Trump's America

[BigRedBuster]

https://twitter.com/GlennThrush/status/865303138160529408

 

 

 

 

It was deleted.

[RedDenver]

https://twitter.com/GlennThrush/status/865303138160529408

 

 

 

 

What did it say?

[Enhance]

A new all time low in Trump approval rating.

 

Unrelated, but it is fascinating to see the incredible spike in Bush's approval rating after 9/11.

[BigRedBuster]

[knapplc]

 

https://twitter.com/GlennThrush/status/865303138160529408

What did it say?

 

 

 

 

Let me tell you, I'm getting sick of people tweeting stuff out then deleting it five minutes later.

 

He wrote, near as I can remember, "Maybe I heard wrong, but I think Trump just said that Argentina was an 'awful disgrace' to the face of their Nobel winning president."

 

He deleted it not once, but twice. The link I posted is the second one that said this.

[BigRedBuster]

 

WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump’s attorneys originally wanted him to submit an updated financial disclosure without certifying the information as true, according to correspondence with the Office of Government Ethics.

Attorney Sheri Dillon said she saw no need for Trump to sign his 2016 personal financial disclosure because he is filing voluntarily this year. But OGE director Walter Shaub said his office would only work with Dillon if she agreed to follow the typical process of having Trump make the certification. That is standard practice for the thousands of financial disclosure forms OGE processes each year.

The Associated Press obtained the letters under a Freedom of Information Act request.

“As we discussed, OGE will provide this assistance on the condition that the President is committed to certifying that the contents of his report are true, complete and correct,” Shaub wrote in a May 10 letter. “When we met on April 27, 2017, you requested that he be excused from providing this certification.”

 

[zoogs]

Wow. Trump is a gd hero for signing those things when he didn't even have to.

[Danny Bateman]

 

 

In non-impeachment-worthy news...

 

 

 

Only problem with targeting NAFTA - automation has taken more American manufacturing jobs than Mexico. You block all the Mexican imports from manufacturing companies and they're just going to build robot factories in America.

 

Those jobs are not coming back. Trump is lying to his constituents (again).

 

 

Manufacturing Jobs Aren’t Coming Back

Most US manufacturing jobs lost to technology, not trade

Don’t Blame China For Taking U.S. Jobs

Manufacturing Jobs Are Never Coming Back

Exactly right. It's one my main problems with Bernie Sanders rhetoric as well. Free trade lost jobs for America, but they aren't coming back even if we ended free trade.

 

We need to deal with the repercussions of automation now because more and more employees are going to be replaced in the coming years. And that's going to include white collar jobs as well.

 

A huge number of white collar jobs have been eliminated already.

 

Companies used to have huge rooms of people sitting at desks doing things that computers do now. I don't know of anyone who has a personal secretary anymore.

 

Think of the Wallstreet stock analysis that used to be done by armies of people and now is done in a split second on websites.

 

 

I'm with all of you on this.

 

Trade is definitely one of the key issues of the moment. It was Trump's strongest selling point (other than I'm not Clinton) and it catapulted him to a victory. It nearly took Bernie to a Democratic nomination.

 

In never felt either of them were being intellectually honest with people. They were oversimplifying the reasons for manufacturing job loss, and I don't know if I heard either of them utter the word "automation" even once.

 

Fiery economic populism and being anti-trade can foment great power at the voting booth. But when it comes time to pay the bill and address the problem, simply railing against our trade deals and saying "renegotiate" over and over again isn't going to amount to much.

[Moiraine]

I really like Bernie but I agree with all of the above.

 

There are a couple Bernie supporters on my FB who like to post charts showing worker production going way up and wages staying the same as if to imply we're working harder for less $. I wouldn't be surprised if that actually was the case but the chart doesn't really show that.

 

What the chart shows is that companies are more efficient. Not the workers. Instead of having 20+ workers using their muscles to do a tough job, 1 somewhat better paid worker is monitoring a machine. A relative of mine is an engineer for a company that manufactures big items and they aren't built by humans anymore. They're built by machines which are designed by engineers. He just makes sure all of the machines keep working right. Even the machine parts are probably built by a machine.

[BigRedBuster]

I agree. The thing is, automation is not a bad thing. It is needed to compete at the corporate level and on a macro economic level. Factories in China and Mexico are automated also. I go to some trade shows each year that are pretty cutting edge technology wise for automation and new equipment. I've been to them here in the US and in Europe. Anyone thinking that Americans are the only ones buying this equipment is delusional. These shows are filled with people from the Pacific Rim and other countries we import from.

 

It's not going away and it's going to be developed even more...and again....this is a good thing.

Now, we need to figure out how to at least make sure those automated factories are in the US instead of somewhere else.

 

Do people expect someone like Trump or Bernie to campaign AGAINST automation in factories? If so.....wow....

[RedDenver]

I agree. The thing is, automation is not a bad thing. It is needed to compete at the corporate level and on a macro economic level. Factories in China and Mexico are automated also. I go to some trade shows each year that are pretty cutting edge technology wise for automation and new equipment. I've been to them here in the US and in Europe. Anyone thinking that Americans are the only ones buying this equipment is delusional. These shows are filled with people from the Pacific Rim and other countries we import from.

 

It's not going away and it's going to be developed even more...and again....this is a good thing.

Now, we need to figure out how to at least make sure those automated factories are in the US instead of somewhere else.

 

Do people expect someone like Trump or Bernie to campaign AGAINST automation in factories? If so.....wow....

Automation is terrible for capitalism. Even if you moved all the automated factories to the US, we'd still have too few jobs eventually. It's a classic case of emergent system properties - it's individually rational to do automation for each corporation because of cost savings, but irrational to do that for all corporations because then there aren't enough people with jobs to buy the goods produced by the automated systems.

 

I don't know what the solution is though. We either need to tax the crap out of the fewer people at the top making money off the automation and somehow get that money to the masses (universal basic income, government employment programs, etc.), abandon capitalism for some other economic system, reverse automation in favor of employment, or something I haven't thought of.

[Moiraine]

This could go way off topic but I believe in the future, say 50 years from now, things could he so automated that the poverty rate increases drastically unless we have a living wage. If there are less and less jobs because we get so efficient, the wealth will become more and more top heavy, and how many jobs will be left for people to do? If we are 10x more efficient then than we are now, something has to give.

 

We have Amazon developing machine delivery, Walmart and Hyvee and Peapod delivering groceries - that could be done by machine eventually, McDonald's has stores where the machines do a lot of the work - food prep and order taking.

 

I just don't see all these big companies saying "well, now that we can make everything faster and cheaper I guess we should lower the prices" and even it they did, lowering prices doesn't help people who have no job at all.

 

We could all resort to growing our own food except that one big company owns like 99% of the seeds and the rights to replanting.

 

 

Edit: What RedDenver said.

[Landlord]

As technology advances, true capitalism's shelf-life will continue to dwindle. That's fine, though - capitalism has plenty of evils, and technological/social progression will lead to a closer equality and a raised lowest standard of living through ease of accessibility that capitalism can't/won't ever provide.

 

 

That might be through something like a living wage. Or it might just as easily be through things like the internet, 3d printed food, self-sustaining transportation, etc. being free for use.

[ZRod]

Guys... this is why you need an education. People still need to design, program, and maintain these parts and systems. But we're ok letting education flounder because we shouldn't have to pay for our children's future if we don't want to.

 

Sure not everyone can be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, journalist, scientist, what have you but you're still much more valuable if you have a welding certification, programming background, basic buisness skills, Electrical/plumbing license, or any of a number of skills that can be taught at a post secondary level.

[RedDenver]

Guys... this is why you need an education. People still need to design, program, and maintain these parts and systems. But we're ok letting education flounder because we shouldn't have to pay for our children's future if we don't want to.

 

Sure not everyone can be a doctor, lawyer, engineer, journalist, scientist, what have you but you're still much more valuable if you have a welding certification, programming background, basic buisness skills, Electrical/plumbing license, or any of a number of skills that can be taught at a post secondary level.

While what you're saying is true, it doesn't really address the problem of automation. You only need a relative small number of people to design, program, and maintain the robots. Whether that's 10%, 40%, or 60% of the available work force doesn't matter as the economy will collapse with unemployment numbers of 40%-90%.