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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]

#601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Tax cuts for all working people. Let people decide what to do with their own money (spend, save, donate, etc.). The bigger the government, the smaller the individual. Tax cuts are all well and good in a vacuum, but how are we realistically going to pay down the national debt when we enact a massive tax cut on top of a tax rate that is already at historically low levels? Some people say we can cut all of this govern…

>how are we realistically going to pay down the national debt We don't want to pay down the national debt. Each treasury note is a promise to provide the holder with real goods and services later, and we need to make those promises to our aging citizenry. We do this in part with the intra-governmental debt that the Social Security Trust Fund holds. Regular citizens also save for retirement, and they hold and demand T…

Yes, we should pay down the national debt. Why would we want to pay interest on outstanding debt when we could lower taxes or increase services instead?

You don't have to buy Treasuries to save for retirement. There are all sorts of bonds, foreign and domestic.

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

#602

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 [0], CNN asking HRC campaign for input regarding questions for Donald in exclusive interview [1]); this should help you understand the scope of the situation and why you haven't been getting good reporting from mainstream news.

[0] https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/786225211481792514

[1] https://wikileaks.org/dnc-emails/emailid/25846

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

#603
post #595

So he's going to lower taxes on the wealthy, drop taxes on businesses, increase spending on military, destroy our national parks to extract oil, and lay off federal employees. This is going to help the middle class and the uneducated who are struggling through... magic. None of the lobbying stuff will ever see the light of day. The term limits won't happen. He's going to repeal the "illegal" Obama executive orders bu…

The president doesn't make the tax plan congress does, but given he has a republican congress he can get a lot of those things passed.

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

#604

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know: > THIRD, a requirement that for every new federal regulation, two existing regulations must be eliminated. Is scariest to me given a Republican controlled Congress. The one sided control makes me nervous.

This is fantastic. That's exactly how it should be. Otherwise over decades you end up with regulations that stifle all forms of entrepreneurship and creativity.

Next time you write a line of code, you have to delete two others.

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

#605
post #498
post #437

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "It's pretty clear he was never a good businessman." Don't you find it silly to call a person with a net worth of $4 billion "not a good businessman" keeping in mind that he made this money doing business

Had he taken the money he was lent or given at the start of his business career, and invested it into an index fund instead of doing his attempts at business, he would now have a net worth of $12 billion instead of $4 billion. He did far, far worse as a businessman than he would have had he done nothing. Based on that alone, I can call him not a good businessman.

> Had he taken the money he was lent or given at the start of his business career, and invested it into an index fund instead of doing his attempts at business, he would now have a net worth of $12 billion instead of $4 billion.

Matt Levine wrote a great article on this idea: https://www.bloomberg.com/view/articles/2015-09-03/should-do...

Maybe the best line: "For one thing, if he put all his money in index funds and reinvested all the dividends for 41 years, he'd be dead, because you can't buy food with reinvested dividends."

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

#606

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Has it become that radical to suggest that smart, well-educated people may in fact see further into the consequences of things (particularly in their areas of expertise, but probably also peripherally), see more cognitive bias, have better critical-thinking skills, remember more mistakes from history, and all around make better long-term decisions? Why is that even offensive to anyone? Just because of someone's perso…

The notion that a college education bestows upon the recipient liberal viewpoints is absolute rubbish. Various universities have different rates of liberalism/conservatism; major programs within universities also have great disparities. This also fails to address the survivor's bias that perhaps those who actually can enter college may already be predisposed to liberalism due to locality and family circumstances. To…

> The notion that a college education bestows upon the recipient liberal viewpoints is absolute rubbish.

Do you have evidence to support that? Because here is mine: Exit polling for the most recent election:

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2016/11/08/us/politics/el...

Scroll down to the "Education" and especially the "Education by Race (white)" sections.

Peripherally (I call it that because of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence), look at the "Religion" section, protestant christians vs. "none".

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

#607

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that's a little harsh. There's no first principle that the average citizen should know that says "clean coal" isn't possible. In fact, in 5-10 minutes of specifically looking at the topic I still don't see why you're mocking the concept.

Simple thermodynamics. We get energy from coal by burning it then extracting some of the heat. The waste products are basically carbon dioxide and heat. Clean coal is about capturing that carbon dioxide, which means spending energy to separate the CO2 from other gasses, then liquefy it. This sequestration process costs about 30% of the energy originally extracted from the coal. I fully support clean coal since it inc…

That's not simple thermodynamics. That's not even appealing to thermodynamic laws at all, other than "it can't be free (unless we can get energy from the captured product)", and that only guarantees that the percentage will be nonzero.

Until you get into the particulars of burning coal and CO2 capture with feasible equipment (which aren't simple), for all you know the loss is 0.1%

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

#608
post #595

So he's going to lower taxes on the wealthy, drop taxes on businesses, increase spending on military, destroy our national parks to extract oil, and lay off federal employees. This is going to help the middle class and the uneducated who are struggling through... magic. None of the lobbying stuff will ever see the light of day. The term limits won't happen. He's going to repeal the "illegal" Obama executive orders bu…

>A middle-class family with two children will get a 35% tax cut.

He's basically Oprah with tax cuts. Kidding aside, I think all politicians promise wide tax cuts, and this "contract" was written prior to him winning. So take most with a grain of salt.

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

#609

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hopefully Trump will not be able to bankrupt the government in 4 years. Filibuster in the Senate is an option for 2 years and maybe there will be some shift in 2018.

The bad news is that the filibuster is very likely to be done away with because it is the only thing stopping the Republicans from doing literally anything they want. And the map in 2018 doesn't look good for the Democrats.

No, they won't do away with the filibuster. Filibusters are theater - they allow Senators in the majority party to kill a bill and support it at the same time. Conversely, they allow people in the minority party to insure a bill passes and vote against it.

We've seen this over and over from Senators in both parties. The filibuster is dumb as a procedural tool, but as a political tool it's invaluable for Senators who want to make a career out of the Senate.

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

#610

Leave nafta? There doesn't seem to be a very thorough analysis on the effect of this.... You can't just make changes to economic policy and hope for the best - there are far and wide impacts to making changes like this.

I imagine in the end it will be renegotiate rather than leave. If you look here [0] you will see just how important us Canadian's are to you.

0 - http://www.businessinsider.com/state-and-country-trade-maps-...

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