Market politics

[Intl Professor]

OT, An Exercise in semiotics for the coming election.

The secret to Trump’s political success is the use of symbols of fear and hate. A wall is a perfect symbol in concrete, best because near everlasting, or other actual barrier. The bigger, the higher, the longer, the better. Whether effective or not, or needed or not, it must become. It must be built to make solid our contempt for those who are not white or it would also be placed at our northern border. It is much like the move to celebrate the Confederacy by erecting heroic statues of warriors in reaction to defeat in the Civil War.

Trump and supporters need a statue of bigotry and hate symbolized by a wall and all that goes with it as a policy. Bit by bit, we are hacking away at any immigration, including flight from tyranny or other danger by both legal and unlawful means. Trump hates the Statue of Liberty so much he in effect has stooped to declaring a state of emergency for the wall since he cannot destroy the actual monument. Liberty, the spirit of the law or Constitution, must be sacrificed to a statue of bigotry and hate.

But if he wins next year, this man so honest in his bigotry will likely send the girl back home to the land of liberté, égalité, fraternité. Those ideas are so un-American!

Any Wall Street collapse will be declared fake news. Regarding Tesla it is already a fake market to be toyed with by his SEC. Remember he has sent a message to all Federal Agencies to do what they can to accelerate climate change and, yes, regulatory agencies are set up to be immune to Presidential or Congressional intervention, but we’ve already seen threats to the FED. Stay tuned.

Just watch. For the first time this July 4th celebration in D.C. is his idea. One worries about over excitement of his heart with so many levers to push. Say, taking credit for the FAA’s discovery of satellite images of porpoising by an airliner in flight. Of course his psychological justification proves his competency at psyching.

 

[MikeQ]

I think the thing that really struck fear in the hearts of Trump supporters was the thought of Hillary being elected. There were more votes for Trump that were votes against Hillary than there were votes directly for Trump.

 

[Intl Professor]

I think the thing that really struck fear in the hearts of Trump supporters was the thought of Hillary being elected. There were more votes for Trump that were votes against Hillary than there were votes directly for Trump.

I'm not sure I would agree on the motivation numbers but another "extinguished professor," a colleague retired from our Criminal Justice Division and a retired FBI agent hated Hillary more though said Comey was clearly off base for treating her so shabbily during the campaign. Early on we both agreed Bernie was the right choice. He explained he was in touch with old FBI buddies, some of whom were assigned to the Secret Service White House detail or in touch with them said she was a real piece of work. (His language redacted.) I've wanted to ask him about his feelings for the attacks on the FBI but hear through the daughter-in-law grapevine his son, a dem, can't forgive him for supporting and voting for Trump. My oldest son is a rabid supporter of Trump to the point of hysteria, and some other friends have 86d a buddy because he has become a gibberer over Fox News koolaid. The last two are on the lowest edge of the income scale so hardest hit by Trump's policies.

So long as they didn't attack others, and they usually didn't, outspoken conservative students were treasured and seldom needed protection from me because they were fine corrections to my left wing perspective and showed how civil debate over policies could occur. Only once in 38 or so years did the possibility of violence require intervention but God was on my side. The class was American Foreign Policy and the debate was between a young man on one side of the room who was against the Vietnam War and a Marine veteran of World War II on the other. The marine acted as though he was about to get up and clean the clock of his opponent. To the tune of the national anthem I crooned, "Ho oh say can you see", a cutie pie frontside, twittered at the joke, and I signaled Jose Nieves to speak. Thereupon God spoke through Jose who told us what it was like to grow up as a boy in Cuba, idolizing Che Guevara only to be forced to flee to Florida with his right-wing parents, after Castro came to power. We were all enthralled at his tale so eloquently told. The waters and vapors of rage were becalmed.

I'm a non-believer, but we do experience divine moments. We need more of them, a lot, now.

 

[Dan Detweiler]

Gonna play devil's advocate here for a second regarding the latest proposed budget. In President Trump's proposed budget he calls for the elimination of the federal tax credit. On the surface this seems like a bad thing but my question is this.

Could the elimination of the EV tax credit actually be beneficial in the long run to EV adoption? My point is that this is one MAJOR objection by the naysayers regarding EVs. EVs can only succeed if they are subsidized and incentivized. Has EV development and production (especially in Tesla's case) not progressed far enough to inevitably succeed on their own? Granted, the adoption might be slower, but it also would force manufacturers to find ways to make them cheaper (much like Tesla has experienced over the last quarter). I think they have progressed too far to be stopped altogether and perhaps the elimination of this big barrier to the naysayers might actually prove beneficial.

Thoughts?

Dan

 

[JRP3]

You might be correct.

 

[neroden]

I have run the numbers. I have a son in college. Perhaps other states have wrecked their state colleges. My state has not. From a minimum wage to college cost ratio, college is cheaper today than it was for me. Tuition is about 2x what it was when I went. Now housing on and off campus has gone up but that's mostly due to everyone's housing cost.

I work 1/8 of mile from a major state university. We recruit from them heavily. I would say we have more interns working for us that are working their way through college than interns that don't. Some live at home, some don't. We do have a state scholarship fund that pays high achieving students and we also have prepaid college that locks in the cost early in your child's life.

State colleges are quite affordable here. The only issue is the requirements for admission are high due to demand. For those that don't get in though there's a guaranteed path through community college.

I guess what I've learned here is that I should appreciate that I don't live in states ruined by their politicians.

OK, which state are you in? It does sound like it's avoided the hack-and-slash which happened in most states.

 

[Intl Professor]

Gonna play devil's advocate here for a second regarding the latest proposed budget. In President Trump's proposed budget he calls for the elimination of the federal tax credit. On the surface this seems like a bad thing but my question is this.

Could the elimination of the EV tax credit actually be beneficial in the long run to EV adoption? My point is that this is one MAJOR objection by the naysayers regarding EVs. EVs can only succeed if they are subsidized and incentivized. Has EV development and production (especially in Tesla's case) not progressed far enough to inevitably succeed on their own? Granted, the adoption might be slower, but it also would force manufacturers to find ways to make them cheaper (much like Tesla has experienced over the last quarter). I think they have progressed too far to be stopped altogether and perhaps the elimination of this big barrier to the naysayers might actually prove beneficial.

Thoughts?

Dan

Like scientists, let's play a little with symmetry. Would you likewise expect different results than intended by getting rid of Pigouvian taxes on cigarettes?

 

[Dan Detweiler]

Like scientists, let's play a little with symmetry. Would you likewise expect different results than intended by getting rid of Pigouvian taxes on cigarettes?

Sorry, you completely lost me on that one. All I am saying is that without the tax credit all those other EVs are within reach for many. If legacy manufacturers are witnessing declining sales of their ICE vehicles and can see the writing on the wall that EVs are the way they must go then they are now forced to foculus efforts into making then cheaper if they want to remain viable

Dan

 

[MikeQ]

OK, which state are you in? It does sound like it's avoided the hack-and-slash which happened in most states.

Florida. We have Florida Pre-paid and Bright Futures Scholarship that anyone who meets grade and SAT requirements (as well as 100 hours community service) will get 100% tuition and books.

 

[MikeQ]

Just ran across this article. Short story, millennials are strapped with student debt. Interesting part: Amanda Hill the millennial in the story with $90k in debt has advice to those who might consider putting themselves in her position.

"If she offered advice to anyone, she'd recommend seriously considering focusing on a college degree that has a more direct relationship to a good-paying job, such as computer engineering. "

This goes back to what I was saying. First, she went to a $40k a year college. She could have chosen a cheaper route. Second she apparently didn't consider the pay potential for the degree she was seeking.

I honestly have a hard time feeling bad for people putting themselves in this position. You know what the cost of college will be. It's really easy to find. It's not difficult to get a ballpark figure for what the industry pays for various skills. Glassdoor.com will give you exact amounts by employer.

I really believe that there needs to be some sort of financial counseling required to force students to be exposed to the information they should be looking up on their own. I mean I did this exercise myself 30+ years ago when I was looking into college.

I wanted to go into aerospace at the time but the Shuttle program (engineering portion) was ending and aerospace engineers were out of work across the industry. I didn't even know anyone in the industry and I knew the job prospects were declining. This was pre-internet too when information wasn't at your fingertips. I ended up going into CompSci as it was the next up and coming field.

Too many kids today don't know what they want to do. Others know what they want to do but don't seem to understand that it isn't going to provide the income they may want.

Millennials are so buried in debt they can't buy into American Dream of owning a home

 

[MikeQ]

Sorry, you completely lost me on that one. All I am saying is that without the tax credit all those other EVs are within reach for many. If legacy manufacturers are witnessing declining sales of their ICE vehicles and can see the writing on the wall that EVs are the way they must go then they are now forced to foculus efforts into making then cheaper if they want to remain viable

Dan

I'd like to see the current credit killed. Tesla and GM have and will hit the 200k max. VW and all the other manufacturers who have dragged their feet on EVs will have a price advantage or at least wiggle room to be more expensive than Tesla before the credit. I don't think it's fair to punish the company that created the EV market and reward those who fought it kicking and screaming.

If it gets renewed, I hope that it's done in a way that levels the field for all. Make the expiration a specific date instead of a number of vehicles produced.

 

[Intl Professor]

College is a time to learn what to do. I entered with the intention to become a businessman like my dad in an industry requiring some technical expertise. I had three choices for grad school. Masters at MIT in M.E. but only on the waiting list for admission to an MBA program at Harvard. I took a third course to become dean of students somewhere but ended with a Ph.D. specializing in foreign policy, Soviet Government and its foreign policy, and the history of Western political theory. A perfectly natural progression. The boundary conditions of life choices often narrow and/or expand the possibilities.

The important thing is to learn how to think as Perry's book noted above enjoins us. Our family influences and education opportunities earlier are crucial but only limited gateways to the future. College can help if done right.

Here is a snippet from a class handout I used to call "Springing the Entropy Trap" on the importance of remaining open to change for success in any system.

"Nicolis and Prigogine have mathematically modeled a town. Although some of their conclusions may appear trivial, they have provided us with confirmation of our intuitions regarding evolving social systems. It is important to preserve the openness of the system to its environment while promoting innovation and adaptability. Their model had an additional conclusion consistent with the notion of innovation's key to success in the long term. 'A very interesting result emerging from the model is the following. If a new activity is launched at a certain time, it will grow and stabilize. If the place is well chosen, it may even prevent the success of similar attempts made nearby at a later time. However, if the same activity is launched at a different time, it need not succeed; it may regress to zero and represent a total loss. This illustrates the dangers of short-term, narrow planning based on the direct extrapolation of past experience. Such static methods threaten society with fossilization or, in the long term, with collapse. The principal message of the dynamical modeling advocated in this section is that the adaptive possibility of societies is the main source allowing them to survive in the long term, to innovate of themselves, and to produce originality.' Grégoire Nicolis and Ilya Prigogine, Exploring Complexity: An Introduction. New York: W. H. Freeman and Company, 1989, p. 242. The selection comes from a passage entitled "Self-Organization in Human Systems," pp. 238-42."

Advice from a Nobel winner.

Compare to shorts, Tesla, and our contemporary political and economic system. And crucially as I say of incest below....

 

[Brando]

Can you have bad borrowers without bad lenders? Qualify for a loan? Make a business case for your loans?
All seems part of our failing Empire.

 

[MikeQ]

Can you have bad borrowers without bad lenders? Qualify for a loan? Make a business case for your loans?
All seems part of our failing Empire.

I think a bad lender would be one that is hiding information from the borrower. In this case, I think the lender has all the information they need to make the right choice. I just don't think they are doing their homework. I think the parents bear some responsibility too. Looking at parents today though, I think most of them didn't learn basic finances either.

It's not even that the kids/parents are taking a loan that is bad. It's that they aren't looking at what makes sense. You don't need to go to a $50k a year college for most careers. Just because you can get into such a college and can get loans to do it, it doesn't make it the right thing to do. You could achieve the same end much cheaper if you put some thought into it.

 

[Brando]

qualifying for a loan - can you reasonably pay it back? The banks no longer care, Feds insure, new laws prevent bankruptcy claims as well,
Take two to tango. I suspect high student debt will NOT help with US competitiveness. Neither will highest healthcare costs in the world.

 

[MikeQ]

qualifying for a loan - can you reasonably pay it back? The banks no longer care, Feds insure, new laws prevent bankruptcy claims as well,
Take two to tango. I suspect high student debt will NOT help with US competitiveness. Neither will highest healthcare costs in the world.

Actually the federal student loans aren't insured. What federal student loans do for you is that the government pays the interest on the loan while you are in college and they pay the interest on the loan during periods where they are deferred. So when you can't find a job or you are between jobs, the feds pay the interest on your loans so they aren't growing. No need to insure them since you can't default on them. New laws did not do this. It's been that way since the mid 70's.

 

[Brando]

What Is a Federally Guaranteed Student Loan?

If you want details, check above. I still think these loan programs are hurting both students and our society. sorry.

 

[Brando]

What Is a Federally Guaranteed Student Loan?

If you want details, check above. I still think these loan programs are hurting both students and our society. sorry.

Seems it wasn't mid 70s but 2010 we got some changes. 50 years ago? I don't know. Always thought borrowing money a dangerous thing to do, IF you could avoid it.

 

[Brando]

What Is a Federally Guaranteed Student Loan?

If you want details, check above. I still think these loan programs are hurting both students and our society. sorry.

Seems it wasn't mid 70s but 2010 we got some changes. 50 years ago? I don't know. Always thought borrowing money a dangerous thing to do, IF you could avoid it.

 

[wdolson]

Gonna play devil's advocate here for a second regarding the latest proposed budget. In President Trump's proposed budget he calls for the elimination of the federal tax credit. On the surface this seems like a bad thing but my question is this.

Could the elimination of the EV tax credit actually be beneficial in the long run to EV adoption? My point is that this is one MAJOR objection by the naysayers regarding EVs. EVs can only succeed if they are subsidized and incentivized. Has EV development and production (especially in Tesla's case) not progressed far enough to inevitably succeed on their own? Granted, the adoption might be slower, but it also would force manufacturers to find ways to make them cheaper (much like Tesla has experienced over the last quarter). I think they have progressed too far to be stopped altogether and perhaps the elimination of this big barrier to the naysayers might actually prove beneficial.

Thoughts?

Dan

The elimination of the EV credit would probably be good for Tesla. Tesla will be on an even playing field with every other manufacturer in the US market. But Tesla is at a point where its EVs are viable without incentives. Not so for other car maker's cars. Car makers will be faced with having to make their EV offerings an even bigger loss item or lose sales. This as the market will be shifting to EVs. It would pretty much doom the Big 3 automakers whose future is already uncertain.

The automakers are pressuring Congress to expand the EV incentive, especially GM which is facing huge problems with their credit going away and not having any EV products that can stand on their own against Tesla. The Bolt can't be made in more than 50K a year and it's lost market share since the Model 3 came out. The Model Y will push it even further out of consideration.

GM and other car makers have frittered away their credits with compliance cars and have not aggressively pursued making a mass market EV like Tesla. They are now behind the 8 ball with Tesla able to mass produce an EV now.

Just ran across this article. Short story, millennials are strapped with student debt. Interesting part: Amanda Hill the millennial in the story with $90k in debt has advice to those who might consider putting themselves in her position.

"If she offered advice to anyone, she'd recommend seriously considering focusing on a college degree that has a more direct relationship to a good-paying job, such as computer engineering. "

This goes back to what I was saying. First, she went to a $40k a year college. She could have chosen a cheaper route. Second she apparently didn't consider the pay potential for the degree she was seeking.

I honestly have a hard time feeling bad for people putting themselves in this position. You know what the cost of college will be. It's really easy to find. It's not difficult to get a ballpark figure for what the industry pays for various skills. Glassdoor.com will give you exact amounts by employer.

I really believe that there needs to be some sort of financial counseling required to force students to be exposed to the information they should be looking up on their own. I mean I did this exercise myself 30+ years ago when I was looking into college.

I wanted to go into aerospace at the time but the Shuttle program (engineering portion) was ending and aerospace engineers were out of work across the industry. I didn't even know anyone in the industry and I knew the job prospects were declining. This was pre-internet too when information wasn't at your fingertips. I ended up going into CompSci as it was the next up and coming field.

Too many kids today don't know what they want to do. Others know what they want to do but don't seem to understand that it isn't going to provide the income they may want.

Millennials are so buried in debt they can't buy into American Dream of owning a home

Youth make bad choices. That isn't news. The question is should someone be yoked into a lifetime of indentured servitude for a bad decision made at age 18 because they liked History?

qualifying for a loan - can you reasonably pay it back? The banks no longer care, Feds insure, new laws prevent bankruptcy claims as well,
Take two to tango. I suspect high student debt will NOT help with US competitiveness. Neither will highest healthcare costs in the world.

The non-discharagability of student loans in bankruptcy has encouraged lenders to loan far more money than kids can pay. This over lending is what led to the collapse of the housing market in 2008. Banks were supposed to do due diligence to ensure that a borrower had the means to pay a home mortgage, but there was outright fraud in an attempt to issue as many home loans as possible and a big chunk of the population went broke trying to pay for a house they couldn't afford.

By not being able to discharge student loans in bankruptcy, the problem gets even worse. Bankruptcy is a relief valve that allows people to get free of debt when it gets too big. Being able to wipe the slate clean, with a hit to their credit and assets, consumers who had been saddled with huge debts can get back to contributing to the economy again.

With a lot of people saddled with debts they will never be able to pay off but never able to discharge, they are enslaved and they can't spend any money in the economy.

The health of the economy depends on people getting paid for their work, and then spending most of it in the community, which employs other people in the community. If too much of the money is going someplace where it doesn't then go back out into the community, the economy becomes unstable. The US has two places where that is happening right now, one is with the super rich getting richer while everyone else has flat incomes or declining incomes, and the other is people overwhelmed with debts they can never pay.

Both put the long term health of the entire economy at risk. The US is going to go one of two ways: revolt (which is happening now through peaceful means at the left end of the political spectrum) or a fuedal with a few wealthy people holding everyone else in bondage. Both have happened before. The safest way is to let people like AOC get her way to a large extent (some of her ideas are completely unworkable in the real world and would do more harm than good, but we need to move in her direction or kiss our society as we know it goodbye).

Actually the federal student loans aren't insured. What federal student loans do for you is that the government pays the interest on the loan while you are in college and they pay the interest on the loan during periods where they are deferred. So when you can't find a job or you are between jobs, the feds pay the interest on your loans so they aren't growing. No need to insure them since you can't default on them. New laws did not do this. It's been that way since the mid 70's.

Congress made some significant changes to student loans in 2005/2006 and then Obama made some changes in 2010. The changes in 2005 made student loans significantly more dangerous to the overall economy. Obama's changes tried to address that, but they may have made the problem worse.