World is Falling Apart Thread (Locked forever)

[Ack]

There you have it, folks. In short, "Everything sucks."

Which in truth is pretty much what my view on our current politics is.

More Cubs jokes, anyone?

(JT, sorry for using you for the joke. I hope you aren't upset)

[J T]

I'm not upset. I don't think everything sucks though. There are good policies and bad policies, and I'm excited by some of the ideas that have been tossed about this election cycle. Choosing a candidate is always a compromise. It is very rare that a candidate will do everything you ever hoped for. It's a matter of sifting through their plans and coming up with a pros/cons list for each candidate and comparing to decide who is most adequate to sit in the oval office.

[MrPopo]

You hit the nail on the head with regards to the student loan thing. There's a group of youngsters who have been conditioned that the proper path is to go to a traditional college after high school, regardless of whether they have the temperament for it or if it makes financial sense for them. As a result the trades are languishing and lots are getting into debt they wouldn't be in in the first place if they had done a reasoned analysis of "how is this going to help my future?"

There's a similar thing with the campaign promises around massively increasing the minimum wage. It has the same sort of appeal for those it will directly impact at first glance, but then you think through the larger economic ramifications. Increasing the minimum wage that significantly means you're massively increasing the cost of labor to employers. That gives them three options: increase prices, decrease the labor force, or take a hit on profits. And it's definitely not going to be exclusively take a hit on profits, especially as so many of these industries (retail especially) already run razor thin margins. If increasing the minimum wage increases the cost of living by the same amount you haven't gained anything.

[dsheinem]

There's a similar thing with the campaign promises around massively increasing the minimum wage. It has the same sort of appeal for those it will directly impact at first glance, but then you think through the larger economic ramifications. Increasing the minimum wage that significantly means you're massively increasing the cost of labor to employers. That gives them three options: increase prices, decrease the labor force, or take a hit on profits.

...or employees who make more money then go and spend more money, increasing the demand for your products and boosting your bottom line despite the initial extra up front salary costs.

[pepharytheworm]

There's a similar thing with the campaign promises around massively increasing the minimum wage. It has the same sort of appeal for those it will directly impact at first glance, but then you think through the larger economic ramifications. Increasing the minimum wage that significantly means you're massively increasing the cost of labor to employers. That gives them three options: increase prices, decrease the labor force, or take a hit on profits.

...or employees who make more money then go and spend more money, increasing the demand for your products and boosting your bottom line despite the initial extra up front salary costs.

In the end yes, but most retail won't wait. They need their profits now, so the first thing they cut is hours, then benefits, then the amount of employees. I agree minimum wage needs to go up but being in retail management myself have seen the direct effect. We in Oregon just increased minimum wage by $0.50 and already my company has cut hours by 10 a week.

[MrPopo]

There's a similar thing with the campaign promises around massively increasing the minimum wage. It has the same sort of appeal for those it will directly impact at first glance, but then you think through the larger economic ramifications. Increasing the minimum wage that significantly means you're massively increasing the cost of labor to employers. That gives them three options: increase prices, decrease the labor force, or take a hit on profits.

...or employees who make more money then go and spend more money, increasing the demand for your products and boosting your bottom line despite the initial extra up front salary costs.

What Peph said, also, if you're making pennies on the dollar in the first place you are likely to not get a large enough demand to offset the increased in the hourly costs of your employees. There's a cost to increasing the rate you produce/move units, and that has a lot of physical realities that will bring you under the theoretical ideal. A given retail store can only move so much product per unit of time thanks to physical realities of space and fixed transaction times, not to mention the variable time introduced by customer interactions.

[MrPopo]

Unlike the liberals on this board (aside Prfl) most conservatives WILL NOT blindly support a candidate. There are principles and values. I have very few good things to say about Donald Trump and do not want him to be our president. This is the case with the majority of republicans and conservatives.

This is mathematically false. One ends up with the nomination by gaining a majority of the vote. Or you're claiming that the majority of people eligible to vote in the Republican primary didn't give enough of a shit to ensure a candidate they'd be happy to see in the White House won. At least the Sanders supporters can hang their hat on the fact that the superdelegates do have the ability to override the will of the people, even though Clinton did win a plurality from those who voted in the primary.

[dsheinem]

Wow, Mike, I never expected such an assholish, ignorant post from you. Shine on.

[TEKTORO]

I'm just happy mjmjr stop to say hi to me been awhile since we talked!!!

I just approached everything with an open mind and appreciated everyone taking the time to converse with each other. Unfortunately I most likely won't vote at all, I registered a few years ago here in PA opting to pick neither party and go independent since I never followed politics and was scared to dedicate to any party without facts. Recently with the open polls here I went to my local place without a clue and got hounded by trump supporters literally trying to take my hand and sign papers in favor of trump without my permission. Told them I don't sign shit unless I read through thoroughly, and left it at that. As an independent I had no say actually in what interested me for the country.

[Sarge]

Trump received a plurality in many places, but not a majority. Unfortunately, as candidates started dropping off, Trump benefited quite a bit from the momentum he'd gained. Plus, Kasich stayed in to impact Cruz just enough to keep him from being a viable threat as well.

Note that most of the caucuses (people significantly engaged in the process) went for Cruz. In the primaries, many of the states have crossover voting, and I believe Trump benefited from "Reagan Democrats", and from people that traditionally wouldn't bother voting. Turnout was historic on the Republican side, which tells me there were quite a few folks involved that wouldn't normally be.

As for another conservative view (I was in Cruz's camp), I have no particular love of Trump. I don't believe he's the Hitler-esque evil that folks are making him out to be, but he's not conservative or liberal. He's what you would get if you had a (rich) average Joe run for the White House. Not terribly motivated by traditional ideology, just rolling with whatever sounds good to him, for better and for worse. I believe he's going to be influenced heavily by those he surrounds himself with.

Will I cast a vote for him? If Gary Johnson can't start pulling anything close to competitive numbers, then yes. Hillary Clinton is both ideologically incompatible with my worldview, and too corrupt a politician for me to consider viable. I believe there is a slim chance that Trump might not be a disaster if surrounded by the right people. Not encouraging, certainly, but that's how I see it. Plus, a lot can change between now and November. We'll see how things shake out.

tl;dr: This election sucks.