Please explain to an outsider...why Trump?

Middle quintile earners are receiving an ~ 10% increase in real income.

 

The Paul Ryan tax cuts that Trump signed pumped money into the economy, and I ackowledge that this led to a little economic growth, but it exascerbated our debt problem. In 2016, the national debt was $19.6 trillion (104% of GDP). At the end of 2Q20, it had grown to $26.5 trillion (136% of GDP). Our short term prosperity is a ticking time bomb.

 

It is a regrettably simple but also long explanation: human behavior.

Humans rely far more on emotions for decision making than logic. It is a big part of why people were drawn to Trump in the 2016 primaries vs the others. He was seen as more authentic, whereas there was disgust for the typical politicians he was running against. If you listen to what he says, he constantly hits those emotional buttons. Fear of rapist immigrants, distrust of the "deep state", hatred of those radical socialist democrats who are rigging the election, etc.

Beyond that, we are a social species. We make families, have religious communities, root for our sports teams, etc. There is a strong bonding mechanism within these social groups - one of which is political ideology. We have become very much tribalized with a growing hatred of the other party. It has been shown in a number of studies:



A few writings on this political polarization:
- How Hatred Came to Dominate American Politics
- Political Polarization in the American Public
- Prius or Pickup?

The polarization of the parties has made party affiliation (and political leanings) very much an us vs them exercise, especially at the national stage. This means that Trump or any other R or D that is run by the D or R party has a certain floor of votes they will most definitely receive from loyal tribal members who view the other party as an existential threat. In general, someone who shows up to vote is voting for the candidate that represents your party or the one you most closely identify with a vast majority of the time.

However, his support grew from 2016 to 2020. He has this year received more votes for president than any in history - with the exception of Biden now. So clearly polarization is not quite sufficient as he also drove far more people out to vote for him.

You say "If someone like that would rule my country, in such a way, i would move abroad immediately." However, this is not the narrative being fed to the right leaning voter. We humans have another very annoying tendency in confirmation bias. It makes us very susceptible believing that which confirms what we want to believe. The market for feeding you the propaganda you want to hear has grown a lot during the Trump presidency with his constant derision of the MSM and promotion of alternative sources.

He has been assisted quite a lot by Fox News (part of the MSM), and other popular RW commentators Mark Levin, Rush Limbaugh, etc, who will of course be unwilling to criticize their own tribal leader on this front. Hearing enough of your trusted sources, and in all likelihood some of your friends / family, promote these things will lead even someone who is not originally a believer in conspiracies down the path of "alternate facts".

This phenomenon is documented in the book Network Propaganda, which you can find a discussion by the authors here:

I believe these factors combined with Trump's demands for personal loyalty that ensured the extolling of his virtues among R leadership helped lead to massive turnout in support of Trump you saw this year.

 

To a degree, I agree with you. For me, though, it's more about picking away at our rights, which has been happening for 30 years, and took a sharp downward turn (for the people,) with The Patriot Act. I'm so disgusted with government.

Trump isn't the answer to that. He's just not. He's just a different version of that. He's been staging a coup for months, AKA we can't trust the states to create their own election process. How many people "knew" that this was going to be filled with fraud, but only if Trump lost.

Madness. He's a bitter, angry and dangerous man. I believe he is committing treason, in a sense. His press secretary no longer speaks for the WH; she speaks for the campaign. I'm fairly confident that doing campaign pressers in the WH press room is a non starter.

Plus this whole lawsuit fund he's built. It's 40% / 60% GOP / Trump Superpac, until the donation reaches $8,001. After that, a percentage goes to the lawsuits.

I'm hopeful that a President Biden, who has many friends in The Senate, will be able to bring a calm to the country so we can all breathe, and listen to each other, and understand. There are so many positive and negative points on both sides. Compromise works. The radicals on "their" team are no more mainstream than the radicals on "your" team.

McConnell and Biden are friends, who have great respect for each other. Biden, a moderate Blue Dog, could be a good administrative president, like (personal favorite in my lifetime,) George HW Bush. Mad respect for him. He's the only president I ever voted twice for.

 

We're not improving infrastructure. Who are you kidding? Businesses aren't going to invest if their market isn't growing, or there isn't an efficiency payout.

In 2017, we needed to cut corporation taxes, not personal taxes for higher income brackets. We should take care to create an operating environment for business of all sizes--straightforward regulations, few in number but strictly enforced, taxation levels that encourage business generally. There's a lot of work needed here.

Of course not. How did that become an issue?

No, you're flat wrong. Government should make strategic infrastructure investments to help some types of business, and provide tax incentives for investment in selected businesses--we have to do some picking of winners and losers. My concern, as you might expect, is the intersection of politics, ideology, and corruption. How do we avoid screwups like Solyndra? Development banks?

We can't avoid strategic investments because other countries are willing to use the power of sovereign government to manipulate the market.

One reason I'm not a liberal Democrat is their tendency to do their picking on the basis of politics and ideology.

Forcing people to self-insure is a huge drag on the economy. The late Senator Coburn got it right with his medical voucher proposal.

You suggest limiting government involvement to creating positive conditions for business. I disagreed because we have to enable our businesses to compete against foreign rivals, here and overseas.

NAFTA gives us preferred access to the Canadian resources. Seems like a good deal to me.

This time is different. A lot of jobs will disappear, others will be modified to take out parts that can be farmed out to computers, and the workplace will be profoundly disrupted.

You're rigid ideology is influencing your perception of my position. I strongly favor market solutions--school and medical vouchers, for example. But I temper my pro-market fervor with pragmatic solutions to ongoing problems. We have trade agreements where we're forced to pick winners and losers. We have to compete with expansionist powers like China who are executing an industrial strategy.

How in the heck do you operate in other cultures?

 

Because they got more hours, not higher wages.

 

Newt didn't set policy.

 

Not to Canada.

They were using tariffs to protect their dairy industry, a lot of it in Quebec.

Not with Canada.

Aussie's can be bloody-minded types if you push them. Americans will go along with tougher measures.

 

I have to agree. I don't like it, but some American companies in some industries simply cannot compete with China and Europe, and Japan and probably South Korea (?), absent government help, or at least coordination.

 

Nuh - uh!

 

People who become employed tend to get more hours.

 

Sure he did. Stiglitz confirmed so.

 

I hope that McConnell and Biden can see sense and steer the US out of the mess it is in.

 

But we can't even agree what the mess is. Some say it's racism (objectively false), some say covid, some say an overreaction to covid; others say an UNDERreaction to covid, some say police brutality, others say disrespect for law and order. This is a madhouse.

 

False as a generalized statement. When there is a lack of people in a sector of the employment market, the value of those people goes up, reflected in wages.

In this area of East Tennessee for example, in limited service restaurants the starting wage has gone up over the last three years from $9.00 for unskilled labor (as in first job seekers) to $10, and for those skilled $11-12 an hour. That includes part time. Full service restaurants have upped the base wage (exclusive of tips) for servers to $10 per hour, and $15 for experienced barkeeps. Because there is a labor shortage. Supply and demand drives wages, not hours.

 

Yep, I’d say it’s a combination.

 

Propaganda Alert!

Trump hasn't done anything special for the economy in spite of his self-promtion. You, of course, bought it hook, line, and sinker.



Economic growth was more rapid under Bill Clinton than under subsequent Presidents, and growth during Obama's last three years were almost identical to Trump's first three.

 

This is the left never wasting a (manufactured) crisis. Covid positive tests (called cases by the left to incite fear) of younger people at very minimal risk showing very mild or no symptoms are increasing because the US is testing more. But daily fatalities and hospitalizations are not soaring and are far below the maximums of last spring. Plus seroprevalence data both in the US and globally suggest that there are ~ 120 million in the US with covid antibodies.

 

Economic growth under Clinton was due to supply side economic policies. Economic growth under Trump was not as great due to the trade negotiations with the CCP. Employment and foreign investment was way up.

 

The facts are right in front of your face in the two graphs I provided. Wages are "sticky" and tend to go up and down more slowly than supply and demand for labor would otherwise suggest.

Anecdotal evidence of labor markets. Some wages more closely track immediate supply and demand, others are "sticky" because of factors like collective agreements.

Who said hours drive wage levels? Not me.

 

Hours worked drive income levels.

 

We have to protect some industries because they're a matter of national security, but others would be viable on their own if countries like China weren't trying to wipe out foreign competitors as part of an industrial strategy.

 

LangleyMan said: ↑
Because they got more hours, not higher wages.

The rise in income is driven by the increase in the per hour wage, not that they 'got more hours'.

Too many meetings today to play dissect the post. Will try and address later.

 

Geez, I said more hours were driving median family incomes up.

 

Some of you Trumpers just don't get it. Older people hide out in their homes and pull back on spending as the case count increases. Reduced consumer demand is seriously damaging the economy.

Not according to the Lancet:

"During the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, fewer than 10% of the US adult population formed antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, and fewer than 10% of those with antibodies were diagnosed. Public health efforts to limit SARS-CoV-2 spread need to especially target racial and ethnic minority and densely populated communities."​

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)32009-2/fulltext

You and your pals are making the economic problem worse.