Trump supporters getting a taste of that "maga" magic.

[ecco]

No, I don't. Because it's nonsensical.

Walmart employees 1,500,000 people in the US. 2.3 million world wide.
The CEO of Walmart made $22.4 million.

The CEO of Walmart made $15 dollars annually for each American employee. $10 per worldwide employee.

Walmart made an annual profit if $6,300 per employee.

Would your "great solution" be to give each worker a $6,300 annual increase and have no profits?
Lower profits = fewer investors = stagnation.

Would your "great solution" be to give each worker a $5,000 annual increase and lose money?

Opinion noted.

"Opinion noted"? Really?
None of the statistics I quoted are "opinions", they are facts.

How about you try to address the facts instead of making flip comments about opinions.

Or is it that you cannot address them without admitting that your ideas are nonsense.

 

[Stevicus]

"Opinion noted"? Really?
None of the statistics I quoted are "opinions", they are facts.

How about you try to address the facts instead of making flip comments about opinions.

Or is it that you cannot address them without admitting that your ideas are nonsense.

Nope, just getting fed up with your unmitigated venom and hostility.

 

[ecco]

Nope, just getting fed up with your unmitigated venom and hostility.

You claim I've addressed you with unmitigated venom and hostility.

Let's first look at the unwarranted and unsupported comments you directed toward me:

• You'll blame US workers for demanding too much money.
• You'll blame the workers and the common people.
• Rich, corporate executives screwing the lower class workers and consumers. This is what you're defending?

You started off on a tirade about the evils of American business executives:

• It's just pure labor exploitation.
• they shouldn't have closed all those steel mills
• it's because the owners demand too much.
• it's the owners who charge too much to feed their own greed.
• It's also the greed of the owners.
• Rich, corporate executives screwing the lower class workers

You posted your easy solutions to the problems:

• steel manufacturers in Pennsylvania could lower their prices to compete better
• they wouldn't necessarily have to pay their workers less.
• Force them to lower their prices and raise wages for their workers
• Force the business owners to pay higher wages, but lower their prices.
• By owners taking less money.

I took the time to research the facts surrounding Executive wages, Corporate profits and employee wages. I used Walmart as an example. I posted facts and statistics showing:

• Even completely eliminating executive wages would only increase worker wages by minute amounts.
• Significantly increasing worker wages would lead to the closing of the company along with the loss of 1.5 million jobs domestically.

You blew it off as opinion. I reminded you that none of the statistics I quoted are "opinions", they are facts.

I asked you to address the facts instead of making flip comments about opinions.


But, going in, I did realize that you wouldn't because you couldn't without admitting that your ideas are nonsense.

To which you responded that you were fed up with my unmitigated venom and hostility!

You have completely exposed yourself as someone who:

• has no grasp of even basic economics.
• has no true understanding of 21st Century reality.
• has no understanding of business.

You are a person who believes there are simplistic solutions to complex problems. There aren't.
You are a person who gets upset when called out on their BS. That probably happens a lot. You should be used to it.

 

[Kangaroo Feathers]

1: Ste


1: Steelworker might not have supposedly IQ of D.Trump but he feels very empathatic [D.T as businessman will get profit out of this IMO]
2: I am a vegan and love animals, so the higher the price humans have to pay, the better I'd say [D.T does try to get his pork intake down I read]
3: I only drink water. If higher prices mean people drink less [alcohol] = better health [+D.T reached 1 of His Goals]

Ah. So, basically "I'm alright Jack, stuff the rest of you". How emblematic.

 

[Kangaroo Feathers]

Nope, just getting fed up with your unmitigated venom and hostility.

Pointing out facts that contradict one's world view is not inherently hostile. Can you point to any factual errors in what he said?

 

[Stevicus]

Pointing out facts that contradict one's world view is not inherently hostile. Can you point to any factual errors in what he said?

I can, but he was doing far more than just "pointing out facts."

I will not be lectured to by those who refuse to post in good faith and choose to make the discussion about me rather than the topic.

 

[stvdv]

Ah. So, basically "I'm alright Jack, stuff the rest of you". How emblematic.

That is your interpretation, not what I wrote.

 

[Kangaroo Feathers]

That is your interpretation, not what I wrote.

Seems a pretty fair summation to me. If you disagree, tell me why. I'm not going to play "imply then deny" with you.

 

[Kangaroo Feathers]

I can, but he was doing far more than just "pointing out facts."

I will not be lectured to by those who refuse to post in good faith and choose to make the discussion about me rather than the topic.

Well, I hope you think I'm posting in good faith. So what points did he raise that you believe are factually incorrect?

 

[Underhill]

Well, that's good.

But a picture is worth a thousand words:

It's clear that back in the 50s and 60s, the US economy was more solid. It was a period of enormous economic growth and great improvement over what previous generations had. Now we're going in reverse, and it's due to our own bad choices.



I don't see how it would put us in a bad spot, or at least not any worse than we already are.

Yeah but how does the rest of the picture change with tariffs? It (maybe) reduces the trade imbalance while driving up prices which reduces consumers effective spending power. It also means less of the stuff we do make at home being sold abroad. In the end it is a toss up whether there is any positive change at all on the economic front (the vast majority of economist definitely think it will mean a negative change). And that isn't even taking account the impact on foreign relations around the globe.

 

[stvdv]

Seems a pretty fair summation to me. If you disagree, tell me why. I'm not going to play "imply then deny" with you.

I explained in post #10 already.
1: I was just postive about this worker
2: I am vegan. So I feel most happy if humans/animals are not eaten. That's all. My feeling, I don't judge you if you eat. I don't proselytize.
3: I just said I only drink water + I read D.Tump likes not alc because of his past. I don't judge you if you drink alc. Again I don't proselytize.
Trump supporters getting a taste of that "maga" magic.

I just looked at it from the positive side. But of course I understand that others prefer low prices. That's quite obvious. Did not see the need to tell that.

 

[Stevicus]

Well, I hope you think I'm posting in good faith.

You're fine. I have no issue with you. I don't even have a real issue with ecco. It's just like arguing with Revoltingest. Sometimes, when we go at it, we have to sometimes call it quits for a while and cool off.

So what points did he raise that you believe are factually incorrect?

It's mainly how it got started, when he responded to my initial post (post #12), as if he didn't know what I was talking about. I sometimes get chided for making my posts too long, so I don't want to go into a big long spiel. In previous threads, I have taken the time to post the stats and numbers showing the changes in the economy over the past half century or so.

Thing is, I've been against free trade going all the way back to Reagan, so the way he made it into a Trump thing (saying what "Trump would say," as if he's clairevoyant), that got us off to a rough start.

There are others from both sides of the spectrum, both left and right, who have opposed free trade. In fact, when NAFTA was under debate, most of the Democrats were against it, while the Republicans were unanimously for it. If not for Clinton using the party muscle to change Democratic votes in Congress, it never would have been ratified.

In post #43, he said "Americans do not pick crops," which I also know to be untrue. (I would like to see some stats indicating what percentage of farm workers are US citizens versus those who are not.)

In post #44, he went into a pointless digression about golf carts, asking questions which were loaded and disingenuous.

In post #62, he started getting condescending, asking questions like "Is it really that hard to understand," but he was only looking it from a surface level, making it appear very simple even while saying it's complex. In my follow up post (#66), based on his earlier provocative statement that "Americans do not pick crops," I anticipated (perhaps incorrectly) that he would claim that American workers demand too much money, which is why it's much cheaper to import from overseas. I will admit that I do take umbrage whenever people start trashing the working classes or Americans in general. (I don't even know if ecco is American.)

In post #71, he brought up another digression about North Korea. Then in post #73, he stated that my proposals were "nonsensical," but FDR proposed the same thing during WW2. That's what gave us the wherewithal to get through WW2 (as well as the industrial might to supply most of the Allied powers). It also propelled America into one of the most affluent, economic prosperous times in our history during the post-war years. And he says they're "nonsensical."

In the same post, he went into another digression about Walmart, but only mentioning the CEO's salary and comparing it to the line workers. He didn't mention any other executive salaries, and he also failed to mention that the Walton Family's net worth is somewhere around $145 billion (since that would have been inconvenient to his argument). I'm not sure how much Walmart spends on legal fees and other areas not related to paying their workers, but still, to bring up a single executive's salary in a single year and compare it to the combined salaries of their line work force doesn't really appear to tell the whole story, nor is it even relevant to the topic anyway.

I felt that our discussion was going in circles, and there was no real point in continuing.

The idea that free trade benefits America comes straight out of the Chicago School supply-side "trickle down" philosophy, and we also have the past 25 years of free trade, which came with wild promises about how much better off America would be. I have yet to see any evidence that free trade has been beneficial to America one iota - at least not any better than we were before.

On the other hand, FDR's Keynesian New Deal, along with similarly inspired economic programs to get America out of the Depression and (more importantly) through WW2, leading to the greatest economic boom that any country has seen in the history of the world.

That has proven success, and that's what I'm proposing. Free trade has proven to be a dismal failure, except for the wealthiest 1%, but I don't care about them.

Just looking at the results, any reasonable person would reach that conclusion.

And he says that *I* have no grasp on basic economics? That's just way out of line.

We just have different philosophies, he and I. It's not a dispute over facts; it's a dispute over values. I support the working classes, and that's how I can say what I say and have a clear conscience. This isn't about Trump at all. There are higher principles involved.

 

[Stevicus]

Yeah but how does the rest of the picture change with tariffs? It (maybe) reduces the trade imbalance while driving up prices which reduces consumers effective spending power. It also means less of the stuff we do make at home being sold abroad. In the end it is a toss up whether there is any positive change at all on the economic front (the vast majority of economist definitely think it will mean a negative change). And that isn't even taking account the impact on foreign relations around the globe.

There may be some slight adjustments to endure. I don't see how it would be worse than what working people have had to endure these past years.

I don't believe in trickle-down economics. I think it was a flawed philosophy from the very beginning.

I recall that when they were pushing NAFTA on the public, one stat that kept being repeated was that US tariffs on products from Mexico averaged only 4%, while Mexican tariffs on US products averaged 20%. But no one wanted to address the question why we had unilaterally lowered our trade barriers without demanding that they lower their trade barriers. It should have been reciprocal from the very beginning, but it wasn't, and no one wanted to ask why.

It was the same with Japan. They were dumping products on US markets (without trade barriers), yet they still had tariffs on US products. (That eventually changed somewhat, but the Japanese were resisting it every step of the way.)

These countries were taking advantage of weaknesses within the US political structure, so I never considered their actions or attitudes to be friendly to the United States. It was a bad deal for the US overall, so now that Trump wants to negotiate a better deal for American interests, they're all upset and crying foul. They've had it so good for so long, that they don't want it to end. It's understandable that they would feel that way, but if it impacts on foreign relations, then they're as much to blame for it as anyone else.

All I want is a better deal for Americans. What's so wrong about that?

 

[Underhill]

There may be some slight adjustments to endure. I don't see how it would be worse than what working people have had to endure these past years.

I don't believe in trickle-down economics. I think it was a flawed philosophy from the very beginning.

I recall that when they were pushing NAFTA on the public, one stat that kept being repeated was that US tariffs on products from Mexico averaged only 4%, while Mexican tariffs on US products averaged 20%. But no one wanted to address the question why we had unilaterally lowered our trade barriers without demanding that they lower their trade barriers. It should have been reciprocal from the very beginning, but it wasn't, and no one wanted to ask why.

It was the same with Japan. They were dumping products on US markets (without trade barriers), yet they still had tariffs on US products. (That eventually changed somewhat, but the Japanese were resisting it every step of the way.)

These countries were taking advantage of weaknesses within the US political structure, so I never considered their actions or attitudes to be friendly to the United States. It was a bad deal for the US overall, so now that Trump wants to negotiate a better deal for American interests, they're all upset and crying foul. They've had it so good for so long, that they don't want it to end. It's understandable that they would feel that way, but if it impacts on foreign relations, then they're as much to blame for it as anyone else.

All I want is a better deal for Americans. What's so wrong about that?

But in both examples these trade deals, which Trump wants to throw out, changed that disparity and created a more equitable tariff structure. Mexicans were not, and still aren't in many cases, fans of nafta either as it caused many of their farmers to struggle to compete with US farmers due to the reduced tariffs on US goods entering their country.

A better deal for some Americans is a worse deal for someone else. You do not get something for nothing. We raise tariffs on steel and China and Europe raises Tariffs on US cars, an industry that employs more people than steel. How is that a better deal? In the end it just creates more instability. Who will come out ahead is hard to foresee but China is holding many more cards, and is in a much better position economically (in relation to debt primarily) than we are. I struggle to see how we win a trade war with China, Europe and even Canada.

 

[Stevicus]

But in both examples these trade deals, which Trump wants to throw out, changed that disparity and created a more equitable tariff structure. Mexicans were not, and still aren't in many cases, fans of nafta either as it caused many of their farmers to struggle to compete with US farmers due to the reduced tariffs on US goods entering their country.

It's true that workers in other countries might also feel like they're getting screwed. That's the other shoe that has yet to drop. The disparity between rich and poor is even greater in countries like Mexico. The kind of exploitation that's enabled by free trade is going to have long-term ramifications and generations of resentment against the countries and ruling classes which have benefited.

A better deal for some Americans is a worse deal for someone else. You do not get something for nothing. We raise tariffs on steel and China and Europe raises Tariffs on US cars, an industry that employs more people than steel. How is that a better deal? In the end it just creates more instability. Who will come out ahead is hard to foresee but China is holding many more cards, and is in a much better position economically (in relation to debt primarily) than we are. I struggle to see how we win a trade war with China, Europe and even Canada.

Well, maybe the idea of "winning" a trade war is beside the point. We don't need to "win" a trade war as long as we are capable of making enough stuff to supply our own country. The only thing that we should import without tariffs are those things we can not mine nor grow in the United States in sufficient quantities. Anything that can be manufactured, can be manufactured here. Recalling your earlier point about automation, the work can be done by robots. That may not have a direct benefit to the displaced workers (who can be helped in other ways), but at least it would be a better deal for America overall.