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starbright
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.

The problem is, of course, where he limits it. You see, Republicans and Democrats both want to increase government spending and they both want to limit it - they just do so in different fields. I would point to George Bush increasing the budget of the military by 800 billion and imbalancing the balanced budget that Clinton left him - not a very fiscally responsible thing to do, eh?

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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.

I'm fairly certain every candidate promised this, though, in several different ways. From Hillary to Bernie to Carly Fiorina to fuckin Rand Paul.

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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.

This one I disagree with. I think it's very telling that under Hillary's tax plan, the one who loses the most money would be herself and her friends. Meanwhile, under Donald's tax plan, both himself and his friends all stand to make billions of dollars in profit. Donald built his following around pretending to help the little guy, but his tax plan is quite obviously aimed at only helping the ultra-rich - under his plan, the minimum wage and middle class can only expect tiny returns, while his friends have literal swimming pools filled with cash coming back for them. Source: [taxfoundation.org]

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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 agree with this one. He ran and won on a platform of white nationalism. He's openly said incredibly racist things ("Obama was born in Kenya!") and openly supported a government registry for Muslims. His voter base doesn't want a government registry for guns, but suddenly their anti-government rhetoric is considerably cooled when it comes to brown people? Hmmm...

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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?

I've never understood Republicans that claim to be Libertarian and want "free markets" without "government regulation" but suddenly balk at these free trade deals which are just that.

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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.

People bitch about the H-1B visa system all the time, but in all honesty the US desperately crutches on it in a large variety of fields that lack qualified employees, including computer science, healthcare, and engineering. Would further point out that getting an H-1B visa is incredibly difficult AND the employer has to show that no qualified US applicants are willing to work this job AND the employer also has to pay the H-1B visa holder the "prevailing wage" that is determined by people holding similar jobs in the area. Long story short, it makes ZERO sense for a company to EVER use an H-1B if there is a qualified American willing to work that job. There's a lot of misconceptions around the program stealing jobs from "honest muricans" and "being used to pay for cheap labor". I would suggest that in fact you're referring to the H-2B visa program that Trump himself uses to get cheap foreign labor in minimum wage jobs.

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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?

Personally, I define globalization as the efficient specialization of labor based on geopolitical characteristics. If you live in California and you have 3 growing seasons for oranges, you producing 3x more oranges than a farm in Canada with 1 growing season for oranges is just plain efficiency. In that case, California should be proving us with oranges and (sorry to orange growers in Canada) the Canadians can find something to make efficiently that they need in California, instead. It's a characteristic of free trade and more or less inevitable the more the world's economy develops. Coal is an expensive, time-consuming, unclean, and high-liability resource to mine - natural gas fracking, on the other hand, is incredibly cheap, incredibly easy, and much less manpower-intensive. Of course everybody is switching to gas. Several countries are banning coal power outright by 2020 - sorry to the coal miners, but your industry is fucked and you need to figure out something more efficient instead of smoking meth and blaming Mexico/China for your woes.

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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.

The last full military invasion (a pointless, stupid war triggered by a personal feud) was done by a Republican. The last increase to the military budget was done by a Republican. The entire US military leans heavily Republican. When Obama decided to reduce our commitments in the Middle East, the ones who stood against it were Republicans. When it came to peacemaking with Muslim nations, the ones who heavily opposed it were Republican. Personally, I find it difficult to credit this Democratic warhawk assessment - for the past 20 years, all the hawks have been painted bright, bright red. Clinton has criticized Putin in the past during her tenure as secretary of State, so Putin doesn't like her - this is true. That being said, Putin deserved the criticism - he definitely rigged the everloving SHIT out of those elections in Russia.