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Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

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Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#901

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot of room to wonder about his trustworthiness given his record as a businessman, but even in this document, he doesn't address campaign finance reform. Congressional term-limits just consolidate power in the moneyed elites--the problems is not just the politicians, it's who corrupted them. If anything, this is a document to passify those moneyed interests who, unlike say Sheldon Adelson, worry about a Tru…

Funny, that "if one created, two removed" was a law imposed by a Principal Software Architect to me and my team regarding apps and apis as part of a rationalization program. "If you create this new API, make sure to remove at least two". I have to say, after two years there, that helped a lot to reduce redundancy and complexity. But well, apps and api are not the same of public policies... who knows.

In my mind, refactoring public policy is going to be like refactoring business processes in enterprise code.

The perception is that all these "horrible" duplications and inefficiencies exist.

The reality is that the duplications are actually slightly different business cases that are are difficult or impossible to generalize (it was easier to copy/mutate) and that seemingly irrelevant code has potentially far reaching and damaging consequences (oh, that was important?)

The essential problem is that we look at these individual lines of code instead of realizing that they grew as part of a dynamic system.

Refactoring code isn't a good analogy.

Try refactoring DNA.

It becomes quite tragic (or hilarious) when teams try to simplify such systems and instead end up breaking lots of business process that was ugly, but worked.

DNA/evolution is orders of magnitude more messy than that, but it gets things done more safely and efficiently than some refactoring efforts I've seen.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#902

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the current system working? My insurance rate has gone from $66 per month for a HDHP to $277 per month 3 years later under the healthcare law for the essentially the same HDHP plan. At that rate of increase I wouldn't be able to afford it at all any more in a few short years so what does it matter?

That's because the system you're now paying into is saving the lives of people who would have had no healthcare otherwise. Like it or not, you live in a society with other people. If you want your society to be fair and just, you have to make some sacrifices.

If you are a healthy and/or young person, your rate will always go up in any social system. There no way around this.

Germany has universal healthcare, but high income citizens can (could?) opt out to private insurance. It's good when you're young and single as it's way cheaper. But for most people it becomes more expensive than the goverment system by the time they're married and get kids.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#903
post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it works out to impeding trade with China in anyway it just acts to slow our economy. We are not going to become more competitive with 1+ billion people who are willing to work without any labor protections by saying we won't do business with them. We're just sanctioning ourselves from essentially the world's manufacturing depot.

And who exactly would be importing all these cheap Chinese goods then?

The rest of the world, whose citizens will see a net increase in buying power and thus wealth, because of the identical supply but reduced demand.

So they'll get richer overall and a part of them will lose their jobs.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#904

How did I not see this before the election (even if it came out 102316 as evidenced in the file name)? Why did NYT/Guardian/all of the news sites that I regularly visit not report this? This is a clear policy proposal, contrary to everything I had read that said he had no clear plan.

Bookmark some more news sites so you get a wider spectrum. Smaller independent operations (ex: Breitbart, Drudge Report) are less vulnerable to being co-opted or politically motivated. Also, r/The_Donald is has been an excellent aggregate for all things related to the campaign. Also, see Wikileaks to get an idea of how bad the bias/corruption has been in the media (ex: CNN giving HRC questions in advance of debates […

I agree with you that much of the mainstream media showed a bias against Trump through this election. (I feel they had very good reasons to be biased against him, but regardless, should have done a better job of keeping the reporting neutral.) That said, Breitbart and Drudge Report are probably the two most well known right-biased sources in existence (aside from the obviously much larger, but less biased, Fox News). Describing them as not politically motivated seems misleading at best.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#905

Some of this sounds great - term limits on congress, a measure to reduce the revolving door effect of government officials going into lobbying. Some of it sounds ridiculous - for every new federal regulation, 2 existing regulations must be eliminated. How is that considered feasible by any rational person? It might sound great if you don't think too hard about it. The scariest things for me are the backing out of cli…

You can see he has never held elected office Its going to require an amendment to the constitution (which takes decades) and from experience a newbie MP Congress man etc will need one entire cycle to get to grips with the system and become effective. Having inexperienced elected representatives just gives more power to the executive - which is not what I think Trump wanted.

One could argue that in the long run, this will lead to a simplification of the legislative process.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#906

"All vetting of people coming into our country will be considered “extreme vetting.” " I visit the US every year to see friends. Some of whom are Arab-American. I'm seriously worried that I'm going to find myself on the receiving end of 'extreme vetting'.

Free colonoscopy though.

Socialised healthcare by the literal backdoor, eh?

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#907

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To which similar documents are you comparing it?

That's exactly the point. No one has ever offered such a document, so say what you want about Trump, he's taking a step towards transparency and accountability.

HAHAHA come on dude, this is just a "first 100 days in office" plan, it's used by presidential candidates all the time. You can't be serious.

Transparency? Accountability? Are you kidding me? This is the guy that brags about molesting women and won't even release his tax returns. Did you see who is going to be in his cabinet? Some of the slimiest and shameless career politicians of all time. Christie? Gingrich? When have these people been accountable ever?

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#908
post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can find more detail on how he plans to make Mexico pay for the wall here: https://assets.donaldjtrump.com/Pay_for_the_Wall.pdf Specifically, he will threaten to disallow wire transfer of money from US to Mexico by non-citizens. Since that is a revenue source they greatly depend on, he suggests they'd rather fund the building of the wall. If they agree to fund the wall, then the ban on transfers will go away.

I do not support building a wall, nor building a wall and getting Mexico to pay for it. However, if I was trying to get Mexico to pay for the wall, gosh darn it this document explains coherently how to do it! You can't deny that the administration is goal-oriented.

>You can't deny that the administration is goal-oriented.

Okay? So fucking what? Saying "Today I am going to do everything I can to make sure I shoot myself in the face" is also a "goal-oriented" approach.

I can't believe what is happening to my country.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#909

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A middle-class family will get a 35% tax cut. I did some back-of-the-envelope calculation to figure how our taxes could change for various income levels for married joint filers. This does not factor in any deductions. Nobody is getting a 35% tax cut. Tax rate for middle-class families will go down by around 1% only, and taxes will go up for low-income families by 2%. Single tax filers will also see an increase in…

Virtually nobody making 10 million a year pays a 39% tax rate. They likely take most of their comp as stock and pay the long term capital gains rate. If they're in finance/VC, they are taking full advantage of carried interest. They have financial planners who structure their portfolio to favor low-tax investments. They form S-Corps and trust funds to defer tax liability, get paid in distributions, write off all sort…

Taxing wealth is a terrible idea, because it means every asset has to generate income each year to offset taxes.

Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]

#910

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is the current system working? My insurance rate has gone from $66 per month for a HDHP to $277 per month 3 years later under the healthcare law for the essentially the same HDHP plan. At that rate of increase I wouldn't be able to afford it at all any more in a few short years so what does it matter?

It isn't, but that doesn't mean that any random change will fix it. Your argument is then as follows: 1-We must do something 2-{This} is something 3-Therefore, me must do {This} You won't find many of us arguing against the first assertion, but I don't think real numbers say that it's insurance regulation that made the prices go up: It's the fact that the risk pools are full of very sick people. While deregulation wo…

> The ACA is working great for people that make so little they get subsidies.

Not everyone. In NC alone, there are 377,000 people who make too little to qualify for ACA subsidies yet are not covered by Medicaid. That's a lot of people, and that's just one state. There are 19 other states that also don't have expanded Medicaid.

http://www.hhs.gov/healthcare/facts-and-features/state-by-st...

Even with subsidized ACA, the Bronze plans are pretty shit. Average family deductibles in 2017 will be $12,393, with the average monthly premium for a 40-year-old costing $350. Other than 1 checkup per year and female care, these families get to pay $1,000+ per month in premiums (assuming 2 adults and 2 kids) and another $12,000+ on top of that before their plan does much of anything for them.

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/10/26/obamacare-deductibles-are-on-...

Even with a subsidy I don't think it makes sense for a lower middle class family to pay $5,000-10,000 for 3-5 checkups, and $20,000+ if they actually need to use that coverage. Yet they'll be hit with a tax penalty if they don't do that.

How is this good?

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