TRUMP reminds me of All Might from Hero Academia. Any other Trump fans?

Slashing Obamacare: Pros: Obamacare- The biggest benefit of the ACA is that it slows the rise of health care costs. It does this by providing insurance for millions and making preventive care free. This means people receive treatment before they need expensive emergency room services. In 2016, the cost of health care services increased 1.2 percent for the year. That's much less than the price increase of 4 percent in 2004. It requires all insurance plans to cover 10 essential health benefits. These include treatment for mental health, addiction, and chronic diseases. Without these services, many patients wind up in the emergency room. Those costs are passed onto Medicaid and therefore the taxpayer. Insurance companies can no longer deny anyone coverage for pre-existing conditions. They can't drop them or raise premiums if beneficiaries get sick. It eliminates lifetime and annual coverage limits. Insurance companies used this to contain costs to $1 million per year. Beneficiaries who exceeded that limit had to pay 100 percent of costs. Children can stay on their parents’ health insurance plans up to age 26. As of 2012, more than 3 million previously uninsured young people were added. This increased profit for insurance companies. They receive more premiums from these healthy individuals. States must set up insurance exchanges or use the federal government's exchange. Either method makes it easier to shop for plans. The middle class (earning up to 400 percent of the poverty level) receive tax credits on their premiums. It expands Medicaid to 138 percent of the federal poverty level. It provides this coverage to adults without children for the first time. It eliminates the Medicare "doughnut hole" gap in coverage by 2020. Businesses with more than 50 employees must offer health insurance. They receive tax credits to help with the costs. It lowers the budget deficit by $143 billion by 2022 according to the Congressional Budget Office. It does this in three ways. First, it reduces the government's health care costs. Second, it raises taxes on some businesses and higher income families. Third, it shifts cost burdens to health care providers and pharmacy companies. Cons: Obamacare- Three million to 5 million people lost their employment-based health insurance. Many businesses found it more cost-effective to pay the penalty and let their employees purchase insurance plans on the exchanges. Other small businesses find they can get better plans through the state-run exchanges. Thirty million people never had company plans and relied on private health insurance. Insurance companies canceled many of their plans because their policies didn't cover the ACA's 10 essential benefits. For those who lost those cut-rate plans, the costs of replacing them are high. The ACA requires services that many people don't need, like maternity care. Increased coverage raised overall health care costs in the short term. That's because many people received preventive care and testing for the first time. It was expensive to treat illnesses that had been ignored for decades. The ACA taxed those who didn't purchase insurance. But many avoided the tax through an ever-expanding list of exemptions. Four million people chose to pay the tax rather than pay for coverage. The Congressional Budget Office estimated they paid $54 billion. In 2013, the ACA raised the income tax rate for 1 million individuals with incomes above $200,000. It also raised taxes for 4 million couples filing joint returns on incomes exceeding $250,000. The rate increased from 1.45 percent to 2.35 percent on income above the threshold. They also pay an additional 3.8 percent Medicare tax. That applies to the lesser of income from dividends, capital gains, rent and royalties or income above the threshold. Starting in 2013, medical device manufacturers and importers paid a 2.3 percent excise tax. Note: This tax was suspended for 2016-2018. Indoor tanning services paid a 10 percent excise tax. This might discourage those businesses from hiring new employees. Starting in 2013, families can deduct medical expenses that exceed 10 percent of income. Before, they could deduct any expenses that exceeded 7.5 percent of income. Pharmaceutical companies pay an extra $84.8 billion in fees between 2013 and 2023. That pays for closing the "doughnut hole" in Medicare Part D. Drug costs could rise if the companies pass this onto consumers. In 2020, insurance companies will be assessed a 40 percent excise tax on "Cadillac" health plans. These are plans with annual premiums exceeding $10,200 for individuals or $27,500 for families. Many of these plans are for people in high-risk pools, such as older workers or those with dangerous jobs. Most of the tax will be passed onto the companies and employees, raising premiums and deductibles. (Sources: "Federal Budget Bill to Delay ACA’s Cadillac Tax & Suspend Two Other Taxes," Kistler Tiffany Benefits, December 21, 2015. "Cadillac Tax Explained," Kaiser Health News, March 18, 2010. "What Obamacare Means for Taxes," Smart Money, June 28, 2012.)

Deregulating business: In his State of the Union Address, President Donald Trump once again touted his administration’s efforts at deregulation. Trump has frequently suggested that eliminating regulations leads to economic growth and greater prosperity. But he is wrong that the economy has been booming under his watch, and he is obscuring the intent of his efforts to strip important safeguards for workers. Job growth in 2017 continued, but was the weakest it’s been since 2010, and real wage growth was tepid. And, far from cutting burdensome or outdated requirements, Trump has been attacking regulations that protect workers’ pay, retirement, and safety in order to pad company profits. While Trump frequently crows about the number of regulations he will cut, and has even promised to reduce regulation to pre-1960s levels—a time before mandatory seat belts and air bags or protections to ensure clear air and water—he does not frequently discuss the specifics of his efforts. Doing so would reveal that deregulation is simply a code word for letting big businesses cut corners at everyone else’s expense. Perhaps the clearest example of whose side Trump is on is his attack on overtime protections. The U.S. Department of Labor sets requirements to make sure that people who work overtime are paid for it. The Obama administration modernized outdated rules to make sure that people in the middle class received overtime protections, benefiting 12.5 million workers. But the Trump administration quietly abandoned the rule, with no fanfare, ribbon-cutting ceremony, or presidential tweet, seeking to hide what amounts to a $1.2 billion pay cut for workers each year (the Center for American Progress and Economic Policy Institute have a tracker that shows in real time how much workers have already lost to date). This is not Trump’s only attack on regulations that protect people’s pay. His administration recently proposed a new rule that would allow restaurant owners to steal their workers’ tips as long as they pay them minimum wage. Using a conservative estimate of the extent to which owners would take Trump up on his offer, the proposal would cost workers $5.8 billion in stolen tips each year. Trump also worked with Congress to repeal a rule that would limit violations of labor laws by government contractors; by scrapping that protection, workers will lose millions in wages each year and face more dangerous working conditions. Beyond the attacks on wages, the Trump administration has also been working to eliminate a rule, the fiduciary rule, that protects people’s retirement savings from unscrupulous financial advisors. The rule requires financial advisors to act in the interest of their clients—in its absence, people are often steered into investments that provide large fees to advisors, at the cost of lower returns and riskier products for investors. All told, people lose $17 billion each year as a result of financial advisors who care more about their own bottom line than the welfare of their customers. And these regulatory rollbacks are just the tip of the iceberg. Among other rollbacks, Trump has gotten rid of rules that keep Internet service providers from selling customers’ browser history without their consent and that prevent large corporations from stripping customers of their right to challenge fraudulent actions in court, and is trying to make it harder for students to obtain debt forgiveness when they have been defrauded by a university. These deregulatory efforts are not seeking to create jobs. They are not aimed at improving the lives of middle-class Americans or spurring economic growth. Rather, they seek to eliminate important safeguards in order to encourage an economy in which it’s easier for big businesses to make money by cheating their clients and stealing from their workers. So the next time you hear Trump talk about cutting regulations, hold onto your wallet: because when it comes to Trump, one man’s “red tape” is everybody else’s livelihood.

Bringing factories (Manufacturing jobs) back: President Trump’s pledge during the presidential campaign to help manufacturing workers by reducing imports from China and other countries sounded half-baked. His administration’s decision on Monday to impose import tariffs on solar energy cells and panels and on washing machines makes clear just how difficult it will be to deliver on that promise. The move will most likely raise the price of solar panels and washing machines in coming years and yet may not even lead to many more jobs. That outcome might sound paradoxical, but analysts say it’s due to changes underway in both industries well before Mr. Trump took office. Tariffs will not be high enough to create new manufacturing jobs because the cost of production in countries like Malaysia and South Korea will remain significantly lower than in the United States. Also, American factories would probably be highly automated and require far fewer workers. Meanwhile, the higher tariffs — and thus higher prices — for solar cells and panels will reduce demand from residential customers, businesses and utilities. That will hurt American businesses that install panels and produce equipment used in solar systems. The Solar Energy Industries Association estimates that the tariffs could cost that industry 23,000 jobs. Whirlpool, which sells more washing machines in the United States than any other company, says that the Trump administration’s decision, which will apply tariffs to imports from most countries, will lead to the creation of 200 jobs at a factory in Ohio, in anticipation of increased sales. But foreign appliance manufacturers like Samsung and LG have already built or are building factories for washing machines in the United States. So any advantage Whirlpool might enjoy could fade away as a new Samsung factory in South Carolina and an LG factory under construction in Tennessee begin churning out machines, creating more competition. The Trump administration imposed the tariffs in response to complaints by domestic manufacturers — Suniva and SolarWorld in the solar case and Whirlpool in the washing machine case — that competition from a surge of imports had hurt their businesses. The tariffs on solar products last four years starting at 30 percent, falling to 15 percent in the fourth year. Each year, the first 2.5 gigawatts of solar cells imported into the country will be exempt from the tariffs. The washing machine tariffs last three years and start at 20 percent on the first 1.2 million units and 50 percent for the rest, declining to 16 percent and 40 percent in the third year. The tariffs, though, could have a domino effect. The Trump administration imposed them under a federal trade law that allows the president to protect, or “safeguard,” domestic industries hurt by imports. Other countries will very likely challenge these tariffs at the World Trade Organization and seek to impose retaliatory tariffs against American exports. Mr. Trump is hardly the first president to use tariffs to help domestic industries. Barack Obama and George W. Bush took similar actions to help the tire and steel businesses respectively. But those presidents also tried to strike trade agreements with other countries, with varying degrees of success. Mr. Trump seems uninterested in the painstaking diplomacy and negotiation such agreements require. Just look at his threats in recent months to withdraw the United States from the 24-year-old North American Free Trade Agreement should Canada and Mexico not quickly agree to changes his administration is demanding. The White House needs to put forward a coherent and convincing trade policy if Mr. Trump wants to do right by his working-class supporters. The current piecemeal approach is not working on behalf of American consumers, nor is it likely to put anyone to work.

Withdrawing from TPP: resident Donald Trump has recently reversed himself, endorsing Article 5 of the NATO Treaty and accurately calling the House of Representatives health care legislation “mean.” He should also reconsider U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a decision that was made with no serious analysis by the new administration of its significant economic and geopolitical benefits for the United States. Exiting the agreement was apparently based on five key assertions Trump made during the presidential campaign, none of which were accurate. 1) “The number of jobs and amount of wealth and income the United States have given away in so short a time is staggering, likely unprecedented. And the situation is about to get drastically worse if the Trans-Pacific Partnership is not stopped.” —Donald Trump, “Disappearing Middle Class Needs Better Deal on Trade,” USA Today, March 14, 2016. Critics of TPP cite a Tufts University study claiming the agreement would cut 448,000 U.S. jobs and reduce American economic growth. However, many economists, including TPP skeptics, note that the study ignored the pact’s benefits, including lower consumer prices and job-generating foreign investment in U.S. businesses. The Tufts researchers therefore absurdly concluded that TPP would have reduced employment in every country in the world. Using more realistic assumptions, the U.S. International Trade Commission (USITC) and the Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE) estimated that TPP would have modestly increased U.S. annual real income by $57.3 billion (0.23 percent) and $131 billion (0.5 percent), respectively. Other TPP opponents argue that while the agreement’s overall effects would have been slightly positive, manufacturing workers would have suffered greatly by losing their jobs to foreign competition. Even USITC models estimate that manufacturing employment would have been 0.2 percent smaller than it will be without TPP, although the U.S. economy would have had 128,000 more total jobs by 2032. However, USITC also projects that manufacturers of products the United States exports abroad, including passenger vehicles and apparel, would see employment gains. USITC economist David Riker observes that jobs in these “export-intensive industries” pay more than other positions. According to PIIE models, the movement of workers to more competitive sectors would have increased real wages by 0.5 percent. Moreover, the PIIE study shows that TPP-related job displacements would have been less than 0.1 percent of existing “job churn,” or temporary unemployment as workers go to other companies. The United States should seek to empower workers to take better jobs with adjustment assistance and training programs, but canceling TPP weakens the U.S. economy without addressing the problems many workers face. 2) “[The TPP] would make it easier for our trading competitors to ship cheap subsidized goods into U.S. markets — while allowing foreign countries to continue putting barriers in front of our exports.… The TPP creates a new international commission that makes decisions the American people can’t veto.” — Donald Trump, “Declaring America’s Economic Independence,” speech, June 28, 2016. TPP would have accomplished the opposite and altered unfair foreign business climates without changing U.S. policy. The agreement would have eliminated over 11,000 tariffs on goods the United States exports by 2030, which, according to PIIE models, would have increased annual U.S. exports by $357 billion by that year. TPP also would have limited the ability of foreign government-run businesses (state-owned enterprises, or SOEs) to subsidize products and undercut U.S. firms with cheap goods. Additionally, it would have addressed child labor practices and introduced minimum wages in Vietnam and other member nations, making it easier for U.S. workers to compete. At the same time, TPP would have had minimal effects on existing U.S. practices.TPP would have had minimal effects on existing U.S. practices. Eighty percent of U.S. imports from TPP countries face no tariffs, and for many that do, such as Japanese autos, tariffs would not have expired for at least 25 years. Far from a bad deal, TPP would have forced member states to reform their markets with few U.S. concessions. Objections that TPP would enable “corporate attacks on our laws” and undermine U.S. sovereignty are similarly misplaced. These arguments refer to the pact’s Investor-State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) system, which is actually a measure allowing U.S. firms to seek remedies for unfair treatment abroad using panels of independent arbiters instead of potentially ineffective foreign courts. For this reason, the United States pushed against resistance from other nations to include ISDS in TPP. Since it entered trade agreements with ISDS systems included, the United States has not lost a case. Moreover, TPP’s Article 9.16 specifically grants member states the right to “ensure that investment activity in its territory is undertaken in a manner sensitive to environmental, health or other regulatory objectives.” In effect, ISDS would curb anti-free market practices that hurt U.S. businesses, not critical laws that protect ordinary citizens. 3) “[The TPP is] a deal that was designed for China to come in, as they always do, through the back door and totally take advantage of everyone.” — Donald Trump, Republican primary debate, Nov. 10, 2015. TPP excluded China, granting the United States economic and strategic advantages. PIIE models estimate that China’s economy would have been $18 billion smaller had TPP passed. It would also have been difficult for China to join after-the-fact; according to Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) researchers, TPP’s rules limiting SOEs and protectionism would have forced China to adopt substantial free-market reforms before entering. Critics claiming China would have exploited TPP’s rules of origin to profit from TPP products ignore that rules for sectors like apparel would have been tougher than current standards and that the United States would have maintained pre-TPP automotive tariffs after the deal’s passage. Exclusion from a trade area worth 40 percent of global GDP would have slowed China’s economy. TPP was also a crucial measure to counter China’s use of economic tools for geopolitical purposes.TPP was also a crucial measure to counter China’s use of economic tools for geopolitical purposes. China uses such methods of geoeconomic coercion, including trade restrictions and its SOEs’ activities abroad, to punish countries opposing its aim of regional hegemony. Without TPP, the United States will be less equipped to protect its allies from Beijing’s pressure. Furthermore, U.S. allies in Asia saw TPP as a symbol of the U.S. commitment to the region. Without it, they are more likely to increasingly doubt America’s willingness to defend them and therefore be tempted to acquiesce to China’s hegemonic agenda. Withdrawing from TPP also helps China’s campaign to negotiate its Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), designed to be a rival regional trade deal excluding the United States. It also gives China a greater ability to build infrastructure in Asia as part of its massive and geopolitically based Belt Road initiative. Both of these will increase China’s geoeconomic leverage over its neighbors at America’s strategic expense.

Forcing congress to act on DACA: I personally don't see why trump supporters are so thrilled about this one. I've tried looking into it's pros but it's just a bunch of kids and adults who for the most part didn't know they were illegal citizens because they were brought here as kids by illegal citizens. It gave them extra time to file for legal citizenship. So turning them away didn't solve a drug issue or secure jobs for legal citizen, it just turned people we may have known away to a country they may not know. Since it was listed on this thread as a positive I'm truly curious why Trump supporters see it that way.

Holding the VA accountable: Employee firings at the Department of Veterans Affairs jumped in the second half of 2017 after new accountability legislation was signed into law last summer, results that administration officials insist show a renewed commitment to cleaning up the agency. But critics say more firings don’t mean better results for veterans, and the rising rate of dismissals may not be significantly different than past years for the massive government bureaucracy. “I don’t think this has accomplished what they want it to accomplish,” said Marilyn Park, legislative representative for the American Federation of Government Employees. In June, President Donald Trump signed into law the Veterans Affairs Accountability and Whistleblower Protection Act, legislation he has subsequently touted as one of his biggest accomplishments during his first year in office. Among other provisions, the legislation shortened the appeal time for VA employees protesting their dismissals and expanded VA leadership’s ability to remove most workers, including senior executives, for misconduct or poor performance. “Outdated laws kept the government from holding those who failed our veterans accountable,” he said at the signing ceremony. “Today, we are finally changing those laws.” From February to the end of July — before the new rules were put in place — 566 VA workers were fired (an average of about 94 a month). From August to mid-December, that figure rose to 756, or about 168 a month. VA officials called that a sign of progress. “The (legislation) is one of the most significant federal civil service reforms in decades and is helping instill across the department the type of workforce accountability veterans and taxpayers deserve,” VA spokesman Curt Cashour said in a statement. The current VA administration is the first to publicly post specifics of employee firings online, a move officials said would help transparency and accountability. The difference in how those reports were handled in the past make exact comparisons for firing rates difficult. But even with the recent increase, the total number of firings at the 300,000-plus-person department appears to be in line with past years. In 2015, then VA Secretary Bob McDonald said about 1,500 employees were fired from the department, an average of about 125 individuals a month. In fiscal 2013 (which ran from October 2013 to September 2014, including the VA wait time scandal of spring 2014) department records indicated that more than 2,200 employees were fired, an average around 183 a month. Eight senior VA leaders were dismissed in 2017, four before the new law was put into effect and four after. On the year, 38 physicians were fired, with 23 of those coming after the new law. Nurses and nursing assistants (226 fired) and housekeeping aides (159 fired) had the top dismissals by position in yearly figures posted just before the Christmas break. Cashour said the smaller number of senior employees hit by the new law is not indicative of problems in its implementation. “Culture spans the entire organization,” he said. “As with any government agency or business, VA has more rank-and-file workers than senior leaders, and we hold them accountable when warranted, regardless of rank or position.” But officials from AFGE, the largest federal employee union and a vocal critic of the new accountability law, said they believe the new firings have largely focused on those lower-level workers. They have requested more detail on management firings and suspensions for 2017, but so far have received no answer. “How is it better if managers are still getting moved around?” Park said. “What we’re seeing is the people with the least ability to influence management are the ones seeing the most effects under this law.” Higher firing numbers don’t necessarily mean more accountability, she said. “It depends on who is getting fired and why.”

Eliminating ISIS: In his State of the Union address, President Trump claimed a very clear policy accomplishment: the military defeat of ISIS. “Last year, I pledged that we would work with our allies to extinguish ISIS from the face of the earth,” the president said. “One year later, I’m proud to report that the coalition to defeat ISIS has liberated very close to 100 percent of the territory just recently held by these killers in Iraq and in Syria.” There’s real truth here. The amount of territory controlled by ISIS declined by 60 percent between January and October 2017, according to a count by IHS Markit, a strategic intelligence firm. The group lost control over both Mosul, Iraq’s second-largest city, and Raqqa, which served as the de facto capital of ISIS’s so-called caliphate; it now no longer controls a major populated city in either country. Yet Trump’s comment implies that nearly all of ISIS-held territory was liberated in the past year. This isn’t true. In fact, it’s not clear that Trump deserves much credit for these developments — if any. His counter-ISIS strategy has, for the most part, been a continuation of the one the Obama administration began back in 2014, which had already been steadily chipping away at the group’s territory. “Whatever successes the Trump administration is claiming against ISIS are actually a product of the Obama administration’s approach,” says Jennifer Cafarella, the senior intelligence planner at the Institute for the Study of War. To be fair, Trump’s approach wasn’t 100 percent identical to Obama’s. He did relax regulations designed to prevent civilian casualties, which appears to have led to a larger number of strikes on ISIS targets per day. It is certainly possible that this led ISIS to lose territory at a faster rate, but experts say there’s no way to tell for sure — and that the group’s losses would have been inevitable without Trump’s changes.

I find myself politically unaligned. I'm curious how Trump supporters view the things I've posted, if any of it is accurate and to what degree, and if more accurate data could be given. Thank you and sorry for the flood.

I'm not gonna read all that. I'll just say "it helps the rich more than it helps the poor" is no detriment of the improvement. People are worried about the rich owning so much of the wealth, but that's the case regardless of which society you look at, until you see it fail from things like socialism or communism, in which case only a select few really have wealth so it's essentially the same. In reality the wealth disparity in the US shrinks over time, naturally. That's the reality of capitalism. Capitalism brings people out of poverty, and makes everyone richer. Attempts to overthrow the rich and put is in socialism constantly fail due to the contentment of the poor, because the poor are much less poor than around the world, where if you're poor here, chances are you still have food, a place to stay, a car, and perhaps even a nice smartphone. And this is the bottom of America. The most unfortunate issue we have in regards to wealth disparity is the constant assault on the poor, however. Our system is designed to keep the poor... poor. Bringing in school choice and reducing taxes brings in the low skill jobs that the uneducated can fill, without need for moving. The jobs will move to them. School choice will help them become educated, giving them the power to rise out of poverty once again, and low skill jobs will enable parents to ween off of welfare which ruins families, and promote the education of their child by sending them to a good school under newly established school choice programs. That might fall under what some would believe is "trickle down economics", but that really is not a thing. The term was applied to the action of tax cuts. It's not any convoluted plan, it's a simple cause and effect. Additionally, it's not as if taxes were cut beyond a boy where companies are taxed less than they possibly should be, as we simply now have the same rate as other major countries in the world, when we otherwise would have been taxed much higher. Social programs and government services can still have a place within a capitalist society, but they should be limited wherever capitalism can possibly flourish, as capitalism surely will do so. Capitalism is unique in that it doesn't require the good morals of society in order to function properly. It's self reliant and self driven, and all it needs is for government to stay out of its way, except when the corrupt start to break the rules. People hear that "greed" is the driving factor to capitalism, and in a way it's true. But it's not some dirty immoral concept. Self preservation is also a form of greed, and it's absolutely an ideal, and part of the core to capitalism as well.