US US Politics General 2 - Discussion of President Trump and other politicians

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Should be a wild four years.

Helpful links for those who need them:

Current members of the House of Representatives
https://www.house.gov/representatives

Current members of the Senate
https://www.senate.gov/senators/

Current members of the US Supreme Court
https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx

Members of the Trump Administration
https://www.whitehouse.gov/administration/

 

[Rick's Beef Wellington]

I know a lot of this site is "lol wut go sportsball yay!" but I can't be the only person who keeps reading Tony Seruga as Tony Siragusa and imagine a fat guy going through cel phone tracking data of protesters with a pile of ribs in front of him.

 

[HOMO FOR LIFE RETURNS]

I'm sure 30-40 year old john doe who works at walmart for minimum wage absolutely loves his job and wouldn't move to a factory for more money.

Imagine if we automate Walmart jobs, you get to do awesome manufacturing, accompanied by no illegals competing for that said job and your wage goes up.

SNAP usages will drop half....maybe completely. Walmart jobs are also subsidizef by SNAP.

The whole system is a fucking scam to destroy American workers and bailout managerial class who contribute nothing and make nothing, sustained by eternal money printing.

 

[Look--an Alien!]

If that is the case then what happened to the promise that tons of high paying factory jobs would be so abundant it would make up for the tariff price increases ?

Right now people want remote work, gen Z especially prefers a flexible schedule and sees 9/5 jobs as a scam. Factory jobs for reasons so obvious I shouldn't have to explain can not be remote and depend on consistent waged labor.

Right? Why didn't those factory jobs magically appear? Why no factories already built? Why no magical wonderful world of fancy where factories grow on trees?

 

[WhiskeyJack]

When I was younger, I stayed away from the markets in times like this, having taken to heart the advice to never attempt to catch a falling knife.

Afterwards, every time I did the math, I found that had I entered the market at its peak before the crash, kept buying, and rode it all the way down, and then all the way back up to the current day, buying all the way I would have made a killing.

I'm feeling mighty tempted to try to catch this falling knife.

I echo that. This is the first time in ages that I've been in a cash position right as a downtrend has happened and I'm really fighting the urge to start buying in again.

This was the song that played when the Narn beat Lord Refa's ass to death after his role in the Narn genocide was uncovered, wasn't it?

Guess it's time for my annual rewatch of the whole series. Good stuff, but Valen help me when I get to the dreadfully dull "Byron's telepaths" plotline in Season 5.

It’s been years since I saw that. I’d have sworn the song was “Sinnerman”, from the end of the Thomas Crowne Affair remake (rare remake that’s better than the original).

My favorite little musical moment of the show was Kosh bringing Sheridan to the secret alien monks.

 

[Glowing In The Streets]

<was nuking the international markets part of your plan?
>of course.
<whats the next step of your master plan?
>crashing this plane
>with no survivors

>mfw I see the markets opening on monday

 

[Buck Broken Chimp]

Right? Why didn't those factory jobs magically appear? Why no factories already built? Why no magical wonderful world of fancy where factories grow on trees?

There is no guarantee the factories will come. No one is expecting them to be built overnight what we are skeptical of is if they will be built at all. Trump is gambling so much on the chance of companies opening factories and hoping they succeed.

 

[BigJoey41X]

America has a 5% unemployment rate. Most of which is kids, retired people and the rest is druggie criminals you don't want to be around. Who is going to work in these factories Trump wants to build ? The birth rate is low so it's not like we have more factory workers coming down the pipes.

Thats the thing the confounds me, who really wants to work in factories with long hours in probably shitty wages unless they literally have no other choice?, do we need to accept more immigrants to make up for this?

In much of the developed world, there's this cultural expectation from society that landing a comfy white collar job means you're successful, to the point that we now have a shortage of blue-collar jobs, even despite having decent or sometimes better salaries than some white-collar professions, its not like you'll be shunned, but there's definitely this undertone people will see you as "lower", "less intelligent", and not as deserving of the same level of respect if you decided on a more physically-laborious career, which is in my opinion is bullshit and we would be better off if we got rid of the stigma.

How can we undo this norm that has developed in the decades following de-industrialization, because this is probably one the biggest hurdles against bringing manufacturing back home?

 

[Rome's rightful successor]

View attachment 7186700

you know, if calling him "literally Hitler" didn't work i doubt downgrading him to "Literally Mussolini" is gonna work either. The left is floundering bros.

link to article

Imagine a scenario where Hitler or Mussolini would time travel to our present and see these protests.

 

[HOMO FOR LIFE RETURNS]

Thats the thing the confounds me, who really wants to work in factories with long hours in probably shitty wages unless they literally have no other choice?, do we need to accept more immigrants to make up for this?

In much of the developed world, there's this cultural expectation from society that landing a comfy white collar job means you're successful, to the point that we now have a shortage of blue-collar jobs, even despite having decent or sometimes better salaries than some white-collar professions, its not like you'll be shunned, but there's definitely this undertone people will see you as "lower", "less intelligent", and not as deserving of the same level of respect if you decided on a more physically-laborious career, which is in my opinion is bullshit and we would be better off if we got rid of the stigma.

How can we undo this norm that has developed in the decades following de-industrialization, because this is probably one the biggest hurdles against bringing manufacturing back home?

Deindustrialization is literally an existential crisis.

Everything you consume has industrial components. From steel to aluminium, every building, every houses and every fabric of our security and prosperity hinges on industries.

You lose every single leverage against the country that produces the said industry. Mainly china. If you have no industry.

They can jack up the prices however they want. They can withhold the product however they want.

Trump is frontrunning the collapsing industry and replacing them with modern factories designed and maintained by blue collar workers with trades like robotic maintenance.

This accompanied by lowest illegal migration in record history, you are building yourself a new era of golden age for American workers.

 

[Betonhaus]

Canada annexation is on the menu right?

I think it is but it's not that high on the to-do list. Plus Trump wants to see how the election plays out first and will try to avoid meddling too much. The Liberal platform is pretty much hating Trump so we'll have to see how that resonates with the people, especially if Trump makes a move that forces Canada to accept that they would implode without America.

 

[Jump]

Trump is gambling so much on the chance of companies opening factories and hoping they succeed.

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

It's better then just sitting around doing nothing and watching everything continue to get worse.

 

[SpergioLeonne]

Imagine if we automate Walmart jobs, you get to do awesome manufacturing, accompanied by no illegals competing for that said job and your wage goes up.

SNAP usages will drop half....maybe completely. Walmart jobs are also subsidizef by SNAP.

The whole system is a fucking scam to destroy American workers and bailout managerial class who contribute nothing and make nothing, sustained by eternal money printing.

If we automate everything and get rid of all jobs, how will you justify your existence?

 

[HOMO FOR LIFE RETURNS]

If we automate everything and get rid of all jobs, how will you justify your existence?

Do you think you’re going to be one of the few globohomo overlords with a bunch of machines making you whatever you want?

First, you’re a faggot. Second, working in a factory will come closer to justifying your existence than some desk job that AI is currently obsoleting. You might pick up some mechanical aptitude in a factory and be spared to help with robot maintenance

But anyways, if you do -nothing- to impede efficiency, then all the money eventually ends up in one account that owns everything.

So stop being smug

Without workers, these factories collapse. Don't be retarded. Having them in America is a bigger leverage for Americans than having them in fucking Vietnam.

 

[SpergioLeonne]

Without workers, these factories collapse. Don't be retarded. Having them in America is a bigger leverage for Americans than having them in fucking Vietnam.

I deleted all of that because I leapt way ahead and thought you were saying something you weren’t from the first sentence.

I apologize. I’m over tired

Also I’m a third generation factory worker living in the Merrimack Valley where every city is a mill town from America’s Industrial Revolution. I’m like as pro American manufacturing as it’s possible to be

 

[mlanguishi]

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take.

It's better then just sitting around doing nothing and watching everything continue to get worse.

As BMJ says, don't be a pussy, bet it all.

 

[BigJoey41X]

There is no guarantee the factories will come. No one is expecting them to be built overnight what we are skeptical of is if they will be built at all. Trump is gambling so much on the chance of companies opening factories and hoping they succeed.

This is probably the biggest gamble the United States has done for itself since the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the fate of humanity was quite literally on its hands, a lot of things really have to go right in the 4 years trump is in office, and whatever happens after he is done, it really looks like we either successfully re-industrialize, which mind you, has never happened before, so we are in uncharted territory, or we get another Great Depression.

Hectic times we are living in, Fuck.

 

[Irene and 22 others]

It's not a theoretical loss, it is a loss.

So when the stock price goes up you should pay taxes on the gains, even though they're similarly unrealized? Should teams down at halftime just go home because they've already lost? You still own as much of the company as you did before. The only thing that has changed is how other people value that asset. Even that is an oversimplification because that price is for a specific amount of trading volume, which is a small fraction of the overall number of shares. Any significant excess of shares being sold in a short period of time would cause the price to drop. Similarly if the trading volume is low enough, an unusual number of purchases can make the price spike temporarily. It's all only hypothetical value until it's sold to someone else.

I traded money for partial ownership in firms. That money became tiny slices of firms. At the point of time of the inauguration, the value of the slices that I owned was high (Value = X) and then dropped significantly recently (Value = X-0.35X). That is a loss.

I think most people here understand how stocks work and have a 401k or some kind of retirement account that is invested partially or wholly in stocks. I get regular statements for mine and it goes up and down all the time even without large market reactions to events like this. I'm not worried about any of this because it will look like noise over the full lifetime of the account. The only way I lose is if I panic like an idiot because I'm worried about losing money and pull out my investment. It'll go back up just like the dozens of times it has before despite there being some quarters that were down.

Anyone worried about the prices dropping even more doesn't realize that if things were ever to go completely tits up and the market were to completely crash, the money they have wouldn't be worth shit. Money is just a medium of exchange to facilitate commerce. If no one's producing anything, the money is useless.

 

[SpergioLeonne]

This is probably the biggest gamble the United States has done for itself since the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the fate of humanity was quite literally on its hands, a lot of things really have to go right in the 4 years trump is in office, and whatever happens after he is done, it really looks like we either successfully re-industrialize, which mind you, has never happened before, so we are in uncharted territory, or we get another Great Depression.

Hectic times we are living in, Fuck.

Dude it’s not. Manufacturing is as scalable as any business. I know a guy whose company is just himself and he’s a defense contractor in his garage

Successful manufacturing can be like a drop shipping business, as long as you have one piece of equipment with which to perform one value added process

 

[Barleys]

There is no guarantee the factories will come. No one is expecting them to be built overnight what we are skeptical of is if they will be built at all. Trump is gambling so much on the chance of companies opening factories and hoping they succeed.

This is literally better than slowly dying and each generation being set off worse than the last. Trump is playing the best hand he can possibly make with the shittiest cards dealt to him because previous admins did not leverage tariffs to support our industries and current admins are paid out by corporations to continue with the status quo. We lost our iron, steel, lumber, automobile, clothing. and currently technology manufacturing businesses because politicians have actively refused to try and implement smart tariffs to protect our industries. Without something as drastic as this we are going to slowly die over the course of generations,

 

[Buck Broken Chimp]

This is probably the biggest gamble the United States has done for itself since the Cuban Missile Crisis, when the fate of humanity was quite literally on its hands, a lot of things really have to go right in the 4 years trump is in office, and whatever happens after he is done, it really looks like we either successfully re-industrialize, which mind you, has never happened before, so we are in uncharted territory, or we get another Great Depression.

Hectic times we are living in, Fuck.

Again why not just give more subsidies which are guaranteed to get things done.

I don't want to hear "muh corporatism" or "muh free market" by supporting the tariffs at all you are conceding that some things super cede the free market in importance