Politics

[tigris115]

I found this and wanna see what opinions are about the presidents we've had.
If you need any help, just ask me.

https://tiermaker.com/create/the-presidents-of-the-united-states-3847

 

[tarbe]

I think it's less draining the swamp and more trimming the fat.

I am thinking you need to do the first item, before you'll have any luck with the second!

 

[Royal27]

Chinese Factory Output Plummets – Total Jan/Feb Exports Drop 17.2% and Worsening…

Posted on March 7, 2020 by sundance
Most people are aware the Wuhan coronavirus has become an economic contagion within China. However, the scale of the contraction is only now being quantified and the data doesn’t match the visible reality.

When evaluating the data showing drops in exports from China is worthwhile to consider the lack of visible supply-chain disruption formerly predicted by global economic “analysts”. According to Reuters; to the extent data can be gathered from within a closed communist system; total exports from China dropped 17.2% in January and February.



The lack of factory production has cut the estimated growth rate within China by half. However, is that a cause? – or – Is that a cover? For decades corporations have moved to a supply chain process known as Just-In-Time (JIT) inventory.

If Chinese component manufactured goods were part of a critical corporate supply chain, and with more than 30-days of source disruption quantified, there would be impacts by now. Where are the crippled customers? There are no measurable, demonstrable, citations for missing component parts making downstream finished goods impossible. There are lots of anticipatory declarations, but no shortage has materialized.


(Reuters) – China’s exports contracted sharply in the first two months of the year, and imports slowed, as the health crisis triggered by the coronavirus outbreak caused massive disruptions to business operations, global supply chains and economic activity.

The gloomy trade report is likely to reinforce fears that China’s economic growth halved in the first quarter to the weakest since 1990 as the epidemic and strict government containment measures crippled factory production and led to a sharp slump in demand.

Overseas shipments fell 17.2% in January-February from the same period a year earlier, customs data showed on Saturday, marking the steepest fall since February 2019.

[…] Imports sank 4% from a year earlier, but were better than market expectations of a 15% drop. They had jumped 16.5% in December, buoyed in part by a preliminary Sino-U.S. trade deal.

[…] Soybean imports in the first two months of 2020 rose by 14.2% year-on-year as cargoes from the U.S. booked during a trade truce at the end of 2019 cleared customs. (read more)

Considering the previous questions; and evaluating what is visible – not theoretical; it seems far more likely the greatest impact from any Wuhan virus is an economic contagion internal to China.

Extending common sense, it seems more likely that Chinese consumption has stalled and dropped internal factory output, not necessarily a lack of export customers. If the world was dependent on Chinese exports that have stopped, we would see these downstream consequences in real terms of missing products; right now. That is not happening.

However, if you consider that we are in year #3 of President Trump’s maximum pressure campaign against China; and you evaluate the numerous multinational moves that took place to avoid the preceding and purposeful Trump tariffs; there’s a strong argument to be made that China’s current condition is less about Wuhan, and more an outcome of visible consequence from the internal void created by Trump’s trade strategy.

There’s not enough solid data to gauge, and it doesn’t help when analysts are over-emphasizing the minutia, but it appears to me that what’s being reported within China, about China, is more about their own economic contraction than any adverse external influence upon their largely closed system.

If I’m right, China’s lack of internal consumption is the major influence contracting their economy; and the ‘lack of exports’ are being overblown to hide that internal contraction.

The internal contraction would be a natural outcome of President Trump’s confrontation with their economic model, which was indeed heavily dependent on exports. No-one has been able to gauge an accurate number of multinationals who shifted their manufacturing as a consequence of Trump’s confrontation with Xi Jinping; but it would make sense the shift in manufacturing would be a direct impact inside China, starting an internal set of economic dominoes falling in a specific sequence, which would ultimately lead to a drop in Chinese workers being spend their wages.

Under this scenario the Coronavirus becomes a good cover story to explain an economic contraction that is actually not related…



PS. Brazil is visiting Trump at Mar-a-lago. Brazil is #2 in the world in the production of soybeans. Brazil is also in BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).

 

[tigris115]

I am thinking you need to do the first item, before you'll have any luck with the second!

Same difference. Personally, I'd start by heavily restricting lobbying

 

[Royal27]

Same difference. Personally, I'd start by heavily restricting lobbying

No, it isn't the same difference.

Tell me how you plan to heavily restrict lobbying when its the people who are getting rich from the lobbyists who would have to actually make a law against it.

Gotta expose the corruption, and drain it, before you have any chance of cutting the fat.

 

[tarbe]

Same difference. Personally, I'd start by heavily restricting lobbying

How about we start with term limits?

Then enforce the death penalty against politicians caught working for the lobbyists instead of the people?

Ok, maybe that is too drastic. Let's just cut off an arm.

 

[Ray B]

If a balanced budget was required it would eliminate a lot of the problem.

 

[tigris115]

How about we start with term limits?

For saying that, I'd buy you an ice cream if we weren't 2 online strangers in different parts of this massive country. If I ever bump into you irl, just remind me and it's a deal.

 

[sgt_zim]

Thanks for the book recommendations. Also, I like to ask questions about what other countries are doing with their healthcare, be it with lots of or little to no government involvement, because I like to look at them all and cross compare. I do agree with you that the government is mainly at fault here, especially with how the ACA turned into an expensive, incompetent mess.

However, I do think that finding solutions for those in poverty is important, because if you can get people out of the threshold of survival, they will become much more productive citizens. Obviously, Bernie's proposals won't work for diddly squat but I think that it's something worth thinking about.

There is no solution to poverty. Poverty is the natural state of man. It has no cause. Wealth is created by productive endeavors. Government consumes wealth. When it consumes wealth at a rate greater than people who have few or no productive skills can generate it, they stay in penury, and the numbers in penury grow.

The essential for wealth generation and accumulation is respect for private property. The Soviet Union never had prosperity because the communists do not believe in private property at all. Somalia is a shit-hole for the exact same reason - there is general absence of respect for private property. They believe, as did monarchies and theocracies and other oligarchies of days past believed: wealth is a thing to be stolen at sword-point, or inherited, or whatever. For the first time in world history, at least on a sizable scale, the philosophy of the US was that wealth is something to be created. It was in the United States that the idea of "making money" was born. Wealth is a product of man's mind. Man's mind, when left free, will experiment, and take risks in order to provide things his fellow man is willing to trade him for what their own minds dared to dream and achieve.

If you really want to solve the problem of poverty in this country (what little of it there really is), it starts and ends with rolling back government to a point where its primary function is as protector of private property rights. Everything else is just whistling past the graveyard.

 

[Wheels]

There is no solution to poverty. Poverty is the natural state of man. It has no cause. Wealth is created by productive endeavors. Government consumes wealth. When it consumes wealth at a rate greater than people who have few or no productive skills can generate it, they stay in penury, and the numbers in penury grow.

The essential for wealth generation and accumulation is respect for private property. The Soviet Union never had prosperity because the communists do not believe in private property at all. Somalia is a shit-hole for the exact same reason - there is general absence of respect for private property. They believe, as did monarchies and theocracies and other oligarchies of days past believed: wealth is a thing to be stolen at sword-point, or inherited, or whatever. For the first time in world history, at least on a sizable scale, the philosophy of the US was that wealth is something to be created. It was in the United States that the idea of "making money" was born. Wealth is a product of man's mind. Man's mind, when left free, will experiment, and take risks in order to provide things his fellow man is willing to trade him for what their own minds dared to dream and achieve.

If you really want to solve the problem of poverty in this country (what little of it there really is), it starts and ends with rolling back government to a point where its primary function is as protector of private property rights. Everything else is just whistling past the graveyard.

Excellent post!

 

[tarbe]

Excellent post!

It sure is!

Without private property rights (and its brother, respect for contract law) commerce and wealth-building amongst the masses would all but cease. Who would bother?

Only the armed thugs would prosper.

 

[tigris115]

No, it isn't the same difference.

Tell me how you plan to heavily restrict lobbying when its the people who are getting rich from the lobbyists who would have to actually make a law against it.

Gotta expose the corruption, and drain it, before you have any chance of cutting the fat.

I meant same difference more in that I thought both phrases were meant to describe ridding the government of all the stuff that makes it crap.

 

[tigris115]

There is no solution to poverty. Poverty is the natural state of man. It has no cause. Wealth is created by productive endeavors. Government consumes wealth. When it consumes wealth at a rate greater than people who have few or no productive skills can generate it, they stay in penury, and the numbers in penury grow.

The essential for wealth generation and accumulation is respect for private property. The Soviet Union never had prosperity because the communists do not believe in private property at all. Somalia is a shit-hole for the exact same reason - there is general absence of respect for private property. They believe, as did monarchies and theocracies and other oligarchies of days past believed: wealth is a thing to be stolen at sword-point, or inherited, or whatever. For the first time in world history, at least on a sizable scale, the philosophy of the US was that wealth is something to be created. It was in the United States that the idea of "making money" was born. Wealth is a product of man's mind. Man's mind, when left free, will experiment, and take risks in order to provide things his fellow man is willing to trade him for what their own minds dared to dream and achieve.

If you really want to solve the problem of poverty in this country (what little of it there really is), it starts and ends with rolling back government to a point where its primary function is as protector of private property rights. Everything else is just whistling past the graveyard.

This may seem wildly off topic from the post above me but I think this is why we need to advertise vocational schools more. I think that if more people knew about them, we'd see more people being able to make their own money. After all, everyone from paupers to princes needs an electrician or a plumber. I can safely say that the pressure the government puts on students to slog through standardized tests just for a degree they may not even use is pure sadism that only benefits an outdated orthodoxy. The more autonomy people have with their lives, the better it will be for everyone because then, you don't have people used to being henpecked by the man into submission, rather, you have strong, independent citizens.

 

[Ray B]

There is no solution to poverty. Poverty is the natural state of man. It has no cause.

Sort of.

Poverty and Wealthy are just relative measures on the material scale. In order for there to be poverty there must be material to lack. Having the existence of material and a supply that is finite will result in inequity of ownership. Prior to the invention of X, no one knew they didn't have it so no one was poorer because they didn't have it. But once X was invented and it was accessible to anyone that had means to obtain it, then there were those that didn't have it, so one had it, one didn't have it, so one was rich and one was poor.

With the industrial revolution many Xs were invented and became commonplace. So if someone didn't have one they were considered deprived even though the same person may have more of other things than he/she did prior to the IR and prior to IR they weren't considered as poor.

so poverty is relative, basically it's the distance between what society determines is a normal accumulation of Xs and the amount a person has accumulated. If the accumulated amount is less than normal the person is considered poor, if more then the person is considered rich.


120 years ago a rich person had many possessions but would not have owned indoor plumbing, an automobile, a radio, television, computer or access to the Internet. Today someone is considered deprived and law enforcement will get involved to force the availability of some of those things.

Schemes have been tried to take from those that have more than what society deems appropriate to give to those that have less. No one has come up with an idea that provides that goal without a host of consequences that cause the reduction of Xs in all. Generally those plans that involve the government in such redistribution efforts have resulted in the opposite.

 

[tigris115]

With that said, there are definite markers of poverty such as food insecurity (a paradoxic catalyst in obesity in America) and poor living conditions. My idea is similar to what communities funded by safari hunting do, that is to create local grassroots initiatives.

 

[tarbe]

This may seem wildly off topic from the post above me but I think this is why we need to advertise vocational schools more. I think that if more people knew about them, we'd see more people being able to make their own money. After all, everyone from paupers to princes needs an electrician or a plumber. I can safely say that the pressure the government puts on students to slog through standardized tests just for a degree they may not even use is pure sadism that only benefits an outdated orthodoxy. The more autonomy people have with their lives, the better it will be for everyone because then, you don't have people used to being henpecked by the man into submission, rather, you have strong, independent citizens.

I wonder how much of the $1.5T in student load debt can be directly attributed to the Feds taking over another aspect of our economy and then throwing money at it, creating more demand for a limited resource, running prices up, repeat.....

And people want more of this?

 

[tarbe]

This may seem wildly off topic from the post above me but I think this is why we need to advertise vocational schools more.

I am all for the above...but we will have to do something about the low-wage illegals here that are doing much of this work now (speaking as one who lives in South Texas and would bet that a materially significant percentage of blue collar work is being done by folks here illegally).

I don't believe the majority of our elected officials want to do anything about that issue...

 

[LivingTheDream]

The student debt is 90% the federal government fault. Just the fact they will give anyone a loan, for whatever degree, for whatever time period, with no skin in the game is insane. It is a horrible business practice!

Furthermore, kids are not taught economics in school and have no business sense and a loser guidance counselor tells them this is the way. So they sign up and off they go to get a degree in something that makes them "happy" and has no real world practice.

 

[sgt_zim]

No, not sort of. It's the default state. If one does nothing, one will have nothing. If one produces something, but it is taken from him by force or coercion, he has nothing. Call it the "absolute zero" of poverty. That state still exists in the world today, and if not for a great deal of charity, those people living at that level would have starved to death long ago.

Asking "what is causing poverty" is the wrong question (I know you didn't ask it, @Ray B , but lots of people do). The better question, the right question, is "what is the cause of wealth?".

Perhaps I'm splitting hairs, but poverty isn't relative; however, wealth certainly is. Most "poor" Americans would be quite shocked to learn that if they're making about $35K a year, they're in the top 1% of income earners in the entire world. Money isn't wealth, but it allows its owner to acquire wealth - those things which, in our own judgment, make our lives more comfortable and meaningful. More, money doesn't buy anything. It is the output of productive effort which is ultimately used to buy things. Money is only the medium used to exchange those productive outputs. Commerce can occur without money (barter is terribly inefficient, after all, but it still works), but it cannot occur without lots of productive output.

These government schemes to redistribute wealth are doomed to failure because they are immoral. Even under the color of law, taking (by force or coercion) the productive outputs of one man and giving them to another man who didn't earn them is still theft.

 

[Hogpatrol]

I perused the majors available at the University of Delaware. Probably half or more of them are useless in today's job market. I mean a degree in "hip hop"? You gotta be fkn kidding me.

https://www.udel.edu/apply/undergraduate-admissions/major-finder/africana-studies/