
They are feeling relatively safe from molestation. That good. They like to think it's because they are keeping themselves safe. If it's their doing then they're in control. So it feels good to them to blame women for their assaults and to believe that men like Trump aren't doing anything. It makes the world feel safer.
The liberal position, that men like Trump do sexually assault people, and that rape is common, and your friends might do it to you, and you should probably believe rape accusations by default, is much scarier. Many women would rather not believe it if they can avoid it.
Women with a LOT of privilege can safely believe it because they can use their prvilege (money etc) to stay safe. Women who are forced to be in unsafe positions can believe it, because they see how common sexual assault is. They are on the front line. Those two groups make up the feminist core.
But there are a lot of women who are just trying to put as much distance as possible between themselves and the rape scene, and for them it's a bit of an abstract matter.
That said, your mandate claim is kind of absurd. More people voted for Romney than Trump.
And Obama got almost 10% more votes than Trump did. So it's not nearly "as loud as can be". Turnout was very low.
Could the backlash spill to the technology and related sectors as well (e.g. a neo-Luddite movement might get started)?
Note: I did not grow up in the US, so I would like to hear your opinions on this, especially from Americans.
That would ignite a civil war in the Republican party between the populists and the upper-class free-trade establishment, and while the populists have a good chance of winning, it's not a done deal.
> Could the backlash spill to the technology and related sectors as well (e.g. a neo-Luddite movement might get started)?
Unlikely, since anyone who gives up technology will be at a severe competitive disadvantage and screw themselves over.
1. I like a good underdog story. The people that support him, for a multitude of reasons, feel neglected by the ruling class in this country. Now I don't know who started all the name calling, but I personally dislike the way they're demeaned and patronized by the Democrats/Liberals as racists and deplorable. There is absolutely no respect from the left given to these people and their opinions. Yeah, there are some loud one saying some ridiculous things, but I refuse to believe that close to half the country hates people of color and wants to completely isolate us from the rest of the world by closing our borders. It just can't be true. I lived in Germany for the last year and was just stunned at how quickly the word Xenophobia was used to label anyone that disagreed with Merkel's policy regarding the refugees. If your opinions were so immediately dismissed with such a strong word, you're going to start harboring some pretty strong feelings of animosity towards those who so quickly judge.
2. I believed he was the candidate with the biggest chance of winning that would bring about the biggest amount of disruption and change. (By this account, I should have voted for Obama in 2007 instead of writing in Ron Paul. But goddamn if Ron Paul didn't seem to have the most reasonable, compassionate and "real" voice I've ever heard in politics.) This, I believe, is inline largely with why Peter Thiel was backing him. I don't know if any of that change or disruption is going to be good or bad for me or the rest of America, but things are certainly going to be interesting for the next four years. Both the Republican and Democratic parties are going to be in complete turmoil as they scramble to figure out what the hell just happened. I think we were all ready to talk about the, sort of, civil war that was about to erupt in the Republican party after this election, but we might end up talking more, initially, about the same thing happening in the Democratic party. Obviously things aren't rosy with the Republicans just because they won everything, but the Democrats really have nothing to do but try and figure out what went wrong and fix it. I, also, don't believe he can really do anything too awful that we can't recover from; I have some faith in the checks and balances laid out by the constitution that will prevent DJT, himself, from doing too much harm. Unlike the Brexit vote, a DJT presidency isn't permanent. We'll be back in four years to do it all over again.
You've never been to the deep south, much the south, have you?
> 2. I believed he was the candidate with the biggest chance of winning that would bring about the biggest amount of disruption and change
Anyone who believes Trump can change things is delusional and has very little, if any grasp, of how power works. Obama was voted in on the promise of change, as all we got was a watered down health care bill and the ability for gays to get married. The ACA probably won't be repealed any time because the Republicans do not have complete control. He will do a few things, and non-White, nonchristian people will suffer, but by in large things will stay the same. The simple fact is that the people who get you elected are not the same people you need to work with to enact legislation.
Please tell me how non-white Americans will suffer from the policies of Trump. I'd think, what with 65k Syrian refugees flooding in and flocking to places like California (where I live) and backed up by policies in to land them unskilled jobs, the minority demo would suffer much more than, for instance, some Americans having their illegal relatives deported for example.
To expand, the Republican party now endorses conversion therapy for homosexuals, voter ids (in other words, voter suppression), denies climate science and evolution, a flat tax rate, and tax cuts for the wealthy (because trickle down economics works so well!). I can continue on, but those policies don't help the poor, who are overwhelming minority.
While I agree with the general sentiment, specially since they had majorities and they couldn't get a much better health care bill, we got more than that. For instance:
- Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
- Dodd-Frank
So...like the parent said, most Americans don't hate colored people. I do think most Americans are frustrated by Obamacare, haphazard foreign involvement, and bailouts.
Yes, I've read similar sentiments. The problem is, regardless of your desire for "change", the man that was elected waged a campaign full of racism and xenophobia and was endorsed by the KKK. Voting for him is implicitly supporting those views.
Barack Obama was endorsed by the Black Panthers. Was voting for him implicitly supporting black racial superiority?
I have been to the south (maybe not the "deep south") but your general assumption that I don't have a great understanding of the people that reside there is accurate. I do understand that there actually are people who truly hate people of color. What I was really taking issue with is the label of bigotry being so readily applied to anyone who supports Trump. I just find it unfair.
Regarding your last point, I wasn't necessarily trying to say that the change and disruption would happen specifically within government or by way of the laws we might pass. I apologize if that wasn't entirely clear. The most obvious place, as I mentioned, where we might see some of this is within both of the major parties themselves and how they operate outside of government. The Democrats will start that process immediately as they were the biggest losers and the Republicans will put that on hold as they do have some control over government, but clearly their party isn't in great shape either.
Talk is cheap, actions are what define you. If you vote for someone who wages a racist, xenophobic campaign, someone who was endorsed by KKK and has riled up white supremacist views, you implicitly support them.
This cuts both ways. Voters had effectively a binary choice. Given the dismal favorability ratings of both major party candidates, I think we do everyone a disservice by assuming they subscribe to every view or position either candidate has ever taken or changed. People have different values and different priorities for the values that they do share with others. We don't get to mix and match our candidates.
Given how split the country is, we likely have a lot of things we can find agreement on. We need to work on finding our common goals so we can move forward and make progress.
Edit to add: I myself struggle with determining where to draw the line. What views and/or actions are intolerable? Are they context dependent? At what point do our associations taint us? Too much for this thread perhaps, but worth keeping in mind when working with people who don't hold exactly the same views as we do; in other words, living in the real world.
Even still, the left has treated the center and right like klansmen for the last decade. Perhaps the left's fatal flaw was failing to distinguish between actual racists and those who simply didn't drink the identity-politics kool-aid.
>I refuse to believe that close to half of this country hates people of color
It's been confirmed that many pro Obama counties have turned pro Trump this election cycle. Clearly not racists.
He denies rape by saying the accuser is too ugly to rape. (Would he rape if she were cute?)
He seems to think that "grabbing women by the pussy" is a good thing. Most politicians I'd give a pass on an event like this - it happened a long time ago, and most politicians would disclaim such behavior (compare Clinton's response to her email server during the debates).
He accuses a judge of not being able to do his job because he is "from Mexico", even though said judge was born as an American.
He attacks (seemingly) muslims at Hillary's DNC speech - for reasons I'm not entirely certain why.
So I think that there are a few options: you are either saying Trumps sexism and racism is worth it for his other qualities, or blatantly ignoring it, or actively supporting it. To me it's not hard to see how people would come to the conclusion that people are actively supporting it, because for a lot of people that is an issue that would trump other issues (bad pun not intended but now that it's there I'm leaving it).
I have to agree with the other commenter who asks if you lived in the Deep South. I grew up in Louisiana. In the early '90s, we had David Duke (whose name you may recognize from this campaign), an actual, genuine, Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard, be a state senator, run a very close to successful campaign for US Senate, and run a very close to successful campaign the following year for governor. Wikipedia recounts the vote totals for the gubernatorial election:
[Edwin] Edwards received 1,057,031 votes (61.2%), while Duke's 671,009 votes represented 38.8% of the total. Duke nevertheless claimed victory, saying, "I won my constituency. I won 55% of the white vote," a statistic confirmed by exit polls.
We can argue about what "hates people of color" means, precisely, but if 40% of voters, and 55% of white voters, are willing to put a KKK Imperial Wizard in charge of the state, it's not an implausible claim. Maybe not half the country. Maybe a quarter. Maybe the majority in some states and not others. Maybe the core constituency of some but not all senators. Is that okay?
And given this country's recent history of explicit anti-black political actions by people in power (see e.g. George Wallace's "segregation forever" and Lee Atwater's candid statement of the Southern Strategy), it's hard to argue that that all evaporated since then.
> I don't know if any of that change or disruption is going to be good or bad for me or the rest of America, but things are certainly going to be interesting for the next four years.
There are a lot of people (e.g., me, presumably you) who can deal just fine with four "interesting" years. There are a lot of people who can't. My LGBT friends are freaking out, for instance, and with a vice president who believes in torturing the gay away, I don't blame them. My capable-of-being-pregnant friends are freaking out. My non-citizen friends on valid visas are freaking out.
Disruption to force change is a fine way to solve some problems, like Netflix's infrastructure being reliant on AWS not shutting down machines. But this isn't Netflix's infrastructure, this is people's lives. I know plenty of people who aren't asking whether to uproot their lives but how, and they're pretty uninterested in having an interesting four years.
This is an interesting point. I've toyed with the notion lately that maybe the American political system is "antifragile"[0]. It's plausible, at least, to me that the system as a whole is stronger when it receives major shocks that disrupt the ossified structure in there. If you have the same politicians with the same policies as normal, then you get ties between the government and industry, and handouts and a ruling elite, etc. Now I don't think Trump is all that much of an outsider or has that much chance of disruption here (I voted Johnson, partly in this hope), but it's interesting to me you raise it as a reason.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifragile
At the base level: Laws still apply, people will go to jail if they harm you. It's not like he's going to declare open hunting season on LGBTQ people.
A number of these were done through executive action, and Trump has said he will overturn them in office. Yes, laws still apply. But not if they aren't laws anymore. Pence was the one who signed Indiana's controversial Religious Freedom Restoration Act into law, and has advocated reparative therapy (brainwashing the gay out of you), which is ineffective and incredibly damaging.
I hope other follow. Maybe they'll finally get off their couch, turn off breitbart, and actually do something positive and productive with their lives.
Addendum:
To the down-voters: I thought part of this 'movement' was to get rid of political correctness. So, please let me take advantage of my new found right to say what I really think - what many people have been secretly thinking but have been too polite to actually say. Let's put it all out on the table. Wasn't that one of the big motivations to begin with?
The fact is that no one wants their unskilled, uneducated labor.
I see democrats with specific answers to all of these questions and none from Trump. I mean, OK: we lost, you won. But that also means you need to govern now and not just shitpost. Wat do?
I'd be curious about your suggestions for implementing the second, because it sounds a lot like Bernie Sanders. No way is a republican congress going to regulate manufacturing like that.
- http://www.computerworld.com/article/3014365/it-careers/sen-...
Trump said those things, but just because he ran on the Republican ticket doesn't mean that he can't butt heads with a Republican-controlled Congress.
2. I'm curious how reducing H1B's is supposed to affect blue collar or rural jobs.
The suburban and rural people who grow America's food, get its energy out of the ground, and manufacture what hasn't been outsourced yet don't want anything from people like him. They have too much pride for that—the good kind, not the kind the grandparent has.
I didn't vote for Trump, but I know a lot of people who did, and every single one of them is a decent, hard-working human being. Upon seeing, reading, and hearing the things being said about Trump voters this morning, my brother, a self-employed furniture maker who did for Trump, said, "I didn't know I was a racist. I just thought I wanted affordable health insurance."
The country's political elites dismissed people like him. The outcome of this election is the result. The attitude of the grandparent is how we got here.
The "Take America Back" compaign's stance on affordable health insurance was 'We have a system that isn't working. Throw it out. Start over'
I do not see how this could possibly be the real deciding factor. It is a convenient shield to protect your brother's true feelings.
Maybe—just maybe—people like my brother viewed Hillary as Obama's third term? He doesn't particularly trust Trump; he just trusted Hillary less. If Democrats really wanted to fix ObamaCare, he reasons, they had plenty of time to do it.
If you want to lose an entire voting bloc, call them racists and question their motivations instead of listening to their frustrations. It has just been proven to work.
You assume that I assume that his "True feelings" are racist.
We could get in to why he considers a third term of Obama's policies to be bad. A blanket statement of "Everything Obama did is terrible forever" also doesn't help describe your brother's true feelings.
On the issue of trust, the choice between "Career Politician" and "80's Businessman" is kind of a toss up. So again, we would need to go in to detail.
I really don't think there has been 'plenty of time' to fix the Affordable Care Act. It was enacted in 2010, majorly phased in in 2014, and will continue to phase in in 2020. So, the magnitude and reach of this is going to take some serious time come to grips with in order to find and fix the problems.
Obviously he is innocent until proven guilty. But an unfounded rejection of the candidate who's message is based on inclusiveness looks a lot like evidence that he is guilty.
So, how do we get the discussion of whether his objections are unfounded?
> Dominated by Republican voters who profess their distaste for the federal government and its social programs, these are the very states that rank highest on the dependency index.
https://www.google.com/amp/www.theatlantic.com/amp/article/3...
I don't consider this a definitive source, but it's what I found fast enough to continue the dialog.
Of all ppl, HN should see this as an opprotunity. Large pain points of rural america = massive startup opprotunites.
The time for acceptance is over.
This changed today I think. I wouldn't be surprised if the next democratic campaign is composed by an alliance of the standard socially progressive base with a populist base that favors poor people from swing states, while treating dark-red states with actual hostility (instead of indifference for their woes)
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12911270 and marked it off-topic.
Many people don't like their co-worker's or neighbor's personal beliefs or behaviors. I can't see that letting people be persecuted openly will end well or fruitfully for anyone.
Addendum:
It's interesting that my other comments are getting downvoted or even detached. Wasn't part of this big 'movement' to get rid of political correctness? I guess I don't understand. But, I'll be done. Sorry.
This isn't actually a thing. It's an internet narrative that tends to be more projectionist than anything substantial.
Live and let live.
(Which is exactly what "safe spaces" and "check your privilege" and the political correctness under threat of ostracism _isn't_.)
SJW means social justice warrior. It carries a negative connotation, being defined[1] as "[carrying] implications of pursuing personal validation rather than any deep-seated conviction, and being engaged in disingenuous social justice arguments or activism to raise personal reputation."
A safe space is somewhere "individuals who feel marginalized [can] come together to communicate regarding their experiences with their perceived marginalization."[2] This originated so that members of the lgbt+ community could talk freely and not feel like they would be persecuted for doing so. People today sometimes use the term to refer to places where they cannot be openly hateful, citing a violation of free speech.
A trigger is something that can cause someone to recall a previous trauma that they have experienced. Examples could be descriptions or portrayals of rape, graphic violence, suicide, or blood. Not all triggers are this directly connected to what people have experienced, but these are what people usually use in trigger warnings. Trigger warnings are little things saying "hey, there's some material following that may potentially trigger memories of trauma."
Microaggressions refer to actions that are not directly aggressive to a member of a marginalized group, but are still hurtful. They can be defined[3] as "rooted in racism, sexism, or discrimination based on nationality or sexual orientation. [They] can be delivered casually or even unconsciously." Examples could be sexist jokes, purposeful discrimination based on race, or misgendering trans people.
Some people use these terms to say that people today are so sensitive, it's just words, etc. Most of those people are not members of any marginalized groups.
[0]:https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Political_correctness [1]:https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Social_justice_warrior [2]:https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Safe-space [3]:http://qz.com/787504/what-exactly-is-a-microaggression-let-t...
Can you give some examples ? Are white "priviledged" marginalized ? Are the people that voted for Trump, deplorables, marginalized ?
sjw=social justice warrior
trigger-warning=just google it. there are people that go in panic when they hear certain stuff (kinda insane really)
safe space= a place that protects you from words that trigger you
micro aggresion= normal aggresion is hitting someone example, micro aggresion is looking wrong, or saying something ~"bad"~
a good example: watch the "hugh mungus" fenomen (original video and many reactions like https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aVna3HohXI )
There are people who experience panic disorder/ptsd. Being "triggered" into a panic attack can literally require hospitalization. Just because you are fortunate enough to not experience this doesn't mean that all people are.
Some examples:
But if that girl from "hugh mungus" video goes, the doctor will slap her sense into her.
The same people complaining about PC-culture and SJWs are the same people who are outraged about Colin Kaepernick taking a knee during the national anthem.
I think this was Hillary's single biggest mistake. It was exactly what they were waiting for -- the "Washington Elite" telling them they were less than. It gave the outsiders a rallying call.
That sounds like you think getting caught saying something like that was the issue, not the comment itself.
It's not the first time she's used language like that to refer to Trump's supporters. She was saying things like that repeatedly, in smaller audiences, throughout the campaign. I'm convinced she said it because deep down she's an elitist who really doesn't give a damn about anything besides money and power.
8-years!
(I voted for Hillary, mind.)
1) you'll accuse me of name calling, even though I just gave an accurate description of your political platform
2) you'll accuse me of trying to curtail your free speech, even though I was just exercising mine
3) you'll try to invalidate what I'm saying by invoking the "you may not campaign for the rights of others" rule you cited
All of which just serves you avoiding actually addressing my words, which are clear and direct: you are a white supremacist.
If I'm lucky you'll try to defend yourself by rattling through the list of your racist beliefs and then we can have a real discussion.
But most anti-SJW types are so triggered by words like "racism" and "xenophobia" that we never get that far.
PC, SJW, etc... had no presence in the mainstream election, and it was the rural mainstream that won Trump the election. Not pepe & dank memes.
You couldn't fit more reactionary buzzwords in there if you tried. Jesus... PC culture is not being able to call out Trump supporters for being bigots or else their feelings will get hurt.
That and all societies have these things. In Saudi Arabia it is illegal to insult the prophet and they have declared what amounts to a "safe space" for Islam. That's one extreme and clear example but every society has taboos and ways of enforcing those taboos.
It's undoubtably true now that there was a very real populist anger towards the existing political order, and as a corollary, the political and economic elites. Instead of harnessing that energy and attempting to create a movement (see: Sanders, Bernie), the Democratic party anointed a candidate who is the definition of establishment.
The results are showing that Hillary lost, at least in large part, due to lower voter turnout, especially among liberal-leaning populations. With all else equal, Podesta, DWS, Neera Tanden, and the rest of the DNC cutup squad ignored the people and ran on the "man, Dangerous Donald, obviously you're not gonna vote for him!" platform. That, and shaming Bernie/Stein supporters about their support for a candidate who can't win - rather than explaining how Clinton's policies would be good. Well, the Democrats and 'moderates' didn't vote for Trump, but they sure didn't have a reason to vote for Clinton either.
Hillary couldn't make that argument because it would've drawn more attention to her most damning flaw: The fact that she's a textbook demagogue who was on the wrong side of every progressive issue until she found it politically expedient to "evolve".
That's why so many people were so passionate about Sanders. You could go back to C-SPAN videos from 1992 and hear him saying the exact same things he said throughout the whole primary season.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vabeos-F8Kk
This was this the exact same case with Ron Paul 4 years ago but it seemed to hardly matter
I'm sure if we had wikileaks of the RNC during that time, it would have revealed much of the same type of insider corruption.
I believe the Ron Paul rule was seen to block Ted Cruz rather than help Trump (semantics, I suppose).
Those knife fights over party rules (especially 40 (b)) made it possible for Trump to get into the running for the nomination, according to many GOP observers. See [1] for an explanation of how.
These election results are a political pressure relief valve: significant swathes of the electorate have been systematically excluded and ignored, then they tried to organize in different ways. First culminating in Ron Paul's bid, then a different wave in Bernie Sanders' bid, and enough formed coalitions behind Trump this time around to cost both parties' establishments their desired outcomes. Ignoring such large groups of the electorate for much longer would have cost us much more in the future. There are very big chunks of the population in a lot of pain for going on decades now, and effectively ignoring that is no longer much of an option going forward.
I see China possibly facing a similar issue with their rural population at some point in the far future.
[1] https://alibertarianfuture.com/2016-election/2016-republican...
Ron Paul just kept repeating his position, regardless of how many puppy orphanages were on fire.
I am convinced that he did not possess the duplicity of most politicians.
A lot of people who voted for her are Democrats -- people she thought she had already in her pockets.
Trump wasn't a top candidate, he wasn't the popular one, has said stupid stuff, and yet people disliked Hillary so much, they still voted for him.
I looked through some emails, it was entertaining (even though CNN said it is illegal to look through them and only media was special and had to interpret them for us). There was very little in those emails of "Hey how does this help ordinary people, let's do something for them" or "You know, we should just tell the truth, let's not really spin this at all".
It is all about how do fool this block "Women, ok, she is a woman, that's easy". Black voters, those are easy... what should we do for them? Organized a rap concert, of course. Because that's not condescending... Let's call Jay-z so he can drop a few N-bombs at them, I hear they like that. She is like the awkward rich person trying to find common ground with peasant that she usually would never associates with and it just looks so fake and stupid... and now more people can see that.
She fought a near perfect 1970s campaign. She got every Columbia school of journalism grad eating out of her hand, total control and ally to the legacy main stream media. Newspapers. Radio. Every academic in the country shilling for her or they lose their position. She had nothing fundamentally new that a 60s radical wouldn't have recognized. There's simply no way she could have lost in 1976.
Of course its 2016 so Trump has approx 5 million NEETs on /POL/ shitposting insane memes about nazi frogs into every normies facebook feed on the planet while epic trolling social and legacy media and releasing all the proof of her corruption via email thru hacked servers on wikileaks. He was the only candidate talking about 2010s issues like the result of 1960s immigration reform or the marginalization and hatred of the white working class. He fought a pretty good 2016 campaign.
This being 2016 and not 1976 its no great surprise which strategy won.
The "R" side needs to take notes that the "D" are likely to make this mistake precisely once. The battles in 2020 and 2024 are not going to be baby boomers still stuck in the '70s losing to '10s millennials again.
Also she hates half the country and calls them deplorables. Somehow, oddly, her despising them didn't magically translate into votes. The sense of entitlement is strong with that one...
Did it though? Did it? [1]
[1] https://youtu.be/zaD84DTGULo?t=29s
This would allow for a lot of social services, but keep them more localized, so they can serve the population better and be held more accountable.
And it would avoid a lot of the problems with big government at the federal level.
If you can't open it, it's an exchange between Gimli and Legolas from the LoTR movie.
Gimli (wearing Bernie hat): I never thought I'd be fighting side by side with a trumpster.
Legolas (with MAGA hat): What about side by side with a deplorable?
Gimli (wearing Bernie hat): Aye.
Gimli (wearing Hillary for Prison 2016 hat): I could do that.
Ordinarily if the choice is bad I'd vote third party, but I really didn't want Hillary in and I was pretty sure this wouldn't be the election when the third party wins it.
In the (probably apocryphal) words of Keynes:
> When someone persuades me that I am wrong, I change my mind. What do you do?
It's not a sign of vice either; I'm sure he's been believing that the Earth is round for 24+ years, and that's fine. What matters is accuracy, and updating in the face of new evidence, not consistency. Consistency in the face of new evidence is called faith.
But being right for 24 years is.
She adopted his ideas one by one and then tried to pretend they'd been hers all along. Unfortunately (for her), Democrats aren't that gullible. It was clear that she was only saying what voters wanted to hear, while Bernie truly believed everything he'd been saying for that past 25+ years.
Case in point: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/2631
All I'm saying is, you can't tout keeping the same idea for years as an unqualified good thing, you have to look at the idea and history in detail, and show that it was a good idea all along.
(I'm not objecting to the object-level argument that Clinton does whatever is politically expedient, I'm objecting to the line of argument that it's good for a politician to hold an opinion for a long time, without also showing that the idea is good, and that it was good all along.)
If that's the critique you hear when comparing Sanders to Clinton, you're not listening very well.
To restate, Sanders didn't just tout the same idea. He's fought for the same core principles throughout his whole career, even when in the clear minority. Overtime, the rest of our culture came around to those ideas (bringing Clinton with it).
His virtue isn't his tenacity. It's his progressive thinking.
> the exact same thing
for years.
I'm not American, I havn't looked into Berns' history in details.
Would you rather have an ethically malleable liberal than a principled conservative? In most cases I would rather have the principled politician because they will have some kind of goal to benefit some segment of Americans. Can we really say that any ethically malleable politician, of any flavor, will always help some segment of Americans?
Then as a counter to all this. Nixon did found the EPA.
I think malleable politicians are malleable because they try to benefit the largest section of the population that they can. Conservatives, lately, have focused on benefiting a very small segment of the population directly, expecting the benefits to trickle down.
However, the trickle down has not worked. I know very little about economics, but, I remember, headlines in newspapers eight years ago were mainly about unemployment, and the growth of the National debt. The euro was $1.30 (now it buoys around $1.10).
I think the American economy is much better now than it was eight years ago, and a larger section of the population has benefited from that, than when principled conservatives were in the government. (And this is just from an economic point of view, which is a small part of the benefits).
She has demonstrated over her career that she will vote for whatever is popular, lean on "think of the children" issues, and only vote progressively to catch up with the times. In a time where Congressional approval is so low, the American people couldn't stomach electing the epitome of a career politician who seems to have so many skeletons in her closet the door is about to burst (real or imaginary, the impression is there).
We ended up with Trump, which I am absolutely not thrilled about, but at least this will send the Democrats back to the drawing board to come up with something better than "Less Evil." I just pray to the FSM that the Republican House, Senate, Cabinet, and Supreme Court don't turn our great nation into a chop shop in the next 2 / 4 years. We are in for a bumpy ride.
You're missing the point completely.
I'm not praising Sanders' stubbornness, I'm praising his foresight and vastly superior judgment. He knew what this country needed to do 20 years before Hillary, and he was willing to vehemently defend his opinions despite the overwhelming opposition. The fact that you're trying to turn this into some kind of debate about consistency vs. facts is frankly baffling. It's clear that he was right all along and she was late to the party on every issue that liberals and progressives care about.
And do you really believe she changed her opinion on those issues where she claimed to have "evolved"? I sure don't. We know she still wants TPP to pass, we know she still secretly supports DOMA, we know she had no interest in reigning in Wall Street, we know she (and Chelsea) were halfheartedly pretending to support medical marijuana, etc. etc.. The Hillary Clinton presented to the public was a fictional character designed for one purpose: To win the presidency.
It didn't work, and the reason is clear: We're not as ignorant or gullible as they'd hoped: https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/3599#efmARhAWn
You're right, I got sidetracked by this:
> has been saying the exact same things for years
I keep forgetting not to try debating what is or isn't a good argument, in the abstract, in politics threads.
What he said makes complete sense in the context he presented it in, and is valid.
You're arguing how what he said would be bad in an entirely different context, which is irrelevant.
Having the same opinion in and of itself is not a virtue, but having wisdom and foresight and conviction and true ground level initiative all at once is far more than just virtuous.
“But If Everybody's Watching, You Know, All Of The Back Room Discussions And The Deals, You Know, Then People Get A Little Nervous, To Say The Least. So, You Need Both A Public And A Private Position.”
https://wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/927
Her motives are clear.
Like, what if someone shows up and shows that Trump has had the same opinions all along? Is that a positive for him?
If the ideas are shitty, it doesn't matter how consistent or inconsistent they are. If they're good, I don't care if the person only adopted them 3 years ago, as long as they did for the right reasons, (e.g. not political expediency, I agree.)
I agree that the fact that he's held the same opinions for a long time is evidence that Berns doesn't act out of political expediency, but to me that point is far overshadowed by whether the ideas are any good.
>but to me that point is far overshadowed by whether the ideas are any good
Mind telling me where his ideas are bad? Most of his beliefs are both long held, progressive, and in my opinion, largely agreeable.
It is if they were good opinions the whole damn time. Being for marriage equality for 24 years is a virtue. Being for an improved social safety net for 24 years is a virtue. Being for universal healthcare for 24 years is a virtue.
"I believe in universal human rights" is a virtue that I think it is perfectly acceptable to have to 24 years (or more!)
You speak of faith and belief a lot. Bernie is like a wise theological scholar. Personally I think he's wrong about quite a few things, but I recognize the strong morals and ethics, the personal virtue, the deep rational thought, the coherent inter relatedness behind his system. He's a personification of sometimes wise people are wrong, but they still remain wise. He's not for me personally, I like other folks, but I'm proud he's an American and if he were the leader I could respect him despite disagreement. And his female opponent is like a televangelist seeking ratings and pledge drives, a faith healer, a fake messiah. And people somehow wonder how she lost. Doesn't her show have the highest ratings? Doesn't she make the best promises in her sermons? Don't our holiest people fall all over themselves to celebrate and show off their own holiness in supporting her? How could a charlatan like her not win, indeed?
You are deliberately misinterpreting the statement. Of course having the same opinion for 24 years by itself is not a virtue! The point is: he has had the same public stance on things that matter : gay marriage, healthcare, etc. In today's climate, when politicians change their views based on the most recent polling, this is indeed a virtue.
How do you know that? Can you really not imagine that someone can misinterpret something without malicious intention?
Can you believe that I agree with OP that Bernie was the better candidate, yet still disagree about a particular argument?
By European standards, most of the European centre-right is fine with most of what Bernie supports...
And then we wake up to Trump.
EDIT - Even though I think Trump is an existential threat to the USA, so have many of our leaders. Maybe 'us' wouldn't be the US if we weren't just a bit crazy. I must accept that I might be wrong about Trump be universally bad and see what happens.
That was not what GP was saying at all. He was saying that Bernie has always stood for what he believes is the right thing to do, whereas Hillary would pick a stance based on its political value.
I disagree with, but respect, Sanders, Stein, Warren, Feingold (and some other lefties). Hillary equals revulsion, repulsion. I can't be talked from "respect" to "vote" with someone I can't even respect first.
The D party worked very hard on converting "respect" people to "vote" people. I think they achieved 100% success. The problem is most of the country can never respect her, and there was zero effort put into making her respectable (perhaps it was recognized as impossible?)
There's something fundamentally wrong internally with the D party when the ground seems to be crawling with respectable (possibly votable!) candidates but instead we get a movie caricature of Lex Luther combined with a slightly more chicken hawk bloodthirsty Joker from a sequel rejected in the 90s. There's something just horribly fundamentally wrong with how people gain political power inside the D party, resulting in the wrong leaders at the wrong times.
Also, keep in mind that most of the electorate votes against party lines, even if the party were to nominate Satan. She completely failed the margins.
Sorry, this is a totally facetious argument. She should have known before that server went up that using a personal email address to circumvent FOIA (not to even get into classified info mishandling) was "wrong". She knew this years ago. She didn't care. She didn't think she'd get caught, and now that she has, she might even get away with it.
That people found out about it before the election is the silver lining here. The stormcloud is, every even remotely well-armed government hacked her server at some point during her tenure as SoS and has everything on it.
But to not put a polarizing, inexperienced politician like Trump away easily is what makes the commentators (and me) think there are larger trends at work.
She had all the cards.
Or, to adapt from Donald Rumsfeld, you go into an election with the electorate you have, not the electorate you wish you had.
There could have been a vast conspiracy to frame the Unibomber or Al Capone or John Dillinger or Nixon. No one can explain why them. Therefore I think it infinitely more likely they were just crooks.
Because she has been in politics for for 30 something years, been on the national stage for 20 something years, and has been "the next president" for roughly 10 years. This wasn't one hit job, this was decades of concentrated work that eventually broke the camel's back.
How is "I'll do exactly what the establishment tells me to do, just like the last couple figureheads, except in a $10K Chairman Mao pantsuit" a challenge to much of anyone?
The country has a not so comfy history with black folks, yet men and women have lived together for eternity, so why didn't Obama get it perhaps 100 or 10000 times worse? Surely you're not a racism denialist? Perhaps no one accused Obama of being a criminal because... he isn't? I mean I never voted for him but I can respect him, he's a wise constitutional scholar who probably deserves a supreme court appointment to an empty liberal seat when this is all over. I disagree with him on many issues but he's no crook and he's reasonably wise. He got teased, essentially, about a technicality of being born in a foreign country and being muslim which frankly don't matter and never turned out to be a problem and never went past offending people on twitter.
Palin was hated in the mainstream media, but it was just a generic Quayle style two minutes hate. How come no one provided any evidence of her crimes? Perhaps... there were none? Could there possibly be any hatred hotter than the DNC controlled MSM's hatred toward Palin, yet there's nothing but sophistry against her because she's clean? I wouldn't describe Palin as being a bright bulb or a beacon of wisdom yet I voted for her, she's not that bad.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alaska_Public_Safety_Commissio...
Hillary didn't need any help destroying her reputation.
As a matter of public record, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated in her FBI interview that she could not recall briefings at the State department pertaining to handling classified information, nor could she give an example of how information might be classified.
Now this is either a lie, or a self-admission that disqualifies a person to hold the position of commander-in-chief of the armed forces, privy to the most sensitive information in the government.
How can you fault a voter who observes these facts and casts their vote for someone else?
I like your optimism, but do you remember what first brought our new president elect into the political sphere? It certainly wasn't to praise Obama for his clean and scandal free record.
I guess nobody around her who had an inkling dared to raise their hand. Can't even imagine what they'd say "Ma'am, people don't believe what you are saying, can you be more genuine a bit?"...
Check out of some of the leaked emails. I'm not sure if they said it to her directly, but they regularly remarked on how insincere and artificial she came across as.
She just has almost no charisma or jovial presence, unlike Trump.
Basically, "the perfect is the enemy of the good" applied to politics.
e.g. "Don't ask, don't tell" is a crappy policy compared with letting gay people serve openly, but it's an improvement on the status quo at that time which was setting up sting operations to catch out gay servicemen and throw them out of the army.
I guess I'm condoning her fighting for something she doesn't truly believe is right, as long as it's better than what's currently the case. Does that make me bad? Does it make her bad?
Really, she hasn't achieved much good for the world if any. She is good at being a power person in Washington though.
I'm not pro Trump, by the way.
Benghazi was a political dog and pony show, that she is completely blameless of.
Libya and Gaddafi were a humanitarian disaster that rests squarely on her shoulders.
Then there's Cuba. Not a big deal in global terms, but a watershed in America's history. Although the payoffs for these mainly accrue to Kerry, it was Hilary who made them happen.
You don't have to qualify your statements anymore. The veil of illusion has come down and the sock puppet masters have ended their contracts, so you won't be attacked unfairly for pointing out the truth.
Basically, "the perfect is the enemy of the good" applied to politics.
A valid point, in spirit.
But the basic problem with the Clintonian philosophy (a term which was coined during Bill's tenure, actually) is that they both took "triangulation" to such an extreme (and made so many 180-degree flip-flops on basic issues, which really should have been principle gut calls -- Hillary's gay rights being a classic example) that the end, you could never get a fix on, let alone believe them what they stood for. It's like nailing jello to a wall, basically.
To be truly successful in politics -- the stance to take (which I hope this election proves) is not "triangulation at all costs" (a.k.a. Standard Clintonianism). Nor is it "perfection at all costs". But it does require a keen sense of judgement to know when, exactly, to make a proper gut call between the two -- and stand up for the right thing, and say the right thing. Even if it seems the majority is against you, or no one is listening to your speeches on C-PAN.
That, and a sense for not letting one's self be "played" (in the sense that Hillary appears to have genuinely believed both the Bush's administration line about the imminent threat of WMD in Iraq, and his private assurances -- albeit not encoded in the resolution that she tragically voted for -- that he wouldn't invade unless all diplomatic avenues had been exhausted; or in the sense that both of the Clintons allowed themselves to be played, for decades, by the Christian Right).
I mean, I know people have been redirecting Trump's flaws onto Hillary but this is just hilarious.
I'm a big fan of Bernie, but I'm not sure I want a politician with early 90s views of everything...
I couldn't disagree more. This campaign was all about emotion, not rationality. Apparently facts don't matter and that's very hard to deal with.
Facts do matter, and I think it's disingenuous to really argue that they don't, even to the American electorate. I think the overriding truth is that politics is about engagement, and it's a battle - just because you have the 'right' ideas doesn't mean you will win. You need to engage, encourage, and motivate people to vote for you - which the Clinton campaign could not do.
Obviously. I think the point being made though is that they seem to matter less than many people thought. Trump ran a campaign that was light on facts, and in many cases used misinformation in lieu of facts. The fact that this is less important than what, if it's true, amounts to a very slight level of corruption in the other candidate (I'm unsure why I should have considered the idea that money given to a charity would get you semi-favorable treatment with regard to an audience as the horrible thing it was presented as) is something I find upsetting.
I understand that people are upset with their governance, but the only thing that comes to mind when I think of this situation is "to cut off your nose to spite your face."
1. money given to her charity
2. charity or "charity"? - valid question, given large percentage of its income is spent on overhead
So? It's not like she's taking it out to buy herself houses and cars? At most, I think you could make a case that she's used the profile of the charity to boost her political career. If that's the case, and the charity gets income that it spends on worthy causes and she gets clout, well that's not the best outcome, but it's sure far from the worst.
> 2. charity or "charity"? - valid question, given large percentage of its income is spent on overhead
I'm fairly sure this has been thoroughly debunked. The amount of income to that charity that goes to overhead is average by all accounts I've seen that are reputable[1]. I've looked, because this has come up before. If you have a source that says otherwise that is not some random blog that references some other random blog[2], I would be happy to read it.
1: http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2016/aug/...
2: I'm way too tired of debunking what people consider a valid source once they've decided that all the mainstream media is biased and untrustworthy. It's hard to tell whether in some cases the errors are due to incompetence, negligence or with purpose. Undoubtedly a useful feature to some.
The soundbite you often hear is about X% spent on salaries and only Y% donated to charity. Which is true, but misleading because the Foundation actually pays people to administer medicine. It's not the type of charity that just hands the money to other groups.
[1]: https://www.clintonfoundation.org/sites/default/files/clinto... [2]: http://www.clintonhealthaccess.org
Facts matter, but emotion matters more. Foe example, some Trump supporters believe that parts of the US are now governed by Sharia law. The fact is wrong, but the underlying fear and racism is real and so much more powerful. The fact doesn't really matter.
A large part of Hillary's campaign (both officially and via her supporters on social media) was actively shaming people into voting for "the woman" instead of "the bigot". Unsurprisingly that seems to have backfired, leaving many liberals flabbergasted how "Women for Trump" was ever a thing.
I would have been upset with either candidate winning but the entire candidacy showed the worst side of American election cycles: mudslinging, character assassination and trying to convince everyone the other guy is literally the devil. Trump's accusations of Clinton being "a liar" and "a criminal" (IOW a typical career politician) were pretty harmless compared to the hyperbole (deserved or not) hauled at him.
For whatever barriers Clinton faced due to her gender, she also wasn't held accountable early enough for a lot of legitimately bad things that she's done, which came back to hurt her in the end.
I'm sorry but that makes no sense to me. Now maybe it's my liberal tendencies talking but the things that have come out of his mouth are flat out dangerous for a person who has that much power (now). Not much of it was hyperbole because it didn't have to be. He was already after foreigners, women, "the washington elite", the internet etc. before any of the media got involved. He was addicted to the cycle coverage but he still said all of those things and you can't wish that away.
While Clinton mastered the "experienced, competent" persona, what she actually did was mostly driven by her ambition to become the first female president.
Trump, who has been accused of being a bigot, has always been very liberal towards LGBT (see his interview for Rolling Stone from a few years ago), while Hillary had been strongly against gay marriage until it became very clear public opinion changed in favor of it.
I can see him being apathetic towards them: if they get married, that's not my problem, but if they get "conversion therapy," that's also not my problem.
Now, I'm not sure that bigotry is the right word for that. But it is something at least as monstrous.
(Also, as a tangent: let's please not confuse gay marriage with "LGBT" as a whole. Trump has come down firmly on the evangelicals' side about trans people and bathrooms. If we mean "LGB" or "gay marriage", we should say what we mean.)
I believe Trump's administration will focus on pressing trade/economics and foreign policy issues, not bathroom identification issues, which affect 0.3% of the population.
To people disappointed with his victory, the consoling fact should be that Trump is not a religious nut. Yes, he said things about Supreme Court/abortion - as a Republican, you have to, to win the primaries.
Also, while these issues directly affect 0.3% of the population, it is a subset of the 99.7% of the population that's calling for these bills. Perhaps enough of a subset that he'll continue wanting to please the religious supporters.
Compromise.
Does no one remember when Obama was against and would not support gay marriage?
http://nbcpolitics.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/05/09/11623172-the...
Also, and maybe I'm missing something because I'm not personally affected by this, but I think there's quite a difference between telling two adults they can't get married, and telling a child that they're going to be miserable and flawed their whole life if they don't figure out how to be straight, and we'll give you electric shocks to condition you out of being gay.
Or between telling two adults they can't get married, and telling an adult they can't use the bathroom. (Which is the effective result of the bathroom bills: a trans person is legally unwelcome in one restroom and socially unwelcome, to the point of causing legal trouble until a judge looks at their birth certificate, in another.) I would much prefer never to be able to get legally married than never to be able to use a public restroom.
There are plenty of anti-gay-marriage people, even evangelicals, who don't support "conversion therapy" and who don't believe that government should be regulating which bathroom you're using. I would be very willing to call someone liberal on LGBT issues despite picking, say, Obama of 2004 as their running mate.
But I've never before seen a candidate -- and especially that candidate's supporters -- be so viciously attacked as Trump was in this election campaign. I know certain liberal groups think "tone policing" is fallacious but I don't agree with this and neither do half of the American voters apparently (please excuse the tired phrase).
Throughout this campaign I've seen HRC supporters lump in abstainees and third party voters with Trump supporters in a way that only reminds me of George W Bush's "with us or against us" rhetoric. I've seen HRC supporters sever ties with family members who announced they would vote for Trump. I've seen them shame and ridicule anyone saying they would do anything other than vote for HRC. I've even seen them call for boycotts of companies run by alleged Trump supporters.
It's not that Trump isn't a disagreeable character, its that he has been singled out and denounced with every imaginable slur and every single accusation levelled at him was taken at face value.
I know this is not solely the work of Clinton's campaign and that the election unfortunately coincided with the BLM movement, various Islamist attacks in the West (including the massacre in Orlando) and the peak of SJW conflicts at American universities but this was a despicable crapshoot and you know it.
If a company's CEO or owner said the things Trump has said, I would call for boycotting the company until that person no longer ran it.
That has nothing to do with the Democratic party, nor his running for president (I'm not even allowed to vote): It's because Trump's ideas are today's equivalent to being opposed to interracial marriage back then.
Also that the media is totally disconnected with the ground reality, I know it is in my country, it is more in the US apparently.
People associate "democracy" with "fairness". With "representation". They associate it with "everybody's voice is heard". When 40+% of the people vote for something, and that something doesn't come through, that's 40+% of the voices being ignored. Don't disregard those simply because they didn't break the 51% barrier.
We can also agree that Trump played the entire electorate. He strategically chose to run as republican, he played the media like puppets to have a free platform to shout from, etc. Those things don't feel fair.
In fact, the entire election really seemed to be a pissing context at times. People also associate democracy with "elevated discourse" and I don't think anyone can claim this happened.
And of course, the US democratic system is really poor compared to other countries (France has one of the best, by comparison: two round voting and none of that electoral college nonsense). But that's another topic.
This brings to mind California and San Francisco's penchant for referendums.
If you can run a Republic with little hatred and division, a nifty opportunity opens up if the nomination process proposes wise and respectable candidates. For example I dislike Obamas ideas but I can respect the guy as someone who's not a crook and has a solid brain on his head and a bit of wisdom. So if the guy who agrees with me wins, I'm chill because we have a comfy echo chamber. If the other guy wins I'm a little bummed but I'm still chill because the have a who's wrong about some things, but wise enough to keep us out of complete disaster.
That's the tragedy of not running Bernie. He's respectable and wise and no crook. I voted for Trump and I'm glad he won, but if Bernie won, I'd be chill enough till next time.
Sort of like mate selection, where kids childishly try to find an appropriate gender photocopy of themselves, whereas once you're over a certain age, its more important to find a mate who's wise. Its OK if my wife likes my hobbies when we were young, but now that we're old its OK if she doesn't, because we respect each other and think each other are wise enough that it'll be OK.
This time around I don't think the right could trust Hillary so it was win at all costs. Meanwhile we "have to" social signal the opposite, but the left pretty much trusts Trump because lets face it, if you think he's an idiot or lunatic, make sure you mention your billion dollar self made net worth first to even qualify... lets face it, a guy who's worked successfully side by side with corporations and banks and unions and politicians for decades resulting in a billion bucks can certainly navigate a giant complex country pretty darn well; he's proven over a couple decades that he's wise enough that its gonna be OK, even if you disagree with everything he believes in and everything he's ever said. So I simply don't think the left wanted it as bad as the right.
It fundamentally comes down to you've got one candidate that wants to do to the entire USA what they did to New York, which is pretty darn cool, and another that wants to do to the entire USA what they did to Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Benghazi, ... so obviously one side is a little more motivated than the other.
Unfortunately, we will probably never know, because he hasn't released his tax returns (which would at least have given us a partial picture).
The Economist tried to compare his financial performance with the S&P 500 [2] and is not impressed: on the longest timeframe (since 1986) he grossly underperforms the S&P 500.
Then there is the question of how he got his money. He seems to have left a long string of investors, banks, suppliers and partners that he essentially conned [3]. In the latter part of his carreer no American bank wanted to do business with him anymore (one of the reasons he switched to licensing his name instead of developing projects himself).
Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet's partner at Berkshire Hathaway, a staunch republican and a man of brilliant insights who knows a thing or two about business (he made his fortune by evaluating companies and their management) says this about Trump [4]: "Do I consider Donald Trump an ideal decision maker or manager of anything? And the answer is no. The last person almost I'd want as the president of the US".
If you voted for this man because of his business acumen, I'm afraid you are the latest in a long line of people he successfully conned.
[1] http://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2016/03/31/how-dona...
[2] http://www.economist.com/news/united-states/21693230-enigma-...
[3] http://www.newsweek.com/2016/08/12/donald-trumps-business-fa...
[4] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RGLMnTzQIh8
You are grossly misrepresenting the facts and policies of both candidates. It's hard to take any of the rest of your post seriously when it closes with that paragraph.
Or am I just misunderstanding the US vote completely?
Fairness doesn't mean "I get my way". And unfortunately, it's binary. Your candidate wins or loses. A loss feels like being ignored, not representation of your 49%.
That's a feature of specific choices about the electoral system and system for government. One'such which are not universal among modern democracies and which empirically lead to lower satisfaction with government and less effectively representative government.
Part of this is due to the fact, I think, that Hillary won the popular vote. In fact, the Dems have won the popular vote 3 elections in a row, and 4 of the last 5. But they only have Obama's 2 terms to show for it.
My guess is that is where some of the "broken democracy" language comes from.
If USA chose the president by popular vote, the campaigns would have been run differently, and some people especially in "sure" states could have had different voting behavior.
I do agree that the US Electoral College system feels obsolete and should be modernized.
Maybe they don't think Trump is going to leave office in eight years.
It's also respect for the rule of law (Rechtsstaat), democratic processes, democratic institutions, respect for minorities, women, separation of church and state, accepting dissent, and a pluralism of opinions.
Trump is not very good at these.
And the voting itself may become an issue in itself - now with total control by Republicans, they can increase the voter suppression to keep old white men in power for a couple more decades.
The "RIP Democracy" bit is maybe a bit dramatic, but the concern for the already weak democracy is very real.
This election results, the way I see it, is a big middle finger to the political establishment. Again, this has happened in my own country's capital citiy's election, an outsider won majority. If he does anything +ve is not the question, politicians need to stop acting as the elite, that's the underlying problem.
...then yes, your democracy might as well be dead.
The plurality winner of the popular vote was Hillary Clinton; Trump's victory is directly dependent on the ways America's Presidential election system defies democracy.
Keep thinking that and you'll lose the next election as well. Amongst Trump supporters I know it was about jobs, the economy, the wars and a feeling that politicians no longer represented them.
I have no doubt there are some Trump supporters who are racist and sexist, but that doesn't win you the middle swing states and the rust belt (especially those states that voted Obama but went against Clinton)
Aren't unemployment and the economy doing better now than 8 years ago? My impression is Trump just fueled the emotion of pessimism (things are awful, they were great before), without neither the facts to back it (because he didn't care) nor a plan beyond the old "the more you cut taxes, the better the economy".
Even for the people that think the economy is important enough that the racism and sexism should be ignored, that's still playing to their emotion.
Jobs are also of a lower quality / less secure than in the past.
I think he probably will win a second term, if he wants to.
But that's not what gets coverage.
Until now I thought that wasn't a bad strategy against Trump as he had said and done so many repulsive things far far beyond what I would of thought the voting population would of tolerated.
For example, "grabbing women by the p*y" I would of thought would have alienated the entire female voting population.
For some reason, some women voters seemed to of tolerated this. It should of been easy win for Hilary.
This is a false equivalence- Hillary would have to say that she wanted to "walk up to ghaddafi and open-hand grab his testicles" for this to be a proper analogy.
The objectionable thing is that it indicates that Trump has, on multiple occasions, grabbed women's genitalia without their consent, purely because he's a celebrity and nobody stops him.
If Hillary had said that she had gotten Col. Ghaddafi "by the balls", I agree that nobody would have batted an eyelid because everybody would have understood that she was not discussing a situation in which she habitually sexually assaulted men and was able to get away with it because she was the Secretary of State.
Well that's blatantly false.
That was Trump's entire campaign. All I've heard all year was "Benghazi", "emails" and "crooked", all of which were just rephrasing of the same thing, repeated in perpetuum. It most definitely worked.
It's true, that's all you heard, but that's not all that he was saying and the part that you didn't hear ... that's why he won. Those who voted for him heard a different message, one specific to their economic circumstances. It's always the economy. And while the aggregate macro picture looks good, we are going through some major shifts underneath those numbers.
He promised huge tax cuts, a reformed health care system which is more accessible and tariffs that brought back manufacturing jobs. He promised a lot of other things but I'm mentioning what attracted the working class towards him.
He only started attacking Hillary much later.
I've come to realize that all their statistics foo is just peddled propaganda in opaque packaging. Utterly worthless.
OTOH Hillary rallies were 90% Trump bashing distributed among different groups. - now all women!! - now all hispanics! - now [insert group name here]
You can't compare how both candidates ran their campaigns and it's hard to argue that HRC main campaign points were: 1. I'm a woman. 2. I'm not Trump.
I'm not convinced by this argument.
She definitely attacks Trump. She also calls for:
It's not accurate to say she didn't talk about why she should be president."Obama got 65.9m votes in '12, Romney 60.9m. Clinton has 59.3m, Trump 59.1m. R vote didn't go up; Dem vote went down. 6.6m missing votes."
https://twitter.com/MaxBoot/status/796378238306160641
EDIT:
1. I viewed Sanders support of Clinton as forced/coerced, as in "We let you compete in the Democratic primary, now you owe us". EDIT 2: By agreeing to support Clinton, she adopted some of his left leaning policies (in show only though, such as not supporting fracking or the TPP).
2. Of course I voted down ballot.
EDIT 3: Getting really tired of these HN throttling limits.
This ... the voting public was told over and over what to think, told what was best for us. We decided for ourselves.
But what I feel is problematic is that Trump was painted as some kind of Hitler, which is ludicrous if you spent a few hours watching some of his rallies. He says things he shouldn't say, and some might say he's an a-hole, but he certainly doesn't come across as a Hitler, a fascist or a Nazi.
Why is it so problematic for everyone? It increases the likelihood of violence, not just against Trump and his family, but against everyone showing public support for him.
In some way not only the people engaging in violence are to blame, but also the media and the campaigns, because when you somehow convince a large chunk of the population that a candidate is literally like Hitler then many will use violence believing it's justified in order to prevent a new Holocaust.
Also the Hitler comparison is used today too often. I believe we currently have 4 Hitlers according to the political establishment: Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Duterte
This was all manufactured by the DNC and it didn't work. I wouldn't be surprised if they're currently planning ways to disrupt Trumps inauguration or other events during the next 4 years to see if he snaps and they can use that as ammo for the next election.
At the end of the day it's politics and playing dirty is expected but now that one side has been exposed it's hard to brush it off thinking everybody does it.
I imagine how many people in the US are now fearing for their lives because the DNC made them believe that Trump will probably build forced labour camps. And how many of them are not just frightened but even read to use violence.
When I check my Facebook newsfeed it's full of posts from friends who seem to be very afraid about what has happened.
If something terrible happens then it might be that the DNC has created the illusion which justified the violence.
I voted for Obama in previous elections. But I also remember how he'd said denigrating things about people who "cling to guns or religion." I suspect people voted for Trump because they thought he didn't put on one face for one public and put on another one for a different public. (Which I doubt is the reality.)
Our media "elites" aren't elites anymore, and they're very out of touch with walk of life lower on the socioeconomic ladder. Denigration and painting with a broad brush are now accepted as the "reality" of politics, the news media, and social media. The "savvy" line to to accept and skirt such things. This is done by both the right and the left.
I believe we currently have 4 Hitlers according to the political establishment: Trump, Putin, Erdogan, Duterte
Fox News made various comparisons of Obama to Hitler.
In a book from the 90's, Eric Drexler proposed that a networked world would save society and make it easier to disseminate the truth. In 2016, one finds that instead the internet has given the loudest voices to the coarsest, most hateful, and stupidest among us. (And by this, I don't mean Trump, but rather online activists on both the right and left.)
But I'm a more of an optimist regarding the Internet and the availability of platforms to share information and express views.
While it is certainly true that some of the loudest voices are indeed the most hateful (Comments on HRC's and DJT's Twitter posts were unbelievable vicious) I also see that there is organically dissent organising on all kinds of issues which we didn't have to such a degree in the pre Internet era.
Of course dissenters also existed before the Internet, but it was much harder to reach an audience. And not all dissent is just hateful and stupid, a lot is legitimate.
But what I feel is problematic is that Trump was painted as some kind of Hitler, which is ludicrous if you spent a few hours watching some of his rallies.
The thing about Trump is that he's better classified as a "proto-" or "quasi-fascist", rather than anything of the old school, early 20th-century sort. For exactly the reasons you describe -- Middle America in 2016 doesn't particularly have an appetite for jackboots or Nuremberg-style rallies, and most likely never will.
But blatant anti-intellectualism, incessant emotionalism, button-pushing, and finger-pointing, combined with a healthy dose of naked bigotry and not-so-subtly implied threats of violence? "You betcha". Those are the seeds of fascist and authoritarian thinking. And they are at the very heart and core of what Trump and his people are about.
I don't believe that. It might be what you saw but that's because the media wouldn't cover anything substantive. She tried; it just got drowned out by all the smears (including those against Trump) and horse-race coverage.
I can't help but think of the similarity to the 2012 election where rank-and-file middle-class conservative voters were being asked to support a Republican candidate who built his fortune firing Americans and off-shoring their jobs. They didn't vote for Obama, but they sure didn't vote for Romney either.
I agree that Clinton never made a case for electing her other than being there for some reason. In general, the Republicans have the courage to take clear positions no matter right or wrong. Whereas the Democrats and especially Clinton are super wishy-washy.
I agree with you that the Democratic Party is horrible at communicating with voters.
Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin were indeed critical to the election, though it was by a hair that Trump won.
The liberal vote was not very enthusiastic, whereas Trump pulled in people that were die-hard fans.
I also believe that the Dems suppressed Bernie in order to have Hillary as their nominee. I don't think Trump had a chance against Bernie. I am hopeful that this will be a blow to the 2 party system where we're forced to vote for lesser evil.