Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

when I've won an argument with a thinking entity, and then some "copy sock" tries to coat tail ride, can I fairly count 2 wins?

Re: Give me a job, give me security; give me a chance to survive.
 

If you know you're fucked behind Door #1, and Door #2 is probably bad, but offers even some small chance of a better result, it's the only rational pick.

Careful with this. That's the Right's favorite speech in favor of "personal responsibility." I agree with you to a certain extent, but that's a third rail if there ever was one. Blame Americans, at least in part, for their own situations? How on earth would you then get them to vote for you?

Which came first? The globalism that eliminated the jobs that caused Joe Sixpack to feign injury and become a junkie, or the abundance of Oxycontin?

Much less complex is determining why Joe Sixpack decided to assign foreigners the blame for his sorry lot. Primarily because they're weak, and he feels like he can do something about them -- unlike his corporate masters who terminated his "career," against whom he hasn't a prayer.

Joe's obsolete in more ways than he'll ever hope to understand. Oxycontin = Natural Selection via Big Pharma.

Re: Give me a job, give me security; give me a chance to survive.
 

I'm seeing a lot more fervor for Trump among the upper middle class right now. That's a naturally biased view, as I tend to run into a lot of them. But I suspect it also might be something else - naked tax voting. Upper middle folks seem to think Hillary's going to increase taxes. I don't know why, as this is not a traditional Clinton position, nor is it a feature of her campaign, even in the face of Bernie demanding it from her.

The truly middle class people I see on a regular basis seem confused by Trump. They don't know who they want to vote for this fall. And I think they know, either way, the forces making things tougher for them are going to keep doing so, regardless of who's in office -- stumbling into the knowledge the President doesn't have much control over the economy.

Re: Give me a job, give me security; give me a chance to survive.
 

When you talk about the people you encounter, it's a helpful reminder to avoid the suburbs.

Not that I really need one.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

The rich can afford a lot of kids; the dumb and poor will have them anyway. Those of us in the middle are doing the serious population control.

I'm assuming writers will use Gatsbyesque to describe things a lot in 10-20 years. That seems mean to Fitzgerald. I'm thinking more a combination of Rich Kids of Instagram and those People of Walmart websites. Choose your ugly... 90 IQ trust fund brats in day glo orange Lamborghini Gallardos in West Egg, or the face-tattooed, seventy-times pierced, morbidly obese crowd scoring oxys on the street corners of the Wasteland.

Re: Give me a job, give me security; give me a chance to survive.
 

I actually find the people I run into posts hepful.

I know the folks I run into have a uniquely Massachusetts mix (PhDs mean squat around here) and upstate NY mix (A little Genny with those pork rinds?). It's good to know what the suburban Philly or hipster Minnesota crowd is thinking. And suitably frightening to hear what white people in Texas think.

Re: Give me a job, give me security; give me a chance to survive.
 

Your numbingly stupid mantra that globalism somehow destroyed the working class, driving them into Trump's arms, is not only misguided, it is frankly immoral. It is immoral because it perpetuates a lie: that the white working class that finds itself attracted to Trump has been victimized by outside forces. It hasn’t. The white middle class may like the idea of Trump as a giant pulsing humanoid middle finger held up in the face of the Cathedral, they may sing hymns to Trump the destroyer and whisper darkly about “globalists” and — odious, stupid term — “the Establishment,” but nobody did this to them. They failed themselves. If you spend time in hardscrabble, white upstate New York, or eastern Kentucky, or West Texas, and you take an honest look at the welfare dependency, the drug and alcohol addiction, the family anarchy — which is to say, the whelping of human children with all the respect and wisdom of a stray dog — you will come to an awful realization. It wasn’t Beijing. It wasn’t even Washington, as bad as Washington can be. It wasn’t immigrants from Mexico, excessive and problematic as our current immigration levels are. It wasn’t any of that. Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster. There wasn’t a war or a famine or a plague or a foreign occupation. Even the economic changes of the past few decades do very little to explain the dysfunction and negligence — and the incomprehensible malice — of poor white America. So the gypsum business in Garbutt ain’t what it used to be. There is more to life in the 21st century than wallboard and cheap sentimentality about how the Man closed the factories down. The truth about these dysfunctional, downscale communities is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible. Forget all your cheap theatrical Bruce Springsteen crap. Forget your sanctimony about struggling Rust Belt factory towns and your conspiracy theories about the wily Orientals stealing our jobs. Forget your goddamned gypsum, and, if he has a problem with that, forget Ed Burke, too. The white American underclass is in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture whose main products are misery and used heroin needles. Donald Trump’s speeches make them feel good. So does OxyContin. What they need isn’t analgesics, literal or political. They need real opportunity, which means that they need real change, which means that they need U-Haul.

Re: Give me a job, give me security; give me a chance to survive.
 

Sure, but better that Sebby run into those people and report back than I have to spend any time with them myself.

Re: Give me a job, give me security; give me a chance to survive.
 

With this I would not generally disagree.

Re: Give me a job, give me security; give me a chance to survive.
 

I don't traffic in morality. That's a slippery metric. But if you think the white working class has not been victimized by globalization, you're being anti-factual.

They're dumb. Of course they failed themselves. But something precipitated it.

When globalization shut down the low skill job engine of manufacturing, it gave a not exactly brilliant population lots of free time. Idle hands, devil's work... Yes. They are to blame. But so are we. As Adder noted yesterday, we who knew better allowed the forces of globalization to savage them and did nothing to assuage the inevitable consequences. (Not that we could have, exactly, but we didn't even try.)

The National Review has been making this argument for some time. But it's unrealistic. One could say the same thing about the squalid inner cities. What do we do? Drive through the Camdens and Appalchias of the world and tell people "You're fucked. Get out! And stop reproducing!"

Agreed. But again, what are you going to do with these communities? Tell them they no longer have a vote because they're obsolete?

You need to read this article.

Re: Give me a job, give me security; give me a chance to survive.
 

Thanks for the article recommendation. I'll take a look. Heck, if it contains some good stuff, I may even quote it (or the article it quotes) and pretend that I wrote it myself.

Re: Give me a job, give me security; give me a chance to survive.
 

So you know my family in upstate NY?

If you see my cousin Bob, remind him that there's no point in plowing the back 40 where his Dad used to dump the chemicals from the plant, and that if he does plant it, he ought to make sure it's just used for animal feed and nothing goes to people.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Precisely. It's done all the time with convertible daily resent preferred, which is nothin more than a cp derivative. I've also done deals over terms ranging from weekly to 45 years. And why is this so dramatically different than slicing up a securitization by credit risk, offering different returns for tranches with more or less risk.

In my scenario, the allocation of risk is determined by the return the lender is willing to accept. Risk is parceled out in accord with the interest premium if takes to fund each successive layer.

I've done this deal for 25 years, with investment banks and commercial b anks, back when it made a difference, insurance companies, vc. and pe. Terms have been everything from overnight working capital to bridge financing, waste control tax-exempt products, and just because it was cheaper than straight debt or equity. I've done it as direct deals, packaged them as collateralized trusts, and floated them publicly. I've done tax-exempt and taxable, special purpose and general credit.

But what do I know. I'm just a simple country tax lawyer.

Re: I used to be disgusted, and now I try to be amused.
 

Ah, very good! And if you turn that into a metaphor...?

Re: Give me a job, give me security; give me a chance to survive.
 

They aren't that hungry yet.