And by the way, defaulting on debts is a standard practice of Trump's multiple failed businesses, which he has embraced as playing by the rules as recently as the Republican debates. This is not some made up thing.

so many words itt detailing why a LITERAL REALITY TV SHOW HOST shouldn't be president

you really wouldn't think it necessary

Wat

nice, thats nice

is this a pwnsall original?

Scott Adams ‏@ScottAdamsSays 5h5 hours ago
I can't tell if people are more angry at the things Trump didn't actually say or the things he doesn't plan to do but you think he will.

Thayer, seriously?

I mean, it's not that interesting when you consider that Trump has said he'd just default on America's debts to "get better deals."

I wanted other options. I think the people right now are dying for some real populist economic solutions-- the fact that the "recovery" has left ordinary people behind is huge evidence of that. I am very concerned we can't afford more of the same. I do not think electing someone who keeps flirting with white supremacists and has no real plans beyond "I'm great, believe me" is the answer.

You should read this sometime, IMO

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2...ry-basics.html

Does Scott Adams know "the things he [does] plan to do?" That would be interesting to read, since there is no answer to the set [things Trump plans to do].

In fact, Obama made that observation just last night: “The Donald is not really a plans guy. He's not really a facts guy, either.”

nah, can't take credit

i've also heard shrillary which i like but not quite as much

Will do.

Right but the only way the US can default on its debts is if Congress doesn't vote to raise the debt ceiling. Of course irresponsible governance can raise interest rates but since US debts are denominated in dollars there cannot be a default.

Uh hyuck

this is why I don't understand how people are so certain about specific awful things that would come from a TRUMP presidency.

Just because he says something doesn't mean he actually is going to follow through on it. He's just gonna wing everything. He's very much a reactionary guy just going on gut feel in the heat of the moment. Nothing he says matters because its not thought through and in many instances it won't be the same thing he thinks the next day or even the next hour.

Now, I personally think these personality traits are horrible for a President which is why I wouldn't vote for him, but I have absolutely no idea what his policies or Presidency would be like and do not for one second believe I could even tell you what he believes or wants to implement. In fact, I don't even think he cares very much about policy at all. He just wants the title, the power, the fame, and the legacy and will say and do whatever he thinks will help him attain these things.

I think that him and Hillary are very much in the same mold on this. They want to be remembered long into the future and will do whatever they think will help them achieve that goal.

I don't think I made my point well enough.

You cannot criticize people for trying to reasonably hypothesize what Trump's stated policies are going to look like in practice. When you do that, you prevent critique of the candidate on the grounds that the person making the critique "doesn't know what Trump plans to do."

That is because Trump doesn't say what he plans to do, except "deport 11,000,000 people" or "build a massive wall" or "create a national registry of Muslims" or "ban all immigration of people from Islamic countries," which I'm pretty sure in his head sounds more like "ban immigration from Islamistan" or something.

With no policy details provided, it is irrational to fill in the blanks with favorable variance. That is insane. The only way to talk about the "deport 11,000,000 people thing," for example, is to think about the most likely, sober way that would happen: expanding government programs and expenditures across local, state and government law enforcement, across domestic military efforts, across domestic espionage efforts - i.e., hunting for Mexicans in what can only be predicted to be just short of a pogrom and likely to become one - across foreign affairs, in border enforcement, etc. That is a human engineering program on a vast scale.

Will he actually do that? I don't know, it seems frankly impossible to me. But how can you conclude he won't try when he said he will? Why does Donald Trump get the benefit of the doubt about his lack of policy detail, and about his likelihood of pursuing his worst ideas?

It's a rhetorical trick to defend Trump on the basis of lack of detail in the critique. That detail doesn't exist. All we can do is extrapolate likely results of the policies he HAS stated. Critiquing people for trying is backwards.

I haven't finished the article yet but this is what I figured it would be. If you want to talk about the debt ceiling in terms of MMT, where government debt is a fiction and government obligations are what generates currency in the first place, and therefore as a direct result no currency-spending government can ever default on anything, then we can do that, but that's not remotely the economic language I'm using in my post and it confuses the issue badly by requiring us to work out agreement or disagreement about economic theory before even reaching the question whether the United States can default on debt service, which in the real world it can by not paying the debt service.

Will it do that? Probably not, but then if it spends to do so instead of raising the debt ceiling it will need to continue doing so, especially in an environment where a tax plan reduces revenue simultaneously with increasing expenditure. That will cause deflation, which will in turn destabilize markets, which will in turn have virtually the same effect as a default, which gets us to the exact same place.

the article says way more than that, but you also have to start getting into what taxes are really for and all that jazz

spending does raise the debt ceiling because that is what spending is

also creating currency by the fed lending money to banks to in turn lend money to people buying houses and ****

the words debt and deficit are definitely used way too interchangeably and are often confusing, i agree

hoya, you can still criticize him for not actually saying what he wants to do and sticking to it on anything that could conceivably be implemented. You can still criticize his temperament and intelligence. You can still criticize his lack of actual consistent and believable policy thoughts. You can still criticize him for lacking a clear path to achieving the goals that he claims to have in mind (even if those goals are probably not honest reflections of his desires). You can certainly still criticize him for saying absurd things to get votes, especially when those things would be damaging if ever implemented.

I just have absolutely no reason to believe that he actually thinks he will build a wall if elected and even less reason to think that the wall will be built even if he does try to push it through.

He's not getting a pass for these things. He isn't like candidates of the past where the things they say are mostly things that either they, their party, or a large percentage of the general public would like to see happen. He just says whatever the **** he wants because he thinks it will help him get votes.

It is completely damning to say that he has no coherent set of beliefs and policies that could be implemented if he was put in office. Furthermore, you can add that his temperament is not suitable for a President and his decision making is both too reactionary and devoid of facts and logical progression. You don't need to attack him on policy in order to demonstrate that he is extremely unlikely to be an acceptable President. In fact, I don't think you can reasonably attack him on policy because he really doesn't have any policy. Its all empty words and rhetoric that play to people's emotions, but actually have no substance.

When you attack his "political positions" or his "plans" you are attacking a ghost. You can't land a shot on these things because they don't exist in any meaningful capacity.

It's called perfect political strategy.

Look, any plan that's longer than a twitter post is too complicated for 90% to understand so it's a net negative politically to have any at all. Opponents then cherry pick whatever they can get away with to bash it and then that's what people think of your policy.

Sure it's mindboggling that some people think he cares about them when he puts his name on plane/towers/etc (ie the most narcissistic thing you can do) but people just want to be told what they want to hear and he's beating hillary on that front.

it's not like people who have policy have policy, just some sort of voting record to loosely go on, even though half the time they know the outcome before they have to vote anyway

i cant believe im actually forced to take it seriously. like how do the trump people not at some point go "i like some of the stuff he's saying, but no, this is too dumb"?

im genuinely offended by this

Well you may want to keep abortion around...

When someone made a cornerstone of their political campaign around "Build That Wall" you can't just brush that aside because you don't think he'll be able to build that wall when he gets in office. By voting for him, you're voting for the idea that a wall should be built. You're supporting that idea or that concept. This is how campaigns work.

To me it's disturbing the amount of people who are supporting Trump based on "what they think he actually wants" and that the things he actually is campaigning on are just to trick dumb rubes into voting for him.

It seems like you're both not understanding it and thinking too hard about it at the same time

Sounds like the perfect encapsulation of someone who shares tweets from the creator of Dilbert