11-28-2016, 03:41 PM
(11-28-2016, 02:32 PM)Eric the Green Wrote: Of course Trump will not produce an economy as bad as Castro's, because we start from a much higher base as the leading economy in the world, in the saeculum that began with the American High, the 1T of the most powerful and prosperous nation in the world that had just defeated its rivals. But I wonder if after it's all said and done, whether the Trump economy compared to the Obama economy will have given America a decline that is larger than the Castro economy's supposed decline after the Batista economy. Time may tell.
But he could make America far less attractive place in which to live, one in which asset ownership is everything and those who own the assets have effective command on everything.
Trump's ideal is a glitzy, mindless, hard-hearted, grossly-inequitable world... something like the bad alternative future in Back to the Future or the awful alternative to Bedford Falls in It's a Wonderful Life.
Just watch for the brain drain. In view of his pick for Secretary of Education, if I were a software engineer had a choice between staying in India and working in its high-tech industry and going to the USA where my kids might not have a chance at a quality education, I just might stay in India despite the far lower pay. I'd rather live in a country and culture that values learning... at least for the sake of the children.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.