Reasons I cannot vote for Trump

[flyer]

That would be these stats, as just one example:

The Sorry State of America’s Household Finances

“While the economy is rebounding and more jobs are created every month, there’s a puzzling disconnect with many American families, who remain gloomy about the economy and their personal outlook.

There’s a very good reason for that anxiety, it turns out. According to a new study from The Pew Charitable Trusts, the financial “balance sheets” of American families are tattered and strained, thanks to stagnant wages, a lack of savings and rising debt levels.

The study, which is part of a new push at Pew to study the impact of Americans’ financial choices and how policy decisions may impact personal economic stability, offers some fairly sobering data about what it calls household balance sheets, or the combination of income, expenditures and wealth. For one, the decade from 1999 to 2009 delivered only a 2 percent rise in wage growth for American workers, representing a sharp turn-about from the 22 percent in wage gains recorded from 1979 through 1999.

That’s left seven out of 10 Americans strained by financial issues ranging from crushing debt loads, insufficient savings or income that’s too low to cover their expenses, Pew said.

Many families feel vulnerable and stressed, said Diana Elliott, research manager at Pew, where she focuses on American families’ financial security and mobility, on a conference call to discuss the results. Family finances are key to future mobility. Even families with relatively high income are walking a financial tightrope.

Keeping liquid savings on hand in case of an emergency is one area where Americans of all income brackets are falling short, the study found. While the bottom quintile of American households only has about 9 days of liquid savings — such as money in a checking or savings account — available, the top quintile is also far from achieving stability. Despite financial advisors’ rule of thumb to keep three to six months of liquid savings on hand, the country’s top earners have only an average of 52 days of liquid funds available.

Even when adding in more illiquid savings, such as retirement accounts and investments, the average household is unprepared to handle a big economic shock, according to the study, which is based on data from a variety of sources including the Congressional Budget Office, the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey and the University of Michigan’s Panel Study of Income Dynamics, among others.

Yet out-of-control spending doesn’t appear to be the issue with why Americans have a lack of savings. In fact, the recession caused American households to tighten their spending, which eroded two decades of consumption growth, Pew said. The net increase in average annual household spending has inched up only 2 percent since 1990 because of the dip in the recession. In the 22 years before the recession started, household expenditures grew by 16 percent.

Adding to the difficulties of maintaining a strong household balance sheet are significant fluctuations in family income, with Pew noting that almost half of all households saw either a drop or gain of more than one-quarter of income in a two-year period. Erin Currier, director of Pew’s financial security and mobility project, said the researchers weren’t sure what is causing the high rate of income volatility, although it could be family members taking time off from the labor market to take care of children or older relatives, or job losses.

Having a gain or loss of 25 percent is very high on a month-to-month basis, so that is likely contributing to families’ inability to build a financial cushion.

The research adds depth to previous studies and polls about American anxiety over their economic future. About 65 percent of Americans say their income is falling behind the cost of living, a poll from Pew Research found earlier this month. Only 6 percent said their income is going up faster than the cost of living.

Many households, from low-income to high-income, are still struggling to regain their footing after the recession, which led to job losses and declines in housing and investment values. America has slipped into “dissavings,” when spending is greater than income, thanks to stagnant wages and a decline in those asset values, New York University economics professor Edward N. Wolff found in a recent paper.

Still, Americans aren’t necessarily spending their money on fripperies. Pew found that spending on housing, health care, insurance and pensions rose, while spending on non-essentials such as food and entertainment decreased or stayed flat compared with other areas.

Housing remains the biggest expense for Americans, taking up about 31 percent of average annual expenditures, the Pew study found. But those in the bottom quintile are spending a bigger portion of their income on housing costs, at 40 percent.

The frayed state of American household finances doesn’t bode well for the financial future of Americans, the researchers said. Without a stable financial base, Americans have less of a chance to help their children get ahead, or to retire comfortably.

Families are in a precarious position. It does create a challenging situation if they can’t be economically secure.”

CBS News 2015

[livinincali]

[quote=FlyerInHi]
6. Finally, why are people hopeful with Trump? What are the concrete things Trump will do for them? Or it is a hopey changey thing?[/quote]

Hope and change worked for Obama. It didn’t necessarily work out for many American’s that voted for it but it appears to be a good campaign slogan. Hilary better come up with something good, because you got to admit that Trump’s “Make American Great Again” is a pretty good one.

The economic reality is that people are failing to compete in this world. They are all looking for some kind of advantage or to overcome some sort of real or perceived disadvantage. That failure to compete is driving anxiety and fear. They are looking for someone to create barriers to the competition they are facing. Democrats and Republicans both crater to their voting base with various protections from competition.

[no_such_reality]

Is it really competition or just shifting of public costs?

On this, Trump basically tells them what they feel. They’ve been sold down the river. If fact, Trump will tell them they’ve been sold down the river and admit to doing himself to stay competitive with every other company doing it. Bernie says much the same.

Prime example, Disney’s failed outsource of theme park IT or Trump’s own use of H2bs to clean his hotel.

My former employees in India were making the equivalent of about $3/hr when you factor their 60 hour weeks. Of course, once they left the office, you were out of luck as they didn’t have home internet service nor reliable cell service.

Or in the case of China, couple the above with the below to figure out why stuff made there is so cheap.

I’m not really willing to be great again and “competitive” if to do so we need to look like the above.

There are costs to having a modern society. Educating our kids, providing health care and making sure all people participate in the economic rewards of our society.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=livinincali]
Hope and change worked for Obama. It didn’t necessarily work out for many American’s that voted for it but it appears to be a good campaign slogan. [/quote]

Obama could not accomplish some things because the voters who voted for him didn’t turn out for the midterms. That’s where responsibility lies.

[quote=livinincali]
Hilary better come up with something good, because you got to admit that Trump’s “Make American Great Again” is a pretty good one.
[/quote]

I agree that Hillary needs a good campaign slogan. But “Make America Great Again” is so backward looking. It sounds to me like “Make high-school educated White Americans great again.”
But I can see how that appeals to Trump supporters.

[quote=livinincali]
The economic reality is that people are failing to compete in this world. They are all looking for some kind of advantage or to overcome some sort of real or perceived disadvantage. That failure to compete is driving anxiety and fear. They are looking for someone to create barriers to the competition they are facing. Democrats and Republicans both crater to their voting base with various protections from competition.[/quote]

It’s our collective responsibility to raise the bar and help our citizenry become more competent. There are real differences between Trump and the Democrats. Socialized healthcare, childcare and college would be a big help to American families. I don’t see proposals on the Republican side.

On trade, yes, people want barriers that protect their jobs. But there’s a big difference between the Republicans and Democrats.

Trump says China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam… are ripping us off when, in fact, they are giving up tangible goods in exchange for electronic Dollars.

Democrats want fair trade, that is forcing multinational corporations to pay living wages and abide by environmental protections that lift workers’ wages overseas. That’s how we lift people out of poverty worldwide, provide them with income so they can become consumers and drive world economic growth. Corporate profits will suffer in the short term, but, long term, everyone benefits.

We are spending too much on our military, inserting ourselves into everything and being the world’s policemen. Democrats have always felt that way.

Trump wants to increase military spending. He wants to get out of conflict so why increase spending? Also I guess he wants to make foreign countries pay for our military budget. Good luck with that.

[Anonymous]

“Make America Great Again” implies that America is not great now.

[scaredyclassic]

[quote=harvey]”Make America Great Again” implies that America is not great now.[/quote]

“Make america less shitty” not as catchy, but basically the same slogan.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=harvey]”Make America Great Again” implies that America is not great now.[/quote]

Makes perfect sense to Trump followers because Obama is president.

[FlyerInHi]

[quote=mixxalot]Personally, I cannot stand any of the candidates running. All of them really suck bad for different reasons. I wish a viable third party candidate like John McAfee or Jessie Ventura had a realistic shot at winning! Right now, the US election races are a two party oligarchy corrupted by special interests, and bought and paid for my Wall Street bankers and foreign oligarchs like the Saudi government.[/quote]

John McAfee and Jessie Ventura?

They are nutcases. McAfee is fighting a murder investigation, he blew his internet fortune and now looks likes a drug addict.

[bearishgurl]

This just in and I am ecstatic (even though it will likely be appealed):

https://www.yahoo.com/news/republicans-score-court-victory-against-obamacare-194221366.html?nhp=1

It’s a GREAT start on doing away with the ACA! Obamacare’s APTCs and copay assistance are very problematic for so many (incompetent and overwhelmed) state and Federal agencies AND a huge portion of the poor slobs (like myself) who are caught in the dragnet of this mess due to all our choices being taken away.

This, in combination with the RNC deciding to support “whoever their nominee will be” back in March (which I posted here a few weeks ago) and now the Speaker of the House gesturing that he and Trump are coming to an understanding supports my view that a lot of the “rhetoric” Trump used when he had up to 16 contenders to compete with is not really who he is, deep down. It’s been almost 3 months since I’ve been paying attention to politics again and in that short time frame, I’ve come to the conclusion that Trump does have the ability to lead this country.

And this is coming from someone who has voted Dem since the mid-late ’80’s and supported SD area Dems for ~10 years in the form of precinct walking, phone banking, distributing yard signs and hosting fund raisers both in the general and midterm elections. So I KNOW what it takes to get elected … even to just a municipal or county post.

All you folks who were saving up your stash of microwave popcorn to watch the dogfight and fireworks at the RNC this July will now likely be treated to a very “Trumpesque” star-studded entertainment gala of epic proportions (big names in music, etc). You may as well break out the champagne or crack open your fav bottle of wine, instead.

Regardless of how long it takes the US Supreme court to nail the coffin shut on the ACA, I predict it won’t last through 2017 if the “right” person is elected President. Good Riddance!!

[FlyerInHi]

BG, the federal court decision will likely be appealed and overturned.
ACA is here to stay so better get used to It; otherwise, the disappointment will be yours.

BTW, what do you think of Hillary’s Medicare buy in proposal for those over 50?

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi]BG, the federal court decision will likely be appealed and overturned.
ACA is here to stay so better get used to It; otherwise, the disappointment will be yours.

BTW, what do you think of Hillary’s Medicare buy in proposal for those over 50?[/quote]FIH, we don’t yet know who will be replacing Scalia on the Supreme Court …. OR any of the octogenarians who are currently sitting on it (if the decision takes several years to get heard). You are leaping to conclusions here as to who will be “running the show” from 2017 forward.

I’ll take a look at it but I’m not really interested in Hillary’s proposals at this point in time, especially if it involves taking a hit on my SS (OASDI) formula later. I’ve already been offered by my retirement assn to take some SS now and take a hit on my benefit formula later and I declined as it’s not in my best interest.

If the ACA has no chance of being repealed, I personally have other choices for health coverage in life and will pull plan B and C out of my sleeve for further examination. I haven’t considered them too closely thus far as they both involve relocation.

I would consider Bernie’s single-payer plan before I would consider anything Hillary has to offer. You are also leaping to conclusions about her certain candidacy, as well. You fail to take into account that superdelegates have been successfully “stolen” by one Dem candidate from another in the past … from their convention to the general election. When push comes to shove, superdelegates, first and foremost, represent their party and have never voted against the will of their voters and thus are subject to flip-flop on their allegiances in a NY minute.

The truth is … nothing is off the table in this election.

Keep in mind that all is fair and love and politics and the “fat lady” hasn’t even stepped onto the stage, yet.

Certainly at some level, you must be aware of all this but are choosing not to discuss it here so I’m happy to bring it out in the open with a bright flashlight shining on it. Your insistence that Hill is a shoe-in for the nomination is just another instance of you continuing to put your hands over your ears and humming. Carry on …. :=]

[FlyerInHi]

Haha, BG… I was right about Obama winning and winning again. In 2012, republicans were pretty convinced that Obama would be a 1 term president. Oh how wrong they were. But that’s besides the point…..

The ACA is now covering so many people that it would be political suicide to repeal it. Even if republicans win the presidency and congress, they may call for repeal, but there will have to be a transistion to something else. There cannot be status quo ante.
Republican know that obamacare is their own plan from the 1990s when Hillary was working on health care. All they can do is tweak it and call it repeal.

Be careful with Trump. I believe that a Trump administration would turn America into more of a Randian, Darwinian society where winners win and losers lose, huge. Try to make sure you’re on the winning side.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi]Haha, BG… I was right about Obama winning and winning again. In 2012, republicans were pretty convinced that Obama would be a 1 term president. Oh how wrong they were. But that’s besides the point.[/quote]

If you will recall, Obama won the Dem nomination in 2008 solely by successfully stealing (plucking off) “pledged” superdelegates from Hillary at the convention (the 11th hr) after winning the primaries by a razor-thin margin. This could most certainly happen to her again! Never say never, brian. Her campaign is currently embroiled in the same level of fierce competition for the nomination as they had against Barack Obama in 2008.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democratic_Party_presidential_candidates,_2008

Stranger things have happened. CA millenials LOVE Bernie and they, as a group, now outnumber the boomers, cuz we’re slowly dying off. Not only are college and university campuses helping students process their voter registrations in droves, this is also being done on CA military bases, outside exchange and commissary shopping areas, which are FULL of millenial active duty members and their spouses.

[quote=FlyerInHi]The ACA is now covering so many people that it would be political suicide to repeal it. Even if republicans win the presidency and congress, they may call for repeal, but there will have to be a transistion to something else. There cannot be status quo ante.
Republican know that obamacare is their own plan from the 1990s when Hillary was working on health care. All they can do is tweak it and call it repeal.[/quote]Umm, brian, there aren’t that many people in the US who signed up for “obamacare” in the form of “private” healthplans. There are many more millions of Americans who signed up for Medicaid/Medi-cal (either willingly or force-placed into it) since the passage of the ACA.

Actually, just ~12.7M Americans (~4% of the US population) had a marketplace plan as of January 2016. Those who are keeping their premiums current (and have not since been involuntarily “bumped” into Medicaid/Medi-Cal) are representative of the 12.7M who signed up for a marketplace plan for 2016:

http://time.com/money/4209255/obamacare-enrollment-2016/

However, >50M Americans are currently on Medicaid/Medi-Cal (17% of the US population) as a result of expanded Medicaid in 31 states:

https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid-chip-program-information/program-information/downloads/updated-january-2016-enrollment-data.pdf

The ACA was actually designed to force as many people into Medicaid as possible as quickly as possible and 19 states have not agreed to participate in expanded Medicaid for this reason (and the cost, especially after the 93% Federal aid cutoff to the states in 2022).

All that had to be done was to expand Medicaid voluntarily so that those who couldn’t obtain policies under the pre-ACA health insurance climate could be covered (either because they couldn’t afford it or couldn’t get a policy due to pre-existing conditions . . . or both). OR, in the alternative, create state insurance pools where carriers rotated to take on members with pre-existing conditions as a cost of being permitted to do business in the state (much like state auto insurance pools and the CA Earthquake Authority). Instead, everyone got screwed in the form of doubled and tripled premiums (so far) and a very thin choice of carriers (just one PPO carrier offered in almost all regions) to choose from. My own 2016 obamacare premium was going to be 296% of my 2013 (pre-ACA) premium but I dropped a metal level last fall for 2016 and it is now a mere 231% of my 2013 premium :=0

If the rest of us hadn’t been screwed out of our existing policies and all the carriers hadn’t been compelled to jump ship out of state individual markets, there wouldn’t be many complaints about the ACA, IMO.

The Federal mandate as well as the gubment constantly in your business when you’ve never taken a dime of “welfare” in your life is why millions of Americans who had no choice but to sign up for coverage on the ACA exchanges are up in arms and beyond fed up over the “obamacare” debacle. And rightly so . . . who could blame them?

YOU (brian/FIH) are not affected by the ACA because you posted that YOU have employer-provided coverage. You are ostensibly partly self-employed and believe me, if you applied on your exchange and were granted a “subsidy” to help pay your now exorbitant premiums of your “marketplace” plan, you would ALSO be vociferously complaining here about being treated like a “second-class citizen!”

As such, you are not in a position to see the damage the ACA bureaucracy has done to so many millions of people. Even many enrolled tax preparers didn’t know how to handle the Form 1095’s issued to taxpayers by employers, the military, retirement associations and the marketplace for tax year 2015. No less than 4 (out of 7) people I helped sign up on the exchange brought me their infamous “12C letters” from the IRS after an enrolled agent prepared and filed their taxes for them and didn’t fill out their Form 8962 correctly! I had to refill these forms out for them with my tax software, filling in all the correct boxes and change the figures on the second page of their 1040 to correspond with the new Form 8962 and fax both documents back to the IRS to a special fax number set up for this purpose under their own cover sheet. All four eventually got their (correct) refunds. This second debacle, (another byproduct of the obamacare subsidy confusion) held up these individuals’ tax refunds for an additional 1-3 months.

[quote=FlyerInHi]Be careful with Trump. I believe that a Trump administration would turn America into more of a Randian, Darwinian society where winners win and losers lose, huge. Try to make sure you’re on the winning side.[/quote]I’m not worried about “Darwinism” or “Randism.” Not only is it not going to happen but I’m all but out of the workforce and now completely out of the stock market so am essentially immune from being affected by any of it. I’m not expecting our president to create conditions which will take care of me for life or change SS (OASDI) and Medicare in a significant enough manner to affect me in any way, shape or form. I have a nearly $400 mo Medicare Part B/D allowance for life and could avail myself of off-exchange (expensive) healthplans offered by my retirement assn if I wish to. I also have other lower-cost medical-coverage choices which involve relocation. It doesn’t even matter to me if Bernie gets in and manages to successfully push a single-payor system through.

[FlyerInHi]

BG, let’s just wait and see who is more accurate after the facts.

The keys to making predictions are timeliness and accuracy.

BTW, millions of people have obamacare policies. I happen to personally know a few dozens who do. It works out very well for them.

Not sure what your problem is. Sounds like you drive over state lines a lot and you want a comprehensive national plan… If those are more expensive, then you need to pay. Sorry, life is not all about you.

[bearishgurl]

[quote=FlyerInHi]. . . Not sure what your problem is. Sounds like you drive over state lines a lot and you want a comprehensive national plan… If those are more expensive, then you need to pay. Sorry, life is not all about you.[/quote]I DID have a PPO with a National network of providers prior to obamacare, for 43% of the cost of my current plan. I didn’t need obamacare to come in and cause my carrier to leave the state and then double/triple my premiums for a chopped-up thinner-local-network plan. Everything was fine … much better than it is now because I had way more (local) providers to choose from and felt secure in the plan and not in fear of being “bumped off of it” involuntarily (which has now happened to me 3x with my exchange plan). In addition, while on my pre-ACA plan, I didn’t get “surprise” bills for out-of-network services which my providers chose for me (not knowing they were now out-of-network for me) i.e. lab/x-ray.

Lots of people prefer PPOs and we should have more than one carrier to choose with which to purchase them from. The ACA in CA has created a monopoly for PPO plans (by region).

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