In modern US history the script for running for President has never been clearer. The presumptive candidate is usually involved in politics for about a decade, becomes the governor as the opposition party get unpopular. During the end of a two term administration, voters' sentiment gets more pessimistic with economy and foreign policy, thus giving the nominee from the opposition party to exploit these conditions (Obama did the same in 2008.) One of the major exceptions in Obama's raise is that he is the only one of 3 Senators in US history to be directly promoted as the President. Whereas usually other Senators wanting to be commander in chief typically gain more experience after their junior term either by running again or getting appointed. Given these facts, we are at a unique crossroads in this year's Presidential election: We have Clinton who has tremendous amounts of public experience as most previous Presidents' have had and then we have Trump who has loads of experience in accumulating private capital for his family. So wouldn't the obvious choice be Clinton because as she says, we need a steady Commander in Chief during turbulent times, not some untested, capricious mogul! Well, NO that answer is too easy for the intellectually curious; As liberals we are obligated to dig deeper, and see which candidate would create more opportunities for lower and middle classes in America, thus creating a trickle down effect that also enhances the standards of living to all humans around the world.
The federal government passed a $1.8 Trillion dollar in tax and spending bill for the current fiscal year. Breaking down this figure further, we have allocated into 3 major categories: $572B on Defense, $680B on Tax cuts and the remaining $548B on Federal Outlays. In addition the US government usually passes additional war appropriations and emergency spending bills! Despite with all of these spending, the US growth rate is at measly 1.1% which is depriving millions of people from getting jobs or having employed individuals stuck at jobs that doesn't match with their skill set. One way the Obama administration has disguised this economic malaise is by showcasing the famous the rate of job growth graph juxtaposed against Bush's final years. Basically this graph conveys the following sentiment: look the previous president ruined our economy and we are doing our best to fix it! The problem with this graph is that it doesn't convey the full employment picture, specifically, it doesn't show that the labor participation rate, which the lowest it has been in 4 decades nor does it show that some people gave up looking for jobs. People have given up on looking for regular jobs either because their skills were obsolete in face of globalization, automation, recession or simply because the government has created much burdensome regulations. Addressing these factors will not only significantly improve the growth rate, it will also allow people to convey an optimistic sentiment on the state of current affairs.
The best way to jump start our sorry state of economy is to revamp the tax code, abolish non mandatory spending on welfare and institute a basic income for everyone. By spending $543B in FY2016, The federal government is the world's largest buyer of goods and services, sadly that's $543B we are robbing from private capital, denying the next Mark Zukerberg from creating the next Facebook or disincentivizing any other entrepreneur who wants to take risks. But fine, I won't even argue against cutting spending, that topic is for a different day, let's keep the base $543B in annual spending and perhaps spend it wisely? Currently Americans spend annually about $60B for complying with the byzantine tax code and ironically big corporations like to keep this status quo because they have the resources to hire an army of lawyers accountants to keep their taxes zero or close to zero. In addition, big companies and labor unions also have plethora of lobbyists that have directly or indirectly to the Democratic candidates this year. Whereas, Trump was able to garner majority of the delegates before he changed his mind on lobbyists, so he personally doesn't owe any favors to anyone. He will be able to stand up both Republicans and Democrats in creating a fair tax policy. By voting for Hillary, you are perpetuating this cycle of corruption in Washington by awarding business contracts that even SMEs suggests are unwarranted. Think about all the money we can spend on infrastructure instead? If China is able to create the world's largest network of high speed trains in a decade with an average of $17M/ mile, why should it take California 3 times as long with twice the cost? Oh yeah, Trump is for the high speed train but he is against regulations that delay public work projects or unions that place the leisurely work ethic of their workers above the crippling needs to America.
Some polls suggest that the current race relations is at the lowest point it has ever been in America since the Rodney King riots of 1992. When Obama was first elected in 2008, there was so much anticipation and hope in the air because the election conveyed to the public that a black person can achieve the highest levels of office and tackle much problems plaguing their community. But then again unfortunately, the identity politics didn't improve the standard of living of many in the Black community. If you look at the Black poverty level, we see that it has actually risen during Obama's presidency. A Clinton administration will perpetuate this sad trend and will also disappoint women voters by pledging a misguided concept of implementing equal pay into the federal register. As anecdotally proven in the last 8 years, adding more rules to institute a policy of good intentions doesn't ameliorate such issues, The correct way is to create incentives (or mostly to remove punitive measures) for Black students to excel in classrooms and for employers to hire diverse candidates, pay them equally because the consumers and their competition does the same! After flip flopping, Clinton is now offering families earning less than $125K to pay for their kids' college tuition. This is a typical democratic answer to most problems, just throw money onto it and hope that the problem will fix itself! By rubber stamping degrees to every young American, without checking their field of study, this plan is doomed for failure. In fact, this plan is similar to the incentives created in the early 2000s of enabling Americans' to own houses, live the American dream that ultimately lead to the biggest housing crisis in modern times. The right way for kids from impoverished neighborhoods to succeed is if they are given the opportunity to study in a different neighborhood, make diverse friends and expand their thinking as certain charter schools have demonstrated. Furthermore, teachers must get well paid as they do in Finland, but that also means we should break the teachers' unions that is agains performance based incentives! Why on Earth would we put the salary of a teacher to a higher regard than the future of a child? When Trump does come up with an education plan it should involve the trend of lessening the frequency of standardized tests, letting charters schools experiment as Republicans have recently pushed for and letting disparate communities experiment with various methods of teaching. Since Trump has so far infuriated both GOP and the Democrats, it's safe to say that he won't pander to strict education policy of one party as his opponent has and will be a deal maker.
