This bothers me a lot. I just remind myself who I am voting for and why, and the fear lessens.
Another vote for Nader then.
I may be a treehugg’in dirt worshipper but I’m not voting Nader, not this time.
I understand. We are going to pay in many ways for the short term fun these neocons have had at our expense.
Yes, if x were y, I would z all over the place.
FTR, I don’t like that this is happening, but I hardly see it as a deal breaker in getting my vote.
Profits are soaring.Production is going up . Wages are going down and jobs are being lost. Why oh why would labor not see a trend that is against them…?Better find a handy label to tag those who are worried about losing livelihoods and will have a shrinking personal economy. Terrified of the future. See your neighbors and family lose their jobs. Watching the foreclosures circle your neighborhood. Wages dropping in your field. Suck it up. You don’t want to be a protectionist. That would be bad.
This is not fair, Sam. You are inducing my personal political view from my general opinion on this matter. You don’t know whom I voted for in the primary nor whom I intend to support in the future general election. Don’t pretend to attack my inconsistency using this kind of circular reasoning.
Goolsbee made some comments on his own recognizance. He claims it was “as a courtesy” to Canada, and “as a professor,” not as a campaign staffer. Perhaps he is lying; perhaps he isn’t. I do not support Obama’s recently revealed preferences over free trade, and should I vote for him, it will be because I think these are of a lower priority than other issues.
Free trade is an issue that is too costly to support in public but too costly to really undermine in private. Bush tried the latter and failed, and his genuinely principled support for the former also failed. I see no reason to believe that any other president, Democrat or Republican, would have a substantially different experience, despite their superior characters.
To be completely fair, home prices where I am are rising, my wage is rising, the wages of my colleagues are rising, and there are no forclosures. Globalization is a major driver of my livelihood. I would appreciate not losing it. Please keep this in mind when you bang on your protectionism drum.
Actually, I didn’t mean to attack you at all. I was aiming that comment about ‘you guys’ at the thread participants on the Obama side in general.
How do you feel about the ‘Patriotic Business’ plan of Obama’s? The that seeks to micro-manage employee relations down to what kind of pension plan must be offered, how national guardsmen must be treated, a demand that every employee make enough to stay above the poverty line for a family of 3 (roughly equivalent to raising the minimum wage to $7.80), the demand that businesses maintain a majority of their employees in the United States and not have head offices elsewhere, etc.?
It would be nice for a politician to come out and unequivocably say that trade is a good thing and stop pandering to the worst aspects of American culture. Say, like John McCain is doing. When all the other candidates were running around Michigan offering up ‘plans’ and protections for Michigan workers, McCain went there and said, “Those high paying jobs aren’t coming back, so stop waiting for them and start adapting to the new reality.” He took a hammering for it, but he stuck to it.
This election is promising to be very dangerous, for one major reason - while politicians are consumed with taxing and spending (or cuttig taxes), there’s a limit to the good or damage they can do, because the amount of money the feds can put in play or remove from the economy is a fairly small fraction of GDP.
But now the deficit constrains politicians in terms of programs they can offer or taxes they can cut. So what’s a good interventionist to do? Regulate. Put mandates on the people that the government doesn’t have to fund. It costs government nothing to raise the CAFE standard to 35 mpg, or to slap a trade tariff on a product, or to pass a law demanding that businesses give more benefits and pay to their employees. But these kinds of laws can do immense damage, because the government has leverage. So long as the government is just spending money, they can only move the economy by a few hundred billion dollars at most. But pass a trade tariff or a new burdensome regulation, and you can do an order of magnitude more damage.
This is what scares me most about Obama. He seems perfectly willing to roll up his sleeves and start telling everyone how their lives must be run. He won’t pay for health care, but he’ll pass laws telling businesses they have to. He won’t provide low income assistance - he’ll just tell businesses they have to raise their wages. His economic programs are all about pushing people around and manipulating the economy. That’s far more dangerous than a new welfare plan.
Capitalism requires vigilant and thorough protections for the consumer and employees. Canada is not vastly different than we are in wages and environmental protection. Mexico is and will suffer. There is no motivation to pay decent wages,protect the environment or to check the safety of the products. They must be forced kicking and screaming.
Are you not familiar with the home crisis in America.? Do you not see prices are dropping around the country.? Just because your neighborhood is safe now ,does not mean it wont in the future. If America goes down the tubes will you be satisfied if you escape.
<Holding Gun to Mexico’s Head>
Damn you! Get rich! Create a middle class! Right now! And until you do, we’re not trading with you!
Fair enough. It is just kind of an easy poke to make.
I say good luck with that. When your base of support is educated people who make more than $50k per year, you have very weak incentive to move forward on a program like this. I hold my nose.
I’ll turn that one around. It would be nice for a politician to come out and unequivocally say that torture and aggressive war are bad things and stop pandering to the worst aspects of American culture. Say, like Barack Obama is doing.
John McCain is the master of costless maverickdom. He fights the high profile fights when it costs him the least. He criticises the president only when Bush had low numbers, he backed campaign finance reform only when there was a clear groundswell of popular support, and he spoke out against torture only when it became a real public issue. He has an excellent sense of which way the wind is blowing, which, to my eye, is the very definition of pandering.
Easy for him to use rhetoric like this because there wasn’t much of a chance that he would actually lose in Michigan, despite Romney’s family connection to the state. The rhetoric was almost completely costless.
I have a different viewpoint about this, but that is neither here nor there. The only candidate who best represents me is, well, me. I have to hold my nose no matter whom I vote for.
And Gonzomax, gee whiz. The company next door to me at work just took a $7B writedown due to the subprime crisis. That is real money. I will survive this, and so will you.
Sam, if my understanding is correct, you’re clearly overstating your case: Obama’s “Patriot Employer” Act does not demand, mandate, nor force an employer to do anything. Rather, it sets up a definition of how a company qualifies as a “Patriot Employer” – if they do, they receive a tax credit.
Would a company be stupid not to take it? Absolutely. Would the availability of such a tax credit change the economic footing between some companies? Without a doubt. Is it a good idea? You think not, while I don’t know. Are your fears that this act is a prelude to more intrusive policies? Maybe…I can see how it would be such an indication.
But ISTM that you’re rapidly approaching the Obama counterpart of a Bush-basher.
I’m offering substantive criticisms of what I see as flawed plans. I have not expressed any knee-jerk opposition to him, and in fact have posted arguments in his favor. I haven’t been attacking him for his middle name, or for Rezko, or for any number of specious arguments others have engaged in. I’ve been sticking to the substance of what he says. Isn’t that fair game?
Take for example your notion that no one is being forced to do anything here, that these are all voluntary tax credits. The fact is, if a company is being pushed into a situation where they are not competitive because their competitor is getting tax breaks, they may be either forced to do the same or be pushed out of business. Not every company, of course, but the ones on the margin. That’s the whole point, isn’t it? To try to push business in directions Obama thinks they should go in?
Maeglin: I understand about compromise - you’ll never find a candidate who agrees with everything you do. And if the other issues you mention are more important to you than economic policy, I fully understand where you’re coming from. Lord knows, I’ve held my nose plenty of times while pulling the lever.
John McCain, btw, also opposes torture. And he gave a speech yesterday which is one hell of a lot better than what Obama has been saying. McCain said, in part:
No, “Yes we can!” call and response oratory. No sob stories of individuals having a hard time (always beware a politician who hits you with the story of poor little Timmy with one leg, who will starve unless you elect that politician). But a clear demonstration of principle: McCain stands for free trade, lower regulations, more competitiveness. No promises of a chicken in every pot and a barricade around every job.
McCain says, “Hey, it’s a tough, global economy. No sense hiding from that. People will lose jobs, people will gain jobs. We’ll try to help the ones displaced with some modest programs of retraining and assistance, but more importantly, we’ll help create the conditions whereby new jobs are created so the displaced workers can find new employment.”
Obama’s answer to the problem of globalization is regulation and restrictions on trade. Obama thinks that strengthening American unions is somehow going to make America more competitive in world markets. Obama thinks that America is somehow at a natural disadvantage in the world, and wants to use the club of government to ‘even the playing field’. Despite his optimistic sounding rhetoric, Obama’s vision is pretty bleak - everyone’s getting screwed, the middle class is shrinking, the good jobs are going away, America is in decline, but with Obama’s help you can make it all better. This is classic populism, and to me it appeals to the worst in people - their fears. Make people afraid, then offer to lead them to the promise land.
McCain says that globalization brings more opportunities than drawbacks, and the proper thing to do is to make America more competitive, embrace free markets, and take on the world.
I know which attitude I prefer.
If global restrictions include the very basis it was sold on ,I am for it. Wage and environmental protection, product safety. Get those and I will talk, Without them it is a farce. Repeating the mantra that free trade creates jobs is time wasting. It costs.
Yes, it’s fair game, but I believe your characterization of the act aren’t quite fair. Consider that last line of mine intentional hyperbole…a bit of Sam-baiting to elicit a response, resulting from not getting an answer in another thread on this very topic in which I brought up the same exact objection.
There is a rather large difference between (mandated) force through penalization and (optional) force through reward. It’s the difference between carrot vs. stick, if you will. With one, you get fed (if you choose), with the other, you get bludgeoned (no choice involved). But you say it yourself – the object is to “push”, not to demand, mandate, nor dictate how everyone MUST live their lives.
I have a very different view on both your characterizations of Obama and McCain. I think your comparison of Obama and McCain in this light is quite unfair and uninformative.
Perhaps you have a visceral dislike of Obama’s rhetorical and dare I say evangelical style. That’s reasonable, as I am dubious of any kind of evangelism. But if you want to compare policies articulated in speeches, then you should at least make an effort to pick one of a myriad of a examples of Obama actually doing this. I could dredge up some of McCain’s “red meat” and compare it to something substantive that Obama said and draw an equally meaningless evaluation.
McCain’s anti-torture position is not so clear, rhetoric aside. At the end of the day, he still voted against the Intelligence Authorization Bill. I am well aware that there are other provisions included therein aside from the anti-waterboarding measure. But when you say that the Army Field Manual ought to be standard for CIA interrogations and vote against it, it kind of damages your credibility and makes people wonder whether or not you mean what you say.
Well, Sam, since you characterized both of those attitudes yourself, it doesn’t really surprise me which one you prefer. But I have to tell you, as a reasonably informed and empirically-driven person, I just don’t characterize either candidate that way at all. I don’t know that it is a good use of either of our time to have a debate on those terms. I don’t feel I have learned anything here other than your opinion, which to be fair, is still pretty interesting.