What have they done?

And it is that time of the political cycle when we begin paying more attention to the news, and boy oh boy has this been a confusion news cycle leading to mid terms 2018! But November is approaching fast, and the score of this two years old administration stands thus:

* promised a border wall to be paid for by Mexico, has gotten zero funding from Mexico and has been ceaselessly and unsuccessfully asking Congress to fund it
* promised better Healthcare for the population at large, has overseen a steep rise in premiums while the individual mandate removal takes its toll on the insurance companies
* promised a tougher approach to other nations resulting in better treaties, has unilaterally torn up the Iran deal without any replacement and has granted legitimacy to NK without CVID, the talks have officially collapsed
* promised better trade deals with other countries resulting in our prosperity, has imposed punitive tariffs on allies and non allies alike, resulting in a full fledged trade war
* promised to be a transparent government that 'drains the swamp', has had an order of magnitude higher turnover than past administrations because of scandals, which include twelve parallel Congressional investigations on the just resigned head of the EPA
* promised better internet connectivity especially to rural America, has rolled back net neutrality which is already causing internet providers to selectively block content and making the goal of connecting rural America significantly harder
* promised lower taxes for all Americans, has passed a tax reform bill which grants permanent relief to corporations and only temporary relief to some Americans depending on which state they live in
* promised a more robust immigration system, has created an unsustainable set of executive orders which had to be partially retracted because of the policy against minors of parents seeking asylum, and continues to struggle to follow directives of our federal courts
* promised a business like approach to create a more efficient and effective government, has mismanaged numerous government projects, the most visible and documented of which is the federal response to Hurricane Maria in Puerto Rico

Where have all our old jobs gone, long time passing? The new world picked them everyone. O when will they ever learn? 

What?

By now, it has been widely acknowledged that the key reason for Trump's unexpected victory in this year's presidential election has a strong link to disaffected white working class voters who were hungry for change. Hillary, representing an establishment choice, never quite tapped into that anger, and eventually fell to Trump all over the Rust Belt.

But this is a festering problem - which affects way more than just the whites. It impacts all workers, independent of race or gender. Many such people have been feeling disenfranchised for decades.

Why?

A large number of articles have also been recently written on why this working class anger should come as no surprise to anyone. I particularly liked Joan Williams' article on Harvard Business Review: https://hbr.org/2016/11/what-so-many-people-dont-get-about-the-u-s-working-class

Most of the articles revolve around the following reasons:

1. Most blue collar workers depended on industrial jobs, which have been steadily leaving the country.
2. A big reason for the industrial job migration is trade treaties (supported by politicians from both parties) which increase the GDP, but at the cost of worker angst.
3. Once the industrial jobs are gone (which in a lot of states meant union ensured benefits, like steady pension), the fall back was to retrain and start or join small businesses. However, when large swathes of a state are ravaged by such job losses, these businesses struggle to find consumers.
4. Most men who belong to the working class, have a strong distrust of white collar professionals - which can be an impediment in their retraining efforts.
5. Undocumented immigrants have not helped the plight of the white working class by eroding the margins of the remaining industrial or small business owned jobs. 
6. Societal decay, caused by the loss of self-worth among men who cannot put food on the table, has led to high drug use in certain areas, causing further erosion in living conditions.

How to fix this?

However, none of these articles get into the much thornier debate on what to do about the current situation. It is obvious that this situation is going to get exponentially worse with the introduction of artificial intelligence into the mix, because certain kinds of repetitive manual tasks can easily be performed by such machines. As they say, the jobs that are outsourced now, are automated tomorrow.

There has been some (but not sufficient) discussion amongst our though leaders on how to handle this problem. One author stands out in terms of his depth of research and easy-to-read policy prescriptions in this area, his name is Martin Ford https://www.amazon.com/Martin-Ford  - whose books https://www.amazon.com/Rise-Robots-Technology-Threat-Jobless and https://www.amazon.com/Lights-Tunnel-Automation-Accelerating-Technology are a must-read for those wanting to familiarize themselves with this topic. 

Here are some options that have been debated, more so in Europe than in the US:

1. Guaranteed minimum income: we accept that we will not be able to employ certain people whose only skills lie in areas that have already been automated, so we pay them money every month to stay on as consumers, which is critical in an economy that is 70% dependent on individual consumer spending. The measure however has proven unpopular on the ballot, the most recent repudiation of which took place in Switzerland on 5th June, 2016 by a margin of almost 50% http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36454060 
2. Negative Income Tax: This is revenue wise similar to the guaranteed minimum income option, but with an eye towards reforming the tax code. People below a certain income get supplemental income from the government because automation has reduced their jobs to be, at best, technicians trying to ensure the machines get installed properly (at least till machines cannot install themselves yet). We already have a certain type of this NIT, in the form of SNAP (supplemental nutritional assistance program), but that is geared towards preventing malnutrition only.
3. Massive government spending on re-education: yes, we realize not everyone will become (or even want to become) a software programmer. However, many workers who used to work on production lines can be re-educated to install and service many of the machines that will replace humans in running these production lines, among other tasks. That is also why I see a great future in clean energy, because installing solar panels is a job that cannot be easily outsourced. At least, this addresses both the problems of climate change (no, its not a hoax) and job displacement. 

How do we deal with evil?

Here is a set of answers given by our presidential candidates on the following topic:

Topic : Pastor Rich Warren asked this question to both the candidates at the Saddleback Civil Forum: OKAY WE'VE GOT ONE LAST TIME -- I'VE GOT A BUNCH MORE ABOUT LET ME ASK YOU ONE IN EVIL. DOES EVIL EXIST AND IF IT DOES DO WE IGNORE IT, DO WE NEGOTIATE WITH IT, DO WE CONTAIN IT OR DO WE DEFEAT IT?

Here are their answers:

Obama: EVIL DOES EXIST. I MEAN, WE SEE EVIL ALL THE TIME. WE SEE EVIL IN DARFUR. WE SEE EVIL SADLY ON THE STREETS OF OUR CITIES. WE SEE EVIL IN PARENTS WHO HAVE VICIOUSLY ABUSED THEIR CHILDREN AND I THINK IT HAS TO BE CONFRONTED. IT HAS TO BE CONFRONTED SQUARELY AND ONE OF THE THINGS THAT I STRONGLY BELIEVE IS THAT, YOU KNOW, WE ARE NOT GOING TO, AS INDIVIDUALS, BE ABLE TO ERASE EVIL FROM THE WORLD. THAT IS GOD'S TASK. BUT WE CAN BE SOLDERS IN THAT PROCESS AND WE CAN CONFRONT IT WHEN WE SEE IT. NOW, THE ONE THINK THAT I THINK IS VERY IMPORTANT IS FOR US TO HAVE SOME HUMILITY IN HOW WE APPROACH THE ISSUE OF CON FRONTING EVIL, BUT YOU KNOW A LOT OF EVIL HAS BEEN PERPETRATED BASED ON THE CLAIM THAT WE WERE TRYING TO CONFRONT EVIL.

Q. IN THE NAME OF GOOD?

A. INTO THE NAME OF GOOD. AND I THINK ONE THING THAT'S VERY IMPORTANT IS HAVING SOME HUMILITY IN RECOGNIZING THAT, YOU KNOW, JUST BECAUSE WE THINK OUR INTENTIONS ARE GOOD DOESN'T ALWAYS MEAN THAT WE'RE GOING TO BE DOING GOOD.

McCain: DEFEAT IT. COUPLE POINTS, ONE, IF I'M PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, MY FRIENDS, IF I HAVE TO FOLLOW HIM TO THE GATES OF HELL, I WILL GET OSAMA BIN LADEN AND BRING HIM TO JUSTICE. I WILL DO THAT AND I KNOW HOW TO DO THAT. I WILL GET THAT DONE. NO ONE SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO TAKE THOUSANDS OF AMERICAN -- INNOCENT AMERICAN LIVES. OF COURSE EVIL MUST BE DEFEATED. MY FRIENDS, WE ARE FACING THE TRANSCENDENT CHALLENGE OF THE 21-CENTURY, RADICAL ISLAMIC EXTREMISTS. NOT LONG AGO IN BAGHDAD, AL-QAEDA TOOK TWO YOUNG WOMEN WHO WERE MENTALLY DISABLED AND PUT SUICIDE VESTS ON THEM, SENT THEM INTO A MARKETPLACE AND BY REMOTE CONTROL, DETINATED THOSE SUICIDE VESTS. IF THAT ISN'T EVIL, YOU HAVE TO TELL ME WHAT IS AND WE'RE GOING TO DEFEAT THIS EVIL AND THE CENTRAL BATTLE GROUND ACCORDING TO DAVID PETRAEUS AND OSAMA BIN LADEN IS THE BATTLES -- IS BAGHDAD, MOZIL AND IRAQ AND WE ARE WINNING AND WE ARE SUCCEEDING AND OUR TROOPS WILL COME HOME WITH HONOR AND VICTORY AND NOT IN DEFEAT AND THAT'S WHAT'S HAPPENING. WE HAVE -- AND WE FACE THIS THREAT THROUGHOUT THE WORLD. IT'S NOT JUST IN IRAQ. IT'S NOT JUST IN AFGHANISTAN. OUR INTELLIGENCE PEOPLE TELL US AL-QAEDA CONTINUES TO TRY TO ESTABLISH CELLS HERE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. MY FRIENDS, WE MUST FACE THIS CHALLENGE. WE CAN FACE THIS CHALLENGE AND WE MUST TOTALLY DEFEAT IT AND WE'RE IN A LONG STRUGGLE, BUT WHEN I'M AROUND THE YOUNG MEN AND WOMEN WHO ARE SERVING THIS NATION IN UNIFORM, I HAVE NO DOUBT,NONE.

So my question to you is : which answer do you dig more? And why should we always think of evil as being something "external" or "foreign" ?

We think, therefore we are

Hi everyone,

I am about to start a YAB (yet another blog for uninitiated ;) )

This, my friends, is the season when the elections are upon us. Unless you have been living under a rock miles away from civilization, the parade of the multicolored parties and their cacophanies have probably left you brain-dead. And here's where I think this blog can bring in some welcome relief to help keep things in perspective.

Now, I am not going to rant and rave and indulge in vacuous partisan diatribes that have so sullied our political landscape. If you want to engage in such activities, I am sure you can find all too many blogs catering to your needs. Instead, I am more interested in initiating a discussion about American politics in general. I want to concentrate on the broader issues that are plaguing us, and the personalities of the leaders who can help shape the future for us.

It is high time that we start thinking about politics, because unless we do, we can get elect someone we will regret for a full 48 months. To put things in perspective, that is 16 financial quarters. Companies are restructured, and in some cases bankrupted, by mistakes made in a fraction of that time. So one would normally think that the person chosen to the highest office in this land will be properly understood in terms of their personality and their affiliations, right? Ideally yes. In practice, though, we decide based on gut instincts and a lot of propaganda that are incessantly handed down to us by the various media sources. So what can we do?

We have only one option. Keep asking, demand answers. There exists a wonderful law in this land which goes by the "Freedom of Information Act". We can use it to get the answers when they are deliberately hidden from us. We need to debate the various propaganda that these parties come up with, and make an informed decision on who is right and who is wrong.

Ultimately, truth has no color. What Descartes said in the 17th century still rings true : Cogito, ergo sum (I think, therefore I am).