Nutjobs Continue to Rule GOP

[broncofan]

Great post. I am not sure what the government can do about these economic trends. I think automation would not be implemented if it were not more efficient in a macro sense, but in the short run it does terrible things to the average worker. When you look at vast restructuring like this and how it shakes up lives, I think it is essentially a problem of distribution...how else could technology replace human labor unless it did more and for cheaper? But its fruits are enjoyed by whom?

Do you think it is possible for the knowledge economy to employ vast numbers relative to total population? Or is it by its nature something that will only depend on the few and the specially educated to shepherd?

I agree with you that whether a judge is conservative or liberal should not matter very much. If they are principled, it is their judicial philosophy that will determine the decisions they make on the bench.

When it comes to interpreting the meaning of statutes, I believe political affiliation does not matter. When it comes to interpreting the bare text of our constitution and how it circumscribes the behavior or legislators at both the state and federal level, political affiliation seems to permeate most decisions. What one sees as fundamental right that legislators cannot legislate away, what one sees as the limits of the federal government versus state governments seem to always depend upon one's meta-view of what kind of society we have been and should be. A Judge evaluating an issue like abortion has no external reference except for the weight he gives to the rights of a woman versus the harm done to the unborn fetus and the right of the court to limit the sovereignty of state legislatures in order to protect some value.

Although I disagreed with many of Scalia's opinions and found some of his reasoning repellent, he did ask one very relevant question. If the Supreme Court can strike down laws to protect values that are not enumerated in the Constitution, what is to prevent them from being legislators in robes? As much as I think the Court has a role to protect fundamental rights and the equal protection of citizens, he has a point...in most systems I imagine Judges have a self-contained body of law to reference and not open-ended values they see as their job to protect.

[broncofan]

Somewhere in the middle are small to medium firms overwhelmed with red tape, layers of tax and pressures on cost, but even if Trump promotes 'the little guy', what in reality can Trump do to give the 'little guy' a break, because there is not going to be an 'even break' with the way capitalism is at the moment.

I don't know the answer, but I suspect that small to medium firms face more pressure with cost and difficulty in efficiently reallocating their capital than red tape and layers of tax. Maybe the red tape they face is more burdensome for them only because they have not achieved the efficiency that comes with economies of scale.

Should the government provide incentives in the form of subsidies and tax breaks to maintain their viability or allow them to be crushed by corporations who benefit from economies of scale and efficient administration? Maybe the government should provide tax breaks and subsidies, but what is the next stage of their business development except to eventually become a behemoth...what is the tide we are fighting to ensure their viability?

It seems I am leading the questions against their protection, but only because the trends in favor of large entities seems strong and their advantages almost unavoidable. Distribution of wealth is important to me, but it can be achieved in other ways than bolstering failing businesses.

[Stavros]

One of the curious omissions in the debate from both sides relates to the timid attitude they have to anti-trust strategies. Even in the case of Bernie Sanders, he wants to break up the 'big financial institutions' but if the overall intention is to create a more level playing field and give 'the little guy' with a small business a better chance of growing his business, why does nobody call for anti trust legislation to break up corporate giants like Google, Microsoft, IBM, Apple, Exxon and so on? Should Rupert Murdoch be allowed to own so much of the US media? Not even the 'free market' champions of the GOP seem interested in this, and certainly not Donald Trump who claims he is on the side of 'the little guy' but doesn't seem to have a policy to match the rhetoric. Yet giant corporations are at the heart of debate on globalisation and its winners and losers, because they can employ people to deal with red tape and every regulation thrown at them, while also using brilliant tax lawyers to pay as little corporation tax as possible.

The odd position that this puts the US in, rather like the UK, is one in which we have gone from an era of full employment, high rates of direct taxation, national prosperity and low deficits, to varying levels of higher or lower than unemployment, low taxation, lower rates of growth and national prosperity, and colossal debt. One explanation for these are unexpected costs, such as the $trillion or more spent on foreign wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but another is the curious case of the way work has changed reducing productivity and with it the national wealth.

One of the consequences of the changes that has taken place along with de-industrialisation in the US and UK is that it is possible for Ford to hire 5,000 hourly paid workers, but not to add value at significant levels to the economy because part-time work or temporary contacts reduce productivity. This in turn means the government receives less revenue in the form of both taxes levied on workers and firms, and on their products, and has to make up the difference through borrowing, or savings on public spending, this position is put well here-

Creating jobs without improving productivity, however, will not result in sustainable employment that raises the nation’s standard of living. Rather than defining the sole goal as job creation, the U.S. must focus on becoming a more productive location, which will generate high-wage employment growth in America, attract foreign investment, and fuel sustainable growth in demand for local goods and services.
https://hbr.org/2012/03/the-looming-...ompetitiveness

The next time Kasich or Christie or anyone else says they have created more jobs in their state in a month than Democrat states, treat with caution. As for Trump, he promises to reduce the top level of tax, take out lower paid workers from direct taxation altogether, but also find the money to 'bomb the shit' out of Daesh in Iraq and Syria and build a wall across the Mexican border -even Trump I assume is not going to demand the money 'up front' (but this wall will never get through Congress anyway so it is just flannel). Trump, the man with a plan and the man for a deal, can't do his sums.

In the UK the gradual decline of the North Sea Oil and Gas industry has also taken a lot of productive value, as well as taxes out of the country's income but there are less visible losses too, such as the decline of the money spent in the UK on Research and Development in new industries, also true of the USA as worldwide the leaders in R&D are Israel, Korea, Japan, Finland, Sweden -even Taiwan spends more of its GNP on R&D than the USA.

You will look in vain for a policy on R&D in any of the candidates policy announcements, just as you will not find any intelligent comments on productivity, but you will find positions on tax because that is an obsession with Republicans and a 'businessman' like Donald Trump.

The difficulty with the social media phenomenon, taking Facebook and Google into account, is that they are not like Apple or Microsoft, companies that actually make things. Facebook, which generates about $1bn profit every three months, in 2014 paid the UK government £4,327 in corporation tax -around $6,158 with corporation tax in the UK being 20%. One reason is that Facebook's European HQ is in Ireland where corporation tax is 12.5% and money made from sales in the UK is routed through Ireland. But the key problem is that with a firm like Facebook there is a difference between profit and revenue, because corporate taxes are levied on profit, not revenue, and a firm without a tangible product like a car or a computer generates more revenue than profit, if that doesn't sound too arcane. But this is also why new industries are either able to become financially successful because they pay such little tax, or because the governments have yet to work out how to tax a business whose 'product' is, in effect, a 'presence' on the internet. Again, an example of how contemporary politicians are using last century's standards of measurement to extract their slice of the cake from an industry they appear not to even understand, and in Sander's case, for 'moral' rather than for sound financial reasons.

At least Mrs Clinton is not obscuring the debate. She can be lumped in with Wall St and the global giants as the 'sell-out' (why not the 'buy-in'?) candidate who promises more of the same, while the others promise little to nothing that connects with the way business is done. The key point about Donald Trump, in the end, is that he is not and has never been interested in 'the deal', but 'the percentage'. He doesn't walk into a board room to negotiate a compromise, as he would have to do with Congress -betraying the 'little guy' in the process- he goes in thinking 'what's my percentage?' Or, 'what's in it for me?'. And that is no way to shape economic policy in the USA, or anywhere else.

Trump's website has these 'Positions' -
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions

There is a checklist of candidates positions on a range of issues where they can be identified, here-
http://2016election.procon.org/view....mary-chart.php

[buttslinger]

Looks like fact is stranger than fiction and Trump will be IN next Tuesday, So be it Lord, in your infinite wisdom, you have checked and balanced all things so that Trump will not only lose the election, he'll destroy the GOP. They're losing spokespeople left and right. RIP
....As for Stavros' pile of corruption, back stabbing, theft, waste, moronic decisions, lost opportunities, hey man, that was one day at work for me. I used to embezzle as much money as I earned, and spend it on dancing girls, whores, alcohol, and drugs. The reason I could steal that much and get away with it was I did the books and I was also one of the best EARNERS we had. Some of my co-workers and one boss kinda knew, but there was such an entangled web of alliances, memories, fears, weaknesses, and strengths, I got away with it. In the USA, the WHEELER DEALER has an odd respect, lots of psychology in business.
As for all that bullshit piled up, I think it is worse than one can imagine, and possibly very dangerous. It's like physics, you have to look through your imagination to see it clearly. The USA can maintain that huge pile of shit simply because, we have the largest pile of MONEY the Planet has ever experienced. We have the most POWER the planet has ever witnessed.
Kennedy said we should do things not because they are easy but because they're hard. Jury is out. The aim is justice, but you end up with reality.

[buttslinger]

One of O'Bama's objectives is a roaring success: He did nothing WRONG enough to send peasants with pitchforks and torches flooding toward the White House. The Republican voters are hopping mad and their hatred is all directed at the GOP!!!!!!

KUDOS Barack Hussein O'Bama!

I give up predicting what Trump will do, but I am pretty confident that 51% of America will not vote for a Man whose main promise is to kick down the doors of 11 million homes and drag Mexican children down the street to waiting vans.
I'm voting for Kasich's daughter (the one on the right)


forum image hosting

[trish]

A Possible Course of Events?
The latest spate of childish tweets and spats have left Trump slightly more damaged than Cruz. It’s possible that neither of them will have enough delegates to win the nomination on the first round of voting at the GOP convention. If that should happen it’s pretty clear Trump would not have gained enough of the party trust to secure the nomination. Yet it would be difficult to award the nomination to any of the candidates who faired worse in the primaries than Trump, including Cruz. I think (should no one have the required delegate count) that the GOP would someone outside the pool of this year’s seventeen or so candidates and clowns. I think it’s likely that after the white smoke settles, Paul Ryan could surface from the convention hall as the newly crowned GOP nominee.

[buttslinger]

A Possible Course of Events?

All roads lead to FAIL:!!!!!!

[trish]

Thanks for the vid buttslinger; that was one-hundred and sixty very excruciating seconds for The Donald. But that's in the past:

It's springtime
For The Donald
In the USA;
Winter for Hispanics
And The Blacks.

(Don't be stupid, be a smarty come and join the border wall party)

[martin48]

Springtime for Hitler - time for a remake?

[martin48]

http://www.usmagazine.com/celebrity-...-women-w200856

If I perform an illegal abortion on Trump, would I be punished?