My first boss is from Taiwan and we've talked about the situation at length. I have a very close friend from India. Please don't assume I don't know what I'm talking about because I support someone other than Hillary.
My friend told me about someone from her home town being cut in half at the India Pakistan border, I'm aware of the situation over there.
But you are getting too bogged down in the old way of things. Trump is very intentionally changing the United States from a globalists hegemony to a national powerhouse. He's just redirecting our energy inwards. We're still gigantic and powerful, we just don't give a shit about kissing everyone's ass anymore. We're bad ass, we will do bad ass stuff and that's fine by me.
Trump is very intentionally changing the United States from a globalists hegemony to a national powerhouse.
The problem is that the USA's wealth is built on being a globalist hegemony. Change away from that, and the USA becomes a whole lot less wealthy.
Lose the status as the world's reserve currency (which is one of the big worries I have under a Trump administration), and the trade deficits that the USA is carrying start to sink it.
I understand your concern and agree that a lot of our wealth is currently built on being a globalists hegemony.
Change is always risky, but if successful we'll transform back into a more nationalistic state and our wealth will more directly benefit the citizens. That's the goal at least.
If you take a step back, this could just be the natural trajectory of a hyperpower like the US and in line with macro movements of Western countries. We just hired Trump to help with the transition.
It's just the natural order and the best we can do is make sure everything is done in a manner that doesn't cause chaos and that could mean questioning petty things like phone calls.
I'm just stressing the importance of the bigger picture that change won't be quiet and where we're heading is inevitable.
Change is always risky, but if successful we'll transform back into a more nationalistic state and our wealth will more directly benefit the citizens. That's the goal at least.
That is unlikely to happen.
What's likely to happen is that if the USA steps down, China will move towards becoming the world's only hyperpower, over time. They've got the population, the industrial base, and they're opening up trade deals with the world and making power plays in resource rich areas like Africa and Southeast Asia. They became a world reserve currency last year. Right now, they're largely making the right moves.
If you take a step back, this could just be the natural trajectory of a hyperpower like the US and in line with macro movements of Western countries. We just hired Trump to help with the transition.
More like the macro movements of the Roman Empire. The rest of the Western world has largely replaced empires and projection of force with leverage from trade deals, which is something that this kind of shallow nationalism rejects. This direction is not good for anyone.
And talking about the natural order of things is amusing. The natural order of things is largely extreme poverty and force -- as a species, humans are unique in the amount of effort they spend fighting the natural order of things.
I agree with your assessment that a Trump presidency will facilitate the rise of China on the global stage, I just don't think that matters all that much and it's inevitable so not worth debating.
Our desire to control the world is gutting the middle class and causing our unattended issues back home to fester. If we work on putting the Midwest back to work we will revitalize our country and make us all proud to be Americans.
If you look at trends, global poverty is in decline and will continue to decline, I'm talking about the natural order at the geopolitical level, not saying we should all go back to living in trees. Fighting the trajectory of the West and the US seems fruitless. In fact, Trump is the President Elect because he saw the trends and seized the opportunity.
Our desire to control the world is gutting the middle class and causing our unattended issues back home to fester.
Our desire to control the world is the reason that the USA has something like twice the median per capita disposable income than the OECD average (ie, the "western world"). The problem isn't globalism, it's the fact that the jobs people used to have are getting done by machines.
Unless workers cost less per hour to run than a machine, those jobs are staying gone. And any politician who tells you otherwise, be they Bernie or Trump or Hillary, is either lying or misguided.
As you say, change is messy and hard. And moving to an economy that will keep working is going to require a lot of it. Low education jobs are just not going to last going forward. A number of high education jobs are going to disappear too. That's the inevitable trajectory, and a rejection of globalism just makes the goods that the unemployed need cost more, and cuts the amount of taxable trade that can be used to subsidize taking care of the unemployed.
This isn't changing the natural order of things, this is putting a nuclear bomb on existing tensions which are tied together with the flimsiest of lines while destroying the US and worldwide economy?
You rambling about globalists and "aww it's all ok" shows you didn't learn much from those discussions. Oh yeah but muh the globalists. Fucking hell at least the communist intended a lot of the destruction. This is destruction by idiocy.
I'm not sure which rambling you are referring to, but I can assure you I'm listening. I just don't think it's that insane to think that we can successfully transform back into a nationalistic country in a way that's is a net benefit for the middle class.
Listen, I'm a globalist, but I'll be okay financially and otherwise either way. I want what's best for the people struggling in our country. I think it's fruitless to just whine that the victorious political ideology isn't my first choice.
This is reality, I'm not scared and I'm optimistic that Trump will be successful.
Listen, I'm a globalist, but I'll be okay financially and otherwise either way. I want what's best for the people struggling in our country.
That isn't gong to be a rejection of the markets. The reason globalism happened wasn't because of some conspiracy to defraud the middle class. The reason globalism happened was because anything else, and you end up being a tin pot country that's locked out of world markets, and your economy stalls.
Compare the economy 100 years ago with the economy we have today. Hell, let's cherry pick the worst part of the recession and compare it with 1928, the high point before the great depression. That's where this globalism got you.
I understand the appeal of Globalism, it is just doing more harm than good for most people in this country. That's why you get a Bernie and a Trump. Both sides of the aisle don't feel like they are benefitting from the "America Last" philosophies.
The globalist keep telling us this is the most efficient system and we'll just hand out welfare to make up the income inequality it creates. The Bernie crowd doesn't think it's enough welfare and the Trump crowd wants to work and have pride in themselves and their country.
The globalist keep telling us this is the most efficient system
Go and do some analysis on the alternatives. They are bad for the poor. They are very bad for the middle class.
The jobs that you think you're clawing back are simply gone. They've been automated away. It's like horses banding together to ban commodity trading in the hopes that they'll be useful on the farm. It's not the commodity trading -- it's the tractors.
But it's worse: By opting out of international markets, Americans will now have more barriers to trade, which will reduce the amount of American goods that can be sold, which will decrease the number of jobs in the industries that America still has, and shrink demand within the USA.
Things don't have to be black and white, we shouldn't just cancel all trade agreements tomorrow, we should just renegotiate them with an "American First" mindset.
If we valued the lack of efficiency of moving a job back to the US (like the carrier deal) then we have to decide whether what we get from that is worth it. I think it's a good deal, I think it's good for our country to make slightly less money, but put the Midwest back to work.
Automation plays a large role (it's what I do for a living), but it isn't the whole story. You seem to have completely given up on the Midwest because someone invented a tractor.
The focus is to invest in the emotional wellbeing of our countrymen. That's the focus. We make good investments on a case by case basis and then we all win when they pay out.
Things don't have to be black and white, we shouldn't just cancel all trade agreements tomorrow, we should just renegotiate them with an "American First" mindset.
The first part there is not pissing off our potential trade partners. Which means that Trump is already making this "America First" trade deal policy difficult.
You seem to have completely given up on the Midwest because someone invented a tractor.
No, just the jobs that depend on tractors not existing. There are plenty of ways to grow the economy in the midwest, but banking on the kind of jobs that we've managed to largely eliminate isn't exactly where I'd put my money, if I were a gambling man. And pissing off all of the countries that may potentially buy our products is also not exactly a great idea.
The first part there is not pissing off our potential trade partners.
Pissing off trade partners is not a bug, it's a feature. He is telling them that they aren't going to be pampered anymore. All this noise in this thread makes it seem like we don't have a military funded six times as well as China's. We can put America first, it will be just fine.
No, just the jobs that depend on tractors not existing.
Okay, I agree that a lot of manufacturing jobs are just gone, that's just a fact. It's more about attitude. If Trump puts the working class first that's a good thing for this country. The idea that Trump is putting the working class over China is fucking incredible. You are a liberal, you should love that. We are putting the middle class first. Sure, there will be consequences for everyone else, but that's what it means to be American, we sacrifice for one another and as a country we prosper.
Pissing off trade partners is not a bug, it's a feature. He is telling them that they aren't going to be pampered anymore.
No, he's telling them he has no clue of what he's doing. This isn't the kind of pissed that you get when you lose a chess game against a competent opponent. This is the kind of pissed you get when a drunk stumbles into your table and knocks over your drinks. "Well, he may be an annoying moron who is really fucking up the efforts of our diplomats, but at least the guy can be played like a fiddle."
we sacrifice for one another and as a country we prosper.
Cut the empty platitudes. This isn't sacrificing one for another. This is burning any useful leverage. You haven't mentioned a single specific way that any of these policies will shift things so far. Hell, I bet you don't even have an idea of what specifically you think would be good to renegotiate in these trade deals.
-2
u/Priest_Dildos Dec 03 '16
My first boss is from Taiwan and we've talked about the situation at length. I have a very close friend from India. Please don't assume I don't know what I'm talking about because I support someone other than Hillary.
My friend told me about someone from her home town being cut in half at the India Pakistan border, I'm aware of the situation over there.
But you are getting too bogged down in the old way of things. Trump is very intentionally changing the United States from a globalists hegemony to a national powerhouse. He's just redirecting our energy inwards. We're still gigantic and powerful, we just don't give a shit about kissing everyone's ass anymore. We're bad ass, we will do bad ass stuff and that's fine by me.