The News Thread
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Blurry_Dreams
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Blurry_Dreams
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Dak
mentat
HamburgerBoy
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He would have been a good open-border liberal in a world where we didn't have a massive entitlement state.
Oblivious Maximus
I am the worm
HamburgerBoy
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CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
HamburgerBoy
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CiG
Approximately Infinite Universe
EternalMetal
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This is local news for me, and I still call bullshit. There are enough legitimate landscapers around here that can and do only hire documented workers. I will admit that the majority of the workers are Mexican immigrants, and there are a fair amount of illegals doing work here, but I also know many crews with white guys as well (a friend of mine mows lawns). We do not need undocumented workers in order to satisfy the demand. The only reason why a lot of landscaping crews hire illegals is so that they don't have to pay our extreme NJ taxes. Malinowski is a fucking rat and so is governor Murphy.
HamburgerBoy
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When I was a kid we had this older Scottish guy as a landscaper. He was kind of the anti-Groundskeeper Willie, fat jolly Santa Claus-esque character. A lot of Vietnamese landscapers that I remember seeing as a kid as well back when San Diego was still 90% non-Hispanic white. I think today a lot of the Hispanic lawn services, i.e. the ones that are formal registered businesses, are probably owned by citizens but some of the labor doesn't seem literate in English, so I imagine it's kind of a hierarchy even within that community. Not sure how many people literally just grab a random group of Mexicans from Home Depot and pay them per-job. iirc the majority of illegal labor is still used in agriculture and slaughterhouses, i.e. big business. Of course, if slaughterhouses were forced to pay a competitive wage, you'd see meat prices skyrocket.
Dak
mentat
Dak
mentat
https://www.cnn.com/2019/08/23/politics/hereby-order-donald-trump/index.html
This article was written either by a child or someone intentionally trying to mislead people. Probably a mix of both. The government can absolutely tell the private sector what to do through various means, wtf is he even going on about. Now, can the President order a company to close up shop in another country? More tricky. But at a minimum, since he can order tariffs, he since he could make tariffs on American companies shipping things back into the country so high it may as well be.
This article was written either by a child or someone intentionally trying to mislead people. Probably a mix of both. The government can absolutely tell the private sector what to do through various means, wtf is he even going on about. Now, can the President order a company to close up shop in another country? More tricky. But at a minimum, since he can order tariffs, he since he could make tariffs on American companies shipping things back into the country so high it may as well be.
HamburgerBoy
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It's a simplistic article appropriate for a news agency that actually publishes stories containing "Ugh. Really?", but practically, it's not exactly wrong. Trump has no chance of signing any legislation to move companies out of China. Best chance, aside from tariffs (which come with negative short-term consequences for his election chances), he can try to get the Senate to write some kind of free trade agreement to grant extra favors to China's neighbors, though we've already had free-trade arrangements with countries like Vietnam and Malaysia for over a decade. I don't think the author is wrong in that Trump's threats are toothless. If maybe Trump called out Congressmen and Senators by name for having approved China's most-favored-nation status, or if he had smart people on his team willing to draw up legislation to enact Trump's goals, his threats would carry a lot more weight.
I mean, presidents in general can do very little these days without the approval of a thousand unelected bureaucrats. The presidency has hardly ever been weaker, war powers aside.
I mean, presidents in general can do very little these days without the approval of a thousand unelected bureaucrats. The presidency has hardly ever been weaker, war powers aside.
Dak
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HamburgerBoy
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I did. Tariffs are a risky proposal that American consumers end up paying for. They also make wealthy stockholders jittery and prone to sell-offs and dropping index prices, which causes Trump to whine to the Fed via Twitter. Maybe it will pay off in the long-run, it will take time for competition in Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand, Bangladesh, etcetc to become viable replacements for Chinese goods, but Trump doesn't have that kind of time.
Dak
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You didn't address the China tariff, and I disagree with the rest. Trump is playing a game that must persist into a 2nd term.
HamburgerBoy
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I did
And I don't see how you can disagree that many goods (electronic goods particularly) from China are produced more cheaply than they could be nearly anywhere else in the world right now. If that wasn't an absolute fact, companies like Apple would happily move to the countries where things can be assembled cheaper. Obviously long-term, if looking at the aggregate which includes the wages/jobs of American workers, that is subject to change, and I do agree that Trump's ploy could pay off if he survives 2020.
But I don't think he's playing the game all that well. I generally don't agree with the globohomo types but they were more or less right when they attacked Trump for not defending the Hong Kong protestors. That could have been an easy leverage opportunity for him and a way of forcing moderates into making it a muh democracy vs muh Red China competition, but at least publicly he basically shit on that chance. He could also begin publicly recognizing Taiwan, which even if unofficially would cause heads to spin (remember how much the MSM attacked him for daring to have a phone call with Taiwan weeks into his presidency?). I don't see much evidence that he has plans to change his current one-pronged approach, but I fully admit that he still has a year to pull some ballsier moves like Nixon did in 1972.
And I don't see how you can disagree that many goods (electronic goods particularly) from China are produced more cheaply than they could be nearly anywhere else in the world right now. If that wasn't an absolute fact, companies like Apple would happily move to the countries where things can be assembled cheaper. Obviously long-term, if looking at the aggregate which includes the wages/jobs of American workers, that is subject to change, and I do agree that Trump's ploy could pay off if he survives 2020.
But I don't think he's playing the game all that well. I generally don't agree with the globohomo types but they were more or less right when they attacked Trump for not defending the Hong Kong protestors. That could have been an easy leverage opportunity for him and a way of forcing moderates into making it a muh democracy vs muh Red China competition, but at least publicly he basically shit on that chance. He could also begin publicly recognizing Taiwan, which even if unofficially would cause heads to spin (remember how much the MSM attacked him for daring to have a phone call with Taiwan weeks into his presidency?). I don't see much evidence that he has plans to change his current one-pronged approach, but I fully admit that he still has a year to pull some ballsier moves like Nixon did in 1972.
Dak
mentat
Damn, read right over that line. Apologies. I don't think he has some sort of grand 4D chess strategy, but he isn't falling for globalist economic fallacies, mostly by accident. I do think he's the best worst option other than maybe Gabbard; Yang has been squandering everything.
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