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[wobbly]

@Wolfhunter: The guy should have started it months ago if he wanted to mount a serious independent challenge.

Does he have to? If Trump takes a big fall he'll be one of the few who got of the train wreck before it happened.

[smjjames]

I mean realistically, as in getting his name on the ballot in all 50 states.

Anyways, Trumps economic speech seemed to be the usual republican red meat. He did mention education reform, but it was all of one sentence.

Gonna wait for the fact checkers to analyze it and stuff though. Also, when he said losing 9 billion hours a year on tax stuff, I did the math on that (because 9 billion seemed WAY overly large) and it's actually a little over a year. 9 billion hours is 375 days and there are 365 days (actually 365. something because we have leap years) in a year.

[Harry Baldman]

Gonna wait for the fact checkers to analyze it and stuff though. Also, when he said losing 9 billion hours a year on tax stuff, I did the math on that (because 9 billion seemed WAY overly large) and it's actually a little over a year. 9 billion hours is 375 days and there are 365 days (actually 365. something because we have leap years) in a year.

He probably doesn't mean per person, but rather in total. Similarly to how you lose decades a year or some shit on traffic jams nationwide.

[Frumple]

I went back a bit because I missed the start of the speech. Also, Trump blamed Detroits problems on Clintons (whether Bill or Hillary, not sure, maybe both) policies when the cities problems actually go back decades.... Not surprising that he pinned it on Hillary.

Actually found a transcript of the prepared speech, I think. It... says basically two things of substance, as near as I could tell. Massive tax cuts across the board (somehow making up the hit to the gov't budget with increased overall trade?), and more or less unilateral deregulation. And. That was the only things that wasn't either attacks on clinton or obama, or promises of more details "later".

I guess it wasn't quite as bad as I was expecting (mind, those two things are pretty disastrous, but nothing much was really said, overall), just significantly more full of empty hot air. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I always get kinda' hopeful someone claiming to state something that's pretty reliant on some degree of detail will actually put out, for once. If that Detroit speech is the actual economic plan that was claiming to be slated for release, anyway.

Incidentally curious about the new york electorate's reaction to parts of that speech, though. I vaguely remember hearing about some of them being kinda' pissed about trump claiming to be (one of) the state's economic savior(s).

[Criptfeind]

Er. I'm not sure what the quote is about, but 9 billion hours is 375 million days. Or bit more then a day per person in the US.

[smjjames]

*Facepalm* I was distracted and didn't register the zeros after the 375. He might have said dollars or the captions flubbed up something, it's not in the transcript I found.

[Criptfeind]

Random google search brings up a lot of articles that say the same thing. I have no idea if it's true (it sounds about right, that's like, what? 1/3 of a % of the year, and coincidentally there's a bit under 1/3 of a % of the population working in tax preparation.) or a bad thing or whatever, but at the least it's something that is I guess not unreasonable for him to have said.

[Starver]

Ninjaed, but...

There are (give or take) 8766 'single-threaded' hours in each year.  9 billion (assuming short billions) hours lost would be a fraction of the year roughly equal to the multiple of a million that the 'losers' total.

So the entirity of the US population would be wasting something like 1/319th of their time, which is something like a 20 hour block per person per year, by my calculations.

All 'US taxpayers' (at a minimum, 122 million pay Federal Income Tax, it says) might be spending three solid days (or nine eight-hour sessions), which sounds a lot, but I'm betting doesn't even compare with time commuting (for anyone who takes more than fifteen minutes' commute), if you're doing it in little bits each day.

And, for all I know, a lot of those 9 billion hours are five minutes of 'putting receipts somewhere safe' most days and the remainder is retrieving them them from their safe place, periodically, and totting things up onto forms...


(But I don't know much about the US tax system. I'm on PAYE, over here, and have never been asked to do too much of that stuff.)

[RedKing]

PAYE = PAY Everything? 

[misko27]

PAYE = PAY Everything? 

pay denbts

Incidentally curious about the new york electorate's reaction to parts of that speech, though. I vaguely remember hearing about some of them being kinda' pissed about trump claiming to be (one of) the state's economic savior(s).

The New York Electorate? As in, NYC? Alternately laughs at him and is horrified by him, depending. The liberals are no fans, the huge minority population isn't exactly keen, and the business section of the state can be more-or-less summed by Micheal Bloomberg, the famously independent-minded big-business loving former Mayor of NYC for twelve years, deciding to speak at the DNC to basically say "I know we have our (many) differences, but Trump cannot be allowed to be President." I think upstate likes him, but I'm not sure Trump is even aware that there is an upstate New York half the time. Of course its a big city, and he has his supporters here and there, but I don't think he's very popular here.

As for his economic claims, what? What exactly did he claim he did? Because basically, his contribution was "being a real estate developer in Manhattan, the most generic Manhattan job imaginable, and contribute to the never-ending glut of luxury real estate". Believe me when I say New York was not exactly hurting for developers before Trump came along, but honestly I don't know because even Trump's outsize influence on the city is kinda hard to see given the sheer scale of the city. Trump Tower is just another building, you know?

[Strife26]

I heard a really good quote from Trump on NPR today about how he's going to win the state, but finding it online is proving difficult.

[mainiac]

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/poll-clinton-leads-by-13-points-among-likely-voters-226790

[smjjames]

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/poll-clinton-leads-by-13-points-among-likely-voters-226790

We're exactly three months out, lots can change in that time.

[misko27]

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/poll-clinton-leads-by-13-points-among-likely-voters-226790

We're exactly three months out; lots can change in that time.

This is post-convention though. This is the point where polls start to gain real predictive power. This election has been going on for a year at this point. Obviously, the polls aren't as accurate as they'll be on the day of, but they are a lot more useful than they were before...

In any case, it's still interesting to see where the candidates are now. It doesn't guarantee Clinton will win, but it does say "If the election were held today, she'd very likely win, and by a lot." Trump has a lot of lost ground to make up.

I heard a really good quote from Trump on NPR today about how he's going to win the state, but finding it online is proving difficult.

I feel like I've heard this too, but only as snippets from unrelated articles.

[nenjin]

The only person stopping Trump from getting on message (that isn't shrill, hateful lying at best) is Trump. Nine months of schlock stood up against three months of try hard doesn't really seem all that fair though. Sorta like people kept expecting him to bomb or drop out, expecting Trump to suddenly get better than he has been also seems like wishful thinking. Chances are Trump has shown his best already and the rest is playing catch up to positions and attitudes he should have been holding and addressing a long, long time ago.

And the thing is, even if he does win, he's been sent the message that he is on his own effectively. Yeah the Republican party will be there for him in some capacity, but when a group of people like this have labeled you a national security threat in public before you've even been elected...I think it's a pretty clear sign he can expect a hell of a lot less support than just an unenthusiastic "Well I guess we have to go with him..." from his own party.

Oh well. I guess 4 years of instant Lame Duck status is still preferable to everyone drinking the koolaid and following where he leads.