US Politics: Free Trade, Freer Trade, and Nuclear War

[IamMe90]

29 minutes ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

South Carolina hasn't been sure about this whole "Union" thing for at least 200 years.  They are not about to start being comfortable now.  It just wouldn't be "them."

This point was made up thread but that is true on both sides of the aisle.  We excuse behavior of people in our in-group that we would not of people who are outside of it.  Trump is an extreme example of this because his behavior is so extreme.  

While this is true, it's totally disproportionate with the modern right. I saw plenty of calls for Franken's resignation from and still see many on the left criticizing Bill for his shit, for instance, whereas you saw near-silence on the right when it came to Roy Moore, Rob Porter, etc, etc. 

[Kalbear]

44 minutes ago, IamMe90 said:

While this is true, it's totally disproportionate with the modern right. I saw plenty of calls for Franken's resignation from and still see many on the left criticizing Bill for his shit, for instance, whereas you saw near-silence on the right when it came to Roy Moore, Rob Porter, etc, etc. 

Now this is accurate. For the most part (again with Haidt/moral theory stuff) as long as someone is part of their ingroup, they get defended better as a Republican than a Democrat. We saw this behavior when Republicans hated Trump but coalesced around him once he became the main guy, and we see it constantly in forgiving moral failings that are condemned in Democrats galore.

This, of course, bugs the everloving fuck out of liberals, because it hits them in their anger/fairness morality vibe, and that's one of the two biggest things liberals in the US have. So Republicans call out Obama for small shit, Trump does something way worse, they excuse it, and Democrats are all 'hypocritical much'? Which doesn't matter in the least to the Republicans. 

A better way to deal with it is that you have to frame it as far as policy you support goes. Franken was consumed by scandal, but more problematically he was a senior leader of a group which has a lot of policy around women's rights. That doesn't really work well. 

[Gone and Quite Forgotten]

1 hour ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

South Carolina hasn't been sure about this whole "Union" thing for at least 200 years.  They are not about to start being comfortable now.  It just wouldn't be "them."

This point was made up thread but that is true on both sides of the aisle.  We excuse behavior of people in our in-group that we would not of people who are outside of it.  Trump is an extreme example of this because his behavior is so extreme.  

Hardly to the same degree. Al Franken is gone, Anthony Weiner is in jail, Bill Clinton is a ghost these days.

15 minutes ago, Kalbear said:

This, of course, bugs the everloving fuck out of liberals, because it hits them in their anger/fairness morality vibe, and that's one of the two biggest things liberals in the US have. So Republicans call out Obama for small shit, Trump does something way worse, they excuse it, and Democrats are all 'hypocritical much'? Which doesn't matter in the least to the Republicans. 

I think Republicans (that is to say, elected Republicans or those running for office) probably dislike Trump's behavior for the reaction he's producing in liberal/moderate voters far more than for the actions themselves. It's not just the number of people that hate him, so much as the degree of sheer animosity that he elicits from those who do. Republicans read their Machiavelli, and one thing they have always understood very well is that fear and anger will get people out to the polls like little else. Now a lot of that is being turned against them.

Of course, you'll never hear them admit it. Because pissing off liberals is exactly what a large portion of his base loves so much about him. It all comes around though. We'll see how much applause his trolling gets after November.

[Zorral]

1 hour ago, Tywin et al. said:

While this is certainly true, I do find Republicans to be more egregious about it even prior to Trump. The example I brought up before was comparing Gov. Spitzer and Sen. Vitter. They were effectively guilty of the same behavior, and yet Democrats ran Spitzer out of office while Republicans defended Vitter, reelected him and then nearly made him governor of Louisiana. Now, obviously people can point to the way Democrats rallied around Bill Clinton, and they wouldn't be wrong, but many Democrats have since come forward and said it was a mistake not to force him to resign. Do you think Republicans will say the same thing about Trump in 15 years? 

Recall it was Stormy Daniels who outed Vitter for what is, diapers and all.?  And they still re-elected him!  Spanking with rolled up magazine you all at re-election time?

But you know with faux and sinclair nobody who supports these a$$hole$ even hears about this stuff.

In any case, evidently SC doesn't remember how this worked out the first two times they tried this: Calhoun and Nullification, and Barnwell Rhett in 1860.

Of course, back then Jackson and Lincoln were the POTUSes . . . .

 

 

 

[Jace, Extat]

I keep myself alive with fantasies of Trump rallies in December of 2018 as The Knight of the Long Knives plays out in the National Socialist American Workers Party, leaving Pelosi and her ilk in the gutters where their closeted repressive policies belong.

[OldGimletEye]

5 hours ago, TheKitttenGuard said:

Old habits really do Die Hard.

Quote

So, yeah, South Carolina Republicans have introduced a bill to explore secession from the United States over gun rights. Not joking. 

http://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/382003-south-carolina-house-republicans-introduce-bill-to-consider-secession

I am pretty certain that in ways not immediately apparent, this will essentially reconfirm the extremism of the gun-grabbing liberals.

I think we should pass a:

“Later South Carolina and don’t let the door hit ya on the ass on the way out”  Bill.

See ya South Carolina. Your antics have been gettin' on our nerves for quite awhile now. Can't say we'd be sad to see you go.
 

[Martell Spy]

 

Quote

But if the big-picture indicators are looking a tad better for the GOP, the landscape in terms of individual House races continues to deteriorate as contests firm up. That’s made clear by a fresh analysis from the Cook Political Report, whose House specialist, David Wasserman, is a generally recognized wizard at this stuff. As he explains, a combination of open seats and vulnerable incumbents adds up to a big problem for Republicans under current conditions:

 

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/house-midterm-landscape-looks-treacherous-for-the-gop.html

The House Midterm Landscape Is Beginning to Settle – and It Looks Treacherous for the GOP

 

[Martell Spy]

9 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

I think we should pass a:

“Later South Carolina and don’t let the door hit ya on the ass on the way out”  Bill.

See ya South Carolina. 
 

Lincoln will see to them. After he is done slaying vampires.

[TheKitttenGuard]

15 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

I think we should pass a:

“Later South Carolina and don’t let the door hit ya on the ass on the way out”  Bill.

See ya South Carolina. 
 

My sympathies are those of a Unionist in the end for good or ill.

I do wonder if a fly over of some Bombers and Planes will be a 21st equivalent of threat to hang Calhoun from the nearest tree.

 

[OldGimletEye]

1 hour ago, TheKitttenGuard said:

My sympathies are those of a Unionist in the end for good or ill.

So are mine. And Lincoln must be rolling over in his grave now that the South Carolina Republican Party is actin’ like a bunch of Dixiecrats.

But, I have to wonder, what actual “grievances” the South Carolina Republican Party has come up with to justify secession. And it’s probably extremely, extremely stupid. And I have to wonder is it even worth the effort to keep such a group of flamin’ dumb asses in the Union.

[Altherion]

12 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

And it would seem, looking back on things, American policy makers might have been extremely naive or unrealistic in their expectations of Chinese trade policy. They were of course aided and abetted by some economist that preached mindless free trade doctrine in all times and in all context.

Why do you think they were naive or unrealistic? They got exactly what the people who finance their campaigns wanted: dirt cheap labor without any of the protections or benefits present in Western nations. Of course, it would have been even better to get that and unrestricted access to a massive market, but the latter was never on the table.

13 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Also there are productivity gains to made under trade. Once a country is able to build up it’s stock of capital goods and engineering know how, pursing protectionist policies will likely breed inefficiencies and lower growth. And I assume China’s leaders and policy advisers are smart enough to know this.

There's a recent New York Times article that expands upon this point. However, there are at least two issues that I can see. The first is made by a substantial number of commenters of that article: let's say we go back to free trade and we convince the Chinese to open up a bit more. Who in the US would benefit? It would not be the communities devastated by outsourcing. In fact, it would be largely the same people who benefited from outsourcing which is in and of itself an argument to fight against it.

The second one is a bit more subtle: we all know the story of comparative advantage and the rest of reasons why trade is good, but... there's a billion and a half people in China, the vast majority of them work a lot harder than the vast majority of us, they are not ruled by their local capitalists (if the latter don't cooperate with the party, they are sent to prison or worse) and the things we make that they need (e.g. intellectual property) are much more easily stolen than the things we need that they make. It is entirely possible that they decide the advantages due to opening up their markets beyond what they have currently done is simply not worthwhile.

[OldGimletEye]

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

Why do you think they were naive or unrealistic? They got exactly what the people who finance their campaigns wanted: dirt cheap labor without any of the protections or benefits present in Western nations. Of course, it would have been even better to get that and unrestricted access to a massive market, but the latter was never on the table.

Standard trade theory, or at least Heckscher–Ohlin  model does predict distributional effects from free trade. So that part of free trade should have not been unkown or at least anticipated. 

But, it doesn’t predict aggregate job losses or drops in aggregate demand.

Also some policy makers probably believed that displaced workers would easily transition to industries where we have comparative advantage. That didn’t happened as seamlessly has they had hoped.

And as far as the unrealistic thing, I think it was part because they were advised by many economist who really believed in free trade at all times and in all context. I think now, while free trade is generally looked on positively most of the time, many are starting to question mindless free trade dogma. Views are starting to become more nuanced about it, than say in 2001.

1 hour ago, Altherion said:

There's a recent New York Times article that expands upon this point. However, there are at least two issues that I can see. The first is made by a substantial number of commenters of that article: let's say we go back to free trade and we convince the Chinese to open up a bit more. Who in the US would benefit? It would not be the communities devastated by outsourcing. In fact, it would be largely the same people who benefited from outsourcing which is in and of itself an argument to fight against it.

The second one is a bit more subtle: we all know the story of comparative advantage and the rest of reasons why trade is good, but... there's a billion and a half people in China, the vast majority of them work a lot harder than the vast majority of us, they are not ruled by their local capitalists (if the latter don't cooperate with the party, they are sent to prison or worse) and the things we make that they need (e.g. intellectual property) are much more easily stolen than the things we need that they make. It is entirely possible that they decide the advantages due to opening up their markets beyond what they have currently done is simply not worthwhile.

If you had read or maybe you did read some of the stuff I’ve been posting, you would have gotten the point that in the future China is likely to have more much more consumption in the future. They won’t be able to pursue their high savings and high export strategy in the future, effectively exporting savings the future to the United States. Chinese leaders know it and they have talked about it. When that happens the United States is likely to start export more in the future to China, closing the trade gap.

In short, Trump is largely fighting a war that is in the past. That is largely a major point of my prior post.

Now, what I am further saying is that it shouldn’t have been surprising, now that China would pursue the strategy they did. And in fact, we probably ought to allow developing nations to use such a strategy to develop their countries, at least for awhile. And had we the US been realistic about it, we might have had better economic policies or macro policies to counter it. I’m not into the economic warfare that Trump seems to like. I think the leaders of a country have a legitimate right to pursue policies that will benefit their own people, so long of course they don’t tramp on the rights of people of other nations. Now, the fact that China pursued a somewhat protectionist policy didn’t have to be a losing proposition for the US. Remember all that savings means we can borrow cheaply, offsetting any demand side losses from the trade. And of course some of the money could have been used to help workers find jobs elsewhere.

Now if you want to be critical of American Policy maker’s choices over the last 16 years or so, then fine by me. I think there is a lot to question. 

But, what Trump is doing now, isn’t going to fix any damage that was done, and what China is going to do in the future isn’t likely to be what it did in the past.

And if you think this offers much of a bone to Trump support you’d be wrong. The fact of the matter is that while free trade may have made wealth inequality a bit worse, it’s not the full story. And if wealth inequality is your thing, than on the whole Trump’s other policies make it worse.

[Shryke]

4 hours ago, Mlle. Zabzie said:

This point was made up thread but that is true on both sides of the aisle.  We excuse behavior of people in our in-group that we would not of people who are outside of it.  Trump is an extreme example of this because his behavior is so extreme.  

This is far too simplistic though. It's like the difference between forgiving someone for shoplifting and forgiving someone for being a serial child rapist. The degrees of difference here matter a lot, which was my entire point. Kalbear's attempt to equate Clinton to Trump is just laughable.

[Kalbear]

I'm not equating Trump to clinton at all. I'm saying simply that as far as policy goes Trump is great for republicans, and if anything the problem has been Congress. And just like Clinton, it makes rational sense to support him even with all the horrible personal things he does because you get what you want. 

And most democrats still support bill clinton despite the fairly bad accusations and behavior he did. is he worse or equal to Trump? no, but it doesn't matter. At this point we are just haggling about the price. 

[lokisnow]

2 hours ago, Shryke said:

This is far too simplistic though. It's like the difference between forgiving someone for shoplifting and forgiving someone for being a serial child rapist. The degrees of difference here matter a lot, which was my entire point. Kalbear's attempt to equate Clinton to Trump is just laughable.

As someone who grew up in a midwestern evangelical church I can tell you that it is explicitly preached that there is no difference between a white lie and murder (these are worldly distinctions); and one is absolutely required to give unconditional forgiveness to anyone in the in-group who asks for said forgiveness (because god would give it so must we), regardless of how one’s doubts or misgivings about the sincerity of the repenter making the request.

now if someone is an obvious outgroup in human monster like bill clinton, no forgiveness was asked for, instead you just see the devil hisself trying to squirm and word weasel his way out (instead of just askin for forgiveness(as ya know the devil hates forgiveness which why he didn’t ask for none)) which is proof of his guilt dontchaknow and also proof that he isn’t repentant, and therefor is evil and happy about it.

Not that any of this applies to trump since he will never admit wrong. But he’s been adopted into the group and now the indoctrination of the group means that as a leader and honorary member he’s going to receive benefits from that path dependency on unconditional forgiveness.

its probably not a question being polled, but I bet that a lot of evangelicals who voted for Trump sincerely believe they remember him asking for public forgiveness for at least one scandal, because everyone in their in group is always asking for forgiveness so surely Great Leader has as well, right?

[OldGimletEye]

Man oh man, the libertarian overlords are really going to hate this one.

https://www.vox.com/2018/4/6/17086720/poll-corporate-board-democracy-worker-council-codetermination-union-labor

Quote

In March, Sen. Tammy Baldwin (D-WI) proposed a big idea to try to make the economy fairer: requiring public companies to let their workers directly elect one-third of the corporate board’s members.

That might sound radical. But Americans largely support the idea. A poll of more than 3,300 American likely voters by Civis Analytics finds that a majority (53 percent) would support allowing employees at large companies to elect representatives to those companies’ boards of directors, thus giving employees a direct, democratic say in how the company is run.

 

Quote

Arguably the most aggressive and well-developed codetermination system is that of Germany. Typically, German companies have two boards: an executive board composed of the CEO and other senior executives, and a supervisory board representing both workers and shareholders, fulfilling a similar role to corporate boards in the US.

And by the way, in deciding what corporate tax rates should be, institutional arrangements like this probably matter.

[LongRider]

7 hours ago, lokisnow said:

As someone who grew up in a midwestern evangelical church I can tell you that it is explicitly preached that there is no difference between a white lie and murder (these are worldly distinctions); and one is absolutely required to give unconditional forgiveness to anyone in the in-group who asks for said forgiveness (because god would give it so must we), regardless of how one’s doubts or misgivings about the sincerity of the repenter making the request.

~~~snip~~~

Wow, this explains a lot, thanks.

[Gone and Quite Forgotten]

12 hours ago, Kalbear said:

And most democrats still support bill clinton despite the fairly bad accusations and behavior he did.. 

I think his proximity certainly hurt Hillary Clinton in the last election.

[Altherion]

15 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

If you had read or maybe you did read some of the stuff I’ve been posting, you would have gotten the point that in the future China is likely to have more much more consumption in the future. They won’t be able to pursue their high savings and high export strategy in the future, effectively exporting savings the future to the United States. Chinese leaders know it and they have talked about it. When that happens the United States is likely to start export more in the future to China, closing the trade gap.

I agree with you that China will eventually have more consumption (it's either that or it falls apart or they succeed in building The Hive). The part I don't see as inevitable (or even particularly likely) is that they will start importing significantly more stuff from the US. They're large enough and produce enough to satisfy the demand mostly from internal production. Of course, they will still import some things from us and probably more than they were importing before, but not enough to make a difference to us.

15 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

In short, Trump is largely fighting a war that is in the past. That is largely a major point of my prior post.

This part is true. It's a fairly classic action in that he's doing something that his base has been clamoring for, but it's something that will no longer make much of a difference.

7 hours ago, OldGimletEye said:

Man oh man, the libertarian overlords are really going to hate this one.

https://www.vox.com/2018/4/6/17086720/poll-corporate-board-democracy-worker-council-codetermination-union-labor

And by the way, in deciding what corporate tax rates should be, institutional arrangements like this probably matter.

Something like this would make a difference, but it's not happening in the US.

[Shryke]

13 hours ago, Kalbear said:

I'm not equating Trump to clinton at all. I'm saying simply that as far as policy goes Trump is great for republicans, and if anything the problem has been Congress. And just like Clinton, it makes rational sense to support him even with all the horrible personal things he does because you get what you want. 

And most democrats still support bill clinton despite the fairly bad accusations and behavior he did. is he worse or equal to Trump? no, but it doesn't matter. At this point we are just haggling about the price. 

No, it does matter. That's the point. Your "just haggling about the price" is as bullshit as the anecdote the quote comes from and missing the point just as hard. The difference matters. A lot.

I mean, Donald Trump is President right now. Franken isn't even a Senator. And you can't tell me Franken wasn't doing his part to get the policies his supporters wanted.