09-14-2016, 10:14 AM
I see no indication that Donald Trump has any acumen at economic stewardship beyond his own economic interests. Sure, he promises that he can bring back jobs from overseas -- but has he offered any concrete programs (aside perhaps from brutal tariffs) to do so?* His activity has been every-man-for-himself, and he has been very good at schmoozing with the right people to get a tax break, perhaps even cutting deals with organized crime to get things done. But every-man-for-himself. He is a real estate mogul, someone very good at getting something built after which he simply collects the rent, which is easy enough to do in a place like New York City where poor people by local standards rent tiny apartments for higher rents than the income in one month for sweatshop laborers in the rural South. Once one has desirable property in a captive market, there is no easier income than collecting the rent from people who have few viable choices.
Manufacturing and marketing do not work that way. Admit it -- it is easier to make money by leasing property to software engineers in Silicon Valley than to make a living as a software engineer in Silicon Valley. Exploiting a scarcity is the easiest way to get and enhance one's wealth in any capitalist order.
Donald Trump is able to get spectacularly rich because he can exploit the scarcity of property in one of the few pa5rts of America that have the stable, high-paying jobs. New York City has a huge proportion of the people making their livings off creative activity, something not at all cyclical as is petroleum. If one runs out of creative ability one retires to some place cheaper. But moving to Scranton, Pennsylvania (a day trip away from New York City) for lower rent costs if one must do one's economic function in New York City? That's as out of the question as moving to Modesto as a software engineer for cheaper rent than in Silicon Valley.
People living in impoverished rural areas (and much of rural America is poor; the few people who do well there either own large farms or have professions that they could do anywhere) often see how successful Donald Trump is -- but he is rich by grabbing the easiest money that there is in America, exploiting scarcity of real estate in Greater New York City.
Let's remind ourselves of why big cities in California and New York are so liberal even if they are prosperous... it is because of real-estate moguls who exploit the scarcity of real estate, squeezing the hard-working people who really can't move to Modesto unless they want to be farm laborers or to Scranton unless they want to compete for the remaining sweat-shop jobs. Other big cities are so for the same reason.
If Donald Trump couldn't squeeze his customer he would not be rich. John D. Rockefeller had to create a market for petroleum products... and succeeded at that. Henry Ford made his fortune undercutting the car manufacturers of his time. William Skaggs discovered that if one took the credit out of food merchandising one could make grocery shopping and selling much easier. Bill Gates found that computers were laboratory curiosities or tools for experts unless those computers had easy software to use for managing something just slightly bigger than a breadbox (and now even slightly larger than a cigarette box, constraint being upon the nimbleness of human fingers and human visual acuity). Sam Walton found effective ways to put information technology into retailing to ensure that his stores were not undersupplied with the right sizes of clothes and oversupplied with the wrong sizes**.
The halcyon time for America was when people could make good livings in places like Greater Detroit when all one needed was a healthy body and a good work ethic. It's not now. America is beginning to fit a pattern in the Third World in which a few cities have all the opportunities and have some sophistication, and the rest of the country is destitute unless it has a resource boom. But here it is the 'flyover' country that it going bad.
Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, and St. Louis used to be prosperous communities. They aren't now.
Donald Trump is a capitalist exploiter in ways that make such types as Rockefeller, Hershey, Ford, Skaggs, Gates, and even Walton seem like heroes. Preserving and exploiting a scarcity is not dynamic capitalism; it is dynastic capitalism. Yes, there are people who admire the marble floors and gold faucets. I don't. He could probably adorn his holdings with tiger furs and elephant ivory except that some inconvenient regulations make such impossible now. He can get away with saying things that many people would love to say and feel constrained from saying due to 'political correctness'. Well, out of respect to the dignity of other people we rightly restrain ourselves from telling jokes about the handicapped, don't we?
Much of the Left-Right divide in urban America is not so much between the 'hard-working middle class' and 'lazy slobs' as it is between landlords and people who see them as greedy gougers. I'm guessing that the Left-Right divide outside Urban America is between people who need above-average intelligence to do what they do and people who resent 'brainy' people.
*Tariffs are a horrible way to create jobs. They are very good at making business much more expensive by forcing people to put overpriced components in what they might otherwise export.
** One thing that I noticed in Wal*Mart was the scarcity of 'remainder racks', collections of clothing in unpopular sizes and often obsolete in style, greatly reduced in price. Wal*Mart did not undercut its competitors so remarkably; it simply didn't get stuck with unmarketable merchandise as did such a competitor as Montgomery-Ward. Montgomery-Ward is a thing of the past.
Manufacturing and marketing do not work that way. Admit it -- it is easier to make money by leasing property to software engineers in Silicon Valley than to make a living as a software engineer in Silicon Valley. Exploiting a scarcity is the easiest way to get and enhance one's wealth in any capitalist order.
Donald Trump is able to get spectacularly rich because he can exploit the scarcity of property in one of the few pa5rts of America that have the stable, high-paying jobs. New York City has a huge proportion of the people making their livings off creative activity, something not at all cyclical as is petroleum. If one runs out of creative ability one retires to some place cheaper. But moving to Scranton, Pennsylvania (a day trip away from New York City) for lower rent costs if one must do one's economic function in New York City? That's as out of the question as moving to Modesto as a software engineer for cheaper rent than in Silicon Valley.
People living in impoverished rural areas (and much of rural America is poor; the few people who do well there either own large farms or have professions that they could do anywhere) often see how successful Donald Trump is -- but he is rich by grabbing the easiest money that there is in America, exploiting scarcity of real estate in Greater New York City.
Let's remind ourselves of why big cities in California and New York are so liberal even if they are prosperous... it is because of real-estate moguls who exploit the scarcity of real estate, squeezing the hard-working people who really can't move to Modesto unless they want to be farm laborers or to Scranton unless they want to compete for the remaining sweat-shop jobs. Other big cities are so for the same reason.
If Donald Trump couldn't squeeze his customer he would not be rich. John D. Rockefeller had to create a market for petroleum products... and succeeded at that. Henry Ford made his fortune undercutting the car manufacturers of his time. William Skaggs discovered that if one took the credit out of food merchandising one could make grocery shopping and selling much easier. Bill Gates found that computers were laboratory curiosities or tools for experts unless those computers had easy software to use for managing something just slightly bigger than a breadbox (and now even slightly larger than a cigarette box, constraint being upon the nimbleness of human fingers and human visual acuity). Sam Walton found effective ways to put information technology into retailing to ensure that his stores were not undersupplied with the right sizes of clothes and oversupplied with the wrong sizes**.
The halcyon time for America was when people could make good livings in places like Greater Detroit when all one needed was a healthy body and a good work ethic. It's not now. America is beginning to fit a pattern in the Third World in which a few cities have all the opportunities and have some sophistication, and the rest of the country is destitute unless it has a resource boom. But here it is the 'flyover' country that it going bad.
Cleveland, Detroit, Milwaukee, and St. Louis used to be prosperous communities. They aren't now.
Donald Trump is a capitalist exploiter in ways that make such types as Rockefeller, Hershey, Ford, Skaggs, Gates, and even Walton seem like heroes. Preserving and exploiting a scarcity is not dynamic capitalism; it is dynastic capitalism. Yes, there are people who admire the marble floors and gold faucets. I don't. He could probably adorn his holdings with tiger furs and elephant ivory except that some inconvenient regulations make such impossible now. He can get away with saying things that many people would love to say and feel constrained from saying due to 'political correctness'. Well, out of respect to the dignity of other people we rightly restrain ourselves from telling jokes about the handicapped, don't we?
Much of the Left-Right divide in urban America is not so much between the 'hard-working middle class' and 'lazy slobs' as it is between landlords and people who see them as greedy gougers. I'm guessing that the Left-Right divide outside Urban America is between people who need above-average intelligence to do what they do and people who resent 'brainy' people.
*Tariffs are a horrible way to create jobs. They are very good at making business much more expensive by forcing people to put overpriced components in what they might otherwise export.
** One thing that I noticed in Wal*Mart was the scarcity of 'remainder racks', collections of clothing in unpopular sizes and often obsolete in style, greatly reduced in price. Wal*Mart did not undercut its competitors so remarkably; it simply didn't get stuck with unmarketable merchandise as did such a competitor as Montgomery-Ward. Montgomery-Ward is a thing of the past.
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.
