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Comment by pavlov | Hacker News Reader

I asked this very question on HN in November 2016: will the "startup visa" survive? Commenters thought that Trump wouldn't interfere with it:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12931943

This is a solid reminder that the Trump administration is showing itself to be mostly concerned with undoing anything that Obama did, rather than working for anyone's benefit. You can't apply logic to predict the actions of these people.

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I'm not an American but as an outsider it's so odd to see the anti-Obama stance this government is taking. Look at the US economy coming out of 2008. From my perspective it's done quite well. Unemployment has gone from 10% to 4%, GDP has climbed. S&P and US stocks in general have done exceptionally well. It seems like whatever Obama did was working. Do the Republicans think they can do better? Why not just ride their coat tails to glory?

I'm pretty sure they honestly and truly believe that the economy is doing well /despite/ Democrat policies rather than because of it. That, or they believe that the financial crisis was just a blip and now this is the economy in its "natural state".

Regardless, whatever the problem is, their solution is always lowering taxes on corporations and rich people. Whether the economy is doing poorly or well, that is what they will propose.

The problem is that most people (ie voters) have not seen things get better. Wages are not keeping up with cost of living. Things are stabilized for the upper echelons of America, but the lower income/wealth individuals (a majority of Americans) are getting left behind. By both parties. So you're always going to have a huge portion during each election that just wants a "change" in the hope it will finally make things better for them. Spoiler alert, it won't.

You have the assumption that economic growth is what they want. Trump has a mandate to punish the rich/middle class people so the poor people can feel relatively better about themselves. Startup visas can do nothing to help the poor rural unemployed. They'll probably be happier with a weaker dollar and thus more primary/secondary industry job opportunities. They certainly don't care about unicorns.

This is a big population of severely disadvantaged people who gain nothing from GDP growth. They do matter.

Most Trump voters were not working class though:

https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/06/16/93450/

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/06/0...

Racism is alive and well.

Obama inherited the market on a low. We are at a high and what may have been compatible with growth at a low may not be good enough for improving the market on a high.

Doesn't mean all the policies have to be reversed though

Not all are.

Guns, God and Gays. Republican voters are easily manipulated to vote against their own economic self interest by playing to cultural issues. And there are a whole lot of republican voters who are in parts of the country that don't have the economic growth that the coasts and the cities do.

These metrics do not imply that those gains were shared widely by the populace, and especially the employment figures don't account for quality of employment or benefits.

It is unsurprising what has happened.

At that time, a lot of people (supporters or not) were under the impression that Trump was okay with legal immigration.

The travel ban made it clear that's not the case (it affected legal immigrants).

In fact, Bannon had spoken against legal immigration before the election, and continues to do so:

"Legal immigration is the real problem"

https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/2/14472404/st...

Increasing salaries needed for H1B was long overdue, obama should have fixed that as one of the first things. Trump, like him or not is taking a hard look at many of these visas. Scrapping the founders visa is not a bad idea there are plenty of other opportuninties to get into the US.

What a nonsequitor. First, the presence or absence of other immigration paths doesn't speak to the cost or benefit of the startup visa.

Second, there wouldn't be so many H1B applicants if there were other ways into the US.

There are other ways into the US. E, L, O visas ex.

Why do people seriously believe that presidential administrations are motivated by petty childishness? Do people really believe it to be possible that someone incompetent could make it as far as the presidency?

There's far more going on that we are unaware of, be it malice or good intentions, thus it is absurd to believe that our leaders are man children. We are too far removed from primary sources to know the truth.

Trump handed Merkel a fake invoice for the amount of money Germany owed NATO. At what level of government is that a good idea?

That actually didn't happen. http://globalnews.ca/news/3340159/donald-trump-angela-merkel...

Can you give a proper source for that allegation preferably from the BBC.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/germany-dismisses-white-h...

The White House denies it, so who knows. Either way, there are many example's of him acting like a child. The inauguration debate for example.

See this is why you have to be very careful when you make any statement about Trump.

When the president consistently acts childishly (with corroboration from his staff, videos of him pushing others aside for photo ops, and countless other shenanigans), does one rationally conclude he is childish, or that he is playing "10-dimensional chess?" (as his most zealous champions inevitably conclude)

A serious question: what would the president have to do, within reason, for you to consider him petty, childish, or incompetent?

r u sure that you're well informed?

>videos of him pushing others aside for photo ops

Check it out. The Montenegro PM stepped on Trumps foot, both of them react to that.

Ask yourself, What other information have you received in a biased form?

That episode is completely irrelevant. To find out what Trump is like, it's enough to listen to what he says in interviews and writes on Twitter. You can't blame media bias for his own words.

This is the point when you realize you've dodged the core of my comment in favor of nitpicking.

(and where are you getting this foot information from, anyway?)

Maybe he's not a man child, but what's his MO? His approval ratings are shite, so somethings not working

last i checked, republicans (and pro-trump candidates) have won every special election since trump came to power. so much for "shite" approval ratings.

No, they really are shite: https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/trump-approval-ratings/...

The only special election they should be disappointed about is georgia 6th. Many of the rest have been fairly encouraging, given that they have been competitive in red districts.

GA-06 hasn't had a Democratic rep in almost forty years.

I'd be more disappointed about SC-05, where it was a close finish with little resources dedicated. If some of the GA-06 millions had been spent there, it might've been a win.

I wouldn't be at all disappointed with the fact that both districts went Trump by 20 points, and were quite close less than a year later.

When I say disappointed, I mean that they played up it's importance to a point where any result less than winning is a little embarrassing.

GA 6 was not won by 20 points by Trump. He won it by just over 1. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/everything-you-need-to-...

Sorry, you're right. I thought I remembered there being two special elections with the big swing, but GA-06 must not be it. Maybe it was the Montana one.

It pains me to point this out, but I think some people are mad at him for not doing enough. I have to believe that some of the low ratings are due to him not being Trump enough. I am pretty sure there are a bunch that are pissed the ACA hasn't been scrapped yet. Yeah... They also probably want him to outlaw Muslims and probably tell gay people to stop being so fabulous. Also, they probably want to make it illegal to point out their bigotry or to call them hateful.

I am pretty sure those people exist. I apologize on behalf of America and ask that you not blame me. ;-)

I will give Trump supporters some credit, because many of them became genuinely disillusioned after Trump's continuation of the status quo foreign policy in the Middle East and after the Saudi arms deal. Hard-line Obama supporters are easily as racist as Trump supporters, why else would they go mute for 8 years while hundreds of thousands of Muslims are murdered by their candidate?

Psst. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering

https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/shite (It's British slang)

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