Donald! Trump!

Have we discussed Ben Carson yet? Oh dear that would be a travesty.

Its basic keynesianism* and it has nothing to do with Corbyn.

It was never debunked though supporting/investing in your people /country/ economy to stimulate it has fallen out of favour and been replaced by neo liberal openness and supply side reform – which tends to mean less rights for workers and fewer “traditional” jobs as we lurch to a supply side economy- in the west as we cannot compete with cheap goods from other countries.

* its well accepted that business must speculate [ or invest] in order to accumulate but for some reason a country MUST not do this and just leave it to the “market”.

Ben Carson:

He was the Director of Pediatric Neurosurgery at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Maryland from 1984 until his retirement in 2013. As a pioneer in neurosurgery, Carson’s achievements include performing the first and only successful separation of Siamese twins joined at the back of the head, pioneering the first successful neurosurgical procedure on a fetus inside the womb, performing the first completely successful separation of type-2 vertical craniopagus twins, developing new methods to treat brain-stem tumors and reviving hemispherectomy techniques for controlling seizures.[3][4][5][6][7] Carson became the youngest chief of pediatric neurosurgery in the country at age 33.[8] He has received more than 60 honorary doctorate degrees, dozens of national merit citations, and written over 100 neurosurgical publications.[9] In 2008, he was bestowed the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the United States.[10]

Ben Carson?

Well, rejecting climate change, believing in creationism & comparing Obamacare to slavery make it difficult to listen to what else he has to say…..but, I’m all ears..?

It was never debunked though supporting/investing in your people /country/ economy to stimulate it has fallen out of favour and been replaced by neo liberal openness and supply side reform – which tends to mean less rights for workers and fewer “traditional” jobs as we lurch to a supply side economy- in the west as we cannot compete with cheap goods from other countries.
* its well accepted that business must speculate [ or invest] in order to accumulate but for some reason a country MUST not do this and just leave it to the “market”.

Great, in which it’ll work and Trump will make America Great again and Trump’s economic policy can be a blueprint for the rest on the world.

https://thinkprogress.org/13-ridiculous-things-ben-carson-actually-believes-8ac626927019#.rkpcc1bxs

It’s Corbynomics, debunked in the 70’s.

If the Trump presidency, and brexit have shown one thing, it’s that the economic system which has been debunked is neo-liberalism. Globalisation is dead and we’re back on a path to beggar-thy-neighbour protectionism. You might want to do some research into what resulted from protectionist policies in the 20th century. It didn’t end very well.

Great, in which it’ll work and Trump will make America Great again and Trump’s economic policy can be a blueprint for the rest on the world.

Straw man is strawy
I doubt you are this stupid and i wonder why you put in the effort to come across as such

It’s Corbynomics, debunked in the 70’s.

So what, try something once, doesn’t work, abandon the whole idea completely forever? Never heard of refining an good idea until it works? But, you’ll say, it’s not a good idea. So why don’t you just come out and say that you don’t like it for personal reasons, rather than trying to justify your position?

Neoliberalism isn’t exactly working, is it? Can we call it debunked yet?

Trump is talking about growing the economy not creating jobs now.

Apparently his Muslim ban pledge has mysteriously disappeared from his campaign website too.

“the economic system which has been debunked is neo-liberalism”

Reality has a liberal bias.

Maybe Trump’s got it right. I doubt it. We’ll see.

Neoliberalism isn’t exactly working, is it? Can we call it debunked yet?

If Trump & Corbyn have got all this right then yes.

Personally I find it hard to believe that a couple of oddballs have spotted something the entire world missed. We will certainly see, now.

EDIT: I removed a line where I said they were both using economic policy to court votes.

Trump is certainly guilty of telling people what they want to hear. Corbyn on the other hand says it out of principle.

You can say what you like about Corbyn’s ability to lead a party and win an election, but you can’t accuse him of an unprincipled power grab.

Trump is certainly guilty of telling people what they want to hear. Corbyn on the other hand says it out of principle.

Quite right, removed that line.

Muslim comments are back on.

How much is the wealth and army worth to the US economy?
Fighting wars all over the world must be profitable for them so he might get some opposition if he tries to scale it down.

If Trump’s got all this right then yes.

Eh? Trump is the living embodiment of Neo-liberalism.

Personally I find it hard to believe that a couple of oddballs have spotted something the entire world missed.

You think this is a niche idea? I’d say across the western world, the supporters of neo-liberalism are in a shrinking minority. It may not seem like it as in the most part the neo-liberal establishment still has it’s hands on power and they’re fighting a desperate rearguard action against the growing opposition to it. Trump and brexit may well be self-defeating reactions to neo-liberalism, but they prove that people are no longer going to accept the status quo.

*Godwin’s Law Alert*

Hitler was a vegetarian painter. The big lefty!

Carson’s crackers. He could be the most skilled surgeon of all time. He’d still think the earth is 10,000 years old.

Eh? Trump is the living embodiment of Neo-liberalism.

but to win over the disgruntled ex-democrats he used a mixture of far right blame the foreigners rhetoric + less rightwing protectionism + left wing? state infrastructure spending to boost jobs
a kind of national socialism?

Trump is certainly guilty of telling people what they want to hear.

It’s funny that though, because much of what he said on the campaign trail he was saying decades ago:

Hitler was a vegetarian painter.

Pretty sure that is a myth. Show me one single vegetarian that he painted.

but to win over the disgruntled ex-democrats he used a mixture of far right blame the foreigners rhetoric + less rightwing protectionism + left wing? state infrastructure spending to boost jobs
a kind of national socialism?

Exactly: He told them exactly what they wanted to hear. However, voting for a neo-liberalist to combat neo-liberalism is like asking the proverbial fox to guard the hen house.

a kind of national socialism

exactly. I also hear Trump is writing a book called “My Fight”, watch out for that

And so it begins.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/post-us-election-racism_uk_5824bb96e4b09a5097233169?utm_hp_ref=uk

Show me one single vegetarian that he painted.

himself, on the wall of a bunker?

Trump is certainly guilty of telling people what they want to hear.

It’s funny that though, because much of what he said on the campaign trail he was saying decades ago:

Interesting….those old interviews show that he is consistent. Despite the fact that he is a vindictive bully and probably all round nasty individual, I do have a sort of admiration for whats he’s just done! 😕

that huffington post report is horrible

just as with brexit, saturating the media with fear and hate of ‘others’ to win a vote has terrible consequences

just as with Brexit again, those same politicians and campaigners offer no solutions to put that genie back in

Yvette Cooper on Qtime last night:

People judged Clinton on her hair. Nobody judged Trump on his hair.

😆 She really wasn’t paying attention.

Im not sure it swung the vote, just part of a larger campaign, shes a demon after all….

http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2015/11/hillary_clinton_hair_attacks_from_the_headband_to_the_wig.html

another link to a press article on the subject, but I think this one has been put together with an attempt at a higher level understanding than the ranty stuff that is flying around at the moment.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/11/08/a-new-theory-for-why-trump-voters-are-so-angry-that-actually-makes-sense/

Regardless of personalities etc, and whats happened up to now….looking forwards, can Trump deliver?

America, like the rest of us, likes its cheap goods. And obviously part of that cheapness is provided by lower costs of labour, by overseas work.

If you bring that production back to the US, its going to add to the cost. Prices will rise. Can America stomach that?

….unless he plans on bringing about a massive reduction in internal US labour costs, of course.

you can see the reasons for the anger, but why do they think Trump is the answer to their problems ?

Are you sitting behind a desk all day? Well that’s not hard work. Hard work is someone like me — I’m a logger, I get up at 4:30 and break my back. For my entire life that’s what I’m doing. I’m wearing my body out in the process of earning a living.” OKAY I AGREE WITH THAT. But the Republican party is the party that tried to privatize social security and is always looking for a way to reduce and defer SS benefits. So that plays right into the Thomas Frank theory of what’s the matter with Kansas – or apparently with Wisconsin. Are “elites” only democrats or does elite mean money. Because the folks in Wisconsin just voted (perhaps) to reduce taxes on elites, reduce their own options for health care, reduce or delay their SS benefits, and eliminate the estate tax. Someone needs to really give me an explanation of how that makes their life any better. In essence, I AM SO MAD AT ELITES I AM GOING TO VOTE TO CUT THEIR TAXES. Tell me how that is getting their voices heard.

you can see the reasons for the anger, but why do they think Trump is the answer to their problems ?

I’m not sure they do: Most just thought he was a better option than Clinton.

“I’m not sure they do: Most just thought he was a better option than Clinton.”

Really good point. We talk as though Clinton/Trump voters vote with enthusiasm. In fact we have no idea what their ideal candidate would have looked like.

In fact we have no idea what their ideal candidate would have looked like.

We do know Trump is the least popular republican candidate in recent history.

you can see the reasons for the anger, but why do they think Trump is the answer to their problems ?

They don’t (and he’s not). But he was the alternative on the voting card. He wasn’t an established politician and he’d voiced ‘policies’ intended to bolster the US domestic economy. He presented an alternative to the status quo, even if that wasn’t the one people actually wanted.

He presented an alternative to the status quo, even if that wasn’t the one people actually wanted.

Yet fewer people voted for him than they have for republican candidates in the past. He failed badly. Luckily for him Clinton was an even bigger failure.

Though disgruntled “blue collar workers” (I dislike that term) played a part I don’t think it’s what won it for Trump (And the Senate & Congress for GOP)… It was probably down to the middle classes not liking Obamacare, they see it as people getting something for nothing while they have to pay through the nose and work hard for theirs. The politics of envy.

“He presented an alternative to the status quo, even if that wasn’t the one people actually wanted.”

5th Elephant’s post leads me to suspect we’re all over thinking this.

Looks to me like ~60m people vote Republican whether it’s Ghandi or a Chimpanzee on the ticket.

Unfortunately the Democrats picked a candidate who was so unpopular in her own party she couldn’t beat the Republican core vote.

America, like the rest of us, likes its cheap goods. And obviously part of that cheapness is provided by lower costs of labour, by overseas work.

If you bring that production back to the US, its going to add to the cost. Prices will rise. Can America stomach that?

….unless he plans on bringing about a massive reduction in internal US labour costs, of course.

I think that the idea that low labour costs elsewhere, especially in China, means that it’s generally simply not economically viable for US (and UK/EU) based manufacturing businesses to compete is too readily accepted, and that the costs vs benefits are a lot more finely balanced than the simple comparison of the hourly rate of a Chinese worker and his American counterpart:

– as I understand it, Chinese labour costs have been rising in the last decade
– China industrialised very rapidly and threw up a lot of factories – many with state money – in a very short period of time, because they knew that almost no matter what they might get wrong, the labour costs were so low that mistakes would not matter. I think many of those factories as a result and the skills/quality of their employees are not as good as their USA/EU equivalents (less efficient, poorer quality product etc.), and as a result they will struggle to maintain a competitive edge without an (artificially?) low currency exchange rate and state bank subsidies.
– China has a major problem with corruption, and that also damages their competiveness
– A lot of businesses have repatriated functions back from the Far East, in order to regain control of quality/product safety, simplify the supply chain, to guard intellctual property, and because it is simply cheaper to do so.

So I suspect that the main obstacles to an increase in USA manufacturing are not so much the operating costs (energy/wages etc.) and more the barriers to entry of the costs of starting up by building or de-mothballing plants, and even those now may not be as great as before. For example, my understanding is that high tech semi-conductor manufacturing facilities have a fairly short lifespan, and it’s often easier/cheaper for the manufacturers to build a new factory for the next generation of chips, rather than try to upgrade their existing factories.

The USA has a lot of advantages for starting up new manufacturing: loads of space, lots of natural resources, a flexible/mobile workforce and a labour market/laws that favour the employer, and low energy costs. If corporations also know that the government (Trump or otherwise) is actively going to support them, that could strongly encourage them to invest more inside the USA.

If they have any shortages, it might be temporary gaps in some of the workforce skills, in which case they can do what America has always done, and encourage immigration to fill the gaps (Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free your ambitious go-getting degree qualified Mexican or Chinese production engineer).