OT: The next President of the United States: ★★★ Donald Trump ★★★

[DuckIII]

um, wha? Eh? Huh?

Allright, well, let's hear it.

I am not waffle. But let me give my counterpoint. It's a good thing to call racists racists. Just say it. If they don't like it, or people who it isn't directed at don't like it, it's of no consequence. It's not relevant if Trump is "really racist" or just pretending. What matters is the support. (By the way, he is a hugely open and proud racist.)

Here's the straight cheese: You support Trump, odds are you are a racist piece of **** with a lot of other problems too. And if you are not, and support him nonetheless, it doesn't bother you if racists take a seat of power. Which makes you a pussy. And also probably racist.

One of my sons asked me the other day why a neighbor had Trump signs in his yard. I told him it was a good thing. Because it lets you know who they are.

[johnnyvann840]

I didn't quote the whole thing but that's the crux of his point. Now, this guy is either a flaming idiot or he is intentionally misleading his readers. Anyone here pay a 19% sales tax? No? Didn't think so.

a VAT system puts countries at a trade advantage over us even if it isn't inherent.

If the author was to use a 19% VAT versus 8% sales tax plus social security tax for his calculation, that would be apparent.

Yeah, I don't understand why the author quotes a piece and then admits to changing the wording and numbers but "preserving the logic entirely... No, sir. When you change the numbers from a 19% VAT vs. an 8% sales tax, to a 19% VAT vs. a 19% sales tax... you are not preserving the logic of the argument.

"quick Internet search uncovers the basic argument on many
websites, and what follows is an adaptation from one such site.
I have changed the numbers and the wording a bit, but have
preserved the logic of the argument entirely.

My God it reads like some defunct economist from one of my 80's college textbooks spewing nonsense.

[coldfish]

um, wha? Eh? Huh?

Allright, well, let's hear it.

I am not waffle. But let me give my counterpoint. It's a good thing to call racists racists. Just say it. If they don't like it, or people who it isn't directed at don't like it, it's of no consequence.

Here's the straight cheese: You support Trump, odds are you are a racist piece of **** with a lot of other problems too. And if you are not, and support him nonetheless, it doesn't bother you if racists take a seat of power. Which makes you a pussy. And also probably racist.

One of my sons asked me the other day why a neighbor had Trump signs in his yard. I told him it was a good thing. Because it lets you know who they are.

Ouch.

I know a lot of Trump supporters. Not one of them is racist in any traditional sense of the word. Many of them are rather uninformed, to be quite honest, and are just angry at the political system. I suppose you could say that they "don't care if a racist takes a seat of power". That doesn't make a person a racist or a pussy. Other issues just take precedence in their minds.

As a counter analogy, I also know a lot of pro-life people. I believe you are one of them. On the extreme, there are some pro-life people who feel that anyone who is pro-choice is a murderer. By that logic, every single Hillary supporter is a murderer.

Is that how we should define people? Just pick one issue and demand that everyone prioritize it above all others? Does this election come down to racists versus murderers?

Personally, I think not.

[johnnyvann840]

nevermind... not getting involved in the racist debate.

[bentheredengthat]

- By globalizing, we turned our closed system into an open system. Unskilled labor has to compete with billions of people around the world unlike before, where you would have full employment and then wage pressures. Dantown is touching on this in multiple places but the reality is that in order for their to be real wage gains, the ENTIRE PLANET has to get close to full employment. That's going to take a while.

hate to indiscriminately crop such a great discussion, but IMHO this is where the problem lies.

I don't think we'll ever get close to full employment - due to automation.

And if we do we've either hit a home run on population control, or our planet is screwed.

...sorry my comment is not up to par with the quality you guys are providing... look forward to learning more.

I don't know if you caught by rock -> hammer -> nail gun analogy but I'll go a little more into it.

Again, I wish people would take "automation" off a pedestal. A robot is just a tool, like a hammer, that makes people more productive. A factory full of robots still needs people to repair them, program them, etc. Its just that your man hours needed per part produced goes down. . . . just like when you went from hammers to nail guns.

Regardless, that's a side rant. More importantly, you might be right. It took us hundreds of thousands of years to go from a rock to a steel hammer. When the rate of innovation is low like that, you get the full process I described. New technology -> Labor dislocation -> more production -> labor moves to new demand -> new steady state at higher standard of living.

Right now, technology is moving so fast that we aren't ever getting to a steady state. From what I am seeing, the rate of improvement is actually accelerating. As such, we will never get to full employment because we will never get to a steady state condition where all new technologies have proliferated through the system.

People are going to bash me to death here, but I don't see free market capitalism working in the long term. Centrally planned socialism and communism don't work either. We almost are going to need a new type of economic system for a world where our tools do 90% of the work and only a small percentage of the population has to work in order to provide for everyone.

Bravo! I can't believe how many times I've had this conversation online and nobody but myself comes to this conclusion. Seems inevitable to me.

[TheSuzerain]

I agree with Coldfish that the VAT taxes imposed on our exports by most of our trading partners are unfair and costly to US workers. The solution seems obvious: pass our own 18% VAT.

The problem is that VAT tax is inherently regressive and is paid primarily by consumers. If you spend 100% of your income on consumer staples, you pay a bigger fraction than the millionaire who spends his money on offshore golf courses, summer homes and sailboats and saves the rest. It's not clear to me how it can be made more fair. Perhaps the proceeds could be earmarked to pay for unemployment benefits, public health and education, which are services for the poor and working classes that are currently supported with payroll taxes and, to some extent, sales taxes, which are also regressive. On the other hand, as recent news related to Trump's tax paying behavior illustrate, income taxes seem to be pretty regressive as well, thanks to loopholes provided by bribed legislators and heavily renumerated tax lawyers who help multimillionaires drive through them.

I'd like the issue of VAT taxes and the apparent regressive nature of our income, property and estate taxes to be addressed in the next town hall debate between the candidates. I don't have high hopes that we will get responsive answers, but it would be nice if the issues were at least raised. Candidates should be pressed to show how they plan to get themselves and their rich patrons to pay their fair share of taxes. I expect smoke and mirrors in response, but maybe the heat on the topic would do some good.

I agree with you on why we shouldn't pursue a VAT, but back to the VAT/trade point.

If a VAT was advantageous to exports, would it then follow that countries with a VAT enjoyed more exports than non-VAT countries when controlling for other factors? Seems like if VAT is a distortion of trade, then that would be accurate. Coldfish feel free to respond to that as well.

P.S. The dichotomy between the actual Presidential debates and the discourse on a Chicago Bulls message board is pretty sad

[bentheredengthat]

P.S. The dichotomy between the actual Presidential debates and the discourse on a Chicago Bulls message board is pretty sad

We should pat ourselves on the back. This board has been doing this for more than a decade with a lot of people coming and going along the way.

I can't believe how drastically the internet age has basically turned everything into a meme. Nobody talks policy in public anymore. Even when it's their job.

They were talking on MSNBC the other day about how they keep asking for the Clinton campaign to send over the policy wonks so they can get into it. They won't do it.

Nevermind Trump.

[Mech Engineer]

I haven't posted in a while and I logged on to see what's going on with the Bulls and there is this interesting discussion going on.

All I can say is both the candidates have their strong points. You need definitely some shake-up in the status-quo to provide a shock in the government like Trump is doing. But, he is just "unbelievable".

It is impossible to trust him because his views are racist, crazy and scary even if he might not be one in real life. We have to judge by what we have seen on media. And, he seems to have no interest in learning anything in detail. He might have been a smart businessman a decade ago. But, he seems to be someone who sounds like an angry old man who is losing his marbles.

Hillary has been beaten up a lot by her detractors because she has been around a lot and there is a lot of hate. I don't think she is as untrustworthy as she is portrayed. That said, I don't think she will change anything if elected. I believe we will have the same issues 4 years from now if she is elected.

We need a president who has a vision of the world/country 10 years from now and plan for it. You do not want a president looking backwards.

[League Circles]

um, wha? Eh? Huh?

Allright, well, let's hear it.

I am not waffle. But let me give my counterpoint. It's a good thing to call racists racists. Just say it. If they don't like it, or people who it isn't directed at don't like it, it's of no consequence. It's not relevant if Trump is "really racist" or just pretending. What matters is the support. (By the way, he is a hugely open and proud racist.)

Here's the straight cheese: You support Trump, odds are you are a racist piece of **** with a lot of other problems too. And if you are not, and support him nonetheless, it doesn't bother you if racists take a seat of power. Which makes you a pussy. And also probably racist.

One of my sons asked me the other day why a neighbor had Trump signs in his yard. I told him it was a good thing. Because it lets you know who they are.

No offense but I think it's preposterous to say that Trump is an open and proud racist.

Maybe it's semantics. He's definitely openly discriminatory in his ideology. But being discriminatory is neither sufficient nor required to be racist. Racism is something different than "being a discriminatory **** who is insensitive to issues of race".

Just notice how you just called a huge portion of americans racist who probably have lots of other problems too.

Do you believe that that type of language influences people to NOT be racists (or what you call racist)? Or might it embolden them in their attitudes? My opinion is that it's often the latter, which is problematic for society.

Again, Trump certainly may be a big racist. But it's not important whether he's racist or simply discriminating and insensitive and an ****. The reason it doesn't matter is that there is plenty to grill him on without having to take the unnecessary step in logic of calling him a racist without evidence (I think as an attorney you can appreciate what I mean when I say evidence). He can just be grilled on the underlying true and clear issues, such as him being full of **** on so many topics, not being a good, sensitive, diplomatic person, etc.

I try to never take unnecessary leaps to call out opponents when it's not critical to winning the argument. Americans can agree to avoid someone like Donald Trump quite easily without needing to agree that he's racist. And since so many people support him, they simply aren't going to agree he's racist. They can easily find a way to rationalize that he's not racist (because in theory there can be other rationale - sometimes equally wrong for different reasons - for his actions and comments).

I really think that a big problem in this country is that people think that all they need to have the country they want is for 51% of the people to agree with them, and then screw the rest. It doesn't work like that. We've been in that mindset for decades.

I think we need to work more on agreement and consensus than on identification of wrong attitudes and defeat of 49% by 51% (theoretically). I think it would be WAY easier to steer some Trump supporters away from him if the rational basis is composed of things other than comments like "he's an open and proud racist." Trump supporters hear stuff like that and dismiss you just as you dismiss them. And nobody is going to win anything with big segments of the population dismissing one another.

[DanTown8587]

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-manufacturing-dead-output-has-doubled-in-three-decades-2016-03-28

Technology and new ways of organizing work have revolutionized the American factory since the Golden Age of the 1980s. Today, U.S. factories produce twice as much stuff as they in 1984, but with one-third fewer workerw.


That has literally nothing to do with globalization. Globalization is essentially pandering to the masses but not the real reason businesses don't manufacture here. American manufacturing is not going down, it's going up. LABOR is going down, not up. Globalization cannot explain that.

This is a common point made by globalists. Its the "bumblebees can't fly" argument that makes no sense. Walk into WalMart or Target or Home Depot. Look at where everything was manufactured. Virtually everything was made outside the US. I'm a little older than most here so I remember a day when that wasn't true.

We manufacture a much lower percentage of the goods we use than we did decades ago. This is an incontrovertible fact. If we manufactured more of the goods we use, we would employ more people. Those people may be far more productive than they were years ago but there would be more, high paying jobs and that would trickle through the economy.

I do want to focus on automation because this strikes at base economics.

Median income tends to stagnate in developed countries unless something drastic happens that can impact an entire economy. Let's say you haven't liked what's happened in the previous 40 years of the US economy (1975+) but look at the preceeding 110 years of history on the US economy

- Ended slavery (more jobs)
- Fought Civil War (more available jobs)
- Took off with industrial revolution (new jobs)
- Manufacturing was viable business (landing spots for people who didn't go to college)
- Fought two world wars that took millions of men out of the work force

The growth of the US economy from 1860 to 1980 was never going to be repeated from 1980 on because the United States was never going to remove 500K 18-30 year olds (aka about .5% of the population) and wages were low because, well, wages were low without protections like minimum wage. Each of those events created new jobs that could be done with unskilled labor and provide basic necessities to families. Now, you HAVE to go to college to have a fighting chance to do that and that costs a lot of money.

It is impossible to just have a ton of unskilled workers make "a lot" of money for multiple generations; it's only available to growing and non-developed countries. Once you reach a point of maturity in a country, wages get high enough that capital is invested in. China is going to see this as well.

OK, a long time ago, people used to hit things with rocks to shape them. That was cumbersome and slow. Someone eventually came up with the idea of attaching a stick to the rock. That stone hammer sped things up. Then we figured out metal and made normal hammers which lasted longer. Eventually we came up with nail guns that allowed a single person to put in a tremendous number of nails. His productivity went up and in the short term, one guy could replace dozens.

All along the way, our standard of living was going up and up. Productivity does that even if it creates short term dislocations. Automation (read: multi axis robots) are just the new version of nail guns allowing less people to produce more.

Its important to understand the why and how of productivity improvements leading to a better standard of living:
- New technology allows company X to replace many workers with less
- Company X has a short term surge in profits
- Company Y and Z get the same technology and undercut company X on price****A******
- Consumers now get goods for less money and spend the extra income on something other than company X's goods. Now their standard of living is better because for the same money they get more stuff.
- The other stuff than consumers are now demanding requires labor. The displaced workers from companies X, Y and Z get jobs there. With full employment, you get wage pressures. ****B****
End result: Full employment, normal profit margins, consumers now get more stuff making their standard of living higher.

Why is basic economics not working today like it did for the past 100K years? Two answers:
- Corporations have got in bed with governments and have acted to stifle competition. This isn't a globalization issue but its a huge problem worth a different discussion. By constantly merging or shutting out competition, corporations have made it so that they don't get undercut on price and can retain the profits they make from higher productivity. This is one of the primary mechanisms of income disparity in the US.
- By globalizing, we turned our closed system into an open system. Unskilled labor has to compete with billions of people around the world unlike before, where you would have full employment and then wage pressures. Dantown is touching on this in multiple places but the reality is that in order for their to be real wage gains, the ENTIRE PLANET has to get close to full employment. That's going to take a while.

And oh yeah, median income is up.

Its just going back up to where it was. If this continues year after year for about a decade, then we might be on to something.

There is no manuacturing job that you can bring back to America because the wages are high enough that businesses will invest or create capital instead (see: car manufacturers or the article listed below)

http://www.stltoday.com/business/local/wal-mart-s-owls-have-returned-to-america-but-the/article_6cf2f59c-85e4-521d-83de-5d24f8b9e3f6.html

The Bordeaux transmission plant.

What is that you ask? Well, its where a tremendous number of transmissions for Ford Explorers and Rangers were made for a very long time at a cost penalty. That's right, Americans were paying about $100 more per vehicle just so that they could drive a vehicle with a higher quality problem transmission imported from France.

Why would Ford do something that stupid? Content legislation. France demanded that if Ford wanted to sell cars in France, they had to employ French workers. Just about every country other than the US does it. This very minute light housings are being assembled in South America instead of the US at a cost penalty to the US corporation because the South American countries demand that the work is done there.

A lot of the studies I read are asinine. They read like the oil companies denying global warming. Of course, there are many labor intensive jobs that are not competitive in the US but there are countless others being moved out of the US due to legal reasons (ie. VAT, content legislation, etc.) The fact that studies gloss over this makes me question their motivation.

I refuse to engage a conversation with someone who takes data, refutes with their own anecdotes, then claims they're right.

If you're so right about wages, workers, automation, and the like the data should be sitting there for you to refute my point and my data.

You can sit there and say that automation doesn't lead to less jobs because you need people to work in factories. Well that's right but think about that kind of worker: the kind of person who can build and fix machines is no longer an unskilled worker, which is your entire point about who has to work in a factory. If a factory goes from people to machines, it goes from unskilled to skilled labor as well; it's not as if a factory takes a high school graduate and then trains him to create machinery.

Again, your claims backed by data would be nice. But the old "I walk into Wal-Mart and everything is made in China so ergo I'm right" isn't data.

There is data that says that when companies in America are manufacturing, they're doing it with LESS workers. You seem to refute that entire point.

My counter-points

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-griswold-globalization-and-trade-help-manufacturing-20160801-snap-story.html

According to a recent study by the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, productivity growth caused 85% of the job losses in manufacturing from 2000 to 2010, a period that saw 5.6 million factory jobs disappear. In that same period, trade accounted for a mere 13% of job losses.

American factories and American workers are making a greater volume of stuff than ever — high-tech, high-value products that are competitive in markets around the world. In the last 20 years, which include enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, real, inflation-adjusted U.S. manufacturing output has increased by almost 40%. Annual value added by U.S. factories has reached a record $2.4 trillion.

What has changed in recent decades is what our factories produce. Americans today make fewer shirts, shoes, toys and tables than we did 30 years ago. Instead, America’s 21st century manufacturing sector is dominated by petroleum refining, pharmaceuticals, plastics, fabricated metals, machinery, computers and other electronics, motor vehicles and other transportation equipment, and aircraft and aerospace equipment.

The problem with trade is that people like you walk into a Wal-Mart and see that everything is made in China and assume that means we cannot make those goods. No, America manufactures a ton of **** (2.1 trillion) but it's a ton of expensive **** (i.e Boeing airplanes or Catepillar machinery) that we trade for cheap **** we do not make (i.e consumer goods).

Your point should have easy data behind it, so find it.

[League Circles]

hate to indiscriminately crop such a great discussion, but IMHO this is where the problem lies.

I don't think we'll ever get close to full employment - due to automation.

And if we do we've either hit a home run on population control, or our planet is screwed.

...sorry my comment is not up to par with the quality you guys are providing... look forward to learning more.

I don't know if you caught by rock -> hammer -> nail gun analogy but I'll go a little more into it.

Again, I wish people would take "automation" off a pedestal. A robot is just a tool, like a hammer, that makes people more productive. A factory full of robots still needs people to repair them, program them, etc. Its just that your man hours needed per part produced goes down. . . . just like when you went from hammers to nail guns.

Regardless, that's a side rant. More importantly, you might be right. It took us hundreds of thousands of years to go from a rock to a steel hammer. When the rate of innovation is low like that, you get the full process I described. New technology -> Labor dislocation -> more production -> labor moves to new demand -> new steady state at higher standard of living.

Right now, technology is moving so fast that we aren't ever getting to a steady state. From what I am seeing, the rate of improvement is actually accelerating. As such, we will never get to full employment because we will never get to a steady state condition where all new technologies have proliferated through the system.

People are going to bash me to death here, but I don't see free market capitalism working in the long term. Centrally planned socialism and communism don't work either. We almost are going to need a new type of economic system for a world where our tools do 90% of the work and only a small percentage of the population has to work in order to provide for everyone.

Bravo! I can't believe how many times I've had this conversation online and nobody but myself comes to this conclusion. Seems inevitable to me.

I agree with both you guys and just want to say that coldfish is spot on with all of his last few posts. The steady state ideas especially are great insight.

[Mech Engineer]

hate to indiscriminately crop such a great discussion, but IMHO this is where the problem lies.

I don't think we'll ever get close to full employment - due to automation.

And if we do we've either hit a home run on population control, or our planet is screwed.

...sorry my comment is not up to par with the quality you guys are providing... look forward to learning more.

I don't know if you caught by rock -> hammer -> nail gun analogy but I'll go a little more into it.

Again, I wish people would take "automation" off a pedestal. A robot is just a tool, like a hammer, that makes people more productive. A factory full of robots still needs people to repair them, program them, etc. Its just that your man hours needed per part produced goes down. . . . just like when you went from hammers to nail guns.

Regardless, that's a side rant. More importantly, you might be right. It took us hundreds of thousands of years to go from a rock to a steel hammer. When the rate of innovation is low like that, you get the full process I described. New technology -> Labor dislocation -> more production -> labor moves to new demand -> new steady state at higher standard of living.

Right now, technology is moving so fast that we aren't ever getting to a steady state. From what I am seeing, the rate of improvement is actually accelerating. As such, we will never get to full employment because we will never get to a steady state condition where all new technologies have proliferated through the system.

People are going to bash me to death here, but I don't see free market capitalism working in the long term. Centrally planned socialism and communism don't work either. We almost are going to need a new type of economic system for a world where our tools do 90% of the work and only a small percentage of the population has to work in order to provide for everyone.

Bravo! I can't believe how many times I've had this conversation online and nobody but myself comes to this conclusion. Seems inevitable to me.

This is the conversation the candidates should be having. Unfortunately, they are looking at votes.

Things like mobility(the quick ability to relocate to a new place where the new jobs are) can help in the short term. That should be easier in US compared to many other countries. One of the biggest advantages we have is the relative similarity of lifestyle anywhere you go in the country. Go to China or India to see the impact of moving from one state/province to another(different languages/cultures/food etc..).

The other thing is the focus on hyper-skills required to thrive in the new economy. There is not enough training/time/support given to jobless people to retrain for a new job. The system is just not set-up both in corporations or in the government to do this. They talk a lot but there is no vision/action on this in reality.

[League Circles]

I haven't posted in a while and I logged on to see what's going on with the Bulls and there is this interesting discussion going on.

All I can say is both the candidates have their strong points. You need definitely some shake-up in the status-quo to provide a shock in the government like Trump is doing. But, he is just "unbelievable".

It is impossible to trust him because his views are racist, crazy and scary even if he might not be one in real life. We have to judge by what we have seen on media. And, he seems to have no interest in learning anything in detail. He might have been a smart businessman a decade ago. But, he seems to be someone who sounds like an angry old man who is losing his marbles.

Hillary has been beaten up a lot by her detractors because she has been around a lot and there is a lot of hate. I don't think she is as untrustworthy as she is portrayed. That said, I don't think she will change anything if elected. I believe we will have the same issues 4 years from now if she is elected.

We need a president who has a vision of the world/country 10 years from now and plan for it. You do not want a president looking backwards.

Great post Mech, don't be stranger here. That's kind of how I feel about the candidates. Trump is too unbelievable and scary, and Hillary is continuation of Obama/Bush policies.

[TheSuzerain]

Trump undeniably catered his campaign to white nationalism.

In my view, the primary reason Trump won the GOP nomination is that he used a megaphone rather than a dog whistle when speaking on those issues. There is/was a huge disconnect between the primary concerns of the GOP intelligentsia and the concerns of the average GOP voter. Trump exploited that beautifully and pretty much curb stomped all the other GOP candidates.

[League Circles]

Trump undeniably catered his campaign to white nationalism.

In my view, the primary reason Trump won the GOP nomination is that he used a megaphone rather than a dog whistle when speaking on those issues. There is/was a huge disconnect between the primary concerns of the GOP intelligentsia and the concerns of the average GOP voter. Trump exploited that beautifully and pretty much curb stomped all the other GOP candidates.

While I think there is some truth to your second paragraph, your first paragraph is similar to saying that the Clinton campaign is undeniably Catered towards baby murderers.

[coldfish]

I refuse to engage a conversation with someone who takes data, refutes with their own anecdotes, then claims they're right.

If you're so right about wages, workers, automation, and the like the data should be sitting there for you to refute my point and my data.

You can sit there and say that automation doesn't lead to less jobs because you need people to work in factories. Well that's right but think about that kind of worker: the kind of person who can build and fix machines is no longer an unskilled worker, which is your entire point about who has to work in a factory. If a factory goes from people to machines, it goes from unskilled to skilled labor as well; it's not as if a factory takes a high school graduate and then trains him to create machinery.

Again, your claims backed by data would be nice. But the old "I walk into Wal-Mart and everything is made in China so ergo I'm right" isn't data.

There is data that says that when companies in America are manufacturing, they're doing it with LESS workers. You seem to refute that entire point.

My counter-points

http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-griswold-globalization-and-trade-help-manufacturing-20160801-snap-story.html

According to a recent study by the Center for Business and Economic Research at Ball State University, productivity growth caused 85% of the job losses in manufacturing from 2000 to 2010, a period that saw 5.6 million factory jobs disappear. In that same period, trade accounted for a mere 13% of job losses.

American factories and American workers are making a greater volume of stuff than ever — high-tech, high-value products that are competitive in markets around the world. In the last 20 years, which include enactment of the North American Free Trade Agreement and China’s entry into the World Trade Organization, real, inflation-adjusted U.S. manufacturing output has increased by almost 40%. Annual value added by U.S. factories has reached a record $2.4 trillion.

What has changed in recent decades is what our factories produce. Americans today make fewer shirts, shoes, toys and tables than we did 30 years ago. Instead, America’s 21st century manufacturing sector is dominated by petroleum refining, pharmaceuticals, plastics, fabricated metals, machinery, computers and other electronics, motor vehicles and other transportation equipment, and aircraft and aerospace equipment.

The problem with trade is that people like you walk into a Wal-Mart and see that everything is made in China and assume that means we cannot make those goods. No, America manufactures a ton of **** (2.1 trillion) but it's a ton of expensive **** (i.e Boeing airplanes or Catepillar machinery) that we trade for cheap **** we do not make (i.e consumer goods).

Your point should have easy data behind it, so find it.

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.IMP.GNFS.ZS?locations=US

US imports 16% of GDP in goods and services now as opposed to 4% in 1950.

Quite frankly, I'm shocked I had to support that. This is common knowledge level stuff. If I say "the sky is blue", I shouldn't have to go out to the internet and find a link to support it.

Anticipating your next comment, US exports have also grown.

http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NE.EXP.GNFS.ZS?locations=US

From roughly 5% to 13%. So, yeah, the net isn't nearly as awful as it is if you just look at it from an import side. However, when you dig into our real exports it starts getting ugly again. You mention Boeing, which is a good example of trade treaties harming our workers. Airbus is EU supported and gets many advantages as a result. Our trade treaties should not allow that and if they didn't, we would have more highly paid aerospace workers here.

Airbus versus Boeing is yet another common knowledge point. I shouldn't have to link anything going over how much Boeing has gotten screwed globally, but here:

http://www.boeing.com/company/key-orgs/government-operations/wto.page

Regardless, the end result is that industries that the US really is competitive in globally get screwed over. Fixing this would bring more high paying jobs to the US.

But yeah, if I have to come up with links for common sense points, please don't debate me. It'll save me some time.

Onto a more interesting discussion . . . .

[coldfish]

I agree with Coldfish that the VAT taxes imposed on our exports by most of our trading partners are unfair and costly to US workers. The solution seems obvious: pass our own 18% VAT.

The problem is that VAT tax is inherently regressive and is paid primarily by consumers. If you spend 100% of your income on consumer staples, you pay a bigger fraction than the millionaire who spends his money on offshore golf courses, summer homes and sailboats and saves the rest. It's not clear to me how it can be made more fair. Perhaps the proceeds could be earmarked to pay for unemployment benefits, public health and education, which are services for the poor and working classes that are currently supported with payroll taxes and, to some extent, sales taxes, which are also regressive. On the other hand, as recent news related to Trump's tax paying behavior illustrate, income taxes seem to be pretty regressive as well, thanks to loopholes provided by bribed legislators and heavily renumerated tax lawyers who help multimillionaires drive through them.

I'd like the issue of VAT taxes and the apparent regressive nature of our income, property and estate taxes to be addressed in the next town hall debate between the candidates. I don't have high hopes that we will get responsive answers, but it would be nice if the issues were at least raised. Candidates should be pressed to show how they plan to get themselves and their rich patrons to pay their fair share of taxes. I expect smoke and mirrors in response, but maybe the heat on the topic would do some good.

I agree with you on why we shouldn't pursue a VAT, but back to the VAT/trade point.

If a VAT was advantageous to exports, would it then follow that countries with a VAT enjoyed more exports than non-VAT countries when controlling for other factors? Seems like if VAT is a distortion of trade, then that would be accurate. Coldfish feel free to respond to that as well.

P.S. The dichotomy between the actual Presidential debates and the discourse on a Chicago Bulls message board is pretty sad

It would be rather difficult to do a fair A<->B comparison on VAT versus non VAT nations and the impact on trade. I think there is only one small nation other than the US that doesn't use a VAT. Realistically, the non-VAT side is a sample size of one. That's why I tend to look at international trade treaties as a bullet aimed at the US. It would have been relatively easy to negotiate a patch for this to level the issue out.

[Mech Engineer]

This globalization talk is very interesting. Every side has their data sets/justifications. The bottom line is jobs will go where cheap labor/efficiency exists. It is human nature to explore that avenue.

I can think of two things I was reading recently. For example, even a poor country like India cannot compete in making shoes . Some Indian shoe companies find it cheaper to make their shoes in China and import it to India. The infrastructure is already there to make it more efficiently in China compared to India.

There is also big American global agricultural companies in poor countries killing(literally making them commit suicide) the small farmers. This is efficiency killing even cheap labor.

I also think that trade treaties(even if sometimes unfavorable to the US) has helped reduce global poverty. This has helped some other American company eventually because those people who grow out of poverty in other countries eventually buy some American product.

The thing is these treaties/policies have to be flexible and look towards the future.

[League Circles]

Another issue relating to international trade and problems for the US is that it leaves us vulnerable IMO to produce exports in such a few sectors in big numbers. Maybe I'm missing something but it seems like most of our exports are food, major machinery, intellectual property (entertainment), and technology.

It just sets us up long term to be leveraged by other nations. To me, that is reason enough to diversify our domestic production more. And the most effective way to do that might be tariffs on imports or something like that.

Self sufficiency is inherently good IMO.

[johnnyvann840]

Another issue relating to international trade and problems for the US is that it leaves us vulnerable IMO to produce exports in such a few sectors in big numbers. Maybe I'm missing something but it seems like most of our exports are food, major machinery, intellectual property (entertainment), and technology.

It just sets us up long term to be leveraged by other nations. To me, that is reason enough to diversify our domestic production more. And the most effective way to do that might be tariffs on imports or something like that.

Self sufficiency is inherently good IMO.

Here's another take.... one which I tend to subscribe to..

http://www2.itif.org/2015-myth-american-manufacturing-renaissance.pdf

CONCLUSION
Conditions for U.S. manufacturing are certainly better than they were a decade ago, as employment and output are both growing, albeit slowly. Despite this improvement, there
is not yet evidence to support the notion of a U.S. manufacturing renaissance. Much of the
growth since the recession’s lows was just a cyclical recovery instead of real structural
growth that will improve long-term conditions, and there is a strong possibility that manufacturing will once again decline once domestic demand recovers. American manufacturing has lost a net of over a million jobs and over 15,000 manufacturing establishments since the beginning of the Great Recession. Value added is also down by 3.2 percent from 2007 to 2013, despite overall GDP growth of 5.6 percent. Moreover, America faces a $458 billion trade deficit in manufacturing goods.
In short, it is unwise to assume that U.S. manufacturing will continue to rebound without
significant changes in national policy. The optimistic message of the manufacturing renaissance provides the public, business leaders, and policymakers with a dangerous sense of complacency that reduces the urgency and necessity for Congress and the administration to take the bold steps needed to truly and sustainably revitalize American manufacturing. To realistically assess our options, it is important to have a clear idea of where we are. The debate on U.S. manufacturing should not be informed by anecdotal evidence, consulting reports for industry, or think tanks with agendas of keeping bad news from dampening support for further global integration

It is beyond the scope of this report to lay out a detailed national manufacturing strategy,
but ITIF has done so before in its report “Fifty Ways to leave your Competitiveness Woes Behind.”
. If we are wrong in our assessment and the renaissance promoters are right, the only risk to enacting such a strategy is that we will be even stronger in manufacturing-based competitiveness than we would be otherwise. Surely, this is not a bad outcome.