If the Secretary of the Treasury designates China as a currency manipulator, your new iPhone will wind up costing you $2000. What madness.
Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]
161–170 of 1001 posts
Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]
#162Does anyone have an idea about the expected global response to the Secretary of the Treasury labeling China a currency manipulator?
Good question. How did they react after the Clinton Administration put them on that list?
Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]
#163For corporations, there's an odd mix of sticks and carrots. For example these two promises:
"... trillions of dollars of American corporate money overseas can now be brought back at a 10% rate."
"Establishes tariffs to discourage companies from laying off their workers ..."
So a company can more easily bring back offshore billions to the US, but at the same time, new tariffs are put in place that make it harder to lay off people, thus effectively discouraging the company from spending that money on creating jobs in the country?
Seems like the net effect of these seemingly bold new rules could be practically zero.
It's odd that Trump is a businessman, yet his list of solutions includes all kinds of tariffs and trade restrictions to rein in business. There's a reason Western countries don't use tariffs much anymore: they're counterproductive if you want to stimulate growth. But I guess that old economics lesson is about to be put to another test.
Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]
#164I'm worried about 18F/USDS/etc. because of the freeze on federal hiring. Partly I have friends there, but mostly, those organizations need to exist if government is going to be effective. They're getting things done, and they're also taking business away from government contractors who don't get things done (i.e., saving significant taxpayer money).
They're fucked. They likely won't lose their jobs, but they won't be able to expand or replace attrition. We've seen this movie before, during the downturn, and evidence points to 4 years (or more) of this crap. Trump has expressed a preference for private industry to do things for the government, because they do it better. Accenture, Deloitte and KPMG are prolly the federal IT of the future
That's not awful, btw. The one upside of a large consulting firm is you can retain decent talent for boring projects by bouncing them around between assignments.... but you still have a single entity to hold accountable afterwards.
Plus a certain percentage of these people take the diverse base of experience and go start something useful. Teaching a bunch of smart, ambitious people about how the process actually works and then letting them go start their own operation seems like a recipe for job creation.... (and finding better ways to replace the status quo)
Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]
#165Some 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…
I don't get the appeal of term limits on Congress.
Why would you vote for an amateur politician instead of a professional career politician?
Aren't career politicians better than amateur politicians? If a politician is doing a good job, why would you artificially limit their term?
The branch of government with the highest approval rate is the Judicial branch, where Supreme Court Justices are appointed for life.
Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]
#166He's calling executive actions unconstitutional. Let's hope he sticks to that.
No, it's describing the actions he's going to repeal. "Repeal those actions which were unconstitutional", not "repeal the actions, which are unconstitutional".
this is where the difference between "which" and "that" is important.
Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]
#167This is so Berlusconi
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contract_with_the_Italians
Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]
#168Some 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…
> How is that considered feasible by any rational person? It's something that sounds simple and good to someone who not only isn't aware of the details of what it would mean in practice, but also isn't aware of their own inability to understand the details and nuance, or that there are details and nuance. It was a Dunning-Kruger election.
> The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which low-ability individuals suffer from illusory superiority
High brow smack (condescension) like that and "basket of deplorables" are what America revolted against.
If the liberal left was truly smart, why did they allow the president to run up more national debt than all presidents prior...combined?
Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]
#169Whatever you think about Trump or the policies in that document, it's clearer and more concise than anything I've seen from an elected official.
I have a feeling you were not alive for the "Contract with America". On a side note this is one of the most naive things I have ever seen. I was a bit agnostic before, but wow this is literally handing Russia and China the keys to the global economy while thinking he is doing the opposite. Yikes, I really did not realize he was this under qualified.
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Re: Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter [pdf]
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd actually be surprised if there were many of those. Regulations are constantly being codified into the Code of Federal Regulations. It's about 175,000 pages. It's printed at about 55 lines per page, which makes it about 10 million lines. About the same size as the Linux kernel. That's big, but it's not "we don't even know what's in here" big.
> I'd actually be surprised if there were many of those. There are entire books written filled with silly, outdated, or absurd laws and regulations (both federal and state). Here's just a taste[1]: > 18 USC §1382 & 32 CFR §636.28(g)(iv) make it a federal crime to ride a moped into Fort Stewart without wearing long trousers. > 16 USC §551 & 36 CFR §261.16(c) make it a crime to wash a fish at a faucet if it's not a fis…
> 21 USC §461 & 9 CFR §381.171(d) make it a crime to sell "Turkey Ham" as "Ham Turkey" or with the words "Turkey" and "Ham" in different fonts
Here's the law: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/9/381.171
This is one of a large number of sections of the law that define what food products mean, for every food product on the market, and lead to a consistent UX at markets. It's not like someone passed the Turkey Ham Font Sizes Act of 1947 or something.
It's these sorts of laws that prevent people from labeling, e.g., high-fructose corn syrup as "corn sugar". http://corn.org/facts-about-the-cra-petition-on-corn-sugar/
Trump has complained about "the FDA Food Police, which dictate how the federal government expects farmers to produce fruits and vegetables and even dictates the nutritional content of dog food."
So, expect to see corn sugar in your sodas as soon as a new federal regulation gets passed. And something else, as soon as people figure out what "corn sugar" is.