Explaining Romney's vision

[Justforfun000]

I am a late comer to politics, any serious in depth look at the economy and taxation, free vs regulated market. etc.. I'm trying to make up for it now and I'm reading a lot of info and while I think I'm closer to understanding Obama and his general plan, especially long-term, I don't have a CLUE how Romney is suggesting his policies will help anyone but the rich?

All I keep seeing is him focusing on making it even easier for rich people to get richer and claiming that reductions in the cost of doing business will both somehow make them make oodles of jobs in the US that are good paying, "real" jobs and also suggests he can do all this with nobody really footing the bill to get there.

????

Obviously I'm simplfying this incredibly but that's it in a nutshell to my understanding. Am I misinterpreting him? Does anyone really know what the hell he actually has as a workable plan to make the poor closer to middle class, the middle class truly like the middle class of old...able to have 2.2 kids on one salary, cars, money for university education and savings to boot for retirement and the rich...well..richer from the sound of things.

I'm totally lost by what his 'vision' is. I'm suspecting it's probably a nightmare..

[NettiWelho]

Now, from what Ive gleamed Romney hasn't put all that much of his would-be policies on the table but I'd imagine it will be another case of...

[Darth Lucifer]

LOL, just as I was reading this thread, I had to check my mail...lo and behold, I got me some Pro-Romney propaganda in the mail. Here's an excerpt:

MITT ROMNEY'S PLAN FOR A STRONGER MIDDLE CLASS

More Jobs and More Take-home pay.

Beginning Day One, Mitt Romney will put job creation first. Romney knows the hard work and innovation of America's entrepeneurs build successful businesses, create jobs and strengthen our economy.

MITT ROMNEY'S plan will strengthen the middle class.

Romney's plan will create more take-home pay and more jobs -- 12 Million new jobs created by the end of his first term.

Energy Independence - increase access to domestic energy resources.

The skills to succeed - great schools, qualified teachers and job training programs focused on building valuable skills that align with oppportunities

Trade that works for America - open new markets and curtail the unfair trade practices of countries like China

Cut the deficit - immediately reduce non-security discretionary spending by five percent and cap federal spendig below twenty percent of the economy.

Champion small business - reduce taxes on job creation, stop the increases in regulation and replace Obamacare with real health care reform that controls cost and improves care.

ROMNEY - BELIEVE IN AMERICA
http://www.MittRomney.com

[Simon_Jester]

Just don't ask him about the details of this plan- like with the health care.

Romney's plan involves trying to say "anything Obama can do, I can do better with an extra side-order of capitalism and tiny government!" That's about all he's willing to say during the campaign. Probably because if he says anything specific, it'll either alienate a slice of his base or alienate all the normal people in the country.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Decided to goto Mitts website myself to look up the "Specifics" of his plans. Thinking surely there has to be some sort of concrete plan that isn't just vague platitudes. Well under JOBS & ECONOMY he has it broken down into the following steps:
Tax
Regulation
Trade
Labor
Human Capital
Spending.

Funny there isn't one there that actually SAYS "Creating Jobs" I click on each of these one by one and find a similar layout.
The first part is titled "OBAMA'S FAILURE" basically, every single subset has a huge two paragraph part that says how Obamas has screwed things up. it is VERY specific, but usually full of lies.
The second part is titled "MITT'S PLAN" this is just a few lines long but then goes into more specifics.
So I am looking for something that says how he will make jobs...
Few of these even USE the word "jobs" many that do, usually in reference to the federal government "Doing a better job"
The ONLY page that actually uses the phrase "Creating Jobs" in direct response to one of Mittens plans was on "Trade" and it says the following:

Opening New Markets

Every president beginning with Ronald Reagan has recognized the power of open markets and pursued them on behalf of the United States. George W. Bush successfully negotiated eleven FTAs, encompassing sixteen countries. He also had the vision to commence negotiations with a number of allies around the Pacific Rim to expand significantly the Trans-Pacific Partnership. All told, these agreements have enabled people across the world to come together and build a better future. Economists estimate that the agreements have led to the creation of 5.4 million new American jobs and support a total of nearly 18 million jobs. Looking beyond just our FTA partners, our total exports support nearly 10 million American jobs. These are not just jobs; they’re good jobs, paying significantly above average, and more than one-third are in manufacturing.

Reinstate the president’s Trade Promotion Authority
Complete negotiations for the Trans-Pacific Partnership
Pursue new trade agreements with nations committed to free enterprise and open markets
Create the Reagan Economic Zone

Thats it, the only time "creating jobs" is used, is when he is talking about BUSH "creating jobs"
Basically the large share of his "Economic Vision" comes down to bashing Obama and saying, in great detail, how he screwed up. Thats it. On Romney's own website, that is all we get for his "Great Vision" of America.

EDIT:
That E-mail is HILARIOUS, it basically boils down to saying "Romney's plan for creating jobs is... To create jobs!"

[Darth Lucifer]

That E-mail is HILARIOUS, it basically boils down to saying "Romney's plan for creating jobs is... To create jobs!"

Actually it was a snail mail and I copied it by hand. Yeah, I was bored.

Basically the large share of his "Economic Vision" comes down to bashing Obama and saying, in great detail, how he screwed up.

That's pretty much the rest of the flyer. The other page of the pamphlet starts:

BARACK OBAMA
BELIEVES GOVERNMENT
CREATES JOBS NOT PEOPLE

"If you've got a business - you didn't build that. Somebody else made that happen." - President Barack Obama, remarks, Roanoake VA, 7/13/12

PRESIDENT OBAMA BELIEVES GOVERNMENT BUILDS BUSINESS AND CREATES JOBS

Not the job creators and entrepreneurs who pursued their dreams, took the risk, and put in the long hours starting and building their businesses.

PRESIDENT OBAMA SAYS THE PRIVATE SECTOR IS DOING FINE

Unemployment is up. The national debt is higher. The number of Americans on food stamps and in poverty is higher.

PRESIDENT OBAMA IS OUT OF TOUCH WITH AMERICA'S ECONOMY

Pushing big-government policies that hurt America's middle-class, kill jobs, and raise taxes on millions of Americans and the small businesses that comprise the backbone of America's economy.

FOUR YEARS AGO, PRESIDENT OBAMA PROMISED TO CREATE NEW JOBS AND AND LEAD AMERICA'S ECONOMIC RECOVERY

America is still waiting.

BARACK OBAMA
OUT OF TOUCH WITH AMERICA'S ECONOMY

Oh, I forgot the cover....

42 MONTHS of unemployment over 8%

(insert picture of a piggy bank with a hammer about to come down on it)

A HAMMER BLOW
to America's Struggling Middle-Class Families

[Chirios]

Romney's idea can be boiled down to this:

Private enterprise improves lives. Government interferes with private enterprise and when it does so it makes people's lives worse. Therefore, the government must reduce the amount that it interferes in peoples private lives to the bare minimum necessary.

From a morality point of view it's an extension of Thomas Paine's statement that "Government, even in it's best form is but a necessary evil"; however it's exact beginnings are with Ayn Rand and Hayek, even though Hayek would've thought Rand a complete and utter drooling moron.

[GrandMasterTerwynn]

Romney's platform is classic Goldwater-style conservatism, which espouses that if you get government out of the way of business, then business will naturally make the nation prosperous. So to do that, you cut taxes for the wealthy, since the wealthy are the business owners; and if they have more money ... the theory is that they will use it to grow their businesses, because a bigger business means more profit.

How does that help people that aren't wealthy? Well, the bigger business will need more people working for it. Ergo the language about "job creators." Supposedly, businesses will pay their employees competitive salaries, to keep other businesses from stealing them. As a result, salary growth should be positive, and the wealth of the business owners will "trickle down" to their employees.

How does this help the poor and destitute? Well, in the fantasy world inhabited by the GOP, anyone can work their way up to wealthy "job creator" through hard work and gumption ... if you only unchain the masses by getting government out of the way. They believe that poor people are being shackled to poverty by government "entitlements" that encourage them to not work and, instead, be parasites upon their hard-working, productive, fellow men. So, if you remove the government "crutch," these people will be forced to discover the hard worker within them, and eventually prosper as a result. And, like how wealth trickles down from the rich to the laborers, so too should wealth trickle down from the laborers to those who are down on their luck. Ergo, the care of the infirm and destitute should fall to charitable and religious institutions funded by wealth willingly given due to the collective guilt of their congregations.

Goldwater conservatives acknowledge that there is one role for the federal government, and that's defense. Which is why they always talk about preserving defense spending and cutting "entitlements." Since this is thinking that was invented during the Cold War, it follows that if the federal government should do something useful and attempt to spread American democracy and free-market principles to the rest of the world, while containing the Soviets the Russians Communism the Chinese. Since Romney employs a great many neoconservative advisers, the role of the "Other" that we must have a big military to contain also includes Islamic extremists, and anyone remotely hostile to the conservative wing of Israeli politics.

This is all why Romney's platform is so lacking of specifics. A Romney presidency's only goals would be to cut taxes, cut regulation, cut entitlements; and then wait for the Magic Hand of the Free Market to make everything better. This is a platform that's aimed only at pleasing rich white assholes wealthy "job creators" like himself, only it isn't politically safe for him to actually say that in mixed company.

[Darth Wong]

The Goldwater conservative model reminds me of the famous "hollowing out" process that MBAs tend to do. The classic case is Cadillac: the MBAs took over in the 1970s and started cutting costs, or as they put it, "finding efficiencies". The problem was that they didn't really know anything about cars; they just knew money. So they kept cutting costs and cutting costs and cutting costs, and the company saw record profitability.

Of course, while this works in the short term, there are long-term consequences to such behaviour: the quality of the product declined, their innovation stagnated, and what had once been a gold-plated symbol of quality became a tarnished brand which had lost most of its lustre. The people who had caused this catastrophe got huge bonuses and moved on before these consequences became apparent, and then their successors had to deal with the mess (and got blamed for it).

Hmmmm ... MBAs ... what degree does Mitt Romney have?

The problem is that when someone's only business is money, then cutting costs is the only way he knows how to improve anything. Rather than over-think what Romney's problem is, just remember the old adage: to a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.

[weemadando]

It's the classic management bullshit platitude of: "We'll have to do more with less."

No fuckheads. Unless you're actually going to fundamentally change the business model, just fucking taking a razor to the joint won't do anything. In fact, crazy idea ahoy - you do LESS with less. BECAUSE YOU HAVE LESS.

FUCK.

[Crossroads Inc.]

Which is one of the things that really pisses me off about all these GOP crowing about having "business experience" and wanting to run the government "Like a business"

Well guess what...
Any business owner with half a brain when asked "you are loosing money, what do you do?" they will tell you "Make more money". The idea that you somehow make a profit by doing nothing but cutting expenses is a business model that soon leads to going out of business.
To compound things, their plans factor in cutting income as well (in the form of taxes).

Imagine being a CEO in a big corporation, you go to the board meeting to try and turn things around...
"Ok people, we are going to slash our R&D, our health benefits, cut out recruitment drives, slash your wages... And get this, we are also going to Decrease our sales by 10 to 15%!"

[Darth Wong]

The thing is, people have found ways to do more with less in the past, but those people were process experts, technical experts, etc. Bean counters cannot "find efficiencies"; they can only slash budgets and assume that the people who do the actual work will find efficiencies for them (and then they will take credit for this, of course).

[weemadando]

There's a difference between just "doing more with less" (like when they cut staff and expect the other staff to be able to keep doing the same amount of work that double the numbers used to) and actually fixing problems and instituting new technology or processes which can create efficiencies in the remaining staff.

Guess which one 99% of people who have heard that phrase get exposed to?

[Mr Bean]

To back up something Weemadando there exists schemes to do more with less when you break the business model down into every component part both Six Sigma (Which I despise) and Lean Manufacturing can be applied to many types of businesses and improvements gained, a real "do more with less" but the difference is the origin of that phrase.

It does not mean as so often portrayed taking what your doing and demanding you do it with less people but instead it's meant to apply to looking at your production flow and figuring out exactly what you need to begin with and comparing it to what you have. Going step by step with your machines and the raw time it takes to get Item A from Point C to Point D.

Lean is all about that, Six Sigma is kind of about that but with lots of marketing friendly bullshit thrown on top of it (Including the infamous belts).
The other problem is that companies that use Lean on their production floor tend to thank everyone involved, write everything down.... and then rather than implement the changes instead fire everyone and move the production to China where they use the new Lean designed production flow rather than their old model. Also not all aspects of Lean apply to all businesses but some do, Call centers are a classic example. There are one or two Lean principles you can apply (The big one is figuring out why people are calling in the first place, I'll get back to that) but when you try and apply them all you end up making stupid cuts as contractors who come in and tell you your business is fine tend not to get asked to come back.

Now remember what I said figuring out why people are calling?
Go look up Macys.com, about five years back I was working for Macy's parent company and one of the things we were tasked with was talking to customers, call center employees, store employees and our own impressions of just getting random people to sit down and ask them to do something with the website.

We spent six months collecting data, conducting tests and all told we spent about 2,000 man hours aside from our other duties on our team getting together a thirty seven point list of changes. As a result we had a seven percent drop in call volume thanks to people calling the right department or being able to do something on the website rather than call us. The biggest thing was gift cards, almost half of that call volume drop was from people calling in to check Macy's gift card totals. Something that takes thirty seconds but when you get six deep dealing with little old ladies who have nothing better to do but slowly talk every call less helps improves response time to customers which makes customers happy and happy customers come back.

Point is we got 31 of our 37 suggested changes implemented and by far the biggest one was to put something on the home-page to check gift card amounts and adding something to the search terms field in case they missed that. Well despite the massive drop in calls the website people hated the one extra link on the homepage and during the next seasonable refresh they undid 10 of our 31 changes. Instantly the next quarter call volume for "Avoidable calls" like checking on gift card balance, directions to stores and the phone numbers to departments jumped right back up.

There's an example of Lean being used successfully and then getting wasted by a department who thought the tiny blip in their visual ascetic was more important then seven hundred less extra calls per day.

[Starglider]

The thing is, people have found ways to do more with less in the past, but those people were process experts, technical experts, etc. Bean counters cannot "find efficiencies"; they can only slash budgets and assume that the people who do the actual work will find efficiencies for them (and then they will take credit for this, of course).

I agree with the general sentiment but this is not strictly true. Large companies do commonly have inefficiencies in their accounting/budgeting systems, supply chain management, purchasing strategy, treasury operations (cash/debt portfolio and banking charges) and tax strategy which good accountants can remove. Management consultants are also not quite as useless as they might appear; while the field is beset by fads and con-artists, best practice for corporate management and organisational structure has steadily improved. The gains are nowhere near as dramatic as with many forms of technological progress (particularly productivity gains from IT), but they are there. The problem is of course that accountants and management consultants generally aren't content to just tweak the finance and organisational aspects of the company.

In business this problem is mitigated by the fact that large companies comitting organisational suicide causes them to be replaced by less dysfunctional competitors that can offer the customer a better value proposition; in the US car industry example, foreign and particularly Japanese brands used the malaise era to gobble up market share. Regrettably, the conception of the nation state as an absolute, unavoidable monopoly within its borders means that there is no such mechanism to smoothly switch from a failing government to a better one (although high net worth individuals see something much closer to a free market in chosing a nationality vs the average first-world citizen).

[Justforfun000]

Ok, this is an email exchange with a very good family friend who is like an aunt to me. She's Canadian but winters in Florida and I've already had a brief exchange with her about her opinion on Romney and the economy.

(Her words)
"I'm on the smart side....rein in that government... give some incentives to the wealthy to get involved in business.... and get the people working...nobody opts to be poor and there's nothing wrong with making a profit as long you use fair labour practices"

"I am passionate about the American elections that are coming up soon and have strong opinions, mostly based on fears, about where the USA is heading with Obama.....he had better change his course or the Americans and their future generations will never get out of debt...they are now 'richly' in debt to the tune of 16 trillion....16 TRILLION!! The saying comes to mind ( attributed to Einstein) that the definition of Insanity is to keep doing the same thing over and over again and expect different results....four more years of this wasteful, rediculous spending and the USA will never get out of debt...and we Canadians will not be far behind when the US economy collapses."

So I basically sent back my opinion on Romney as having no real workable plan and Obama being hardly to blame for the state of the economy and he's doing everything sensible to fix it and that cutting taxes ESPECIALLY on the wealthy again isn't going to do shit for the economy and in the past when major wars were fought, taxes went as high as 90% for the ultra rich. Somebody had to pay for the damn thing and obviously the poorest couldn't.

So the latest salvo is this...how do I sum up in a concise way what's wrong with her ideas? How can she honestly think Romney would benefit the entire nation and not just rich businessmen??

"Right off ...there's the difference in our thinking...all in one sentence!..Your words...'I honestly hope he won't get the chance to prove me right'...I want the best person for the job to get the job!! It has nothing to do with me being right or wrong...What I suggest is that you watch MSN and CNN all the 'liberal' channels... and Fox News...honestly rate the integrity of the guest speakers and panelists on each show and have an open mind to what is being said...a word to the wise should be sufficient and the voters will not be able to say that they were not warned.

The US economy and foreign policy have taken such a beating under Obama that the US is going down the drain financially and has lost the respect of the rest of the world...especially the mid east...since Obama took office only three and one half years ago. Financially the US is going the Socialist way of Europe...look at the revolts that are going on in Greece, Spain, France...the government can promise all they want...there's just not enough money to pay for all the promises!!The government has to get the people back to work...give incentives to the wealthy to invest in businesses so the people will have jobs. Right now 47% of the people in the United States do not pay any taxes! He promised Hope and Change...the Change is evident...the Hope has just about disappeared. He lied then and he's continuing to lie...The facts are that there are more people out of work and more on food stamps and govenment subsidies...the national debt is scary.. since Obama took office. It's time for the Democrats to stop blaming Bush for everything. Obama had a senate majority and a majority in Congress for the first two years of his term...what did he do to correct any of the problems the Democrats were complaining about?...nothing..zilch! Instead he spent his time golfing, vacationing, being a pal with Celebrity malcontents and oh yes...Obamacare...which will not be what he promised the voters...it will be part of what will bankrupt the US. He is a Socialist and the American economy has been built on Capitalism...and was the reason for so many wanting to immigrate to the US.

Four more years of this bungling by this inept, arrogant man ("I am eye candy to you" he says on the TV show, The View) and the damage might be beyond repair. Oh yes, Obama is articulate...but, so are a lot of other people who have hidden agendas...like breaking down the social structure for their own radical ideas. Enough is enough...if he was in private business and had a record like this he would have been fired! He's got to go...Romney has proven his ability in the business world...listen to what the Economists say about his (and Paul Ryan's) plans for getting the US out of this mess. Obama and Biden would be a joke if things weren't so bad. I suggest you read Charles Krauthammer a brilliant jounalist...this man knows what he is talking about. Listen to the Experts and be open-minded."

[Simon_Jester]

Regrettably, the conception of the nation state as an absolute, unavoidable monopoly within its borders means that there is no such mechanism to smoothly switch from a failing government to a better one...

Trying to do it another way hits a wall when you start defining "better government." If a company that makes cars can make a better car for the same price, or a cheaper car of the same quality, you can say "it's a better company." That works.

Government does a lot of different things, and you usually can't even get all the people in one country to agree what government ought to be doing. How do you define better performance? Nine tenths of the problem is figuring out what it should be doing in the first place.


Any government could become very efficient at doing one thing, if it were universally accepted what that thing was. Your government could be very efficient at providing a comfy welfare state at the cost of collecting 40% of GDP in taxes, or very efficient at being a giant anarcho-libertarian enclave, or very efficient at being a surveillance-heavy police state... but which one do you want? And if your government 'fails' to be one of those things, does it mean that it should be replaced by one that does what you want? Or does it mean you just happened to lose the election?

[Starglider]

Regrettably, the conception of the nation state as an absolute, unavoidable monopoly within its borders means that there is no such mechanism to smoothly switch from a failing government to a better one...

Trying to do it another way hits a wall when you start defining "better government." If a company that makes cars can make a better car for the same price, or a cheaper car of the same quality, you can say "it's a better company." That works. Government does a lot of different things, and you usually can't even get all the people in one country to agree what government ought to be doing. How do you define better performance? Nine tenths of the problem is figuring out what it should be doing in the first place.

This is a false dilemma. We cannot say that any car company is 'the best' in an absolute sense; does Ferrari make better cars than Toyota? Yes if you go by performance on a racetrack, no if you go by affordability, cargo capacity, reliability etc. Every consumer makes their own choice based on their own criteria; successful companies make design and production trade-offs that result in an attractive proposition for a large number of customers.

In principle, this is completely possible for governments; if it was legally and financially practical for humans to live in whatever country they chose, then there would be a free market of governance (with the price being the effective tax rate). In fact this is largely the case for multinational corporations and wealthy individuals (although language and legal barriers still apply in the later case). The US used to be like this to a significant degree but steady expansion in federal power and reduction in state power has made it less so. Many of the micronations people e.g. the seasteading movement like to talk about 'experimental governance' and 'a free market in governance' of exactly this type, and while there are massive practical problems (it is pretty much a pipe dream right now), it is a good idea in theory.

Of course, socialists of almost every stripe are completely opposed to this kind of freedom. They may talk about removing borders but only as part of an inescapable global communist regieme (which in practice would have movement at least as restricted as a typical 20th century communist state). While capitalists are (in general) happy to allow communes and co-operatives to exist as a voluntary option for citizens in a free state, communists are desperate to use violence and murder to confiscate and destroy every alternative to state dependency.