The "Two Backed Beast" Running for President

America, you have two candidates for president, neither of which is going to be able to solve the problems that are bedeviling the country.

They are both tinkerers.

They are both wedded to problems that go to the core of what has been the American identity since the assassination of JFK.

Donald Trump is wedded, despite his gestures and protestations, to economic policies that are responsible for the migration of virtually all of the country's wealth into the hands of the richest one percent of the population. Mr. Trump has articulated nothing in the way of realistic policy that would alter that trend in any way.

Hillary Clinton is wedded to a bi-partisan foreign policy stance that has defined America's presence on the international stage since 2001 and one might argue, since the Vietnam War, a stance dominated by the interests of the oil industry, the military industrial complex and punch drunk russophobes who can't get it through their palooka heads that the bell has rung on the Cold War and they won.

Both of these candidates have indicated a willingness to address the issue that is the weak point in the other's political platform.

Mr. Trump is willing to refresh the relationship of the US to Russia, to look for ways to cooperate and be reasonable in a post Cold War world.

Mrs. Clinton wants to increase taxes on those earning more than $200,000 a year and to raise the minimum wage. She wants to reduce the burden on student loan holders and to get to work on infrastructure projects in America.

Together, the two of them make a terrific single candidate. Unfortunately, that candidate is a "two backed beast", in Shakespeare's words, that cannot win an election.

Separate, each one suffers from a fatal flaw that will insure that America continues to spin its wheels in a brand new world that is starting to move away, down the track, toward a multi-polar era in which second tier nations begin to achieve unprecedented increases in their standard of living, increasingly indifferent to the American attitude to anything at all.

America needs to get with the trend of tomorrow. America needs to look itself in the mirror and fix what needs to be fixed at home, so that it can play a constructive role in the immediate future of the world.

Neither of these candidates really sees the whole picture, in my view. Neither embraces the startling idea that the world outside America is neither an enemy of America, nor desperate for American assistance, and that it should not be America's hunting and foraging preserve.

Neither candidate threatens the headlock that the military industrial complex has on the economy and more importantly, on the psychology of the country.

You have to go to a fringe party like the Tax Wall Street Party to find policies that address America's problems in a comprehensive way, on the economic front and on the foreign policy front.

America has been and is still being, if we judge by our two candidates' platforms, led around by special interest groups with tunnel vision, focused, like specialists, on solving specific problems to the neglect of the big picture.

a reply to: ipsedixit

... and most of the public is going along with it like Lemmings off a cliff. When the actual hell will people wake up and think for themselves? Literally, 90% or more people in this country are brainwashed ***holes who know NOTHING about what's really going on. They think us "conspiracy researchers" are just paranoid and think everything is a trick.

a reply to: ipsedixit

Well said. While there are many other issues at play as well, you've well articulated two of the core platform problems.

a reply to: ipsedixit

Well said. While there are many other issues at play as well, you've well articulated two of the core platform problems.

a reply to: ipsedixit

You hit the nail on the head with this thread.

The fundamental underpinnings of the United States are and have been under threat for a very long time, and neither candidate appears to have any answers to the problem, in fact seem likely to entrench these problems ever deeper, such that any legitimate entity attempting to remove these errors from the system, will find it even more complex and difficult than it needs to be, than it already was.

ipsedixit:

They are both wedded to problems that go to the core of what has been the American identity since the assassination of JFK.

Excellent point. Americans are still reeling from JFK's assassination. Ever since that day of the death of hope, they have been frozen wide-eyed with shock, and in their inertia, have had their country pulled from under their feet. Today, they just accept grotesqueries as a matter of course, and have stopped understanding (perhaps, even caring?) what it both takes and means to be a country.

a reply to: ipsedixit

Mrs. Clinton wants to increase taxes on those earning more than $200,000 a year and to raise the minimum wage. She wants to reduce the burden on student loan holders and to get to work on infrastructure projects in America.

None of those things are good.

Why is raising taxes on anyone a positive thing?

You're literally removing a person's ability to do. It is a removal of options.

Taxes and the minimum wage should both be abolished if you want to achieve greater economic prosperity.

a reply to: Dalan

This is the classic Republican point of view and it is very doctrinaire, like communism was doctrinaire. It is the belief that the elite will work harder if you give them more money and the wage earners will work harder if you hold their wages down.

It's just baloney.

a reply to: ipsedixit

This is the classic Republican point of view and it is very doctrinaire, like communism was doctrinaire. It is the belief that the elite will work harder if you give them more money and the wage earners will work harder if you hold their wages down.

It's just baloney.

There is nothing baloney about it.

They do it in the Scandinavian countries to great affect. They have lower corporate tax rates than we do, and Sweden has no minimum wage. Their countries have less unemployment because of it.

Im not just talking about lowering corporate tax rates, though. I also think that income taxes should be lowered for everyone, along with sales taxes and tariffs.

Currently, if I make $15/hour from my employer, my employer is not paying $15/hour for me--it would be more like $20 to $25/hour. Your employer pays an amount in taxes from the amount that he is paying you. When your income goes up, that rate that he gets taxed at also goes up, and this is before your income taxes are taken out. This is why wages stagnate.

If I took $20 a week from you, that is $20 less you have to make decisions with. You are now less $20 worth of options, your economic freedom has narrowed. That logic is the same whether your dealing with a business or an individual.

The government cannot tax us into prosperity. Prosperity requires savings and production, and taxation lowers our capabilities for those things. Government doesn't produce anything. Government doesn't earn money through an equivalent exchange, it takes it from all of us--the people who have to work for it--through coercion. Government is inherently a parasite, but I don't mean that pejoratively.

WE have no control over the situation, this wont end well.

a reply to: Dalan

Your post invites a much more detailed discussion of the economy than I am either qualified for, or have the time for, but your post is also very misleading, to the point where I really question your sincerity in posting it.

Here is the situation as it pertains to the minimum wage in Sweden:

www.investopedia.com...

Sweden is often touted as the poster-child for abolishing the minimum wage. However, the Nordic nation is certainly no free-market free-for-all. Instead, minimum wages are set by sector or industry through collective bargaining. Nearly all Swedish citizens belong to one of about 60 trade unions and 50 employers' organizations that negotiate wage rates for regular hourly work, salaries and overtime. The minimum wage tends to hover near 60-70% of the average wage in Sweden.

Swedish law limits the workweek to 40 hours, just like in the U.S. However, it also dictates that all workers are entitled to 25 paid vacation days and 16 additional public holidays each year, which is far more generous than the U.S. standard.

The current (2014) average hourly wage in the United States is $21.68.

www.tradingeconomics.com...

Applying Swedish methods to that figure, under the Swedish system the minimum hourly wage in the US would be between $13.00 and $15.18.

a reply to: Stormdancer777

Of course it will end well. At the very least Mrs. Clinton will be no worse that what has been going on already, and that is not as bad as Donald Trump makes it out to be.

Supporters of Mrs. Clinton are already gearing up to make sure her feet are held to the fire on certain issues. I will probably carry on with my anti militarist posts, because I think Mrs. Clinton is more Bush like than President Obama, who I see as one of the trickiest American interventionists to come along in a long time. America needs to get that out of its system.

a reply to: ipsedixit

Yes. Trade unions bargain with businesses.

That's not government setting wages.

a reply to: Dalan

True, but it would be a gross exaggeration to call it "no minimum wage", since the wage level is in fact pinned to the national average hourly wage. If the United States had a "no minimum wage" policy like Sweden, the lowest hourly rate would immediately rise into Hillary Clinton territory, i.e., $15.00 an hour.

Maybe Mrs. Clinton should assuage her critics on the Republican side by assuring them that there will be no minimum wage in the US because the US is going to move to the Swedish model. I wonder how many Republicans would be happy with that.

originally posted by: ipsedixit
a reply to: Dalan

True, but it would be a gross exaggeration to call it "no minimum wage", since the wage level is in fact pinned to the national average hourly wage. If the United States had a "no minimum wage" policy like Sweden, the lowest hourly rate would immediately rise into Hillary Clinton territory, i.e., $15.00 an hour.

Maybe Mrs. Clinton should assuage her critics on the Republican side by assuring them that there will be no minimum wage in the US because the US is going to move to the Swedish model. I wonder how many Republicans would be happy with that.

That decision would be better than forcing regulations on the market, that's the whole point. Individuals and trade unions can do a better job of bargaining for wages on a case-per-case basis. That is better than having a blanket federal law dictating the lowest amount that an employer has to pay. Some can pay it, some cannot.

Bah, what a disappointment this thread is. Seeing as "beast with 2 backs" has always been an euphemism for sexual intercourse.. I fully expected to hear a "true story" about there being an until recently undiscovered tape of Trump and Clinton caught in flagrante delicto...

a reply to: Dalan

This question can be looked at in a lot of ways, and should be aired thoroughly for the electorate's consideration. I don't know the size of the "subsistence wage" problem, or the "below subsistence wage" problem. Many would argue that America's illegal immigrant problem is connected to it, some might argue that some social problems are connected to it as well.

Some might ask why an employer should be allowed to exploit employees by having them work for less than a living wage. Properly ventilating these questions at election time will allow voters to vote intelligently on them.