Message from @Sh0t
Discord ID: 645821718497198101
I knew that was not going to happen based on his advisors
McMullin wasn't any better there, but at least he wouldn't be a foreign operative, something I suspected about Clinton and Trump
This reads like a Tom Clancy novel
Taleb misjudged Trump on one of the most important tail risks he cares about, the environment
I dont see how corporate and upper class tax cuts de leverage institutions large enough to need social bail outs (his whole point in antifragile, black swan and his most recent book)
He didnt misjudge trump, he ignored that tail risk
I can't quite parse that
Additionally please explain how pro corporate actions in the part of the FTC, just to name one trump stacked agency, lead to derisked institutions. The support of hegemony and monopoly seems counter to everything taleb said
Trump has only one real legislative achievement and has done nothing economically but cut taxes and deregulate corporations
Trump hasn't done anything on that front, things are worse and probably getter worser fasterer
Getter worser
Okay we are done here :)
Trump hasnt cut taxes is a bold stance
As is claiming he hasnt deregulated industries
Nice try
There was a tax cut for some, a tax raise for others
SALT deduction change was a tax raise on some
Doubly, the pressure on the fed to lower rates puts us in a situation where recession mandates fiscal, as opposed to monetary policy. Essentially mandating corporate bail outs
Fuck taleb and fuck trump
I'm not a fan of the Trump policies so I can't really explain why they were taken, but I suppose they could argue the corporate tax repatriation could have been used to pay off some debt, but I haven't seen numbers on those effects beyond the lack of wage growth
Repatriation =/= taxable
That's the point if repatriation
That why it was not repatriated
Cool beans though
Part of Trump's explanation for the TCJA was to encourage overseas held corporate money to come back, hence the reduction to 21%
```Before the new tax law, companies kept much of their overseas profit offshore to avoid a 35% tax that kicked in when they brought the money back to the U.S. The Republican tax law set a one-time 15.5% tax rate on cash and 8% on non-cash or illiquid assets, regardless of where the profits sat.```
```Corporations brought $100.2 billion of overseas profits back to the U.S. in the first quarter, marking $876.8 billion that has returned since Congress overhauled the international tax system and prodded companies to repatriate more.
The cash that has come back to the U.S. falls short of the $4 trillion President Donald Trump said would return as a result of the 2017 tax law. Investment banks and think tanks have estimated that U.S. corporations actually held $1.5 trillion to $2.5 trillion in offshore funds at the time the law was enacted.```
Not as much as promised, but some of that is repatriation
it didn't translate to much wage growth, it mostly went to buybacks, so it was a silly gimmick to pump the stock market if anything
So Taleb applauds Trump for trying to avoid war with Iran. I think destroying the nuclear deal with Iran was on the right path to that anyway so 2 steps back, 1 step forward on that one
@AlphaUK to understand what I said about the Euro and immigration, read this prediction of what problems the EuroZone would have in 1992, particlarly the last paragraph:
https://www.lrb.co.uk/v14/n19/wynne-godley/maastricht-and-all-that
1992?
I didn't read all of it because it was hurting my brain a little bit but the last paragraph was pretty interesting
yea he predicted what would happen
> The 2003 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) deregulated all agricultural trade, except for corn and dairy products. The Mexican government complains that since NAFTA’s initial implementation in 1994, the United States has raised farm subsidies by 300 percent. As a result, Mexican corn farmers, who comprise the majority of the country’s agricultural sector, experienced drastic declines in the domestic price of their product. It should come as no surprise, then, that the United States began to experience an influx of Mexicans looking for employment in the latter half of the 1990s.
> “An Ethnographic Study of the Social Context of Migrant Health in the United States.” In the study we learn that 95 percent of agricultural workers in the United States were born in Mexico and 52 percent are undocumented.
> Out of all the crops that farmers grow, the government only subsidizes five of them. They are corn, soybeans, wheat, cotton, and rice.
> Corn is the nation's biggest crop. Over 15 billion bushels were grown in 2017, with 15% exported. The corn belt is Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Missouri, Nebraska, and Kansas. A third of Iowa's economy depends on farming. California produces the most food by value. Most of it is almonds, wine, dairy, walnuts, and pistachios. These aren't subsidized.