Accepting responsibility for Clinton's loss

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLG9g7BcjKs]

Saw this video today, not sure who the hell this liberal is but he tells it like it is, from a liberal point of view. NSFW

^ Brits have perspective. He’s a UK comedian, too much coffee, and not really funny, and mostly correct.

All my UK friends shared this, and they also shared stuff for months warning America this was coming. However the rigged American media told me it was almost “statistically impossible” for Trump to win (of course I never got to see their models, probably as stupid as the subprime models). Me, I’m the guy who stopped watching TV 15 years ago, because it’s a brainwashing device. So what do I do to get information on Trump’s odds? Decide to break my own rule and watch TV!!! Wow, idiot move.

Lesson, if you did not build the model yourself, you can NOT trust it. And never bet money using “the news” as a serious source of information. This is the misinformation age.

These rural voters (and Millennials for that matter) are always complaining about the “bad” economy but never really seem to do anything to improve their own situation. They talk non-stop about gays, guns, and immigrants instead of positioning themselves to be valuable in the modern economy. Meanwhile large companies like mine having to deal with expensive green card filings and paying out 200k, 300k, and 400k to get qualified workers. Does some Indian developer have it better than some guy in Wisconsin where the factory moved away? Maybe if they did something beside bitch about Obama for the last 8 years they could be get a better job. Instead they’ll wait for Trump to bring back Steel plants at $50/hr with great benefits and a pension…because that’s gonna happen.

States like NY and California do not represent the country well. You are right those rural voters shouldn’t blame immigrants because 1) Indian IT guys did not steal their manufacturing jobs or mining jobs; 2) Mexican did not steal their jobs either since they are mostly doing jobs most Americans think are too good for them. But uneducated people will always need someone to blame other than themselves so it’s easy for someone charismatic like Trump to sway them.

Ultimately, the question is whether Trump will improve the overall economy or not. People in the middle class hold a mix of jobs that are representative of the US economy as a whole. So, a broad based stimulus from regulatory relief and infrastructure investment will probably help, even if it is not as much as the people expect it will.

Also, a lot of people’s perception of well being is really in their minds. One thing can happen under Obama, and they might say it is awful. However, if the same thing happens under Trump, they might say it is great. So, who knows how this will turn out.

Well, the “job stealing” argument has two dimensions. One dimension is jobs that used to be done in the US are now being done overseas - this was manufacturing, and is increasingly other professions. The other dimension are immigrants who come here and do jobs here in the US. A lot of times, these are the immigrants who are “doing the jobs Americans don’t want to do.” But they do have an effect of depressing the going wage for Americans who are willing to do it, or who don’t want to do it but have no other choice.

I think these two dynamics get conflated a lot. The big issue are the jobs here in the US that have gone abroad, leaving little but customer service, or people trying to push product or loans on each other here in the states. But a lot of people see the other immigrants, and figure that they are the ones who are taking their jobs. It doesn’t really make logical sense, but in the emotional insecurity of these times it’s easy for a demogogue to tie them together into one “I hate the outside world,” moment of rage.

so let me see if I got this right.

on Hillary’s side, you got hordes of people who grew up thinking they are owed everything and the govt should pay for it all (healthcare, welfare, college)

and on Trump’s side, you are claiming people want to work hard, but are too dumb to change with the times (manufacturing outsourcing was a no brainer and will never return)

so in short, the country is totally screwed?

Hell YEAH!

Are you this granular when you do your investment analysis too?

This was paraphrased from page 188 of my best selling book, “The Lost Generation”.

I think my favorite part about manufacturing jobs being “stolen” is the fact that the US only held a commanding manufacturing position due to WWII.

Literally almost no one could produce anything at scale after WWII but we somehow believe we can return to these “glory days” where a manual laborer with little to no education can earn $80k (adjusted for inflation) while retiring at 55 with a full pension and benefits from producing aluminum sockets.

how can you afford a house and 2 cars on 80k?

People don’t need to “take back manufacturing”. They already have other jobs. The unemployment rate is below 5%. What they really want is just for wages to increase, and the way to get this is to create more economic activity. If Amazon creates a bunch of distribution centers in Utah, labor demand will increase and so will wages. Do enough of this, and the upward wage pressure will help overcome the job losses from globalization or other effects.

I agree with Galli’s point about WWII and have made the same one in other contexts. I wonder how much of the glory days of the US had to do with being the unrivaled industrial power exporting to much of the world and with little competition from abroad.

As for Ohai, one of the challenges is the recent decoupling of GDP or more accurately productivity growth from median wage growth. Part of the concentration of wealth issue is that GDP growth seems to mean mostly that the top percentiles of society accumulate wealth faster and not that wages go up.

The unemployment rate is low but the labor participation rate is also fairly low. If wages were rising, one could argue that people were opting for leisure over additional work, but it seems that there is still a lot of underemployment, which would seem to suggest that there isn’t much pressure on wages to rise. If Amazon needs to mail more boxes, they don’t need to pay much more to hire new workers. And automation definitely suppresses the link between GDP growth and wages.

ya

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-intersect/wp/2016/11/17/facebook-fake-news-writer-i-think-donald-trump-is-in-the-white-house-because-of-me/?tid=sm_fb

Unemployment is below 5%, but on a record low participation rate. Also, manufacturing jobs are important because they can provide skilled and stable jobs to people without a degree, particularly a four year one.

Agree, although things are tough even for people with a degree. We laugh at English majors, but even Engineering people have a hard time when lots of engineering tasks can be offshored.

Indeed, if lots of the manufacturing is happening abroad, the main argument for having engineers at home are to protect intellectual property components. Otherwise, bring the engineers to the manufacturing site. So it’s not just a problem with liberal arts degrees.

Manufacturing jobs are a good thing, but how are uneducated working class dudes going to get manufacturing jobs when it is going to be increasingly automated? If it’s low wage manufacturing jobs, even China is losing those to Vietnam… IMO, they are in major trouble regardless of who sits in the Oval Office.

I would imagine reshoring manufacturing jobs would bring a number of engineering jobs back with it.