President Trump: The NEW one and only politics thread

Sorry.

 

Oh, the idea of a "profiler" trying to know Trump - like Silence of the Lambs....why has this not been done on SNL yet?

 

At bottom, I’m still not entirely sure what you want the government to do. Fifteen people in a factory can now do what it used to take a thousand—trade deals don’t have anything to do with that. Nor does the fact that improvements in transportation in logistics mean chains have replaced the local store.

I’m all for a Universal Basic Income—and, who knows, maybe even a robot tax. But tariffs will simply (at best) help a narrow group of manufacturing employees at the expense of others in America and elsewhere.

 

The wage gap widens and widens and widens.

America is being expensed as we speak and has been for a long time.

 

And? I’m still not sure what you’d like the government to do. I agree this is troubling, but don’t think tariffs are the answer, because free trade isn’t really the problem.

And free trade has also helped increase the quality of living and wages in other countries, which for some reason you seem not to care much about.

 

No collusion!

 

This assumes people first heard of her only recently.

 

Another case of Executive overreaching by an mperial President? Taxes and Tariffs ,by the Constitution, are legislative not executive.

 

The Growing Size and Incomes of the Upper Middle Class

 

30 y

I didn't see YF say that every single conservative has always supported free trade or that every single liberal has always opposed it, but it seems fair to say that from at least the Reagan administration until recently, Republicans as a whole have been far more supportive of relatively free trade than Democrats. Without going to the trouble of looking, I'm sure the last several pre-2016 party platforms reflect this, and I'm sure that in most of the important trade-related Congressional votes of the last 30 years (let's say on US-Canada FTA, NAFTA, WTO replacing GATT, China MFN, and some of the smaller FTAs like CAFTA-DR & Colombia) a higher percentage of Republicans than Democrats supported the freer trade position, even when it was a Democratic administration pushing that position. What would the counterarguments be? Pat Buchanan getting some support in Republican primaries several elections ago? So did Richard Gephardt on the Democrat side, and I think he was more representative of Democrats as a whole than Buchanan was of Republicans at the time. President Clinton eventually supported NAFTA, but that was after opposing it while campaigning and reopening the negotiations to add labor and environmental agreements. Organized labor is certainly more of a Democrat constituency. Not trying to be snarky, but curious as to who you had in mind.

 

This is an interesting sentence.

Is it America's responsibility to concern itself with the standard of living in China or India or Mexico? Would the standard of living improve in those nations more if the poor and oppressed in those nations addressed those concerns head on - through whatever means, including violent means, if those nations so desire it - rather than our indirect influence of it through a handful of rich people relocating their factories?

I could just easily say, back to you, that the US's intervention in Afghanistan and Iraq was warranted for reasons of suffering alone and the resulting political nightmare in Iraq - which it has been - was unfortunate, but not something we knew on the front end, so justifiable.

I mean, has oil in Middle Eastern nations - and our purchase of it - made those nations collectively better over the last 40 years? Or worse?

Central America - including Mexico - is such a hospitable, wonderful collection of political states that millions of undocumented immigrants have come...here. Which, incidentally, many knew would happen once NAFTA was passed. We knew there'd be more free passage of drugs, too. Which, there has been.

Casting me as the cradle-to-grave patriot is interesting, though. Don't get that one often.

I'll pose a question back: Are you in favor of the United States making Mexico all Central American nations states? So adding 175 million to the population? You game for it? 175 million people who suddenly are entitled to our federal minimum wage, and we're entitled to develop all their territory?