Defining the term ‘shithole’ country
[Photo source: Chicago Tribune]
By Joe America
I would guess that what Donald Trump meant when he used the term ‘shithole country’ is something like:
- shithole country: a generally poor and struggling, politically conflicted country that seeks relief from the United States, thus imposing burdens upon the great white nation.
As Winnie the Pooh might express it, these countries are ‘a bit of bother’ to his people.
I’m confident Trump would not consider the Philippines to be a ‘shithole country’ because it has a hotel that bears his name, plus casinos and a partner in bad-boy thuggery in President Duterte. But if that were not the case, he’d probably observe that a lot of Filipinos are in the US illegally, and rage the white rage at Filipinos in general. He might try to build a wall across the Pacific.
My own definition of ‘shithole country’ would be a country whose leaders use and abuse citizens rather than raise them up, protect them, and give them ways to grow and prosper. That is, a nation whose leaders are not fair and not kind. The Philippines is on the path to becoming a shithole nation. So is the United States. Myanmar is already a shithole. So is North Korea. China is not because, although the leadership is racist and thuggish, it has raised the standard of living for many, and it provides opportunities to grow and prosper. It is just a cheating, thuggish nation.
Well, to be truthful, I have not thought much more about it than that.
I was hoping you could help me out.
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The Society of Honor by Joe America 
A scary scenario. I am still praying and hoping for a better Philippines, a more responsible and productive govt. instead of EJKs and corruption left and right. Where is our economy going? Good morning Joeam!
The problem is TRAIN. Basically no taxes for the poor, but there are fears that more excise taxes will make even basic commodities even more expensive than they were in 1988, around the time VAT was first implemented.
Heck, taxed fuel will also create an impact.
So true, everything and everyone will be affected. What’s the use of reducing tax when the outcome is even more disadvantageous? I bought a couple of sardines yesterday, it now costs “P17 for a small tin can.
Which leaves us wondering where all that money would go to, and considering how this government is functioning, there will be little transparency.
I am constantly amazed with the appearance of beautiful language. In astronomy it’s the black holes I try to understand; in hydrology it’s sink holes I try to use in my musings. In Tagalog I feel at home using them like siga, siokeh, bebot, kelot, garutay, and my favorite WAKARANG. I will not say that the new “HOLES” words SINK HOLE, and SHIT HOLE were really invented by ass holes (Not you Joe Am who is not an inventor). An Aussie classmate in the early eighties sent me a greeting card with the word Ass. Professor under my name. I thought he was an Ass. Secretary of Trade.
What’s in a word, este in a name? I thought I have written a poem about that. But TAXES what ever its other nomenclature, my blood simmers to a boil whenever the poor are accused of not paying their taxes by educated nincompoops. I might yet write my harangues on that.
No matter how big or small an entity like a family of seven, or a poultry farm of 109 million chickens and 1 million wolves the pursuit of happiness lies squarely on four items: Taxes. Revenue, Expenses, and Public Debt. Ideally it should be: Small is beautiful for the Philippines; Bigness is awesome for US, Russia and China. For those who say the poor do not pay tax, the poor should line up authors of VATs to face the firing squad.
The unfortunate news is that the income of the Philippines is VERY little. Promises made cannot be delivered, financially it wont happen, but the things the people are told IS happening can’t be seen, it is NOT going to happen – a underground rail network in Manila…NO….a rail link to Clarke…NO…….social reform for poor people? NO…..this is about placement to become a power unto himself with no opposition….it is not about the Philippine people. I cannot understand that the people don’t understand that this man has no consideration at all for them. It has never been about a drug war at all, it has been about an excuse to rub out the opposition, but one only focused on the local people, as internationally he has been called out for what he is . The Philippines AT THE MOMENT is going down the toilet with a dictator at the helm who is mad.
Pasingit sa comment.
If fuel and coal witll kill us, then one thing can save us and that is garbage.
Most of the powerplants here are coal because they were the cheapest, but that is no longer the case.
If coal powered cement plantscan use 30% of refuse derived fuel to mix with coal to make cement, why can’t coal powered power plants do the same?
For the Diesel powered power plants, there are plastic to diesel technology, a technology that is not used because a use had not ben found to be worth it, why not start with the diesel powered power plants.
Rather than have stand-alone wte, why not use the existing power plants.
Also that will rid the landfills and dumps.
More real estate.
For our transport sector, most manufacturers are going hybrid, why can’t we do the same.
ps
That thing IACT is doing flagging down old jeeps and buses, would not be happening , if LTO did its job in not registering them, and or not allowing fake plates and licences to be manufactured just a few meters from LTO.
The problem with using trash for fuel? So rather than using just a few known substances, you think it’d be a good idea to use who knows what? You cant. The soot is the problem and so are the processing byproducts. You cant normalise what chemicals you get from trash so you cant predict how it will impact your machinery much less your environment.
A bit off-topic regarding the article itself—but regarding this thread of comments:
TRAIN raises the burden on the poor, yes—but I think that one thing that’s not being emphasized that much in the debate regarding TRAIN is the fact that, whether we like it or not, we’ll need higher taxes.
One of the interesting trends that I have observed—a continuity spanning both the Aquino (PNoy) and Duterte eras—is that the Philippine State has undergone and is undergoing a tremendous transformation in capability and influence. The Aquino administration saw the rise of a nascent—but increasingly fully capable—welfare state, with the foundations being built; I suggest that, if one has time, to skim through the PhilHealth annual reports.
The costs of benefits utilized have risen from thirty, fifty billion pesos to over a hundred billion pesos—and the costs of contributions have barely kept pace, the equally massive increase barely cancelling the uptick in costs. This is powered by the drive towards Universal Healthcare—and powered on the backs of not only the Sin Tax Law but also the National Household Targeting System (also in use in another program massively expanded under the previous administration: the 4Ps Program) which gathered the data on the poor and less well-off, increasing not only coverage but contributions. In the House, there is a bill at an advanced legislative to codify elements of this trend toward universal healthcare. Imagine that. If all goes well—we will have a healthcare system that, while not exactly the best yet, would be leagues more equitable and fair in comparison to my parents’ time, to my grandparents’ time. Where you felt the trapo more than the absent state—that is slowly coming to a close.
Ask any student of any public university—and they’ll show a receipt bearing zero pesos.
The Duterte administration’s own take on this “expansion of the state” has been the “Build, Build, Build” program—which, for all its faults, will reshape the infrastructure of the nation.
A silent New Deal has taken place, amid all the crazy plotting.
wishful thinking:
Honestly—to wipe out drugs and be the best President we ever had, Duterte doesn’t have to wage open war on oir drug lords. Just run a competent state, continue this cascade of reforms towards making the Philippine State capable of truly serving the people, continue the expansion of social services towards the levels befitting of a genuine social democracy—and yes, build, build, build—and he’ll be remembered as a hero, as the future druggies (enveloped in the warm embrace of mother society) shall no longer be alienated enough to use drugs in the first place.
Open war on drug lords? Am I missing something? The war is on poor users and investigation into P6.4 billion in shabu was cut off. The President didn’t even express concern about that pile of drugs. The Customs guy that let it through got a new job in government.
The economy is substantial, I agree. Whether the recent tax increase will trickle through to make Duterte a hero or a goat has yet to be played out. Build build build is also debt debt debt. And I wish we really knew how much in taxes escape through cheating (improper property valuation, professionals getting and not reporting cash payments, etc.) My own sense is that a couple of percent increase in VAT would have been less onerous to poor people.
I view poverty as the ’cause’ of excessive drug usage. I note unemployment has edged up. Service across the nation is going back to the days of fixers and cheating and rude behavior. I’m afraid I don’t ‘feel’ your dreamworld.
Now we discover the killing of 3,000 Filipinos cannot be investigated because of national security concerns.
https://www.rappler.com/nation/193474-calida-refuses-submit-drug-war-documents-supreme-court
Tax reform is causing concerns. I’m reminded of how talking conceptually about it (build, build) has no staying power with people who notice what tangibly matters. In other words, it seems like Duterte supporters on taxes are speaking like Aquino and Roxas did. It is beyond mildly amusing.
http://cnnphilippines.com/news/2018/01/11/national-anti-poverty-commission-tax-reform-harm-poor-filipinos.html
Dear Jo. The economy is NOT substantial, it is VERY limited – 52 Bill (US$ equivalent a year.) that’s is the NET income – you can’t do a lot with that for a nation of n ow, roughly 120 million people. Even Naru has more mineral reserves.
Right. It is a very thin economy. There is a bustle to it though. More new cars. Malls packed and growing. Roadwork active. It was fascinating to me to realize the UK has a population of 65 million. The Philippines 110 million or thereabouts. The potential is enormous.
He did kil that Leyte mayor in jail and Parojinog, but majority are poor.
To be honest my views before are scums of society who harm neighbors and others must die, thanks to being enlightenment of many, my views changed a bit, no my views changed a lot.
About TRAIN , if Dominguez says it will only collect less than 600 Billion in five years at least for phase one, our debts would have ballooned to 7 Trillion by then, the only way it will maintain the 5 trillion level is to allocate less for debt repayments, and that is prolonging the agony.
The OFWs like in Saudi are already feeling the tax reform laws in their place of work, add that to the large taxes here, their remmitances won’t count much even if it becomes 52 Pesos to the Dollar.
Speaking of 52 pesos to 1 dollar.
We import a lot for electronics, we export cars, but the money goes to Japan.
We export bananas, only because The Latin Americas gave way.
Then we import fuel, we do not refine, we just stockpile.
How many will continue dodge VAT.
They say that Duterte was able to let Luvio Tan pay his taxes, that is fake news.
Prof Popoy said the poor already pay taxes due to VAT.(Consumption)
So the problem is Collection and compliance of the businesses.
It strikes me that Aquino was the disciplined financial manager, thrifty because the paycheck is small, allocating money carefully, not making the family suffer with new tax burdens but figuring out how to be thriftier (improve tax collection disciplines). Duterte is like the guy who can’t connect income and outgo, is acquiring a lot of credit cards and loans from neighbors (China), and spending as if the world will end tomorrow.
Correct, and he decided correctly on the SSS pension incresese, because that was based from studies.
Speaking of studies.
Abaya’s position of studying first the project made it appear that he slept on all proposals.
It is proven now, that it aint easy being at the top of DOTR.
And soon Villar will realize this at DPWH.
Damned if you do or don’t, this dengvaxia, is said to be rushed and not studied.( Or we bcame part of studies as guinea pigs)
Collection is the key.
If there is always sink hole in collections straight to the pockets with no holes, then you just add to the pockets.
Hindsight judgment seems to me to often provide an incorrect interpretation of the past. If one projects back and sees President Aquino responsible for the huge dengue problem, with vaccinations available and money available only to the end of the year, most rational people would have done what he did. That’s my view, and anything beyond that is politics.
Good morning, arlene.
He talks about emigration, so his focus is on people and not a country as such. What he means is “I need more valuable white people from the north of Europe and less second hand brown people and certainly no more black ones.”
IQ and race? Physical strength and race?… I think he has a lot of reading to do.
As a stable genius that went to the best colleges, this reading should not be problematic.
Race and intelligence, race and character, race and violence… all taboo subjects, but still there are good standard works about it and even more about the nature nurture debate.
I think they were talking about asylum seekers, refugees and lottery immigration, josephivo; Trump’s been on record in favor of merit immigration, ie. instead of tired, poor and huddled masses, he wants talent, skill and ideas (not necessarily race)— nothing wrong with that.
Though he probably should’ve been more diplomatic in his description of said countries, but then again it was off the record, probably in the heat of policy negotiations.
But the question is actually a valid one (from a policy perspective): “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Are they skilled, talented, have ideas? Or do they simply get to come here because they are from shithole countries, without any consideration to what they can bring to the table for America.
If you get past all the PC stuff, it is a legit question.
Hey Lance, my hunch is that most ordinary Americans use exactly this kind of language when talking about this kind of issue among themselves.
So really the questions is whether a US President should use such blunt language or use ‘diplomaticspeak’.
But Trump has a record of use blunt straight talking language. If fact it helped him get elected. Why ? Because many US folks are sick to the back teeth of diplomatic PC speaking which only confuses them.
And Trump has continued in this pattern since being elected. I suggest that he will not change his spots as demanded by his political opponents in the now elitist run Democratic party. The party that used to be the party of American working people..
Lance is being restrained by the Censor in Chief to allow other people latitude to contribute. The issue of barroom speak and presidential speak is interesting. I know President Duterte is a dirt-mouth and is loved for it. Catholics appear not to mind their Pope being insulted.
I tend to think there is a trickle down morality as there is a trickle down economy. If we admire, or even accept, such language, it is what our kids become. I want my kid to understand the words, but understand there is a time and place to go ‘earthy’. The higher path is to take care, and be understanding and kind to those who are different than us.
I guess both Presidents would disagree with you Joe. Dutters is definitely not Catholic and I doubt that Trump is a Catholic as he has married, divorced and married again. So it is not anything to do with Catholicism.
Probably more to do with a couple of men getting annoyed with ‘PC’ness’. That is always appreciated by other men also annoyed by it. Hell it’s even appreciated by men here in Oz.
They would disagree with me about what?
Would the Pope agree with me?
Probably Joe. But most Catholics don’t agree with the pope nowadays.He’s too radical.
But why do you need to mention the pope ?
Trump does not accept the pope as his religious leader – if he has any. And the US Constitution prohibits any established religion.
Because he represents the moral custodian of the Catholic Church, and Duterte spoke crudely about him. The issue is sense and sensitivity toward those who are different than us. Trump’s ‘shithole’ comment was grossly insensitive toward Africans and Haitians, and . . . by extension . . others of color. His comment may have been economic or political, and not racial. Many are taking it as racial.
I’d say diplomats are skilled at censoring their own words so as not to offend. Trump is no diplomat, nor is Duterte. I think the presidency is besmirched by bad language. Most seem not to care that much. I am somehow disheartened by that, as if we think a barroom world is good, kind, productive.
You didn’t explain what Trump and Duterte would disagree with me on.
Joe, Trump is not a diplomat. He is the USA president. He ( rightly ) sees himself as accountable to the American people who elected him. He does not think he is not accountable to Haiti, or Sudan, or the people of other countries.
He does not even think he is accountable to the Australian people. Back early last year, there was a very interesting phone conversation between Trump & our Australian Prime Minister Turnbull over ‘boat people’ as they are called here. It was according to the leaked transcript afterwards, a very ‘robust’ conversation with major disagreement which was very bluntly expressed. That’s the way Trump is.
Things used to different back when you & I were young. Through the 1950’s- 1980’s, the USA was the leader of the Free World versus the Communist world. And US presidents were ‘expected’ & needed, to be diplomatic and speak softly to anyone who was part of that group or could become part of that group. ( Mind you in private they all used far blunter language.) But those days are long gone.
Joe you said ” there is a trickle down morality “. I suggest that is what you think ‘should’ be.
I think that Trump & Dutters would disagree with you on this. They are both I believe, representative of a very large group of people in their countries. And these groups of Americans & Filipinos people appreciate and support their presidents because they talk their talk.
You also wrote the pope ‘represents the moral custodian of the Catholic Church’. Sorry mate the Catholic church has precious little moral authority here or in many other countries. Here we have a cardinal on trial for pedophilia along with a massive record of the Catholic church protecting pedophile priests for the past 50 years. Back in 2009 Ireland had a Presidents Commission that came to a similar conclusion. The USA has a cardinal who has fled to the Vatican a few years ago because if he had stayed in the USA he would have been on trial for protecting pedophile priests as well. Even in Argentina, the Pope’s own homeland, the vast bulk of the population are just nominal Catholics
It is the Philippines which is the exception in the modern world. Only in the Philippines are there such massive popular Catholic events like the Black Nazarene ‘translacion’ in Manila last week.
Another aspect of Filipino exceptionalism. But probably as aspect which Dutters does not especially like, going by his published remarks about the pope.
Good points, all. Yes, trickle up election is what happened, and the Catholic Church is losing its voice and moral platform. Still, I remain locked into my Christian upbringing, and readings of Dickens, Twain, and Steinbeck, and think humankind ought to aspire to be understanding and compassionate rather than layered by favored over disfavored people, a stacking that eventually filters down to be a stacking of worth. And worthless.
We know that the Democratic party was the party of the New Deal. The party of the American working people living in the industrial heart land that used to be. The party backed by the unions, the CIO & AFL.
Sometime around the 1980’s the Democratic Party became dominated by a new generation of leaders like Bill Clinton & a professional paid bureaucracy & paid activists. And that party wen it achieved office decided to put first the interests of people in other countries instead of the American working people. And those former industrial states are now the rust belt.
Trump, a bloody billionaire, saw what was going on and saw his opportunity. And got elected. He does not respect the Democratic party or it’s vocal vested embedded interest groups.
Right. He does not respect a lot of Americans.
I just had a good laugh watching news. Trump blamed those despicables, or that Chief Despicable Obama, for his not going to London to open the relocated the Embassy there. Turns out it was GW Bush who approved the relocation deal. My guess is Trump is too chicken to face the protests that would surely accompany his arrival. He tried to sideshift the blame to Obama.
Open mouth. Insert foot.
Yes, his brand of smart is destabilizing.
Well said, JoeAm! Most kanos are embarrassed by him. I apologize!
Racism is endemic anywhere. I just realized one of my aunts, despite years living in Canada, is a racist. She said, Syrian refugees are messing up her adopted country. So yeah … it runs in the best of families. We should all confront it and call them out with firm gentleness — I told my aunt: “Mama, you were an economic refugee once upon a time, and you should not begrudge the Syrians what Canada has so generously given to you when you needed it.” I don’t know if I got to her, but hey I tried!
In any case, yeah, Donald Trump is racist — nothing new in that. Shithole country, there no such thing — there are just asshole persons. My 2 cents 🙂
Worth a lot.
It’s not a white country dumbass
Welcome to the blog, Ronald. You a little slow with satire, or what?
“China is not because, although the leadership is racist and thuggish, it has raised the standard of living for many, and it provides opportunities to grow and prosper. It is just a cheating, thuggish nation.”
Joe – that shows your balanced view.
Many will jump in here and start going down the racist line.
I’m no Trump apologist, but one ought to appreciate 2 things.
(1) ‘shithole’ was mentioned in the context of a discussion on immigration, and specifically directed at Haiti, El Salvador and African countries.
(2) Trump speaks in 144 word cycle bursts. Often not explaining his bullet points properly.
In the context it was spoken, it’s was purely economics and not racial. He did go further to say he was more amenable to accepting Asian immigrations. His thought was on people coming into US who can contribute to the nation. The colourful language was uncalled for, but the rational behind it is understandable.
But of course we know immigration is a contention between 2 sides. Those who want to bring in the capitalists – those with cash, skills and knowledge, to create jobs. Then there are the capitalists who want the cheap labourers for their farms and factories – cash, skills, knowledge not required.
I would be sorry to see TSH going in the direction of a racist onslaught against Trump on an ugly word taken out of context. But if it is an invitation to help build the dictionary on what constitutes a ‘shit hole’ country, I guess the floor is wide open.
From me, a ‘shit hole’ country is one where the presidents of the country, the congress and the senate all poop in and mess up the same toilet bowl.
The characterization to me does have racist tinges, but Trump is mainly seeking to characterize nations that he believes are taking advantage of the US. It is consistent with his overall political view of America for Americans. It was a very unfortunate choice of words, embarrassing to many Americans, and insulting to many people from struggling, impoverished countries.
And who owns the ox that is gored matters. Haitians, for instance . . .
Certainly people are taking Trump’s comment as racist:
“It’s not just that racist piece of trash @realDonaldTrump called predominantly black countries “shitholes,” it’s also that he picked Norway as his example of a good country. Norway is massively liberal – so it definitely isn’t about politics. What else is Norway- massively white.”
And UN human rights org says ‘racist’.
http://edition.cnn.com/2018/01/12/politics/un-human-rights-trump-response/index.html
There is an excellent discussion of how Trump came to be elected president of the USA in November 2016 here :
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/religionandethicsreport/trump-and-how-class-came-back-to-bite-polticial-elites/9250118
The program is about Trump & How Class came back to Bite the Democratic Party Political Elite of the USA. And the question posed is : Can the Democratic party be big enough for working people, the middle class and the elites?
For the key issue is the Democratic party in the USA since Clinton. It is now lead and dominated by university educated ‘professionals’ who have hardly ever got their hands dirty. And thus it has failed the American working people
The guest being interviewed is Professor Joan Williams author of “White Working Class: Overcoming Class Cluelessness in America” Joan Williams was a member of the Democratic party trying to elect Hilary Clinton in 2015-6.
In short millions of American working class people voted for Trump because they thought that their country was becoming a “shithole” and wanted to stop that process.
In that context Trumps comments this week are exactly what one would expect.
I listened to this program this morning. Unfortunately it only available by listening to it.There is no transcript
Hey Joe ..I see that you are still not allowing comments on the previous blog topic. “Gender roles, ethics, and you”. I still dance tango. Here is a thoughtful & considered post by a US tanguera ( a female tango dancer ) living in Texas on this issue
http://www.mytangodiaries.com/
When I cannot trust readers to use delicacy to discuss sensitive topics, there will be no discussion. I’ll just blather on myself.
Now this certainly is a sensitive issue. And that’s why I posted the link to ‘My Tango Diaries’
Enough said, actually. The truth needs no embellishment.
First, let me address the technical aspects of this issue – (1) we do not know what exactly Pres. Trump said because it was said “off the record” after the media had left the room and we only have the usual “unnamed source” as the source, (2) such an adjective is commonly used here in the US… it’s part of the lingo, and (3) think he’s bad, you should hear my ole Command Sergeant Major at our General Staff Meetings!
Having said that, I will not defend Pres. Trump’s choice of words… but I will defend his frustration about the immigration laws in the US. He is a one-track guy… make America great again! Everything he says and does about immigration has to do with making America great again. Why is the majority of legal immigrants to the US selected on the basis of family relations (chain migration) and not based on talent/skill? If we want to make America great again, we need to attract a different kind of immigrant. Makes sense to me.
Trump wants more people from Norway? How about this dentist from Sweden? No joke..
Nigerian-born hip-hopper Dr. Alban (Sing Hallelujah etc.) finished his dentistry course, even practiced..
I doubt, however, that any black man nowadays would prefer the US to Scandinavia, given a choice.
Unless Trump and Putin finish the job of destroying the EU as a civilized, prosperous place..
That EU countries have put up coordination between their militaries independent of NATO is a sign of distrust in Trump I believe.. things will indeed get critical in the near future, unfortunately.
Most of the EU is a place where oligarchs don’t dominate yet (or again) like in Russia, China – and recently again the USA, so it is livable for a majority, and predominantly democratic.
This is what I remember Dr. Alban for.
US role in Haiti destruction :
The threat of democracy in Haiti in 1991 was even more ominous because of the favorable reaction of the international financial institutions (World Bank, IADB) to Aristide’s programs, which awakened traditional concerns over the “virus” effect of successful independent development. These are familiar themes in international affairs: American independence aroused similar concerns among European leaders. The dangers are commonly perceived to be particularly grave in a country like Haiti , which had been ravaged by France and then reduced to utter misery by a century of US intervention. If even people in such dire circumstances can take their fate into their own hands, who knows what might happen elsewhere as the “contagion spreads.”
The World Bank announced that “The renovated state must focus on an economic strategy centered on the energy and initiative of Civil Society, especially the private sector, both national and foreign.” That has the merit of honesty: Haitian Civil Society includes the tiny rich elite and US corporations, but not the vast majority of the population, the peasants and slum-dwellers who had committed the grave sin of organizing to elect their own president. World Bank officers explained that the neoliberal program would benefit the “more open, enlightened, business class” and foreign investors, but assured us that the program “is not going to hurt the poor to the extent it has in other countries” subjected to structural adjustment, because the Haitian poor already lacked minimal protection from proper economic policy, such as subsidies for basic goods. Aristide’s Minister in charge of rural development and agrarian reform was not notified of the plans to be imposed on this largely peasant society, to be returned by ” America ‘s good wishes” to the track from which it veered briefly after the regrettable democratic election in 1990.
Excerpted from:
https://chomsky.info/20040309/
But of course the orange-haired buffoon at the White House is not capable of acknowledging the historical perspective of why Haiti became a “shithole country”.
Micha, Haitian history is far more complex than ever Chomsky says. I suggest that France had far far more of an impact for most of Haiti’s history,
And so did the Spaniards. See link below.
A more comprehensive account of Haiti’s history by Noam Chomsky:
http://truth-out.org/archive/component/k2/item/47318:noam-chomsky–the-tragedy-of-haiti
You can drink more mango juice next year Joeam….. 🙂
”Investors rejoicing over the Philippine peso’s rally to a six-month high should beware: the currency is predicted to be Asia’s worst performer next year.
The peso will slide to 51 per dollar by end of 2018, a loss of 1.5 percent from current levels, according to the median estimate of a Bloomberg survey, with a most bearish projection of 56. The currency will be undermined as the current-account deficit widens, while the central bank is slow to raise interest rates from a record low, strategists and fund managers say.
“The peso remains vulnerable,” said Jonathan Ravelas, chief market strategist at BDO Unibank Inc. in Manila. “The external payments position will likely deteriorate further as more economic activity fuels demand for capital equipment and consumer goods,” he said, forecasting the currency will end next year at 52 per dollar.”
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-12-21/philippine-peso-seen-as-asia-s-laggard-for-2018-as-deficit-grows
I am getting so rich thanks to the policies of the two best presidents on the planet. I should shut my yap and start praising their bizarre methods which plenty of smart people like Francis seem willing to do.
Maybe you could donate some to the 16.000.000? 🙂
Or use it to remove your name from the mango juice addict list?
https://www.rappler.com/nation/193490-dela-rosa-admits-cops-demand-money-remove-names-drug-list
🙂
Yes, I need to set up a fund for various extortions, bribery, and NPA taxes. Good Point! Thanks.
I feel for you sir. When I see how the Philippine peso is becoming such a loser, I get torn between my love of money and my love of country 🙂
I’d rather have less wealth and a sane country in which my son could build a good life. If he chooses to leave when he is older, I’d understand why. But it would for sure be the Philippine’s loss.
I disagree with your definition of a “shithole country”. That term is a denigration of rational discussion and hence should also be defined accordingly. Trump has globally spread that term so it should be defined in that context. Hence, a “shithole country” are those countries where the speaker has unilaterally applied his or her bias and claimed a universal character regardless of truth or evidence and explicitly excludes countries who meet the same conditions but where the speaker has a predisposed affinity.
So a list of such countries would include the US, Philippines, North Korea, Iran, Israel, and China?
By my definition I would exclude US and Philippines because I have an affinity. I have no bias on North Koreans as a people or to Iran or Israel. I would put China on the list because I would be biased indicating the priority of the people are profit and family with less regard for other cultures unless it is profitable or enhancing of their family.
Okay. Thanks.
I am a registered Independent. Neither a Republican nor a Democrat. I do not like Democrat because they allow open borders. I do not like Republicans because they do not allow open borders I am more in favor of allowing worthy immigrants. I am conflicted about Religion, therefore, not Republican. I am a swing voter fence sitting Independent.
Of course, I would like Norwegian to immigrate but they are not because Norway is a happy country. European countries are not immigrating to America because they do not have problems like in America. Europe doesn’t have issues with minorities so does Latin America where most blacks were exported in the 19th century. Minorities know their place in these countries. In the US Minorities rule ! They force their way to America because they know this principle: Minority Rule. This resonates with white folks that built this country that made them vote demagogue Donald Trump.
It is Trump that put the issue on the table without embarrassment. I repeat, I DID NOT VOTE DONALD TRUMP. I wrote in BERNIE SANDERS !!!
The issue that minority keeps repeating is they contribute to the greatness of America. If they did they should go back and contribute to the country where they came from and make it not a S***thole.
I contribute to the Philippines. I brought my money in. I post my observation so they can change. I wanted to teach mathematics to school children but they did not want a foreigner teaching because I did not have teaching credentials. Of course the company I used to work sent me here to teach BPOs rudimentary conversational English with California accent that does not require English Grammar credentials.
I showed the Filipinos they are racist preferring whites that is why I became a rockstar here. Long blond hair. Flip-flops. English speaking. Blue eyes. Greenbacks. Sculpted surfer body. Funny. Love to talk with locals. And certified Single handsome worthy of Bench and Collezione model. As you know, Filipinos here, Home-grown made-in-the-Philippines brand are modeled by whites. Let me repeat, MODELED BY WHITES !!!
I was approached several times I told them I did not want to promote Philippines are populated by whites nor promote racism. After my contract with BPOs, I packed up, left, went to some small islets north, Babuyan Island, where I do not get mobbed by people instead help them help themselves so they can become nationalist, patriot and love their bronze skin color.
Philippines is not a S***thole just because the country is run by jacka**es and a**holes. They should seize and desist going to Metro Cities in the Philippines. Go somewhere remote where Internet is slow and intermittent. This is where people sweep off the the dead leaves and light them up by the road side in the morning. The smell of burning leaves comingling with cow dung. The haze. Mothers running after children to force feed them. Children in rural areas forget they have to eat. In Metro Cities they wake so they can forage for Jollibee leftover.
Philippines is not a tourist destination. The food is boring. They do not have regional dishes. It is all the same from Aparri to Jolo. They have to stay a little longer to like this country.
REMEMBER: AVOID THE CITIES. GO TO BOHOL! SIARGAO! ILOCUS NORTE!
Please do not come to my private Ireland in the North. IT IS MINE !!!
Well said. Can’t say I disagree with your spot-on analysis of Filipino “colonial mentality”. It’s been hard wired for over 350 years by first the Spaniards and then Americans after that. You’ve heard the old cliche’: “Filipinos were raised in a convent for 350 years by the Spaniards and 100 years in Hollywood by Americans”. Though I would suggest to add an almost paradise spot in southern Cebu called Moalboal, where the coastal waters are still crystal clear blue and a haven for deep sea divers marveling at stunningly beautiful coral reef. Also, one can enjoy fresh, tasty local cuisine by the white sandy beach for around $3.00 a meal. Not bad. Disclosure: I’m originally from Cebu and my mother was from the southern most part called Samboan.
Here are whys China, Vietnam, Thailand, Korea not in the list:
1. They have their own communities they barely venture out;
2. Their communities are self-sustaining because they have their own businesses that caters to people like them
3. They do not bother anyone except when they are on the freeway or surface streets: they drive slow than posted speed limit. They are parking-challenged. They stop in the middle of the streets to read road signs. Their teens drive top-of-the-line Lamborghinis, Ferraris, Mercedeses, BMW sports cars that are a danger to ogling American drivers
4. Their food is just superb if not exotic: Frogs, fried grasshopers, grilled monkeys, beating heart of snakes chased with fresh snake blood
5. They can cook fish in thousand different ways
6. Who’d clean my ears? Only Vietnamese and Chinese do that.
7. They have cheap haircuts do not go to Korean barber because they are expensive
Philippines is not in the list because:
1. They are harmless people
2. They have no gang affiliation
3. Who’d clean their hotels and cruise ships?
4. Who’d care for their aged?
5. They pay taxes
6. They are respectful of other races … get my drift … that makes them absolutely harmless and extremely friendly
7. When they talk they always smile, laugh and giggle (defense mechanism someone told me, they cannot be mad at people who are smiling, laughing and giggling before anyone)
Why Trump singled out Africa and Haiti? Actually, Donald Trump “Africa” is short in saying black people as a whole. He just did not want fire and fury in his backyard. REMEMBER: DONALD TRUMP IS A RACIST !
Frankly, I enjoyed these two posts. I think most of your posts are ‘read only’ as dialogue probably would not change your hardened, if insightful, observations.
Trump fully embraces White Supremacy which he learned from his father who was a secret Klansman in New York. Unfortunately there are enough angry, disillusioned, threatened White folks who share Trump’s racism and bigotry and he intuitively rode this all the way to the White House. For decades since after the Civil War many White folks were satisfied with their lot as long as they can “look down” on the Colored folks, but as Blacks (and other minorities) started to ascend and thrived after the Civil Rights Act, many White folks began to resent the rearranging of social status and hierarchy (to wit: ungrateful NFL millionaire players), some openly and others resented quietly. The election of the first Black President was the final straw for many of them and electing an openly racist, bigoted White guy in Trump was the backlash. This gave the bigots and White Supremacist a sense of “righting the course” of political destiny, albeit a it’s short term one. The reason I say that is I believe in the maxim – Demographics is Destiny. The unmistakable trend is an ever increasing Browning of America based on current birth rates of Whites versus Non Whites. Thus Trump’s clarion call to his base using dog whistles such a calling Africa “shithole” and demanding to replace non-Whites with Norwegian immigrants as in blue-eyed blond dudes and babes. It works with his base. It always does. Trump is the first openly “R & B” POTUS. That’s RACIST and BIGOT, I don’t mean the R&B sound from Detroit.
Trumpism is ethnic-nationalism, rightist ethnic nationalism, specifically white ethnic nationalism. That’s been crystal clear from day one with the talk about Mexico sending its rapists and murderers to America, with the hyper-politicization of crimes committed by immigrants and especially undocumented immigrants. There are more than 10 million undocumented immigrants in the country. Obviously, a percentage of them will commit crimes, even heinous crimes, though there’s substantial evidence that immigrants commit less crime than the native born. It isn’t about crime. It’s a form of racialized incitement.
The heart of Trumpism has always been fueled by panic over the decline of white privilege and a rapidly changing demography in which whites are no longer the overwhelming majority of Americans and in a few decades likely won’t be a majority at all. (The uncertainty is not so much numerical as taking account the fluid definition of whiteness itself.) This need to yell stop!, to turn back the tide to an earlier America is the beating heart of Trumpism.
“They are taking over” is the backdrop of Trumpism. The shithole comments make that crystal clear. It’s not just exclusion but a palpable dehumanizing contempt. The words only matter in as much as they illustrate the ugliness of what is currently happening and that is real and much more important than mere words. Trump administration policy means to, and is in the process of, implementing the “shithole” mindset which is to say get rid of as many “outsiders” as we can and keep new ones from coming in.
From Talking Points Memo by Josh Marshall
Haiti and the Philippines have many things in common :
– both are located in the tropical zone near the equator.
– both are prone to natural disasters such as typhoons and earthquakes.
– both are resource-rich lands but many of its population are poor.
– both have been exploited by past colonial powers.
– both have been subjected to American interference in its economic and political affairs.
– both have been ruled by despotic thieves.
– Duvalier and Marcos were puppets of Washington until they weren’t.
– Duvalier and Marcos were ousted in the same year (1986).
– today both countries are still under the spell of neo-liberal corporate thugs.
Both are shithole countries.
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Sad to agree that the Philippines is a sh*thole country.
The primary function of government is the physical security/protection of its citizens. That is, body. There are the two other levels of security — soul and spirit.
Any country that does not perform these primary functions is a sh*thole country. It is difficult to categorize countries because the performance varies by degrees.
Just on the primary function alone, I would say these countries fit the description in an outstanding manner. They have/are committing democide.
o Syria
o Philippines
o China
o Myanmar
o North Korea
In the past:
o Russia
o Germany
o Cambodia
o Turkey
o Poland
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I agree with both Micha & edgar’s assessment re what constitutes a sh*thole country. I’d add poverty plays more role in defining a country as such, than security and foreign influence (though not mutually exclusive, I’m sure related too),
One standard as to what makes a country a sh*thole or non-sh*thole would be tourism, and directly related to the term is whether or not a country devotes some level of effort in ensuring their toilets are clean (and passes muster),
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/11/28/chinas-toilet-revolution-will-give-domestic-tourism-boost-xi-says.html
– China is focusing on enhancing public toilet facilities as part of a “toilet revolution”
– The drive will improve living standards and give local tourism a boost, state media said
– Around $3 billion has been spent on the campaign to improve toilets in the country
I almost used a dilapidated toilet as the photo for the blog.
Let us get this Sinkhole country fiasco straight:
Honorable REPUBLICAN Lawmakers and Congressmen attended Donald Trump meeting apparently some of them are not listening or saving their behind from Trump’s disparaging tweeter attack. Others are not commenting. Or denying hearing them.
THIS MEANS that they attend meeting without paying attention! TOUGH LUCK, AMERICA !!!
GOP Congressmen/women and Senators these days are all cowards. No exception. None of them have the spine and moral courage to stand up to a moronic despot like Trump. All are desperate to hang on to their power and terrified to go against the Right Wing base. All willing to sell their soul and turn a blind eye to any of Trump’s vile and despicable acts . All believe in party over country. Every. Single. Day. No profiles in courage among this sorry lot of politicians. They are all either Immoral or Amoral, take your pick, it does not matter. President Lincoln, arguably the best American President, a Republican, and who bravely fought a bloody Civil War to free the Blacks from bondage of slavery, must be spinning in his grave. America has lost its moral compass. Only time will tell if the country can find it again.
The White House has officially denied Pres. Trump uttering the word “shithole”. Now what? Who is making up this story? Who stands to gain from that “shithole” story?
I get it – some folks do not like Trump and/or the USA for whatever reasons you have and you choose to believe whatever unsubstantiated stories and gossip you hear. We can choose to discuss issues intelligently based on verifiable facts or we can choose to spread balitang kutsero… your choice will define this group.
Get over it. Apart from being a misogynist, bigoted, and racist buffoon, Donald Trump is also an inveterate liar.
Remember he also denied having said “grabbed them by the pussy” on that Access Hollywood tape with Billy Bush.
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It defines you as well. And the definition is not… well.
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Were you at the meeting? How come your ‘knowledge’ carries more weight than those who believe the reports of those who were at the meeting and say Trump did say the words? You make the same biased guesses as others but blame them for not discussing things intelligently. Intelligent would be to observe and listen then make a judgment that is yours alone, and respectfully allow others their judgments. And opinions. Then we could get past the ridiculous name-calling and divisiveness.
No, I was not in the White House. My knowledge does not carry any more weight and I did not make a guess one way or the other (kindly read my post again). It’s a he said, she said… that’s a TIE in my books… so no one gets my vote. I also did no name-calling nor was I being divisive… I simply asked you to make a choice. But thanks, you just proved my point.
It’s something Trump would say period, the issue isn’t the veracity of what was said. It fits the pattern of his personality. It’s not the word that’s the problem (at least to me), but the problem that was being discussed.
(I voted for Trump)
p.s. ~ I’ve been trying to come clean here since yesterday (if Joe will allow me this post)… I use the term sh*thole (most Americans I know do too, Bill’s correct, ie. Alabama’s a sh*thole, Fresno’s a sh*thole, Afghanistan is a sh*thole— sure it can be racist, but mostly it’s just a handy straight-to-the-point descriptor.).
By the way, Shithole’ is not a term used in Oz…I have never used or referred to it except in this blog.
This tweet I received is relevant:
Asian news outlets have had fun/trouble translating @realdonaldtrump’s “shithole” slur.
Taiwan wins with “place where birds wouldn’t lay eggs”.
What point did I prove? That I seek to end the accusative rhetoric? It seems to me that edgar, micha and LCX all read your comment as I did. Maybe you should re-write it so it is clearer.
There’s no middle ground in this episode, Sal E. Spineless agnosticism is dangerous in the public arena. Either he said it or he didn’t. Either he lied or not.
We’re talking here of the leader of the most powerful country in the world with access to the nuclear launch code. Imagine if a nuclear bomb is halfway through Iran or North Korea and then he denies ever having authorized its launch? Would you still bicker about giving him the benefit of the doubt?
FYI. A Democrat senator (Durbin) who was in that meeting has confirmed that “shithole” story and per his account another senator (Republican Lindsay Graham) actually stood up to Trump and made known (what I would infer as) his opposition to the use of the offensive word.
—
From https://nypost.com/2018/01/12/graham-says-he-confronted-trump-over-comments/ :
Trump has denied reports that he said, “Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” during a discussion on African and Haitian immigrants — although Sen. Dick Durbin, who was also in the room, confirmed the widely leaked comments.
Durbin says that Graham “spoke up and made a direct comment on what the president said.”
“For him to confront the president as he did, literally sitting next to him, took extraordinary political courage and I respect him for it,” he told MSNBC.
“I appreciate Senator Durbin’s statements and have enjoyed working with him and many others on this important issue,” Graham said in his statement.
There you go — Exhibit A. Thanks for the note and link, cha.
Really this is about migration. Migration of foreigners into the USA. And this article about Filipino migration to the US is informed and interesting.
http://usa.inquirer.net/9417/trump-immigration-plans-hit-hawaiis-filipino-families-hard
However it does miss the main point of Trump’s attitude and policies. He was elected by the US people on a platform of restricting both legal and illegal migration. And a policy of introducing a migration system similar to Australia’s where there is a point system.
I also find perplexing the attitude expressed by Filipinos in the article, and by the author, that they have a ‘right’ to “Family migration” ( Chain migration ) to the USA. And It certainly does not exist here in Oz.
Now that is not in the US constitutional bill or rights. So if US law is changed limiting family migration, then it’s changed.
By the way, I did not know that 1 million people migrate permanently to the USA every year. That is a huge number to absorb – to house, provide jobs, schooling, child care, etc. No wonder there are concerns among native born Americans.
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Oz has a Family Reunion program (implemented as Australia Family Sponsorship Visa).
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It’s very expensive to apply for a visa on that program Edgar. And even after paying there is a huge wait as there is a long queue and only so many handed out each year. (IE it’s capped )
That’s very different to what the USA has at present with a migrant being able to sponsor a whole chain of relatives…I read of one chain that was 30 odd people long of relatives.
I love California. It is the world’s sixth largest economy and a racial mix so varied that no one dominates and people generally get along well. The state is liberal, in the main. Here’s a typical California viewpoint:
“The Statue of Liberty doesn’t say send me your richest, your smartest, as well as your whitest people. That’s not what America is all about,” California State Senate leader Kevin De Leon says of President Trump.
California, also Oregon & Washington (and Hawaii) tend to be colorblind. I grew up this way. I noticed though that people from the east coast, say DC and up (Northeast, Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, etc. even Chicago & Detroit) are also varied (racially mixed), but unlike the west coast, east coast folks tend to know where everyone’s from, i.e. who’s Jewish, who’s from Poland, Italian, Irish, Arab etc. etc. It’s not like that in California (and the Left coast).
There’s not that type of accounting.
So I don’t think Trump is necessarily racist (although he could just as well be), but he definitely fits the New Yorker mentally of knowing where people are from, and having that part of his calculus in relating with people. It’s just how they operate there.
As far as immigration goes, yeah Californians are open to different people, but illegal immigration (especially criminals, like the cartels in our forests on our highways) we don’t like that, though we are more forgiving with stuff like DACA and overstaying and anchor babies (personally I’m in favor of DACA only, but for the kids, they’re including older folks in the mix now and others not necessarily kids who had no say, so those guys need to be defined also).
Overstaying and anchor babies need to be stopped. The Chinese especially are exploiting anchor baby loopholes. Are anyone born in Australia, automatic citizens, Bill?
I’ve already talked about chain immigration & lottery, and asylum and refugees– no need to rehash. It all goes back to what bnimble07 said re absorb , what’s the magic number that’s absorbable? That’s the question. Is all this a big tsunami or is it just a rip tide?
I think it’s a big tsunami, both legal (chain/lottery, anchor baby, etc.) and illegal immigration (overstaying, to jumping the border, etc.).
Simple. Go with merit immigration. If there’s some tech stud in Nigeria wants to come here, let him come; doctor in Haiti, practice medicine here , but if you’re just gonna end up working in McDonalds here, we have unemployed Americans that can do that, mop floors, we have robots for that now. We don’t need a refugee crisis here, like in Europe.
I posted a couple of articles earlier in the thread that suggest what is expected to happen does not. Trying to bring in high-skill people pushes established Americans to lesser jobs. Filling from the bottom pushes workers up.
Got it, Joe. Just skimmed thru it. It’s based on historical patterns, I don’t think will be at play in this new economy, globally not expanding , but contracting.
I get that it may push Americans down, in theory i could see that happening (but remember my other point was to lessen people coming in). This is why as part of this new acquisition of talent (as new immigration policy) settlement and placement needs to happen. Because whether skilled or unskilled, talent or no talent, new comers will tend to gravitate towards the coasts, or cosmopolitan areas,
hence placement and retention in said areas, incentivize staying in places where they are needed, where their presence isn’t a negative but complimentary to the community, a positive. Right now, I think immigration is just get them here, and theyre free to thrive or fail.
But this thinking that we should be banking on potential skills & talents (acquired when they are here, ie. heart, work ethics, hunger for success, etc.) seems silly, when we can grant immigration status to those with proven skill and talent, cut to the chase.
then at the same time re-assess the numbers we are letting in. Again what is absorbable?
The point of one article was not theory, but historical experience. I think America has attracted and will continue to attract skills. If companies need them, they’ll find or train them. I agree there need to be limits on immigration, but it ought not be on race or religion or other factors that, in the US, are not allowable as discriminating factors. There should probably be region and country quotas, and some latitude for compassionate entry.
“I agree there need to be limits on immigration, but it ought not be on race or religion or other factors that, in the US, are not allowable as discriminating factors.”
This one’s interesting, Joe (so let me comment one last time on this, and i’ll go back to tracking mode, and await the next blog).
Yes, citizens cannot be discriminated upon, but why cannot we prefer certain folks over others when it comes to immigration? Say in the Middle East for example, the Kurds, Yazidis, Druze, Arab Christians, etc. are being persecuted, why not chose them (prioritize) over say Shias and Sunnis. There should be a balancing calculus, but again also based on what they can bring to the table for America.
But the concept of discrimination at least in legal terms as i understand it applies to citizens and non-citizens but living here, its jurisdictional in nature , but I don’t think legally it would apply in the choosing of who gets to come here or not, this would be related to Trump’s initial Muslim ban which I believe is still being argued, but here’s the history of our discrimination laws (which I’m pretty sure doesn’t cover the rest of the world),
http://history.house.gov/Exhibitions-and-Publications/BAIC/Historical-Data/Constitutional-Amendments-and-Legislation/
If a nation is hostile to the US, or if a group of people is hostile, then I can see the basis for not allowing immigrants. And I could see allowing persecuted people under a compassion quota, but it ought be blind to religion.
The international outcry is that Trump’s remark is racist. It to me is consistent with his evident hate for Clinton (strong woman) and Obama (black man), and having white supremicists on his staff. He is for sure not broad minded as I think the leader of a diverse nation ought to be. My editorial advice is that you refrain from dominating the discussion so people can interact with others, free of your insertions.
Got it, Joe.
What are ‘anchor babies’ ?
Lance, here in Oz not every child born here is automatically entitled to Australian citizenship. A child born here is a citizen only if the parents are citizens or have permanent residence.
Children born here of people here with temporary residence visas or here illegally without any visa, are not citizens.
Is it different in the USA ? If it is, I guess that would drive demand by illegal residents to procreate in the USA. ( Anchor babies ? )
Yup, thanks, Bill! The Chinese have made an industry of this loophole, any child born in the US is automatically a US citizen (Trump’s attempting to change that), the Russians i guess have caught on too,
http://dailycaller.com/2018/01/10/liberals-triggered-by-pregnant-russian-women-coming-to-america-and-giving-birth-to-anchor-babies-video/
Love California as well. My family has been vacationing there for years. Love Malibu Beach, Sta. Monica, Big Sur and Disneyland of course as my teen age daughter can’t get enough of it. Lots of my relatives and college mates live there too. Love those Pinoy Pinay Restos where you can eat yummy authentic Pinoy dishes for a song. But it also offers the best hamburger anywhere with In N Out Burgers. There’s something magical I find in California that I can’t find in any other state and I’ve been to many. Could be the weather, could be the mixed races living in peace and harmony. Peoples from around the world sharing their rich cultures and cuisine. Could be the fact that there’s 2 million Pinoys there plus half a million TNT’s (I’m sure you know what it stands for). Good luck to Trump and ICE hunting down these TNT’s. Besides ALL of them are peaceful, law abiding, tax paying Californians, some are relatives of mine. So it’s easy for Pinoys to feel at home in Cali. Here’s a bit of Filipino history in California mist Pinoys probably don’t know. A Fil American called Larry Itiong who came to the Salinas/Delano area in the 1930’s was the first to organize farm workers union which eventually amalgamated with the Mexicans under Cesar Chavez. The Filipinos were larger and better organized under Itiong but with mutual consent he allowed Cesar Chavez to head the now famous UFW (United Farm Workers Union) which stage a popular grape boycott in the 1960’s for improve labor conditions. Cesar Chavez became extremely well known in America but he actually owed it to a Filipino Larry Itiong and the Pinoy farmers to spur a successful union organizing in the Central Valley area and grape boycott to improve the lives of thousands of farm workers over the last 50 years. I have relatives in the Sslinas area, the bread basket of America, and it was my first point of visit when I first arrived in America so I was intrigued by the history of Filipinos since the 1930’s. So I’m sharing this remarkable Filipino success story in America as often as I can. I’m also making it my mission in life to support anything or anyone the Dotard Trump hates and he hates California and its people with a passion as you know. Trump also hates smart and strong minded women like Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. At the end of the day, America’s future lies in states like California ( just ask Apple, Facebook, Google and Tesla) and its multi cultural characteristics as opposed to states like Mississippi. Just reading between the lines, my guess is that you are a native California dude yourself or have lived there and embraced its culture. You’re one lucky American Joe. In closing, thanks for allowing this rather longish rant.
Cheers, bnimble07. Thanks for the perfect description of California’s allure, down to In N Out Burgers with its real fries and bible quote on the container. I think the Philippines could be the California of Asia, but not the way it is going now.
I was born in Colorado, but my entire working life was in Los Angeles. I traveled a lot, so know California well, and connect with its multi-dimensional ‘soul’.
I read in News website California is seceding from the Union. If so, it would be top 5 in world’s economy by itself.
No argument re California Joe.But your comment is not to the point either. Trump wants to stop the chain migration policy and replace it with a migration policy that favors those who have needed skills and those with the capacity to become Americans.
Seems fair enough to me.
Yes, I detect that you and Trump are pretty well in sync.
Actually no I am not a Trump sympathiser. I would not vote for him. If I was a US citizen I would have supported Bernie Sanders.
But I am not. I am simply an Australian watching what is happening in the USA as a result of the massive challenges posed by globalism.
As I have said before, the Democratic party was once the party of the US working people. It has become the party of the inner city ‘natterati’ and ‘glitterati’. And betrayed the interests of the US working people, white, black & brown, over a long time.
Jobs have gone offshore, or become underpaid contract positions. The Democratic party watched on & allowed this process under Reagan & the Bushes. Then it encouraged the process more under Clinton & Obama.
It’s interesting the Rust Belt former Democratic party states, voted for Trump;NOT for the business focused old Republican party.
Every administration has a context, wars, social upheaval, economic turmoil, anti-trust or piracy concerns, and ways to care for 300 million people well. The two main parties have very different ideas as to how to go about it. Results vary and are never perfect. Essentially, America is an ongoing, intricate dialogue influenced by everything from the weather to rogue nations to new knowledge about technology, disease, and social interactions. I tend to think that pointing fingers to political parties is a form of denial of contexts and intricacies, or a short-term convenience. Or a part of the discussion, but seldom a ‘truth’, as such.
Well the American female professor, Democrat party member, & Hilary Clinton supporter in that interview I posted the link to yesterday, thinks differently… And she has published a book on it all…
I am mostly reflecting her opinions here Joe.
I can’t listen to the audio and have not read the book. The US is dynamic. It’s exciting is it not?
What does ‘capacity to become Americans’ mean? I’m scratching my head. Americans are some higher kinds of people?
Het Joe, that’s a rediculous comment to make. If people migrating to the USA lack any capacity to join in the American Dream & American Society with all it’s aspirations and history, what the hell are they doing living in the USA ?
Migration to the uSA is happening a 1 million people a year. If that 1 million a year don’t want to become Americans and part of American society, then your country will have serious problems.
Just my opinion as a foreigner & and an Australian.
“In the United States, reforms in 1965 ended the system of assigning different immigration quotas for each nationality in ways that favored northwestern Europeans. In addition, the U.S. Senate passed a resolution in 2011 symbolically repudiating anti-Asian measures such as the 1882 Chinese Exclusion Act (which had been legally rescinded in 1943) as “incompatible with the basic founding principles recognized in the Declaration of Independence that all persons are created equal” and “incompatible with the spirit of the United States Constitution.” Formally, therefore, U.S. immigration law is no longer based on ethno-racial criteria and real changes in immigration practices have greatly diversified the racial and ethnic make-up of the United States over the past half century.”
Source: David Cook-Martín, New York University, David Scott FitzGerald, University of California, San Diego
Your argument that 1 Million new immigrants to the U.S is a huge number to absorb is misleading at best. Currently the U.S. population is at 326 Million. This is not even 1% of the nation. Because the current population growth rate is 0.7 % . It’s less than 1% so even if you bring in new immigrants at 1% a year you’re almost at Zero Population Growth or ZPG. Any smart economist will tell you a country will have a better economic prospect if it’s population is growing at a healthy clip. Case in point: Philippines in the last 5 years and China in the last 10 years. Every American business whether it be Wal Mart, Ford, Coca Cola or Microsoft will always clamor for more healthy robust population growth either through two options A) robust immigration policies or B) policies that encourage families to grow larger organically. In recent decades Option A has been more dependable than Option B for a variety of changing social norms. That is why Trump’s anti immigration tendencies (legal or illegal) is anathema to businessmen who want future steady growth. It does not make economic sense. America can no longer be choosy who they let in to their troubled country. Who from Norway or Sweden (places with mostly white folks) in their right mind would want to immigrate to America at this point of its history with all its social problems and an erratic leader like Trump threatening a nuclear war with North Korea and Iran every day.
“Your argument that 1 Million new immigrants to the U.S is a huge number to absorb is misleading at best. Currently the U.S. population is at 326 Million. This is not even 1% of the nation. “
Which begs the question, what’s the appropriate number that’s absorbable, bnimble07?
I found this collection of quotes from 1965 when lawmakers then were debating the 1965 Immigration Act, http://www.vdare.com/articles/so-much-for-promises-quotes-re-1965-immigration-act
I thought this particular quote (among many others) echoed your sentiment, bnimble07,
Well lance, he got that completely wrong ! Sounded reasonable at the time but in reality turned out to be ‘soothsaying’ …
Nnimble07, Trump was not elected by the directors of Ford, Walmart, Coc Cola or Microsoft. He got elected with the votes of Americans who live in the devastated rust best states…That is his constituency….And that constituency has very informed and definite opinions about both legal & illegal migration.
If Trump was PM of Australia, by now his policies on these issues would be already in operation. It’s only Democratic spoilers in Congress and their sympathisers in the courts who have blocked or stopped his policies in the USA.
This is illustrated by simple history : In 2013 our previous Labor Party government was dumped from office because it had lost all capacity to prevent illegal migration. Then a new government was elected with a policy of stopping it. And within a couple of months arrivals had been stopped completely.
And as for the Korea question,it was North Korea which attempted to conquer the South in 1949. And having afiled in that entered a UN brokered armistice in 1954 – that’s 63 years ago. .Now it’s North Korea which has developed nuclear bombs and missiles to send at the USA. And North Korea which has said that it is at war with the USA…Bloody nutters ! Very scary !!
Trump’s claims that he can bring back manufacturing jobs to the Rust Belt by restricting immigration from Mexico (or other shithole countries) is a bogus one. And he knows it. 80% of the manufacturing jobs lost in America in 2016 was due to automation or computerization. It’s advanced robotics that blue collar Americans have to worry about not new immigrants from Mexico or other shithole countries. Trump and the White Supremacist movement is waging a Cultural War and appealing to the angry, disillusioned White base who feel threatened that their place in the social pecking order will be further diminished as non Whites become more prominent in American social, political and business spheres of influence.
Some years ago I stayed a fortnight in Decorah, Iowa. Nice college town. About 11,000 people. But bugger all work for the locals not involved in ‘College’ or farm industries.
And out on the edge of town was a major meat packing operation. It was 90% staffed by illegal Mexicans on very low casual wages. They all lived in a couple of trailer parks. It’s cold in Iowa in Winter.
Not my idea of a good way to run a country. But it was not my country so I did not discuss it when locals brought it up.
And your alternative would be to mandate that the companies pay more? Or what? The unions, likely headed by communist sympathizers, would agree with that sentiment. The company would not, and might choose to close it’s doors. Then how would that community be?
If you judge a nation on these kinds of anecdotes, the nation will always fail you.
And why do you think the Mexicans came to America?
And I repeat my question. What does ‘capacity to become Americans’ mean? I’m scratching my head. Americans are some higher kinds of people?
There were no unions Joe nor probably any Communist sympathisers. Nobody I met in Decorah mentioned any.
Now how do we in Oz tackle this type of issue.
1: No employment of illegal immigrants. Companies doing this get fined by the Commonwealth government. Directors of such companies are banned from being directors. Workers applying for work have to have a tax file number ( TFN ) and if an immigrant produce the visa that allows them to work. People working without a visa which allows them to work when caught, get put in detention & then deported from wherever they came from.
2: There is a national award hourly rate of pay for virtually all types of work. These award rates apply across all Australia. Workers employed on a casual basis get 25% extra per hour. Tax is taken out. And as well Superannuation ( ) is paid by the employer at 9% for each dollar earned, into the employees nominated retirement fund.
3 As it happens there is a major meat packing & exporting operation about 20 ks away from me. A large national company named Thomas Foods. It employs a big workforce. and many of them as migrants from Afghanistan, Iraq, Thailand, the Philippines, including a couple Filipina friends of my wife. It’s physically hard work with early starts but they have secure employment. They all get the same rate of pay as locals and the same conditions.
Now that also creates a society which gives people a ‘fair go’.
1) The US has similar laws. The US is not an island and has a huge wage gap with Mexico and other Latin American countries. Policing the flood is onerous. Many industries like agriculture need the low-cost workers. Totally different contexts.
2) The US has structured wage scales.
3) Okay.
Since we are going anecdotal, I once dated a union organizer, Mexican, sharp, trying to get higher wages and better treatment of Mexican workers in Los Angeles. Her whole group was a pack of commies. I particularly enjoyed one Christmas party we attended, as she danced numerous dances with the President of our bank, which was rabidly anti-union. Clashing cultures can sometimes unite under the right circumstances.
Note the discrepancy between men and women in Australia’s underemployment rate. I could take a dig that the ‘fair go’ you tout is not so fair, and condemn Australia as a stuff up. But you have your own dynamics, history, politics, and embedded economic patterns. I’m confident your leaders are working diligently on such unfortunate quirks, as are American leaders.
I’ve not read what economists think about Trump immigration policies. Unemployment is 4.1% or virtually full employment. I’m not sure how US companies get cheap labor without immigration. I tend to think many whites have hobgoblins in their minds, unable psychologically to accept blacks/browns as being the same as them, just as smart, just as capable, just as good. These economic factors are just rationalizations of their incapacity to get outside themselves.
Okay, now this is interesting. Restrictions on immigration may push whites into lower earning jobs.
https://theconversation.com/the-economic-effects-of-restricting-immigration-lessons-from-us-history-88032
And here are additional insights:
http://www.businessinsider.com/how-dreamers-green-card-holders-immigrants-affect-the-us-economy-2017-9
Or maybe employers will actually offer reasonable wages and conditions ?
They are in business to make money, not be altruistic.
Joe that is true. But if workers in a country do not have decent wages and conditions, they cannot be effective consumers..So businesses go bust anyway…
Business in the US is roaring and I suspect bankruptcies are low.
The matter of minimum wages, unions, profits . . . always tension, so speculations can be made and argued every which way.
By the way Joe, I’m pretty sure that the 4.1% unemployment figure in the USA is a doctored figure. I wonder what the real level is including all those who can only get a few minimal casual hours a week ?
Here the government agency charged with measuring unemployment takes out anyone who works an hour a week, because technically they are “employed”. That’s obfuscation, bloody ‘mud in the eyes’ in my opinion to keep us in the dark.
If you don’t accept the facts that economists publish, and hold that you have greater knowledge, then it provides no basis for continuing the discussion or resolving the issue.
Joe, decades ago I studied Economic Statistics at Uni. The first thing our professor told us was this :” There are lies, dammed Lies and Statistics”. He even published a book with that for the title.
The headline figure 4/1% should not be trusted. Go look for the percentage on low hours of casual work. Usually it’s mentioned as “Underemployed”. Go look for the number of people retired because they could not get a job. Look for the percentage of people who are on disability pensions, because they cannot get a job.
The cumulative total is much more than 4.1%.
I say this because it is the same here/ The figures are fiddled to appear good as a high unemployment rate could kill a government as voters turn on the pollies presiding over it.
As I said, we have no basis for further discussion. The US economy is booming. The unemployment rate is as low as it has been in a long, long, long time. I’ve lost track of the point anyway.
Joe I googled “US Underemployment Rate” and immediately got this site
https://www.statista.com/statistics/205240/us-underemployment-rate/
In July 2017, the most recent figures to hand, the rate was 12.7%. And that figure does not include folks who have been ‘retired’ on Social Security because they cannot find a job.
Thanks.
Okay, that compares with about 11% for women and 7% for men in Australia. I have no idea if methodologies are the same. I must say that the US puts a lot of effort into its measurement, conducting thousands of phone surveys monthly. The US rate was 18.4% in 2010, so it is coming down consistent with the enduring robust economy.
This trend chart shows the current number is lower, so clearly these statistics are liars somewhere. But the US figures are similar to Australia’s and the trend is down.
Joe the same site has this statement :
“Unemployment in the U.S : A person is considered unemployed if they have no job and are currently looking for a job and available to work. The unemployment rate in the United States varies across states. Nation-wide unemployment was 4.1 percent as of November 2017 and has remained almost the same over the last year. …….. Since 1990, the country’s unemployment rate reached a low of 4 percent in 2000 and a high in 2010 at 9.6 percent.
It has been argued that the definition of unemployment is too narrow and does not include some groups of people, such as the “underemployed” and the “hidden unemployed”, which account for about 3.3 million Americans. ”
You point out that there is a difference between the male & female underemployment rates in Australia with 11% of women being underemployed..
I do not know the source of the graph which presents this. I imagine that many women who are carers of young children ( and thus limited in their capacity to work outside the home ) may fall into this category. But I really do not know.
Australia had it’s share also of Communists involved in the Union movement here dating from the early 1930’s. But with the collapse of the USSR in 1990 the supply of cash money which funded this dried up. We still have home grown left wing extremists around in Australia. But now they tend to be members or supporters of the Green party.
Interestingly the Greens are now the only party who have an open borders policy for attempted illegal migrants. And the Greens got 7% of the vote at the last national elections….
Well, we’ve had a good discussion. My main conclusion would be that every nation has it’s peculiar circumstances and easy judgments invariably omit important information. Immigration is a difficult and delicate matter, and in my opinion, President Trump is doing great damage to America’s interests. His popularity was at an all-time low prior to the shithole remark, and I suspect it will go down even further.
I think Filipinos would fall into his shithole bucket if he didn’t have business interests here, and I think that is unfortunate. He should be using his powerful office to raise up those who struggle, not tear them down. What a jerk.
[edited]
Lies or not,
Here is the summary:
Employment Situation Summary
Transmission of material in this release is embargoed until USDL-18-0024 8:30 a.m. (EST) Friday, January 5, 2018 Technical information: Household data: (202) 691-6378 * cpsinfo@bls.gov * http://www.bls.gov/cps Establishment data: (202) 691-6555 * cesinfo@bls.gov * http://www.bls.gov/ces Media contact: (202) 691-5902 * PressOffice@bls.gov THE EMPLOYMENT SITUATION — DECEMBER 2017 Total nonfarm payroll employment increased by 148,000 in December, and the unemployment rate was unchanged at 4.1 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment gains occurred in health care, construction, and manufacturing. __________________________________________________________________________________ | | | Revision of Seasonally Adjusted Household Survey Data | | | |Seasonally adjusted household survey data have been revised using updated seasonal| |adjustment factors, a procedure done at the end of each calendar year. Seasonally | |adjusted estimates back to January 2013 were subject to revision. The unemployment| |rates for January 2017 through November 2017 (as originally published and as | |revised) appear in table A, along with additional information about the revisions.| |__________________________________________________________________________________| Household Survey Data In December, the unemployment rate was 4.1 percent for the third consecutive month. The number of unemployed persons, at 6.6 million, was essentially unchanged over the month. Over the year, the unemployment rate and the number of unemployed persons were down by 0.6 percentage point and 926,000, respectively. (See table A-1.) Among the major worker groups, the unemployment rate for teenagers declined to 13.6 percent in December, offsetting an increase in November. In December, the unemployment rates for adult men (3.8 percent), adult women (3.7 percent), Whites (3.7 percent), Blacks (6.8 percent), Asians (2.5 percent), and Hispanics (4.9 percent) showed little or no change. (See tables A-1, A-2, and A-3.) Among the unemployed, the number of new entrants decreased by 116,000 in December. New entrants are unemployed persons who never previously worked. (See table A-11.) The number of long-term unemployed (those jobless for 27 weeks or more) was little changed at 1.5 million in December and accounted for 22.9 percent of the unemployed. Over the year, the number of long-term unemployed declined by 354,000. (See table A-12.) The labor force participation rate, at 62.7 percent, was unchanged over the month and over the year. The employment-population ratio was unchanged at 60.1 percent in December but was up by 0.3 percentage point over the year. (See table A-1.) The number of persons employed part time for economic reasons (sometimes referred to as involuntary part-time workers) was essentially unchanged at 4.9 million in December but was down by 639,000 over the year. These individuals, who would have preferred full-time employment, were working part time because their hours had been cut back or because they were unable to find a full-time job. (See table A-8.) In December, 1.6 million persons were marginally attached to the labor force, about unchanged from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) These individuals were not in the labor force, wanted and were available for work, and had looked for a job sometime in the prior 12 months. They were not counted as unemployed because they had not searched for work in the 4 weeks preceding the survey. (See table A-16.) Among the marginally attached, there were 474,000 discouraged workers in December, little changed from a year earlier. (The data are not seasonally adjusted.) Discouraged workers are persons not currently looking for work because they believe no jobs are available for them. The remaining 1.1 million persons marginally attached to the labor force in December had not searched for work for reasons such as school attendance or family responsibilities. (See table A-16.) Establishment Survey Data Total nonfarm payroll employment rose by 148,000 in December. Job gains occurred in health care, construction, and manufacturing. In 2017, payroll employment growth totaled 2.1 million, compared with a gain of 2.2 million in 2016. (See table B-1.) Employment in health care increased by 31,000 in December. Employment continued to trend up in ambulatory health care services (+15,000) and hospitals (+12,000). Health care added 300,000 jobs in 2017, compared with a gain of 379,000 jobs in 2016. Construction added 30,000 jobs in December, with most of the increase among specialty trade contractors (+24,000). In 2017, construction employment increased by 210,000, compared with a gain of 155,000 in 2016. In December, manufacturing employment rose by 25,000, largely reflecting a gain in durable goods industries (+21,000). Manufacturing added 196,000 jobs in 2017, following little net change in 2016 (-16,000). Employment in food services and drinking places changed little in December (+25,000). Over the year, the industry added 249,000 jobs, about in line with an increase of 276,000 in 2016. In December, employment changed little in professional and business services (+19,000). In 2017, the industry added an average of 44,000 jobs per month, in line with its average monthly gain in 2016. Employment in retail trade was about unchanged in December (-20,000). Within the industry, employment in general merchandise stores declined by 27,000 over the month. Retail trade employment edged down in 2017 (-67,000), after increasing by 203,000 in 2016. Employment in other major industries, including mining, wholesale trade, transportation and warehousing, information, financial activities, and government, changed little over the month. The average workweek for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 34.5 hours in December. In manufacturing, the workweek edged down by 0.1 hour to 40.8 hours, while overtime remained at 3.5 hours. The average workweek for production and nonsupervisory employees on private nonfarm payrolls was unchanged at 33.8 hours. (See tables B-2 and B-7.) In December, average hourly earnings for all employees on private nonfarm payrolls rose by 9 cents to $26.63. Over the year, average hourly earnings have risen by 65 cents, or 2.5 percent. Average hourly earnings of private-sector production and nonsupervisory employees increased by 7 cents to $22.30 in December. (See tables B-3 and B-8.) The change in total nonfarm payroll employment for October was revised down from +244,000 to +211,000, and the change for November was revised up from +228,000 to +252,000. With these revisions, employment gains in October and November combined were 9,000 less than previously reported. (Monthly revisions result from additional reports received from businesses and government agencies since the last published estimates and from the recalculation of seasonal factors.) After revisions, job gains have averaged 204,000 over the last 3 months. _____________ The Employment Situation for January is scheduled to be released on Friday, February 2, 2018, at 8:30 a.m. (EST). __________________________________________________________________________________ | | | Upcoming Changes to the Household Survey | | | |Effective with the release of The Employment Situation for January 2018 on | |February 2, 2018, new population controls will be used in the household survey | |estimation process. These new controls reflect the annual updating of intercensal | |population estimates by the U.S. Census Bureau. In accordance with usual practice,| |historical data will not be revised to incorporate the new controls; consequently,| |household survey data for January 2018 will not be directly comparable with data | |for December 2017 or earlier periods. A table showing the effects of the new | |controls on the major labor force series will be included in the January 2018 | |release. | |__________________________________________________________________________________| ____________________________________________________________________________________ | | | | | Upcoming Changes to Establishment Survey Data | | | |Effective with the release of The Employment Situation for January 2018 on | |February 2, 2018, the establishment survey will introduce revisions to nonfarm | |payroll employment, hours, and earnings data to reflect the annual benchmark | |adjustment for March 2017 and updated seasonal adjustment factors. Not seasonally | |adjusted data beginning with April 2016 and seasonally adjusted data beginning with | |January 2013 are subject to revision. Consistent with standard practice, some | |historical data may be subject to revisions resulting from issues identified during | |the benchmark process. | | | |The establishment survey will also revise the basis for industry classification | |from the 2012 North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) to the 2017 | |NAICS. The conversion will result in minor revisions reflecting content changes | |within the mining and logging, retail trade, information, financial activities, and | |professional and business services sectors. Additionally, some smaller industries | |will be combined within the mining and logging, durable goods manufacturing, retail | |trade, and information sectors. Several industry titles and descriptions also will | |be updated. | | | |Approximately 4 percent of employment will be reclassified into different industries| |as a result of the revision. Details of new, discontinued, and combined industries | |due to the 2017 NAICS update, as well as changes due to the annual benchmarking | |process, are available at http://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesnewseries.htm. | | | |For more information on the 2017 NAICS update, visit http://www.census.gov/eos/www/naics/. | |____________________________________________________________________________________| ____________________________________________________________________________________ | | | Upcoming Changes to The Employment Situation News Release | | | |Effective with the release of January 2018 data on February 2, 2018, the U.S. Bureau| |of Labor Statistics will introduce a minor change to The Employment Situation news | |release table B-1. As a result of the update to the 2017 NAICS, the industry title | |for general merchandise stores will change to general merchandise stores, including | |warehouse clubs and supercenters. A listing of all series changes as a result of the| |the 2017 NAICS update, including the industries published in news release table B-1,| |are available on the BLS website at http://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cesnewseries.htm. | |____________________________________________________________________________________| Revision of Seasonally Adjusted Household Survey Data At the end of each calendar year, BLS routinely updates the seasonal adjustment factors for the labor force series derived from the Current Population Survey (CPS), or household survey. As a result of this process, seasonally adjusted data for January 2013 through November 2017 were subject to revision. (Not seasonally adjusted data were not subject to revision.) Table A shows the unemployment rates for January 2017 through November 2017, as first published and as revised. The rates changed by one-tenth of a percentage point in 1 of the 11 months and were unchanged in the remaining 10 months. Revised seasonally adjusted data for other major labor force series beginning in December 2016 appear in table B. An article describing the seasonal adjustment methodology for the household survey data and revised data for January 2017 through November 2017 is available at http://www.bls.gov/web/empsit/cps-seas-adjustment-methodology.pdf. Historical data for the household series contained in the A tables of this release can be accessed at http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsatabs.htm. Revised historical seasonally adjusted data are available at http://www.bls.gov/cps/data.htm and https://download.bls.gov/pub/time.series/ln/. Table A. Seasonally adjusted unemployment rates in 2017 and changes due to revision January – November 2017 Month As first published As revised Change January…………. 4.8 4.8 0.0 February………… 4.7 4.7 .0 March…………… 4.5 4.5 .0 April…………… 4.4 4.4 .0 May…………….. 4.3 4.3 .0 June……………. 4.4 4.3 -.1 July……………. 4.3 4.3 .0 August………….. 4.4 4.4 .0 September……….. 4.2 4.2 .0 October…………. 4.1 4.1 .0 November………… 4.1 4.1 .0
HOUSEHOLD DATA
Table B. Employment status of the civilian population by sex and age, seasonally adjusted [Numbers in thousands]
Employment status, sex, and age 2016 2017
Dec. Jan. Feb. Mar. Apr. May June July Aug. Sept. Oct. Nov. Dec.
TOTAL
Civilian noninstitutional population(1)
254,742 254,082 254,246 254,414 254,588 254,767 254,957 255,151 255,357 255,562 255,766 255,949 256,109
Civilian labor force
159,736 159,718 159,997 160,235 160,181 159,729 160,214 160,467 160,598 161,082 160,371 160,533 160,597
Participation rate
62.7 62.9 62.9 63.0 62.9 62.7 62.8 62.9 62.9 63.0 62.7 62.7 62.7
Employed
152,233 152,076 152,511 153,064 153,161 152,892 153,250 153,511 153,471 154,324 153,846 153,917 154,021
Employment-population ratio
59.8 59.9 60.0 60.2 60.2 60.0 60.1 60.2 60.1 60.4 60.2 60.1 60.1
Unemployed
7,502 7,642 7,486 7,171 7,021 6,837 6,964 6,956 7,127 6,759 6,524 6,616 6,576
Unemployment rate
4.7 4.8 4.7 4.5 4.4 4.3 4.3 4.3 4.4 4.2 4.1 4.1 4.1
Men, 20 years and over
Civilian noninstitutional population(1)
114,603 114,297 114,375 114,455 114,538 114,627 114,721 114,817 114,918 115,020 115,120 115,212 115,292
Civilian labor force
81,996 82,051 82,054 82,007 82,054 81,915 82,022 82,128 82,297 82,561 82,366 82,375 82,548
Participation rate
71.5 71.8 71.7 71.7 71.6 71.5 71.5 71.5 71.6 71.8 71.5 71.5 71.6
Employed
78,396 78,448 78,515 78,548 78,839 78,794 78,753 78,863 78,887 79,393 79,248 79,324 79,431
Employment-population ratio
68.4 68.6 68.6 68.6 68.8 68.7 68.6 68.7 68.6 69.0 68.8 68.9 68.9
Unemployed
3,600 3,603 3,539 3,459 3,215 3,120 3,269 3,266 3,410 3,168 3,118 3,050 3,117
Unemployment rate
4.4 4.4 4.3 4.2 3.9 3.8 4.0 4.0 4.1 3.8 3.8 3.7 3.8
Women, 20 years and over
Civilian noninstitutional population(1)
123,383 123,052 123,131 123,212 123,296 123,386 123,480 123,577 123,679 123,781 123,882 123,975 124,057
Civilian labor force
71,898 71,720 72,050 72,233 72,144 71,979 72,187 72,499 72,406 72,497 72,187 72,302 72,293
Participation rate
58.3 58.3 58.5 58.6 58.5 58.3 58.5 58.7 58.5 58.6 58.3 58.3 58.3
Employed
68,835 68,572 68,978 69,337 69,218 69,087 69,289 69,586 69,502 69,692 69,576 69,665 69,614
Employment-population ratio
55.8 55.7 56.0 56.3 56.1 56.0 56.1 56.3 56.2 56.3 56.2 56.2 56.1
Unemployed
3,062 3,148 3,072 2,896 2,927 2,892 2,898 2,912 2,903 2,804 2,611 2,637 2,679
Unemployment rate
4.3 4.4 4.3 4.0 4.1 4.0 4.0 4.0 4.0 3.9 3.6 3.6 3.7
Both sexes, 16 to 19 years
Civilian noninstitutional population(1)
16,756 16,734 16,740 16,747 16,754 16,754 16,756 16,757 16,759 16,761 16,763 16,762 16,760
Civilian labor force
5,842 5,947 5,894 5,995 5,983 5,836 6,006 5,840 5,895 6,024 5,818 5,857 5,757
Participation rate
34.9 35.5 35.2 35.8 35.7 34.8 35.8 34.9 35.2 35.9 34.7 34.9 34.4
Employed
5,002 5,056 5,018 5,179 5,104 5,010 5,209 5,062 5,082 5,238 5,022 4,928 4,977
Employment-population ratio
29.9 30.2 30.0 30.9 30.5 29.9 31.1 30.2 30.3 31.3 30.0 29.4 29.7
Unemployed
840 891 876 816 879 825 797 778 813 786 796 929 780
Unemployment rate
14.4 15.0 14.9 13.6 14.7 14.1 13.3 13.3 13.8 13.0 13.7 15.9 13.6
Footnotes
(1) The population figures are not adjusted for seasonal variation.
NOTE: Seasonally adjusted data have been revised to reflect updated seasonal adjustment factors.
Thanks for the data, and for illustrating the rigor of the US effort to understand the economy.
God Karl, there is a week’s work looking through that data…And analysing it’s significance….
And I don’t have that time..
😦
Sabtang Basco…your wishes come true….
Many Philippine media persons are fired or getting fired…..
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/959770/media-group-deplores-termination-of-60-cnn-philippines-workers
I grieved for the Zombie journalists. Before CNN caught the firing fever ABS-CBN TV5, fired, too, and so many others. Here: https://www.rappler.com/nation/193445-employees-layoff-cnn-philippines
They splurged all their Christmas bonuses over the holidays … burn whatever was left-over on firecrackers … max’ed out their cards … before it got fully paid … 4 days before Valentines day they get fired. No money. No honey. Terrible! Terrible!
Yes, their last day is February 10!!!
According to the link by Sup they are right-sizing. They have one month to clean their cubbyholes and sinkholes. The disgruntled will pour water in their computers sabotage their office equipments. Like in the U.S., once they handed them the pink slips out they go. They are also given two banker boxes to gather their family pictures and employee picnic photos and wood laminated certificates. Extra security personnel are hired to make sure those pink-slipped do not hang-around to burn the place down.
No worries, these zombies will get a job right away. Working with an outfit like CNN is good enough credentials to be employed.
Just a few years from now, the immigrant hiring tech giants would be hiring less.
(Spoiler:AI)
https://www.salon.com/2017/11/14/amazon-apple-facebook-and-google-are-destroying-jobs/
karl,
I just watched AlphaGo movie (documentary) on Netflix, https://www.alphagomovie.com/
and what struck me the most, though it was a documentary about A.I. was the level of devotion S. Korea as a nation and people placed on this Chinese game of Go (Weiqi, in Chinese), surpassing Japanese and Chinese players.
And to think that S. Korea after WWII and the Korean War was a sh*thole country , related to my other comment re chess (I responded to your comment by the way ) , I’m now curious as to Go’s involvement in a nation’s rise, from sh*thole to one of the premier nations today,
maybe the Philippines can start a Go/Chinese Chess/Chess revolution (kinda like China’s “toilet revolution” , aka no more sh*tholes ) , in which you bring these games into the barrios, barangays, towns, provinces, slumps, etc. over there.
But for sure there’s a correlation between these deep games to a nation’s sh*thole status.
Please forward this idea to Sen. Trillanes.
My reply to you.
To add to that, we are good at Sudoku. Scroll down fom the link in my post above.
NH would love to share his insights about Go.
About barangay chess tournaments.
https://www.google.com.ph/search?client=safari&hl=en-ph&ei=Am5ZWqaLIIGm0ATVyaf4AQ&q=barangay+chess+tournament&oq=barangay+chess+tiurnament&gs_l=mobile-gws-serp.12…0.0.0.16992.0.0.0.0.0.0.0.0..0.0….0…1c..64.mobile-gws-serp..0.0.0….0.A2Uh3dZfEFo
http://thebatslife.blogspot.com/2017/06/chess-in-barangays.html
Thanks, karl, it looks like the Philippines is producing studs in chess (internationally rated too!)… so chess is popular in the Philippines then? From 1 to 10 (10 being like Russia in chess, like a juggernaut) where would the Philippines be? Better yet, compare chess to boxing , billiards and basketball there. Thanks!
karl,
While everyone’s so focused on eGames like DOTA2 , chess/chinese chess/go only requires a board and its pieces. So much more accessible than computer games.
Lee Sedol , the Korean guy who played AlphaGo , in the documentary explained how Lee was from some provincial, isolated island in S. Korea, so when he went to the Go academy at age 6 or 7, he thought pizzas grew on trees (totally provincial). I love that story, that’s what made the documentary so interesting, it focused on the people around AlphaGo.
Lee had an epiphany while playing the 2nd game with AlphaGo. How awesome is that. How many people even get epiphanies anymore?
Yeah, NH , would love that documentary (if he ‘s not already seen it).
Is Wesley So a rockstar in the Philippines? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wesley_So is he famous? Does he get a lot coverage there?
48th
https://ratings.fide.com/topfed.phtml
Wesley So has many results in google..
So as far as coverage, he is….covered.
https://www.google.com.ph/search?q=wesley+so&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&hl=en-ph&client=safari
Rockstar status?
Maybe, maybe he has twitter following.
You wanted failed-coup leader disgraced ex-Lieutenant Trillanes to play a game of strategy in chess? You gotta be kidding us, Lance! Trillanes got outwitted by Binay&Sons&Daughters. Trillanes didn’t even know that he can get the Certificate of Land Title of BinayLand in his own backyard. Most of all he got bamboozled by Binay’s promise to support him in Trillanes failed coup attempt.
You know what? “Coup” is a big serious word. Actually the Philippine Press, in their embarrassment of being ignored by foreign news wire, downgraded it to “misunderstanding”.
Now, you want him to pay a game of strategy and wit in Chess? Tough luck. He’d surely fail again against those Barber-waiting-for-customers in my local Barbershop.
Good news, not so many AI specialists around……yet.
http://www.thehindu.com/business/Industry/tech-giants-are-paying-huge-salaries-for-scarce-talent-in-artificial-intelligence/article19939786.ece
Karl, I really thought you were following the Philippine Senate investigations and Congressional debate. I find their intelligence are all artificial. Like Philippine OP-EDs, their intelligence are intermittent depending on binary code of a real number followed by number of zeroes separated commas.
If you think Silicon Valley is in need of Artificial Intelligence, please, send your Senators, Congressmen, Presidents, Cabinet Members to Santa Clara in California.
Hahahaha 🤪
TJoe you said “The US has similar laws. The US is not an island and has a huge wage gap with Mexico and other Latin American countries. Policing the flood is onerous.”
Yes I agree with you. And that is why Trump wants to build the wall on the Mexican border.
As for Australia, well being an island has not been much use recently as almost everybody arrives by plane. nowadays…So the key is how effectively the immigration authorities police arrivals and people breaking their visa conditions or overstaying their visa. That task is thought pretty important here. & funded accordingly.
But I doubt we will ever agree on this issue. So maybe I will leave it all be now.
I’d wager he’ll never get that wall built. He might get pieces, and more sensors and troops, but there is a cost/benefit calculation that must be done. If he gets it done, it will stand at some future point as a great dilapidated, useless structure not nearly as elegant as the ineffective Great Wall of China, and just as hated as the Berlin Wall.
By coincidence Quadrant magazine here in Oz has just put this article about Bannon & Trump on it’s website. definitely a sympathetic article but it still makes some interesting observations.
https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2018/01-02/new-nationalist/
The tenor of the article is upright, and I suppose if Bannon had pursued his ‘policy’ objectives earnestly through lobbying or running for office himself, his work might be understood as high-minded, but he instead led his initiatives with Breitbart News, a hate-filled, white-supremacist diatribe the very opposite of high-minded. The New Nationalist may, for its own interests, paint it as a picture of a silk purse, but it is, in fact, a pig’s ear.
Bannon’s done for.
First he crossed Trump’s family (pissing off Trump), then he did a half-apology for not speaking up, ie. “I regret… ” (pissing off Trump supporters). Andrew Breitbart was from Los Angeles , by the way Joe, he started Breitbart as a push back to liberal internet news outlets like HuffPost, etc. I hope it goes back to being an anti-HuffPost, instead of all the conspiracy theories, California minded, instead of catering to the Mid-West/Bible belt.
Bannon will probably create another Breitbart, if he’s not done so already. But he did promise to run for office, with his personality and charisma and good looks, i’m sure it’ll be for some small town council, Lol. As for Trump, remember he was a registered Democrat then Independent, then right before running for President, a Republican. I’m sure his family and his close inner circle are liberals socially, as many in New York are.
With Bannon gone, you’re seeing a more progressive Trump (as one might expect with above track record). But he is loyal to the people who elected him, and that’s the Rust belt and the working stiff (and immigration/trade agreements was the reason, Joe, not Russia or N. Korea). Whatever high-minded macro- conclusions are, at the end of the day, it’s about small towns falling apart, because of jobs going abroad, then seeing non-skilled immigrants,
that’s the reason Trump won those important electoral votes, Bannon helped but Trump already won the Rust belt before him, because he focused on immigration/outsourced jobs. My point, Bill’s correct. Now whether Trump and the Republicans will hold Congress that’s another story because people are kinda tired with all the antics.
For sure I think Trump will be impeached.
Lance, Lance, Lance … Sean Spicer is coming out with his book
Amarosa, too! She felt uncomfortable in the White House as the only black. She’ll write her story, too
So does Bannon to get even confidentiality or no confidentiality agreement.
WHAT DONALD TRUMP IS AFRAID OF? Drum roll please ……. brrrrrrth kaboom ! JEFF SESSION !!!!
Jeff knows a lot than all these blond blue eyed white supremacists …. DONALD TRUMP DOESN’T WANT JEFF TO WRITE A BOOK …. Else, the Democratic mid-term winners will throw the book at Trump !!!
Reading your tweet, sir, may I apologize my French by describing POTUS as a REMF who knows only opulence while being played as a puppet.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=REMF
Yes you may. Our leaders seem to admire dishing out crude, insulting language. It seems only proper that they reap what they sow.
Right, China is not … just watch this video by BBC News
Watch Chinese poors’ relocation houses. Their relocation houses looks like Forbes Subdivision houses in Makati.
They appear to be, unless one looks at how those houses are built.
Some Chinese contractors tend to cut corners like crazy.
I agree with you, madlanglupa, Donald Trump didn’t say those words.
???
What I was saying, if madlanglupa did not believe what the Chinese has built for their poverty-stricken people, therefore, I did not believe Donald Trump said the “sinkhole country”.
Ah, I see. 🤔
Thks for the vid. Human endurance is amazing. I’m puzzled by one thing. How come traffic seems to be one way only?
******
There’s a slide on the other side.
*****
At the end of the slide down to the base, you need a change of pants.
If there is no slide, there must be hang gliders.
At least the reason to change pants is not due to friction or abrasion.
There are people who do not believe Trump said that. But I do! Because he has been disparaging people from Mexico, Africa a great supporter of KKK. I agree illegal immigration has to be stopped I also believe Donald Trump said those words.
THERE ARE MILLIONS OF COUNTRIES AROUND THE WORLD WHY WOULD THEY COME TO AMERICA? WHY DO THEY COME TO AMERICA? WHY NOT NORWAY? SCANDINAVIA? WHY NOT THE PHILIPPINES? If these illegal immigrants claimed they contribute to the greatness of America, please come to the Philippines contribute to make Philippines great! You are most welcome.
I invite you to come illegally to Philippines. Pick your TV shows you can appear in. Talent is not required. Beauty and white skin is.
Here is the list of TV Shows illegal immigrant can apply: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Philippine_television_shows
After their stint in these TV shows, they can run for public office TO MAKE PHILIPPINES GREAT !!! (I did not say AGAIN because it never was)
Joe, I did reply to your question about migrants “Capacity to become American”.
Maybe you missed it is the complicated weave of threads up above. So I’ll repeat it here :
“Hey Joe, that’s a rediculous comment to make. If people migrating to the USA lack any capacity to join in the American Dream & American Society with all it’s aspirations and history, what the hell are they doing living in the USA ?
Migration to the USA is happening a 1 million people a year. If that 1 million a year don’t want to become Americans and part of American society, then your country will have serious problems.
Just my opinion as a foreigner & and an Australian.”
So any one who does not understand you is ridiculous? I genuinely did not understand and you call me ridiculous? I shall refrain from responding in kind.
The American dream is what just about everyone has when trying to get into America, legally or illegally. Their desire instantly qualifies them. Only racist idiots like Trump attach a color of skin to it, or a religion, or a richness of nation.
Joe, Australia too is an immigrant country. My views are simply a reflection of that fact.
So I wonder what other Americans here think of this.
Joe I just found your comment that you cannot listen to the link I posted yesterday from the ABC website about Trump & the Democratic Party.
I do not know why you cannot listen to it. It comes up easily for me. But maybe it’s a bandwidth issue at your end. And I wish there was a transcript as they are much quicker to read than listen to.
Still Amazon has the book for sale and also allows us to read sections of it with their look inside function.
The Amazon review of the book says this :
“Around the world, populist movements are gaining traction among the white working class. Meanwhile, members of the professional elite—journalists, managers, and establishment politicians–are on the outside looking in, left to argue over the reasons. In White Working Class, Joan C. Williams, described as having “something approaching rock star status” by the New York Times, explains why so much of the elite’s analysis of the white working class is misguided, rooted in class cluelessness.
Williams explains that many people have conflated “working class” with “poor”–but the working class is, in fact, the elusive, purportedly disappearing middle class. They often resent the poor and the professionals alike. But they don’t resent the truly rich, nor are they particularly bothered by income inequality. Their dream is not to join the upper middle class, with its different culture, but to stay true to their own values in their own communities–just with more money. While white working-class motivations are often dismissed as racist or xenophobic, Williams shows that they have their own class consciousness.
White Working Class is a blunt, bracing narrative that sketches a nuanced portrait of millions of people who have proven to be a potent political force. For anyone stunned by the rise of populist, nationalist movements, wondering why so many would seemingly vote against their own economic interests, or simply feeling like a stranger in their own country, White Working Class will be a convincing primer on how to connect with a crucial set of workers–and voters.”
Thanks. It is interesting that the disappearing middle class, who support Trump, are exactly the people who would be pushed further down by an immigration qualification based on ‘skills’. #Irony.
Maybe they are responding to what has actually happened them..Rather than what others, elite type folk from a different class, think WILL happen in the future ?
As for the prediction, it depends on the numbers doesn’t it ? And that depends on the nature of those setting the migrant annual targets.
Bill C from Arkansas might interject: It’s economics really amigos. The middle class ain’t disappearing at all. Those in the upper middle had just been kick down by amuck economics to populate the lower middle. Those in the lowest class are now sliding into the lower lowest class. But as JoeAm said, it’s just words.
No, that is not just words. That is trends.
No more Latinos!!! Make White Americans go hungry and starve. Make White Americans work in the field again !!! No more Filipinos!!! Let them wipe their parents behind! No more Indians !!! Let them code computers !!! No more Chinese !!! Let them treat their own !!!
No more whites !!! WHO WILL feed the world? Treat the sick? Develop OSX and Windows? Employ the immigrants? If there are no more whites in America who will come to work for Indians, Filipinos, Chinese and Latinos?
It’s interesting. There is nature, which allows water and people to flow here and there. There is mankind that tries to impose intellectual rules on nature to suppress the natural rule that the strong shall survive, giving the disadvantaged a chance. If nature were allowed to direct our manly ways, only the Chinese would survive. Time for you to take a trip to the Belo clinic and bone up on your Mandarin?
If I may be forgiven as a sandstone unfeeling as igneous rock, here is a link from TSoF, (the Society of Fools) by Popoy; what a way for imagination to earn a hard buck or two.
Intended may be to awe but not shock, this delightful eche bucheche of press freedom.
https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/canada/hamilton-brantford-couples-in-hawaii-prepared-for-the-end/ar-AAuDYai?li=AAadgLE&ocid=spartandhp
No. NO. I ain’t getting away from rectal-holes (sounds better than shitholes) of noble imagination -this concern by the righteous on unbridled immigration to better climes for better lives by Darwin’s admired survivalist specie. A troll like Jonathan Seagull can soar the sky of history what could be two dissimilar WALLs of eche bucheche.
Now here is another Wakarang of a discourse: REWIND TO 2,237 years ago. China in the days of Empire dynasties, built the Great Wall which can be seen today clearly in outer space by US Astronauts. Great Wall against what? Against invaders, against marauders, historian says. Great Wall for what? For protection as understood by the Chinese and the wall builders. The Emperor was may be wise to be scared or whatever.
Now, pass forward to the present: The alleged cantankerous US President is building a TRUMP WALL against what? For what? For reasons and justifications, it might be better to listen to the snoozers, Trumps detractors, and trolls? They the snoozers and detractors can demonstrate foresight without hindsight.
Time has not changed in its significance and duration. Only people and countries keep on changing. Europe as the world’s microcosm of civilization, for example, brisk through its dark ages, through its wars and revolutions, its reformation, restoration and renaissance, its modern communitization and Brexit (happening in parallel to globalization).
The computer age gave the world a new ballgame, stretching and expanding frontiers. People of all creed and breed went their crusade to find the good life, leave behind the bad one. The new issues are travel visas, permanent residence, expatriate employment, cheap exploited labor, naturalization, deportation, angry displaced and discarded locals, racism, etc. People in search of a better life became pejoratively the modern invaders, the peaceful marauders, the new worker, the new citizens.
If NEED BE, they should be WALLED OUT. That is if they cannot be stopped by humane policy, by Homeland Security. Trump Wall in the year 5,000 or less, could not only be seen clearly by gawkers orbiting outer space. It has become an awesome museum piece visited by Martians, Mercurians or Neptunians , etc. who worked and settled close to the TRUMP WALL in Southern United States replacing the Americans and illegals who left for other planets.
As I troll about it, only I, it seems have been yakking and yakking about a new dubious colonialism. Trump may have thought of the idiocy to build the Wall along the beaches and shores of a sea and another shinning sea because US has the SKAGS, The Air Force , the Navy and the Coast Guards. However, It seems crazy and not acceptable overkill to use the US Army to thwart unarmed border crossers.
The Wall MAY NOT be truly and solely against the GOOD coming from Mexico but against the BAD and UGLY of other countries who can make the porous borders the longest portal to USA. Oh yes, of course: what about the US airports? There’s an answer to that. When time travel has reach its apogee. the POE (point of entry) to great USA will be a large space station. Returning residents can be splashed down on water ports or landed in big airports. Those denied entry will be loaded into space ships to orbit the earth ceaselessly.
Those denied entry will be loaded into space ships to orbit the earth ceaselessly to await deportation back to their country.
The Great Wall and the planned border wall are for aliens of the third kind.
Failed to attach picture.(last attempt)
My dear Karl, if I may, that’s the modern greatness of America. Find it in Hollywood, in mansions and millions earned from great entertainment of the world, not the greatness of yore when Americans, freemen and slaves produced food, clothing and shelter, even jobs in factories. There is big bucks of an idea to film a yarn of aliens invading the earth. Some beauties married aliens. Men in Black battled aliens who by their appearance can’t even be accepted as Hollywood extras. Films should be made about aliens coming to earth as tourists to booze and fornicate. ET of the first encounter is cool.
Yeah, but E.T. was rated G. Drew Barimore was just a kid there.
GOODNESS GRACIOUS
How can an ad showing a black boy sporting a hoodie which says, “Coolest Monkey in the Jungle” get past the brains of H&M Stores Marketers. And we are not talking of the brain of Trump here.
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-14/people-protest-against-racist-ad/9327196
Thank you, NHerrera for being sensitive to blacks. What about insensitivity of Filipino movie makers derogatorily epitomizes Filipino with the looks Cachupoy, Redford White, Don Pepot, Pichay, Babalu, Yoyoy Villame and other ugly ducklings making fun of their Filipino looks while the mestizas and mestizos are characterized with respect?
SB, you have a point there; thanks for the note. But in the context of the world at this time, one would think Swedish H&M, a business enterprise, has more corporate brains.
Enough already … I strongly suggest redraw the political border of the U.S. and move it back to where cold region begins. Give California, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, Texas and all the states along the present border to illegal immigrants and Latin America.
Somebody redefined illegal as El Legal Immigrants in English: THE LEGAL IMMIGRANTS
Well, America, if you do not act now I do not care as long as my parents keep sending me greenbacks.
There were 8 “honorable” “lawmakers” in the meeting EACH HAS DIFFERENT VERSION WHAT DONALD TRUMP SAID !
Next Time when they have a meeting they should speak one language not multi-lingual. They should have a sign: ENGLISH IS ONLY SPOKEN IN THIS MEETING! NOT FRENCH!
This is my take about the so called “shithole countries” bruhaha which like a stink bomb had awakened snoozers in poor parts of the noodle world. These countries are not and won’t ever be rectum countries. There’s nothing of the sort in any man inhabited galaxy or black holes in the universe. To me plain and simple, these aftermath of spittle of anger and sniffles for sympathy are serendipitous of incorrect righteousness.
Excretory countries are products of excretory minds; NOT UNLIKE sewerage outlet pipes. It’s like calling girls you don’t like BIMBOs. To be called a Bimbo does not diminish girlhood, the quality of sweetness of femaleness, of being not an animal but a human being. Call them names: the country’s Queen, or London’s Soho streetwalker, doesn’t change what they are.
But that’s mere snoring of a snoozer, THAT’S NOT THE POINT. Even from the point of view of a simpleton. The point is “SHITHOLE COUNTRIES” as referents IS CONTEXTUAL.
USA is leader of all free world countries. The leader of USA is with select people to discuss may be not oppression or conquests of other lands but PROTECTION (security?) of its citizens. To have the honor and dignity to be part of that meeting with the paramount leader, albeit so obnoxious to press; even a simpleton functionary of Great USA should know what will transpire there will be inclusive: could be Top Secret, Secret, Confidential or Restricted information. To be a part (despite being a press freedom junkie) of that meeting and to YAK or blab about what happened there under protection of not being authorized, is to me to be a WAKARANG, to be a bureaucract Bimbo.
Now here’s the spin: I am a young rich rapper. My Dad is terrible, an SOB. He is not happy with our neighbors. He thinks our neighbors is NOT doing the family any good. He called for a family council to ask our opinions. We have mild ideas. We know he wanted more. He called the neighbors names, using very bad words.
Now here’s the rub: As a son of a terrible father, is it right for me to bladder to the world what my Dad said about our neighbors. Should I, a rapper be an S.O.B. like him, because he is an S.O.B. because I can’t fall away from the tree. Am I not disrespecting my family every time I am disrespecting my Dad to the world? That’s more than a spin. It’s a dilemma. Basta, porque tu eres hijo de bamboo.
if you think this is a critique of the TSoH, please read again, think of why Brexit England will not bomb into salty liquid the train railroad under the English Channel.
*******
As supposed leader of the Free World, should the U.S. President be disrespecting constituent countries even in private?
It goes to frame of mind.
A leader that is secretly contemptuous of followers is not a good leader.
*****
Agree it goes to frame of mind. One is a leader, elected by his people not a paid APPOINTED government official. One don’t want and can’t tolerate the smell of shit. This is happening to one’s people hit by shit. Because of shit, Sissy leadership is becoming a thing of the past.
If your followers are openly contemptuous of you as a leader and you are only secretly contemptuous of them you’re a weak leader, they should be fired. When your detractors hatred is more than your alleged hate of them. Who is the great demonstrator hater? You are not Jesus Christ, an elected Saint for martyrdom. You expect yourself to make things happened as people expects. For personally not killing people or jailing them you can get assassinated. It had happened before. Snoozing can also be a frame of mind.
I am not for or against Trump, ergo, therefore I am a troll but not a Wakarang.
I am depressed, I like to punch my Dad in the face. I told him in disgust I am going to leave home and live somewhere else but I am still here. I am worst than my Dad. My genes and environment failed me. When I get rich I will buy a mansion and live there. That will be cool.
Moroccans immigrate to France …
Asian-Indians immigrate to UK …
UK immigrate to Canada and Australia … never to America
(American women loves British accent if it were not for their crooked teeth)
Vietnamese immigrate to France
Congo people to Belgium
Brazilians to Portugal
Middle Eastern to Europe
Filipinos immigrate to the U.S.
They have one common denominator … colonized immigrate to their HATED former colonists. WHY?
Only Filipinos do not immigrate to their former HATED colonist, Spain. Why? Why Filipinos prefer the U.S. over Spain when they have been colonized for 350 years?
I do not get it. Nor “doctors of history” from Ateneo and la Salle.
*******
Because Filipinos have short memories.
And Spain is not a creator/innovator of gadgets. It’s most famous inventions are bullfighting and jai alai.
Ironically, Spain discovered the New World (U.S.).
*****
Again, not exactly.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_people_of_Filipino_ancestry
40 thousand is still 40k.
As for British Americans, 40 million.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Americans
I’m reminded of a sculptor facing a huge marble block (Basco brick) who knocks a chip off the impenetrable block of outrageous opinion, seeking to sculpt truth. Good luck! 🙂
If a hammer and chisel won’t work, there are power tools.
Dear subscribers,
I found a YouTube video recommended viewing for your consideration. This is 30-minute long of sights, sounds, culture and epic result of CHAIN MIGRATION that Donald Trump want no part of. It is a mix of sorrow, loneliness, love, migration, assimilation and, like what I said, CHAIN MIGRATION how it will change the face of this tiny islet (hyperbole) in the middle of Atlantic Ocean.
Here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q0br4Ujitu0
Here is a spoiler, THE WOMAN HERE IS EXTREMELY COY in her wedding video THAT MADE ME THINK I SHOULD FIND A WOMAN LIKE HER and change Babuyan Island forever.
Is that the same as chain smokers?
Go google find the weakest link in the chain. Chain smoking could be wrong English, more so if smokers put in their mouth two skags (PMAyers lingo) at a time.
Change smokers then.
There was a pinoy version of the game “Weakest Link” hosted by Edu Manzano…..Goodbye.
This is my unsolicited take on Harry and Meghan. Harry looks naughty, mischievous, and lovable unRoyal English bloke to the female specie. His affection makes and gives the real Meghan the difficult to define sweetness and charm only those who experienced true love can be intoxicating, and permanent until death.
Harry and Meghan against the ugly and cruel world, are the Romeo and Juliet of our time. You see it in Meghan’s happines when she meets all kinds of people when she is with Harry; Just like Kate but more than Kate, Meghan has different diamond finish and sparkle. Tragedy seems to await their love for each other. Their parents and families are not at Odds.
The majesty of the Queen’s character is demonstrated by her charm to have learned what love is all about from her humble Prince consort. She does not meddle. May be the fault is not in Harry’s or Meghan’s or their combined stars. If it happens because Cupid has already done a good job, God might mysteriously intervened.
Only those who no longer can earn big bucks from making mince meat of Harry and Meghan, will say and write I told you so. Mga Wakarang.
There are no shithole countries, there are only shithole leaders.
Bingo.
The joke’s on him.
The same should be projected to Miss Philippines: NO S***THOLE FILIPINA ALLOWED. GERMANS, AMERICANS AND NEW ZEALAND ARE PREFERRED !!!
Just in case Madlanglupa is not aware, FILIPINOS EXERCISE REVERSE RACISM. They hate their own preferring Non-Filipino looking in beauty contests.
Donald Trump said a few hours ago that he is less racist than “others”. I AGREE WITH TRUMP! Trump is honest. Liberal Democrats are not! They run a ring around a rosie beating the bushies.
Example. Santa Monica in California is the most liberal city in Southern California. They protect all races all ethnicities but do not live amongst the race they protect. They would rather drive hours stuck in the freeway when they can live in South Central which is 20-minute easy drive from everywhere.
Los Angeles is still segregated so is Oakland, San Francisco, San Jose and Sacramento. So are the Burroughs in New York up and down the coast from Havana to Buffalo.
White people doesn’t want their children attend school where there are colorful children. Of course I am afraid, too. I am afraid of classmates wearing low-slung loose jeans wearing outlandish jewelries. When I see Navigators, Cadillacs, Hemis, Crown Victorias and cars with shiny chrome wheels hip-hop rap music thumping windows rolled down I KEEP AWAY. They are Democrat protected criminals wanting attention. I slow down. I speed up. I change lane. Just to keep away from them. If you are next to them, do not make eye contact. Their violence is their culture and their culture is protected by Democrats.
The idea is wait until they blow my brains out before I complain.
When police take them in, the police put their hands over their head from banging the roof of their cruiser when they go for a jail ride.
ME RACIST? No, I am not a racist. I PROFILE people who to avoid for my safety. Thank goodness in the Philippines they do not have that. Actually it is difficult to profile Filipinos. You are walking. They invite you for a drink. When they get drunk. They shoot you because I said something against Duterte.
FBI employs full-time profiler. They are psychologists. They cannot publish profiles because it is racist. See the difference? Between a Racist and a Profiler? Agent Clarice Starling was a FBI profiler. She took down Dr. H Lecter. It is OK to publish profile of whites but never ever profiles of people of color.
I will moderate you so as to ease your domination of the discussion. I am trying to publish an earnest discussion, and your outlandish views wobble between entertaining and offensive, and that is not the character I seek for this blog.
There are some interesting remarks is a new article in Quadrant Magazine here in Oz about this subject:
: “We have a problem in the rich (predominantly) fair-skinned west. Our problem is thinking that we are lucky. We are not; if by luck we mean chance. Chance has nothing to do with it. Our deeply embedded Judaeo-Christian culture and values have made us rich – not our fair skins. So, we better make sure when inviting large numbers of people in that they don’t bring dysfunctional cultures and values with them. With Haitian, or Sudanese or Somalian cultures and values Norway would not be the Norway that we know. It would be a race of fair-skinned people wanting to escape en masse to America.
Racists make excuses for corrupt, crime-ridden, dirt-poor societies. It is the racism of low expectations. ……Non-racists, including Trump, I suggest, put differences down to culture and values not to race. Trump wants a merit-based system which brings people who can contribute and who, as he puts it in his homespun way, “that love us and want to love our country.” He puts America first, as he should.
What is wrong with that? How is that the least racist? It is only racist to those who see everything through a racial prism. ”
https://quadrant.org.au/opinion/qed/2018/01/bring-back-whinging-pom/
What an incredibly incomplete perspective of a dream. Please allow me to use the Steve Jobs analogy in the pursuit of a better world. Dreaming of a future that only resembles the past is doomed to stagnation. Before the development of computing graphical interfaces, text was presented in the most basic character representation. Then came Steve Jobs who became enamored with calligraphy which he integrated into his computers. Today, our form of communication is so comfortably beautiful, it is scary to think what would have happened if the parents who were in less than ideal circumstances never met and bore that child. Look throughout history and you will find many innovative life altering contributions made by those in difficult circumstances. It is that struggle from challenging situations that actualizes the best aspirations. The dreams of those who have less are greater than the dreams of those who have more. Differently put, if you send your kids to school in uniform, they will come home in uniform. Let them dress themselves and their looks will surprise you in interesting dimensions.
” . . . so comfortably beautiful, it is scary . . .” Great description. So is the lesson at the end, which PH educators have failed to grasp for over a century now.
JohnD, It seems you do not like the perspective expressed in this Quadrant article. However I don’t think your reply is relevant at all. In fact it is largely bs and off topic.
Take your statement ” Look throughout history and you will find many innovative life altering contributions made by those in difficult circumstances. It is that struggle from challenging situations that actualizes the best aspirations.
Excuse me ?
Life usually is quite capable of throwing challenges at us all without adding to them exponentially by for example a stupid migration policy here in Oz or for that matter in the USA.
Bill, kindly direct your comments to the issues and refrain from labeling the comments of others in a way that denigrates. Thank you.
Bill, I think your range of options for immigration policy does not include not having one at all. I just think that discussions on immigration fail to ask the question of why there is immigration at all. The first world countries seem to think that they are not part of the reason of the immigration and hence all immigrants are foreign substances requiring an antibody solution. When you go to another country, you open the door. When you make noise in that country, you attract more to go through your door. I am not familiar with Australia’s policies but do you have an immigration problem from Kazakhstan? The U.S. doesn’t now but will have one soon, now what we know how money is laundered through Kazahkstan through the building of ghost resorts. The same thing when the U.S. went to Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria. I bet that the immigrants in Australia are all from countries where Australia has the most dealings. I dont believe in immigration policies in the form it is currently based. Instead there should be interaction/intervention/intercourse policies. If you want to go war with a country, you should pre-calculate the immigrants that will come into the country as a result of that intervention. It is unavoidable. You cannot prevent a soldier from finding someone while on the battlefield. You cannot prevent your government from offering sanctuary to someone on the battlefield who provides you assistance. You cannot prevent the refugee from coming to your shores because you blew up their homeland. Even without a war, you cannot prevent your engineer from finding someone while surveying a foreign country for resources. If you open the door, they will enter.
My point in my earlier response is that you are pushing away people because you think they are not worthy by some rationale but you can never know. Instead look towards the reason they come and control that. Unfortunately, no country does that. There should be percentage immigration impact of all investments made into another country. The more disruptive that investment is in that country, the greater the immigration impact. So, If Trump wants more Norwegian immigrants, he should sell cheap oil and charcoal in Norway and drive out the Hydrogen and Solar power companies. People will buy more gas cars, pollute the air, destroy their environment. Norwegians will immigrate to the U.S. in droves.
The Quadrant article posted here is a revisionist account of the expansion of Western Empires in the last 300 years. Christians today would be horrified to know the atrocities, injustices, genocides and bloodlust committed by the Western Empires (Spanish, Dutch, British, American) in their quest for material wealth around the world in order to feed the insatiable appetite of their population back home. The Spanish Empire is a classic example. The Spanish Conquestadores succeeded in colonizing the Americas NOT because of their Judeo-Christian beliefs but because of their unrelenting brutality and technology (guns) in wiping the local population which resisted the invaders who were out to exploit their natural resources. Truth be known, if these genocides happened in the present day, the Spaniards would have been hauled en masse to the ICC Court in The Hague and prosecuted with Crimes Against Humanity. The Vatican or any other Church denomination would have condemned these acts of barbarity and inhumanity if the Spaniards were committing them today. That’s how they wiped out the Incas from the face of the earth and proceeded to exploit the New World resources and became very rich in the process. Pure genocide. And the British repeated the same in all their colonies. The Dutch as well. And of course, our beloved Americans also followed the same pattern, in the Philippines, and elsewhere but with more advanced and deadly technology available. They had a Blueprint to Imperialism which they all shared and faithfully executed to the detriment of the local populations they conquered. Rinse and Repeat. It had nothing to do with superiority of Judeo-Christian beliefs.
No Christian I know of would be proud to claim that the atrocities committed by these Western Empires from the Old World including up to the present in their quest for material wealth is part of the core beliefs of Christianity. None.
Here’s an excerpt of an interview with Jared Diamond, academic and historian, author of the best selling book Guns, Germs and Steel.
GUNS, GERMS AND STEEL:
Voiceover: The first smallpox epidemic of the New World swept through Central America and reached the Inca Empire. Wherever it went, the virus decimated native populations, making them easier prey for Spanish conquest. But why were the germs so one-sided? Why did the Spaniards pass their diseases onto the Incas, and not the other way around?
Jared Diamond: This is Pizarro’s secret weapon; pigs and cows, sheep and goats, domestic animals. Remember that Pizarro was a swineherd. He grew up in huts like this, in intimate contact with domestic animals, breathing in their germs, drinking the germs in their milk, and it was from the germs of domestic animals that the killer diseases of humans evolved, for example our ‘flu evolved from a disease of pigs transmitted via chickens and ducks. We acquired measles from cattle; we acquired smallpox from domestic animals, so that these worst killers of human people were a legacy of 10,000 years of contact with our beloved domestic animals.
Voiceover: During the Middle Ages, infectious diseases swept through Europe and claimed millions of lives. But paradoxically, repeated epidemics made Europeans more resilient. In each outbreak, there were always some people who were genetically better able to fight off the virus. These people were more likely to survive and have children. In the process, they’d pass on their genetic resistance.
Over centuries, whole populations acquired some degree of protection against the spread of diseases like smallpox – a protection the Incas never had.
Tim Brooks: Once smallpox was taken to the New World, nobody in the New World had ever seen a disease like this before, so the number of people who were susceptible was much greater. There was no natural immunity, and so therefore the number of people who could both contract the disease and then spread it, and the number of people to receive it once it had spread, was much higher.
Voiceover: More people would die, and more people would be susceptible to catch it in the first place. It would spread rapidly throughout the population, and the death toll would be enormous.
Jared Diamond: Why hadn’t Native Americans encountered smallpox before? And why didn’t they have any deadly diseases of their own to pass on to the Spaniards?
It’s simply because they didn’t have the same history of contact with farm animals. The Incas had llamas, but llamas aren’t like European cows and sheep. They’re not milked, they’re not kept in large herds, and they don’t live in barns and huts alongside humans. There was no significant exchange of germs between llamas and people.
Voiceover: The key to Diamond’s argument is the distribution of farm animals around the world. Aside from the llama, all the large farm animals were native to Eurasia and North Africa. None was ever domesticated in North America, Sub-Saharan Africa, or Australia. As a result, the worst epidemic diseases were also native to Eurasia and North Africa, and were then spread around the world with deadly effect. There’s been a long debate about the number of indigenous people who died in the Spanish conquest of the New World. Some scholars think there may have been a population of 20 million Native Americans, and the vast majority, perhaps 95%, were killed by Old World diseases. A continent virtually emptied of its people.
END OF EXCERPT
Pizarro weaponized pigs and cows? Intentionally? I don’t think so. Medicine even today is full of surprises. I don’t think Aquino weaponized mosquitos against kids. The point about blueprints for imperialism is rather the devil in our humanity, or the law of human reactions where good intent produces unforseeable circumstances. It is not a calculation except after the fact. Before the fact, it all made sense.
I like Diamond’s writing. I have all his books on the shelf. However he got it wrong about the disease which killed the Aztecs. It was salmonella which did them in.
Check out this new science, published this week:
https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/in-conquered-mexico-almost-a-million-died-of-salmonella-in-just-five-years
And here is an important article from the Guardian – probably the best that has been published in the past decade or so. It is about one man’s “Total News Blackout” for a year after Trump was elected. The net result was that all the rage he felt all the time, disappeared. Remarkable !
https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2018/jan/18/my-year-of-living-ignorantly-i-entered-a-news-blackout-the-day-trump-was-elected
I have just found this on Youtube. A Nigerian living in the USA comments about Donald Trumps “shithole’ country remark in a private conversation.
Another great discussion about why Trump won and still resonates with so many ordinary Americans. The guest is a ‘liberal’ left of centre US writer named Thomas Frank. And as he says Trump in 2016, stole the Democratic Party’s historic traditional message to the American people.
And the Democratic party having been taken over by the professional educated classes could do nothing about it.
http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/counterpoint/why-people-are-sick-of-being-lectured-to-by-elites/9271298