Trump by name......

How does underemplyment effect that 5% unemployment? I know, here in Australia (especially in the tourist areas where I live) alot of people cant get more than part time work, which makes it even harder to earn a liveable wage. There was an article in the NYT showing that the California farm workers are not getting paid enough to be able to afford healthy food. It's been similar here in Aus with dairy as the milk processing companies use their market power to reduce the amount paid to farmers for their produce.

Like Ero has said, regulations often benefit the big businesses because they can afford the people to handle them that often little ones cant. For example the compliance work for public companies can consume a great deal of time, one of my textbooks mentioned that board directors felt that they should spend most of their time on strategy and policy but find that they are spending most of it on compliance. If that's the case for huge businesses who can have dedicated people to work on it, then its going to be much harder for small companies to keep up and afford the fees required. I'm not against regulations, and I think environmental ones need to be beefed up in alot of cases, but it sure seems like many of the regulations make more barriers to entry and benefit established big corporations.

Some of the articles I've seen lately suggest that globalisation has been slowing down even before Trump came along, as big multinational companies have seen slower growth (except for some of the big IT companies) when they open businesses in other countries.

The last year or so, my thoughts on globalisation and big businesses has been all over the place so I'm not sure what is best at the moment. Big business and globalisation has benefited consumers with lower prices, but it comes at a cost to the small manufacturers who's profit margin gets smaller and smaller.

 

So conflicts in the Ukraine and emerging conflict in Iran.

I think the Steele dossier is more accurate than many care to admit. My ongoing guess is that Trump made an agreement to give Putin the North Sea and the Ukraine to sell oil to Western Europe, while we got to invade Iran without fear of reprisals.

I've been thinking about this from a historical perspective and what happens when you get a lot of people acting unpredictably, with demagogues coming into power, Brexit, Syrian refugee crisis, Global Climate Change, etc. and how at the time very few people thought that the assassination could have possibly led to World War 1.

My guess is whatever ensues, and I doubt it will be very good, historians will wonder why few people saw it coming.

Edit: And Trump is threatening to move US troops to Mexico to take care of 'bad hombres.'

 

I'm not sure if the Trump admin realizes what they're actually admitting to when they claim to be running "as a business". Trump's ex in-house lawyer who is now his chief of international negotiations was quoted as saying about the country's new foreign policy:

So what he's saying is that the way he and Trump run their business is quite obviously to bully everyone around into submission. Well, that should restore people's faith back into the capitalist system, mega corporations and the business world. No negotiations, no talks, no reason. Just roll over or else. Nice of them to clear that up.

 

It's no problem at all! It makes for lively discussion. It's actually pretty fun when debating these same subjects in person, because having debated it here on MAP your thoughts are organized and you can quick fire info. and ethical positions in person since they're prepared and practiced beforehand xD.

I like the honesty too. It's nice having a discussion with somebody who can get under your skin because they make good points and challenge your position vs. getting under your skin because they're just annoying, of which you're definitely the former there.

Philo is definitely the latter. :running:

 

Trump has set sights on the Johnson amendment. Calls to the Australian PM did not go well. Sanctions against Russia are being eased and all major Israeli news sources have put out a release saying that Hamas has been restored to 2014 levels of military capability; I'm guessing that this will be a pretext for war.

 

this topic is actually very near and dear to me and currently working on impressing government regulators.

it's interesting because i don't think we want the 'tyranny of the bureaucracy' to dominate. just have so many rules that business is suffocated preventing all players from entering a transparent and efficient market. because at the end of the day, for me, 'free market' means transparency. kind of like how observation is critical to science and the scientific method.

we want to avoid bureaucracy. but.....and this is a big but....i think we also need protections in place. not only to help provide access to all players (big, small, in the middle), but to make markets transparent and efficient. i think you could argue that corruption has a huge cost in and of itself; by marking markets transparent, we can help to eliminate corruption.

it's hard to say what kind of regulation is needed without delving into details of the market itself. but i'm working with government regulators currently to help establish a new capital market. so far, i haven't seen anything that doesn't make sense, in the interest of transparency or efficiency. but yes, like you mention, there's a monetary cost to it--a big one.

my firm tries to lower the cost of technology, knowing that we can help entrepeneurs by freeing up capital for governmental approval and marketing. but still, it's costs a lot of money.

sorry i know i'm rambling. because i don't have one single sound-bite of an answer. really, it's complicated. lol

 

https://theintercept.com/2017/02/02...n-of-attacking-u-s-navy-vessel-an-act-of-war/

These clowns. Christ, I hope Americans are not stupid and hateful enough to be drawn into yet another war.

 

Speaking of regulations, Republicans voted to allow the dumping of coal wastes into rivers and streams.

http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/01/politics/stream-protection-rule/

Let's be clear that these efforts are not aimed at enabling 'small coal.'

 

I do not think Trump is against GLBT

 

I agree. I don't think they're even on his personal radar. That said, it doesn't mean he wont sell them down the river if it benefits him personally.

 

how asinine is the 1-in/2-out rule. that's the kind of nonsense that idiots think of.

 

You say that, but strategically it does mean that the least important regulations will get cut first (rationally speaking), and that any new regulation needs to be more important than the two least important regulations.

Of course, importance is subjective.

 

i'm all for auditing protections, making sure there's no cruft, making sure that markets are efficient and transparent and legitimate and don't prevent people from entering a market. but to just say 1-in/2-out without any thought or nuance behind it....asinine--there's really no other word for it.

 

Good politics though.

 

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news...ndustry-top-aide-says/?utm_term=.eb57de9d5f47

It looks like trump is really telling wall street whos boss! (it seems they are!)

 

from the annals of 'you can't make this manure up'....

disclosure, i'm copy/pasting the quotes from another news site to here.

“Don’t believe those phony numbers when you hear 4.9 and 5 percent unemployment,” Trump said last February. “The number’s probably 28, 29, as high as 35. In fact, I even heard recently 42 percent.”

“The five percent figure is one of the biggest hoaxes in modern politics,” he said in an August speech.

In November, right before the election, Trump again called the unemployment rate number “phony.”

fast-forward to today.....

“Two-hundred twenty-seven thousand jobs,” Trump said at the White House. “Great spirit in the country right now, so we’re very happy about that. I think that it’s going to continue, big league. We’re bringing back jobs.”

the guy who's been in office two weeks, is claiming credit for a jobs report that he has nothing to do with and he's been citing as phony.

i want to know where the fools are from this thread that have been going on and on about the u6 numbers for months.

 

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=bd79UsXSLWg


At first this looks like a pretty boring conspiracy theory, but it does makes quite a lot of sense.

Is trump unable to actually read, and this is why hes signing things without understanding their full context?

 

I think he can read, I just think he has the attention span of a toddler. He's never had to read anything in his life, he's always had a building full of lackeys to read, digest and summarise for him.

 

Trum can read and he can "sign: