Trump Voters.... why?

[Sliced]

Trump supporter checking in. This is in response to the original question. I haven't read through this whole mega thread.
...

Interesting.  What urged you to post your first ever response here on this thread on a forum that's primarily focused on financial independence?

I've been reading MMM for a few months but haven't visited the Off Topic section. Never felt compelled to post in the general discussion section because I felt like a lot of topics are discussed ad nauseum and I don't have any questions about my personal path to FI.

[waltworks]

This has left me shaking my head too - I understand that the Clinton campaign didn't want to highlight photos of them standing alongside Trump, but I figured that someone would be doing it.  Trump invited the Clintons to his third wedding (they attended and appeared to have a good time). At the time (2005) Bill was a former president and Hillary was a US Senator. He first formed a presidential exploratory committee in 1999 (17 years ago) and has at various times backed and met with Reagan, McCain & Romney, all prior to this election cycle. He's been a frequent call-in guest on political talkshows for two decades.

To say he hasn't been buddy-buddy with career politicians is a ridiculous. He's just never actually held political office.

The only conclusion I can come to is that his appeal is entirely due to:
-His "non PC" tone/language. Though he doesn't really have policy positions per se, he says "this sucks" bluntly when he doesn't like something. I guess people like the tone and don't care about the (relatively standard for a politician) lack of content.
-Finding people/institutions to assign blame to for complex long term problems. Nobody actually wants to pick fruit for $5 an hour, and there are fewer illegal immigrants in the US than there were 10 years ago, but it apparently feels good to blame them for the loss of middle class manufacturing jobs that started going away 40 years ago.
-Blatantly appealing to the cranks/conspiracy minded lunatics. If Hillary Clinton actually had the various powers attributed to her I'd already be sitting in my Solyndra powered socialist work house drinking my soylent green after the black helicopter ISIS/UN (really the same thing, amiright?) forces took away all my guns, instead of refreshing 538 (or Breitbart) every 10 minutes to see if she can actually narrowly pull off getting elected.

I thought Peter Wehner's article in the NYT was pretty good. He basically threw up his hands and said the Republican party deserved to die at this point, because the principles they used to espouse have been thrown away completely for political expedience.

-W

[nereo]

Trump supporter checking in. This is in response to the original question. I haven't read through this whole mega thread.
...

Interesting.  What urged you to post your first ever response here on this thread on a forum that's primarily focused on financial independence?

I've been reading MMM for a few months but haven't visited the Off Topic section. Never felt compelled to post in the general discussion section because I felt like a lot of topics are discussed ad nauseum and I don't have any questions about my personal path to FI.

Ok, but it's just a bit odd that you're joining a 34+ page discussion on Trump the day of the election by providing a list of 7 reasons why you are voting for Trump/against Clinton, all of which have been covered extensively in this thread except "Wants to reduce waste".... I'm guessing you are talking about fiscal waste (instead of consumer waste, which he seems to be a champion for).  If so this also strikes me as bizarre, as I've never heard any politician anywhere running for any office talk about being "for waste".  Literally everyone talks about how they'd cut down on fiscal waste and suddenly firehoses of cash will start raining down on us taxpayers.

[Mississippi Mudstache]

Your numbers show that Trump is 11 times more popular in Southern states than the Midwest.  That sorta belies your argument doesn't it?

No, the numbers show that the percentage of people preferring Trump to Clinton in the South is about 9-10% higher than the percentage of people who prefer Trump to Clinton in the Midwest. In 2012, the percentage of people who preferred Romney to Obama was 16% higher than the same metric in the Midwest.  In other words, Southerners are less supportive of Trump than they are of a generic Republican, whereas Midwesterners are more supportive of Trump than a generic Republican. If you want to fault Southerners for being Republicans, that's fine. If you want to fault Southerners for Trump's hostile takeover of the Republican party, that is ignorant. Try again.

[Northwestie]

Thanks - interesting numbers there.

[Northwestie]

.
-Finding people/institutions to assign blame to for complex long term problems. Nobody actually wants to pick fruit for $5 an hour, and there are fewer illegal immigrants in the US than there were 10 years ago, but it apparently feels good to blame them for the loss of middle class manufacturing jobs that started going away 40 years ago.
-Blatantly appealing to the cranks/conspiracy minded lunatics. If Hillary Clinton actually had the various powers attributed to her I'd already be sitting in my Solyndra powered socialist work house drinking my soylent green after the black helicopter ISIS/UN (really the same thing, amiright?) forces took away all my guns, instead of refreshing 538 (or Breitbart) every 10 minutes to see if she can actually narrowly pull off getting elected.

I thought Peter Wehner's article in the NYT was pretty good. He basically threw up his hands and said the Republican party deserved to die at this point, because the principles they used to espouse have been thrown away completely for political expedience.

-W

^^^^ This.

While some manufacturing has been lost to trade - particularly textiles - most of the job "loss" in other industries is due to productivity gains.  Those robots can put together a car pretty fast.  GM is going gang-busters but now employs a third of the team it used to.  A French company recently opened a steel mill, yes, in Ohio.  It employs 400 folks, about a 10th of what is used to need to push out the same amount of product.

It's not the first time we've seen some upheaval in labor markets and probably not the last.   Manual labor jobs are just not going to pay that well going forward.  Skilled manual labor jobs will.  We need to do a better job helping folks make this transition.

[Tyson]

.
-Finding people/institutions to assign blame to for complex long term problems. Nobody actually wants to pick fruit for $5 an hour, and there are fewer illegal immigrants in the US than there were 10 years ago, but it apparently feels good to blame them for the loss of middle class manufacturing jobs that started going away 40 years ago.
-Blatantly appealing to the cranks/conspiracy minded lunatics. If Hillary Clinton actually had the various powers attributed to her I'd already be sitting in my Solyndra powered socialist work house drinking my soylent green after the black helicopter ISIS/UN (really the same thing, amiright?) forces took away all my guns, instead of refreshing 538 (or Breitbart) every 10 minutes to see if she can actually narrowly pull off getting elected.

I thought Peter Wehner's article in the NYT was pretty good. He basically threw up his hands and said the Republican party deserved to die at this point, because the principles they used to espouse have been thrown away completely for political expedience.

-W

^^^^ This.

While some manufacturing has been lost to trade - particularly textiles - most of the job "loss" in other industries is due to productivity gains.  Those robots can put together a car pretty fast.  GM is going gang-busters but now employs a third of the team it used to.  A French company recently opened a steel mill, yes, in Ohio.  It employs 400 folks, about a 10th of what is used to need to push out the same amount of product.

It's not the first time we've seen some upheaval in labor markets and probably not the last.   Manual labor jobs are just not going to pay that well going forward.  Skilled manual labor jobs will.  We need to do a better job helping folks make this transition.

I kind of have to laugh - these people are all about capitalism, until capitalism squeezes their jobs out in the pursuit of more profit, especially via automation.  And then that somehow becomes the government's fault?  Seriously, it makes no sense.

[Tyson]

To follow up, both sides I think are highly energized this election, so we'll get a good sense of where the country actually stands, once the chips fall today.

[MrMoogle]

.
-Finding people/institutions to assign blame to for complex long term problems. Nobody actually wants to pick fruit for $5 an hour, and there are fewer illegal immigrants in the US than there were 10 years ago, but it apparently feels good to blame them for the loss of middle class manufacturing jobs that started going away 40 years ago.
-Blatantly appealing to the cranks/conspiracy minded lunatics. If Hillary Clinton actually had the various powers attributed to her I'd already be sitting in my Solyndra powered socialist work house drinking my soylent green after the black helicopter ISIS/UN (really the same thing, amiright?) forces took away all my guns, instead of refreshing 538 (or Breitbart) every 10 minutes to see if she can actually narrowly pull off getting elected.

I thought Peter Wehner's article in the NYT was pretty good. He basically threw up his hands and said the Republican party deserved to die at this point, because the principles they used to espouse have been thrown away completely for political expedience.

-W

^^^^ This.

While some manufacturing has been lost to trade - particularly textiles - most of the job "loss" in other industries is due to productivity gains.  Those robots can put together a car pretty fast.  GM is going gang-busters but now employs a third of the team it used to.  A French company recently opened a steel mill, yes, in Ohio.  It employs 400 folks, about a 10th of what is used to need to push out the same amount of product.

It's not the first time we've seen some upheaval in labor markets and probably not the last.   Manual labor jobs are just not going to pay that well going forward.  Skilled manual labor jobs will.  We need to do a better job helping folks make this transition.

I kind of have to laugh - these people are all about capitalism, until capitalism squeezes their jobs out in the pursuit of more profit, especially via automation.  And then that somehow becomes the government's fault?  Seriously, it makes no sense.

I'm sure there are many who believe this way, but there also many Republicans who don't.  Personally, I automate as much as I can for my job.  Other people now do what I used to, and do much more than what was possible, because of what I created.  But I keep getting new things to work on.

[MasterStache]

.
-Finding people/institutions to assign blame to for complex long term problems. Nobody actually wants to pick fruit for $5 an hour, and there are fewer illegal immigrants in the US than there were 10 years ago, but it apparently feels good to blame them for the loss of middle class manufacturing jobs that started going away 40 years ago.
-Blatantly appealing to the cranks/conspiracy minded lunatics. If Hillary Clinton actually had the various powers attributed to her I'd already be sitting in my Solyndra powered socialist work house drinking my soylent green after the black helicopter ISIS/UN (really the same thing, amiright?) forces took away all my guns, instead of refreshing 538 (or Breitbart) every 10 minutes to see if she can actually narrowly pull off getting elected.

I thought Peter Wehner's article in the NYT was pretty good. He basically threw up his hands and said the Republican party deserved to die at this point, because the principles they used to espouse have been thrown away completely for political expedience.

-W

^^^^ This.

While some manufacturing has been lost to trade - particularly textiles - most of the job "loss" in other industries is due to productivity gains.  Those robots can put together a car pretty fast.  GM is going gang-busters but now employs a third of the team it used to.  A French company recently opened a steel mill, yes, in Ohio.  It employs 400 folks, about a 10th of what is used to need to push out the same amount of product.

It's not the first time we've seen some upheaval in labor markets and probably not the last.   Manual labor jobs are just not going to pay that well going forward.  Skilled manual labor jobs will.  We need to do a better job helping folks make this transition.

I kind of have to laugh - these people are all about capitalism, until capitalism squeezes their jobs out in the pursuit of more profit, especially via automation.  And then that somehow becomes the government's fault?  Seriously, it makes no sense.

I've been making this same argument for quite some time now. It typically falls on deaf ears.

[MDM]

To follow up, both sides I think are highly energized this election, so we'll get a good sense of where the country actually stands, once the chips fall today.

Probably "divided" as nereo mentioned:

ETA:  and while I"m on my soapbox, I'm damn sick and tired of presidents calling their victory a "mandate."
...
It's not much of a mandate if 45% of the public voted for someone other than the winner.

Whether it's Clinton or Trump, the winning side is likely to act much as Clinton did following the Iowa caucus earlier this year:

Although Sanders pronounced the race "a virtual tie,” Clinton declared Tuesday that she was "so proud I am coming to New Hampshire after winning Iowa,” the AP reports. Leaving no hint that Iowa was anything but a victory, the former secretary of State, former U.S. senator, and former first lady told supporters, “I've won and I've lost there and it's a lot better to win."

[Chris22]

.
-Finding people/institutions to assign blame to for complex long term problems. Nobody actually wants to pick fruit for $5 an hour, and there are fewer illegal immigrants in the US than there were 10 years ago, but it apparently feels good to blame them for the loss of middle class manufacturing jobs that started going away 40 years ago.
-Blatantly appealing to the cranks/conspiracy minded lunatics. If Hillary Clinton actually had the various powers attributed to her I'd already be sitting in my Solyndra powered socialist work house drinking my soylent green after the black helicopter ISIS/UN (really the same thing, amiright?) forces took away all my guns, instead of refreshing 538 (or Breitbart) every 10 minutes to see if she can actually narrowly pull off getting elected.

I thought Peter Wehner's article in the NYT was pretty good. He basically threw up his hands and said the Republican party deserved to die at this point, because the principles they used to espouse have been thrown away completely for political expedience.

-W

^^^^ This.

While some manufacturing has been lost to trade - particularly textiles - most of the job "loss" in other industries is due to productivity gains.  Those robots can put together a car pretty fast.  GM is going gang-busters but now employs a third of the team it used to.  A French company recently opened a steel mill, yes, in Ohio.  It employs 400 folks, about a 10th of what is used to need to push out the same amount of product.

It's not the first time we've seen some upheaval in labor markets and probably not the last.   Manual labor jobs are just not going to pay that well going forward.  Skilled manual labor jobs will.  We need to do a better job helping folks make this transition.

I kind of have to laugh - these people are all about capitalism, until capitalism squeezes their jobs out in the pursuit of more profit, especially via automation.  And then that somehow becomes the government's fault?  Seriously, it makes no sense.

But productivity is just one aspect.  Another is taxes, and another is regulation.  The more we treat employers as a piggy bank to squeeze money from, or a whipping boy for our bureaucracy, the more we push jobs overseas.

As much as I think Trump is out to lunch on his methods of shaming companies into staying domestic, he at least seems to get the idea we should try to stop flight from happening.  On the left (not so much from Hillary, I don't think, granted) the idea seems to be "make them [companies] pay their fair share!" which is just shooting ourselves in the foot.  Yeah, let's badger GE for using the tax credits the system allows and try to raise taxes on them which will essentially drive them out of the country.  Smart.

[Tyson]

Drive them out of the country to, where?  We already have some of the most lax tax laws in the developed world. 

[Chris22]

Drive them out of the country to, where?  We already have some of the most lax tax laws in the developed world.

Google sez

"The United States has the third highest general top marginal corporate income tax rate in the world at 39 percent, which is the same as Puerto Rico and is exceeded only by Chad and the United Arab Emirates. ... The worldwide average corporate tax rate has declined since 2003 from 30 percent to 22.9 percent.Oct 1, 2015"

In early 2014, Pfizer (inverting to the UK by taking over AstraZeneca),[4][14] Walgreen, and Medtronic had each proposed high-profile inversions. Concerns about an accelerating exodus prompted a round of public policy proposals in Congress.[citation needed] One group of Congressional Democrats proposed a measure to disallow inversions involving a smaller merger partner; another group proposed tightening rules on government contracts with inverted companies; both groups were blocked by Republicans.[citation needed] The two parties also split over whether to enact short-term measures to discourage inversions.[citation needed] President Barack Obama called the maneuvers "unpatriotic" during a speech in July 2014.[citation needed] The Economist responded to the calls in America to restrict companies from relocating abroad by way of merger "misguided" and called for wider tax reform to address what it describes as more fundamental flaws in the American corporate tax system instead.[3]

Democratic lawmakers attempted again in September 2014 to propose a tax reform that would focus on slowing the number and rate of corporate inversions via taxing any earnings outside the U.S. as income, until the inversion occurs. Republicans and Democrats had several proposals that could possibly address the issue.[15] An additional consideration surrounding any proposed inversion regulations is whether the regulations would apply retroactively, and further, whether such a retroactive application would be constitutional.[16]

You know, let's do all that, instead of just fixing the problem.

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_inversion

[waltworks]

Yeah, free trade is a bunch of crap!

...said no capitalist or Republican ever.

You can't bring back the jobs. They are done by robots. Hell, a lot of small plastic crap (ie Ninja turtle figurines for your kids b-day party level junk) is USA made again, because it's basically free to make so the profit margins are all about minimizing transport costs.

This was discussed a bunch upthread, but what Trump and Trump's voters are complaining about is postindustrialism. That is a real problem (we make stuff so easily/cheaply that we don't need most of the population to work at all) but it's not one that is solvable by repealing NAFTA or whatever. Trump has no serious policy proposals about this issue so I can't vote for him. I am glad he's drawing attention to it, though.

Personally, I think we should move to a mandatory 32 hour workweek. Everything over has to be paid overtime. Some people are working too much, some not at all, everyone is unhappy, nobody gets enough rest or exercise - yet we live in an age of amazing plenty. Stupid stupid stupid.

-W

[Mississippi Mudstache]

Yeah, free trade is a bunch of crap!

...said no capitalist or Republican ever.

You can't bring back the jobs. They are done by robots. Hell, a lot of small plastic crap (ie Ninja turtle figurines for your kids b-day party level junk) is USA made again, because it's basically free to make so the profit margins are all about minimizing transport costs.

This was discussed a bunch upthread, but what Trump and Trump's voters are complaining about is postindustrialism. That is a real problem (we make stuff so easily/cheaply that we don't need most of the population to work at all) but it's not one that is solvable by repealing NAFTA or whatever. Trump has no serious policy proposals about this issue so I can't vote for him. I am glad he's drawing attention to it, though.

Personally, I think we should move to a mandatory 32 hour workweek. Everything over has to be paid overtime. Some people are working too much, some not at all, everyone is unhappy, nobody gets enough rest or exercise - yet we live in an age of amazing plenty. Stupid stupid stupid.

-W

The majority of americans don't make things, they are in services industries.  I don't get why the only "true americans" are factory workers according to the media and trump.

If we moved to a 32 hour work week, would you be ok with a 20% paycut and 20% reduction to benefits?

Why should I take a pay cut? I don't work even 32 hours a week at the moment - I'm just required to be at the office 40 hours a week. Moving to a 32-hour workweek would have zero effect on my productivity.

[waltworks]

The majority of americans don't make things, they are in services industries.  I don't get why the only "true americans" are factory workers according to the media and trump.

If we moved to a 32 hour work week, would you be ok with a 20% paycut and 20% reduction to benefits?

Well, I work for myself, so I already made that decision and took a 50% pay cut to work half time. That was many years ago.

No-brainer really, when there are so many great things to do in the world that aren't working (riding my bike, playing with my kids, posting to the MMM forums, etc).

-W

[sol]

If we moved to a 32 hour work week, would you be ok with a 20% paycut and 20% reduction to benefits?

Omg yes.

But that's not the point.  If the economy creates just as much value as before with only 80% of the work, shouldn't we all get paid the same amount?  If I wanted to make twenty percent less and work twenty percent less, that option is available in lots of industries.  But if I can do 100% of the work in 80% of the time, due to automation or other productivity gains, I'd like to be 100% paid for my 100% productivity.  Otherwise, all the gains accrue to the owners as profit, for gains made by the workers, and inequality continues to increase.

Yay capitalism?

[dividendman]

... he at least seems to get the idea we should try to stop (the jobs) flight from happening.

I am always confused by this assertion that has been made by lefties for a while and now by people on the right. Why should be stop the jobs flight from happening (if it is)?

America: The land of opportunity. Where the net immigration from the world is so high. Lots of folks want to come here. Why is that? Why do all of these people want to come when we are shipping the jobs to their countries? Wouldn't they want to be where the jobs are going?

I'm confused.

[nereo]

If we moved to a 32 hour work week, would you be ok with a 20% paycut and 20% reduction to benefits?

During the furlough in California we had exactly this.  We started calling it our "20% reduction in pay with a 50% increase in our weekend".
To tell you the truth, I missed those 3 day weekends even more than I liked getting my bigger paycheck.

[waltworks]

Nice, I want to do that after FI too.  But I don't think we should force the entire country to work 32 hours.  Not sure that's enforceable anyway as the 40 hour work week is kind of a cultural norm as opposed to a law, and many companies ask you to work longer than that.

I'm not FI.

I have deliberately delayed FI (by a LOT!) in order to have more free time now and not be stressed/miserable/shorten my life by not taking care of exercise and my friends/family.

But that's not the point here. The point is that the society is producing more and more of a surplus, and fewer and fewer (including all those unhappy Trump voters) get to share in it. I can imagine a future where <10% of the population needs to work to keep the economy humming along/provide everything everyone needs. What do you then do with the 90% who aren't needed? The old arguments about being paid fairly for fair amounts of work sort of break down when there's such a surplus that nobody needs to work at all.

-W

[Metric Mouse]

If we moved to a 32 hour work week, would you be ok with a 20% paycut and 20% reduction to benefits?

Omg yes.

But that's not the point.  If the economy creates just as much value as before with only 80% of the work, shouldn't we all get paid the same amount?  If I wanted to make twenty percent less and work twenty percent less, that option is available in lots of industries.  But if I can do 100% of the work in 80% of the time, due to automation or other productivity gains, I'd like to be 100% paid for my 100% productivity.  Otherwise, all the gains accrue to the owners as profit, for gains made by the workers, and inequality continues to increase.

Yay capitalism?

Would shift workers like EMTs and dispatchers and police officers, who can't just reduce the amount of time they provide service, then get a pay BUMP for working longer than32 hours? Seems quite fair. I'd be all for that then.

[sol]

Would shift workers like EMTs and dispatchers and police officers, who can't just reduce the amount of time they provide service, then get a pay BUMP for working longer than32 hours? Seems quite fair. I'd be all for that then.

If productivity increases allowed EMTs to do provide the same level of services in only 32 hours, they should get paid the same.  If they work more than 32, and provide more than their previous full time level of service, they should get paid more.

But in practice, I imagine service industries that don't get any more work done just by being on the clock longer would hire additional workers and make them each work 32 hours.  The business pays more for the increased productivity, but it would be spread among more folks.

[Metric Mouse]

Would shift workers like EMTs and dispatchers and police officers, who can't just reduce the amount of time they provide service, then get a pay BUMP for working longer than32 hours? Seems quite fair. I'd be all for that then.

If productivity increases allowed EMTs to do provide the same level of services in only 32 hours, they should get paid the same.  If they work more than 32, and provide more than their previous full time level of service, they should get paid more.

But in practice, I imagine service industries that don't get any more work done just by being on the clock longer would hire additional workers and make them each work 32 hours.  The business pays more for the increased productivity, but it would be spread among more folks.

So same productivity, less pay per person, and more money for the company that employees them (More employees, with benefits, etc.)  Sounds like public servent industry is shafted.

[sol]

So same productivity, less pay per person, and more money for the company that employees them (More employees, with benefits, etc.)  Sounds like public servent industry is shafted.

No, I think you have that exactly wrong.  More productivity, the same pay per person, and the company pays more because it gets more due to the productivity increases.  The public service industry benefits because it creates more (32 hour, full time pay) jobs. 

Right now, productivity increases don't benefit workers at all.  All that profit goes to owners.  This type of system uses the productivity increase to transfer that benefit fully to the workers.  In clock coverage industries like EMTs, it also creates more workers.