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@Christian thanks for the detailed reply, you seem to have a very level headed prospective.
Sorry for the rather short and rapid fire posts, I was running late and couldn't really formulate my ideas as I would have liked to, let me attempt to do so now.
Concerning Trumps generally policy I agree his foreign policy is a bit questionable when I said "moderate" I meant generally less hawkish than normal Republican policy but you are correct it is a bit different than either parties.
"-Immigration: This issue has usually been one that doesn't fall very neatly on party lines, but Trump is certainly more extremely in favor of strict borders than Republicans have been, maybe ever (see Reagan and amnesty)."
I think Trumps policy falls very well in line with conservative thought on this issue, one of the frustrations I and many conservatives have is the way the republican party has been so weak on this issue, it is still not unprecedented in my opinion.
On the issue of Pro-life I don't really care what Trump thinks himself, I don't think he particularly cares about this issue but he has partnered with Pro-life groups and will probably veto pro-abortion laws and sign anti abortion laws like lat term abortion laws etc. Not to mention he will likely elect pro life judges.
"-pro-American: I don't even know what this means. Do you think Obama is anti-American? Every candidate for US president is in favor of America; sometimes people on the right call people on the left "Blame America Firsters" for criticizing the US's role as world policeman, but since Donald Trump is far more in favor of diminishing that role than Hillary even that criticism doesn't land."
I did not define this issue very well, and this is probably a bit tangental to the main discussion but I think Obama is Anti-American in the sense that he feels the United States has too much influence and power in world has made speeches in foreign countries basically apologizing for our influence and actions in the world. Frankly I would have to go back and look up some of the stuff Obama has done and said (And Hillary as secretary of state) to fully answer what I mean by "Anti-American" Basically I trust Trump to act in our own best interest, but I do not Trust Hillary to do the same.
The issue of economic policy is to my mind the most interesting again, when I say "Moderate" I simply meant different from standard conservative thought, I agree I miss used that term . Trump's protectionism is certainly the most troubling part of his economic policy although I do think it is more along the lines of progressive policy as it favors government intervention into the free market. To my mind, I think Trump is a smart enough business man that he will not go overboard on destroying trade, I am not an expert on trade policy by any means and my instinct is that any government intervention will result in a decrease in productivity, yet perhaps giving incentives for companies to stay in the country will be a good thing. Specifically on the issue of China I have not studied the issue but I give Trump the benefit of the doubt that China has not been taking advantage of our trade agreements and currency so perhaps some policy change in that direction would be beneficial.
While I have reservations on Trump's trade policy I think his economic policy is excellent, I do not know where you got the idea that he will increase spending, from what I could find Trump is in favor of government money for child-care as well as well as spending money on infrastructure, but these spending increases can be easily off-set by his plan to reduce military spending(removing troops from places like Germany for example), increase tax revenue by cutting loop-holes and theoretical increases from lower tax rates on businesses (Laffer curve), eliminating Obama care and hopefully reforming medicare etc.
The big one here is regulation reform and corporate tax reduction. These two issues are massive weights on our economy, small businesses, one of the largest sources for job creation, have to deal with massive reams of regulations and red tape which causes huge expenses directly effecting the consumers. the U.S.’s corporate tax rate of 39 percent is the third highest in the world, tied with Puerto Rico and lower only than the United Arab Emirates and Chad. The U.S. tax rate is 16 percentage points higher than the worldwide average of 22.8 percent and a little more than 9 percentage points higher than the worldwide GDP-weighted average of 29.8 percent.--Taken from a study by the taxfoundation.org. The ridiculously high corporate tax rate directly damages small business and large businesses, forcing many companies to take operations overseas, and generally causes economic mayhem.
If Trump reforms theses two issues, regulation and 39% corporate tax the economy will experience massive growth, in all sectors directly benefiting consumers and the unemployed. Now this economic growth is a benefit to ALL Americans, especially the poor and middle class. I ask you, who usually gets unemployed first, the rich or the poor? Who get hit the most by higher prices on goods and services, the poor or the rich? When the economy is good, the poor and middle class benefit the most, the rich don't really care whether the price of bread is 2:00 or 2:50, they can afford 100,000 loaves either way. So when Hillary says "I want to make rich evil corporations pay their fair share" she is actually directly taxing the poorest Americans.
Now concerning the race issue. To me this is directly related to the idea of Trump as a raceist vs Hillary. My point is that the fact of whether Trump is somehow racist is unimportant compared to the question of whether Trump will improve conditions for minority groups, whether they are Hispanic, Black, or whatever.
This is such a complex topic, I do not think I really have a good enough understanding nor the time and writing skills to fully explain my thoughts and rational. In fact I think the reason this is such a thorny topic is that there is really no easy solution, the problems of the Black community is rooted in extremely complex social and economic issues which are very hard to unravel. I will attempt to explain myself as I see it, but I fear I may not be able to communicate my thoughts as clearly as I would like.
You are correct just one set of data does not provide a very clear picture, by mentioning Chicago I was simply grabbing the first example that came to mind + 1 minute of google searches (Not a strong argument). The overall point I was trying to make was that if we look at majority black communities, Inner city Chicago, New York, Detroit, etc. These places have been solidly democrat for years and the party has had ample opportunity to implement those policies you mentioned. More funding for inner city schools, affirmative, action, criminal justice reform(That kettle of fish is beyond the scope of this discussion), welfare programs, rent subsidies etc. In fact most of these have actually been implemented for example rent subsidies, rent control, welfare and foods tamps affirmative action. In addition I believe the government has been pouring money into the school system for years without positive effect.
Yes these policies are targeted to the black community but I would argue they simply do not work. For example rent control is designed to provide low cost housing for the poor community but it actually has the opposite effect, as counter intuitive as it seems. Unfortunately I do not remember the exact details.(I highly recommend "Basic Economics" by Thomas Sowell he has a fantastic explanation for the economic failure of rent control) I believe the issue is that at an Artificially low cost the incentive for a landowner to run an inner city apartment complex is low and thus there is no incentive to build Apartments and as a result there are simply not enough rooms to go around and the poor are forced to, as you mention, to pay high prices for hotels etc. The sad fact is that because of rent control inner city dwellers actually have to pay MORE compared to suburban communities. Government subsidies for housing is now like putting a band-aid on the gaping wound caused by rent control.
Education is an issue where the proposed solution for years has been to simply pour more money on the problem and hope it gets better, this has not succeeded and I do not see any reason why the next four years will be different. I will not touch on this too much as I have very little knowledge, fair enough to say I think do not see how Trump's plan will be worse than Hillary's, perhaps vouchers will not benefit inner city schools as much but neither will simply adding money.
However I would not necessarily be against more funding for inner city schools, certainly cutting waste and improving teacher salary might help(cutting bureaucratic waste is easier said than done I know).
The issue of education is deeply rooted in the social and economic problems in the inner city and minority communities, however.
I think you really mischaracterize the Republican position on the black community, from a conservative point of view the problems in the black community is not black culture, it is the economic and social system which exists in inner city communities. The problems like crime rates, out of wedlock children, poor education etc are not the root problem, they are simply the surface level results of the deeper issues. The problem is that the deeper issues are very hard to ferret out thus I can see why it is easy to mistake the surface problems with the root problems. It is a very thorny issue as the problem is circular. you have bad education as a result of broken family structure and low quality education, this results on few job opportunities which leads to crime and dependency which then feeds the cycle of broken families and poor education I frankly do not know what the best solution to the inner city minority problem is, I think a first step is improving the economy to the point where inner city jobs exists is the best place to start. Also education reform and improvement, although again I am very unsure how this would be done.
As far as whether Trump himself is a receist I think it is frankly irrelevant, I could counter by quoting Bill Clinton who once said something along the lines of (Talking of Obama) "A few years ago and this guy would have been serving us coffee."
I could mention Hillary's and Bill's ties to the old democrat part in Arkansas and the KKK(Robert Bird anyone?).
I think that is irrelevant, even if Trump is a dyed in the wool raceist his policies have the best chance and improving the lot of poor minority groups. It is not like Trump has absolute power, he cannot get elected and than repeal the 13th and 14th Amendments. I ask you: What exactly(besides re-tweeting white supremacist tweets) do you think Trump will do to disadvantage minority groups?
Obviously I do not think Trump would do such a thing, I frankly do not think he is a racists in the sense that he would pursue policies which would benefit one race over another, I would not disagree that Trump is a receist in a broad sense, as in his comments about jews, but I would argue that this is more like generally stereotyping especially to make a point. For example he didn't say"All mexicans are rapists," rather he mentioned a specific case and used a narrow stereotype of illegal immigrants to argue for immigration control, I frankly do not see this as raceist as he is simply stating fact with this logic.
1. A certain percentage of illegal immigrants (Majority of these Mexican) are criminals: Demonstrably true. 2. Thus why should we allow this percentage of criminals to enter our country illegally given we cannot strain out the criminals.
I fail to see the racism in this logic, you may disagree but how is it raceist?
One last thought I wanted to paste on this poorly formatted and executed post is that the flood of illegal immigrants directly compete with lower class minority groups for jobs, stopping cold the entrance of illegal immigrants should improve lower class job opportunities for poor American citizens.
I do want to thank you ChristianS for this post, you seem very well informed and I respect your well reasoned opinions. I do find these issues very fascinating, especially concerning the whole race issue.
As I mentioned earlier I highly recommend reading some of Thomas Sowell's work, he has some fascinating insight on the economics of inner city minority groups and economics in general. I will leave a link to his web page. http://www.tsowell.com/
Edit: rereading this I realize my post is a bit off topic as it does not directly concern much of what was discussed above. To me this is the best way to understand the issue of racism and which political "box" to put Trump in. However, I do understand that my post is rather tangental to the political question of whether Hillary can pin Trump into the racist box.
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it's not a matter of whether trump is racist, it's the fact that he incites racism in his followers. We need someone who actively fights racism
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ya i mean trump is a farsighted politician. even so he's doing badly in the polls because of rampant idealism. it's almost impossible to simultaneously guide the nation toward the aims and likewise win votes. realistically a candidate with the perfect answer to every issue is losing support left and right and without the engineering to win an idealized election (grassroots election) the major question becomes one of media. trump obviously is far ahead in media holdings but he's way behind in the things that matter in his personal life. bringing the kind of fiscal solvency to Washington isn't practical from a national view because the united states stakes its personal reputation on being an international monetary reform frontrunner. if foreclosures and wall street are the make or break issue or as you suggest IMF and national banking schemes are appealing only to the informed 1% there's no capacity to resolve the fundamental question of dollar value, gold standard, and larger market property. landed interests are collapsing and strategic interests are unavailable. therefore to the extent that we're hoping to achieve a quasi-independent future for tax paying citizens, we can't resort to logic of consequence and can only suppose that the real political nature of the debate is one that supposes military interests outweighing the general economic welfare. then in practice any mention of the alt-right is appealing primarily to tea party, neo-conservatives whose private holdings and quantified interests are certainly not in league with the national interests wholesale. a general and domestic monetary collapse of international character impinges on the personal character of citizens abroad and endangers trilateral trade issues between mexico and Canada. nothing suffices to undermine the campaign to the extent that our global infrastructure does, and it makes me wonder whether the election is anything more than a sham. we're not trusting our candidates at the bottom line to be unified with the kind of constructivism alt-right propaganda brings to mind. after all if we can't trust our candidates then we can't trust our voting methods or our best intentioned appraisal of politicorelations. Finally we're deftly avoiding the issues politicians are meant to address and resorting to a kind of laissez faire attitude in our own caretaker duties as citizens. Focusing like we can govern these issues to the same extent like a candidate as Trump we're not judging things at face value. Clearly we're expressing marked preferences for non-election issue and supposing the best of the nation to benefit. Exaggerating the methodological inquiry of alt-right attitude is just as bad or worse than the vectors and intentionalities characterizing judgment and invoking unpardonable clause of by-gone properties characteristic of historical revenant. Then fading from view are the real stakes we're playing for and the morphological perspective of how well our favored candidates are in office. This short run perspective is nothing other than inexperience by the voting public and a marked indifference by relative judges themselves. We're achieving nothing and there's nothing to achieve.
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On September 23 2016 07:59 imgbaby wrote: it's not a matter of whether trump is racist, it's the fact that he incites racism in his followers. We need someone who actively fights racism The irony being that affirmative action is the definition of a racist policy but is backed to the hilt by the dems.
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On September 23 2016 07:59 imgbaby wrote: it's not a matter of whether trump is racist, it's the fact that he incites racism in his followers. We need someone who actively fights racism
From what I've been seeing it is certainly not white racists that are causing racial tensions in America.
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On September 23 2016 23:55 Vandrad wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2016 07:59 imgbaby wrote: it's not a matter of whether trump is racist, it's the fact that he incites racism in his followers. We need someone who actively fights racism From what I've been seeing it is certainly not white racists that are causing racial tensions in America. Come to Ohio and we'll see how that notion checks out.
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On September 23 2016 17:41 iPlaY.NettleS wrote:Show nested quote +On September 23 2016 07:59 imgbaby wrote: it's not a matter of whether trump is racist, it's the fact that he incites racism in his followers. We need someone who actively fights racism The irony being that affirmative action is the definition of a racist policy but is backed to the hilt by the dems.
Affirmative action is not reverse racism. To assume it is reverse racism is to assume that minority groups, particularly those that are black, are afforded the same opportunities as white people.
The purpose of affirmative action is to correct institutional biases in our society. If we assumed society was a pure meritocracy, there would be far more women in higher positions of power but as we know in many, many industries that is not true. The critical tenet of affirmative action is that it diversifies work and educational environments, allowing certain genders and races to enter said industries, and normalize said races and genders in these industries.
It isn't a racist policy because its not telling white people, who don't suffer from the same institutional biases, to go home and suck eggs. White people, still by and large, aren't still frozen out of certain real estate markets through exclusionary practices for instance.
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The main reason there are fewer women in higher positions of power is because so many women drop out of the workforce to have kids and then return on a part-time or casual basis while they are raising the kids.If you compare women who never had kids and thus never dropped out of the workforce for a time to men then they earn around the same.For childless women under 30 living in urban areas they earn 8% more than men.
There is no institutional bias in this situation it is all personal choice.
A white kid growing up in West Virginia where Obama closed down half the coal mines will have it tougher than some rich white kid growing up in Palo Alto.W-V is one of the poorest states in the USA and one of the few states where whites are still 90%+ of the population.Why should you discriminate against some poor white kid from W-V via affirmative action just because he is white? No, affirmative action discriminates based on race and that is the literal definition of racism.I don't see what there is to argue here.
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Appalachian is a recognized class for the purposes of most affirmative action programs, so try again with your example nettles
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There's poor white kids in every state.
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On September 24 2016 22:21 iPlaY.NettleS wrote: The main reason there are fewer women in higher positions of power is because so many women drop out of the workforce to have kids and then return on a part-time or casual basis while they are raising the kids.If you compare women who never had kids and thus never dropped out of the workforce for a time to men then they earn around the same.For childless women under 30 living in urban areas they earn 8% more than men.
There is no institutional bias in this situation it is all personal choice.
A white kid growing up in West Virginia where Obama closed down half the coal mines will have it tougher than some rich white kid growing up in Palo Alto.W-V is one of the poorest states in the USA and one of the few states where whites are still 90%+ of the population.Why should you discriminate against some poor white kid from W-V via affirmative action just because he is white? No, affirmative action discriminates based on race and that is the literal definition of racism.I don't see what there is to argue here. You're overstating the case that institutional bias against women doesn't exist. Yes, the maternity leave issue is one area where earning inequality can happen. But first of all, depending on the industry that doesn't account for all the disparity in income levels, and second of all, this phenomenon is still pretty common even if the mother doesn't drop out of the work force – just takes her paid maternity leave, has the kid, and then comes back into work. Motherhood consistently damages women's careers in a way that fatherhood just doesn't, which is still about personal choice, but on a double standard. Women have to make a "personal choice" between career and family, while men can have both.
Re affirmative action: That's a dumb argument against for a couple of reasons. First of all, you're highlighting an underprivileged group that you say doesn't get the benefit of affirmative action, and ask why that group doesn't get benefit – but that argument actually starts from the assumption that underprivileged groups should be favored to level the playing field, and just whines that one group isn't included. The obvious policy implication of your argument isn't to stop affirmative action, it's to start doing it for poor white kids from West Virginia. And in fact, since we're not in the era of quota systems any more, underprivileged white kids probably do get some benefit in the college application process. If two students had the same SAT scores, and similar quality of writing in their essays, a lot of schools would probably favor the poor white kid over the rich one.
Then you argue that "because affirmative action discriminates based on race it's racism," which is trying to win the argument by semantics instead of actually talking about whether affirmative action is good or bad. If we find that affirmative action does good in the world, but accept your definition that it's racism, we wouldn't say "oh, well, it's a good thing, but we shouldn't do it because it's racist." We'd say we'd found maybe the only case of racism that actually lessens racial inequality, so we should still do it.
And your definition is pretty questionable anyway. There's a legitimate argument to be had about whether or not it's racist to discriminate based on race if you're just trying to offset the discrimination based on race that already exists in the world. An example:
Let's say you're in middle school. And you go to school one day, and in the cafeteria, the school has decided to provide ice cream cones for lunch today! But there's not enough for all the students, so the school gives ice cream cones to teachers to hand out at lunch. Unfortunately, most of the teachers are racist pricks, and they only give ice cream to white students. One teacher, Mr. Jones, is not a racist prick, but isn't sure who to give his ice cream cones to. Would it be racist if he gave them to only black children, to try to offset the discrimination by his colleagues? Or is he obligated, by his non-racism, to ignore the race of the students and hand them out equally (meaning that black students wind up with a much smaller chance of getting ice cream, since only one teacher will give to them and even that teacher is still giving a lot of his ice cream to white kids).
I think the obvious answer is that if Mr. Jones isn't racist, he should give all his ice cream to black kids because that makes the overall system more fair, even though if you looked just at the kids Mr. Jones gave ice cream to, he would look pretty unfair. Of course, the American education system's admissions process is a lot more complicated than handing out ice cream, but this at least demonstrates that the position "because affirmative action discriminates based on race it's racism" is either semantically trivial, or, if the implied "so therefore it's bad" is there, dumb.
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Yes, there are some women who quit work to become mothers due to personal or logistical issues. But that is completely irrelevant to my point. I specifically stated higher positions of power for a reason.
In these cases, women with very good careers generally do not have a lot of children (or none at all) in order to retain their career. Unlike the father, the women in this situation find it difficult to have children because you may be put to pasture if they do have one. And no, it isn't always a double standard where the mother gets leave and the father doesn't. After all, Canada provides paid parental leave to the father if he wishes to take it I am not mistaken.
Even if we assume that most mothers quit their (fulfilling and well paying) careers because of motherhood (which screams BIOTRUTHS if you ask me), it still doesn't explain why the percentage of women on ASX 200 board of directors is still less than 1/4 despite women being, in general, better educated than men. And that number is only as high as it is because many companies are actively issuing diversity quotas.
I don't know where you work in Australia but I know its a trend in small engineering firms to either pay women less or not hire women at all because they are seen as less capable than men. Obviously they won't say it that's the general attitude in these environments. For this sort of firm, the only woman is a secretary and I'll let you know the one at my company earns less than I did when I first stated as a full time graduate despite having worked there for a decade.
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@slammer, thank you for such an in-depth post. I really wanted to hear a real opinion. It seems hilarious to me that you have presented a platform that Trump has not at all been able to articulate coherently and clearly. Nowhere am I able to read this kind of thought from the Republican party, so they don't really give me the impression that they know what they're doing. Your ideas make sense, I just don't see the evidence. I guess same with Hillary.
@christian, thank you for the post. I aspire to write like some of you guys do, regardless of whether your point is truly true or not. Presenting an argument well is its own quality. Also your insights are dope/thought-provoking.
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