Discussion Topic |
|
This thread has been locked |
Escopeta
Trad climber
Idaho
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 03:16pm PT
|
National debt is affected by the Bush tax cuts which gave most of the cuts to the well off.
Add another name to the list that doesn't know the difference between Debt and Deficit.
|
|
Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 03:22pm PT
|
And overregulation is a term that measures marginal costs against marginal benefits. The attack on that term only discusses alleged benefits, not costs. It does not follow that because current regulation does not prevent all bad outcomes, we need more regulation.
john, I am sincerely interested in what regulations we need to get rid of. again, if the costs are high and benefits low, then there needs to be a discussion. unfortunately, this type of discussion doesn't play well on tv.
|
|
pyro
Big Wall climber
Calabasas
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 03:26pm PT
|
[Click to View YouTube Video]
I was hoping he would have said this last night..
Have they found Baghdadi yet?
|
|
dirtbag
climber
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 03:27pm PT
|
Dirt, Area 51 thinks the moon landing was faked? You're kidding, right?
Nope, not kidding. That was his position awhile ago--I'm assuming he hasn't changed his mind.
|
|
nature
climber
Boulder, CO
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 03:28pm PT
|
I could, but it's a lot funnier when you try to explain it.
you mean like when the "fact" that the moon is further away from the earth than the sun is presented?
|
|
dirtbag
climber
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 03:37pm PT
|
Hmmm...I wonder what the wise duck thinks about that?
Crankster, judging by his post in which I am urged to check out the llm schematics, I think it's safe to say he still believes it. And his explanation, even in abbreviated form, is as comical as ever.
|
|
Moof
Big Wall climber
Orygun
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 03:47pm PT
|
That's a nonsequitur. I'm not blaming the recession on him, I'm blaming the lack of a robust recovery on him. He's had 8 years, for crying out loud, and has yet to preside over a single year with even 3% GDP increase. No other president has done as poorly:
You should also spread some of that blame around over the last 6 years to the House/Senate that have been waging a scorched earth campaign against anything that comes from the other side of the aisle (even if the ideas were originated from themselves). Congress owns the purse strings, and the republicans have dug in their heals to prevent as much of Obama's agenda as possible since they got majorities. Obama should have done more, and should have used his skills to win over the populace to bring voter ire to his cause, but much of the current budget and deadlock is owned by Ryan/Boehner/McConnell's leadership.
|
|
Daphne
Trad climber
Northern California
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 03:53pm PT
|
What moof said +1! What President in our lifetime has had such obstructionism to overcome from the other side?
|
|
NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 03:56pm PT
|
+1 to Moof and Daphne
I think history will look back most unfavorably on the legislators in this period, not the executive office.
|
|
Norton
Social climber
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 04:03pm PT
|
|
|
dirtbag
climber
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 04:16pm PT
|
Love that, Norton.
|
|
nature
climber
Boulder, CO
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 04:33pm PT
|
yeah, that pretty much sums up last night.
He was sober for the first 25 minutes. Then he got drunk on Drumpfaid.
|
|
Jon Beck
Trad climber
Oceanside
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 04:47pm PT
|
3% growth is ludicrous, unsustainable. We need to learn to live within our means, and that involves more than just money. Great periods of growth occurred during time periods of great destruction of natural resources. We blow through resources at a ridiculous rate compared to the rest of the world, and we should accelerate that? No thanks.
|
|
Hawkeye
climber
State of Mine
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 04:58pm PT
|
What moof said +1! What President in our lifetime has had such obstructionism to overcome from the other side?
i have been really struggling with the reasons why Obama was met with such behavior. our friends on the right will revolt at this but i do believe that there is a deep seated racial issue for obama to fight as well as a big fight for our first woman president.
lets face it, america is not justice and liberty for all, that's BS. Other countries have been much more progressive when it comes to electing a female president. america is not the world leader in rights that it grants its minorities and women as evidenced by this election and the rhetoric coming from trump.
if the right wants to challenge why they stonewalled obama, then they should come up with valid and logical reasons why the treated the first black president like sh#t. birthers? come on, what BS, all propigaed by trump.
the whole muslim ban idea was also counter to why the mayflower came here in 1620. they came here to escape religious persecution and now what does trump do? persecute a religion. that alone should have had him tarred and feathered.
|
|
kunlun_shan
Mountain climber
SF, CA
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 05:21pm PT
|
Trump in 2008, at 1:13: "Bill Clinton was a great President. Hilary Clinton is a great woman, and a good woman...."
[Click to View YouTube Video]
|
|
NutAgain!
Trad climber
South Pasadena, CA
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 05:35pm PT
|
One thing I find quite annoying from both extremes of the political spectrum, is oversimplifying the factors that influence the economy and giving credit or blaming a President for them. There are some really big things that should be taken into consideration that overshadow the economic performance of different Presidents:
1) Dotcom boom, with Internet revolution energizing the business world as much or more than the industrial revolution did. Bill Clinton got a huge boost from this.
2) Dotcom bubble burst that shifted to a housing bubble and housing market burst, that nailed George W Bush, apart from the money he burned on large-scale military operations and cost-plus contracts to the company formerly headed by his VP.
3) The same Internet boom that created new sector jobs in IT and computer science and increased logistics/shipping activity, also took them away with increased feasibility of managed outsourcing to other countries, and consolidation of businesses to centralize sales, marketing, administrative tasks like HR and IT, and universal email access that caused a 20x-50x contraction in "secretary" jobs in large corprations. Improving logistics for material shipment has made overseas manufacturing more attractive, hugely impacting high-wage manufacturing jobs in USA.
4) Moore's Law, improving computers and technology in general, has led to more and more robotic and programmable/artificial intelligence advancements that stimulate automation while reducing human jobs.
So what are things that Presidents can influence in this mix?
1. Banking/finance regulation
We need this to prevent the gross levels of leverage (investments controlled vs. actual equity), to prevent the deceptive repackaging of many high-risk investments, to create a firewall between institutions that manage our savings vs. those institutions that specialize in high risk high return investments, to limit the size of financial institutions such that government bail-outs are not required and that poorly run individual institutions are allowed to fail when reality eventually catches up with them.
Who remembers the Savings and Loan scandals of the 1980s? This was a direct consequence of Republican efforts to remove financial regulation that was "bad for business." When given more freedom, these institutions combined in a way that maximized profits until catastrophic failure when the inextricably linked risks caught up, and it was up to the government (i.e. our tax dollars) to step in and save the economy from collapsing. Same thing happened 20 years later, and that is what Obama inherited.
What caused the most recent financial melt-down that Obama inherited? Lots of little things, but Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act was a big one. Note that the three namesakes were all Republican. This act overturned the long-standing financial protections in our economy that were put in place after analyzing the causes of the Great Depression. So modern business greed, drive for profits in spite of increasing risk and widespread misery to our entire citizenry and the world, let to Republicans sponsoring (and I have to acknowledge Democrat Bill Clinton signed it) this crap.
So we need MORE financial regulation. Bernie would have been best for this, Trump is an obvious opponent because his identity is wrapped up in being a rich person who is smart enough to milk the loopholes in the system. He has said Hillary should have closed the loopholes he used, but he has not said that he will close them if he is elected. This area is my biggest concern for having Hillary going forward. I think she will be good on a variety of social and healthcare issues, but I am gravely concerned about how she will handle Wall Street. It depends a lot on how active the Bernie movement folks are post-election, but ultimately Hillary will have a lot of room to do enough good things to appease the masses while also giving out favors to Wall Street. In the balance, I'm still voting for her because even if she confirms my worst suspicions on this front (just as I suspect Trump would), she will still be very positive on just about every other issue where the prospect of Trump is frightening.
2) Honesty about the death of assembly-line manufacturing jobs
They are never coming back in volume where neighborhoods full of people can live respectable lives as homeowners, mowing their lawns on Saturday mornings, and raising a family. The relentless corporate drive for profit will either continue outsourcing such jobs to other countries, or figure out how to automate them with robots and software to eliminate humans altogether. There is no such thing as a good manufacturing job as a large sector of employment for society. There will be little bubbles that have eluded outsourcing or automation, but they will eventually die. Be honest, and help people retrain for different jobs. And be honest, these new jobs are more difficult and more competitive, and might be beyond the reach of the people formerly working on assembly lines. It's an ugly problem for society. If it's a job that can be done by a person of low to average intelligence, then it probably doesn't need to exist for much longer. If you look far enough in the future, even the jobs for intelligent people will largely vaporize. In other words, the profit motive to employ humans is going to dramatically reduce in our generation and in coming generations. We've already seen it, which is why "trickle down" economics doesn't work. Give a rich person a tax break or a bonus, and they put in their pocket. They don't feel compelled to go hire people unless they will make a profit doing so. And if they would make a profit doing it, they would already be doing it. But they invest in outsourcing an automation first, and only fall back to hiring domestic people when there is no other choice. We need a different motive than money to trigger job creation, i.e. the prevention of civil war or the dramatic fracturing of our society into more and more starkly different classes.
3) Proactively developing the framework for baseline income for all citizens
This is horrifying for many hardworking people. I have emotional triggers related to homeless people begging for money, because I was working since I was 7 years old in my mom's bakery washing dishes, operating the cash register and serving customers, scopping ice cream, making chili dogs, etc. I gathered abalone shells and sold them to tourists. At 6am on Saturday mornings I swept up cigarette butts from the gutter in front of a liquor store for $1. I delivered newspapers on my bicycle, and once per month I walked door to door and collected 75 cents from each customer, of which I got to keep about 35 cents. In 8th grade, from 3pm to 9pm Monday through Friday I washed dishes at a burger joint, which left me zero time to do homework or extracurricular activities. Luckily I was smart and it didn't hurt my academic advancement. I could go on, but my point is, I fully empathize with the perspective of folks who believe in hard work, that it isn't fair to give something for nothing to people.
But we have a real societal problem looming of too many people and too little work. Will we just execute all the people who don't have the small percentage of jobs that exist because we don't want to feed them or give them medicare? Or will be build a wall (no intentional allusion to Trump and the Mexico border wall, but it is telling of Trump's stance) and keep them out to live sub-human lives while a small elite live oblivious privileged lives within the wall like in various science fiction movies? (e.g. see Elysium). We as a society need to confront this looming issue.
We also have to address the roots of crime, and giving people a basis for self-respect and dignity and belonging within a society. For this reason, I am not a fan of just having a policy of giving out checks to everyone while they sit and watch TV at home. I would like to see a massive scale government investment in creating jobs that are not economically profitable but that benefit society, and put people to work in these jobs using the taxes extracted from the very wealthy who earn all the profits from the automated systems. Perhaps such institutions would not be the most efficient structures compared to a profit-seeking business. But, that is not the point. The point is to create value for society that is not measured by economic productivity, but measured by our social well-being and the creation of an environment that is inclusive and elevates quality of life for all, and to have a pathway for anyone who wants to be a constructive part of society. If we close the doors to constructive options, people will find destructive options.
This is not pie-in-the-sky thinking about an idealized altruistic dream from a trust-funder bored Occupy movement camper. I am trying to honor what I have learned of human behavior in the last 40-something years of rising from a low socio-economic class and a variety of low paying jobs, through the gift of my natural intelligence and a modest amount of my own invested work, to a person who is university educated and financially secure and paying more taxes than most of the people who gripe about government spending. I am not assuming that people will work for the good-will of society. People will work if they don't get paid otherwise. I do expect the quality of that work will suck, because the pressure for performance reviews will be less. Some desirable jobs might be very competitive, but I expect the folks who carry the desalinization plant filters from their operating positions to the scrubber machines will do as little as possible to not get fired. And that is ok! We can't force everyone to be productive, but we can create a framework that empowers people who want to be productive, and we can maintain an illusion for everyone else so they can hold on to a shred of dignity that stops them from being dedicated to a life of crime or attempting to foment an armed revolution against the rich people. It's not perfect, but I challenge anyone to come up with a better solution.
People should still work for a paycheck, but that employer will be our government because no profit-chasing corporation will hire them. The corporations will be forced to indirectly pay them through the taxes to the government. It is a redistribution of wealth, to counter the extreme aggregation of wealth that occurs as a side-effect of technology and automation.
It's easy to talk sh!t, to tear down other's plans, but it's hard to come up with solutions. Put up or shut up.
I don't expect I will hear any Republican or Libertarian candidates talking about such big-government solutions. And I don't expect any for-profit private businesses are going to step in to solve this societal problem.
4) Education from preschool through university
Where future jobs still exist, fewer of them are accessible to people with high-school only level of education. The pathway to university begins at a young age, and a cycle of poverty and unequal living conditions is an ongoing impediment to some segments of our society being supported to get that education from the earliest stages.
I don't hear about Republican candidates talking about training people for the jobs of the future. I hear them blowing smoke up the a*#es of stupid gullible people saying we'll be tough in trade and get those old jobs back. Let's Make America Great Again.
Alright, I've spent too much time here today. It should be clear why the Republican party can't come up with a reasonable candidate. What intelligent person (edit: who has even a shred of intention to help society) wants to be on the wrong side of all these issues, and instead focus on the hypocrisy of regulating the most personal of all possible decisions affecting a woman's body or whom we choose to love, while arguing to stop burdensome government regulation in business that inhibits profit (just so we can maintain human rights and a livable environment and a solvent economy).
|
|
Escopeta
Trad climber
Idaho
|
|
|
Oct 20, 2016 - 05:59pm PT
|
|
|
|
SuperTopo on the Web
|
Let us know!