Society The Donald J. Trump Show - 4 more years editions

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KWingJitsu

ยาเม็ดสีแดงหรือสีฟ้ายา?
Nov 15, 2015
10,311
12,692
I think you read his post wrong. He said that adding in employees at an entry level wage would reduce the overall average wage. He plucked those numbers out of thin air to give a simple example. Of course if you change any of those numbers in the example, then the outcome would change. I'm sure he assumed everyone would realize that.

I was just messing with Hauler @Hauler by piling on.
Most normal people would realize that.
He doubled down. Re read the sequence.
 

Shinkicker

For what it's worth
Jan 30, 2016
10,445
13,912
Most normal people would realize that.
He doubled down. Re read the sequence.
I did. When you said that it would change if you had more employees, he thought you meant the original statement which was that the average would go down. That's why he said that it would go down regardless of the number of employees.

No one realized that you were trying to literally change his made up example. Of course those numbers change according to whatever you plug in.
 

Hauler

Been fallin so long it's like gravitys gone
Feb 3, 2016
47,985
60,021
No, uneducated. Autocorect while driving.

But if you think I'm wrong, instead of another angry contard insult, try proving me wrong....
I can't explain it any simpler.

I just had my 8 year old nephew read our back and forth and he thinks you are a stupid head poop face.

If you want me to have him explain it to you I can have him give you a call.
 

Hauler

Been fallin so long it's like gravitys gone
Feb 3, 2016
47,985
60,021
I did. When you said that it would change if you had more employees, he thought you meant the original statement which was that the average would go down. That's why he said that it would go down regardless of the number of employees.

No one realized that you were trying to literally change his made up example. Of course those numbers change according to whatever you plug in.
This is the dumbest conversation I've ever been involved in.
 

Truck Party

TMMAC Addict
Mar 16, 2017
5,711
6,832
It works no matter how many employees you have. If you add more entry level positions, your average hourly wage will go down for the company.
his arguments with this are rather amazing, he single-handedly brings the average IQ of this place down
 

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
26,916
26,589
So if you add, just pulling a number out of nowhere here... 50,000 new jobs and the majority of those jobs are entry level positions. Does the AVERAGE hourly rate go up or down?

Actually, shrink it down. If you have 1 guy making $12 / hour and the company is doing well so they add another new worker at $10 / hour, your average wage rate just dropped from $12 to $11.
Thats right. Wages have dropped, as the article just said.
 

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
26,916
26,589
Trump Admin Plans Emergency Aid For Farmers Caught In Tariffs Crossfire
The Trump administration readied a plan Tuesday to send billions in emergency aid to farmers who have been caught in the crossfire of President Donald Trump’s trade disputes with China and other U.S. trading partners.

The Agriculture Department was expected to announce the proposal that would include direct assistance and other temporary relief for farmers, according to two people briefed on the plan, who were not authorized to speak on the record.

The plan comes as President Donald Trump is scheduled to speak at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in Kansas City in the heart of the nation’s farm country.

Trump declared earlier Tuesday that “Tariffs are the greatest!” and threatened to impose additional penalties on U.S. trading partners as he prepared for negotiations with European officials at the White House.

The Trump administration has slapped tariffs on $34 billion in Chinese goods in a dispute over Beijing’s high-tech industrial policies. China has retaliated with duties on soybeans and pork, affecting Midwest farmers in a region of the country that supported the president in his 2016 campaign.

Trump has threatened to place tariffs on up to $500 billion in products imported from China, a move that would dramatically ratchet up the stakes in the trade dispute involving the globe’s biggest economies.

Before departing for Kansas City, Trump tweeted that U.S. trade partners need to either negotiate a “fair deal, or it gets hit with Tariffs. It’s as simple as that.”

The president has engaged in hard-line trading negotiations with China, Canada and European nations, seeking to renegotiate trade agreements he says have undermined the nation’s manufacturing base and led to a wave of job losses in recent decades.

The imposition of punishing tariffs on imported goods has been a favored tactic by Trump, but it has prompted U.S. trading partners to retaliate, creating risks for the economy.

Trump has placed tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, saying they pose a threat to U.S. national security, an argument that allies such as the European Union and Canada reject. He has also threatened to slap tariffs on imported cars, trucks and auto parts, potentially targeting imports that last year totaled $335 billion.

During a Monday event at the White House featuring American-made goods, Trump displayed a green hat that read, “Make Our Farmers Great Again.”

“We’re stopping the barriers to other countries. They send them in and take advantage of us,” Trump said. “This is the way it’s going to go — make our farmers great again.”

The president is meeting with European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker on Wednesday. The U.S. and European allies have been at odds over the president’s tariffs on steel imports and are meeting as the trade dispute threatens to spread to automobile production.
 

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
26,916
26,589
Estimated Increases in 2019 Premiums by Congressional District Due to ACA Sabotage
Over the past two years, the Trump administration has worked tirelessly to sabotage the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The U.S. Congress’ repeal of the individual mandate penalty and the Trump administration’s actions to expand the availability of skimpy short-term plans are raising premiums for middle-class families. In its latest attack on the individual market for health insurance, the Trump administration also slashed funding for enrollment assistance by 72 percent and halted payments for risk adjustment, the federal program that discourages plans from avoiding sicker enrollees.

Last year, President Donald Trump’s decision to end cost-sharing assistance payments resulted in staggering increases in 2018 marketplace premiums, and these more recent attempts to destabilize the individual market will result in even higher rates for 2019. Although tax credits rise with premiums and therefore insulate lower-income individuals from higher costs, many middle-income families who buy insurance on their own will see 2019 premiums thousands of dollars higher than they would be if the Trump administration allowed the ACA to work as intended. Based on rate information to date, the Center for American Progress estimates that an unsubsidized 40-year-old will pay an extra $970 in marketplace premiums on average in 2019 because of the end of the mandate and the expansion of short-term plans.

Mandate repeal and short-term plans are driving up premiums
The individual mandate was one of the ACA’s mechanisms for keeping premiums low by stabilizing the insurance risk pool. Congressional Republicans’ tax bill—backed by the Trump administration—effectively eliminated the individual mandate starting in 2019. As a result, experts predict that young, healthy enrollees will tend to forgo health insurance, which leads to a sicker individual market risk pool and higher premiums for remaining enrollees. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has projected that mandate repeal will drive insurers to raise rates an additional 10 percent. What’s more, the Trump administration has made regulatory changes to widen the availability of short-term plans that offer substandard coverage, harming the ACA risk pool and raising rates for comprehensive coverage.

Rate filings to date show that many insurers are requesting large premium increases for 2019. The average requested rate increase was 30.2 percent in Maryland and 24 percent in New York state. Most insurers have specifically cited the repeal of the individual mandate in their actuarial memorandums. In New York, insurers attributed about half their large requested increases to mandate repeal. Even in states with small rate increases or overall decreases, insurer filings state that premiums next year would be significantly lower in the absence of federal sabotage. For example, BlueCross BlueShield of Vermont requested a relatively small 7.5 percent increase for 2019 but said that its request would have been 2.2 percentage points lower if not for mandate repeal. Peter V. Lee, the director of Covered California, said that his state’s average rate increase of 9 percent “could—and should—have been much lower.”

Estimating the cost of sabotage
CAP has projected 2019 premium increases at the congressional district level attributable to recent ACA sabotage. Like CAP’s earlier state-by-state estimates of premium increases due to ACA sabotage, these estimates are based on projections by the Urban Institute of 2019 premium increases due to the Trump administration’s decision to allow for short-term junk plans and Congress’ repeal of the individual mandate. The Urban Institute’s projections account for individual states’ efforts to stabilize the individual market through reinsurance programs, coverage mandates, and regulation of short-term plans.

Premiums vary widely not only across states but also across geographic areas within a state. Individuals in rating areas with fewer insurers and less competitive markets for physicians and hospitals—generally rural and lower-income areas—face higher premiums. To account for variation within a state, the authors used county-specific marketplace premiums from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF), then converted those estimates to congressional district averages.

Nationally, the authors estimate that recent ACA sabotage actions add an additional $970 to the 2019 annual benchmark premium for a 40-year-old.* Because premiums increase with age and household size, sabotage of the ACA hits older people and families even harder. A typical family of four will see a premium that is $3,110 higher and a 55-year-old couple will see a premium $3,330 higher on average because of President Trump’s recent efforts to undermine the ACA. While the ACA’s tax credits protect eligible enrollees from premium increases, unsubsidized middle-class consumers are responsible for covering the entire cost of these needless premium hikes.

The table downloadable below contains estimates for each congressional district’s excess 2019 benchmark premium dollars that enrollees would face. It includes examples of excess cost for three types of unsubsidized marketplace consumers: a single 40-year-old; family of four consisting of 38-year-old and 40-year-old parents and two children under age 15; and a 55-year-old couple.

Because underlying benchmark premiums vary both between and within states due to state policy decisions and local market conditions, the estimates of the cost of sabotage do as well. For example, within Maine, it’s expected a 40-year-old would face an extra $1,060 for marketplace coverage in 2019 in Portland but an extra $1,320 for coverage in the 2nd congressional district, which covers the northernmost region of the state. In California, a 40-year-old would pay an extra $1,170 in the 1st district, at the northern border; $1,040 in the 12th district, which covers San Francisco; and $720 in the 25th district, which includes parts of Los Angeles. In the two states that have enacted coverage mandates and banned short-term plans, New Jersey and Massachusetts, it’s estimated that the change in respective federal policies will not generate any excess premium costs.

CAP’s estimates capture the excess premium costs due to actions that Congress and the Trump administration took in late 2017 and early 2018. The total cost of ACA sabotage since Trump took office accounts for an even larger share of 2019 premiums. Marketplace rates in 2018—the starting point for the estimates—were already higher than they would have been under a good-faith implementation of the ACA because the administration slashed outreach efforts and stopped reimbursing issuers for cost-sharing assistance to low- and middle-income consumers.

Conclusion
Insurers’ rate filings for 2019 have made it clear that the administration’s backing of substandard coverage options and elimination of the individual mandate are driving up premiums for consumers. Further attacks on the marketplaces, such as the Trump administration’s threat to halt risk adjustment payments and slash funding for enrollment assistance programs could force insurers to raise rates yet higher. Whenever the Trump administration and congressional leaders sabotage the ACA and destabilize the individual insurance market for political show, middle-class enrollees are forced to pay the price.

Emily Gee is the health economist for Health Policy at the Center American Progress. Aditya Krishnaswamy is an intern for Health Policy at the Center.

*Authors’ note: The estimate of the national average excess premium paid by a 40-year-old consumer differs from CAP’s earlier estimate because the authors are using updated versions of actual and projected 2019 premium increases.

To download the tables with the estimated premium increases attributable to ACA sabotage by congressional district, click here.**

**Correction, July 24, 2018: The downloadable spreadsheet has been updated to remove extra rows of incorrect data and correct the average for Washington state in the table of state averages.

Methodology
The table shows the excess premium dollars individual market enrollees will be charged as a result of the Trump administration’s ACA sabotage. To account for local variation in marketplace premiums, CAP started with data from the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) on second-lowest cost silver benchmark premiums for a 40-year-old in 2018. The KFF premium data is at the county level, we developed a data crosswalk to convert counties to congressional districts using resources from KFF, supplemented with publicly available tables from Daily Kos to reflect the redrawn district lines in Pennsylvania.

We then used county population data from the 2016 American Community Survey (ACS) via American FactFinder to calculate population-weighted average 2018 benchmark premiums in each district. We then used the 2018 benchmarks to estimate 2019 premiums and the portion of the 2019 premium attributable to mandate repeal and the short-term plan rule.

In most states, little or no information on 2019 average rate increases was available to date. In those cases, we took our 2018 average benchmark premiums and trended them forward to a 2019 baseline by applying the 7 percent national medical trend projected by Covered California, giving us an estimate of what 2019 premiums would be if the Trump administration had not engaged in any ACA sabotage since fall 2017. Next, we applied the Urban Institute’s projections of 2019 premium increases attributable to the repeal of the individual mandate penalty and the proposed short-term plan rule in each state, and then converted that to a dollar amount for each district.

For two states, we adjusted the Urban Institute’s projection of excess premiums to reflect recent state action to stabilize the market for comprehensive insurance; therefore, the estimates in this column may differ from those in a previous CAP column. New Jersey and the District of Columbia, have passed state-level mandate legislation, and we altered the projected 2019 premium increase for these states. We reduced the District of Columbia’s projected excess premium increase educed by 10 percentage points to eliminate the effect of federal mandate repeal. New Jersey, as Massachusetts, has both a state mandate and a ban on short-term plans, so our estimate of excess premium dollars from the federal changes is $0. We did not alter the Urban Institute’s projection for Vermont, where the state mandate does not take effect until in 2020.

In the handful of states where officials have announced the average requested rate increase in 2019—California, Connecticut, Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Washington state—we incorporated that statistic into our calculations. In these cases, we applied the statewide average increase to each district’s benchmark to approximate 2019 premiums, including the effect of sabotage. We then solved for the amount of the amount attributable to the mandate and the short-term plan rule by assuming that the 2019 premium included a load equivalent to the Urban Institute projections. In some states, issuers requested a small rate increase or a decrease for reasons including setting 2018 prices to high or accounting for a new state reinsurance program. Regardless of the size and direction of the 2010-19 rate increase, the level of 2019 rates would be lower without changes to the mandate or short-term plans; therefore, we still estimate a positive cost of sabotage because without destabilizing policies.
 

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
26,916
26,589
Thanks Sasha, I do my due diligence in keeping this place a safe space for you government people.
Cute but ignorant as always.

I work for a non-profit organization not a govt agency.

How's working for minimum wage working out for you?
 

Freeloading Rusty

Here comes Rover, sniffin’ at your ass
Jan 11, 2016
26,916
26,589
Any Malcom Gladwell fans?

The Unintended Cruelty of America’s Immigration Policies
Unintended Consequences
A recent episode of Malcolm Gladwell’s Revisionist History podcast explored the causes and effects of the militarized US-Mexico border. To summarize, for most of the 20th century, into the 1960s and 1970s, migration between the United States and Mexico was primarily cyclical. Migrants from rural areas near the border in Mexico would move to the United States for work, stay for a few months, and move back to Mexico with their families. This worked economically because the risk, and therefore the cost of crossing the border was essentially zero. If you were apprehended, you’d be returned, but in general this arrangement allowed for the flow of migrants into and out of the United States.

In the early 1970s, however, the US-Mexico border began to be militarized. It happened almost by accident. An extremely skilled and dedicated retired Marine general took over immigration and naturalization services and began to tighten up the way in which border patrols operated. There was never any intent to cause suffering. On the contrary, the original aim seemed to be to harmonize border enforcement with existing laws in a way that benefited everyone. But as the borders became less porous, migrants began seeking border crossings that were more dangerous. Often these were in the high desert where risk of injury and death was higher. As the cost of crossing the border back and forth increased, migrants were less likely to engage in cyclical migration and instead stayed in the United States, either sending money home to Mexico or bringing their families with them.

This has profound implications for the current state of affairs. As each successive administration cracked down on illegal immigration, tightened the border, and militarized the border patrol, it increased the risks and costs associated with crossing back and forth. Migrants still want to come to America, and people are still claiming asylum, but illegal immigrants in the United States are persecuted and stay in hiding. Every indication is that the worst possible thing that could be done would be the actual construction of a wall. In some ways, an analogy can be drawn to “desire paths” in public spaces. In urban planning, a desire path is path that is worn in by foot traffic that deviates from the sidewalk. It shows where people actually want to walk, not where the planners wanted them to walk. There is a natural flow to collective human behaviour. Civic planning and architecture may try to steer people in particular directions, but it can’t control them entirely. Human behaviour will always win out. Likewise, people will continue to migrate.

Gladwell doesn’t say this, but it seems to me that the most rational and humane solution is a porous border. When a border is porous, illegal immigrants are turned back when apprehended, but in a straightforward way. People are not apprehended and put into detention centers. Families are not charged with committing a misdemeanour offence and jailed prior to their hearings necessitating the removal of the children. When a border is porous, there is still border security but the overall level of enforcement is lower. A policy like this could benefit from increased access to green cards, since many migrants wish to work in the United States for only a few months. Unfortunately, no one in the Southwest (or anywhere else in America) is going to win an election with the promise of “Let’s make our border more porous and engage in lax border security.” That will not sell. But the evidence presented by the Mexican migration project and reviewed by Gladwell in his podcast suggests this would be the most rational solution.
]
Malcolm Gladwell: Strict Enforcement Encourages Illegal Immigration
In his latest podcast, Malcolm Gladwell uses his platform to make an important point about the latest immigration crackdown that has the Trump administration separating immigration children from their parents as a means of deterring illegal immigration. This week, both Sessions and Huckabee Sanders have been trying to use passages from the Bible to justify this cruel policy. It’s the law, they argue. And it enforcing the law is the will of God–ignoring the fact that God didn’t write these laws and that changing them is within the power of our lawmakers.

Gladwell is best known for his non-fiction books, such as The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers, which apply research from the social sciences to provide new insights into crime enforcement, business, and sports. More recently he has created a podcast called Revisionist History which he describes as “journey through the overlooked and the misunderstood”.

Gladwell is not known for taking overt political positions in his work. He has done podcast episodes on McDonald’s french fries and the Toyota sticky accelerator issue and the granny-style free throw in basketball. However, this season’s episodes of his podcast have taken a more political tone, including the latest must-listen episode released this week.


In podcast titled General Chapman’s Last Stand, Gladwell explains just how we got to this point in American history, where a large part of the population (mostly called Trump supporters) believe there is a serious immigration issue along the southern border and that strict (or biblical) enforcement is the only solution. Not only does Gladwell tells us how got we got to a policy of separating immigrant families, he also illustrates the solution to the “problem” created the problem in the first place. Everyone on both sides of the debate should listen to this podcast. It puts all the recent developments in this debate into sharp focus.

Though you can’t tell from the title, the episode is about illegal Mexican immigration into the US. The immigration of Mexicans into the US has been extensively studied through a Princeton project called the Mexican Migration Project. The data from this project shows how the pattern has changed from “circular migration”, where the migrants come to the US to find work, but ultimately go back to Mexico because that is where their family roots are. Because of circular migration, the net immigration into the US was low.

This migration pattern changed, Gladwell argues, because of Commandant Leonard Chapman, retired from the Marines Corp, who made his mission to enforce the border regulations. Because crossing the border became so difficult, circular migration stopped. If you managed to cross the border, you didn’t return to your family. You couldn’t be sure you would be able to cross the border again, so you stayed and send for your family to join you. You became a permanent illegal immigrant, instead of a temporary one. And your children became today’s dreamers.

Chapman also made it his mission to convince us that we had an immigration problem. Before he became head of the Immigration and Naturalization Service in 1972, very few Americans thought we had an immigration issue. By the time he retired in 1977, the majority believed that immigration was a problem. Chapman was so good at his job, that he convinced us that good walls make good neighbors. But the data suggestions otherwise, at least when it comes to illegal immigration from Mexico, which is what Malcolm’s Gladwell’s latest podcast eloquently points out.

Since I’ve listened to the podcast, I have a whole new perspective on the latest immigration debate. The attempts by the Trump administration to stop illegal immigration across our southern border, whether it’s by ripping immigrant children from their mothers, or spending a ridiculous amount of money on a border wall, will not work. In fact, they will have the opposite effect. Migrant workers will still find a way to cross the border to do the jobs Americans don’t want to do. The more difficult and risky we made that border crossing, the less likely those migrant workers will return home when their work is done. And net illegal immigration goes up, not down.
 

Disciplined Galt

Disciplina et Frugalis
First 100
Jan 15, 2015
26,029
30,797
Cute but ignorant as always.

I work for a non-profit organization not a govt agency.

How's working for minimum wage working out for you?
555 that's even worse you subversive whore.

I usually make around 60k baht per month. About half of what I'd make in Sweden, but fuck living around a bunch of cucks.