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It's amusing how EVERYONE seems to distrust Hillary and consider her as a dishonest cunning politician. Then when you ask specifics, what people answer is usually extremely vague.
I don't think Hillary is very different from someone like Obama. She has changed opinion on several issues for tactical reasons, which is what every politician that lasts more than a few years does, and been quite consistent otherwise.
I personally think that right wing propaganda against her (hi Fox) has been so successful that even left wingers have started to believe it.
Also folks, Sanders is not far left. He is left. It's just that the political spectrum has shifted so much to the right since 30 years that people can't really distinguish mild social democracy and Maoism.
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Taxing goods is worse for the poor, and you're not gonna get jobs back from China where people still earn less than even the current US minimum wage.
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On February 12 2016 22:36 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:
How is protectionism supposed to work when you can buy stuff online from overseas.It costs more to enforce the tax than the revenue.Maybe it can work on cars and industrial stuff but for 90% of manufactured goods it's unworkable.
Free trade is here, it ain't going away.Deal with it and stop living in the 50s.
It's called customs control and it's actually pretty easy. The whole EU has been enforcing it for decades without any real problems. Yeah, I can buy stuff online, but the only way to take without paying duty (and VAT on top of it) is with me physcially and that only works as long as the stuff you have is feasible presentable as you normal personal suitcase (so I can easily buy one camera, but not five). I have no illusions that the borders are sealed perfectly (heck, I actually talk to a group of people while they were smuggling shoes in my train), but compared to the overall volume of trade, it's peanuts.
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On February 13 2016 01:14 Soap wrote:
Taxing goods is worse for the poor, and you're not gonna get jobs back from China where people still earn less than even the current US minimum wage.
My family’s business directly competes with both China and Mexico for work of the exact nature you are talking about. The only reason they can’t pull in huge jobs and hire more than the 30 people they employee is because they get outbid by China or Mexico. But its not by unobtainable margins. Claiming the jobs won’t “come back” isn’t really accurate. Some of them would because a lot of vendors don’t like sending the work to China.
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On February 13 2016 01:11 Biff The Understudy wrote:
It's amusing how EVERYONE seems to distrust Hillary and consider her as a dishonest cunning politician. Then when you ask specifics, what people answer is usually extremely vague.
I don't think Hillary is very different from someone like Obama. She has changed opinion on several issues for tactical reasons, which is what every politician that lasts more than a few years does, and been quite consistent otherwise.
I personally think that right wing propaganda against her (hi Fox) has been so successful that even left wingers have started to believe it.
Also folks, Sanders is not far left. He is left. It's just that the political spectrum has shifted so much to the right since 30 years that people can't really distinguish mild social democracy and Maoism.
Hillary not being very different from Obama could be one of the issues that are getting people upset. There's no need to "seem" like Hillary is distrust worthy. The internet has already shown a slew of information in regards to the Clintons and their back dealings. When it comes to specifics, of course a lot of people are just parroting information they have heard from others. That's the same on all sides of the fence. Flip-flopping on issues is different from having changed perspectives over time. A lot of people are getting upset that someone will flop for the status quo. In the end, nothing actually changes without a reason as to why you've changed opinions. Fox hasn't even had to hit Hillary that hard. Not too many left-wingers are talking about her email scandal and few are aware that the supreme justice court expects all of them by the end of February.
Sanders is left in the sense towards other countries like Europe and Canada. America has been been reluctant to leave the right for a long time.
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ROCK HILL, S.C. — Ted Cruz has faced attacks on his national security record before, but not in a place like this.
The Palmetto State has far more of a military presence than Iowa and New Hampshire. And some of Cruz’s votes on national defense — during his time in the Senate he’s joined with Sen. Rand Paul to slow military spending, and he was a key collaborator in reforming the PATRIOT Act — could put the Texas senator on defense. A fifth of 2012 GOP primary voters here identified as veterans, and thousands more of their family members and friends could be swayed on issues of national security, too.
Several of Cruz's foes and a super PAC are already pouncing.
“He voted for budgets that would gut the military. He voted for the Rand Paul budget that guts our foreign aid. Any military person knows you better have a soft power approach, and this carpet bombing thing is just silly,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), a Jeb Bush backer, referring to Cruz’s comments that he would “carpet bomb” the Islamic State. “His inexperience and his libertarianism won’t play here.”
As for Paul, Cruz has a conundrum. He’s having to defend his past alliance with the anti-interventionist senator on defense issues, at the same time he's wooing Paul’s libertarian voters after the Kentucky senator dropped out last week. On Thursday, two former Paul aides endorsed Cruz and praised him for being the next-best candidate on foreign policy after Paul.
A super PAC called the American Future Fund is planning to spend $1.5 million on an ad blitz blasting Cruz as weak on defense. “Ted Cruz talks tough on national security. But look at his record," the narrator says, going on to link Cruz with Bernie Sanders, Edward Snowden and President Barack Obama.
The Texas senator has been trying for months to recalibrate his message, in response to a GOP electorate demanding tough national security positions at a time of rising terrorism fears. This week he labeled himself a “national security conservative” — albeit one who is still extraordinarily skeptical of military intervention.
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On February 13 2016 01:09 DickMcFanny wrote:
That depends on what you mean by "the economy".
For the super rich it would be disastrous, for the rest of the domestic population it would be a true blessing.
'Free trade agreements' during the past 40 years have been nothing but awful for basically everyone involved.
This is downright wrong.
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On February 13 2016 01:40 Ghostcom wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2016 01:09 DickMcFanny wrote:
That depends on what you mean by "the economy".
For the super rich it would be disastrous, for the rest of the domestic population it would be a true blessing.
'Free trade agreements' during the past 40 years have been nothing but awful for basically everyone involved. This is downright wrong.
It is not completely inaccurate either. Globalization is not perfect or an absolute good. Same with Free Trade. The claims it is a “net gain” might be correct, but most people are not concerned with the net gains of a country on a personal level. I would have to look into it, but Kwark suggests that Germany has a more effective way to exist in a free market.
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On February 13 2016 01:44 Plansix wrote:Show nested quote +On February 13 2016 01:40 Ghostcom wrote:On February 13 2016 01:09 DickMcFanny wrote:
That depends on what you mean by "the economy".
For the super rich it would be disastrous, for the rest of the domestic population it would be a true blessing.
'Free trade agreements' during the past 40 years have been nothing but awful for basically everyone involved. This is downright wrong. It is not completely inaccurate either. Globalization is not perfect or an absolute good. Same with Free Trade. The claims it is a “net gain” might be correct, but most people are not concerned with the net gains of a country on a personal level. I would have to look into it, but Kwark suggests that Germany has a more effective way to exist in a free market.
It isn't even close to accurate. Suspending all TAs would not in any way be a true blessing for the domestic population as a whole, not even remotely. I'm glad you brought up Germany because it is a prime example of TAs not being "awful for basically everyone involved" - the internal market of EU is the result of an international TA and has secured what is possibly the longest era of peace and prosperity in recorded human history.
EDIT for clarification: I do not consider TAs to be a solution to all the worlds issue, neither argue that TAs should intertwine economies as closely as the internal market of EU. However, there is a lot of hyperbole painting TAs as the scourge of the US economy and that is downright wrong.
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United States44174 Posts
There is far more to free trade than prosperity. In the case of Europe the purpose of free trade was originally to entwine the economies of Germany, France and the Benelux countries in order to stop Germany fucking shit up for the rest of Europe again. The first iteration of the EU was the Coal and Steel Association which created an interdependence in heavy industry that would make it difficult for another war between France and Germany. However the economic growth within the proto-EU bloc (France, Italy, Germany, Benelux) was far greater than that of the countries that stood outside of it (the UK in particular) which led to the rest of Europe seeking entry (except the "fuck you, I got mine" economies of Norway (oil) and Switzerland (banking).
Now it must be recognized that this is free trade between relatively comparable countries. Obviously the US cannot compete with China on wages in the same way that Germany can with France. Furthermore we must recognize that the European project has expanded far beyond its original mandate as it is pulled by the ideological federalists. However it has unquestionably been a success, both in terms of keeping a Nazi flag from flying at the top of the Eiffel Tower and in creating prosperity across Europe.
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Deep in the bayous of Louisiana, about 80 miles southwest of New Orleans, lies the Isle de Jean Charles, a tiny swath of land that's all but vanished into the Gulf of Mexico.
Over the last half-century or so, the island has fallen victim to irresponsible oil and gas extraction practices and the effects of climate change. Many of its residents -- members of the Isle de Jean Charles Band of Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Native Americans -- have been forced to flee.
"What you see of the island now is just a skeleton of what it used to be," Chris Brunet, a tribal council member and lifelong island resident, told The New York Times in a mini-documentary called Vanishing Island in 2014.
A recent federal grant, however, will allow the state-recognized tribe to resettle on higher ground, making it the first community of official climate refugees in the United States, according to Indian Country Today.
Late last month, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) awarded $1 billion for resilient infrastructure and housing projects as part of its National Disaster Resilience Competition. On the list is $52 million for the Isle de Jean Charles tribe to relocate to a "resilient and historically-contextual community," HUD wrote.
Since the 1950s, the tribe has lost 98 percent of its land to rising sea levels, coastal erosion and flooding. Experts suspect the island will be completely submerged within 50 years, Houma Today reports.
Albert Naquin, chief of the Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians, has been fighting to secure funding for 13 years and said the money will allow the tribe to reestablish community, something that -- like their historic island home -- is being washed away.
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I think there is reason to be optimistic about globalization. China had dirt cheap wages for a while, but now they are getting undercut by Vietnam (which after TPP will have to respect unions and minimum wages). The great globalization cycle is now getting diminishing returns. Check out some of the writing by economist Mark Thoma on this. The concern about China was a real thing in 2001-2006, but it isn't the same anymore.
"First, the slowdown can be traced in part to the end of the integration of China -- and to some degree Central and Eastern Europe -- into the world economy. During this transitional period, international trade grew robustly. But as this era ends, the volume of international trade relative to GDP will stabilize. It's possible that other developing countries will emerge to fill the void, but even if they do it's unlikely they'll have an impact as large as China.
The second reason the slowdown in trade may be a permanent phenomenon associated with the Great Recession is diminishing returns to offshoring production. If the limits have "been reached on the ability of (incentives for) firms to engage in the international fragmentation of production," then we should expect growth in trade due to production moving to other countries to be limited as well."
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/could-the-forces-of-globalization-be-receding/
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I am ok with not having Walmarts around anymore.
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The Walmart and targets of the world are shrines to Free Trade and China. They are filled with cheap everything, most of which is garbage, will break or not worth my time. They even carry food. Not healthy or efficient food, but its cheap.
I can’t really see Walmart as a net gain. Cheaper goods are still just cheap goods.
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I never had the pleasure of seeing a Walmart with my own eyes. But Walmart provides cheap products for Americans who have been experiencing low and stagnant wages so they fill in a need.
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On February 13 2016 03:23 Deathstar wrote:
I never had the pleasure of seeing a Walmart with my own eyes. But Walmart provides cheap products for Americans who have been experiencing low and stagnant wages so they fill in a need.
It's pretty much the central problem of trade barriers. Sure you're wages may go up because workers don't need to compete with foreign companies, but so will the prices because wages are the biggest price driver and you haven't gained anything in the end. I guess instead of increasing the trade barriers strengthening the welfare state would be a better idea.
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On February 13 2016 03:23 Deathstar wrote:
I never had the pleasure of seeing a Walmart with my own eyes. But Walmart provides cheap products for Americans who have been experiencing low and stagnant wages so they fill in a need.
Walmart employees are also (generally) paid woefully low wages, often need government assistance to survive, which often gets spent at Walmart because of the low, low prices. It's a cyclical business model.
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There are a lot of problems with Walmart. They are rarely net gains for the areas they exist in and are very good at avoid local taxes/getting tax breaks.
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United States44174 Posts
I shop at Walmart, no issues with the produce or the prices personally.
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Walmart will be increasing pay for their workers soon. Walmart is iffy. As I understand, they destroy local businesses and pay starvation wages for their employees, which thereby increase the need for welfare overall (from destroyed businesses and low wage workers).
By increasing wages, their products will be ever so slightly more expensive but hopefully there is less welfare burden on the community and state and the workers will be more self sufficient.
More than 1.2 million Walmart U.S. and Sam’s Club associates will receive a pay increase under the second phase of the company’s two-year, $2.7 billion investment in workers. The pay raise, which takes effect Feb. 20, will be one of the largest single-day, private-sector pay increases ever. As an industry leader for competitive pay and benefits, Walmart is also implementing new short-term disability and simplified paid time off (PTO) programs. The combined changes will expand support for associates dealing with extended health issues and provide associates greater control over their paid time away from work.
http://news.walmart.com/news-archive/2016/01/20/more-than-one-million-walmart-associates-receive-pay-increase-in-2016
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EPT
