Re: The Magic of Trump
 

No pass from me. Bernie is a pitiful joke. A sort of half-wit Nader (maybe that makes him a quarter-wit?).

This is about his vanity, not his principles.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

To answer your first question: No, urban farming is not any more romantic than a whole lot of other things that no one here is talking about.

Re: Starrtling News
 

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

Her appeal is that she will actually accomplish something.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

I agree with much of what you say, but this is fundamentally, tragically, backward. We (especially the US) need far denser, more urban communities in which people can live almost entirely without cars. It's absolutely key to "saving" the planet.

Any relationship between density and crime, poverty, malnutrition is a fallacious relic of the white flight that decimated American cities as the direct result of public policies that subsidized unsustainable suburbanization.

Nearly no? Not nearly enough, certainly, but I don't think it's nearly nothing. And I don't think tearing it down has ever helped at all.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

How do you know when you haven't tried?

You corporate shill, you.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

It is if it's processed on a clean line. Soy doesn't have gluten.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

Yeah, unfortunately, I've spent a lot of time trying to find the gluten-free tofu in the Whole Foods store. As to other soy products - fuggedabotit.

When Armageddon comes, I'm heading straight for the nearest french bakery and pigging out on croissants before I'm called for the judgment.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

We've actually come a long way on many issues, especially race and gender, though, as the book says, we've still got fur to go.

On economic issues, there are arguments we've gone sideways and backwards as well as forwards. Unfortunately, the decision of the labor movement to embrace nationalism and protectionism played a big part in some of the backwards stuff, and its hard to see how we reverse that, and I am very dismayed that the brovolution embraces the very elements that played such a big role in the collapse of unions.

But then, as one of my friends recently reminded me, I'm just a feisty old wobbly at heart.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

what does this mean? Once the average american thinks it is okay to buy stuff made in dirt pay countries how does work stay here?

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

That means you put a lot of emphasis on building unions in other countries as a key party of your strategy, which you do through trade deals like TPP, and you focus on supporting union labor in general as opposed to American labor in particular.

I've never bought a car assembled in a nonunion plant. As a matter of fact, I've never bought a car that didn't have an American brand on it. But we all know, the parts, and all the jobs that go with them, usually come from all over the world and all kinds of plants.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

You buy cars? My only transportation is a rainbow cart made from organic trees that died humanely of natural causes and is pulled by small batch artisan unicorns. Here is "Hung Up" by Salt. Your Daily Dose:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t944...166DE8BC1553E7

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

And that was not true when all american workers refused to buy stuff made in another country.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

given all the talk about Union jobs in Asia I think your continued U.S. based funk posts are xenophobic. Why worry about building interest in US bands only? Here is it- Chine Funk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IclW1sooyYk

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

You are a better man than I. I listened to my Daily Dose while eating my smokey blue cheese on rice crackers with dates and drinking my port and riding in my 15 mpg jeep with the top down on a big superhighway.

I do have a bike rack on it, so I get some hipster eco-credits, right?

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

When did that actually happen? I remember a brief period in the 70s when people talked about not buying Japanese cars. But even then, people were buying Japanese cameras and clothes from wherever. And American cars were crappy.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

Try Asian markets. And you may even want to look in the local grocery store chain, whatever they call the Piggly-Wiggly (hi Not Bob!) in Beantown. That's where I found my gluten-free soy sauce.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

You only get those if you actually have the bike on it and you pull it off more than once a month.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

Done and done. So I can trade these eco-credits for enough carbon to fly me to Europe, right?

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

http://www.tvhistory.tv/1960-2000-TVManufacturers.htm

in the 70s it became okay to buy Asian made cars, then electronics, then steel. before that some people might have owned cheap Asian made cameras, but check out the TV manufacturers in the 70s and today. What change do you see?

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

If you were a real patriot you'd go to Appalachia and buy homemade crafts from the families of unemployed coal miners instead.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

Were you not paying attention when I discussed American funk influence on African bands? :( :( :( Here's a nice cut from the The Funkees! You know they're funky because they're name tells you it's so!!!!!! From Nigeria, although they later moved to London. With a sweet Meters-esque bass line, "Too Lay" is your funky African Daily Dose:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVSGwNIVpTM

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

Very little. By the mid-70s, very few American companies were making TVs. Most were being made by Japanese companies. That has shifted a little, to include some Korean and Chinese manufacturers.

So, again: When was it that American workers were refusing (actually refusing, not just saying that they'd refuse) to buy foreign-made goods?

Maybe in the 1960s, or earlier. But so what? It's not like there were a lot of high-quality foreign-made goods around at that time. Or even low-quality cheap ones.

I have a great deal of trouble understanding what seems to be a basic concept at the heart of Sanders' and Trump's protectionism/anti-trade/populism claims. It seems to be suggesting that we can revert to the situation we were in, when the US had no competition from other countries in manufacturing and when the technology that makes current manufacturing so efficient didn't exist. (And only white men got to take advantage of it.)

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

looks to me like Asian companies started in the mid 70s. US died in the 80s. Prior to mid 70s American working families would never buy Asian made electronics. This graph isn't when the Asian companies started making sets in Asia it is when they started supplying them here.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

Here's the thing, I'm thoroughly in favor of keeping manufacturing here, but the key threat to that is not what people are willing to do on the market, because they're mostly going to choose based on either price or quality not origin. The big threat is countries that permit slave or forced labor, countries that maintain artificially low exchange rates, countries that have no protections to unions and so extremely low wages. We're moving into a world where parts of China and India have fairly similar wages for most people to folks in parts of Southern Europe - the old differences that were hangovers from a more divided world are eroding. The best way to further erode them is through treaty negotiations and by encouraging the growth of unions and wage protections similar to ours in those countries. But organized labor hates things like TPP, which include many of those provisions, because they are still wed to tariffs (usually not permitted anyway), trade quotas and other ways to protect the market. And organized labor has done little to encourage unionization abroad, thinking of those workers as more competitors than sisters and brothers.

Sure, buy American, you, me, about half of Michigan, and almost no one else will be on board. But if you really want industrial jobs here, TPP does more to do that.

Isn't that you in that LTD II? You'll never know til you try.
 

Based upon my personal anecdotal evidence, the switch for cars flipped during the energy crisis of 1973/74. Prior to that (at least in the Ancestral Homeland), working-class Americans were emphatically Not Interested in buying cars made by the people who bombed Pearl Harbor. (Other than VWs, cars made by the people who killed 6 million Jews weren't really an option for the working class during this time.) At least for my relatives, the rapid increase in gas prices overcame the memories of WWII, and the camel's nose was under the tent.

And before we all recite "free trade" and "Adam Smith's Invisible Hand" and simply blame (depending on our politics) the lazy/greedy UAW workers and/or the lazy/greedy executives at GM/Ford/Chrysler/AMC for the Matadors, Vegas, and LTDs that chased Joe Sixpack into the arms of Datsun et al., let us remember that Japanese economic policies of the 1960s through the 1980s subsidized R&D and manufacturing and restricted imports from the gaijin.

Same was true of TVs, too. And while there were legitimate complaints about the quality of many American cars (my Aunt Maureen's brand new 1972 LTD was a lemon from the day she drove it off the lot), I don't ever recall hearing anyone complain about the quality of their Zenith. It was just that it became cheaper to buy a Sony or a Sharp - and not because of free trade.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

American working families weren't buying Japanese TVs before the mid-70s because they weren't available here, or the quality was poor. (As for other electronics -- stereos, radios, etc. -- IIRC they came available a little earlier. As did cameras.)

This wasn't out of loyalty to American manufacturers. It was a decision based on quality and price. If it had been loyalty, then Japanese electronics manufacturers would not have become so dominant, so quickly.


If you have a way to revert 1972, let me know. I doubt it. How much are people going to pay for an iPhone when President Trump decrees they be manufactured in the US?

Re: Isn't that you in that LTD II? You'll never know til you try.
 

In general, we can use retaliatory tariffs against imports that are subsidized; but just subsidizing R&D doesn't do it (and our pharma industry would be pissed if it did). We can also retaliate protective tariffs, but the Japanese market is hard to crack even after tariffs come down.

It's all complicated. Which is why TPP (or NAFTA, etc) needs to be long.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

well I was a consumer in the 70s and you were at your mommy's titty, so whatever. I have memories you've read articles. Plus I actually grew up working class.

We can't "buy American now for 2 reasons. Most people make less so they have to buy Costco discount stuff. No way you can sell stuff made for living wages to the big box. Second, I don't think you can buy A TV actually made here.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

I feel like I am doing my part with the Daily Dose.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

I'm 50 years old, you fucktard. You may have been nursing until you were 10. I wasn't.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

Of all the places this conversation could have gone, I did not anticipate Hank's Oedipal issues.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

My mom was Calabrese, stacked; no one would walk away.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

In Calabria, women are more dangerous than shotguns.


People would run, not walk.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

True, but you picked it backup in your 20s. NTTAWWT

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

My dad bought a fucking K-Car in 1980 or so under some misguided "buy American" phase.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

We had a '72 Ford Pinto. Between that and the Volvo station wagon where we rolled around in the back on road trips it's a miracle I survived childhood.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

It should surprise no one that a 70+ year old technology (even with the updates) is no longer manufactured by high wage labor in a high wage country.

Our manufacturing jobs necessarily must come from innovation.

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

Like Apple?

Re: The Magic of Trump
 

Apple is a marketer, not an innovator.