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Friday, March 29, 2024

Tuesday Turmoil – Brexit Uncertainty Trumps Trump Uncertainty

Short autos!  

Today's edict came out at 6am with President Trump tweetcreeing that autos shall henceforth be manufactured in these United States.  Once upon a time, we did manufacture cars in the United States and all those companies went broke or got massive Government bailouts at some point.  In fact, the Federal Government took over GM and Chrysler in 2009, firing CEO Rick Wagoner and forcing a merger with Fiat after putting in $80.7Bn to sweeten the pot.  The government ended up getting back all but $9.2Bn and managed to save Millions of jobs – ironically over the total objection of the GOP.  

Ford got a $9Bn line of credit and a $5.9Bn loan in exchange for pledging to spend $14Bn developing battery-powered and hybrid cars and more millions of jobs were saved without telling them where or how they had to make those cars.  Donald Trump met with Elon Musk yesterday, who does build his cars in the US but Tesla (TSLA) has LOST over $3Bn since 2010 and has no prospects of making a profit this year or next. 

Image result for us manufacturing historySo, is Trump trying to finish the job and finally destroy the US auto industry or did Musk simply convince Trump to help him destroy his competition?  The way to make America great again is not to forcibly prop up dying industries but to spur investment in the growing industries of the future – the way we did under Clinton when Silicon Valley and the chip industry became a thing. 

And Musk is the worst possible example of American manufacturing because his cars are primarily built by ROBOTS, not humans – something Tesla is very proud of in their promotional footage – does Trump not know this?  Tesla only has 13,000 employees who made 50,000 cars last year, if this is the Future of the Auto Industry then it's a very bleak one for American workers.  Perhaps instead of forcing manufacturers to move back to the US, we should invest in companies that make the robots?  Oops, that's already a fail as TSLA just bough a German automation company – now those guys are on the ball!  

This is all just economic smoke and mirrors to distract the easily distracted Trump voters from what the real problems are in this country.  We are simply not EDUCATED enough to move our workers into the kind of jobs that are growing in the World.  American workers rank nearly last in education but fixing that problem is expensive and doesn't go well with cutting taxes, does it?

Rather than blame ourselves and do what is necessary to compete in the new Global economy, the Trump administration wants to WALL OFF America and put up trade barriers and force businesses to make things here – whether profitable or not, all in order to avoid fixing the long-term problem of better-educating our workforce.  

And where will ignoring the problem and walling off the World for 8 years leave us?  We will continue to lose ground, our workers will continue to be less competitive and another generation of children will miss their chance to learn the skills needed to truly compete in the World.  

What made America "great" in the 50s and 60s?  Well, in WWII the army gave basic skills training to pretty much every able-bodied male in the country and, after the war, the GI Bill  provided cash payments of tuition and living expenses to attend high school, college or vocational/technical school, low-cost mortgages, low-interest loans to start a business, as well as one year of unemployment compensation to any veteran.  THAT RAMPANT SOCIALISM is what made America great in the decades that followed!  

Image result for income tax historyOf course, back then, the Top 1% paid as much as 85% of their income in taxes (leaving them only 1,000 times richer than the average American).  The top tax rate dropped to 65% in the 60s and then, in the 80s, Reagan decided Big Government was everyone's problem and cut rates to 35%. 

The results were, of course, predictable – the rich got much, much richer and deficits soared (because the poor didn't have enough money to make up the difference).  Rather than considering the possibility that cutting taxes on the Top 1% from 85% to 35% (and, even worse, Corporate taxes were slashed too) may have been going a bit too far, the Conservative-backed foundations and their pet politicians began a war on social programs, including education and even the Social Security and Medicare that workers, in good faith, had contributed to their entire working lives.

All this was in order to maintain the incredible gains in wealth the Top 1% had been accumulating since the Reagan Revolution with incomes up 300% in 30 years while the bottom 40% were up 20% – not even close to keeping up with inflation.   

That's right America, this Administration is playing you all for fools and they are taking steps that will ensure this country is NEVER great again because great countries SHARE the wealth, great countries are, dare I say, lands of opportunity – where every child that is born has the ability to get a good education and work hard and get ahead and forge a better life for themselves.  

That's not what we have anymore and Trump's new Secretary of Education wants to privatize Education through vouchers.  Vouchers sound like fun but what they mean is everyone gets, for example, $5,000 to educate their child and there will be cheap schools and there will be expensive schools and the expensive schools are, of course much more than $5,000 but that's no problem for the Top 1%, who wouldn't be caught dead sending their kids to public school in the first place.  

Related imageSo, the net effect of the vouchers is to reduce the cost of Education, allowing for more tax cuts, by eliminating the quality controls and setting up a system where only the rich can afford to give their children a good education, giving their children a tremendous competitive advantage over your children from the day they are born.  

This doesn't make America great, this makes the elite a permanent class that builds a wall around the opportunities that used to be open to all.  The same goes for the re-privatization of health care.  Why should you have access to the same doctors as Donald Trump's children?  They don't like to wait in line.  Equal access to health care means the rich don't have an advantage over you – they won't live longer and your access to their medicine makes it more expensive for them – how is that fair?

Related imageImagine how annoying it is to have a treatable disease that only costs $100,000 to cure and you have to wait 3 months because there are a lot of poor people ahead of you with their "Obama Care" waiting to be cured as well.  Even worse, that's YOUR tax money that's helping to pay for the cost of their treatment.  In the very least, you should get a pass to move to the front of the line or hey – here's an idea – let's eliminate the line altogether by taking away their health care!  Even better – now we're not being robbed to heal the sick because, as it says in the Bible – Fuck them!  

We anxiously await the rollout of the GOP's "Trump Don't Care" health plan but, meanwhile, the only "plan" seems to be tearing down the Affordable Care act – it was the very first thing Trump did after being sworn in potentially pulling health care from 30M people in an act that the New England Journal of Medicine estimates will lead to the death of 44,000 people per year – making Trump possibly the biggest mass-murderer since Stalin – no wonder the Russians love him!  

So, job creation is relocation, not education and health care is only for those who can afford it and those that can afford it will have much more money because the Government doesn't want to tax them anymore, despite a projection to run up $1.5 TRILLION in debt for each year Trump Reigns – sounds about right…

I'll leave you with one thought:  We used to hold certain truths to be self-evident, that human beings had a right to Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness and (and this is the part they forget) to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.  Whenever that Government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it… and replace it with a Government that seems most likely to affect their Safety and Happiness.

If you are not feeling safe or happy — just remember what the Founding Fathers expected you to do!  

Image result for jefferson revolution blood

 

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