Doesn't the Hillary gotcha political ad featuring Trump with Letterman actually reveal that Trump, by actual experience, knows better than most the extent of the outsourcing problem?

I’m not sure I’m following, so bear with me here.

You mean Hillary hasn’t considered that the ad may vet Trump as someone who understands more than most about outsourcing?

So you’re saying viewers will get to that point, but not take it one step further and realize that the best person to fix a problem isn’t someone who is an active, willing participant who profits from the problem?

If that’s it, I don’t think the ad is going to make anyone new view Trump as the solution to outsourcing. Whether or not it’s a problem is a whole different debate, but no one is going to view that ad and think Trump is the person to fight that battle for them.

@funkdaddy I haven’t seen the ad, but Trump’s schtick is that because he does benefit, he knows how to fix it.

The ad shows a conflict of interest. Would Trump be willing to take acts as president that would cause him to make less money? Nothing that he has done indicates that he would. He repeatedly proclaims the importance to him of making lots of money.

The ad

Hillary is using the tri3ed and true emotional argument that anyone that manufactures overseas is an evil person. It’s simple and it appeals to the emotions. Unfortunately the counter argument is more difficult and requires you to think it through. Manufacturing is done overseas because it is profitable to do so. Taxes, regulation, and wages in the US drive up costs to the point that we simply aren’t competitive. Taxes should be competitive, our Corp taxes are the highest in the world and should be at least cut in half. Regulation is obscene. A simple cost-benefit analysis on new regulations would bring them back in line but we ram through every hair-brained scheme we can think of and when it doesn’t work we simply pass more. Those two changes alone should even the scales but if you believe wages are still a problem, a little better trade deal would even that score as well.

Corporations need a level playing field and if we had one manufacturing would work here as well as anywhere. Democrats need a ‘Bad Guy’. They have been offering up Corporations as the Bad Guy for years to cover up their incompetence. Hillary’s ad is a prime example of that. Those that support her will cheer, while those that don’t will jeer. Such is the state of politics in these United States.

@Jaxk – Come on man, the effective corporate tax rate has been proven again and again to not be above average and usually well below. Quoting marginal tax rates is like quoting MSRP, it means nothing. Compare corporate profits over time to corporate tax income in the US.

The primary component that pushes business overseas is labor costs. I don’t think it’s evil, I think it’s going to eventually get the world to a better place actually. But this whole corporate tax burden argument needs to go away. As for regulation I doubt anything other than worker protections would push a simple business like clothing manufacture overseas.

If you want to cut the rate in half, and think marginal rates matter, propose a half rate on the full amount of profits without loopholes and see how many businesses actually support it.

@funkdaddy – You are the target audience for Hillary’s ad. The marginal rate for corporations starts at 15% for the first dollar and quickly escalates to 39% over $100,000. In fact our median taxes paid are 10% higher than other industrialized countries and 25% higher than third world countries. Is it any wonder we would move manufacturing to Bangladesh.

As for safety regulations, they are a pittance in the over all scheme of things. I’m constantly amazed at how much the banking regulations cost me and I’m not a bank. We’ve passed regulations on everything. We’ve passed regulations on Goat Herding in 2011.

As for loopholes, I doubt you know what a loophole is. Democrats never point to any, they just scream “LOOPHOLES”.

I guess while my assumption is that you’ve read enough to know better, your assumption is that I haven’t. I don’t have any desire to argue with you, just correct obviously false and misleading statements.

Keep trucking Grumpy, but I think you know better.

I know about taxes and I know about regulation. I deal with them every day. Unfortunately a nebulous term like ‘loopholes’ can’t be argued unless we know on what a loophole is.

What, exactly, would a level playing field look like? Would it look like China – where wages and regulations are so poor that workers are often driven to suicide because of inhuman working conditions?

I think that ad is exactly what I said. People who support Trump don’t care he manufactures overseas. He never said he doesn’t, he said he understand why corporations do.

@Jaxk The actual tax rate, what corporations actually pay, is much lower, something like 12 or 14%. I’d have to look up the exact number, my memory fails me. The “rate” means almost nothing. It’s the same with personal taxes, people think everyone pays 50% in taxes, but they don’t. The average middle and upper class person pays about 22% federal taxes, and the super rich pay 17% on all earnings. The 17% is partly because of capital gains tax, but fat other 22% covers the majority of people, because after deductions, and some simple tax write-offs, that’s about where people wind up, even if they are straight salary. They are in a higher bracket or “rate” which is 33% above $250k I think? And, as high as 39% above $400k, more or less, but the rate doesn’t explain the whole story. The tax code is a game of numbers. Sometimes I think the game is necessary, and sometimes I’m disgusted by it.

@Darth_Algar I don’t think @Jaxk was talking about changing wages.

@JLeslie – I understand the difference between tax rates and effective tax rates. Here is an article that talks about effective tax rates. Those are what is actually paid in the US vs what is actually paid elsewhere in the world. If you want to understand why someone would manufacture their ties in Bangladesh, look at the comparison without the small country bias. Also look at the corporate tax rate schedule and you can see that it escalates much faster than the individual tax rates. It gets to 39% above $100K penalizing small business much more so than individuals.

As for wages, we are much more productive than most third world countries. The productivity we have will support higher wages but not higher wages and excessive regulation and higher taxes. There are some labor intensive industries that wages are the driving force such as customer service telephone support. It will be difficult to compete in that industry but in manufacturing labor is only one piece of the puzzle. The problem is that the democrats have been pushing the idea that wages are the only reason a company would move overseas for years. They’ve said it so often that everyone believes it as fact. It’s not.

Tax loopholes are the same way. That term has been used so often that no one feels they need to explain it, just say it and everyone takes it as fact. The most common complaint I hear about tax loopholes pertains to depreciation which most people don’t understand. Depreciation schedules were invented to get the government taxes paid upfront while the business expenses are recovered over time. For instance if I have a business that makes $25K in profit but over the course of the year I spend $25K (depreciated over 10 years) on plant and material. At the end of the year, I have no cash, zero, zip, nada. Yet I because I can only take $2500 in expense, I owe taxes on $22,500 in income. I didn’t have any income. I have to beg borrow or steal, the the money to pay taxes. If however, I’m allowed to expense the $25K I made no money and I pay no taxes. Democrats would call that a loophole, I call it common sense.