The Official Former President Trump thread

[pandarilla]

Bernie? he reminds me of a Janitor in an old folks home.

Excellent contribution sandy. Well done.

Just to be clear, you're saying he's old and a bit disheveled, yeah?

[JamieThomas]

Janitors are famously all in their late 70s

[dirty dingus]

6 minutes ago, MixuFixit said:

I'd fucking love it if a jannie was in charge tbh. Solving everything with sawdust.

Depends on what type of Jannie, the Hong Kong Phoey type for sure the Ian Huntley types a definite no-no.

Edited December 6, 2019 by dirty dingus

[SandyCromarty]

9 hours ago, pandarilla said:

Excellent contribution sandy. Well done.

Just to be clear, you're saying he's old and a bit disheveled, yeah?

Aye and dear old benevolent Bernie is not all he makes out to be.

In the Nineties Dear Old Bernie voted four times against the Brady Gun Control bill which in part would have legislated for background checks on potential gun customers. 

His argument was that people liked to go hunting in Vermont.

In 2006 two people were fatally killed in a Vermont School shooting. 

[welshbairn]

Bernie would have his 80th birthday in his first year as President and he's currently recovering from a heart attack. Cuddly and worthy as he is, he should be thinking about his retirement. Weird how most people in normal 9-5 jobs are expected if not forced to retire at 65, but there is no limit for probably the most high pressure and responsible job on the planet. Same applies to Biden imo, who's clearly losing his marbles.

Edited December 6, 2019 by welshbairn

[Thistle_do_nicely]

42 minutes ago, SandyCromarty said:

Aye and dear old benevolent Bernie is not all he makes out to be.

In the Nineties Dear Old Bernie voted four times against the Brady Gun Control bill which in part would have legislated for background checks on potential gun customers. 

His argument was that people liked to go hunting in Vermont.

In 2006 two people were fatally killed in a Vermont School shooting. 

tbf to him though (don't know anything about the Brady Gun Control bill or Vermont shooting you refer to and cba googling it either, taking you at your word since it certainly sounds 'Murican enough to vote against gun control and for there to be a school shooting) that could very well have been an instructive learning experience?

[SandyCromarty]

4 hours ago, Thistle_do_nicely said:

tbf to him though (don't know anything about the Brady Gun Control bill or Vermont shooting you refer to and cba googling it either, taking you at your word since it certainly sounds 'Murican enough to vote against gun control and for there to be a school shooting) that could very well have been an instructive learning experience?

Google 'American School Shootings' and you will see a Wiki list come up at the top, the total list over all of the decades is very extensive and frightening.

In the 'nineties' when Dear Old Bernie voted four times against gun control there were 66 school shootings.

[Utter Roaster]

21 hours ago, JamieThomas said:

Janitors are famously all in their late 70s

Hong Kong Phooey, mate! 

Edited December 6, 2019 by Utter Roaster
Duh

[Jacksgranda]

On 05/12/2019 at 20:44, Zetterlund said:

Andrew Yang gets it. Good interview with him here.

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/andrew-yang-freedom-dividend-matt-taibbi-katie-halper-useful-idiots-920375/

 

He didn;t say "the worst for Democrats", surely?

[dorlomin]

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-50681431

America seems to be deliberately breaking the WTO. There is a very clear pattern here, breaking the multilaterlism set up in the Cold War. Its not just Trump but much of the right think NATO is finished, it serves little purpose. They now seem to see the world as being bilateral deals in trade in and defence, redrawing everything to a more US centric outcome. This perhaps explains why the UK right is so keen on Brexit, being the first in the door with the new world structure, though I think they are fools for following this path. 

China is in a deep dark hole. Most people seem oblivious to it. There population peaks in about 2025, then they have a huge bulk of their population hitting retirement age and a rapid drop in young people coming through. 

 

This is why they have so much leverage over them, well that the huge trade imbalance and its huge debt pile. 

Much to most of that is non performing, see their endless "ghost cities".  With their growth stalling they will have huge social care bills coming due in the next couple of decades and a shrinking workforce. They need to break into good paying sectors as they face low cost labour market competition.

With the looming debt crisis in Italy and other Eurozone countries, Europes own looming demographic problems 

 

(Again shrinking work force)

The more hawkish wings of the US seem to be deliberately breaking multilateral organisations to use US leverage to improve their position in the word. The EU and China have large pools of labour that is still relatively poor and can be brought into the better educated jobs (Eastern Europe here) but the US has Mexico in its local trade zone so can always expand that way and a growing\relatively stable demography. They will have the young 30 something consumers in 20 years from now to pay tax, work and help with the pensions. Few other developed world regions will. 

When Trump goes I think we will still see the continued  dismemberment of the multilateral world. 

[welshbairn]

Could be that automation, robotics and AI will be arriving just in time rather than the bringers of a dystopian future. We'll have to rethink ideas of time, labour and reward though.

[BFTD]

16 hours ago, welshbairn said:

Could be that automation, robotics and AI will be arriving just in time rather than the bringers of a dystopian future. We'll have to rethink ideas of time, labour and reward though.

Mind the days when these things were going to bring about an age of lifestyle choice and security for humanity? Before it became obvious that a few folk in business and government were going to keep all the gains for themselves. How naive we were.

[welshbairn]

37 minutes ago, BigFatTabbyDave said:

Mind the days when these things were going to bring about an age of lifestyle choice and security for humanity? Before it became obvious that a few folk in business and government were going to keep all the gains for themselves. How naive we were.

If that happens who's going to buy all the shite to keep them rich?

[BFTD]

5 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

If that happens who's going to buy all the shite to keep them rich?

Ah, the fatal flaw: enough is never enough.

[welshbairn]

1 minute ago, MixuFixit said:

Reminds me of an article I read about a climate change expert being invited to a meeting with a handful of billionaires. Walked in expecting them to ask how they could best put their wealth to use to combat climate change and instead was asked where on the planet will be most comfortably habitable in a worst case scenario, how to keep their security staff loyal when money stops meaning anything...

 

 

That thought came to mind when Trump was putting feelers out about buying Greenland.

[dorlomin]

 

[dorlomin]

44 minutes ago, welshbairn said:

If that happens who's going to buy all the shite to keep them rich?

This theory has been kicking round in various forms since the 1800s. It also feeds into various theories from Marxist and other strands of economics on distribution of wages and lack of demand. Ironically this is exactly what is not happening in the UK. Our productivity is flat that is workers are producing about a similar amount as 10+ years ago, this is one of the main problems with wage and GDP growth. We have a relatively low count of robots per 1000 workers. This though is in part as we are so financial and service sector orientated (for now, Boris' Brexit may cure that). 

Most robotoised labour markets in the world, Japan and South Korea, the two where demographic contraction is the greatest risk. (already underway in Japan). 

The long and the short of it is that we have experienced two centuries of increasing automation of labour and so far we have always managed to reskill the work force and increase the productivity and wages of workers. It seems to many that the huge surge in off shoring to low wage economies in the past 30 years has played a much larger role in the stalling of wage growth in the west (the UK has its own extra problem as above). There are a lot of people (who I tend to agree with) who suggest that this allowed greater accumulation of capital in fewer hands but this has lead to lower demand and the need for more personal credit (as capital is accumulating in unproductive stores of wealth more of this is available to lent and lower interest rates). Demography comes back into this as many societies will have less and less of their populations in the borrowing and spending age cohorts and more in the liquidating assets for retirement cohort, this may cause a surge in interest rates as less people buy government bonds for savings and more sell them for pensions (not the people per say their pension funds) here the years of rising cheap credit and lack of distribution of wealth may come home to roost. 

 

That is a lot to cover in a short couple of paragraphs and I am not much minded to go hunting data on this for P&B. This all kind of feeds into America not having the same demography problem as much of East Asia and Europe (Russia's demograph is catastrophic, the war in Ukraine is seen by many to be an attempt to pick up a few million more warm Russian babies rather than land or anything). 

And the UK needs lots of immigrants but the communities least able to benefit from the modern economy have little vested in the increases in immigration. People sneer and deride them as "racists", but what incentive do they have to support large immigration? The EU is popular with the educated and the large urban centres. The places that have benefited from the modern UK, financial\service sector economy. Compare with the small ex mill, steal or coal towns Labour is now at risk of losing. Being against young blond haired, blue eyed Polish girls coming to work is not racist, its just conservative, wanting to conserve the character and culture of your (dying) town. The last 40 years has been shyte for them. 

People are retreating to what makes them comfortable. 

[Highland Capital]

[Detournement]

It was always coming

[BFTD]

I can't click on that link for some reason, but what's the gist behind noted Jew Bernie Sanders being an anti-semite?

Curious if there's any more to that than, "he hangs around with the goyim too much."