Hilliary vs. Trump: The 2016 US Presidental Election

Indeed. It's about automation and about the developing world catching up to industrialisation and offering the same blue-collar labour (and increasingly, white collar services) at the same price now that Americans were paid fifty years ago. You can't compete with that unless you are prepared to experience a significant drop in income and lifestyle. Or unless consumers are prepared to pay a lot more for their gadgets and clothes and stuff. Either way, whether at the labour end or the consumption end of the equation, standards of living are going to take a big hit.

Western countries are having to reinvent their economies: they have to become the designers and developers of the stuff that is mass-produced in the developing world. They have to become the Apple to the Foxconn side of the equation.

But that requires, amongst others, a serious revamp of the educational system and reorientation of the economy which frankly I don't see the US (or UK) manage any time soon, because these countries are fundamentally not so much governed but run by market forces, and markets will simply move somewhere cheaper. It is the more socialist governments that tend to invest in the country.

 

I won't repeat what's already been said so I'll just post a chart that i think highlights the problem all to clearly.

Sauce.

Being told by the so called elite that your problems have nothing to do with them is nothing new.

 

Naah, I think he'd rather just believe the narrative that it's all them low-skilled, low-wage foreigners' fault, spread by tabloids which are owned by multi-millionaires.

 

People beleived those jobs would never have left at all, until corporate globalisation came along.
From what I have seen in last few years, And how completely wrong experts have been getting it, I would not bank on "never coming back", Maybe not in the form they used to be. Change is diffinately coming for globalisation, and it will have to adapt to that change.

The 1% have used globalisation and freedom of movement (coporations are legal fictions like the rest of us) to move their money and production around the world, Taking advantage of natural resources along thw way. Yet people still feverishly beleive this is a good thing, For example: by opposing and suppressing people who support removing complete freedom of movement.
Globalisation can only function if freedom of movemenmt of goods, services and people exist, period.

So people who support the tenets of globisation and all it's establishment are not in a position to criticize it, even go as far a questioning it.
By opposing policies that make it hard for parasitical Globalisation to exist, You are directly helping the 1% become further entrenched.

The wool will eventually fall from the eyes of it's unwitting supporters, It's just taking a bit of time, unfortunately.

 

What you describe isn't a problem of globalisation and freedom of movement, it's a problem of allowing people with lots of money to play one group against another for their own gain.

The principal of freedom of movement isn't a bad thing as it allows people without work, money, or a way to improve their lot in life to move to someplace where they can, freedom of movement is akin to the freedom to move any other resource from one place to another, where it does cause problems though is when people are allowed to exploit the freedom to move resources from one place to another for their own gains.

So no the wool won't eventually fall from the eyes of the unwitting supports because (IMO) you've failed to identify what the actual problem with the freedom of movement is, if Mexico started flooding the American market with cheap corn, so much so that American corn farms started going out of business would you blame the corn?

 

Automatisation and information technology is responsible for those job losses. Machines that can do the same job that people did, faster and better. The ability to send a task halfway around the world by internet and have it back on your desk, done, by the next morning.

If it does, it won't involve the working and middle classes benefiting from it. That's not how big business works (I know a guy who makes a goodly £ half-million a year managing a budget of tens of millions. It is interesting to observe how his mind works. It be like: "Problem? --> What's the solution?". He doesn't agonise about why things happened or what it means. He doesn't dwell on the social fairness or unfairness of it. It's just an obstacle to overcome; an opportunity to capitalise on. Business caries on carrying on).

This anti-globalisation trend? It's just an obstacle to get around, and big corporations employ at very good pay very bright people who are very good at getting around obstacles and even capitalising on them.

Moreover, you benefit from this globalisation also. It's how you got your affordable mobile phone, your cheap clothes, your cheap food, your cheap services, when and where you want them. You could have decent working class jobs at decent pay, right there in Newcastle, except you'd have to accept a serious rise in cost of living and a corresponding drop in standards of living.

I remember a time when my parents wouldn't have been able to afford an iPhone, let alone a teenager like me. I see people, even poor people, own stuff that my parents could only dream of. Globalisation did that --but at a big cost. So far those costs were borne by mostly dark people halfway around the world, whether in the form of exploitative labour practices, environmental pollution or asset stripping of their natural resources, but it was happening to them, so it was not a problem. But now these costs are spreading, like an oil slick on water, into the Western developed world, into the Western working and middle classes, and all of a sudden globalisation is a problem.

It was always a problem. It just wasn't our problem yet. People just keep upgrading their iPhones every 18 months, their cars every three years, buying their cheap GAP clothes, gorging themselves on cheap food until the obesity crisis, watching their Sky TV. People never wonder where all that stuff came from; where all the waste goes. Who had to slave in factories or on farms for a pittance to make all this possible, like we don't wonder about the third-world immigrants who clean the London five-star hotel rooms and City banking offices at night. Who drive us home in Uber minicabs after a drunken Friday night out on the town. Who mans the all-night off-licenses and convenience stores.

And so can your iPhone, your cheap clothes, food and services. Without that freedom of movement of goods, services and people, you'd be paying a lot more.

Dude, YOU are supporting it, as a consumer. You are supporting it with Brexit.

Global corporations are more powerful than countries. If one country levies reasonable taxes, enforces standards of practice, employee rights and/or consumer protection, the corporation simply moves its operations to another country. The only way that can be stopped is if countries bind together into trading blocs --like the EU for instance: the biggest economic bloc in the world, bigger than the US, bigger than China and India combined. This is why the EU can force higher taxes from Google and Apple. This is why it can oppose Microsoft's monopolistic practices.



Rupert Murdoch, you will recall, was a great supporter of Brexit. He now is about to add Sky to his global empire --at a knock-down price since the Pound dropped.

This is also why every country with some sense is binding together in a trading bloc. Whether it is ASEAN in the Pacific (founder member: Singapore), or the AFTZ in Africa, or MERCOSUR in South America. It is the only way to stand up to global corporations.

Mote in your own eye, mate.

 

Freedom of movement is a wonderful thing for the middle class.

Here where i live there are companies that come from around the EU to fill a room of engineers at the same price of one engineer where they are from. It is good because that brings jobs and money, it is bad because they pay the minimum they can. I have heard of IT and electronics engineers working for 600€/month. They work for a few months and then GTFO and travel to other countries in the EU where they earn much much more.
If were were not in the euro zone and we did not have freedom of movement we would be stuffed. Thankfully i can go work anywhere in the EU, this allows e to go to places where there is a lack of people with my skill and earn more. I then spend money on taxes, housing and food where i'm working. Then you say something like: -but you are sending some of that money back home.
Yes. But think about this, if i send 50% of my earnings back home, this means that 50% stays there. 50% of something is better than 100% of nothing (nothing representing an unfilled job opening).

If you think that these jobs should be only for locals then... imagine your day to day life, now take away every single foreigner. Is there enough people and knowledge to replace them? Would YOU do their work for the pay they get? I'm not talking about doctors and stuff, i'm talking about cleaning hotel rooms, cleaning toilets, sweeping the streets, washing plates, sewer stuff, you know... the dirty and stinky stuff. Would you do it?

 

We have done just fine in the past leading up to present day and if taking those jobs is the difference between you eating or starving you will take those jobs. Of course, you may feel to 'good' for such menial labor.

On the other hand, if handouts from government leaves you with more money in your pocket at the end of the month than it would if you worked any of those jobs you would not take those jobs, you would get lazy, complacent and lose the drive of wanting to improve your life and better yourself because there would be no incentive for you to do so. It's not like you are starving or forced to work those jobs which would then help to drive you forward with a desire to get away from them as soon as possible. It also creates a culture of entitlement, by the way.

You can just sit at home and watch TV.

Edit.
We didn't build our respective civilizations and cultures with shitty work ethics and that of being lazy and unproductive, it's most certainly not what's gonna preserve them, if ever possible with current direction of travel to begin with. It doesn't look too promising.

 

DONALD Trump has signed an executive order giving the US security services 30 days to devise a new strategy for defeating ISIS, the White House said today.

What a day for us all to see in!

FULL MIGHT OF THE US INDUSTRAL MILITARY COMPLEX

Let the fireworks beginning in t minus 30 days.



Its going to be very successful.

 

short of glassing the entire middle east - how will this happen....

 

I hope he kills more than his recent policy creates.

 

Doesn't that just prove the need to make sure all jobs pay more than the basic subsistence handouts from government? It seems a little backwards to say if handouts from government leaves you with more money in your pocket at the end of the month than it would if you worked, that that's a problem with said handouts creating a sense of culture of entitlement.

I mean if you want people to feel motivated into taking a job shouldn't you offer them more than they're currently getting, it seems to be the way things work if a business wants someone to do a job that involves more work, responsibility, etc, etc.

No we didn't, we mostly built them of slave labor and exploiting others.

 

The joy you have over what amounts to nothing more than a vague executive order is amazing, it reminds me of how my cat gets all excited over a scrunched up ball of paper.

 

It's been in full swing in the Middle East since Bush.

 

Wait, didn't Trump promise an end to "intervention and chaos overseas"?

Of course the only reason why ISIS has not been defeated is because the entire military might of the West just didn't spend a few weeks sitting down and thinking about the problem.

Say hello to civilian casualties on a scale not seen before...

 

Well, he is going to forge strong alliances with ISIS' enemies, like the Iraqi and Iranian governments --Oh, wait...

 

Because it is as simple as signing an executive order. Works just as well as throwing coin in a wishing well.

 

Bush and Obama both signed their fair share of executive orders. It's funny how quickly people forget, every 8 years or so their memory gets wiped and they just start over.

Edit.
Difference here (without having compared to previous executive orders) is that Trump appears to be in a hurry.

 

Yeah, but none so sweepingly stupid, damaging and inconsequential.