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Saying the other political party has “ideological resistance to helping each other,” is ridiculous. That kind of bigoted dismissive ignorance just fuels our bitter partisan gridlock and helps nothing.

Of course are fringe nutters in the world and unfortunately some of them even get elected, but the vast majority of Americans, Republicans and Democrats, are just ordinary people who care about their kids and their neighbors, want to see everyone prosper, and even agree about a lot more than they disagree about.

But Paul Ryan, leader of the house, wants to cut social security, medicare and medicaid. He's against unemployment. He's the titular leader of 1/3 of the govt. That's not an exaggeration, those are his stated goals in multiple interviews over many years. I agree that the vast majority of Americans want those things but the leader of the house does not.

He's not just a fringe figure that managed to get elected but has no real power.

But Paul Ryan, leader of the house, wants to cut social security, medicare and medicaid.

I don't think that he's against helping people. Rather, he thinks that those programs have long term externalities which outweigh their benefits. We're talking about actual people here, not villains from a 60's cartoon.

Good point, in fact there's plenty of folks on the other side who would like to replace all these programs with a more efficient system (aka basic income).

I think that is extremely unlikely. If you were to have a scale of the volatility of security where a zero is potentially being entirely on your own and a ten is a very modest utopia where everyone can perpetually live like a student then functioning universal basic income is probably an eight. Much of Europe today would be around a five, with the Nordic countries maybe a six. The US, being unique in many regards when it comes to developed countries, would today overall be a something like a three. Without even the most basic assistance it is probably a two. You don't just go from a two to an eight overnight. It is just so far from what exists today that it is a pretty safe bet that a functioning universal basic income system is never going to happen in the US.

a zero is potentially being entirely on your own

I met some people in Alaska who were trying to approximate this.

a ten is a very modest utopia where everyone can perpetually live like a student

I guess some people historically would see it as a utopia. One's perspective changes with age and life experience. Some would find it depressing.

> I guess some people historically would see it as a utopia. One's perspective changes with age and life experience. Some would find it depressing.

Most people in the world, if not the US, spend at least five days a week working to have even far less then that. I would put a true utopia, with e.g. the good parts from unlimited free energy, at a hundred or more on that imaginary scale.

I would put a true utopia, with e.g. the good parts from unlimited free energy, at a hundred or more on that imaginary scale.

Sure. I'll have that instead of the 8-ish student life.

> half the country has an ideological resistance to helping each other

> I agree that the vast majority of Americans want those things

I had to double check that this was the same username. You seem to have disagreements with yourself. Which comment is the accurate one in your eyes? Either way, lumping half the country into one harmful ideal, then not apologizing or explicitly admitting you were initially wrong to do this or actually believing it, is not ok.

Half the country and half the people are not the same thing. Someone told me that the US voting system is designed to make sure more populated regions (e.g. big cities) don't overrule the less populated parts.

There is no mention of "half the people" and definitely not worth the pedantic differences here on a large generic statement.

I don't think it was meant to be a reversal, and I don't see it as one.

It's a claim that half the country holds inconsistent beliefs - wanting things for themselves which entail people helping each other, but being ideologically opposed to the mechanism.

You may disagree, or consider it exaggeration, but it doesn't seem to be incoherent as a claim.

That doesn't mean that Paul Ryan (or 'half the country') is against helping people. He thinks that government programs aren't the way to do it.

Then what are his ideas on the replacement? Because all we ever hear are," these are not good programs, they need replacement." We still haven't heard about the replacement.

I'm only vaguely familiar with Ryan's plans. However, he very plainly lays it all out on his site.

He is extremely clear in his language about Social Security.

"As Speaker of the House, one of my top priorities is to preserve the Social Security safety net and make sure the program remains solvent for future generations."

https://paulryan.house.gov/issues/issue/?IssueID=12227

So nothing concrete then. I've read the statement and it doesn't explain anything. Though, it appears everyone has backed away from privatization from the go-go fast days of the early aughts.

The way I see it they can either cut entitlements and piss off their retired voters or they can make the young pay more and piss off their working base.

By their statements, Republicans like Ryan say they want to save health care and social security for all. But by their actions, they just want to kill those things. As far as I see, they never work on the replacements. Like the dozens of votes to kill Obama care. Please also spend time on doing the new thing. You control the house, senate, and white house. You can pass legislation now. Just negotiate with 8 democrats in the senate and you can pass anything. But they don't, because they don't really want to replace these things.

A similar question one might ask is, before we offshore all of our labor do we have a decent, actionable plan to replace the jobs?

> The us has done a terrible job helping workers find new employment when their old factory or similar manufacturing jobs were lost to another country. I can't see that these tariffs can ever bring back many factory jobs to the us. We need a strategy to find new jobs and industries. The current plan is just not going to accomplish much of anything.

....and similar opinions identify a problem, but this manner of thinking where people say we'll "just" find new jobs (it worked out in the past few hundred years, therefore it is guaranteed to continue working indefinitely) is irresponsible, as is pointing out the simplistic isolated fact that "it's more efficient" to offshore jobs. Thoughtful, responsible leadership listens to all opinions, and considers all consequences, before rushing headfirst into incredibly transformative change in an extremely (on a relative basis) short period of time.

Indeed, many things are getting so much better for millions of people around the world. But if one takes a calm, unbiased look under the covers, some potentially very serious cracks are starting to appear economically and socially. I'm not a huge student of history, but I know enough that sometimes seemingly good and stable systems can destabilize very quickly.

The only thing that fuels partisan gridlock is a refusal to hold the parties responsible for their moral failings, including and especially Congressional Republicans' ideological resistance to helping each other.

There are a great many Republican voters who support social safety nets and yet continue voting for the party that is ideologically opposed to them. Continuing to pretend this doesn't happen, as you propose, cannot fix the problem.

(Note: My comment is in response to your comment about the parties. I cannot and will not defend GP's comment as applying to "half the country," as I think this is overbroad.)

>A second positive change would be ending requiring selling a part of any foreign venture to a local Chinese company, which I don't think was planned to change.

It was not a requirement for many many years already, and before that on case by case basis.

The list of industries in which it is still a requirement is well known.

On Qualcomm and NXP, that's kinda bizarre - nor Qualcomm, nor NXP is a listed company in China, nevertheless, China orders a block on merger of their units in USA.

But were they not be compliant, they could've fared worse: remember Sigmatel, they tried to bully a Chinese competitor with patent trolling, but instead got shipments of their chips tracelessly vanishing at Chinese customs. That was a death sentence for them as a company: it doesn't matter that they were selling chips to foreign companies for as the final product was assembled in China

> But, and it's a big but, lets not forget that trade between countries has a good chance of reducing the potential of wars between them.

Was this ever true? The old saying, "If goods don't cross borders, then troops soon will."

Europe was very commercially integrated before WW1.

I think nukes are what will prevent a war.

Nukes cannot prevent war as long as military higher ups believe that a nuclear war is "winable"/surviveable, and seeing as they get special bunkers in the event of said nuclear war, I don't think they will smarten up any time soon

I really believe that extensive international trade between the us and china will have a good tampering effect on potential war between the two countries.

The article could be interpreted thus: Extensive international trade between the us and china will have a good tampering effect on trade war between the two countries.

Chinese building of military bases in the south china sea against the wishes of your neighbors and and asserting your power won't help anyone to trust china

The long term plan of US strategic planners is to keep China bottled up behind their coastal waters with the help of Taiwan, Korea, Japan, and other allies and neutral parties who want to avoid Chinese hegemony. As a distant hegemon, the US is much preferred. On the other hand, China wants to realize the Greater Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere envisioned by pre-WWII imperial Japan, but with China as the head and local hegemon.