The fact that enough people think this way (I've had people say your comment to me in person, but not nearly as nicely) just shows how far out of touch things are. Instead of just yelling bigot/racist/etc., I think Trump's opposition needs to actually listen and see what people are really seeing in him. Otherwise they're in for a big surprise. (FWIW I'd never have considered a US right or nominally conservative before.)
Many of us here realize that this exponential growth in national debt supported by printing unbacked fiat currency cannot continue. We will be in especially deep trouble if other nations decide not continue to use the US dollar as the reserve currency. We cannot continue to outspend on defense the next 11 or 12 nations combined. We cannot solve every crisis in the world.
We do not have a perfect choice for president. We never do. We do know that Mrs. Clinton is another one who sees more government intervention as the solution to every problem. She was not very effective as Secretary of State and I am surprised she has not been indicted for compromising national security with her private email server. Even if they had put up Sen. Sanders, his own wife's experience (shutting down the college she presided over because it was economically unsustainable, getting a nice severance package, leaving the students with debt...) shows that his plan is unworkable. At least Mr. Trump realizes that not every expenditure is possible or prudent. He seems to understand the concept of 'vital national interests' - that we must get our own house in order before we can continue to help the greater global community.
Those of us who say this are often publicly vilified. We do not seem to be able to have a peaceful, rational exchange of ideas. So people will keep their mouth shut and go cast their ballot in the privacy of the voting booth, exercising their fundamental human right guaranteed by under a constitutional republic. Gee, it sounds a lot like what the voters in the UK just did.
I'm actually going to need some more evidence on that claim vis-a-vis Jane Sanders past decisions invalidate Bernie Sander's plans for... I mean you just say plans. Would all of his plans be unworkable? That's a pretty bold claim.
The difficult truth is that not every student has the prerequisite skills, ability, and self-discipline to complete university level work. Do you really expect the taxpayer to subsidize remedial courses at the university if the student couldn't acquire the prerequisite skills at the secondary level? Here in New York, despite record per pupil primary and secondary school expenditures, student performance has continued to drop. Why should taxpayers be forced to continue to subsidize poor performers? Those who want to do so are always free to contribute to scholarships.
Now let's consider student performance at the university level. Take a look at, for example, Richard Arum's book Academically Adrift. He notes that a large fraction of students graduate with very limited critical thinking and reasoning skills. This is because very little was demanded of them. As Arum so aptly put it, instead "they provided beer and circuses." The schools were paid for this...
Much of this outcome was produced because schools were paid (typically because of easily-obtained government subsidized loans). These students have not been so pleased when saddled with all the debt later on. Surprise: it is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Talk about the "gift that keeps on giving..."
Now ask, How is "free college" going to provide return to the taxpayers if the students don't have significant "skin in the game"? How will you ensure this?
Matters have been exacerbated by what we call "rampant credentialism." Those who make hiring decisions love this because it provides a way to screen candidates without getting sued. Is there really sufficient demand for workers with all these credentials to pay to produce them all? I don't think so.
I have watched the "great sucking sound" predicted by Ross Perot as jobs were offshored. This now includes those STEM jobs Americans want. I know. I have one. When I started work almost 35 years ago I was in an analytical division of a major corporation that had over 300 scientists and technicians. There are 27 of us left. The major scientific societies have noted demand is weak and salaries are flat at best and appear to be declining.
Are all these new graduates going to be able to find employment at a salary where their taxes repay the public investment? I don't think so. It is one thing if a system is designed where people can freely contribute to provide such education. It is another matter entirely to do this by force of tax law without regard for return on investment. What gives any of you the right to force this on another? Who died and made you despot?
Finally, let me return to the one who has proposed "free college." What has Sen. Sanders really produced in his lifetime? How many such successful programs has he run? What has he really done?
As evidenced by his many bankruptcies?
In some ways that seems worse and a form of double-standard. People didn't get paid. People lost jobs. But he came out OK? Is that leadership?
For what it's worth, I've been a registered Democrat my entire adult life. I don't see that happening, at least not large-scale, I think that much has been made clear. I don't think that many people realize that, to many Trump supporters and swing voters, they are essentially proving his point for him. They'll have no one to blame but themselves if he wins.
That said, the key to a free society is peaceful exchange of ideas. Don't like his ideas? Great! Critique them! But the fundamental human rights guaranteed under the Bill of Rights include the right to assemble and speak freely. I would note that rallies to listen to the ideas of a presidential candidate are precisely the situations those who drafted the Bill and those who ratified it envisioned.
Let's leave the thugs out of the picture. If you want to protest, fine. Be peaceful and do impede the exchange of ideas from those who came to hear what the candidate said. You do not have to agree with anything you hear.
I live close to Costa Mesa, CA and the violence at that Trump rally was abhorrent to me. The law enforcement response we later saw in Anaheim, CA, as a result, was cold, calculated, and, quite sadly, exactly what was needed. I agree with you completely, violence is not an acceptable response to not liking the things someone else says.
Part of winning an election is getting people to show up at the polls, so maybe the Trump opposition rhetoric is aimed at turnout rather than conversion of his supporters.
Here. Let me tell you what people see in him.
He's bringing up the issue of labor arbitrage. That's the beginning and the end of it.
Anyone who talks about Trump without looking at that issue is absolutely clueless (IMHO). The reason for this cluelessness is that most pundits are in "alpha cities" like NYC, DC, SF, LA, etc., and these cities with their financial and higher-tech industries have been spared the economic hollowing out that has occurred elsewhere. They don't see it because in their back yard the economy looks okay. "Why do they not eat cake?" they ask. It's really that bad.
Yes there are some people who support him because of his thinly veiled racism, but they are a minority. I know a bunch of Trump supporters back where I grew up (Ohio) and every single one of them talks about outsourcing, outsourcing, and outsourcing, in roughly that order. Most of them are not people I consider particularly racist or anti-immigrant or anti-gay, or at least those are not issues they care deeply about. Many are not religious. They also don't talk much about the Islamic immigration terrorist fear bogey man. They might feel that way a bit, but it's also not a big deal compared to outsourcing. Not even close.
... and as much as I can't stand Trump and would never vote for him for many reasons, I have to kind of agree on this point -- but with a lot of caveats.
American (and European) industry has for the past 25+ years been forced to compete with industry in countries where there are no environmental regulations, no minimum wage, no OSHA, and no labor laws or worker rights. (Or so little of those things that it's a joke.)
I am very much in favor of free fair trade (and immigration to a point), but this is not fair trade. Basically US and EU corporations have been allowed for the past 25-30 years to leverage the Chinese PLA's billion-strong totalitarian labor camp as a long arm to smash domestic labor. It worked. Wages are stagnant, unions are dead, and vast swaths of the American interior are in a state of near collapse.
It's painful every time I go home to Cincinnati, Ohio (where I grew up) and see the effects of this: massive (and understated) unemployment, crumbling infrastructure, alcoholism and drug addiction everywhere (a strong comorbidity with economic malaise), and a general hovering sense of rage that last time I was there I found vaguely foreboding. It reminds me a lot of what I've read about Russia post-USSR-collapse. I live in California now and I feel a little bit like an expat who has fled a dying nation, but who still feels a sense of cultural affinity and loyalty. I wish I could go home sometimes but I want my children to grow up in the first world.
What's scary is that Cincinnati is not by any stretch the worst-off place. It has several healthy employers and many very nice neighborhoods. Look at St. Louis, Cleveland, Flint, etc. Some of the interior is nearing collapse-of-civilization levels of decline. "Don't drink the water" is usually a warning we reserve for third world countries.
Trump is winning because he talks about this. Meanwhile his opponents don't bring it up or even acknowledge its existence except in vague milquetoast "Wall St. vs Main Street" terms. It's not a slight problem. It's a crisis. Not mentioning it as such is insulting to all the people who are affected by it.
(I don't think unfair labor arbitrage is its only cause, but it's definitely a significant contributor.)
Edit:
See also: https://morecrows.wordpress.com/2016/05/10/unnecessariat/
We can't forget about these people. And it's important to remember that these aren't hard working, enterprising people (as some say). But that we've simply criminalized their labor. We enforce labor standards and environmental standards high on our own companies (things I applaud), but are happy to import products not built under those same standards. We enforce free trade agreements, which make it impossible to oppose the flood of cheap products, but we've legislated higher costs for our own products. (This is also why these parts of the country have for so long voted for politicians who promised to remove or decrease this regulatory burden -- you may think they are voting agains their own interest, but they do not perceived it that way.)
The objective truth is that globalization and labor arbitrage overall produce value. That is why we are seeing markets around the world react negatively to the UK's decision. Global economies will work less efficiently in a world in which the UK is not part of the EU.
However as a society we are doing a bad job of distributing the increased value that comes from globalization. Int is true that the way we are distributing the value is leaving the people you are talking about worse even off than before. That is the problem and it will only get worse as other countries continue to develop and more jobs are taken over by automation. The way to solve the problem is not to roll back progress and retreat back into isolationism. That would leave society as a whole worse off. The answer is to continue to encourage progress but increase redistribution efforts to help the people who are left behind.
It is simple math really. Imagine a scenario before globalization where person X has $10 and person Y has $30. Now after globalization person X has $5 and person Y has $40. Person X would clearly be angry about this development but that doesn't mean the solution is to revert everything to how it was before globalization. The answer is to take somewhere between $5 and $10 from person Y and give it to person X. That way everyone is better off than before and we all benefit from progress.
> The answer is to continue to encourage progress but increase redistribution efforts to help the people who are left behind.
This is the Bernie Sanders answer to the same question. For Sanders to get as close as he did to nomination would have been as utterly unthinkable even 4-8 years ago as Trump's nomination would have been. Sanders rode the same wave, offering a left-wing reaction to the decline of the American interior vs. Trump's right-wing reaction.
While I personally can't stand Trump, I'm actually a bit concerned that if he loses to Clinton we'll be facing a real full-blown gloves-off fascist in 4-8 years. The kind of systematic decline I described in my OP is historically the precondition of fascism. I have a friend who's been predicting this for years, calling this "Weimar America."
It is also worth noting that the plan I mentioned isn't one Sanders supports. He agrees with the social safety net aspects, but he still wants to halt progress on globalization and trade. He might be even more isolationist in that regard than Trump. Sadly there was no candidate in the presidential race that joined both the support for globalization with an understanding that increased social programs are a requirement in a new and more globalized economy.
I hear this a lot. I've then gone back and listened to the exact words he's said. I think it's a very hard case for people to say there's anything he has said that's actually racist. Mexico isn't a race, and even if it were, he's simply correctly pointed out that illegal immigrants are not the best people the country has.
Trump hasn't said anything anti-immigration. Only anti-illegal immigration. Much of it is focused on Mexico, and opponents yell about how terrible this is. Yet Mexico is hypocritical. I'm in Guatemala, and friends that have simply had a layover in Mexico require a visa and go through harassment.
On top of that, I've been threatened deportation from the US during a border crossing (I'm Canadian). My wife lived as an illegal immigrant in the US (visa overstay while we tried to adjust status). My daughter was indirectly killed due to us having to leave the US and return to a bad country with junk healthcare.
Despite that, I realise mass migration won't help. Hint: Most of Latam has it not-so-good. Probably a majority would jump at the chance to get US residency. But how is that a solution? Not to mention the current status quo mostly benefits Mexico. Guatemalans face a hard time just getting through Mexico - Mexico has harsh immigration against them and won't hesitate to deport.
Trump's opponents refuse to address this. Instead they just scream racist/bigot/immigrant-hater, while waving Mexican flags. More and more people are realising these are empty insults and non-sequiturs.
http://www.cnn.com/2015/12/07/politics/donald-trump-muslim-b...
>Mr. Trump, who said last week that a Mexican-American judge in a case involving Trump University was biased against him because of his heritage.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/08/us/politics/paul-ryan-dona...
Trump wants to stop Muslim from immigrating to or even visiting this country. He also believe the qualifications of an American born US citizen can be put into question if that person's parents are from another country. I'm not sure how comments like that can be classified as anything besides xenophobic, bigoted, and racist.
This is an anti-ideological stance. It's not racist, and it's not anti-immigration as a whole. When hundreds of millions of people in a group agree that leaving the group should result in the death penalty[1], I think it's fine for a country to want to put a hold on things for a bit while better selection processes are put in place?
>Mexican-American judge Who is part of a "La Raza Lawyers" group which seems to stand for the opposite of everything Trump is. (Not to mention if a white guy joined a group called "The Race"...) That aside, ask yourself: Would this judge get some raised eyebrows among friends and family if he ruled in favour of Trump? It's not unreasonable to assume so.
If a judge declared himself Irish-American and proud of Ireland, maybe they wouldn't be the best judge to rule on the Microsoft Ireland data retention/access case. Maybe. Not agreeing with Trump, just pointing out that it's possibly plausible scenario and not a completely illegitimate comment.
At any rate, Mexican is not a race, so it's still not a racist comment.
Anyways this is getting into kill-area for HN, but I'd be happy to discuss over email/Skype if it's interesting.
1: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/04/30/the-worlds-muslims-religi...
Racist.
/s
Do people think Trump voters are religious? While it was still a competitive race, Cruz and Rubio beat Trump among religious voters easily.
Trump wins people who check 'religious' in the survey and otherwise participate minimally in organized religion.
I predict that active evangelicals will mostly stay home in November since there's not a credible pro-life candidate on the ballot.
This growing distance between the people and the government is a fertile breeding ground for populists. And the distance is the biggest between the people and the government of the EU.
It's all about media. I will always blame the media for being extremely biased in whatever they do. I cannot mention today one objective and inquiring media. They ALL report what people already know or what they want to know. Democracy without objective media is oligarchy.
But why call a referendum ridiculous? I guess it is primarily because you don't agree with the proposal that the referendum is about. And because you don't agree with the proposal, you feel that there should not even be a referendum about it? That means that you think your opinion is more valuable than a possible majority of the voters. Isn't that an egocentric point of view?
According to Wikipedia: "Foreigners who commit a crime would be automatically expelled from the country, regardless of the severity of the crime." [0]
I don't know the laws in Switzerland, but I can tell you that in Germany if they catch you without the train ticket for three times, you can potentially go to jail. In Switzerland, if such a law existed (I don't know), such a person would be expelled. This is ridiculous to me, because in a life span anything can happen. If you commit rape, homicide, break-ins, I can understand. It's the "regardless" that makes me wonder how welcome foreigners are. Although "ridiculous" might be the wrong term, I think that such a referendum should not even exist. Why was it even thought about? Why the "regardless"? What's wrong with us humans? Foreigners come, make your country richer - especially foreigners, PHD, master students, and highly skilled employees - and that's how you pay them back? Treating them like if they were worse than animals? "If you fuck up, go away".
I don't doubt the effectiveness of referendums, although I come from a country in which they hardly have an impact. I really appreciate Switzerland's method, as it keeps its citizens closer and more interested to politics. However, I am still of the idea that news can corrupt democracy pretty much everywhere, no matter how it's implemented - as long as citizens are the main responsible for the elected people or laws.
I don't see what is so negative about this event. People got a chance to vote, and voted with quite a convincing majority (58%) against the proposal. Isn't that good? It shows that the majority of people, despite all populism and superficial media coverage, are still making the most human decision.
> This is because in Switzerland there have always been referendums. That really makes a difference on how people see their laws and regulations.
seems not to take into account that media are highly biased, and these do have an impact on people. Referendums are not the solution, but just a different way to express your (?) own opinion. When your opinions are shaped by media (because they inevitably are), then you see, it's not the implementation (referendum/yes/no) the problem/solution, but how people perceive reality.
In a country where media work, you wouldn't have had such a referendum, not because of different opinions, but because people wouldn't feel threatened by foreigners (due to media) - or possibly, you would have a fairer request: send away only the ones who commit high crimes. I am sure that it would have been successful with at least 70% of "yes".
58% of people means 6/10 - this might translate to: 4 people don't like immigrants/don't feel safe due to foreigners.
And the media too. By attacking people for their views, they basically gave these populist movements ammunition and caused their supporters (and much of the public) to see a divide between an elite and the working man.
Things will probably get far worse in the future because of all this...
Globalisation has destroyed the planet along with the capitalism and values it touts as the future. All lies and deceit that contributed to the ever enrichment of the elite while we're left here saying again and again that the working man is stupid for reacting to it.
As said, I don't agree with the rhetoric of the far right, but one thing I have been entirely certain for many years, left or right, it doesn't matter, neither hold the future for us.
I worry the politician voted in as a protest against elites and globalisation is going to be someone merely using that as a cover for a far worse ideology.
Disclaimer: I am a EU foreigner in Switzerland.
Last time I was in Zurich, this is the first thing I've seen at the railway station [1]. This is a very reasonable thing to do for Swiss people and something very different to what is happening in EU during the "refugee" crisis. On the other hand, in the EU it would be considered anti-immigrant or even racist (especially by media).
[1] http://s1.ibtimes.com/sites/www.ibtimes.com/files/styles/lg/...
Just my impression of course.
Is it? At one point they blocked one type of a building from being built.
Not to mention this clusterfuck https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swiss_immigration_referendum,_...
I'm confused. U.S. politics over the last decade have been dominated by populist pushes on all sides of all aisles: Tea Party, Occupy, Trump, Sanders, even Obama ran on 'change' had minimal 'insider' credentials when he was elected.
> Populist movements that rely heavily on anger, fear, and anti-immigration rhetoric
Substitute 'anti-immigration' with 'anti-someone' and you basically have the case for most reform these days. The reaction to the Orlando shooting has basically been this, right? Anger? Check. Fear? Check? Pick an enemy? You have three or four to choose from: Muslims, gun nuts, homophobes.
I think we need to be more self-reflective and (socially) self-policing than tutting at all the other people out there.
The "experts" were wrong about the probability of a Brexit, maybe they're also wrong about the motivations too?
Facepalm.
We had this whole World War thing, which is endlessly replayed in TV and movies from your country. How did you miss the moral of the whole story?
Germany was one of the wealthiest industrialized nations. It was a top education destination worldwide, with some of the best universities in the world. The lesson of National Socialism is "if it could happen here, it can happen ANYWHERE".
I don't think that trump is a Hitler. But the emotions and rhetoric that he uses is extremely dangerous stuff. And your media just eats it up. You guys arent just playing with fire; you're playing with TNT.