Donald Trump. Before 2016, bringing him up in any meaningful political conversation would’ve been conversation suicide. Not only for the lack of political experience (which is overrated) but also because Trump is brash & more importantly, he doesn’t always think before he speaks. Now this entire 2016 election campaign has amplified those points and the people who support Trump have learned, it’s better to just zone out and not listen because you know he’s going to say something offensive. In the real world, you can’t just say something and then 2 days later say the complete opposite and pretend like you didn’t take a stand 2 days before. It’s really getting past the point of no return and no matter what issue you discuss in regards to Trump, you only have to look at the last 6 months before you find video evidence of him on both sides of an argument (e.g. gay marriage & invading Iran). Then there’s some issues where he’s just taken the radical approach and holds opinions that are clearly dangerous & not to mention anti-American (e.g. banning Muslims & building a wall with Mexico). He’s lost my vote because I just don’t know which side of the coin he stands on with so many key issues. I also think if there’s another terrorist attack, he’d take the nuclear reaction towards Muslims and that’s not what America needs. By nuclear reaction, I mean he’d overreact in anything he does because Trump seems to be wanting to appease the most radical elements of the Republican party. Also the idea of banning a group of people because of a personal choice is the most un-American stance I’ve ever heard any politician say. I cannot believe that recent comments commending racial profiling were not met with a stern disapproval from his supporters. Americans who are Conservative, should not support someone who vehemently supports such policies. They are symptoms of BIG government and will add layers of inefficiency to the bureaucratic monster we already have.

Non-Trump minute – why I think terror attacks happen

Terrorist attacks happen because terrorists have too much time on their hands. One of the reasons I will avoid Paris and Belgium in any future trips is because they have too many people sitting around doing nothing with their time. Islamic unemployment rates in those countries are higher than non-Muslim unemployment rates and they wonder how terrorists were able to plan attacks like the Bataclan attack. I don’t believe that religion makes terrorists kill people because killing people is crazy. This is not a symptom that the religion is sick, this is a symptom that the person is sick. If you’re ready to kill someone then you deserve treatment and that’s one of the faults of our society. This is evident by the sheer number of veterans that come back from Afghanistan & Iraq and suffer silently from PTSD. It’s time we stop blaming a religion and blame the simple fact that we don’t care about treating mental health as a society. The fact is that mental health is ignored and rather than try to fix mental health issues, we as a society are more comfortable in supplying medicine in pill format and hoping the issue go away. I believe that one day, when the baby-boomers are long gone, we’ll be able to transform our healthcare system into one that focuses on helping all those who have fallen between the cracks rather than wait for those cracks to grow and take innocent lives with them.

— back to the article —

Back to Trump. Before this week, I would have voted for Trump for the following reasons:

He’s opposed to TPP He’s self-funding his campaign He won’t start WW3 He’s about fair immigration

Each of these points deserves a little explanation so I will detail it below.

I like his anti-free trade stance. Free trade in the classical form is ideal. It allows citizens of a nation to benefit from cheaper prices because foreign countries are able to specialize in skills and build a competitive advantage with which to trade with. I like this. But it also makes countries dependent on other countries. Steel production has decreased steadily over the past 30 years in the USA and with the abundance of cheap steel coming from China, this may present a national security issue in 5-10 years.This means even free trade should have it’s limits. Additionally, this would undoubtedly bring more jobs back to America than it would cost it.

9/11 edit – Additionally by offloading industries to other countries due to present day benefits provided by free trade, countries essentially consent to offloading future R&D productivity improvements in the selected industries as well. For example, how can you perform R&D on improvements in automotive technologies if you have no automotive base to start with? So for a country like Canada, when we offload automotive to Mexico, we essentially give up future R&D improvements and that’s why there’s a glut of automotive engineers who cannot find work in the GTA.

/9/11 edit

With the recent citizen’s united ruling, politicians can literally spend whatever they want on their campaigns in order to get elected. This is a ruling that I believe should’ve been passed because it allows greater transparency in viewing how much politicians raise in order to get elected. I believe it reduces corruption on a national level because now politicians don’t have to do behind closed doors wheeling and dealing with their biggest campaign contributors. You can clearly see how much money certain politicians raise and from what industries and I believe in the future it could help people avoid certain politicians who’ve taken too much money from a certain avenue. This is counter to conventional wisdom that people use in setting up contribution limits as this is supposed to even the playing field for all entrants into a political race. Personally, not sure which side is the right side to stand on but either way I appreciated that Trump was self-funding his campaign. Don’t forget to mention this was the only guy on the Republican side who was doing this.

9/11 edit – http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/graphics/2016-presidential-campaign-fundraising/ Just wanted to include a link highlighting campaign fundraising to date

Trump is on record saying that he wouldn’t start an unnecessary war (a la Bush) because he believe in communication with foreign leaders rather than dropping bombs. I don’t believe that Hillary will go her 4 years without escalating things with Iran. I base this on the fact that Hillary has received $50M in campaign contributions from Saudi & Kuwait (see that Citizen’s United ruling paying off). But again with all the flip flopping and appeasement of the radical elements of the party, this is a stance I believe Trump would renege on.

Lastly, deporting illegal immigrants is not racist. It will incentivize people to immigrate to the USA legally and would actually raise the wages of people in the industries currently dominated by illegals. It would hinder human trafficking from Central America because most people immigrate to the USA based on economic benefits. It’s reported that it costs upwards of 19k to immigrate to the USA from central American countries. If Trump follows through and deports the 10M or so illegals currently residing in the USA, those people in Central America would have to weigh the additional risk of getting deported back to their home countries, rather than just working perpetually in the USA’s shadow economy. Basically these are all valid reasons why people supported (and many still support) Trump.

Now that I’ve listed the main reasons I supported Trump, the biggest dealbreaker in not supporting him is I don’t believe in supporting someone who has a hateful message. It’s a deal-breaker and it makes Conservatism in America look bad (halo effect). In fact, it makes Conservatism all across the world look bad and stops us from transforming America’s government into one that focuses on efficiency and solving problems. Another 4 years of democratic leadership lends credence to “left-wing” policy all across the world and if Republicans don’t stand up to Trump and tell him to stop with his hate speech, Conservatism suffers and inadvertently left wing policy gets a temporary boost. America is not the land of systematic discrimination. In the past, America may have discriminated against the Germans and Japanese, however we recognized the errors in that judgement. America is not the land of discriminating against its minorities, we shouldn’t bring ourselves down to countries like Turkey, Pakistan and other countries where they actively persecute their minorities. I’ll leave you with this old saying from WW2:

First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Socialist.

Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—

Because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me.

Article was written by gtareguy (Greater Toronto area real Estate guy) . I release a new article every Friday and I write about economics, the nba and real estate in the GTA.

Last – 9/11 edit

I’ve received a lot of negative feedback regarding my Pakistan and Turkey comment but I’m just looking at facts. Since the 1950’s, minority populations in countries around the world (e.g. China, UAE, India, USA, Canada) have exploded relative to the majority population. You can just go and look up demographic charts comparing the demographics in the 50’s compared to now.

In China, the Han population has decreased relative to its 50’s figure.

In the UAE, the local Arab population has decreased relative to its 50’s figure.

In India, the Hindu population has decreased relative to its 50’s figure.

In Canada & the USA, the white populations have decreased relative to its 50’s figure.

In Pakistan & Turkey, minority populations have decreased while the majority populations have increased. This to me says that those states have state sponsored systematic discrimination in place, which they absolutely do.

If the USA passes legislation to discriminate based on religion, there is no difference morally, between them and Turkey & Pakistan.

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