2016 USA Presidential election thread I: The warm-up

[Andalusian girls]

I'd like to see a counter to it, but most of my impressions regarding NAFTA come from this study:


http://www.citizen.org/documents/NAFTA-at-20.pdf


Not so greatly worded article on it, but quoting some of the summarizing:

http://www.citizen.org/documents/NAFTA-at-20.pdf

i am hesitant to respond in depth to the Ralph Nader think-tank (a Cato Institute study showing NAFTA has produced 5 million jobs has the same obvious and self-serving partisan bias) but a few observations after a cursory glance.

the most pressing and easily refuted claim in the study is the causal linking of trade deficit and job loss. we are thankfully removed from the days of Pat Buchanan claiming $1 billion in trade deficit equates 20,000 lost jobs, but the Sanders and Trump campaigns's's vilification of trade has resurrected this tired dybbuk. balance of trade is by nature balanced, it is not as though we set aflame the money that finances a trade deficit. that money goes into our trading partners' hands, both businesses and governments, and they either sit on their dollars, which would drive up the value of their currency (stronger currency = weaker exports / stronger imports and vice versa) resulting in a diminishment of the trade deficit until equilibrium is reached, or conversely they turn around with their shiny U.S. dollars and reinvest that money into the United States, lowering the cost of borrowing money, increasing the value of securities, and providing investment capital for business. these, combined with the savings engendered by more efficient production, generally exceed the costs of outsourced jobs and result in increased employment.

this is readily witnessed by the fact that China is the global leader in exporting goods, widely recognized as the world's trader winner because no one can match its trade surplus, yet the global leader in foreign direct investment (that is foreign investment going towards tangible economic assets not stocks or bonds or other portfolio components) is the United States, which received more direct foreign investment in 2015 than at any point in our nation's history and received more than three times (!) as much as the #2 recipient of foreign direct investment.

there is one addendum to this in the Triffin dilemma. i clock out too soon to explain it in depth so feel free to google it but the thrust is the use of the U.S. dollar as the world's global reserve currency facilitates our trade deficits by increasing demand for the dollar for use in bilateral trade between non-U.S. actors.

but let us abandon the heady realm of theory for empirical evidence and note all evidence points to an inverse correlation between the unemployment rate and the trade deficit. that is to say since globalization truly started to take the world by storm during the late-80s and early-90s the American trade deficit has grown every year our economy has grown and has only discernibly closed during the recessions of 2001 and 2008, and it shrank proportionally to the severity of those recessions. if anything a decreasing, not increasing, trade deficit indicates fewer jobs.

and i could use an ugly piece of rhetorical gamesmanship by pointing out that America gained manufacturing jobs for a half-decade after NAFTA passed and the late 90s were the economically healthiest in the history of the Republic but i'm above such legerdemain.
well no i'm not, but as i've been reiterating aggregate employment cannot be linked solely or even primarily to free trade.

the most egregious ignorance contained in the study is the linking of Mexico's economic difficulties to NAFTA, ignoring the Zapatista Uprising and assassination of presidential candidate Colosio in 1994, events that facilitated the flight of foreign capital which when combined with Mexico abandoning a fixed currency exchange rate resulted in the hyperinflation of the peso which then resulted in the spiraling cost of tortillas the authors so dishonestly lay at the door of NAFTA. the Mexican economy has more or less been in persistent trouble since the 1970s for a myriad of reasons, presently the collapse of civil society in large parts of Mexico and the endemic corruption of local government following the rise of the cartels are maybe the most culpable actors, and to lay the blame for Mexican poverty at the feet of free trade is a comic absurdity. indeed the protestations appear to be a manner of Schrodinger's immigrant, America is losing jobs because they are being shipped to Mexico while Mexico is losing jobs because American jobs are being shipped to Mexico.

the infantilization of Mexican economic history is indicative of my most salient objections to essentially every finding in the study as they consist of (generally inflated) figures shorn from all other context. the rankest form of presenting correlation as causation used in an effort to demonize the impact of NAFTA, which as initially stated is smaller in both its positive and negative impact than most would have you believe. its primary impact is as an agent of what economists call disruption, an event in which markets assume fundamentally different shapes than the ones they had previously assumed, and such events produce both economic winners and economic losers, but in the aggregate the consensus is overwhelming that there are more of the former than the latter. that is to say free trade does not greatly either increase or decrease employment (though most economists agree it slightly increases employment while greatly increasing efficiency) but it does greatly facilitate shifting the emphasis of an economy's production.

the role of government should not be to satiate the yearnings for a romanticized past, but to ease the discomfort that comes with disruptions, both those engendered by globalization and those engendered by technological advancement. the scope of that conversation is beyond this already bloated post but the emphasis should not be on bringing back jobs that require men to attach steel to other steel but in teaching the coming generation how to write the GUI that the manufacturing workers who remain will use to control industrial robots to do the same.

[Andalusian girls]

well i'm sure glad i stuck true to not responding in an in-depth or technical fashion

[Krandor]

All the while, Trump has been pumping tons of money into his own pockets. Running for president may be one of his best business ideas.

http://www.usnews.com/opinion/articl...ump-businesses

He put in like $13 million of his own money during the primaries (and another $2 million since yesterday) so he's more just paying himself back.

[archibaldcrane]

He put in like $13 million of his own money during the primaries (and another $2 million since yesterday) so he's more just paying himself back.

Put it in, or loaned it to his campaign?

[Minions]

He put in like $13 million of his own money during the primaries (and another $2 million since yesterday) so he's more just paying himself back.

Except if he loans his campaign 13 million, he will still take that 13 million back out once he passes that funding during/after the GE. He is/can basically funnel campaign funds into his own pocket this way, and its entirely legal, in the same way Hilary giving funds to campaigns, that then decide to return the money is...

That brings us to the second caveat: The vast majority of Trump’s contributions to his own campaign — about $12.6 million — are loans rather than donations. This means he could expect to eventually recoup these funds."

http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-me...campaign-sort/

Hint; He will take that 13 mil back in full, and whatever else he paid his businesses is just icing on the cake.

[Niiro]

[Qeomash]

[archibaldcrane]

Bernie put an op-ed in the WaPo to, uh, repeat his stump speech again.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/poste...-what-we-want/

[Zealot]

He and his campaign are done, he's now leveraging his appeal towards forcing the DNC to make concessions towards his platform. Trump is still unpredictable enough and Hillary vulnerable enough that if I'm the DNC, I'm not looking to have any division in my voter base, and he knows he's got that going for him.

[archibaldcrane]

Sure, but that op-ed said absolutely nothing about "the DNC platform". It's literally his stump speech - all "what" and no "how".

[Gredival]

It's literally his stump speech - all "what" and no "how".

I mean so are his interviews, he's a man of consistency.

[Zealot]

Sure, but that op-ed said absolutely nothing about "the DNC platform". It's literally his stump speech - all "what" and no "how".

Doesn't have to. He just wants his message out there and repeated as much as possible heading into the convention.

[Dotsudoku]

to strengthen the naivety of a large group of people who don't seem to think that a what requires a how

[Krandor]

Trump has forgiven all the loans he's made to his campaign

[Andalusian girls]

reports leaking that Tim Kaine is presently Hillary's top choice for Veep

Virginia Sen. Tim Kaine is emerging as the leading candidate atop Hillary Clinton’s vice presidential short list, according to Democratic allies and operatives close to the campaign.

Sen. Elizabeth Warren and HUD Secretary Julian Castro are also top prospects for the Democratic ticket — both representing nods to important Democratic constituencies. But they have serious drawbacks that make them less appealing for Clinton than the Spanish-speaking, Terry McAuliffe-endorsed, former missionary and swing state governor.

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/0...ep-list-224702

[notorious bum]

LMFAO

Liz Kreutz
‏@ABCLiz

Clinton: "If we broke up the big banks tomorrow….would that end racism? Would that end sexism?" "No!" crowd yells out

[Blubbartron]

LMFAO

Jesus. Yeah, there's no way I'm voting for Hillary Clinton. The continuation of identity politics is the single most harmful thing we can do in this country, besides allowing massive corporations and their interests to dictate our laws.

[Melena]

Good to know then you'd rather watch the world burn. She does have a point though with what she said.

[Blubbartron]

It's only a point if you think racism and sexism are holding more people down than poverty and the drying up of the middle class.

[kisada]

you'd have to be braindead if you think donald trump is going to be good for the economy, let alone with everything else