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I can’t afford this Trump economy

I mean, this is Economics 101. Countries that tried to boost manufacturing by following import substitution policies (higher tariffs, non-tariff barriers) failed miserably. As industries were artificially supported by tariffs, competition and productivity declined, while consumption suffered due to higher prices. Markets stop to function properly, leading to dead weight loss (economic efficiency loss). What is expected = Recession + inflation. There are decades of experience and dozens of case studies.
People can't be bothered to learn anything. And MAGA can't be bothered to stop their plan of a full American Dictatorship, so GTFO with that *****.
 
MAGA 2024: Muh eggs! They’re like $4 bucks! How will we ever survive this?

MAGA 2025: what is money? Money is just made up. Let’s stay the course and endure this so our orange god king is happy.
IMG_3183.jpeg
Tariff temper tantrum? The Dow is literally almost as fast as 2008. It’s only had a few worse days, 1987 and during the Great Depression. Tantrum???

View: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3llz7kdpbvp2x



View: https://bsky.app/profile/mattmfm.bsky.social/post/3llz7npzj3c22


Ya gotta love millionaires telling us to endure this **** for no reason.


View: https://bsky.app/profile/mehdirhasan.bsky.social/post/3llxppj7p2c2g
 
I’m tired of fat *** Americans bitching about how “duh manufacturing jobs” have disappeared. As if:

1. They’d be working those ****** jobs if they could. We all know they wouldn’t. We’d have to import immigrants to do those jobs and hear their bitching about how immigrants are taking over and eating pets.
2. Fat *** Americans haven’t benefited by offshoring/automating/integrating with the world economy. That cheap *** stuff these folks are addicted to at Walmart? They’d be forced to buy a lot less of that stuff if it were made in America.

The better we understand basic economics the better off we’d all be. I know it’s contrary to the popular narrative here, but America is the richest country because of how successful its economic policy has been. Now its social safety net is lacking and wealth inequality needs to be addressed. But those are domestic issues, not macroeconomic issues.
 
MAGA 2024: Muh eggs! They’re like $4 bucks! How will we ever survive this?

MAGA 2025: what is money? Money is just made up. Let’s stay the course and endure this so our orange god king is happy.
View attachment 18462
Tariff temper tantrum? The Dow is literally almost as fast as 2008. It’s only had a few worse days, 1987 and during the Great Depression. Tantrum???

View: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3llz7kdpbvp2x



View: https://bsky.app/profile/mattmfm.bsky.social/post/3llz7npzj3c22


Ya gotta love millionaires telling us to endure this **** for no reason.


View: https://bsky.app/profile/mehdirhasan.bsky.social/post/3llxppj7p2c2g

If losing our country looks like the USA during the Biden administration then please lose it some more.
I had a pretty damn good 4 years.
 
People can't be bothered to learn anything. And MAGA can't be bothered to stop their plan of a full American Dictatorship, so GTFO with that *****.
Ugh. This post was exhausting to read. You sound like one of those smarty pants communists. Is there a reality teevee show I can watch to learn about tariffs? Or some tik tok or McDonald’s cheeseburger that can explain this to me? Ugh I’m bored. Time to watch some more teevee. All I know is that I’m a major victim in this economy. I can only afford a 8,000 square foot house, cabin, and drive a new F250. Can’t wait for Trump to save me from all of this poverty that Biden hitlery gave us.

I just feel like Trump had won 3 straight elections so he must know something! We just need to endure a lil more. Prosperity is right around the corner (because obviously what we had before under Biden inflation wasn’t prosperity)
 
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MAGA 2024: Muh eggs! They’re like $4 bucks! How will we ever survive this?

MAGA 2025: what is money? Money is just made up. Let’s stay the course and endure this so our orange god king is happy.
View attachment 18462
Tariff temper tantrum? The Dow is literally almost as fast as 2008. It’s only had a few worse days, 1987 and during the Great Depression. Tantrum???

View: https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3llz7kdpbvp2x



View: https://bsky.app/profile/mattmfm.bsky.social/post/3llz7npzj3c22


Ya gotta love millionaires telling us to endure this **** for no reason.


View: https://bsky.app/profile/mehdirhasan.bsky.social/post/3llxppj7p2c2g

Man, people used to lose their heads for spouting this kind of nonsense
 
With a bit of luck this will trash the US economy without having a massive effect on the rest of the world. Countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh are in some trouble but i think the west will survive this. China will likely benefit from it. Interesting times.
 
With a bit of luck this will trash the US economy without having a massive effect on the rest of the world. Countries like Vietnam and Bangladesh are in some trouble but i think the west will survive this. China will likely benefit from it. Interesting times.
As long as Russia benefits then everything went according to plan

Sent from my OPD2203 using Tapatalk
 
Economist Jeffrey Sachs explains just how woefully stupid the American president is:



(Below is the complete text of Sach’s tweet)

“Tariffs are going to lower living standards.

They're going to wreck the US economy, and they're being put on for unbelievably bizarre and mistaken reasons that are completely fallacious.

Let me explain.

The United States runs a large deficit in its trade in goods and services — what's called the current account of the United States — and that deficit is about a trillion dollars.

Trump says, 'Oh, that's because other countries are ripping off the United States.'

I can't even begin to say how absurd that line is.

[The word is childish.]

Running a current account deficit means — and it means precisely — that the United States is spending more than it's producing. That's what leads to a deficit. You spend more than you produce.

And we spend more than we produce because we have very low saving in this country. We have an enormous budget deficit.

So the government is like the national credit card — it runs on credit.

It transfers money, pays for wars, pays for Israel’s wars, pays for military bases in 80 countries around the world, pays for that more than a trillion-dollar-a-year military establishment, and hundreds of billions more of associated spending on the military-industrial complex.

And it gives tax cuts for the richest Americans.

It allows for tax evasion by the richest Americans — and I mean evasion, because it doesn't do audits, and it guts enforcement of the tax laws.

So we hemorrhage deficits and have rising public debt.

And because of all that, the spending of our country is much larger than our national income.

It’s a trillion dollars more than national income.

It is exactly the imbalance of our imports of goods and services over our exports of goods and services.

All of this is to say that what Trump calls a 'ripoff' is just the absolute irresponsibility of the political class in Washington.

It's a corrupt, plutocratic gangsterism that gives away the taxes and tax cuts to the richest people and goes on war after war — on credit.

And that leads to these large deficits that Trump then blames on other countries.

Now he's going to correct these deficits, he thinks, by raising tariffs.

And of course, it's going to do nothing of the kind.

The deficits are going to continue because they come from the profligacy of Washington.

They don't come from the fact that other countries are ripping us off.

So he'll raise the tariffs. Americans will shift their spending, say, from an imported automobile to domestic automobiles. That's true. They'll pay higher prices for those domestic automobiles. And our auto industry will export less abroad.

So yes — there will be fewer imports and fewer exports, and the balance won’t budge.

And none of it's going to change the fiscal recklessness.

Because what's Trump’s highest aspiration? It is to continue tax cuts for the richest Americans, which is going to cost another $4 trillion over the next 10 years in the budget.

Because these tax cuts are supposed to end, but he says, 'No, no, no — these are taxes for my rich donors, so they're going to continue.'

So he's not going to solve the budget crisis.

He's not going to solve the trade deficit — because that comes from the budget crisis.

But what he's going to do is lower the living standards of our country and the world.

Because trade is beneficial in living standards — it's called gains from trade.

We buy more cheaply. We sell goods that we have a comparative advantage in. And both sides gain from trade.

Of course, we overdo it, because we overspend — but that’s a completely different thing.

No one’s ripping off the United States by these numbers.

I don’t know whether it's just rhetoric or ignorance or confusion, but it's unbelievably bad economic policy.

It will come to no good.

And incidentally, you mentioned rightly that tariffs are, of course, a tax. So who’s supposed to have authority over taxes?

[Congress.]

And Congress has nothing to say in this. This is a one-person show.

What did we become in this country? Even King George wouldn't levy taxes without the British Parliament in the 18th century.

So what happened to this country? Trump just says, 'Oh, it's an emergency,' and now we have one-person rule — and one-person rule on completely fallacious premises that don’t pass the first day of study of what a trade deficit is.

I taught that for more than 20 years at Harvard University — what is a trade deficit, how does it relate to the excess of spending over production, how does it relate to the excess of investment in a country over a low saving rate?

Well, none of this seems to register.

No one asks a question.

There isn’t a day of hearings.

There isn’t any analysis.

It’s a one-person show based on economic fallacies that are going to wreck our economy, wreck the world trading system.

And I can tell you — all over the world, because I am talking with leaders all over the world, and recently in Asia — the words to describe this, you can’t say in polite company."
 
Last edited:
Economist Jeffrey Sachs explains just how woefully stupid the American president is:



(Below is the complete text of Sach’s tweet)

“Tariffs are going to lower living standards.

They're going to wreck the US economy, and they're being put on for unbelievably bizarre and mistaken reasons that are completely fallacious.

Let me explain.

The United States runs a large deficit in its trade in goods and services — what's called the current account of the United States — and that deficit is about a trillion dollars.

Trump says, 'Oh, that's because other countries are ripping off the United States.'

I can't even begin to say how absurd that line is.

[The word is childish.]

Running a current account deficit means — and it means precisely — that the United States is spending more than it's producing. That's what leads to a deficit. You spend more than you produce.

And we spend more than we produce because we have very low saving in this country. We have an enormous budget deficit.

So the government is like the national credit card — it runs on credit.

It transfers money, pays for wars, pays for Israel’s wars, pays for military bases in 80 countries around the world, pays for that more than a trillion-dollar-a-year military establishment, and hundreds of billions more of associated spending on the military-industrial complex.

And it gives tax cuts for the richest Americans.

It allows for tax evasion by the richest Americans — and I mean evasion, because it doesn't do audits, and it guts enforcement of the tax laws.

So we hemorrhage deficits and have rising public debt.

And because of all that, the spending of our country is much larger than our national income.

It’s a trillion dollars more than national income.

It is exactly the imbalance of our imports of goods and services over our exports of goods and services.

All of this is to say that what Trump calls a 'ripoff' is just the absolute irresponsibility of the political class in Washington.

It's a corrupt, plutocratic gangsterism that gives away the taxes and tax cuts to the richest people and goes on war after war — on credit.

And that leads to these large deficits that Trump then blames on other countries.

Now he's going to correct these deficits, he thinks, by raising tariffs.

And of course, it's going to do nothing of the kind.

The deficits are going to continue because they come from the profligacy of Washington.

They don't come from the fact that other countries are ripping us off.

So he'll raise the tariffs. Americans will shift their spending, say, from an imported automobile to domestic automobiles. That's true. They'll pay higher prices for those domestic automobiles. And our auto industry will export less abroad.

So yes — there will be fewer imports and fewer exports, and the balance won’t budge.

And none of it's going to change the fiscal recklessness.

Because what's Trump’s highest aspiration? It is to continue tax cuts for the richest Americans, which is going to cost another $4 trillion over the next 10 years in the budget.

Because these tax cuts are supposed to end, but he says, 'No, no, no — these are taxes for my rich donors, so they're going to continue.'

So he's not going to solve the budget crisis.

He's not going to solve the trade deficit — because that comes from the budget crisis.

But what he's going to do is lower the living standards of our country and the world.

Because trade is beneficial in living standards — it's called gains from trade.

We buy more cheaply. We sell goods that we have a comparative advantage in. And both sides gain from trade.

Of course, we overdo it, because we overspend — but that’s a completely different thing.

No one’s ripping off the United States by these numbers.

I don’t know whether it's just rhetoric or ignorance or confusion, but it's unbelievably bad economic policy.

It will come to no good.

And incidentally, you mentioned rightly that tariffs are, of course, a tax. So who’s supposed to have authority over taxes?

[Congress.]

And Congress has nothing to say in this. This is a one-person show.

What did we become in this country? Even King George wouldn't levy taxes without the British Parliament in the 18th century.

So what happened to this country? Trump just says, 'Oh, it's an emergency,' and now we have one-person rule — and one-person rule on completely fallacious premises that don’t pass the first day of study of what a trade deficit is.

I taught that for more than 20 years at Harvard University — what is a trade deficit, how does it relate to the excess of spending over production, how does it relate to the excess of investment in a country over a low saving rate?

Well, none of this seems to register.

No one asks a question.

There isn’t a day of hearings.

There isn’t any analysis.

It’s a one-person show based on economic fallacies that are going to wreck our economy, wreck the world trading system.

And I can tell you — all over the world, because I am talking with leaders all over the world, and recently in Asia — the words to describe this, you can’t say in polite company."

Wow.
 
It’s already becoming the new Qanon/covid. The cult is already setting the bar to prove one’s loyalty. This is the “reasoning” you’ll soon find your friends and family using to justify all of this economic pain. Let’s see how many continue with it once they lose their jobs, retirements, and are paying much more for everything.


It’s depressing to see fellow human being just stuck in this cult. They’re just stuck. We’ve already had mass protests, a pandemic, and an attempted coup. We’re running out of catastrophes that might shake people from this mass psychosis. It seems that no matter what happens, these folks are going down with this ship rather than admit that empowering Trump was ever a mistake.
 

“There is zero incentive for any company or brand to be remotely critical of this administration,” said a public affairs operative, who, like others interviewed for this story, was granted anonymity to speak freely. “It destroys your ability to work with the White House and advance your policies, period.”

An official in the energy industry echoed that sense of fear. “Hearing angst and frustration from all quarters,” the official said via text message, “but no one wants to be first out of the box saying anything negative about Trump’s decision-making.”

“There is absolutely a sense that the administration is keeping a list, and no one on K Street wants to be on it,” said one executive at a trade group downtown.

“I think a lot of business leaders are very frustrated that the process of getting here was opaque, and that the decision points are so starkly black and white, and … that they’re not dealing with situations with more nuance,” one multi-client Republican lobbyist said, before adding: “I’m trying to say something profound without getting a call from the White House that, ‘You’re next.’”

“What’s the Japanese proverb? The nail sticking up gets hammered down,” the lobbyist added. “On K Street, there’s no value in being the nail sticking up right now.”

“People are smarter this time in dealing with the Trump administration,” the person said. “They know not to beat their chest and try to score points in The New York Times, but have conversations behind the scenes and try to make deals. I think it’s about making deals and not antagonizing the administration.”

“Everyone is terrified,” a senior GOP aide said. “But I don’t think anyone wants to cross the president right now.”
 
It seems that no matter what happens, these folks are going down with this ship rather than admit that empowering Trump was ever a mistake.


President Donald Trump has reached the “peak of not giving a f***,” one White House official told The Washington Post for a lengthy report on what went on behind the scenes leading up to the president’s massive tariff announcement this week.

On Wednesday — or “Liberation Day,” as Trump calls it — the president announced massive tariffs on imports from a number of countries. He’s maintained that the massive shift in economic strategy will result in better trade deals and a boost in manufacturing for the United States.

The stock market has meanwhile taken major hits since Trump’s announcement as the tariffs have led to uncertainty among companies and investors.

“He’s at the peak of just not giving a f*** anymore,” a White House official familiar with Trump’s thinking told The Post. “Bad news stories? Doesn’t give a f***. He’s going to do what he’s going to do. He’s going to do what he promised to do on the campaign trail.”

The Post story — by Natalie Allison, Jeff Stein, Cat Zakrzewski, and Michael Birnbaum — cites other White House officials and paints an administration that is very different from the one Trump oversaw in his first term. Despite strategizing on tariff policy up to just three hours before the president’s official announcement in the Rose Garden, there was reportedly very little disagreement with Trump making the final decisions himself.

“In the first term everyone thought they were president,” a senior White House official said.

Those internal disagreements are apparently a thing of the past now with Trump’s cabinet fully behind his trade war. Officials reportedly offered a variety of options on tariffs for each country and the president went through himself and pick and chose what he preferred.

The final meeting on tariffs included officials like Vice President JD Vance and senior trade advisor Peter Navarro.

“In their recruiting process, they made sure it would only be people who were totally Trumpers, because in the first administration there was a lot of trouble with people quitting, writing bad books, things like that,” Wilbur Ross, commerce secretary in Trump’s first administration, said. “The people now have been confirmed as true Trumpers.”
 
Checked the ol 401k today. Oof. Rate of return year to date is negative 8.8% And that includes the first few months when it was a positive.
 

“There is zero incentive for any company or brand to be remotely critical of this administration,” said a public affairs operative, who, like others interviewed for this story, was granted anonymity to speak freely. “It destroys your ability to work with the White House and advance your policies, period.”

An official in the energy industry echoed that sense of fear. “Hearing angst and frustration from all quarters,” the official said via text message, “but no one wants to be first out of the box saying anything negative about Trump’s decision-making.”

“There is absolutely a sense that the administration is keeping a list, and no one on K Street wants to be on it,” said one executive at a trade group downtown.

“I think a lot of business leaders are very frustrated that the process of getting here was opaque, and that the decision points are so starkly black and white, and … that they’re not dealing with situations with more nuance,” one multi-client Republican lobbyist said, before adding: “I’m trying to say something profound without getting a call from the White House that, ‘You’re next.’”

“What’s the Japanese proverb? The nail sticking up gets hammered down,” the lobbyist added. “On K Street, there’s no value in being the nail sticking up right now.”

“People are smarter this time in dealing with the Trump administration,” the person said. “They know not to beat their chest and try to score points in The New York Times, but have conversations behind the scenes and try to make deals. I think it’s about making deals and not antagonizing the administration.”

“Everyone is terrified,” a senior GOP aide said. “But I don’t think anyone wants to cross the president right now.”
Annnnddd that’s exactly what happens in a fascist authoritarian takeover of a country. Now everyone is too afraid to speak out. This is how Hitler, Putin, Orban, etc have taken over. If Trump ordered our country to invade Canada, why would anyone speak out? If he ordered mass arrests of Haitian immigrants, why would any business leader or elite speak out? If he ordered the liquidation of the Democratic party, what would stop him? Certainly not law enforcement.

This is why it blew my mind why moron Americans voted this degenerate back to the White House. He made it clear the last time that he wasn’t going to be bound by laws. He was an aspiring dictator and we welcomed him back to the White House and gave him the keys.

Now we’re in for it.
 
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