Running on Drudge right now, "Trump Shakes World Order"
Obama gazes in awe.

Deepdiver that was one of the best posts ever..

Trump is getting at the fundamental issue with the American economy: it's service based.

Superpowers largely have industrially-based economies. Fading countries have service-based economies.

(03-08-2016 12:08 AM)rpg Wrote:  Running on Drudge right now, "Trump Shakes World Order"
Obama gazes in awe.

From the story:

Quote:European and Middle Eastern government representatives have expressed dismay to U.S. officials about anti-Muslim declarations by Trump that they say are being used in recruiting pitches by the Islamic State and other violent jihadist groups.

Battered wife syndrome.
"I must have done something to deserve it!"

The real fear among Europeans, though, is Trump-inspired nationalism in their own countries.

(03-07-2016 06:05 PM)Enigma Wrote:  What's really stupid is trying to compete directly with a country that doesn't play by the same rules and where the standard of living for the average factory worker is atrocious.

Yeah, that's a classic misconception.

If the Chinese have, let's say, artificially cheap goods, because the government subsidizes them or they enact laws preventing workers bargaining for higher wages, who does that benefit?

The answer is the American consumer: the good is now cheaper than before, meaning more money for other things!

This means also a factory shuts down somewhere with a big impact on a single community, but the the combined savings of all Americans from cheaper goods is by definition greater than the factory loss.

The policy challenge is not "How do we stop consumers getting better deals?". The policy challenge is: "how do we make sure the money american consumers save is channelled into new jobs that spur new growth?" and "how do we prevent the collapse of stable, local communities".

Different ball-game entirely.

From a geo-strategic perspective, there is also the danger that comes from the relative increase in Chinese power, but that is a geopolitical argument, not an economic one, and I think if America doens't pick fights with China (but maintains a clear superiority in weaponry), then China will not pick fights with America. But that's a seperate argument.

Eljefe I understand what you are getting at with the savings vs loss example. But if the Chinese have a long term plan then at some point when we are weakest they can reverse it. It would take a long time possibly to get manufacturing up to a respectable level.

And while the U.S. may be service based, I will include in it R&D. That stuff China steals so it doesn't have to invest heavily there.

Taking out manufacturing weakens America. The problem is no one is convincing businesses to keep manufacturing in the US.

The average Americsn with extra money is going to piss it away. The savings if given to the government will piss it away. A business will maybe invest some depending on its industry but give a chunk to the leaders of the businesses plus shareholders. Saved money on a large scale with Multiple parties/people never goes well.

(03-07-2016 06:31 PM)Samseau Wrote:  Nah, you're incorrectly applying the classical economic model to a situation not accounted for by classical economics. That is, the currency peg.

Right now China, India, and other 3rd world shitholes have a currency peg which keeps their citizens enslaved. No matter how much they work, they get a x6 or more devaluation to their earnings relative to the USD.

That's why China's GDP per capita has barely gone up relative to it's overall GDP. Same for the USA, because our corporations aren't paying US workers they are paying slaves in third world countries while the elites of the third-world also bag tons of profits. Average citizens in both countries lose hard. The only way to break the abuse of third-world slaves is though tariffs.

China GDP per capita: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp-per-capita
China GDP: http://www.tradingeconomics.com/china/gdp

Time to update yourself on theory: https://www.rooshvforum.com/thread-54249.html

We really haven't lifted that many people out poverty, you're just repeating capitalist propaganda without examining the facts. The average Chinaman isn't much richer than he was 10 years ago, they've just stopped reproducing while trying to hoard bitcoins and gold to preserve the value of their ever devaluing renminbi.

Tariffs would do wonders right now to stop the enslavement and raise standards of living everywhere, but unfortunately big corporations will take a hit.

See my other answer. The short answer is that I'm an actual economist, so I actually know the theory for and against, and also know what I'm talking about. Did you look at those figures yourself? They show the opposite of what you say they do.

Don't take my word for it, but read any book on the history of economic growth. Trade is by far and away the most important feature. There are still folks who recommend protectionism, but these people are like socialists. They never learn, so don't be that guy.

The answer I gave was meant to illustrate two things:

The grievances arising from globalization are real, and the causality is even real (globzaliation destroy jobs). But globalization also creates jobs, including in the US. The process of creative destruction is also known as Schumpterian growth. If you're not familiar with the concept, look it up. The trick is to maximize job creation and mitigate the consequences from the destruction of communities. THe communities are in trouble because they put all their eggs in one basket. A sound portfolio strategy is not one where all your assets are exposed to the same risk. That is called stupidity.

(03-08-2016 12:55 AM)samsamsam Wrote:  Eljefe I understand what you are getting at with the savings vs loss example. But if the Chinese have a long term plan then at some point when we are weakest they can reverse it. It would take a long time possibly to get manufacturing up to a respectable level.

And while the U.S. may be service based, I will include in it R&D. That stuff China steals so it doesn't have to invest heavily there.

Taking out manufacturing weakens America. The problem is no one is convincing businesses to keep manufacturing in the US.

The average Americsn with extra money is going to piss it away. The savings if given to the government will piss it away. A business will maybe invest some depending on its industry but give a chunk to the leaders of the businesses plus shareholders. Saved money on a large scale with Multiple parties/people never goes well.

China stealing our stuff has nothing to do with the benefits of trades. If they steal, enact a tariff, please, but that is to deter them from stealing.

Also, US manufacturing has never been higher. The number of jobs has in that sector is decreasing due to automation. Think of it this way: did life get so much worse when we didn't have to wash our clothes by hand and had robots that could do that for us? The answer is no.

Focus on the negative impact on communities from Schumpterian growth. That is a far more nuanced view. The Chinese have been subsidizing their manufacturing growth. As Samseau rightly pointed out, at the cost of artificially low returns to their investments and providing cheap credit to American consumers.

You're final paragraph on how Americans spend their money is not an argument against free trade. It is an argument against the intelligence of Americans. The second sentence is not an argument for tariffs, if governments piss money away why the hell do you want to give them more?

American consumers will pay for the tariff with higher prices. I happen to support a tariff, but I was just chiming in to squash misconceptions. Perhaps it deserves a longer piece on RoK.

It's either low prices and low wages and shitty jobs or higher prices and higher wages and things made in America.


Also, how is it "free trade" with China with they have tariffs?

If it was truly "free trade" that would be an improvement over the managed trade designed to hurt most Americans.

I'm thinking Trumps might become the new president!

Trump Facebook = 6.2 mil
Trump Twitter = 6.7 mil

Clinton Facebook = 2.7 mil
Clinton Twitter = 5.6 mil

The thing about academic economics: how often does that actually work in practice? For example traditional economic theories dictate that Europe should take in as many migrants as possible because of how that impacts the demand curve.

What was the actual result?

(03-07-2016 07:24 PM)Jvramerys Wrote:  Ted Cruz to receive endorsements from... his colleagues in the senate.

Quote:Ted Cruz’s colleagues may loathe him, but they seem to have found somebody they dislike even more.

http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/432...dorsements

Look like the republican establishment will rally behind Cruz, they might hate Cruz but they hate Trump more. The biggest enemy of Trump is the Republican party.

No, it's an ordinary propaganda piece that Cruz has somehow been loathed and hated by establishment. There is no significant conflict between the establishment and Ted Cruz. He has always been their good friend and has received plenty of support from the very beginning.

If he's really some uncontrollable fanatic that everyone hates, then why does he have a $50 million super-PAC? What idiot politician or banker would donate to someone who was really against them?

Or in the words of our 2nd most favorite homosexual:

Let's dispel once and for all with this fiction that the establishment doesn't know what it's doing. It knows exactly what it's doing.
And let's dispel with this fiction that the establishment doesn't know what it's doing. It knows exactly what it's doing.
This notion that the establishment doesn't know what it's doing is just not true. It knows exactly what it's doing.
I think anyone who believes that the establishment isn't doing what it's doing on purpose doesn't understand what we're dealing with here, OK?

(03-07-2016 10:49 PM)Phoenix Wrote:  

(03-07-2016 06:25 PM)el mechanico Wrote:  I agree or maybe we stop the boats and the Chinese junk with a 300% tariff and do the same to Mexico and Canada real fast you'll watch them open factories here real, real fast.

You'd also see people's living standards drop 66%. Why the hell would we want to glue together toys and knit cardigans ourselves when we can get someone else to do it for 1/10th the price? Americans are capable of plenty more valuable things than just factory work, such as designing the stuff that gets sent to the those factories, for instance.

The best scenario is more balanced: minimal, culturally compatible immigration to fill genuine shortages; no tariffs or regulations if possible; tit-for-tat tariffs with specific countries otherwise.

China's currency pegging should certainly be met with retaliation, but it won't be. The peg is maintained by China constantly buying US treasury bonds. The US government might make noise about it, but they aren't honestly going to stop it.

That's one way of imagining it, but the empirical evidence shows otherwise. Before we were blessed with the boundless benefits of cheap foreign made shit we had a robust industrial economy, with plentiful jobs which allowed men with nothing more than a high school diploma to afford a house, a car, and a stay at home wife raising 2-4 kids.

Today, the majority of folks are living paycheck to paycheck and many if not most couples where both the man and woman work can barely afford to pay rent on an apartment, let alone a house and 4 kids.

So please explain in which way the standard of living has increased since the day of the working husband with the white picket fence and two car garage? The folks in the 50's and 60's were able to afford all the amenities which the technology of the time allowed them. They had no computers of Iphags, but that's only because they didn't exist at the time. But they had dishwashers, cars, microwave ovens, television sets, etc, all made in the United States and all affordable on the husband's single factory paycheck.

So if you could have such a high standard of living back in 1960, before the advent of computers, industrial robots, productivity gains from automation, and Chinese made shit, I'm guessing you would have an even higher standard of living today when you add computers, industrial robots, and automation into the mix to raise worker productivity. Just think about it: how is it possible that 1 high school educated man in 1960 could provide a great standard of living to a family of 6 when today 2 working, college educated parents are barely able to survive with a single child? Why haven't standards of living risen despite the huge advances in productivity?

It's precisely because of Chinese made shit, the Chinese made shit that took away those factory jobs and straight out gutted and hollowed out what used to be the world's most robust and vibrant economy. It's not just the jobs that disappeared, the whole economic ecosystem is completely out of whack because only financial machinations are able to keep an economy going despite said economy being wholly dependent on overseas manufactured goods. The loss of value generating activity in the country is also the reason why we will soon be washed away by a 300m high Tsunami of crashing deleveraging of an ocean of debt. When you don't create anything of value because you don't have any factories but you still consume things of value from factories located elsewhere, this is only possible through taking on debt.

But yes, if you slap tariffs on China and force people to pay $700 instead of $600 for Iphags (labor cost is less than 15% of total cost of manufactured goods) the standard of living will drop by 66%.
People seem to pay way too much attention to the feverish tripe of bought and paid for shills than to what is actually transpiring right before their eyes. Let it not escape you that it is precisely the same people who extol the never ending benefits of unlimited immigration that most fervently push the free trade canard. "We will collapse without Cheap Chinese Shit" is the flip side of the coin from "We will collapse without rapefugees."

Fast Eddie it isn't just because of Chinese shit. Back in the day businesses and employees had a bit of trust and a relationship that let people retire with pensions. That pact has been broken and because businessss don't give a fuck, you have what you have. But this selfish and aggressive behavior is evidenced by our culture. Compare the incredibly self absorbed and angry music of today with the music of the past. It is cultural.

If there wasn't this greed then the politicians, who are controlled by the wealthy, would make smarter laws. But it is the average joe who failed to vote out shitty politicians who has created the mess they are in.

Also part of the reason the economy has gotten harder than the past is home prices. Back in the day a man could work and support his family on one wage. But then people realized if two people worked they could live in a better school district. But in the past if the man lost his job, his wife would find something and they had unemployment and could ride through a tough spot. Now if either lose their jobs they are toast. Also it allowed for one person to be home to take care of kids and parents. It was in a book called the two income trap written by Elizabeth Warren.

So much income is tied up in housing and rent.


On a separate note I think a lot of guys want to support their position by logically ignoring other parts. But all this shit ties together. And few truly understand how everything impacts everything and to what to degree. If anyone does think he has a handle on it all has a pretty big ego I think. Maybe some PHDs may be able to see it all.

(03-08-2016 01:20 AM)muscless Wrote:  I'm thinking Trumps might become the new president!

Trump Facebook = 6.2 mil
Trump Twitter = 6.7 mil

Clinton Facebook = 2.7 mil
Clinton Twitter = 5.6 mil

While I hope this is true. I doubt the dedication of anyone who uses Facebook. They are more concerned about how they look in front of their equally moronic friends on Facebook.

(03-08-2016 03:08 AM)samsamsam Wrote:  Fast Eddie it isn't just because of Chinese shit. Back in the day businesses and employees had a bit of trust and a relationship that let people retire with pensions. That pact has been broken and because businessss don't give a fuck, you have what you have. But this selfish and aggressive behavior is evidenced by our culture. Compare the incredibly self absorbed and angry music of today with the music of the past. It is cultural.

.....

Businesses have always been greedy. The difference is that without open borders and free trade, they were not able to fully exercise their greed because they had no alternative to American workers. There was a certain demand for labor, and a finite supply of it, which dictated the price of that labor. This price, the wages of the American worker, was sufficient to provide the high standard of living I described in my previous post.

The opening of the floodgates to immigrants and to goods from overseas busted open that labor supply and in effect started a trend to global equilibration of wages. You shut the border and slap tariffs on foreign goods and guess what will happen? The effective supply of labor will drop and the wages will rise. Companies will not abandon the American consumer market, still the largest in the world, rather than taking a slight (because labor is a low and ever dropping fraction of total cost of production) hit to profit margins and moving production back to the United States.

(03-08-2016 12:49 AM)ElJefe Wrote:  Yeah, that's a classic misconception.

If the Chinese have, let's say, artificially cheap goods, because the government subsidizes them or they enact laws preventing workers bargaining for higher wages, who does that benefit?

The answer is the American consumer: the good is now cheaper than before, meaning more money for other things!

This means also a factory shuts down somewhere with a big impact on a single community, but the the combined savings of all Americans from cheaper goods is by definition greater than the factory loss.

If you'd step outside of the ivory tower for a moment, you'd know that what you're saying is not true in practice.

Marlboros are $1 a pack in the Philippines. Yet the standard of living is shit for the average person, because they don't have jobs and their wages are terrible.

Almost without exception, the poorer a country is, the lower their cost of living. And vice versa. Anyone who has traveled at all can confirm this.

As their economy improves, their cost of living goes up and improves.

Higher cost of living + higher wages > lower cost of living + lower wages

Quote:The policy challenge is not "How do we stop consumers getting better deals?". The policy challenge is: "how do we make sure the money american consumers save is channelled into new jobs that spur new growth?" and "how do we prevent the collapse of stable, local communities".

Yes, we can figure out how to somehow keep cost of living really low while making wages really high.

Or we can simply bring back jobs for the 25% of Americans who are unemployed, put more money into the economy, and bring everyone's wages and standards of living back up.

(03-07-2016 11:29 PM)Phoenix Wrote:  

(03-07-2016 11:10 PM)rpg Wrote:  We have millions of stupid people in America who can barely push a broom. Let them glue toys together. They will never be tech competent and need something more than leaf blowing.

Easier to stand behind a till or serve coffee than glue toys together.

Except there are plenty of manufacturing jobs that don't involve gluing toys together or knitting cardigans, like working for Ford or Boeing.

Not to mention the through-the-roof unemployment. I'm sure there are plenty of people that would rather work on an assembly line than have no job at all.

B21 naming contest is up. Any Air Force related members who could suggest "Trump"?
http://www.afgsc.af.mil/Library/NametheB...nForm.aspx

(03-08-2016 03:08 AM)samsamsam Wrote:  Also part of the reason the economy has gotten harder than the past is home prices. Back in the day a man could work and support his family on one wage. But then people realized if two people worked they could live in a better school district. But in the past if the man lost his job, his wife would find something and they had unemployment and could ride through a tough spot. Now if either lose their jobs they are toast. Also it allowed for one person to be home to take care of kids and parents. It was in a book called the two income trap written by Elizabeth Warren.

So much income is tied up in housing and rent.

Yeah, it's weird how the industry that employs illegals more than anyone else, also has some of the highest relative prices.

It's almost like it's all some sort of scam...

Just put some solid money on Trump winning Florida and Fagio taking Hawaii. Trumps campaign is at a periodical slump right now so take advantage.

(03-08-2016 03:47 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

B21 naming contest is up. Any Air Force related members who could suggest "Trump"?
http://www.afgsc.af.mil/Library/NametheB...nForm.aspx

Bro, you have to call it the Ivanka. Delivering bombshells with every click of the button.

(03-08-2016 03:47 AM)Handsome Creepy Eel Wrote:  

B21 naming contest is up. Any Air Force related members who could suggest "Trump"?
http://www.afgsc.af.mil/Library/NametheB...nForm.aspx

If Trump doesn't get elected, they should name it Cuck. A high-tech specialized weapons platform dedicated to spreading cuckness around the world. Designed to be used as a last resort only, if subversion by sponsoring 'independent opposition', gay parades and NGOs doesn't work.

The name would even fit the lineage somewhat:

B-1 Lancer
B-2 Spirit
B-21 Cuck

Borders get opens by influential businesses and powerful interests. You can't say if they didn't open the Borders it wouldn't be so bad. Of course the business will do what they can to open them. Why wouldn't they? Of course the prisoners want the prison doors open and the guards gone. Why wouldn't they.

Am I missing something here? Because it seems like these conversations are very narrow in focus. You can't say well if we didn't just open the borders. Then life would be good. If only girls were not attention whores and ate too many carbs then everything would be good. Maybe I am just missing it and that is fine. My focus is to raise my FU money. The thing about these opinions is we have them and some that rail against certain things never go beyond the keyboard.

(03-08-2016 04:59 AM)samsamsam Wrote:  Borders get opens by influential businesses and powerful interests. You can't say if they didn't open the Borders it wouldn't be so bad. Of course the business will do what they can to open them. Why wouldn't they? Of course the prisoners want the prison doors open and the guards gone. Why wouldn't they.

Sure, but this is the Trump thread. It's 700+ pages because we are operating under the assumption Trump is going to lock the inmates back in the asylum and bring the guards back. We are arguing the objective merits of different policy choices. Their objective merits are independent from the likelihood of them actually being implemented.