2024 US Presidential Election Thread
- Thread starter ryzno
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- GBO-Possum
Seems that the people who have power over at "Truth" Social have created a circular firing squad which could derail the entire scam.I don't know how accurate this is but this news story claims Trump will become over 3 billion dollars richer if today's shareholder vote backs his plan to float Trump Media. Per the article he wouldn't see the money for around six months if this were the case, though as the merger document contains a clause preventing him from liquidating his shares immediately in order to prevent a glut which would devalue their overall price.
Donald Trump to make $3.4bn if shareholders back plan to float Trump Media
Ex-US president planning to list Trump Media & Technology Group if merger with special purpose acquisition company goes aheadwww.theguardian.com
Here's a free link to the WaPo article - https://wapo.st/3x6nNrr
Scaff
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- a baby, candy, it's like taking.
- TexRex72
lol. lmao.
THIS IS COMMUNISM IN AMERICA!*
*This is not communism in America or anywhere else. Communism is bad and conservatives want to tie anything they don't like to it to make those things sound bad, crippling legitimate opposition to communism
THIS IS COMMUNISM IN AMERICA!*
*This is not communism in America or anywhere else. Communism is bad and conservatives want to tie anything they don't like to it to make those things sound bad, crippling legitimate opposition to communism
What are those wet, sucking noises? Oh. Oh! Ew! No!
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I don't think you guys understand the level of mistrust/paranoia of China in the USA. Yes there has been a flood of cheap Chinese products in the USA for the last 40 years - BUT, 1 - they have historically benefited US companies in some way, and 2 - where they don't benefit US companies, they are coming under increasingly heavy scrutiny.
Whereas Apple using cheap Chinese labor to make a lot of Americans rich (or more precisely a few Americans SUPER rich) is generally acceptable - having Shein or Temu just dump goods directly (via de minimis loopholes) into US buyer's hands with little to no US economic benefit is looking increasingly untenable for US regulators.
Dewalt selling cordless drills under a historically American nameplate but using Chinese manufacturing is a much different animal that GWM selling state-subsidized cars directly to US consumers. Japanese and Korean automakers were able to make inroads into the US in the 70s-90s, but that doesn't mean that regulators didn't throttle it or make sure that it provided US economic benefit. Nearly every Japanese automaker makes most of their US-market cars in the US. The Koreans are following suit. Asian & European market pickups and SUVs are basically not sold in the US at all due to heavy tariffs. I sincerely doubt any US presidential administration or congress is going to let Chinese cars flood the market - and if they are sold here at all, it will probably be under some kind of agreement where they are manufactured in Kentucky or South Carolina or whatever. There is no situation in which Chinese cars are allowed to be sold unrestricted or without heavy tariffs in the US - the US auto industry is far too important to American identity and to politicians of both parties, particularly in critical mid-western swing states where that industry is concentrated. The democrats will do basically anything to avoid losing union votes, and the Republicans will do basically anything to thwart China gaining any advantage over the US.
@Keef Am I wrong?
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- TexRex72
If that distrust has indeed permeated the populace, the people won't buy Chinese. If the people will buy Chinese because that distrust hasn't actually permeated the populace, the people should not be prohibited from (by embargo) or punished for (by tariff) doing so.
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- GBO-Possum
Another hysterical aspect of Trump's claim that he "actually HAS the money", it's just that he wants to "use it for his campaign".lol. lmao.
THIS IS COMMUNISM IN AMERICA!*
*This is not communism in America or anywhere else. Communism is bad and conservatives want to tie anything they don't like to it to make those things sound bad, crippling legitimate opposition to communism
What are those wet, sucking noises? Oh. Oh! Ew! No!
Remember that Trump didn't choose to use ANY of his own money on his campaign in 2020.
It is scarcely credible that he intends to put his hand in his own pocket to fund his 2024 campaign.
However, by claiming he wants to reserve this (imaginary) money for campaign purposes, he can continue pretend to be flush with cash. Of course, by the time the reality hits that he's not putting any money into the campaign, he'll have moved on to the next volcano of lies.
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- Alabamamania
So you're supporting the guy that lost his job due to poor job performance, claimed he won despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, sent his buddies to vandalize the workplace, essentially committed treason to our nation, and you want him back in charge of the executive office of the United States?
The rest of us aren't eating your steady diet of Loser Chow. Find some sustenance.
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- 13,887
- Adelaide
- Neomone
Probably not. I don't understand the knee-jerk anti-communist stuff either. Or the anti-EU stuff. Or the world police stuff. I accept that Americans will often think and behave in ways that I find to be foolish and irrational, and this thread is rife with examples.
However, from my fairly limited understanding of global economics I don't really think the US is equipped to wage an economic war against China. The US needs Chinese manufacturing a lot more than China needs US manufacturing. While I don't doubt that the US auto lobbyists would love to have an entire captive market with no competitors, that's not going to happen.
Yes, the Chinese companies might have to "manufacture" in country, but we've seen how easy it is for companies to get away with paying lip service to that particular regulation. Yes, a lot of rich people are coasting by on ultra-nationalist sentiment at the moment, but if someone wanted to spin Chinese cars as a good thing it's not that hard to do even to the ultra-nationalists.
Talk about how you're setting up a couple of factories in the name of "good old fashioned American jobs". Talk about how you're going to take these substandard products and push them to the next level with American ingenuity and hard work. Talk about how you're going to use your superior business skills to get one over on the Chinese industries by getting them to pay to set up all this stuff that will actually be for the benefit of Americans. Talk about how this is going to be a revival of American manufacturing, how it's going to Make American Manufacturing Great Again.
Tell me if any of this sounds familiar.
I may not understand how Americans think, but I can observe that there's a substantial portion of them that go rabid for that sort of talk. And whether it's true or not doesn't seem to matter at all, as long as the person saying it is seen as authoritative.
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- TexRex72
No opposition should be knee-jerk. It should always be reasoned.
Communism is bad because it hinges on coercion. Misguided as it may be, a voluntary system of collective ownership of property and wealth does not violate rights because parties have consented. Communism ignores consent.
Capitalism--which is to say free capitalism, not state capitalism which is just as susceptible to cronyism and corruption as communism is--provides the greatest opportunity for personal wealth.
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All non-trivial systems of government hinge on coercion. They have the monopoly on the use of force. If you don't do what they say, you get fined, locked up, or killed. The only way you have no coercion is if there's no rules. That's anarchy.
Communism in and of itself is no worse than any other system of government in this way. Specific implementations may be (and have been), just as specific implementations of nominally capitalist based systems have been. You don't get to choose the system which you are born into.
There's any number of parts of even modern economic systems that are not fully consensual. That's not in and of itself a reason that they're bad, it's just a negative aspect to be weighed against any potential positive aspects that may also exist.
Except that totally free capitalism also results in completely ****ed economic systems. Almost nobody has this any more, for good reasons. Most of the successful economies today are some form of mixed economy. Because capitalism and communism are both ideas at far opposite ends of a spectrum. Neither can deal with all the enormously complex range of situations that result from an economy with millions of people. Both have gaping holes begging for unscrupulous people to exploit them. They're useful concepts in a textbook to understand basic economic systems, but they are not
"The greatest opportunity for personal wealth" is not a desirable end goal, that just means that you produce people like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. It means that your system actively seeks to increase wealth disparity. Over any reasonable length of time it is unsustainable. You create financial monarchies. To put it in video game terms, money scales too hard. Having money makes it much easier to get more money. Having more money makes it much easier to start changing the systems so that money funnels directly into your pockets without you providing anything of value to society at all.
To me, that's at odds with what I'd like to see from a society. I want something that provides the greatest opportunity for safety and happiness, and ideally encourages people to act for the benefit and improvement of the situation of those around them. Because that's what most people ultimately want wealth for, right? So that they can have a space in which they and their loved ones can be safe and secure, and that they have the ability, time and resources to pursue goals that they feel are worthwhile for them and their community.
I mean, some want it so that they can display how powerful they are, or so that they can use their wealth to manipulate or enslave others, but **** those people and what they want. Anyone who wants the best for themselves at the expense of everyone else is not someone who should have any say in how societal level systems work.
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Communism is a form of socialism, just as laissez-faire capitalism is a form of capitalism.
Yes, it's an argument for using a blend of the more general forms of both capitalism and socialism. If you're already going to try to pick and choose the best of both worlds, you might as well give yourself the broadest selection to choose from. That means capitalism, socialism, anything in-between, and any other useful economic models or concepts that may not fit those categories.
But more importantly, it means not subscribing strictly to the ideologies that often come along with strongly capitalist or socialist systems, and instead maintain the goal of improving life for the citizens using whatever means are appropriate. What exactly "improving life" should look like can be debated and any group of reasonable size will never come to a solid consensus, but basing your system around a goal instead of a means allows freedom of thought and action to adapt to circumstances as necessary.
It shouldn't be even mildly controversial to state that we should use the best tools for the job from the selection of everything that is available. But it is, because humans. And I guess the remarkably high proportion of selfish arseholes in a species that only got to where it is through intense cooperation and information sharing.
UKMikey
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It doesn't go both ways, though. Communism is kind of totalitarian and doesn't mix as well as less extreme forms of socialism do with other methods of government.
I can't think of any examples of countries which have only gone a little bit communist as like fascism it seems to be an all or nothing deal.
Not sure where the controversy is here as far as my post was concerned.
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- GBO-Possum
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I didn't read @Imari's use of the word "controversial" as being aimed at your post, more that there's a body of opinion that "communism" is "100% bad", so even implying that one could rationally consider communism as having any positive aspect to offer can be seen as "controversial". At least that's my take on it.
If I recall correctly, Singapore blended components of benevolent authoritarianism, capitalism, socialism and communism to great effect, lifting pretty much the entire population simultaneously in the years between the 60s and the 80s.
But now I'm WAAAY off-topic!
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They force everyone to fund their own retirement but I'm not sure whether that counts as communism.
Central Provident Fund - Wikipedia
Red Terror: The Forgotten Story of CPM Violence and Subversion in Newly Independent Singapore
The 1970s are often remembered as a time of rapid economic transformation and progress for Singapore, but this period also...
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Keef
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I think you're absolutely right. China's economic "prowess" - aka total lack of respect for worker rights and safety, international IP law, economic law, law in general - is not tolerable to any mindful person in the US, regardless of political stance. They're dumping a lot of nicknacks on younger generations through social media and it's working far too well. It's working so well in fact that the folks who are now obsessed with all these hyper-cheap and hyper-accessible Chinese products see the US going after this dumping as a bad thing but that's because they tend to be apolitical and lack context on what's been going on.
There has been a Chinese auto glass factory called Fuyao here in the Dayton area since 2014. It took over part of GM's shuttered truck and bus factory. Despite Fuyao making an effort to establish an American branch, they still refused to follow American rules and dealt with regulatory pressure and enforcement for years before they fleshed out proper safety and worker rights procedures. They eventually fixed it but the plant was in the news for injuries and violations more often than not for several years. Progress wasn't truly made until they committed to sending their Chinese management teams home and hiring American management expertise. This lack of oversight is truly a Chinese cultural problem which is why the stories are so consistent no matter where in the world you read them.
Western countries may suffer from our own problems the enforcement of economic law but I'd much rather deal with that than with a nation that simply doesn't have rules. It's the exact same reason individuals and corporations are constantly defending their IP in court because without some fort of IP protection, the concept of property gets muddied, true innovation becomes pointless, and every aspect of the economy becomes the type of race to the bottom that has bankrupted companies like Evergrande and saddled China with millions of empty apartment buildings crumbling back down shortly after being put up.
@TexRex
There is a very large portion of the American populace that avoids "Chinese" products at all costs. Buy American, yada yada. Almost all American brands do manufacturing business in various other countries so it's almost impossible to avoid, and because we actually have rules and standards, American-branded products are always much more expensive than others, but we try. Problem is, a lot of products are so incredibly cheap that people with very little expendable income - an even larger portion of the American populace - just doesn't give a **** because they have needs and wants and will do anything to distract themselves from being poor. China has literally lifted a large portion of their own populace up and out of poverty simply by selling crap to Americans. Yay for China! But I don't live in China so I don't care. What I care about is maintaining my country's hegemony and therefore my ability to be an ass when on international vacations. Now that's what I call luxury.
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UKMikey
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Guardian: Headache for campaign team as Trump gets the band back together
theguardian.com
Headache for campaign team as Trump gets the band back together
The ex-president’s 2024 election operation has been surprisingly professional but the return of old faces with political baggage has some worried
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Get enough criminals in the one room together, and criminality itself becomes normalized.Guardian: Headache for campaign team as Trump gets the band back together
Headache for campaign team as Trump gets the band back together
The ex-president’s 2024 election operation has been surprisingly professional but the return of old faces with political baggage has some worried
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- Alabamistan
Guardian: Headache for campaign team as Trump gets the band back together
Headache for campaign team as Trump gets the band back together
The ex-president’s 2024 election operation has been surprisingly professional but the return of old faces with political baggage has some worried
Legion of Dopes
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The Washington Post today pointed out that Trump's late mother-in-law entered the US via "chain migration".
Melania's "truly evil" family must have felt immediately at home.
Melania's "truly evil" family must have felt immediately at home.
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You can't think of any examples? Not, say...our own country of the UK? Which has the NHS and a generally strong history of all kinds of social services? Or...any other liberal democracy on earth? All of which have some socialist/'communist' elements baked in? Australia, Norway, France, Spain, Germany, America itself...every functioning country on earth has gone a 'a little bit communist'.
It's weird to me that socialism is only defined by its most extreme failures. Yet pretty much every single non-functioning 'third world' country on earth is a capitalist society. Afghanistan, Sudan, pick a name out of the hat of a country that's gone tits up over the last century and if it's not an explicitly socialist country then you could make a convincing argument that by definition it has to be a capitalism. Yet those countries are never counted as 'failures of capitalism'.
I'm cross that I've gone my life so far without seeing that video
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