2016 U.S. Presidential Elections: The Circus Is In Full Swing

[pentagathus]

People like to to buy **** and they like efficiency, unless you can change that then economic isolation is never going to be popular.

 

[Temujin]

Someone with an engineering degree might not find a job for a time but won't work dead-end jobs all his life, those without degrees won't have his job opportunities.

Go to Greece, go tell the people to all get an education and they'll magically find job opportunities and save their economy.....

 

[cwr]

Small-town nationalism disguised as economic protectionism. The consumers are somehow expected to bear the burden, but they don't want to, they are smarter than that and want cheap stuff, meaning cheap imports.
The US does need to modernize its workforce, its manual labor is not competitive and young people should be stimulated to get higher education, not drop out of school and compete for non-existing jobs. The culture of disdain for education and the expense of getting one need to be changed.
It's delusional to think that somehow jobs with low added value can be brought back from elsewhere, just to accommodate the working class and keep a few dollars more in the economy. They are screwed because too many of them didn't go to school and just depress each other's wages while professional pay is constantly on the rise for decades.

You seem to think I am insulted when you call me a nationalist-that is not the case. No one is arguing against better education and higher access to education. A better educated workforce is a fine goal that everyone wants, but when only 30% of the workforce over 25 has even a bachelor's degree, the plan of America only being a white collar economy plus service industry and agriculture isn't feasible. Service industry and agriculture pay **** wages and can't support 70% of the economy the way that manufacturing for the large domestic market can.

And how many times must I say that prices on domestic goods will lower with the economies of scale, and especially if the tariff is offset with a sales tax? Minimizing the hurt to the consumer is an important thing to keep in mind, and is perfectly possible.

 

[Mage246]

You can keep saying it, but it's just not true. Scaling production isn't the magic wand you think it is. Labor costs are fixed.

 

[Anarion]

Pfft, American nationalism. Maybe if you are a sucker for instant gratification. I prefer Albanian nationalism, the victories there are small but much more satisfying when they come.

 

[Mage246]

Sales tax offset also. Prices on American goods won't rise though.

Nothing you've written makes a lick of economic sense. You can't offset a tariff with a tax. That's not how tariffs or taxes work.

Prices on American goods don't have to rise - they were already higher than the foreign goods were without the tariffs. To the consumer, however, the price of the good has risen because they are no longer able to buy the foreign-made good at its actual price. As a result, they must buy at the higher price for the American-made good.

 

[Mage246]

If you meant lower sales tax, why not say that? When you just say "tax" it doesn't mean lower or rebate.

In any case people already use the lower consumer prices to buy more goods and services. If you increase the cost of goods and services, people buy less, including American-made goods. When you shrink a person's budget, you also shrink the economy. The reason for this is that foreign trade imports makes up a fairly small portion of the economy (12-20%), but if those goods go away and we pay the much higher prices that it would cost to make those goods in the US, suddenly people have a lot less disposable income to buy, say, a new living room sofa or a night out at a restaurant. Which in turn means that those companies make less money and perhaps even have to fire workers.

Your solution is not a magic bullet that would fix the economy. There's a lot more involved than you are considering.

 

[Almalexia]

Someone with an engineering degree might not find a job for a time but won't work dead-end jobs all his life, those without degrees won't have his job opportunities.

Go to Greece, go tell the people to all get an education and they'll magically find job opportunities and save their economy.....

You're missing the point. If everyone in Greece got a higher level, valuable education, a lot of companies foreign or domestic would be willing to invest in Greece to access these skills, and as things stand at a much lower rate than they would have to deal with in other countries. Comparative advantage, essentially.

 

[Jhessail]

Greece also has far more issues than just poor-skilled workforce that also needs to be fixed, combined with decades of poor fiscal decisions by multiple governments.

Anyway, it will be interesting to see if Sanders can threaten Clinton to the last minute or not and when exact Trump's star falls. Trump becoming the official GOP nominee is extremely unlikely as he could not get the moderate vote. Remember that the candidates are pandering to the whacko-side of GOP at the moment.

 

[Almalexia]

By poll Trump was seen as the most electable candidate by Republican party members, as I recall.

 

[Mage246]

That poll doesn't mean much. It just means that people hear his name a lot.

 

[Almalexia]

To be cynical I'd say that's all a candidate needs to be elected, but I'll hold my opinion until the nominations come out. 

 

[An Irish Noob]

I don't really care for any of the candidates. But then again, I never care for any candidate. The only person I can trust to act in my interests is myself, and even then I'm not entirely reliable in doing that.

 

[Almalexia]

Well damn, for someone who doesn't care you've been posting on a lot of these kinds of threads.

 

[An Irish Noob]

I'm bored and it's 1am, if ever there were a time for me to be posting things which have no bearing on anything ever, this is it.

 

[Lord Brutus]

I don't really care for any of the candidates. But then again, I never care for any candidate. The only person I can trust to act in my interests is myself, and even then I'm not entirely reliable in doing that.

If it's any comfort, most of us in the US don't care what you think anyway.

 

[Somewhatpro]

Ben "Gifted Hands" Carson surpassed Trump in the polls

I don't really care for any of the candidates. But then again, I never care for any candidate. The only person I can trust to act in my interests is myself, and even then I'm not entirely reliable in doing that.

If it's any comfort, most of us in the US don't care what you think anyway.

Savage

 

[Jhessail]

Just so you don't think that Trump is the only idiot:

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/nov/05/ben-carson-egyptian-pyramids-were-grain-stores-not-pharoahs-tombs

Egypt’s pyramids were built by the biblical Joseph to store grain and were not, as archaeologists believe, tombs for pharaohs, Republican presidential hopeful Ben Carson has said. The retired neurosurgeon, who is seeking his party’s nomination for the White House, made these remarks in a 1998 address at Andrews University, a Michigan school associated with the Seventh-day Adventist Church, to which he belongs, in a video posted on Buzzfeed on Wednesday.

The church is a conservative evangelical Christian one.

Asked on Wednesday if he still held these views, Carson told CBS News: “It’s still my belief, yes.”

In his 1998 address, Carson said: “And when you look at the way that the pyramids are made, with many chambers that are hermetically sealed, they’d have to be that way for various reasons.

“And various of scientists have said, ‘Well, you know there were alien beings that came down and they have special knowledge and that’s how, you know, it doesn’t require an alien being when God is with you’.”

Also, evolution isn't real, homosexuality is a choice and of course the good old classic, the evil mainstream media is a LIBRUL CONSP1RACY!!!

http://www.msnbc.com/msnbc/ben-carson-comment-flashback-us-would-be-cuba-without-fox-news

Last October, the retired neurosurgeon — who was a paid contributor at the network at the time — said at an event at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, “Even if all the media tries to shut you down, which they have tried very much to do with me, but they can’t because the good Lord has provided me with mechanisms like my syndicated column and Fox News. We’d be like Cuba if there were no Fox News, I ought to tell you.”

Carson — who has recently emerged as a top-tier candidate — became testy when he was pressed about his comments during an interview with CNN’s Alisyn Camerota on Friday morning. Camerota asked the GOPer, “You mean that if Fox News didn’t exist, we would be a communist country?”

Carson shot back: “There you go with sensationalism. That’s what you try to do. You hope somehow that will resonate with people who don’t think for themselves. I’ve got news for you, people are a lot smarter than you think they are … and they know exactly what I’m talking about.”

No Ben, we don't know what you're talking about because you're talking bull****.

 

[Kentucky 『 ＨＥＩＧＵＩ 』 James]

Don't these people have PR managers?

 

[Mage246]

Yeah and I read an article once about them. They basically decided to let Carson be Carson because that's the kind of **** that his supporters love.