[livinincali]

[quote=carli]Wall St Journal reported today on Moody’s recent analysis of Trump’s economic proposals, saying their report “is the first that attempts to quantify the cumulative economic benefits and costs of Mr. Trump’s proposals on taxes, trade, immigration and spending.”

Bottom line? WSJ writes the Moody’s report “determines that full adoption of those [Trump’s] policies would sharply reduce economic output during his first term and reduce employment by 3.5 million jobs. Under almost any scenario, the report says, ‘the U.S. economy will be more isolated and diminished.'”

Also, “The report singles out [Trump’s] trade and immigration policies as the most detrimental to the economy in the short run because they could sharply boost labor and goods prices at a time when there’s less slack in the labor market.”

Wow, what a dealmaker Trump is. A dealmaker of very bad deals for Americans.[/quote]

His protectionist policies most certainly would reduce economic activity in the short term. If he did anything about the medical monopolies in this country it would reduce economic activity. The question is would the country be better off in the long term. Doing something about the medical monopolies and costs associated with those monopolies would be a huge relief to the taxpayers and insurance rates over the long term. Unfortunately in the short term you’d put hundreds of thousands of paper pushers working in those industries out of work. There would be a painful readjustment.

I do think that whomever gets elected in this election is likely a one term president. Mostly because I expect a fairly significant economic dislocation to happen within the next 4 years and the government/fed unable to respond to it in an effective manner. Economic concerns are behind the Sanders and Trump movement. A more likable outsider that focused on economic issues would crush this field.

[livinincali]

[quote=SK in CV]
And just a day later, another hateful act took 50 lives. Not like the attack in Tel Aviv a few days earlier. Not like Paris or Brussels or Istanbul. In fact, nothing like them. A hateful man, who hated gays attacked 300 people in a nightclub. And politicians were quick to blame it on muslims. That hasty decision, racist on it’s face, was dead wrong. It had nothing to do with Isis, nothing to do with Islam, radical or otherwise. It had only to do with hate. Hate that is approved of, vindicated, and sanctioned every day in this country.

While politicians mostly ignored the hate, and went on to find solutions to terrorism, solutions to gun control, pointing fingers at who was responsible and who predicted it would happen, they almost all ignored what happened. A gay nightclub with 300 people inside was attacked on latin night. For the sole reason that it was a gay night club. And the guy who did the attacking thought gays should be dead. His father taught him that. His religion taught him that. As Christian preachers over and over again have taught the exact same thing.
[/quote]

How are you going to say it’s not about his religion in one paragraph and then immediately blame the teachings of his religion for the hate that consumed him in the next. Many religions teach their followers that being a homosexual is a sin. Muslim’s preachers and followers seem to be particularly bad in this regard as evidenced by the laws in countries that are heavily secular Muslim. The shooter attended prayer sessions by an Iman that preached this hate here in this country. Shall we ban the first amendment. Should we ban religions that teach hate towards gays and women. Why should we allow people in this country that have likely been taught this hate towards gays or taught women should be treated as property. Are we naive enough to think we can change these people’s views on gays and women after decades of being taught something else.

As for more more gun control, maybe it’s worth it but seems like our law enforcement already can’t do it’s job. He acquired his weapons via legal means as far as I can tell even though the FBI investigated him and was alerted again by a gun store that refused to sell the shooter the weapons in the first place. Would another law have helped or was it just really crappy law enforcement that had better things to do. The police didn’t storm the building and take out the shooter until 3 hours had passed by while they waited outside. How many people died in that 3 hours that could have been saved if the police had acted as brave heroes rather than complete pansies.

That said banning Muslims isn’t a realistic option and obviously leads to a slippery slope. Who do we ban or discriminate against next. Going as far as repealing the second amendment and confiscating all the guns isn’t going to happen and isn’t necessarily going to stop these kind of attacks either. That didn’t stop the attacks in Europe which have far more restrictive gun control than we do. Being nice and not criticizing the elements of the Muslim religion that teach hate probably isn’t going to make that hate go away. We probably should criticize those elements of the Muslim religion that teach hate rather than ignoring them. In addition we probably should let people arm themselves and carry. It’s not optimal having a bunch of people running around with guns everywhere, but it’s probably the best of a lot of bad solutions.

[livinincali]

[quote=henrysd]I have owned Vanguard long term CA muni bond fund since 2009. The fund is so called long term, but it is actually in high spectrum of intermediate term bond fund as the average duration is only 6.4 years. There were many good times to buy it like any time from 2009-2012. The best time was when “star analyst” Whitney called for massive default in muni bond which never happened. True star manager like Bill Gross added massive position in muni bond after Whitney made the call which causeed big selloff in muni bond. My entry point was about 4% YTM and with the yield down to 1.8% now, there is significant risk of losing value when interest goes up. I personally feel it is too late to jump into the boat. Be careful when tempted to the 1.8% yield using bank saving rate as reference.

I am still holding the position, and if Fed raise fed fund rate to 1% (likely in 3 baby steps), I’ll dump the fund and change position to CA muni money fund.[/quote]

The math says that eventually some muni bonds will be defaulted on. The problem is when and where. That’s what Whitney got wrong, the timing. It’s obvious that at some point Chicago is going to default on their muni bonds. They are currently paying the bond holders and defaulting on their contractors. CA sort of did the same thing with IOUs in the depths of the recession. You do have somewhat of a cushion because cities seems to value paying the bond holders before some of their other bills.

[livinincali]

[quote=FlyerInHi]At least accordiong to the “elitist” press, the consensus seems to be that Trump’s response to Orlando was pretty atrocious.
[/quote]

The essence of I told you so about Muslims isn’t probably the best first response to a tragedy.

[livinincali]

[quote=outtamojo]
I have yet to hear objections to Octoberfest or to St. Patrick’s day -celebrations originated by the fair skinned. Somewhere out there is the master key to all we object to but I haven’t found it yet.[/quote]

There is no master key because we all operate with our own set of beliefs and morals. For example go to Saudi Arabia and announce your gay. They’ll imprison you for being gay because they believe it is wrong to be gay. If you make a statement in the western culture that being gay is wrong and they should be imprisoned you’d be accused of hate speech. We operate on different standards based on different beliefs.

[livinincali]

[quote=Myriad]
And finance it (3.5%, 10%, 20%), doesn’t really matter, but makes no sense to pay all cash at these rates.
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Just don’t go with FHA financing. The MIP for FHA financing is just too high to make it worth it to not go 10% or whatever percent down you need for a more traditional product.

That said I’d probably wait if I were in your shoes. The whole buy now or be priced out forever crowd seems to be back and I don’t think that’s a good thing. We’re also due for a recession so let that work it’s way through the system and see what happens.

[livinincali]

[quote=joec]
One thing that I think people need to also accept in general is that to live in CA and if you think of a “coastal” place, those places and most places in metro CA (SF, SV, LA, SD) will never be affordable for “middle” income people.

Middle income americans weren’t meant to buy homes here at the 700-1mil min to play price when you can go to Vegas or Texas and buy a nice decent place for 200k.

I actually think we will be more like Europe and most people will just end up renting moving forward in a lot of areas in CA.

With a global economy and wealth all over the world, people who have the wealth (stocks/houses) aren’t in any rush to sell and supply is still pretty limited overall here.[/quote]

Affordability matters at some point. Maybe we end up being a renters society but even then local incomes will control how high rent can go. There’s always going to be pressure on housing prices from the interest rates and the buy or rent calculation. It’s never going to get too extreme one way or the other because it will get arbitraged eventually.

There’s 10’s of thousands of people in San Diego that live in a house they couldn’t afford to buy at today’s prices. When they die those homes will rent or be purchased by something affordable for the middle income of that area. The house in Mira Mesa that is occupied by an aging boomer who bought it 30 to 40 years ago on a military salary will eventually be occupied by somebody else.

[livinincali]

[quote=zk]
Serious question regarding checks and balances, one I really don’t know anything about (even after reading the below link):

What could a really awful president do with executive orders? The bitching about Obama’s executive orders was just partisan b.s. The same with Bush’s. Those two and, as far as I know, all previous presidents have generally had some respect for the process of government. But what if there was a president who had no such respect? A president who considered his or her opinions and desires above the process? How much damage could he do? Any constitutional scholars here?

http://blogs.findlaw.com/law_and_life/2014/01/what-are-executive-orders-what-are-their-limits.html%5B/quote%5D

There’s always impeachment. I guess at some point it really boils down to whom the military backs.

[livinincali]

The 2 major parties are both seeing signs of fracture. The republicans are probably closer to a split than the democrats but it wouldn’t be surprising to me if you saw a 3 or possible 4 party system in the not so distant future. The socially conservative base of the republican party is certainly unraveling as the glue to hold the party together. The parties for decades have been holding themselves together via moral/social issues but those issues are becoming less important to Americans’. How long ago was it that your stance on abortion was the biggest factor in the election? Now that’s probably not even in the top 10. Fiscal issues are becoming a much more important. Both Trump and Sanders popularity is one of a fiscal nature, not because of their stance on abortion, LGBTA rights, or some other social issue. It’s that shift in priorities which is baffling the political pundits.

The other big factor is the disregard for the rule of law in this country. There’s far too many people above the law and people are upset with it. There’s frauds everywhere and people want somebody to hold them accountable. Nobody ever goes to jail. Clinton isn’t going to have anybody locked up. Sanders or Trump might.

[livinincali]

[quote=UCGal]
For those curious about Denise Gitsham – the 2nd place finisher to Scott Peters – she is a former cast member of The Bachelor.
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For what it’s worth she doesn’t appear to have endorsed or supported Trump yet.

[livinincali]

[quote=AN]Scott Peters won with 51% of the vote in 2014 and got 58% yesterday.[/quote]

In 2014 I knew Carl DeMaio was running for that seat. This year I didn’t even know the republican challenger was Denise Gitsham until I just looked it up. Maybe you guys are right that Trump is going to be good for democrats but I still think it’s a little too early to tell.

[livinincali]

[quote=FlyerInHi]That cannot last, especially given the fact that conservatism has delivered high mortality rates, divorce rates and drug abuse to very red states like Oklahoma.[/quote]

That cannot last, especially given the fact that liberalism has delivered high mortality rates, divorce rates and drug abuse to very blue cities like Chicago.

Good point.

[livinincali]

[quote=spdrun]^^^

You’re misunderstanding the UBI, then. I’m not a supporter, but EVERYONE would get the UBI, regardless of whether they work or not.

So store employees wouldn’t lose the UBI if they work at a store for less than the UBI. They’d just (say) make $150,000 instead of $100,000 per year.

If the UBI is designed to cover housing, food, medical insurance, and basic clothing, the extra $50,000 per year would allow for better versions of those items, or extra money for travel, recreation, hobbies, etc, etc.[/quote]

But where does the money come from. That is the point. No matter what the number is how do you take enough from the haves so that the have nots can have guaranteed shelter and food. Understand where the money has to come from and then you’ll understand why giving everybody the same UBI makes it essentially worthless. The economy will just rebalance itself to the added income especially if it’s done via deceit spending.

It’s the same as a massive increase in rental property tax to provide for housing vouchers. Alternatively setting rent as no more than 30% of household income. The net result to a landlord is the same. If you tax me $20K and give me back $10K it’s the same as taxing me $10K

[livinincali]

[quote=FlyerInHi]
Sounds like you’re acknowledging that taxing the rich and redistributing that money to the poorest would result in economic growth (assuming there’s little friction). Incidentally, rich people may pay higher taxes but they will earn it back in income from their businesses. Win-win.

Concentration at the top 1% is very bad for the economy because those people don’t spend. They park money in real estate. That squeezes the lower classes who have no money left to spend on goods and services.[/quote]

If you had a closed system and everybody acted rationally it’s possible redistribution would work but history has proven that most redistribution schemes have failed to produce economic growth. Moving from capitalistic systems to socialist, fascist, or communist system have never created significant economic growth. Just look at France GDP vs US GDP over the past 5 years. They are averaging about 0.5% per year we are at about 2% per year. Seems like all the “good” socialism of France is a negative to economic growth.

There’s a pretty big disincentive to create a business that you hope will be successful if you know the government is going to tax away a lot of your success. Would you want to be a landlord if government made you set rents at <30% of a the tenants net income. Would you be a landlord if government tripped property taxes on rental property compared to primary.

Just because you create demand you don't necessarily create economic growth. That increased demand can be met purely with inflation in the goods in services if no new competition/supply comes online. I.e. no new nail saloons are opened but the owners of the current nail saloons rake in the money as they serve more clients.

A UBI also creates a disincentive to work and whether employed or self employed you create economic activity when you work. A simple example would be imagine a UBI for $100K per year. How many people would immediately quit their jobs and live on that. Everybody that quits working results in a loss of economic activity. Stores close because they can no longer find anybody that will work for less than the $100K UBI. We can all imagine what happens in that scenario. You get a massive inflationary event until businesses can charge enough that they can pay their workers more than the UBI. At that point your back to the situation where UBI is barely enough to get by and you really need to work.

The Swiss vote on a UBI got defeated strongly. 77% against, which is in the realm of never going to happen. It's probably not worth even discussing the pluses and minuses. It doesn't seem like western populations are interested in this idea at all.

[livinincali]

[quote=FlyerInHi]
Yeah. Considering all the current social costs, including criminal enforcement, ubi would be cheaper and result in a richer society. People would consume more on goods and services thus improving the economy. Combine that with legalization of marijuana and cuts in military spending.[/quote]

I don’t understand why you think UBI would be cheaper and also result in people consuming more goods and services. If it’s cheaper then the government is spending less money. Therefore those that receive government money would get less and consume less. I don’t see how it does anything then change who the winners and losers are. The only way I see it resulting in more consumption is if the savings rate goes down in aggregate. I.e. we take money from people who save money and give it to people that spend money.

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