Economics

[phork]

Serious question. How in the hell is Trump a favorite to be president.

 

[GoIrish41]

Serious question. How in the hell is Trump a favorite to be president.

Because he's going to make America great again. Haven't you heard?

 

[IrishLax]

Finland Plans to Give All Its Citizens $875 a Month, Should Other Countries Follow Suit? | VICE | United States

I know Switzerland was doing a beta test on this but sounds like Finland is charging ahead.

I missed this, but I've always been very interested to see how a "prebate" works in practice.

 

[mgriff]

Serious question. How in the hell is Trump a favorite to be president.

I don't have a definitive answer, but I can speculate. I honestly think many people just want to blow up the political system in any way possible. Trump has had wealth, and created more. Now that doesn't correlate to the nation necessarily, but we are the wealthiest country in the world, so it's easy to think he could make us more money.

People want the borders secure, and he went, in true Trump fashion, as big as possible. We're going to build a wall! Illegal Mexican immigrants drive down wages for working class Americans, and no one was really serious on this because hey, cheap labor. Now Trump has made it a serious campaign issue.

People see the incredible amount of money donated by special interests to candidates, and see that it has gotten them favorable legislation and tax breaks. Average people aren't seeing the government work for them anymore, and Trump is financing his own campaign. He has no history in politics so he's an outsider. It helps that he calls out establishment candidates and their donors, often and loudly.

Finally, he's not a Republican in the current sense of the word. He's far more liberal on many social issues, which many moderates and independents agree with. There is a large demographic that are socially liberal and fiscally conservative, and they lost their home in the GOP long ago. He can bring those voters back to the party in the general.

He hasn't taken a real stance on much as of yet, and I think he's biding his time for the nomination before he gives more serious policy statements. He did just say he wouldn't cut social security, and that the Iraq war was a mistake. That may not get him points in the GOP, but it resonates outside of the echo chamber. I think there are enough people in the GOP who just don't care what he says, and are going to vote for him anyway, to stick it to the GOPe. He likely sees something similar, and is starting to position himself for his faceoff with Hillary, after a DNC job on Bernie if necessary.

That will put Trump against Hillary, and he will not be polite like Bernie. He will call out everything wrong with Hillary and I don't think she'd have a chance against Trump in the general. She inspires no passion, and is the epitome of establishment D.C. politics. That establishment is the very thing taking a beating in both parties during primary season. I know everyone thinks he's crazy, and he very well may be, but the American people might go for some crazy, instead of a status quo that has forgotten about them.

 

[GowerND11]

Serious question. How in the hell is Trump a favorite to be president.

I don't have a definitive answer, but I can speculate. I honestly think many people just want to blow up the political system in any way possible. Trump has had wealth, and created more. Now that doesn't correlate to the nation necessarily, but we are the wealthiest country in the world, so it's easy to think he could make us more money.

People want the borders secure, and he went, in true Trump fashion, as big as possible. We're going to build a wall! Illegal Mexican immigrants drive down wages for working class Americans, and no one was really serious on this because hey, cheap labor. Now Trump has made it a serious campaign issue.

People see the incredible amount of money donated by special interests to candidates, and see that it has gotten them favorable legislation and tax breaks. Average people aren't seeing the government work for them anymore, and Trump is financing his own campaign. He has no history in politics so he's an outsider. It helps that he calls out establishment candidates and their donors, often and loudly.

Finally, he's not a Republican in the current sense of the word. He's far more liberal on many social issues, which many moderates and independents agree with. There is a large demographic that are socially liberal and fiscally conservative, and they lost their home in the GOP long ago. He can bring those voters back to the party in the general.

He hasn't taken a real stance on much as of yet, and I think he's biding his time for the nomination before he gives more serious policy statements. He did just say he wouldn't cut social security, and that the Iraq war was a mistake. That may not get him points in the GOP, but it resonates outside of the echo chamber. I think there are enough people in the GOP who just don't care what he says, and are going to vote for him anyway, to stick it to the GOPe. He likely sees something similar, and is starting to position himself for his faceoff with Hillary, after a DNC job on Bernie if necessary.

That will put Trump against Hillary, and he will not be polite like Bernie. He will call out everything wrong with Hillary and I don't think she'd have a chance against Trump in the general. She inspires no passion, and is the epitome of establishment D.C. politics. That establishment is the very thing taking a beating in both parties during primary season. I know everyone thinks he's crazy, and he very well may be, but the American people might go for some crazy, instead of a status quo that has forgotten about them.

I'd also argue that he is doing very well in getting people to vote for/like him through their emotions. He is voicing their anger, sadness, and disdain that no candidate has done in a long time.

 

[wizards8507]

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/4DxXHh-p-O4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[EddytoNow]

I don't have a definitive answer, but I can speculate. I honestly think many people just want to blow up the political system in any way possible. Trump has had wealth, and created more. Now that doesn't correlate to the nation necessarily, but we are the wealthiest country in the world, so it's easy to think he could make us more money.

People want the borders secure, and he went, in true Trump fashion, as big as possible. We're going to build a wall! Illegal Mexican immigrants drive down wages for working class Americans, and no one was really serious on this because hey, cheap labor. Now Trump has made it a serious campaign issue.

People see the incredible amount of money donated by special interests to candidates, and see that it has gotten them favorable legislation and tax breaks. Average people aren't seeing the government work for them anymore, and Trump is financing his own campaign. He has no history in politics so he's an outsider. It helps that he calls out establishment candidates and their donors, often and loudly.

Finally, he's not a Republican in the current sense of the word. He's far more liberal on many social issues, which many moderates and independents agree with. There is a large demographic that are socially liberal and fiscally conservative, and they lost their home in the GOP long ago. He can bring those voters back to the party in the general.

He hasn't taken a real stance on much as of yet, and I think he's biding his time for the nomination before he gives more serious policy statements. He did just say he wouldn't cut social security, and that the Iraq war was a mistake. That may not get him points in the GOP, but it resonates outside of the echo chamber. I think there are enough people in the GOP who just don't care what he says, and are going to vote for him anyway, to stick it to the GOPe. He likely sees something similar, and is starting to position himself for his faceoff with Hillary, after a DNC job on Bernie if necessary.

That will put Trump against Hillary, and he will not be polite like Bernie. He will call out everything wrong with Hillary and I don't think she'd have a chance against Trump in the general. She inspires no passion, and is the epitome of establishment D.C. politics. That establishment is the very thing taking a beating in both parties during primary season. I know everyone thinks he's crazy, and he very well may be, but the American people might go for some crazy, instead of a status quo that has forgotten about them.

The wages were already low. The Mexican immigrants come and are welcomed, because Americans won't work that hard for the wages offered.

Trump was on the giving end of a lot of political money. He wasn't give his money away for free. Just like the others, he was purchasing favors, from both parties.

Trump won't be talking about specific policies unless he is forced to by the media. Once he states his position and his policy, he will begin to see his support fade away. He revealed his lack of knowledge of political issues when asked about the Nuclear Triad.

Let's not over-estimate the support for Trump. He won't be swaying any Democrats to vote for him, and his support from Republicans has remained at the 30-35% level (or about 15% of the general electorate) He has not benefited from other candidates dropping out, which suggests there are large numbers of Conservative voters who would support any of the other Republican candidates before they would throw their support behind Trump. He has a long way to go before he appeals to a majority (over 50% of the electorate).

 

[drayer54]

Serious question. How in the hell is Trump a favorite to be president.

Our election process has become American Idol. It has happened before this election, but it is neither substance nor ideas that win elections. He bashes people and rants about things that would end most politicians, but his people don't care. Some people are so excited to see someone say things outside the realm of most career politicians and love that he will shake things up.

He can literally say that his idea to make a healthcare plan that is brilliant or do things for the economy that are great and the morons just nod their head and believe him. The problem is that the issues we face are not simple and will likely require serious compromise in an age of divided politics.
I think many people don't understand the issues or our challenges, so they just love to see someone confident and different. Romney ran his campaign the same way, only instead of making America great or winning it was "I'm the CFO guy, I'll get in and look at the books and then things will be good." That's the problem with the businessman who wants to run Washington. It never works.

Every time I see Trump winning somewhere, I think of this...

http://youtu.be/KHJbSvidohg

 

[RDU Irish]

He doesn't have to appeal to the majority - he just has to be more appealing than Hillary. Why is that so damned hard for people to grasp.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

ND Professor Patrick Deneen just published an an article titled "Res Idiotica":

My students are know-nothings. They are exceedingly nice, pleasant, trustworthy, mostly honest, well-intentioned, and utterly decent. But their minds are largely empty, devoid of any substantial knowledge that might be the fruits of an education in an inheritance and a gift of a previous generation. They are the culmination of western civilization, a civilization that has forgotten it origins and aims, and as a result, has achieved near-perfect indifference about itself.

It’s difficult to gain admissions to the schools where I’ve taught – Princeton, Georgetown, and now Notre Dame. Students at these institutions have done what has been demanded of them: they are superb test-takers, they know exactly what is needed to get an A in every class (meaning that they rarely allow themselves to become passionate and invested in any one subject), they build superb resumes. They are respectful and cordial to their elders, though with their peers (as snatches of passing conversation reveal), easygoing if crude. They respect diversity (without having the slightest clue what diversity is) and they are experts in the arts of non-judgmentalism (at least publically). They are the cream of their generation, the masters of the universe, a generation-in-waiting who will run America and the world.

But ask them some basic questions about the civilization they will be inheriting, and be prepared for averted eyes and somewhat panicked looks. Who fought in the Peloponnesian war? What was at stake at the Battle of Salamis? Who taught Plato, and whom did Plato teach? How did Socrates die? Raise your hand if you have read both the Iliad and the Odyssey. The Canterbury Tales? Paradise Lost? The Inferno?

Who was Saul of Tarsus? What were the 95 theses, who wrote them, and what was their effect? Why does the Magna Carta matter? How and where did Thomas Becket die? What happened to Charles I? Who was Guy Fawkes, and why is there a day named after him? What happened at Yorktown in 1781? What did Lincoln say in his Second Inaugural? His first Inaugural? How about his third Inaugural? Who can tell me one or two of the arguments that are made in Federalist 10? Who has read Federalist 10? What are the Federalist Papers?

Some students, due most often to serendipitous class choices or a quirky old-fashioned teacher, might know a few of these answers. But most students will not know many of them, or vast numbers like them, because they have not been educated to know them. At best they possess accidental knowledge, but otherwise are masters of systematic ignorance. They are not to be blamed for their pervasive ignorance of western and American history, civilization, politics, art and literature. It is the hallmark of their education. They have learned exactly what we have asked of them – to be like mayflies, alive by happenstance in a fleeting present.

Our students’ ignorance is not a failing of the educational system – it is its crowning achievement. Efforts by several generations of philosophers and reformers and public policy experts whom our students (and most of us) know nothing about have combined to produce a generation of know-nothings. The pervasive ignorance of our students is not a mere accident or unfortunate but correctible outcome, if only we hire better teachers or tweak the reading lists in high school. It is the consequence of a civilizational commitment to civilizational suicide. The end of history for our students signals the End of History for the West.

During my lifetime, lamentation over student ignorance has been sounded by the likes of E.D. Hirsch, Allan Bloom, Mark Bauerlein and Jay Leno, among many others. But these lamentations have been leavened with the hope that appeal to our and their better angels might reverse the trend (that’s an allusion to one of Lincoln’s inaugural addresses, by the way). E.D. Hirsch even worked up a self-help curriculum, a do-it yourself guide on how to become culturally literate, imbued with the can-do American spirit that cultural defenestration could be reversed by a good reading list in the appendix. Broadly missing is sufficient appreciation that this ignorance is the intended consequence of our educational system, a sign of its robust health and success.

We have fallen into the bad and unquestioned habit of thinking that our educational system is broken, but it is working on all cylinders. What our educational system aims to produce is cultural amnesia, a wholesale lack of curiosity, historyless free agents, and educational goals composed of contentless processes and unexamined buzz-words like “critical thinking,” “diversity,” “ways of knowing,” “social justice,” and “cultural competence.” Our students are the achievement of a systemic commitment to producing individuals without a past for whom the future is a foreign country, cultureless ciphers who can live anywhere and perform any kind of work without inquiring about its purposes or ends, perfected tools for an economic system that prizes “flexibility” (geographic, interpersonal, ethical). In such a world, possessing a culture, a history, an inheritance, a commitment to a place and particular people, specific forms of gratitude and indebtedness (rather than a generalized and deracinated commitment to “social justice), a strong set of ethical and moral norms that assert definite limits to what one ought and ought not to do (aside from being “judgmental”) are hindrances and handicaps. Regardless of major or course of study, the main object of modern education is to sand off remnants of any cultural or historical specificity and identity that might still stick to our students, to make them perfect company men and women for a modern polity and economy that penalizes deep commitments. Efforts first to foster appreciation for “multi-culturalism” signaled a dedication to eviscerate any particular cultural inheritance, while the current fad of “diversity” signals thoroughgoing commitment to de-cultured and relentless homogenization.

My students are the fruits of a longstanding project to liberate all humans from the accidents of birth and circumstance, to make a self-making humanity. Understanding liberty to be the absence of constraint, forms of cultural inheritance and concomitant gratitude were attacked as so many arbitrary limits on personal choice, and hence, matters of contingency that required systematic disassembly. Believing that the source of political and social division and war was residual commitment to religion and culture, widespread efforts were undertaken to eliminate such devotions in preference to a universalized embrace of toleration and detached selves. Perceiving that a globalizing economic system required deracinated workers who could live anywhere and perform any task without curiosity about ultimate goals and effects, a main task of education became instillation of certain dispositions rather than grounded knowledge – flexibility, non-judgmentalism, contentless “skills,” detached “ways of knowing,” praise for social justice even as students were girded for a winner-take-all economy, and a fetish for diversity that left unquestioned why it was that everyone was identically educated at indistinguishable institutions. At first this meant the hollowing of local, regional, and religious specificity in the name of national identity. Today it has came to mean the hollowing of national specificity in the name of globalized cosmopolitanism, which above all requires studied oblivion to anything culturally defining. The inability to answer basic questions about America or the West is not a consequence of bad education; it is a marker of a successful education.

Above all, the one overarching lesson that students receive is to understand themselves to be radically autonomous selves within a comprehensive global system with a common commitment to mutual indifference. Our commitment to mutual indifference is what binds us together as a global people. Any remnant of a common culture would interfere with this prime directive: a common culture would imply that we share something thicker, an inheritance that we did not create, and a set of commitments that imply limits and particular devotions. Ancient philosophy and practice heaped praise upon res publica – a devotion to public things, things we share together. We have instead created the world’s first res idiotica – from the Greek word idiotes, meaning “private individual.” Our education system excels at producing solipsistic, self-contained selves whose only public commitment is an absence of commitment to a public, a common culture, a shared history. They are perfectly hollowed vessels, receptive and obedient, without any real obligations or devotions. They have been taught to care passionately about their indifference, and to denounce the presence of actual diversity that threatens the security of their cocoon. They are living in a perpetual Truman Show, a world constructed yesterday that is nothing more than a set for their solipsism, without any history or trajectory.

I care deeply about and for my students – like any human being, each has enormous potential and great gifts to bestow upon the world. But I weep for them, for what is rightfully theirs but hasn’t been given. On our best days together, I discern their longing and anguish and I know that their innate human desire to know who they are, where they have come from, where they ought to go, and how they ought to live will always reassert itself. But even on those better days, I can’t help but hold the hopeful thought that the world they have inherited – a world without inheritance, without past, future, or deepest cares – is about to come tumbling down, and that this collapse would be the true beginning of a real education.

 

[Armyirish47]

ND Professor Patrick Deneen just published an an article titled "Res Idiotica":

His devotion to nostalgia for a past that never was always reads so odd to me. I understand that nobody gets tenure, or article views, by defending the status quo, but the Pleasantville (or I suppose more accurately collection of loosely interrelated Pleasantvilles) he envisions is no more real than the result of one sipping Kirke's potions.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

His devotion to nostalgia for a past that never was always reads so odd to me. I understand that nobody gets tenure, or article views, by defending the status quo, but the Pleasantville (or I suppose more accurately collection of loosely interrelated Pleasantvilles) he envisions is no more real than the result of one sipping Kirke's potions.

I've yet to read a Deneen article pining for a golden "past that never was". Since you claim to be familiar with his writing, can you point me to one? He's a critic of philosophical liberalism, which he argues is hostile to the communitarian, the local and the sustainable--all values that we'll need to rediscover if we want to keep our republic. It's not about trying to "go back" to some idealized vision of post-WWII Americana.

 

[Armyirish47]

I've yet to read a Deneen article pining for a golden "past that never was". Since you claim to be familiar with his writing, can you point me to one? He's a critic of philosophical liberalism, which he argues is hostile to the communitarian, the local and the sustainable--all values that we'll need to rediscover if we want to keep our republic.

I'm only familiar with what you post on here.

In the article you posted today, "due most often to serendipitous class choices or a quirky old-fashioned teacher,might know a few of these answers. But most students will not know many of them, or vast numbers like them, because they have not been educated to know them." The implication is that old fashioned teacher's taught this routinely (old fashioned being synonymous with past). I would also argue that his listing of all things students don't know now implies there was some past education system that would have taught them those things. Otherwise his argument would have been much shorter, and carried less heft without some historical underpinning to it. To be the result of a long standing campaign necessarily means there was some point to campaign from, does it not?

From his Unsustainable Liberalism article opening salvo "For most people of the West, the idea of a time and way of life after liberalism is as plausible as the idea of living on Mars. Yet liberalism is a bold political and social experiment that is far from certain to succeed. Its very apparent strengths rest upon a large number of pre-, non-, and even antiliberal institutions and resources that it has not replenished, and in recent years has actively sought to undermine. This “drawing down” on its preliberal inheritance is not contingent or accidental but in fact an inherent feature of liberalism." Again, don't you have to "draw down" from a starting point you are more aligned with?

I don't have a problem with his viewpoint, but is he not arguing that those values were apparent at some time before, perhaps in the founding of our republic, and thus represent something we should return to? A "golden" past perhaps?

 

[drayer54]

He doesn't have to appeal to the majority - he just has to be more appealing than Hillary. Why is that so damned hard for people to grasp.

I believe that was the campaign slogan for Mitt Romney.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

I'm only familiar with what you post on here.

In the article you posted today, "due most often to serendipitous class choices or a quirky old-fashioned teacher,might know a few of these answers. But most students will not know many of them, or vast numbers like them, because they have not been educated to know them." The implication is that old fashioned teacher's taught this routinely (old fashioned being synonymous with past). I would also argue that his listing of all things students don't know now implies there was some past education system that would have taught them those things. Otherwise his argument would have been much shorter, and carried less heft without some historical underpinning to it. To be the result of a long standing campaign necessarily means there was some point to campaign from, does it not?

Ah, I see what you're getting at now. American conservatives are often rightly criticized for pining after some idealized period in our nation's past-- the "Morning in America" of Reagan's 1980s, the Cleaver-style atomic family of the 1950s, etc.-- and Deneen would likely point out that the deep sources of our current problems were already present and undermining our society even then, so that's a fool's errand.

But as it relates specifically to higher education, he would definitely argue that the curriculum has been hollowed out and the quality has declined precipitously from what was offered in the past. Our great universities used to teach the liberal arts, which involved deep and sustained interaction with the classics of the Western canon, with the aim of freeing students from passion and prejudice, as well as passing on our priceless cultural inheritance. Now our top schools offer a mostly utilitarian curriculum and do very little to challenge the passions and prejudices of their students. From Deneen's perspective (and mine), that's simply not an education worthy of the name.

From his Unsustainable Liberalism article opening salvo "For most people of the West, the idea of a time and way of life after liberalism is as plausible as the idea of living on Mars. Yet liberalism is a bold political and social experiment that is far from certain to succeed. Its very apparent strengths rest upon a large number of pre-, non-, and even antiliberal institutions and resources that it has not replenished, and in recent years has actively sought to undermine. This “drawing down” on its preliberal inheritance is not contingent or accidental but in fact an inherent feature of liberalism." Again, don't you have to "draw down" from a starting point you are more aligned with?

As the title indicates, his argument in that article is that liberalism is unsustainable in the long-term, both socially and economically. We've muddled along through a slow decline thus far because our citizenry at the founding was overwhelmingly Christian, which provided a deep well of social capital that kept a lot of selfish anti-social behaviors in check. But now that well has been mostly spent, so we're reaping the consequences of liberalism (broken families, growing inequality, global warming, etc.) He's not arguing that everything was perfect in 1787 at the American Founding, or the high middle ages before the Reformation. But he would argue that a lot of what is Good, True and Beautiful in Western culture is directly attributable to Christianity, and that liberals don't understand how much we stand to lose by continuing to secularize.

I don't have a problem with his viewpoint, but is he not arguing that those values were apparent at some time before, perhaps in the founding of our republic, and thus represent something we should return to? A "golden" past perhaps?

No "golden" past. But he'd argue that culture requires a cultus, a sacred sense of order, a cosmology that roots moral demands within a metaphysical framework. Christianity is the cultus at the center of our culture, and if we lose it, we face cultural dissolution and irreversible civilizational decline.

 

[ND NYC]

Deneen is basically saying: this generation has great heads on their shoulders....but no heart.

 

[RDU Irish]

Deneen is basically saying: this generation has great heads on their shoulders....but no heart.

thanks for summarizing- Whiskey, take note

 

[ND NYC]

thanks for summarizing- Whiskey, take note

and thank you for my proving my point

 

[RDU Irish]

and thank you for my proving my point

didn't know you had a point, thought you were just summarizing? You can't be claiming I have no heart since I don't have the head on my shoulders to understand the comment? And I also am being a bit petulant so I can't be lumped in with the generation of polite smart kids..... DAMN YOU MILLENIALS

 

[ND NYC]

didn't know you had a point, thought you were just summarizing? You can't be claiming I have no heart since I don't have the head on my shoulders to understand the comment? And I also am being a bit petulant so I can't be lumped in with the generation of polite smart kids..... DAMN YOU MILLENIALS

don't confuse petulance with condescension.

 

[RDU Irish]

I believe that was the campaign slogan for Mitt Romney.

Mitt didn't run against Hillary, this thread is confusing the shit out of me.

 

[mgriff]

The wages were already low. The Mexican immigrants come and are welcomed, because Americans won't work that hard for the wages offered.

Trump was on the giving end of a lot of political money. He wasn't give his money away for free. Just like the others, he was purchasing favors, from both parties.

Trump won't be talking about specific policies unless he is forced to by the media. Once he states his position and his policy, he will begin to see his support fade away. He revealed his lack of knowledge of political issues when asked about the Nuclear Triad.

Let's not over-estimate the support for Trump. He won't be swaying any Democrats to vote for him, and his support from Republicans has remained at the 30-35% level (or about 15% of the general electorate) He has not benefited from other candidates dropping out, which suggests there are large numbers of Conservative voters who would support any of the other Republican candidates before they would throw their support behind Trump. He has a long way to go before he appeals to a majority (over 50% of the electorate).

Hey man I'm not a Trump defender or anything, but you're living a lie if you think no Democrats are going to vote for him against Hillary. The area where I live in staunchly Democrat, and my family is among them. They are all for Bernie right now, because they see he has some integrity, misguided as his policies may be. At least half of them have said they would vote for Trump over Hillary. Hillary is a polarizing figure, and I would vote for Trump over her any day of the week.

You don't just get to say none of the other 60-65% of Republicans would vote for him because they aren't now. He will pick up votes as others drop out, you can't just add the other numbers together. He's going to lock up the nomination, it's almost there. In one week, if he does as well as all the polls show on Super Tuesday, it's over. I can't say I'm thrilled about it, but I understand it. Average Americans have been hurt by globalization, there's no denying that. Trump is appealing to a simple economic reality that many are facing.

Americans won't work for illegal immigrants wages, no kidding. American labor can't compete with cheap foreign labor because they expect to have an American lifestyle. That doesn't mean people are lazy. If you keep adding low-wage workers you aren't going to help wages, you're creating more competition, and hurting Americans. I understand the need for business to maximize profits and seek cheap labor sources, it's capitalism. That doesn't mean you allow 12 million illegal immigrants to come into the country and harm Americans to attain it.

As I said, I'm not a Trump defender by any mean, but he does have some policy statements out, which I didn't know about when I wrote the previous post. https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions

 

[mgriff]

Mitt didn't run against Hillary, this thread is confusing the shit out of me.

He's saying Mitt tried the same thing that Trump is doing, and Mitt failed miserably against Obama. Creating connections to discredit Trump as much as possible. I don't love the man or anything, but everyone is underestimating him. He's resonating across party lines and causing an influx in new voters. In one week it's going to be all but confirmed he'll be the Republican nominee. Hillary is so divisive I don't see her inspiring anywhere near the motivation the Republicans have to oust her, and Trump will win by a very large margin. I really see Trump as the next President, which is crazy, but I'd take that over Hillary.

 

[drayer54]

Mitt didn't run against Hillary, this thread is confusing the shit out of me.

My point is that the GOP was long convinced to beat Obama in 2012, all they needed was a warm body capable of fogging a mirror because what they were selling had to be better than Obummer.

The businessman got up and said he would do his CFO thing and things would be great. The lack of a candidate able to compete in the American Idol like environment we have today with no real message ran into a stomping defeat.

So yes, Mitt didn't run against Hillary... But to assume that fogging a mirror will be enough to beat her is not true.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

ND Professor Patrick Deneen just published an article at Front Porch Republic titled "New World Order":

Events of the past several years up close could be compared to individuated and discrete dots, each circumscribed by itself alone, each self-contained and even comprehensible. The housing bubble. The financial crisis. The energy crisis. The financialization of the American economy. Our colleges as beer-and-sports luxury purchases. “Globalization.” 9/11 and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Federal Reserve’s printing presses. China. India. Europe’s empty churches and cradles. TARP. Cash-for-clunkers. Gold at $1,100 an ounce. The Federal Stimulus plan. The United States, indispensable yet teetering.

Seen from something of a distance – from a point of “perspective” – all these points, and many others, come into focus as an example of “pointillism,” a comprehensible picture in which many discrete points, seen from a distance, converges into a picture altogether more comprehensive and even distinct. The picture being portrayed is the end of Western liberalism, and the beginning of something rather different – something yet without a name – but which I’ll call authoritarian capitalism for shorthand.

At the end of the first decade of the 21st-century, accumulating evidence points to the decline not only of America, but the operating assumption of a market-based, liberal nation-state that has operated over the hundred and fifty or so years. That system – whose philosophical groundwork was laid in the latter part of the eighteenth-century, but which began in earnest with the industrial revolution in the mid-nineteenth century – argued in essence that two seemingly incompatible ends could be achieved.

First, it was held that modern society should be built around the goal of material prosperity – “the relief of the human estate,” in Bacon’s phrase, or “commodious living,” in Hobbes’s articulation. Human ingenuity and the rise of modern science aimed toward maximizing the ability of humans to manipulate and control the natural world, and to extract from it hitherto unimaginable bounties for life.

Second, particularly with arguments posed by John Locke and the Framers, as well as the thought of many thinkers in the Scottish Enlightenment, it was held that political sovereignty rested in the will of the people, and that political systems ultimately derived their legitimacy from the consent of the governed. This basic insight (which had some relationship to medieval theories of constitutionalism, albeit without a concept of “human will” at its core) laid the groundwork for theories of modern democracy, including periodic elections, theories of rights-based individualism, and eventually a form of liberal welfare-statism that would ensure the basic material conditions of life needed for participation in the political and civic order.

The result were two theories in pronounced tension, if not outright contradiction, with one another. The first claim recognized that practical inequality was the likely result: as people’s talents and abilities were permitted maximum distinction in an environment of opportunity and progress, some would achieve great rewards, and others would risk too much or accomplish too little. Prosperity with pronounced social inequality and societal instability was the anticipated outcome. The second claim allowed for the full expression of grievances over those unequal outcomes, with the strong possibility that the popular sovereign would demand some form of equalization of outcome.

Classical political science had long understood that any such extreme and permanent forms of social inequality and instability led to social unrest and ultimately endangered the viability of private property. For this reason, political democracy was thought to be incompatible with significant forms of material inequality. Where extensive forms of inequality existed – typically in large-scale regimes, most often various forms of empire – it was believed that a strong form of autocratic rule was essential. A strong distinction between republic and empire was one inheritance of classical political science, in acknowledgment of the political incompatibility of political equality and social stratification.

The new political science introduced a third element into the mix: growth. Economic growth was the bribe that Stratification offered to Equality. In return, Equality agreed largely to respect the boundaries of rights to private property (though, truth be told, in times of economic stress, this relationship would become strained and Stratification would need to offer an additional pay-off to Equality, e.g., The New Deal). As long as economic growth tempted Equality enough that it might benefit from Stratification, the bargain held. America seemed to be a story of economic AND political progress, a constant increase in PROSPERITY and EQUALITY all powered by GROWTH.

Trouble was: until the latter part of the 20th-century, American growth was premised upon unrelenting ravaging of the resources of the continent. Everywhere something of value could be found, it was extracted and exploited. America largely eschewed the wars of imperialism (largely, though not entirely), a) because it was able to recategorize a domestic form of imperialism as its manifest destiny leading to the “Empire of Liberty,” and b) the resulting continental amassing of property had more than enough resources to exploit without engaging in the kind of foreign imperial project required of the Europeans. At the same time, the regime became ever more “democratic,” as political rights and even forms of State obligations were extended to ever more classes of people – the propertyless, former slaves (whose labor was replaced by machines and the energy slaves that powered them), women, immigrants, youth, and so on. A narrative of Progress (powered by Growth) hid the fundamental tension of the regime from view.

In 1971, the United States simultaneously produced as much oil as it would ever produce (hitting its point of domestic peak production) and produced an elaborate theory that philosophically justified a permanent institutionalized form of property-redistribution that at once a) would ensure the pacification of the least-well off, and b) continued to permit systemic inequality (I speak here of John Rawls’s A Theory of Justice and his famous “difference principle”). I do not think it was a matter of mere coincidence that these two events occurred at the same historical moment: this was, oddly, the high water mark of the marriage between Stratification and Equality, a kind of celebration of their compatibility even as it also marked the beginning of their long separation. The continental growth that had depended on resource exploitation – above all, oil – was beginning its long descent, and with it a mad scramble to replace it with various kinds of fixes that only ensured further and more severe forms of stratification – the “unlocking of shareholder value”; outsourcing; the “symbolic-analytic” economy; the ramping up of the meritocratic educational system, and the accompanying insanity and corruption of our universities; the “financialization” of the economy; a debt culture that began in earnest with the Presidency of Ronald Reagan and reached its culmination (if not its final act) in the Autumn of 2008; and the expansion of the American military umbrella which, above all, protected sources of “foreign oil” that the empire simultaneously required for its maintenance and which it maintained through the enforcement of empire. America was on its way to foreclosure, but before that happened, those with enough know-how, cleverness, and the advantage of unscrupulousness would do what would become common in many instances of foreclosure: they would strip the domicile of everything of worth, leaving only a shell of worthless material that could barely house and protect anyone who happened to be left behind. It was a Made-off economy.

All the major players knew that the “social contract” between Stratification and Equality was teetering, but that it could be propped up a while longer with further pay-offs. For years these pay-offs had no longer come out of “current use” funds – those funds were becoming too precious, and without prospect for long-term increase – to be used to pay off the demands of Equality. Instead, pay-offs were increasingly made using future funds, the presumed inheritance and legacy of generations not born, all added to a running tab called “the deficit” or (most amusingly) the Social Security “Trust Fund.” A massive fiction called “the National Debt” was sold to the rising nation of China, who – for lack of better savings depot – decided to buy out its only real competitor, biding its time for the day when it would own the West. Monetary policy was devised to create a series of oscillating bubbles, each popping ever more closely to the previous, each one indicating a growing frenzy to get what one can while one could. Fearing electoral backlash, the political classes continued to buy enough votes to bring its success in the next election, and the money-masters financed that auction in return for 1,070 blind eyes.

Without the advantage of a crystal ball, I suspect we will be looking at a New World Order within a decade. Writing at the eve of 2020, we will look back on the first score of the 21st century and see more clearly than we do now that “regime change” was afoot – albeit not the sort we might have imagined when that phrase entered the common parlance. The massing evidence that still requires a conclusion suggests that the 21st century will signal the end of the arrangement of the past 150 or so years. The marriage of Stratification and Equality will unravel, and I fear that it will not be a friendly parting. As is often the case in ugly divorces, those of us – friends of each spouse – will be forced to choose which we will remain our friend, for the other will finally brook no communication with the other. And all the evidence to date suggests that the choice will be difficult: we will not want to choose either, loving aspects of both while fearful of offending the other. We will try to remain friends of each until the bitter end, and – predictably – will end up driving both away.

The future will be China, and the new world order. That arrangement is deadly realist about the incompatibility of Stratification and Equality. It has embraced a future of Prosperity without a sentimental glance at the worn bride, Equality. It has ruthlessly elected to engage in the remaining prospects of worldwide resource exploitation, and will do so unburdened by the often tragi-comic efforts of the West to maintain the fiction that this effort can be finally made compatible with a marriage to Equality.

The choice facing America today is grim: it shows every sign of a willingness to embrace the Chinese model, a model it will likely choose to remain “competitive,” but also daily demonstrates its habits of blandishing a citizenry that demands to be coddled. The “democracy” continues to demand its fair share of a dwindling pie, an expected denoument when citizens have been redefined as “consumers.” I wager that in 10 years’ time, the nation will either have sunk itself beneath the untenable weight of continuing payment of a bribe that could never be sustained – and will look like a third world “banana republic” – or, it will have “successfully” made the transition to another regime, an form of autocratic capitalism in which the State will change the terms of the bribe, paying us with materialist distractions in exchange for our political rights and equality. I daily see signs of both prospects, and can’t clearly discern at the moment which will arise. Either way, our culmination is grim, for in either event we will cease in any real sense to be a Republic.

But, that may have happened long ago. We may never have been a Republic. We may have always been an Empire – or at least our tendency was tilted in that direction – and only became better at it over time. We have only imperfectly, and occasionally been truly self-governing. And, I sadly acknowledge at the end of an old year, the prospects for self-governance in this careening modern world have never been dimmer.

 

[pkt77242]

6% of companies make 50% of U.S. profit
JPMorgan Chase made record profits last year (24 Billion).

Yet they cut about 5000 jobs last year.

I think this is what frustrates many people. The constant chase for every increasing profits benefits the wealthy (mostly) and harms the working class. The CEO gets a raise not for increasing revenue (it was stagnant) but for cutting expenses.

I am not arguing that profits are bad, so don't make that argument.

 

[Whiskeyjack]

6% of companies make 50% of U.S. profit
JPMorgan Chase made record profits last year (24 Billion).

Yet they cut about 5000 jobs last year.

I think this is what frustrates many people. The constant chase for every increasing profits benefits the wealthy (mostly) and harms the working class. The CEO gets a raise not for increasing revenue (it was stagnant) but for cutting expenses.

I am not arguing that profits are bad, so don't make that argument.

Saw a tweet this morning that said: "If you had told US elites in 1990 how fabulously wealthy they'd be in 2016, but there was a small risk of fascist backlash, they'd have taken the deal without a 2nd thought."

 

[Wild Bill]

6% of companies make 50% of U.S. profit
JPMorgan Chase made record profits last year (24 Billion).

Yet they cut about 5000 jobs last year.

I think this is what frustrates many people. The constant chase for every increasing profits benefits the wealthy (mostly) and harms the working class. The CEO gets a raise not for increasing revenue (it was stagnant) but for cutting expenses.

I am not arguing that profits are bad, so don't make that argument.

It's not necessarily true, however, that the job cuts at Chase didn't lead to a job creation somewhere else. For instance, due to increased regulation, Chase is forced to pay higher regulatory and legal fees. Rather than paying employees who they deem non-essential, funds are diverted into the pockets of decent, kind-hearted attorneys who help them comply for a small fee.

 

[Ndaccountant]

Also, Chase has seen 5 years of revenue decline. Since 2010, their revenue has declined from $102b to 93.5b. Some years had bigger decline than others, but that is a 9% decline.

Headcount? At year end 2010, they had 239,000 employees compared to 236,000 employees at the end of 2015. So, for comparison sake to 2010, they have reduced headcount by 1% compared to a 9% revenue decline. Also, that decline of 1% has essentially translated to flat compensation and benefits expense.

I'm not sure they are the company to be pointing out.

Income Statement for JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM) from Morningstar.com

that has the 2011-2015 data

 

[pkt77242]

Also, Chase has seen 5 years of revenue decline. Since 2010, their revenue has declined from $102b to 93.5b. Some years had bigger decline than others, but that is a 9% decline.

Headcount? At year end 2010, they had 239,000 employees compared to 236,000 employees at the end of 2015. So, for comparison sake to 2010, they have reduced headcount by 1% compared to a 9% revenue decline. Also, that decline of 1% has essentially translated to flat compensation and benefits expense.

I'm not sure they are the company to be pointing out.

Income Statement for JPMorgan Chase & Co (JPM) from Morningstar.com

that has the 2011-2015 data

A couple of things.
1. Compensation/benefits only declining by 1% doesn't mean much because that is just a number without any detail to it. What if pay has been stagnant for 95% (and dropping in the case of benefits) of the company but the other 5% are getting massive increases? I guess I have a different view as I have multiple friends who work for JPMorganChase in multiple different states and in multiple functional areas and the picture they paint is that for the average worker compensation is not going up much and the benefits are getting worse every year.

2. If revenue is declining why is the CEO getting raises every year?

3. At some point profit chasing is out of control, 24 Billion a year while cutting staffing to increase profits, seems to be a little ridiculous. It basically turns into a big circle jerk where the CEO cuts expenses (instead actually growing the business) to earn more profits, the shareholders are happy with the increased profits and thus give the CEO a nice large raise, and on and on it goes. Sadly the person that gets left out is the average employee.

4. Profits are good, and are a sign of a healthy company, and companies should be profitable but there comes a point when there is excess profit taking. I believe that we have reached that some companies.