The policy and politics of Trumpism

92tide · Feb 15, 2017

bama_wayne1 said:
I'm not too impressed with Harvard, Obama was a big deal there and he wasn't really a big deal. he has beaten Carter as the worst POTUS. He may soon be beaten at that although it remains to be seen...

not even remotely based in reality

GreatMarch · Feb 15, 2017

92tide said:
not even remotely based in reality

Reading so many of the posts on this board over the years (including present day posts), reality left this board long time ago. From all sides of the political spectrum.

Jon · Feb 15, 2017

great interview of Even McMullin. I see why he didn't gain much traction in the GOP, far too rational and level headed for Republicans

http://www.vox.com/conversations/20...p-cia-republican-party-intelligence-community

The Republican Party has surrendered to Donald Trump. One could make a monograph of the quotes (here and here and here and here) from leading Republicans claiming Trump wasn’t fit for office until he became the nominee, at which point they fell in line.

So far, they have continued to placate Trump in office, regarding him as a vehicle for their agenda. There are, of course, notable exceptions like John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Ben Sasse. But the vast majority of the party, including House Speaker Paul Ryan and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, remains anchored to Trump.

Anti-Trump Republicans have had few representative voices. During the campaign, Evan McMullin, a former CIA officer and investment banker from Utah, stepped up and ran as an independent presidential candidate. McMullin’s campaign became a lodestar for conservatives who opposed Trump’s bigotry and bombast. He made a strong run to challenge Trump for Utah’s six Electoral College votes. Ultimately, Trump won Utah easily, capturing 45 percent of the vote; McMullin earned 21 percent.

Since the election, McMullin has persisted in his opposition to Trump. In December, he penned a piece for the New York Times describing Trump as an authoritarian threat to the Constitution:

CrimsonRuss · Feb 15, 2017

chanson78 said:
I don't think you understand the problem. The majority of jobs that were lost are still only being performed by people because it is cheaper to pay someone in Asia to make a sock than it is to buy a sock robot. When they bring these jobs back to the US with lucrative tax deals and repatriation forgiveness they aren't going to all of a sudden hire a ton of sock makers. They are going to take that investment in capital, invest in sock making robots, take a loss for 2 or 3 years, and the only people who will have jobs are people who can repair sock making robots.

It's the whole "raise the minimum wage" argument. Paying some dude to flip burgers for 15$ an hour will only incentivize McDonalds to work harder to create a burger flipping robot that when worked out over some time costs only 14$ an hour effectively. That doesn't even scratch the soon to be massive set of white collar workers who are about to be out of work due to AI.

Trump is playing 3 card monty with the jobs and capitol. Under the cup is your tax money. You think by betting on Trump to be a great businessman you might win it back. In reality all he is doing is setting up him and all his rich buddies to get one more tax free fleecing of the US taxpayer before it all goes under.

As a standard caveat, yes the democrats do it, clinton is horrible and, BUT THE EMAILS.

Robots might be able to cut some labor costs an temporarily help to boost stock prices, but the last time I checked robots don't buy any of the products they would be making.....

chanson78 · Feb 15, 2017

CrimsonRuss said:
Robots might be able to cut some labor costs an temporarily help to boost stock prices, but the last time I checked robots don't buy any of the products they would be making.....

So from your statement, I'm going to infer that you believe companies would not use robots over humans to perform work that they may bring back after they already outsourced the jobs once to outside the country. If that is the case, well, I've got nothing.

CrimsonRuss · Feb 15, 2017

chanson78 said:
So from your statement, I'm going to infer that you believe companies would not use robots over humans to perform work that they may bring back after they already outsourced the jobs once to outside the country. If that is the case, well, I've got nothing.

Nope, I'm simply stating that the biggest inherent problem with your whole robot theory is that it would be the equivalent of cutting off your nose to spite your face. If companies start large scale replacing laborers, who are also consumers, with robots there would be no one left to consume the products that were made. So while it might look good for the short term it's suicide for companies long term....

And the $15/hr minimum wage argument doesn't hold water as well. Point in case...

http://xpatnation.com/how-does-mcdonalds-australia-pay-employees-16-an-hour/

chanson78 · Feb 16, 2017

CrimsonRuss said:
Nope, I'm simply stating that the biggest inherent problem with your whole robot theory is that it would be the equivalent of cutting off your nose to spite your face. If companies start large scale replacing laborers, who are also consumers, with robots there would be no one left to consume the products that were made. So while it might look good for the short term it's suicide for companies long term....

And the $15/hr minimum wage argument doesn't hold water as well. Point in case...

http://xpatnation.com/how-does-mcdonalds-australia-pay-employees-16-an-hour/

Let me try it a different way. I think we can both agree that this is relatively what has happened with globalization and the industry within the US.

Pre-globalization: Lots of industry, many blue collar workers doing many blue collar jobs. The American dream is alive. People are making enough money to buy the products they make.
Initial phase of globalization: Industry moves jobs overseas. Many workers are paid to train their replacements. The American dream is dying. There are not enough jobs to replace those going overseas and no easy way to get retrained.
Currently: Many unhappy blue collar workers wanting some way to put food on the table. They can barely afford to keep food on the table in many cases, buying the products they used to make is a pipe dream.
Future: Robotics and AI will make production even cheaper. Now the guy in Asia will be out of a job too.

So here is my question. If the companies didn't worry about their producer/customer here in the states when they shipped their jobs overseas, how exactly are they going to start caring when they bring those "jobs" back? There is no interest in their worker, otherwise they wouldn't have shipped the job overseas in the first place. Companies are beholden to their shareholders. The CEO's that are making these decisions want their multi million dollar bonus that is based off of year over year returns. If they do decide to cut off their nose to spite their face, they usually aren't the ones that have to deal with the fall out because they already got their 20M$ bonus and are going to walk away with a 50M$ golden parachute. What do they care if they screwed up the business model for short term gains? You don't have to look any further than the 2008 mortgage collapse to realize that ridiculous incentive packages led to CEO's thinking it was a good idea to try and leverage their companies, at the worst case 33-1, to try and make more money in the current year. No matter that being over leveraged 33-1 is insanity.

Quoting an article about how a nation that has essentially embraced labor unions as a nationally protected thing in the workforce and attempting to use that as a way that it would work in the US is naive. If you need articles to show it is already happening I can help with that.

Forbes: McDonalds replacing customer facing jobs with self service kiosks.

Business Insider: Burger flipping robot that can replace workers.

Jon · Feb 16, 2017

chanson78 said:
Let me try it a different way. I think we can both agree that this is relatively what has happened with globalization and the industry within the US.

Pre-globalization: Lots of industry, many blue collar workers doing many blue collar jobs. The American dream is alive. People are making enough money to buy the products they make.
Initial phase of globalization: Industry moves jobs overseas. Many workers are paid to train their replacements. The American dream is dying. There are not enough jobs to replace those going overseas and no easy way to get retrained.
Currently: Many unhappy blue collar workers wanting some way to put food on the table. They can barely afford to keep food on the table in many cases, buying the products they used to make is a pipe dream.
Future: Robotics and AI will make production even cheaper. Now the guy in Asia will be out of a job too.

So here is my question. If the companies didn't worry about their producer/customer here in the states when they shipped their jobs overseas, how exactly are they going to start caring when they bring those "jobs" back? There is no interest in their worker, otherwise they wouldn't have shipped the job overseas in the first place. Companies are beholden to their shareholders. The CEO's that are making these decisions want their multi million dollar bonus that is based off of year over year returns. If they do decide to cut off their nose to spite their face, they usually aren't the ones that have to deal with the fall out because they already got their 20M$ bonus and are going to walk away with a 50M$ golden parachute. What do they care if they screwed up the business model for short term gains? You don't have to look any further than the 2008 mortgage collapse to realize that ridiculous incentive packages led to CEO's thinking it was a good idea to try and leverage their companies, at the worst case 33-1, to try and make more money in the current year. No matter that being over leveraged 33-1 is insanity.

Quoting an article about how a nation that has essentially embraced labor unions as a nationally protected thing in the workforce and attempting to use that as a way that it would work in the US is naive. If you need articles to show it is already happening I can help with that.

Forbes: McDonalds replacing customer facing jobs with self service kiosks.

Business Insider: Burger flipping robot that can replace workers.

"If I don't automate my competitor will"

I sell automation and I hear this daily. My average customer cares about their people. They talk about "Reallocating resources" but they know what that really means as do I. But like them, if they don't buy automation from me they will from my competitors. And as such the invisible hand continues to push forward indifferently.

chanson78 · Feb 16, 2017

Jon said:
"If I don't automate my competitor will"

I sell automation and I hear this daily. My average customer cares about their people. They talk about "Reallocating resources" but they know what that really means as do I. But like them, if they don't buy automation from me they will from my competitors. And as such the invisible hand continues to push forward indifferently.

Thanks for the clarification. I don't actually believe that they are evil people doing horrible things to their workers for the fun of it. But rather, they have a responsibility to the company and shareholders. If they don't automate, they can't compete, and their workers will lose the jobs anyways. With automation they may be able to keep a fraction of the original, but some people having jobs is better than no people having jobs.

bama_wayne1 · Feb 16, 2017

Jon said:
"If I don't automate my competitor will"

I sell automation and I hear this daily. My average customer cares about their people. They talk about "Reallocating resources" but they know what that really means as do I. But like them, if they don't buy automation from me they will from my competitors. And as such the invisible hand continues to push forward indifferently.

How long do you think it will be before all sales are automated? Not being snarky I just see it as an eventuality as well.

Jon · Feb 16, 2017

bama_wayne1 said:
How long do you think it will be before all sales are automated? Not being snarky I just see it as an eventuality as well.

It will be a while, enough to make it to retirement for me but even though my Dad was in this business as well my kids won't be. Much of what I do today is not direct selling, which I do enough of to stay sharp, it's more mentoring and training. But buying without sales is taking a huge toll. Most of the Cloud purchasing from Amazon, Google and to a lesser extent MS Azure are self served though all three of them are staffing up huge as are Oracle, SAP and others in the Cloud space. Then you have people like Atlassian that have figured out a new model that is working well for them though their software is extremely niche and their tools are very much a part of a self service DevOps culture so I don't think this model will work for everyone, it is worth noting. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...5-billion-software-company-has-no-sales-staff

2003TIDE · Feb 16, 2017

The whole thing is interesting. I'm 35 and in IT. Right now is an interesting decision point for me in trying to pick the right path to make it to retirement.

My wife works at a very large insurance company. She's not in IT, but in a position where she can listen into executive strategy meetings. We've had some interesting discussions related to AI and automation as a result.

Anyone who things blue collar jobs are going to come back in massive amounts is wrong. If we do end up pulling things back to the US, it will be highly automated. Plus, the same thing that happened to blue collar jobs in the 2nd half of the 20th century is about to happen to white collar jobs.

Jon · Feb 16, 2017

2003TIDE said:
The whole thing is interesting. I'm 35 and in IT. Right now is an interesting decision point for me in trying to pick the right path to make it to retirement.

My wife works at a very large insurance company. She's not in IT, but in a position where she can listen into executive strategy meetings. We've had some interesting discussions related to AI and automation as a result.

Anyone who things blue collar jobs are going to come back in massive amounts is wrong. If we do end up pulling things back to the US, it will be highly automated. Plus, the same thing that happened to blue collar jobs in the 2nd half of the 20th century is about to happen to white collar jobs.

yup

If I'm you I'd get really strong into Coding and Scripting. Learn the Atlassian tools and build your chops in DevOps. Not a lot of Developers understand IT Ops and not many IT Ops people understand the Dev side and the two will merge and are merging. The budgets have left IT and are moving to LOB's. The LOB's don't care about legacy infrastructure or ITIL or 6 month waterfall software Dev or any of the crap the IT Side does, they just want their Apps to work and to be able to adjust or add functionality on the fly. The new generation coming into corporate America isn't used to waiting and has been able to find an app to do what they want online for basically their entire lives and like it or not they will set direction. If you can help facilitate that you are valuable. If not, who knows.

sabanball · Feb 16, 2017

Jon said:
It will be a while, enough to make it to retirement for me but even though my Dad was in this business as well my kids won't be. Much of what I do today is not direct selling, which I do enough of to stay sharp, it's more mentoring and training. But buying without sales is taking a huge toll. Most of the Cloud purchasing from Amazon, Google and to a lesser extent MS Azure are self served though all three of them are staffing up huge as are Oracle, SAP and others in the Cloud space. Then you have people like Atlassian that have figured out a new model that is working well for them though their software is extremely niche and their tools are very much a part of a self service DevOps culture so I don't think this model will work for everyone, it is worth noting. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...5-billion-software-company-has-no-sales-staff

Interesting to read your post as I sit here using Jira, Bitbucket, SourceTree, and Bamboo within an Agile methodology. I agree that automation and AI is the future however as some jobs are lost others are created.

Now consider worst case scenario...

What happens when a foreign nation explodes an emp device over America or something similar to the 1859 Carrington event happens and we are immediately thrust back a century or more technologically...can one rely on that degree in MIS or Comp Science to plant a garden and feed your family?

Jon · Feb 16, 2017

sabanball said:
Interesting to read your post as I sit here using Jira, Bitbucket, SourceTree, and Bamboo within an Agile methodology. I agree that automation and AI is the future however as some jobs are lost others are created.

Now consider worst case scenario...

What happens when a foreign nation explodes an emp device over America or something similar to the 1859 Carrington event happens and we are immediately thrust back a century or more technologically...can one rely on that degree in MIS or Comp Science to plant a garden and feed your family?

funny

and I don't like to concern myself with your worst case as that line of thinking leads to being a crazy prepper and fortunately for me I have one of those in the family to run it if it ever hits the fan

MattinBama · Feb 16, 2017

Jon said:
funny

and I don't like to concern myself with your worst case as that line of thinking leads to being a crazy prepper and fortunately for me I have one of those in the family to run it if it ever hits the fan

Wouldn't you like to be a prepper too?

I look at prepping much the same way as buying insurance. No need to go super crazy with it but nice to have something ready in case.

2003TIDE · Feb 16, 2017

Jon said:
yup

If I'm you I'd get really strong into Coding and Scripting. Learn the Atlassian tools and build your chops in DevOps. Not a lot of Developers understand IT Ops and not many IT Ops people understand the Dev side and the two will merge and are merging. The budgets have left IT and are moving to LOB's. The LOB's don't care about legacy infrastructure or ITIL or 6 month waterfall software Dev or any of the crap the IT Side does, they just want their Apps to work and to be able to adjust or add functionality on the fly. The new generation coming into corporate America isn't used to waiting and has been able to find an app to do what they want online for basically their entire lives and like it or not they will set direction. If you can help facilitate that you are valuable. If not, who knows.

Scripting with PowerShell, I can do. I've been resisting coding since I haven't writing real code in over a decade and that would be a big time investment for me to get up to date. Right now I'm doing a lot in Azure. So going with that for now. I think there will be a lot of opportunity for the next decade helping companies move their workloads to the cloud. Past a decade who knows.

Jon · Feb 16, 2017

2003TIDE said:
Scripting with PowerShell, I can do. I've been resisting coding since I haven't writing real code in over a decade and that would be a big time investment for me to get up to date. Right now I'm doing a lot in Azure. So going with that for now. I think there will be a lot of opportunity for the next decade helping companies move their workloads to the cloud. Past a decade who knows.

since you are already down the Azure path, get to know AzureStack and take a look at some of the Hybrid Cloud tools that can support moving workloads from on prem to off. I see AzureStack as having a solid future for many big MS Shops but most others will want tools to allow them to pick and choose what cloud makes sense. I'm a big fan of the OpenSource tools for this and even what a few of the big IT Players are doing here.

sabanball · Feb 16, 2017

Jon said:
funny

and I don't like to concern myself with your worst case as that line of thinking leads to being a crazy prepper and fortunately for me I have one of those in the family to run it if it ever hits the fan

Funny? ok...

Wasn't really referring to preppers/prepping as much as say just the knowledge to be able to plant and grow a garden for example.

My bad for the derailment.

Jon · Feb 16, 2017

sabanball said:
Funny? ok...

Wasn't really referring to preppers/prepping as much as say just the knowledge to be able to plant and grow a garden for example.

My bad for the derailment.

funny as in ironic that you are working with the tools as I am discussing them here

the other stuff is scary, sorry for the confused response there. I am fortunate that my wife has a very green thumb as does as a close by sister in law who along with my brother own a very strong and safe freshwater spring that is well hidden on a few dozen acres. I hope to never need it but it is nice to know it is there

The policy and politics of Trumpism

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