Addressing your numbered points:

1) Repeal of ACA (aka Obamacare), and encourage competition across state lines. Obama's (and Hillary's) goal of a single-payer system would be tremendously catastrophic to my family's health care. I don't think it is a coincidence that my health care premiums have increased greater than 200% in the past few years.

I can agree with more competition: but what seemed appealing about Obamacare was moving towards universal coverage. Many other rich countries have more or less universal health coverage so you can't be "too poor" to get medical treatment for illnesses, up to a point.

Re: premiums rising in the past few years: I think it's because Obamacare covers "preventive care" on top of the usual healthcare costs? In the long-term preventive care should reduce the total costs, but in the short term it would represent a sudden increase in premiums. The other issues might be the extra requirements e.g. computerized records and such, again these are long-term investments which cost money now. [www.thebalance.com]

2) Focus on limiting of government spending. You can see this guy in action on this already, and the dude isn't even president yet. I have high hopes here.

Yes. I did approve of the comment about Boeing's price for Air Force One. I guess we will see if he succeeds: governments are massive and have many stakeholders all with their own fingers in their pies too. It takes a lot of centralized power to manage it.

3) Removal of government regulations (remove 2 regulations for every 1 added. Genius).

Yes, agree. Complex rules = opportunity for rent-seeking by lobbyists and special interests.

4) Simplification of the Tax plan. Also, I have a fundamental disagreement with Hillary's "tax-the-wealthy-to-solve-everything" scheme. I think it drives business away and punishes folks for being successful. The fact that Hillary can straight out say, "We're gonna just tax the wealthy to pay for everything" without offering solutions to cut costs chills me to the bone. I don't think it's fair to pander to the majority and promise to tax the rich minority into oblivion, even if I'm not one of the rich that would be taxed. On the other hand, I don't mind paying my fair share in taxes and I don't think my taxes will change too much personally even under Trump.

OK. Agree with simplification, but at the same time very-rich people they are able to avoid taxes entirely by hiring good tax lawyers and accountants. The loopholes do need to be closed.

5) Immigration enforcement. Make no mistake, Trump will not go around rounding up folks and throwing out families. However, we desperately need to enforce our borders, and prosecute and/or deport illegal alien criminals. Sanctuary cities are a crock of shit and these cities need to be punished by having their federal money cut off. I'm iffy on an actual giant wall, but actually enforcing poilcy will go a long way.

You might not be wrong re: he won't literally build a wall and round up folks, but I find this an example of "being REALLY forgiving towards Trump" (in a way that Hillary isn't afforded). He said some really racist and extreme things, and the best one could say is that he didn't mean it and it was the only way an outsider could get a seat at the table. If a dude said a terribly nasty thing, I'm (probably) not giving him the benefit of the doubt. I don't have a problem with border control and controlling immigration, but publicly saying offensive things at Mexicans/Muslims etc. is something else altogether.

I don't disagree that certain minorities have higher crime rates, and I'm all for being tough on crime, but naming and targeting the ethnicity is wrong. We should be naming and targeting criminals regardless of race. You might say he's just "saying what we all know and would say in private", but a leader needs to be held to a much higher, professional standard. I wouldn't want my kind-of-racist Uncle Bob to be President you know? :-P

6) Repeal NAFTA. Obvious reasons are obvious.
7) No TPP.

Lumping these together as "curbing untrammeled free trade". OK, but I note that free trade tends to cause an "absolute increase" in total economic output. I take the point that the gains from trade are shockingly unequally distributed (rich capital holders gain a lot, workers lose a bit) but is it possible to support a better redistribution of the gains from trade?

8) limiting/enforcing abuse of H-1B visas, particularly for STEM work. This one is huge for me, as I work in the industry and see the abuse first hand. I'm not saying that the folks hired from India/China are bad people, but make no mistake, a lot of college grads that were educated here in the States are being displaced by foreign workers brought in here without even knowing its happening. Hillary would have surely rewarded her backers Tata, etc by granting even more of these visas and driving down wages here. You also have to realize this is brain-drain on India to get these people over here displacing American workers (for much cheaper), so it's not actually good for them either. I could go on for days about this one but you get the point.

Quick note: getting a US H-1B visa is pretty hard as far as I know.

But, I know what you mean by managers abusing the system: I used to work in a small for-profit company which branded itself as a "research institution" and got a number of foreign visas per year, and basically paid below market-rate for top talent. They managed to acquire math/programming talent at discount prices by taking foreigners desperate to remain in the UK after their studies: quite a number of them have partners who are based in the UK and so they want to be there, even at high cost to their careers. Managers like these are scumbags and they should be stopped.

I should note that the US has benefited hugely from highly-talented migrants, and I believe Trump himself has said that he's not against talented immigrants. The US has a population of 300m, the rest of the world has 7bn. Talent may not be perfectly evenly distributed (the US probably has a disproportionate amount) but those are huge odds to roll against. There's definitely a lot to be said for the argument that the US' global lead in technology is sustained by its being incredibly attractive to skilled immigrants which other countries would love to get.

9) Discouraging American companies from outsourcing work to foreign countries when there are plenty of employees here to fill the job. I've been displaced once and nearly twice by this corporate practice. I'm glad it is finally being seen as an issue.

Yeah there's some balance to be had between outsourcing and retaining essential industries in the country. Manufacturing and engineering is one thing I think a country cannot entirely give up. Still, the extreme opposite is that you never outsource anything, which makes your exports more expensive.

10) I'm very anti-globalization, in its current incarnation. Globalization is not free trade.

Globalization could be defined as free movement of (1) capital (2) technological-capital (3) products (4) labour. I'm generally for globalization unless it hurts people (e.g. job losses without corresponding re-training for other jobs and a time buffer for workers). I take it you're against free movement of labour and (to some degree) products?

11) I don't want a war with Russia-- the "no fly zone" in Syria type of thing is just one indication that Hillary would put us more on that trajectory. I think the current Democrats are actually more plugged into the Warhawk way of thinking than Trump. I could be wrong, but here's to hoping.

Probably smart not to have a war with any of the other (nuclear) powers, yes. I think geopolitics is complicated and there are probably reasons why the Democrats have done what they did. Let's see what Trump will do when he's in office.

12) Edit: Second Amendment is also important to protect, even though I'm not a gun-nut or anything, the concept is crucial for the long-term future of America.

Here's where I find the US very odd :-P Let's agree to disagree re: guns.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/23/2016 11:01AM by starbright.