[ExI] Even India and Haiti do it better

[John Clark]

On Mon, May 11, 2020 at 5:44 PM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

  > *Up until the virus crushed economies all over the globe, we had a
> great run.*
>

Great run? The wealth gap between rich and poor is accelerating worse than
ever, and even before the virus Obama grew the economy faster than Trump
did, and Obama inherited the second worst economic situation in the last
hundred years.... well third worst now:

US Economic Growth
<https://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=https%3A%2F%2Fichef.bbci.co.uk%2Fnews%2F410%2Fcpsprodpb%2F122CB%2Fproduction%2F_110934447_usgdp-nc.png&imgrefurl=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.bbc.com%2Fnews%2Fworld-45827430&tbnid=dPt6IlOIYKU89M&vet=12ahUKEwi61M6sjq7pAhVWCVMKHek4DDQQMygAegQIARAh..i&docid=D0ihY8o9kPT14M&w=2666&h=2083&q=us%20economic%20growth%202019&hl=en&ved=2ahUKEwi61M6sjq7pAhVWCVMKHek4DDQQMygAegQIARAh>

And yes after the virus came the GDP would decline under any president, but
Trump's bungling made it far worse. In the first quarter the GDP of South
Korea declined by 1.4%, in the USA it declined by 4.8%. And today the
unemployment rate in the USA is 14.7%, in South Korea It's 3.8%. And both
countries reported their first case of COVID-19 on the same day.

And even before the virus Trump increased the national debt that you're so
worried about much faster than Obama did.

Change in debt
<https://zwingliusredivivus.files.wordpress.com/2019/02/51810464_2165383930208313_2636530764878970880_n.jpg>

*> The constitution limits the damage any one bad actor (or group of them)
> can do. *
>

You're so confident that little piece of paper can protect you from
anything that you won't even lift a finger to prevent the bad actor from
gaining power in the first place, such as by putting a checkmark on your
ballot next to a presidential candidate that actually has a fighting chance
of beating the bad actor, instead you go for Mr. Nobody from the Very Silly
Party that will be completely forgotten by history 10 minutes after the
polls close.


> *> Aren’t you glad we have a constitution?  *
>

I'd have no worries whatsoever if it was as difficult to violate the
constitution as it is to violate the Second Law Of Thermodynamics, but that
is not the case. The constitution is not the divine word of God either, it
is the end result of a series of compromises made by a bunch of very
fallible human beings. And the Constitution means what the Supreme Court
says it means, and the Supreme Court is full of Trump flunkies. Trump
promised in 2016 that he would make his tax returns public, but he did what
he always does, he lied. Trump wants to keep his tax returns secret so
badly that he took the case all the way to the supreme court and they will
be hearing arguments about it today, but I think there is little chance the
court will do the right thing and let the American people see those damming
tax returns, at least not before the election. I hope I'm wrong.

 John K Clark
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