He doesn't need to soften his rhetoric though he just needs to pick up more targets. I think a lot of Americans are willing to ignore trumps other issues (myself included) if he promises to go after big banks and the heath insurance establishment.
Not so. The people who are horrified of giant Mexican walls and war crimes against Muslims are not going to vote for the guy, period. The people who want giant Mexican walls and war crimes against Muslims are not going to vote for the guy if he suddenly decides that Syrians are people, too. There is no moderate path forward for Trump, period. So honest question: what level of "promise" are we talking about here? Because I'll point out that Obama has promised to close Guantanimo every year since 2008 and has failed, and that's literally 300 prisoners at a military base. "Go after big banks" is an easy thing to say but a tough thing to do. "the health insurance establishment?" Near as I can tell, he's got 500 words of free-market doublespeak that basically say "repeal Obamacare and make Congress do the rest." "Congress" has not been particularly effective to date. So what level of credibility are you going to require of Candidate Trump in order for him to earn your support?
I dont really see the horror of a Mexican wall. Whats wrong with a wall? It may be expensive and not 100% effective but its more effective than the current border protection scheme. I'm not sure it will happen any way due to the cost and inability to get congress to do anything related to funding. If you are saying we dont need the wall then why do we need border patrol at all? Hell why do we even have any border checks. In my mind it either matters or it doesn't and the half assed approach today is just a waste of time and money. I dont have super high hopes of giant douche being able to accomplish much, but at least he has at leave voiced some very valid criticisms of the system that nobody else really has (Free trade, Iraq mess). If a candidate is aware of the issues facing the country he or she is able to at non 0 but low possibility of addressing them. If hes spouting out stuff about free trade, H1 visas and needless Iraq war being an issue at least that means that stuff is reaching him. And presumably he could if he chose to work to address them. Unfortunately giant douche has not had a great track record of keeping a single position so I had no clue where he stand on most issues only that hes aware that there are issues. The problem I have with shit sandwitch is that I feel like she is only aware of "issues" facing individual big donors ability to make/steal more money but is completely unaware or unresponsive to the needs of normal people. Shit sandwich has been more constant than giant douche on her positions. Unfortunately she tends to be on the wrong side of most issues pro NAFTA, pro TIPP, pro WAR (Iraq, Syria, even IRAN), pro adding more H1 visas, pro big banks, pro big pharma, pro obamacare, hell she was even on the wrong side of the LGBT rights issue before she changed her mind. Shes basically been on the wrong side (in my opinion) of every major issue in the last decade. Not the mention the Dynastic problems of having 2 Bushes followed by 2 Clinton's as president. So to answer your question giant douche has a very low bar of "promise" since shit sandwich offers no promise what so ever and has promised to actually work against the interest of the American people. Usually I vote more on social issues but this time around both shit sandwitch and giant douche are pretty socialy liberal so I dont really feel like that's a huge problem. So the only thing left is the lame promises candidates offer during the election.
The issue of the wall is that it banks on a misunderstanding of border controls. A border patrol and/or inspected border crossings exist in order to prevent a systematic bypassing of international tariffs and controls. The Great Wall of China was not created to keep out Mongolian refugees, it was created to keep out massed Mongolian cavalry. Likewise, the border patrol doesn't exist to keep out individual refugees, it exists to prevent consortiums from violating the border with goods and materiel. A ladder or rope gets an individual across the Great Wall of Trump but is no more effective at preventing a rogue convoy of black market TV or cocaine than a helicopter is. The helicopter, however, costs a lot less. The porosity of a border is a quantity, not a binary. Some will get across no matter what. The demonstrable utility of the wall flies in the face of the proposed purpose of the wall, which is why most people object to it - it's an expensive and quixotic gesture of no real purpose except to excite the minds of those who don't understand foreign policy. Which is pretty much Trump's campaign in a nutshell. You call them "shit sandwich" and "giant douche" but the fact remains: "shit sandwich" has made arguably wrong policy decisions based on her worldview and the worldview of those within her sphere. "Giant douche", on the other hand, has no policy, demonstrable or otherwise, and those within his sphere are equally naive as to the function of a modern state. Clinton may have made the wrong choice on Benghazi. Trump doesn't know where Benghazi is. Yet for you, the fact that "giant douche" comes out ahead because he's untested and quixotic, while "shit sandwich" comes out behind because she's actually demonstrated her position? Is that what you're really saying? "I like Trump because he's never had to put his money where his mouth is?" "I like Trump because no record whatsoever is better than a record I disagree with?" "I like Trump because the offensive shit he wants won't ever come to pass while Clinton might actually accomplish something in office?"
I agree that all walls are passable but a wall would be more costly and difficult to pass than say no wall. Russia had walls to keep people in, and it was pretty darn effective. A 3 layer wall will an electric fence in the middle and razor wire isnt going to be something you can easily and quickly cross with a ladder. You dont necessarily need to make it impenetrable you just need to give border patrol time to respond. Tunnels will be a bigger thing, but they take time to make and are expensive. So flow of migrants will decrease significantly. Hell look at Europe, some simple razor fencing in high crossing areas was able to stem large tides of refugees from crossing over. A few will trickle though but volume decreased substantial. "I like Trump because no record whatsoever is better than a record I disagree with?" I didn't say that I like giant douche for these things. Just that a hooker that may or may not have AIDS is slightly preferable to one that you know has AIDS Yeah that's my biggest fear. I dont think shes on the side of ordinary Americans and I think the things she does accomplish will make things worse not better. For example Obamacare in my opinion is even a worse system than the F-ed up system we had before and I expect shit sandwich to try and pass more similarly bad legislation when she comes into office full of corporate carve-outs for her donors."I like Trump because he's never had to put his money where his mouth is?"
"I like Trump because the offensive shit he wants won't ever come to pass while Clinton might actually accomplish something in office?"
My two cents as a healthcare professional on the only bit that I can really weigh in on. More people have access to life saving care and the cost-reduction tool that is preventative medicine NOW than they did before Obamacare. I will not say it's perfect. I will say that it has probably saved a few lives, and will save more.For example Obamacare in my opinion is even a worse system than the F-ed up system we had before
But haven't health care costs gone up for your patients? Did you see a lot of 10k deductibles before Obama care? How much is a non poverty family paying for insurance now vs before? In my middle class / upper middle class group people have ended up with shittier insurance and higher costs. Although I do agree that there are now more people that have insurance, many of those that do cannot afford the deductible on the services they need.
The ones who had insurance before, nope. They pay what they always have. The ones who now have insurance but didn't before? No idea, they didn't have any before. I have yet to see a 10k deductible. From my side of things, all I know is if a person has coverage or doesn't. And from what I've heard from my veteran coworkers, there has been a significant decrease in the amount of people saying they have no insurance.
At the moment I can only prove Higher costs, but it was more of a failure to stop a trend than an obvious dislocation caused by the change: Source: http://files.kff.org/attachment/summary-of-findings-2015-employer-health-benefits-survey
There's more to it than deductibles. Prevention is really the part you aren't grasping here. Right now, a huge part of why costs are so high is because of the no-pay rate in Emergency rooms and lots of other outpatient clinics, so the people who do have to pay, pay more. Prevention, annual checkups, nutrition counseling and better access to primary care providers, among other things, lowers the amount of people who use the emergency room as a one stop medical shop, which again, jacks up costs for everybody.
Its interesting that you mention that. The data I linked seemed to show a steady increasing trend in healthcare costs paid but no spike (see exhibit B ) but the increased access is a factor I hadn't considered. Like you said a large part of the cost should be because of the uncompensated care rate Effectively middle class Americans are still paying the same huge costs as they were with lots of uncompensated cost but they are also paying for the expansion of medicaid that they weren't paying for before. As for prevention I agree that more people are using their free annual checkup but I'm not sure how much more likely they are to use primary care considering 40-60 percent of workers have a deductible over 1k [(see graph on exhibit G) ](http://files.kff.org/attachment/summary-of-findings-2015-employer-health-benefits-survey) and less than half of Americans have $1,000 in savings. The current structure still makes many of those services inaccessible to those who would benefit most.
best chart I could find (old from 2014). But if uncompensated care has gone down, drastically but patient costs have have continued to climb at previous rates that is the the huge spike. Its just hidden by the medicaid expansion. So i'm not off the rails like tacocat might imply (BTW exhibit G shows % of plans with over 1k deductible).
Okay, we need to address this wall thing, because it's legitimately crazy. ... is this really the comparison you want to be drawing? I can't help but think one would want to distance themselves from a despotic dictatorship with literally tens of millions of dead and displaced people. But let's put that aside, it's not really what we're here to talk about. I'm not even going into the fact that a wall that covers almost 2,000 miles is expensive. Nor will I mention the same of the also proposed 3,900 mile Canadian border wall. I will, however, mention that you guys tried it in 2006 in Texas, and it turned out to be an over-budget nightmare that was only sort of completed and doesn't even work. This video (though from a documentary with an obvious slant) shows people getting over the border wall just fine. 2000 miles is completely indefensible from any realistic standpoint. You don't have the manpower or the money to make it happen - no one does. However, that's not even the biggest problem. The biggest problem is the people you're trying to build a wall to keep out. Because they're refugees. The only reason they're not classified as such by the US government is because it means that they would have to actually deal with them you guys also don't want to take many Syrian refugees, and are shirking even in that duty). Don't believe me? I have sources. Atlantic {UN Refugee Agency](http://www.unhcr.org/5630c2046.html). They're also not just Mexican, they're from all over "central america" ( a political term, not a geographic one). So you're basically saying that you want to put up a wall to prevent all of these people who are often fleeing for their lives just so that you don't have to deal with the monetary consequences. If that's fine with you, then I can't really argue with you, i guess. There's a reason why your border to the south is so porous btw, and it comes down to money again. Your entire food production system is based on the use of illegal immigrants and migrant workers. You like cheap food? Sure, everyone does. If you took away all of that cheap labour with little to no safety standards then you would be looking at a SERIOUS increase in the cost of your food. Strawberries would become incredibly expensive, for example. {...} Just raise the wage, you say, and an American would take the job? Not necessarily, and very unlikely if it's a farm job. Farmers have been trying that — for decades. They raise the wage. They recruit in inner cities. They offer housing and transport and countless other benefits. Still, no one shows — or stays on the job, which is outdoors and grueling and must get done, no matter how hot or cold or otherwise unpleasant the weather. And of course, at some point, there are limits to how high a wage a grower or dairy farmer can pay before he is forced out of business by a farmer who produces the same commodity in another country, where the labor actually is cheap. http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/08/17/could-farms-survive-without-illegal-labor/without-immigrant-labor-the-economy-would-crumble An example of what happens when you don't have cheap labor - You get undercut. So what I'm saying is that a wall is not only unfeasible and indefensible, It's also a human rights violation and a recipe for potential economic collapse. Now, I feel for you, your political situation in the US right now is a real disaster. However, you gotta be real with yourself about both sides of this picture.Russia had walls to keep people in, and it was pretty darn effective.
Immigrant workers aren't a "cheap labor" alternative, as so many Americans think. They are the only labor available to do many unskilled jobs, and if they were eliminated, most would not be replaced. Instead, whole sectors of the economy would shrivel, and with them, many other jobs often filled by more skilled Americans.
To your first point: The wall in Texas is expensive and poorly thought out - no argument there. A better wall could be built but possibly not in the current political climate Isn't that what EU is doing by making a deal with the Turkish dictator to keep the migrants out and not letting non Syrian economic migrants in. Unlimited flow of people into your country just is unreasonable and creates way too many problems and is a net drain on your economy and standard of living. There aren't enough jobs as it is for both skilled and unskilled laborers in this country so more people will just make the problem worse check out the labor participation rate (% of people employed) As for farming you are right. We may loose strawberry farming in California. Its unfortunate but they probably don't have the water for it anyway. Farmers will have to switch to less labor intensive crops, some farms will close. I'm sure the Southern states before the end of slavery made the same argument that the author of the article made that if plantation owners had to pay the slaves they wouldn't be competitive. As a country though we have to enforce labor rights and standards as failure to do so will cause a huge decrease in quality of life for most people. For me American workers being too expensive is not a good justification for allowing farmers to smuggle people in and treat them like slaves with no legal protections. If the job cant be done when paying people a fair, and legal wage then the job shouldn't be done. Per your last link farming for export in Hawaii probably isn't realistic, being that the price of land is insane and transpiration can fuel and labor costs are insane. It will be replaced either with a new housing development or lower cost/impact farming for local consumption. Similar things will happen in California. Either more automate crops will be sown or land will be used for other things. Plastic tasting strawberries that are available all year may become too expensive but they will still grow in many regions and be available for you to go and pick them ripe and delicious in season.So you're basically saying that you want to put up a wall to prevent all of these people who are often fleeing for their lives just so that you don't have to deal with the monetary consequences. If that's fine with you, then I can't really argue with you, i guess.
Its also costing Europe 15K per person per year so its a huge resource drain.
hey man, I've put the EU on blast before about this too. Their actions are totally unconscionable, IMO. I'm working with a Syrian refugee at the moment. He's working two jobs to try and bring his family over, while also studying for his AZ (transport license) so that he can get a better job. Dude's salt of the earth, and is just trying to provide a better life for his family. As for there not being enough jobs, we're going to run into this problem eventually - consider this a practice run of what's to come. (he goes into more depth here: What I'm trying to tell you is that if this happened, we would be royally fucked, me up here in Canada included.Isn't that what EU is doing by making a deal with the Turkish dictator to keep the migrants out and not letting non Syrian economic migrants in
It will be replaced either with a new housing development or lower cost/impact farming for local consumption. Similar things will happen in California. Either more automate crops will be sown or land will be used for other things.
Im curious why lack of strawberry harvesters in California would royally fuck you up there in Canada? Seems unrelated unless you have a big plant that builds strawberry harvesting equipment. I guess were all fighting for a piece of an ever shrinking pie (actually the pie is getting bigger but 1% of people get more and more of it) so jobs are getting more scarce and that's why I don't feel like the US should take any more economic migrants. Talented people sure, we should take more but low skill workers are loosing their jobs to robots on a daily basis and if we keep giving those jobs away eventually a lot of people will have to get basic income or there will be rioting in the streets.
Or maybe, just maybe, we could make the loss of jobs a good thing. Who actually likes work anyway? Why do we need to do it if robots can do it? Why do we allow the Capitalists to reap enormous profits at our expense, then blame the migrants(who, let's be clear, are also shafted by the Capitalists)? Why do we hold on to this insane idea that the "free" market is a sacrosanct entity that can only be nudged one way or another, never defeated?