dc koop

America funded the rebuilding of Germany and Japan and provided money to developing countries over many years. Wherever people were willing to work the Americans were always there to help. Now we have a bunch of self serving gits whose only agenda is to screw the incumbent President if he belongs to a rival party.

Thank god I live in a part that's a sea of blue and the sixth largest economy in the world. We may just be able to escape some of the toxic emissions that will be coming out of DC for the next four years

robin1234

Maybe Trump will have a Leonard Cohen moment ....

Beaverstate

According to his web site their are indeed no tours planned.
https://www.leonardcohen.com/tour

robin1234

Exactly.

Ebonhawke

I think that we're going to see a lot of rants on Twitter from Trump - however, I think a lot of them will be trying to act as a political smokescreen to some of the other issues surrounding him.

Case in point, his twitter rant about the cast of Hamilton - lots of comments noting the hypocrisy of his rant, but it distracts from the news that he settled his Trump University fraud lawsuit for $25M on the same day, as well as the news that he has met with Indian business partners of the Trump Organization in Trump Tower (also remember that he's said on the campaign that the US would be looking to expand its relations with India), and the number of other instances since the election where conflict of interest / corruption could be implied.

While I'm sure that some members of the press and the voting contingent will keep tabs on the issues that should be the biggest impact to Trump, these distractions could keep a lot of people from focusing on those issues, and more focused on 'click bait' tweets.

morpeth

Add reducing corporate taxes and regulations, and hopefully control of medical costs.

I know a local Midwest factory that has a starting wage of some $2,100 a month, but the cost of medical insurance to company over $1,000. So often they get temp workers making $1,600 or so they don't have to pay insurance. Other places structure jobs so two people work 29 hours a week each, works out often cheaper than one full time person.

Then on top of that restrictions on bank means many people cant get mortgages even with fair credit. Regulations ( city and state) make rehabilitating houses in the cities prohibitively expensive. So housing market which could absorb many of the out of work or underemployed is not as strong as it could be.

scrubbedexpat099

The local brew pub has stopped doing food, well they have a few snacks but that is all.

I asked why because they seemed to quite busy during the summer and was told that it was labour intensive and they could run the rest of it with a few people and the little bit extra simply was not worth all the extra hassle and risk.

The relative costs of doing things have changed a lot in my lifetime and continue to do so.

There are consequences in changes. I can see there is a market for high end individual restaurants but otherwise I expect there will be a continuing move to franchise type operations which can do volume.

My County I acknowledge needs more money, but they have cried wolf so many times and them misspent the proceeds that the chances of a successful vote is slim to nil.

One of the problems I see is that there are so many illogicalities in how things are done, needs major reform, but the people who will lose out will fight tooth and nail to stop changes happening, so the Politicians avoid the issues and focus on new areas. Meanwhile the issues get worse and worse. Happens at all levels. Saw the same thing when working for large companies, eventually companies fail, no such easy option for Government.

Leslie

I am cynical on this topic but that doesn't mean that I disagree with the spirit of what you're saying. I would love to be proven wrong.

johnwoo

Thankfully I spent most of my working life, both in the UK and US when employers actually gave a damm about their employees.
The genesis of the downward spiral started with the sainted Ronald Regan the hated Mrs Thatcher.

scrubbedexpat099

Certainly rimes have changed, there has to be a rebalance between labour costs, some disparity is OK but massive disparity over a long time will cause issues.

dc koop

I can thank Reagan for losing 40 percent of my Social Security benefit due to having the California Public Employees Retirement Pension.

The "double windfall" tax they called it. Eh ? Wot did they think? Two times a lottery winner?

Steerpike

Many of the banking regulations stem from the events leading up to the great crash in 2008; or are you conveniently forgetting that? It was too easy to get money (mortgages) back in 2008, and banks were merging left, right, and center, and offering all manner of services. The regulations were designed to stop banks getting 'too big'; 'too big to fail'. I guess Trump will roll all that back, and will allow a free-for-all, which may eventually crash, leaving a democrat to pick up the pieces.

scrubbedexpat099

The favourite meme seems to be that we made the mistake of taking Trump literally but not seriously, should have taken him seriously and not literally.

Giantaxe

Fyp.

FlaviusAetius

You people in CalMexico like to boast about having the sixth-largest economy in the world. There's also a lot of talk there (#Cali) about secession. Assuming the US reduces corporate tax rates to 15% and Cali departs and needs to keep those tax rates at the current level or higher to pay for all the free stuff. How long before all your big money-making corporations would be gone? They're public corps and the boards would have them relocate to Texas as the shareholders would demand. The Red counties of Cali would follow the historic example of West Virginia, then you'd be an over-populated coastal strip of cities, poor, hungry and out of water and power. You should thank God you're not yet allowed to escape - but our patience is wearing thin.