# A debate on where America was before Trump. Were we really in decline? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [December 22, 2020, 2:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648 "2020-12-22T14:56:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2020, 4:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/121 "2020-12-29T04:36:12Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > And why is it that rents and the cost of living are higher where folks are paid more? It’s not like any good or service has an intrinsic currency value. Oh yes, let’s start building slums in the US so we can get close to the cost of living of the poorest parts of Asia. MAGA!! > [@octopus](#): > > instead of being employed at market value I think this whole thing comes down to a philosophy of superiority. I think you like to think of a proportion of the US population as being inferior, intellectually at least, and only generating a few dollars of worth per hour. When in fact they would not be employed if their contribution was so close to break even. They are generating much higher value in most cases for the job to even exist. The employer is not doing them a favor. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2020, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/122 "2020-12-29T04:49:19Z")
> [@Kimstu](#): > > Oh for pity’s sake, octopus, you can’t really be taking such silly arguments seriously. This is like debating with climate-science deniers who try to claim that sudden global temperature rise is no big deal because the earth was many degrees hotter 92 million years ago. 🙄 again > > But okay, if I really need to spell it out for you, among human beings in a developed industrial nation in modern times assembling and utilizing labor, raw materials, and organizational skills for large-scale production projects such as high speed rail or steel factories requires capital, and lots of it. There is a reason why we buy stuff from folks overseas who aren’t constrained by our own counterproductive policies. There are reasons why we turn a blind eye to 10 million or so illegal immigrants in the US. One such reason is to lower the costs of doing business. If we didn’t have ridiculous counterproductive policy, enacted to empower politicians and make us feel oh-so-virtuous, it wouldn’t require tremendous amounts of capital. We could pay the true market value for the idle labor we pay to be idle! and we could easily extract the massive amounts of raw materials sitting in the dirt under our feet. Dollars don’t get one to the moon. Rockets do. Dollars don’t defeat the Nazi’s. The assembly line and putting people to word did. > [@Kimstu](#): > > The “completely wrong behaviors” we’re actually incentivizing, from the standpoint of a healthy society, are the hoarding and offshoring of wealth in ever more socioeconomically segregated hogging of power and resources by the richest Americans. The fact that many of the poorest Americans are stagnating in decaying communities with no prospects of decent jobs or education or reliable healthcare is largely a by-product of our society’s shameless coddling of all the worst greedy impulses of the extremely wealthy. When incentives for an education, healthy living, proper adult behavior, and to get a job are destroyed in order to achieve political or ideological goals you can’t complain when predicted but so-called unintended consequences come to fruition. It’s like the left is completely immune to history and biology. Do you think the leadership of Venezuela intended for there to be a run on zoo donkey meat? No. But they ignored over 100 years of evidence that socialism only succeeds in reducing inequality by making everyone, but the ruling class and the military, equally poor. > [@Kimstu](#): > > The problem is not with encouraging or expecting poor people to put in some time doing work for low (or even no) wages. The problem is with expecting or requiring those low-wage workers to depend on such work to provide them with basic necessities such as food, shelter, healthcare, communication, education and transportation, in an economy where the prices of such necessities are scaled to (and often far beyond) the earning power of the non-poor workers. That’s a surefire recipe for desperation, abuse, crime, ignorance, family breakdown, and a whole host of other evils. > > Let’s get this society set up so that everybody has access to a reasonable minimum of the necessities of life, irrespective of their employment status and earning power. And then if you want to argue that somebody who wants a super-fancy smartphone or a skiing vacation or a restaurant dinner or a new rifle or whatever other personal extravagance they crave needs to earn the money for it, even if the only work they can find is low-paying, I’ll be right there with you. > > But while we’re expecting people in general to depend on their or their family members’ earnings even for the most basic necessities of life, nope. Living-wage laws all the way. Lol. If only wealth could be voted into existence! We could all be trillionaires. Hell, why not think big, we could all be double-trillionaires! Well, in the real world, it takes more than voting for silly policy to create wealth. Pay people what they are worth and not a penny more. If they can’t afford market value for the goods and services they require then, if there is a surplus, we can enact means tested policies to help in those circumstances. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2020, 4:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/123 "2020-12-29T04:53:45Z")
> [@Mijin](#): > > Oh yes, let’s start building slums in the US so we can get close to the cost of living of the poorest parts of Asia. > MAGA!! Go to California and check out the tent cities. Demvilles such as those tent cities and Detroit which is a ruin when it used to be in the top 10 wealthiest cities in the world are already built. I think you can buy a block of Detroit for under a million. > [@Mijin](#): > > I think this whole thing comes down to a philosophy of superiority. I think you like to think of a proportion of the US population as being inferior, intellectually at least, and only generating a few dollars of worth per hour. When in fact they would not be employed if their contribution was so close to break even. They are generating much higher value in most cases for the job to even exist. The employer is not doing them a favor Where does superiority come in to the discussion? Do you honestly believe that each and everyone’s labor and capabilities are 100% equal? If only everybody had a homogenous upbringing they’d have homogenous abilities? Do you know how pricing is determined in a market economy? ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2020, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/124 "2020-12-29T05:19:06Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > If we didn’t have ridiculous counterproductive policy, enacted to empower politicians and make us feel oh-so-virtuous, it wouldn’t require tremendous amounts of capital. We could pay the true market value for the idle labor we pay to be idle! and we could easily extract the massive amounts of raw materials sitting in the dirt under our feet. Dollars don’t get one to the moon. Rockets do. Dollars don’t defeat the Nazi’s. The assembly line and putting people to word did. Emphasis added. Have you really not noticed, octopus, that rockets and assembly lines cost money? FFS, again. Engaging in economic races-to-the-bottom in order to impoverish workers and drive down cost and quality of living doesn’t eliminate the need for large amounts of capital for major projects. The cost of constructing space rockets in the low-wage countries of China and India still amounts to tens of millions of US dollars. The cost of constructing space rockets for the highly successful European Space Agency missions, funded by all those “socialist” European countries you recoil from in horror, also amounts to tens of millions of US dollars. You can’t make financial realities disappear just by pretending they’re not important. > [@octopus](#): > > When incentives for an education, healthy living, proper adult behavior, and to get a job are destroyed in order to achieve political or ideological goals you can’t complain when predicted but so-called unintended consequences come to fruition. Tell it to the conservative/libertarian grifters who have been systematically destroying those opportunities for huge swathes of the working population in their eagerness to provide more tax breaks and ultra-deregulated robber-baron paradises for the superrich. > [@octopus](#): > > If only wealth could be voted into existence! It doesn’t need to be: it already exists, and as technological advancement and automation continue, wealth will only become more and more decoupled from low-skilled human labor. Your obsolete insistence on Victorian-guttersnipe levels of insecurity and deprivation for low-wage workers is just going to go on getting ever more irrelevant to the realities of wealth and work. There’s plenty of wealth to sustain a strong social safety net and a vigorous market economy in our society, so there can still be plenty of incentives to work, but being unable to work (or unable to get high-paying work) won’t automatically doom you to penury, disease and desperation. No, we won’t all be trillionaires, and in fact probably none of us will be trillionaires, and significantly fewer of us will be billionaires. But we don’t actually have to resort to the slums-and-slavery impoverished-worker models of your Dickensian fantasies in order to get out of this dead-end road of growing inequality that we’re traveling now. I draw your obstinately reluctant attention once again to countries like Germany and the Netherlands, which certainly are far from flawless in their socioeconomic support systems but are far more effective than we are, while at the same time remaining highly competitive in the global marketplace and having far superior outcomes overall in terms of economic security and prosperity for their populations. And whaddya know, they’ve even got a few dozen billionaires as well. > [@octopus](#): > > Do you know how pricing is determined in a market economy? Do you know how poorly real-life market economies conform to theoretical ideal markets? I don’t think you can, or you wouldn’t be able to spout all this libertarian fantasy nonsense as though you thought it seemed credible. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2020, 5:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/125 "2020-12-29T05:33:50Z")
You still haven’t answered why it’s ethical to buy and from your implied point of view, exploit, the less fortunate souls who happened to have been born in a country across the ocean. Should we have an open border where everyone can benefit from your generosity? And what’s this libertarian nonsense? Where did I say get rid of the state? You do realize that the laws of supply and demand and pricing are not some crackpot Ayn Randian construct. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2020, 5:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/126 "2020-12-29T05:38:16Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Demvilles such as those tent cities and Detroit which is a ruin Considering the proliferation of decaying dirt-poor “Pubvilles” throughout much of the US, crumbling opioid-plagued backwaters whose inhabitants keep stubbornly waving signs for Trump and their local/state Republican officials, I don’t think your own glass house offers a lot of scope for throwing stones at Democrats. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2020, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/127 "2020-12-29T05:43:13Z")
Oh, good point. You don’t think that global trade and mass illegal immigration which undercut their ability to legally work had anything to do with that? Like it or not, we have a section of the population who are competing for the same jobs you denigrate yet benefit from. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2020, 5:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/128 "2020-12-29T05:55:50Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > You still haven’t answered why it’s ethical to buy and from your implied point of view, exploit, the less fortunate souls who happened to have been born in a country across the ocean. I never said it is ethical. Didn’t you even read my condemnation way back in post #111 of “the immorality of buying slave-labor-produced goods and services from foreign countries”? And my endorsement of “wise-aid-and-fair-trade” policies back in post #114, along with my disparagement of greedy multibillionaires who “swell their moneybags by selling cheap slave-labor-produced Chinese merchandise to the families of their food-stamp-dependent store greeters”? Actually, though, if you haven’t even been reading my posts then that would explain a lot about your responses to them so far. > [@octopus](#): > > You don’t think that global trade and mass illegal immigration which undercut their ability to legally work had anything to do with that? Sure, but what’s the aim of our policies encouraging “global trade and mass illegal immigration”? It’s to make it easier for wealthy elites to make ever more massive amounts of money unhampered by any restrictions preventing the degradation of the environment and the sufferings of their workers. What I’m advocating is reasonable regulation, taxation, and social-safety-net policies that will protect both workers and the environment from this sort of destructive exploitation. Whereas you seem to be simultaneously trying to argue for the necessity and desirability of destructively exploiting US workers (because they aren’t any more intrinsically “deserving” than Chinese ones, after all), and trying to claim that the miserable plight produced by their exploitation is somehow all the fault of Democrats. Pffft. ---
**Author:** ![Mijin](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mijin/32/9369_2.png) [@Mijin](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mijin)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2020, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/129 "2020-12-29T06:00:18Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Go to California and check out the tent cities. Demvilles such as those tent cities and Detroit which is a ruin when it used to be in the top 10 wealthiest cities in the world are already built. I think you can buy a block of Detroit for under a million. Sure but let’s put this in context. I am suggesting that the US join the rest of the developed world in having a robust social safety net and then have nothing comparable to tent cities. You are the one implying we should embrace such squalor, because it means the cost of living can remain competitive with parts of the world that don’t have running water. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2020, 6:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/130 "2020-12-29T06:00:41Z")
I recognize we live in a world where money and goods, and in some cases workers, can easily move. Therefore, differences in regulations can be exploited. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2020, 6:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/131 "2020-12-29T06:01:53Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > Therefore, differences in regulations can be exploited. But they don’t necessarily have to be exploited to the extent of greedy destructiveness that we tolerate in the US. > [@Kimstu](#): > > I draw your obstinately reluctant attention once again to countries like Germany and the Netherlands, which certainly are far from flawless in their socioeconomic support systems but are far more effective than we are, while at the same time remaining highly competitive in the global marketplace and having far superior outcomes overall in terms of economic security and prosperity for their populations. And whaddya know, they’ve even got a few dozen billionaires as well. ---
**Author:** ![survinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cab0a1/32.png) [@survinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/survinga)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2020, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/132 "2020-12-29T15:04:26Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > It’s like the left is completely immune to history and biology. Do you think the leadership of Venezuela intended for there to be a run on zoo donkey meat? No. But they ignored over 100 years of evidence that socialism only succeeds in reducing inequality by making everyone, but the ruling class and the military, equally poor. But we have socialism in America, just as Europe and East Asia have socialism. And everyone is not equally poor. The largest and most competitive economies in the world have socialism mixed throughout. Using Venezuela as the go-to example for socialism is lazy at best, or ignores dozens of other examples that don’t back up your point. > [@octopus](#): > > Pay people what they are worth and not a penny more. If they can’t afford market value for the goods and services they require then, if there is a surplus, we can enact **means tested policies** to help in those circumstances. Then, you are arguing for socialism. If we get rid of minimum wage laws, and the “market” decides their salary, then you will have millions who will in fact need means tested policies to get by. But the very people who want no minimum wage laws (because God forbid we pay someone more than $3.00 an hour) are also the same people who don’t want means tested programs. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2020, 3:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/133 "2020-12-29T15:17:18Z")
American socialism, from the Erie Canal to the Railroad Land Grants, to the Kingsbury Commitment, to the development of the internet, has always been to use the power of the governments (local, state, and Federal) to take wealth from the public and give it to the powerful, connected, and lucky. To say this country isn’t socialist-for-the-powerful is to literally ignore our economic development. This is the _definition_ of American Capitalism, in _practice_. ---
**Author:** ![asahi](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/asahi/32/8693_2.png) [@asahi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/asahi)\ **Post date:** [December 29, 2020, 3:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/134 "2020-12-29T15:36:41Z")
never mind (was going to edit and cleared it instead) ---
**Author:** ![Buck\_Godot](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/buck_godot/32/6573_2.png) [@Buck\_Godot](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Buck_Godot)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2020, 8:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/135 "2020-12-30T08:17:14Z")
9/11 definately an obvious inflection point in our standing with regard to the rest of the world and in my opinion a massive missed opportunity on Bush’s part. The 9/11 attacks garnered massive world wide sympathy and support for the United States. Bush had the opportunity to run with that support and Build a coalition that could work together the deal with the challenge of religious extremism. Instead Bush played to the nationalist elements of the country with “Your either with us or against us” and “Freedom Fries” ending in the Iraq war and the image of the US as biggest bully on the block. Obama helped to put some of that back together, but with continuing drone strikes he failed to meet with the expectations expressed in his award of a premature Nobel Peace Prize. Trump has of course lit our reputation on fire and pissed on the ashes, but we were declining before that. ---
**Author:** ![octopus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/octopus/32/3716_2.png) [@octopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/octopus)\ **Post date:** [December 30, 2020, 6:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/136 "2020-12-30T18:01:51Z")
The definition of socialism is not government spending. I can see the desire to muddy the concepts but it’s not accurate. ---
**Author:** ![Kimstu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/ecd19e/32.png) [@Kimstu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kimstu)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2020, 1:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/137 "2020-12-31T01:23:43Z")
> [@Buck\_Godot](#): > > Bush had the opportunity to run with that support and Build a coalition that could work together the deal with the challenge of religious extremism. And IMHO he actually embarked on that path for a couple weeks or so immediately following the attacks. Remember, for instance, the [White House iftar dinner at the end of Ramadan shortly after 9/11](https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jun/26/donald-trump-abandons-traditional-white-house-ramadan-celebration)? > [@](#): > > The sunset dinner, attended by legislators, diplomats and leaders within the US Muslim community, went on to become an annual tradition starting in 1999, observed by the past three administrations. > > George W Bush held an iftar dinner every year of his two terms, including just after the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001. [James Norton](http://advanced.jhu.edu/about-us/faculty/james-norton/), a former deputy assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security under Bush, said: “From President Bush’s perspective, it was important post-9/11 for the administration and to show the White House and the US is inclusive of all people and religions, especially after such a traumatic event. We were not at war with Islam itself but with terrorist organisations […]" But soon the pea-knackers took the wheel and the whole sorry “crusade” was underway. (Remember the PNACers, or [“Project for the New American Century” ideologues](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century), who were jonesing to flex some foreign-policy muscle in order to permanently cement America’s position as the sole global superpower, not to mention making massive bucks for their cronies in the ongoing privatizationpalooza of the former Soviet spheres of influence? The PNACers figured that the post-9/11 turmoil was their golden opportunity. As it turned out, they did indeed permanently cement the US leadership position, but only in the sense of the proverbial overshoes.) ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2020, 2:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/138 "2020-12-31T14:06:39Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > The definition of socialism is not government spending. OK, so what’s Socialism? ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2020, 2:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/139 "2020-12-31T14:11:23Z")
It’s government spending _which helps different people_, duh! ---
**Author:** ![survinga](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/cab0a1/32.png) [@survinga](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/survinga)\ **Post date:** [December 31, 2020, 3:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648/140 "2020-12-31T15:47:20Z")
> [@octopus](#): > > The definition of socialism is not government spending. I can see the desire to muddy the concepts but it’s not accurate. You’re just picking nits here. We can either pay people a higher minimum wage and they would then rely on less of the social safety net programs, such as food stamps, medicaid, etc. Or we can pay them a wage without a minimum, and they would need more safety net programs to survive. One way or another, our society will have to pitch in and help these people. We can afford it. And we’ve been doing this for decades without becoming an uncompetitive economy, and still a very dynamic place where people want to do business. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648.md?page=6) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/a-debate-on-where-america-was-before-trump-were-we-really-in-decline/928648.md?page=8)