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Trump is going to ruin the American economy. Attack universities by discouraging foreign students. Cut federal funding for research. Encourage political attack

Trump is going to ruin the American economy. Attack universities by discouraging foreign students. Cut federal funding for research. Encourage political attacks on universities. The most damaging will be not forgiving student loans from people who went to scam universities, like Trump university. What Trump and others don’t recognize is that the American university system is a distributed system of factories that manufacture knowledge, innovation and the future. Just look at self driving cars. Much of the tech and the talent came from various universities.

gervase 9y ago
I absolutely believe that this is recognized, and is considered by some to be the precise point of this assault. A poorly-educated workforce drives down wages, speeds automation of low-skill jobs, decreases social mobility, and makes for a more predictable and easily-manipulated electorate. The few remaining high-skill, high-pay jobs can be filled by those who can afford to foot the entire bill for 12-18 years of private education. It is not seen as a "ruination" of the economy, merely a continuation of existing policies designed to "reshape" the economy into a less-equitable form. It only seems like ruin to the majority on the wrong side of those changes. I believe someone else on HN referred to these changes are "corporate feudalism", which I think is apt.
- townesok 9y ago
  Yep. It seems obvious that one party is actively making education more difficult to obtain to increase a demographic[1] advantage. I'm not sure how to "prove" this. And anyway there's way too much plausible deniability to ever get anywhere. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016#Voter_demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...
whatever_dude 9y ago
What the current White House administration is doing right now is akin to the short-term-gain-focused changes one would do in a company to please investors who want to short: * Remove or shrink employee (citizens) benefits * Stop investing on R&D (education), just ride on what you currently have * Alienate potential customer base and partners (other nations) * Drive away top performing employees (citizens, entrepreneurs) * Make sure your company is not attractive to new hires (alienate immigrants) * Increase long term debt by giving bonuses to already rich people (tax breaks to millionaires) This is going to come back to bite the country back in a decade or so, and it. Is. Not. Going. To. Be. Pretty.
- ataturk 9y ago
  I wholeheartedly disagree with your appraisal. But feel free to invest your money based on those assumptions because I'll be happy to take it from you. How is Trump removing citizen bnefits? Healthcare costs spiraled out of control under Obama. 100%+ increases! R&D? I have no idea where you're getting that from. Government shouldn't fund every single thing that every single person wants. Alienating other nations? No. Trump has made it clear that Americans will put our own interests front and center going forwards. Obama never once stood up for this country. Never. Once. Drive away top performing employees? Please. The rich people in SV and NYC are getting richer every second no matter who is in office. Unattractive to new hires? Putting American citizens interests at the front of the line. Increase long term debt. Stay tuned on that one, I have an inkling that the debt is going to fall soon. What is not going to be pretty are all the snowflake meltdowns over the next few years when each of you is proven wrong continuously.
- please_be_real 9y ago
  you realize everyone got tax breaks and not just millionaires? literally every citizen in america? the fact that you lie about that point makes your entire post worthless
throwaway7312 9y ago
>> Trump and others don’t recognize is that the American university system is a distributed system of factories that manufacture knowledge, innovation and the future. There is another side to this. And that is that the American university system has a distinct political agenda that is opposed to the interests of the Trump-supporting half of the American electorate. It is a bad thing for innovation when there are fewer smart people immigrating into the U.S. However, when you have a system of institutions that adopt adversarial political positions toward a large chunk of the electorate, you should expect that at some point you will end up in a situation where the electorate elects leaders who work, to some degree, against what the winning side of the voting public regard as powerful institutions firmly in the hands of political opponents. There is not, unfortunately, an easy solution to the adversarial relationship between academia and half of America. The shift toward a mono-cultural academia (from a political standpoint) has occurred over decades; the left is now firmly entrenched in American universities and unlikely to relinquish its position any time soon. We can't ban politics from universities either; you will never get politics out of any organization in which humans are involved. We are distinctly political animals. So perhaps the focus should be on returning academia to a more politically balanced setup... that we might no longer end up in scenarios like today, where half the voting public views academia as a shining part of the leadership of progressive society, and the other half views it as a once-great former pride of our country, sadly fallen and increasingly adversarial. So long as the universities remain a bastion of the American left and an enemy of the American right, they will continue to feast during the years in which the left holds power, and continue to starve during the years when it does not.
- forapurpose 9y ago
  > the American university system has a distinct political agenda that is opposed to the interests of the Trump-supporting half of the American electorate. The ideological conservative movement repeats this claim, but it doesn't make it so. Can you substantiate it? Can you define what it means? Like any ideological movement, there can be no debate or discussion; anyone who fails to drink the kool-ade and promote the ideology must be silenced. It can't be that the facts simply are inconvenient to the ideology, that reasonable people can disagree, or that a member of the movement could learn something. The ideology is correct and those who don't accept it are apostates. They'd done that with climate scientists, journalists, the entire State Department, universities, and more.

gervase 9y ago

I absolutely believe that this is recognized, and is considered by some to be the precise point of this assault. A poorly-educated workforce drives down wages, speeds automation of low-skill jobs, decreases social mobility, and makes for a more predictable and easily-manipulated electorate. The few remaining high-skill, high-pay jobs can be filled by those who can afford to foot the entire bill for 12-18 years of private education. It is not seen as a "ruination" of the economy, merely a continuation of existing policies designed to "reshape" the economy into a less-equitable form. It only seems like ruin to the majority on the wrong side of those changes. I believe someone else on HN referred to these changes are "corporate feudalism", which I think is apt.

townesok 9y ago
Yep. It seems obvious that one party is actively making education more difficult to obtain to increase a demographic[1] advantage. I'm not sure how to "prove" this. And anyway there's way too much plausible deniability to ever get anywhere. [1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_2016#Voter_demographics https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_ele...

whatever_dude 9y ago

What the current White House administration is doing right now is akin to the short-term-gain-focused changes one would do in a company to please investors who want to short: * Remove or shrink employee (citizens) benefits * Stop investing on R&D (education), just ride on what you currently have * Alienate potential customer base and partners (other nations) * Drive away top performing employees (citizens, entrepreneurs) * Make sure your company is not attractive to new hires (alienate immigrants) * Increase long term debt by giving bonuses to already rich people (tax breaks to millionaires) This is going to come back to bite the country back in a decade or so, and it. Is. Not. Going. To. Be. Pretty.

ataturk 9y ago
I wholeheartedly disagree with your appraisal. But feel free to invest your money based on those assumptions because I'll be happy to take it from you. How is Trump removing citizen bnefits? Healthcare costs spiraled out of control under Obama. 100%+ increases! R&D? I have no idea where you're getting that from. Government shouldn't fund every single thing that every single person wants. Alienating other nations? No. Trump has made it clear that Americans will put our own interests front and center going forwards. Obama never once stood up for this country. Never. Once. Drive away top performing employees? Please. The rich people in SV and NYC are getting richer every second no matter who is in office. Unattractive to new hires? Putting American citizens interests at the front of the line. Increase long term debt. Stay tuned on that one, I have an inkling that the debt is going to fall soon. What is not going to be pretty are all the snowflake meltdowns over the next few years when each of you is proven wrong continuously.
please_be_real 9y ago
you realize everyone got tax breaks and not just millionaires? literally every citizen in america? the fact that you lie about that point makes your entire post worthless

throwaway7312 9y ago

>> Trump and others don’t recognize is that the American university system is a distributed system of factories that manufacture knowledge, innovation and the future. There is another side to this. And that is that the American university system has a distinct political agenda that is opposed to the interests of the Trump-supporting half of the American electorate. It is a bad thing for innovation when there are fewer smart people immigrating into the U.S. However, when you have a system of institutions that adopt adversarial political positions toward a large chunk of the electorate, you should expect that at some point you will end up in a situation where the electorate elects leaders who work, to some degree, against what the winning side of the voting public regard as powerful institutions firmly in the hands of political opponents. There is not, unfortunately, an easy solution to the adversarial relationship between academia and half of America. The shift toward a mono-cultural academia (from a political standpoint) has occurred over decades; the left is now firmly entrenched in American universities and unlikely to relinquish its position any time soon. We can't ban politics from universities either; you will never get politics out of any organization in which humans are involved. We are distinctly political animals. So perhaps the focus should be on returning academia to a more politically balanced setup... that we might no longer end up in scenarios like today, where half the voting public views academia as a shining part of the leadership of progressive society, and the other half views it as a once-great former pride of our country, sadly fallen and increasingly adversarial. So long as the universities remain a bastion of the American left and an enemy of the American right, they will continue to feast during the years in which the left holds power, and continue to starve during the years when it does not.

forapurpose 9y ago
> the American university system has a distinct political agenda that is opposed to the interests of the Trump-supporting half of the American electorate. The ideological conservative movement repeats this claim, but it doesn't make it so. Can you substantiate it? Can you define what it means? Like any ideological movement, there can be no debate or discussion; anyone who fails to drink the kool-ade and promote the ideology must be silenced. It can't be that the facts simply are inconvenient to the ideology, that reasonable people can disagree, or that a member of the movement could learn something. The ideology is correct and those who don't accept it are apostates. They'd done that with climate scientists, journalists, the entire State Department, universities, and more.