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Donald Trump Is Elected President

nytimes.com

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Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President

#761

Post by noobermin »

IMTDb wrote: post #368
jernfrost wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do what the democrats have talked about, which we have successfully done in Nordic countries which is to spend a lot of money on re-educating the workforce and making sure those at the bottom get decent skills. I grew up in a rustbelt like industrial town in Norway. We has shipyards, glass factory, paper mill, textile industry, lock systems etc. Almost all of it got closed down and moved overseas as I grew up…

USA does not have an oil fund that amounts do $150k per capita to pay for "free everything" (university education, universal health care, childcare) and good pensions for everybody. Norway generates more revenue with oil than the entires US of A, for 5 million people, and is third worldwide exporter for Natural Gas just behind Qatar and Russia, again with only 5 million people to serve (less than the population of Ne…

Yet we do have the funds to pay for perpetual war in the Middle East and the military industrial complex? The money we spent on the Iraq war alone would have paid for years of free college.

Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President

#762

Post by rudolf0 »

CalChris wrote: post #24
TulliusCicero wrote: post #15

Terrifying, but the dems kind of brought it on themselves. A nominee who was actually likeable probably would've wiped the floor with Trump.

Again, Republicans did this. Don't blame this on Hillary (hint: she won the popular vote). Don't blame this on Democrats. Accept responsibility. As for likable, Hillary has been the most admired woman in America, 14 years straight. Trump ran the most negative fact free campaign ever to overcome her likability.

>As for likable, Hillary has been the most admired woman in America, 14 years straight. Trump ran the most negative fact free campaign ever to overcome her likability.

I seem to recall a great amount of distaste to her, even coming from other Democrats (including Obama's and Biden's campaigns), in the 2008 election. Most liberals I knew disliked or even detested Hillary back then, and now detest her more now.

I could think of hundreds more American women who deserve the title "most admired".

Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President

#763

Post by serge2k »

SolaceQuantum wrote: post #17

Now that the voices of the disenfranchised blue collar workers have been heard, what actually can be done to help them? I'm less worried about the accusations of racism, etc. because it appears to me a majority are voting because their livelihoods have been lost and, despite economics saying globalization will bring new jobs, they aren't showing up in the critical areas where they are needed. So, what policies can be…

> I'm less worried about the accusations of racism

Why? They elected a guy endorsed by the KKK and white supremacists. At the very least this is a kick in the pants to minority voters (although 8% of black voters and 29% of latino voters went for trump).

Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President

#764

Post by kilroy123 »

simonh wrote: post #322
ajross wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In all honesty: almost none. He just wanted to be president. Most of his time will be spend enriching himself by selling banal access and bloviating on the world stage. That's pretty awful, but not apocalypse-level awful. Of your list: The wall is a technical impossibility that everyone can recognize. There's no funding for a deportation force and the political optics of goon squads rounding people up is something co…

>That's pretty awful, but not apocalypse-level awful. My main concern is foreign policy. The House can drive domestic policy and hopefully not make a mess of it, but foreign policy is all Trump's domain. He's vain and temperamental, this provides two powerful levers that manipulative foreign powers like China and Russia are free to push and pull as they like. He's also notoriously bad at taking advice. Frankly, it's…

Same here! As someone who went to school for International Relations, this is so sickening. I live abroad and let me tell you, people are very upset around the world.

Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President

#765

Post by 1_2__3 »

TheGirondin wrote: post #735
Asdfbla wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems extremely disingenuous that Trump supporters of all people would criticize hate and name calling when Trump's campaign was run on those issues, but I guess it's always easier to strike a conciliatory tone when you've won.

The entire collective campaign strategy of Democrats has been to name call, demonize, and fear monger. Don't even try to pretend it was them.

So calling your opponent "Crooked " and repeatedly referring to them by what is effectively a slur was a... Democrat strategy?

Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President

#766

Post by wtbob »

notacoward wrote: post #630
jernfrost wrote: post #258

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't think that is possible. If I was a democrat today I'd do like the Republicans have been doing the last 8 years and do my outmost to make the Trump Presidency be a major failure. The way the republicans have played this game is so dirty, that you can't expect people to forgive. We can not reward such a divisive character like Donald Trump with his racism, xenophobia, mysogny, insults and bullying with a successf…

> do like the Republicans have been doing the last 8 years and do my outmost to make the Trump Presidency be a major failure. I think I'd modify that just a little. Our too-few representatives in Congress should do everything to thwart the Trump agenda, but only because that agenda is itself a failure. By opposing it, we make America a success. Very different than what the Republicans have been doing.

Have you considered that Republicans might consider their opposition and obstruction to be in the best interests of America?

Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President

#767

Post by ryanx435 »

jernfrost wrote: post #291
tommy_wiseau wrote: post #262

The valley need to get over themselves and learn to appreciate the lessons from the unlikely Trump victory. Trump is the quintessential startup success story. Jump in the ring, breaks shit (always easier to ask for forgiveness than permission) then somehow makes his way to a hit product. He disrupted the business of politics much in the same way that uber disrupted the business of transportation. Guess Peter Thiel re…

Having a population of idiots is not something Trump can claim responsibility for. He is simply an asshole who has exploited this for his own gains. What exactly is there to learn from this? That democracy doesn't work when to large fraction of the electorate are ignorant fools. The lesson should be a better school system for America. But of course that would not be in the interest of republicans. They rely on large…

> Having a population of idiots is not something Trump can claim responsibility for.

> large fraction of the electorate are ignorant fools.

if you think the roughly half of all American voters that voted for trump are idiots or ignorant fools, than it is perhaps you that is the idiot. Simply by the law of large numbers there exists a significant number of them that are smarter and better educated that you are. Disparaging them as an lesser group is a dangerous way of thinking.

Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President

#768

Post by jawns »

threatofrain wrote: post #378
SolaceQuantum wrote: post #17

Now that the voices of the disenfranchised blue collar workers have been heard, what actually can be done to help them? I'm less worried about the accusations of racism, etc. because it appears to me a majority are voting because their livelihoods have been lost and, despite economics saying globalization will bring new jobs, they aren't showing up in the critical areas where they are needed. So, what policies can be…

I think the only decent destiny left for the unskilled undemanded worker is one of welfare, but those same voters have vicious attitudes about welfare and those on welfare. It's not reasonable to retrain this coincidental generation of unskilled undemanded workers, especially not when our nation still has a bad education resource problem. Pedagogical expenditure should go to those who are most likely to experience th…

> And with all the companies of the world racing towards robotic labor and domain applied machine learning, the kinds of US manufacturing job growth here will be few, high paying, and highly technical. But these innovations will mean net fewer manufacturing jobs, even as manufacturing may go up.

> And the fact that driving is one of the most frequent jobs in most states of the US, and with Uber having made an automated truck delivery of beer recently... there's no way that manufacturing jobs will keep pace with job loss.

> These people are screwed without welfare, and after welfare, there's nothing else to be done for them.

You've pointed out that automation, particularly of the trucking industry, has the potential to lead to extraordinary job loss.

I agree that automated cars are the future, and I look forward to the day when all cars on the road are automated.

There's also an extraordinary amount of money to be made in this space. But it's likely going to be made by private companies.

If there were a way that workers (rather than capital investors) could primarily reap the financial benefits of this new technology, I would think that would help ease the job phase-out.

Obviously, it's unrealistic to expect worker-owned cooperatives to catch up to those private companies at this point. But could there be an alternate way?

I wonder if the federal government could do something similar to the auto-company bailouts of a few years back.

It essentially purchased shares of the companies, and then later sold them at a profit.

I wonder if it might somehow institute a way to purchase shares of automated-trucking companies on behalf of truck drivers, so that when automated trucking causes job loss, the truck drivers would have a cushion of investment income. Perhaps it could be on a subsidization basis, where the government matches investments.

There are probably terrible problems with that idea. Just spitballing. But I don't want to say, "meh, welfare" until more creative solutions have been exhausted.

Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President

#769

Post by bjourne »

james_pm wrote: post #733
bjourne wrote: post #726

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The unemployment rate in the US has shrunk from about 10% in 2009 to 4.9% in 2016. The homicide and violent crime rates has also continued to shrink from a peak in 1992. By any statistical measure you can think of, the US population is doing better today than in 2008.

Except that 4.9% rate is a) an average across the country, and b) not reflective of the true rate of unemployment. ShadowStats suggests the real rate (including those who have given up on finding work) is more like 23%. In certain areas of the country (the rust belt, for example), it's higher than that.

I've only made a cursory glance, but the statistics on that site appears to be the work of an MBA named John Williams. A lot of other sites claims to have debunked ShadowStats.com and that their data is flawed. In addition to that, no other source claims that the US employment rate has stayed constant since 2010.

Oh, and to explore the data he is using to draw the graphs you need to be a SGS subscriber which costs $89 for six months.

In Pennsylvania (which I think is the center of the Rust belt) unemployment has decreased from a high of 8.7% to 5.3%. It is important to note that even if you believe the numbers are fudged, they aren't more fudged today than they were in 2008. Even if the real unemployment rate is double, that just means the decrease is from 17.4% to 10.6% instead.

Re: Donald Trump Is Elected President

#770

Post by harrumph »

inimino wrote: post #196
mch82 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a community we need to create more tools like WordPress that decentralize wealth creation and create jobs. We need to create fewer tools like Medium that centralize wealth creation and eliminate jobs.

I appreciate your passion for decentralization, but these issues go a bit beyond what kinds of software we write. The issues this election raised aren't going to be solved by writing code.

>The issues this election raised aren't going to be solved by writing code.

I agree, but I would say that actively selecting what kind of code you will write using criteria that value wide economic utility -- much wider, say, than the goals of the average me-too unicorn chasing project -- is a healthy and all-too-rare thing.

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