Everything the current US administration has done has been an unmitigated disaster. Tariffs are taxes. Manufacturing is still declining, not returning and a man who could not run casinos successfully is not going to change that. His economic and foreign policy are dictated entirely based on who flatters him the most. Add to that continued environmental damage, domestic policy dictated by a regressive religious minority and a lack of interest in performing the duties of the position in favor of caring about only what it can be leveraged for. A failing state operating on grievances and stupidity.
> Economic activity in the manufacturing sector expanded in July for the seventh consecutive month, say the nation’s supply executives in the latest ISM® Manufacturing PMI® Report.
> The report was issued today by Susan Spence, MBA, Chair of the Institute for Supply Management® (ISM®) Manufacturing Business Survey Committee.
> “The Manufacturing PMI® registered 55.6 percent in July, 2.3 percentage points above the June figure and the highest reading since May 2022 (55.9 percent). The overall economy continued in expansion for the 21st month in a row.
Are you saying PMI is a survey of 400 manufacturing executives about the status of manufacturing, and you don't think it carries meaningful signal about the status of manufacturing? I wonder what you think _would_ carry meaningful signal, if you're not satisfied by asking the people that are doing said manufacturing?
Executives aren't exactly the ones doing all the manufacturing. If you want to look at employment in manufacturing, the most you can say is that's it's stabilized after the first year of this administration: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?g=1XUKx
Manufacturing has never really declined in US, not in absolute terms.
It's simply facing the same fate of agriculture: automation.
Politicians want to sell to people they can bring back manufacturing jobs, but it's not like in china they making cars or batteries or chips by hand. It's all automated everywhere.
Have you seen that SmarterEveryDay video about trying to make a grill brush in the US? That obviously would’ve been possible in the US 50 years ago but is borderline impossible today because every manufacturer laughs in your face and just says “make it in China, we can’t help you”
> it's not like china they making cars or batteries or chips by hand
That was true a while back but less so now. Chinese companies are moving to "dark factories", which can function autonomously without humans (hence no need for lighting).
> Manufacturing has never really declined in US, not in absolute terms.
Is a factory making 2GB RAM chips twice as productive as one making 1GB RAM sticks?
Because if manufacturing output is merely constant while chipmakers’ output has skyrocketed (on paper, as PCs went from 32MB RAM to 32GB over a few decades), other manufacturing output must have fallen a great deal.
What are they manufacturing? It must not involve any metal. Due to the tariffs on metals manufacturing costs have increased significantly for anyone using them.
As someone who grew up in a machine shop, still in manufacturing, and have my own hobby shop, its gross how much raw materials cost. I can get finished parts shipped from China cheaper then I can buy the raw material here in the US. I almost wept looking at over $500 for a simple 2x4 foot sheet of 1/2 inch thick 6061 aluminum.
Inconel is through the roof and I know a few aerospace clients who are MONTHS behind due to shortages and bonkers material costs. Like holding up the military supply chain which is ludicrous. This admin is brain dead.
It is going to get worse. Iron/steel and aluminum are some of the most common elements on the planet. They are literally everywhere. The cost is in the energy for production, and to a lesser extent transport. But energy is not only going to become more expensive but actually hard to get (thank you again AI). Canada has energy, from empty land for wind/solar/hydro, to oil, to enormous piles of uranium ore. That is not an enemy worth making.
It would, but smelting is not a process that likes being started and stopped. Once furnaces and other bits and pieces are up to temperature they want to stay there. Thermal expansion is a thing, but also letting them all cool down is throwing energy away. And iron workers don't like sitting around "on call" waiting for energy prices to swing enough to justify going to work.
Same too with customers. The people buying bulk metal need is when they need it. They don't want to wait around, literally, for the winds to change.
Can you expand on what relevance this has to the pragmatic thermal process based point raised in the comment above yours?
The aluminium smelters I've had contact with have all avoided any shutdowns (back up generators, etc) because any significant breakdown in continuous processing involves several days of tear down in order to restart.
I am literally within 20 feet of someone who worked 5 years as a general foreman in charge of the smelter portion of the Portland aluminium smelter* who is not embracing the idea that this a process you can just turn off and turn on again later w/out a large chunk of effort.
The relevance is that you would have a base load to keep the system hot which is separate from the electricity that does the work.
I think at a steel smelter, since the heat does the work, they aren't as easily separable. You would still use less energy at the times when you processed less metal.
Aluminium smelters were traditionally some of the biggest loads on the grid. They were built near hydroelectric dams and had contracts with electricity providers to absorb excess energy and to pause operations on short notice when other demand is high. In exchange for this they get it very cheap, which is good because they need a lot of it. Variable energy supply is not new to them.
Now I've never worked at either and I'm just spitballing ideas on the internet, but you haven't either and you are too.
Or perhaps people are thinking longer than you and realize it’s a problem America isn’t domestically producing these things? I can not stand that trade offs and thinking about domestic production cant be done because otherwise smart engineers pretend like the economy is black and white and thus if a price goes up due to a lack of domestic supply that will always be the case. Industrial policy is designed to fix that, it will not be magically fixed overnight but neither will it be fixed if we do nothing and call people idiots when they try things.
Everybody I know in construction, especially larger scale, is losing their minds because nobody can bid on jobs without risking loosing their shirts. Tariffs could hit somewhere between the bid and the time the job starts and could increase material costs by 150-200% and could cause more delays. It's been like this for 2 years or so and they're losing their minds.
Tariffs have been hell for marina renovation work I'm associated with. Things paid for well in advance have exploded way past their budgets thanks to all the raw material costing so much more. Thanks to Trump.
Even the MAGA folks I have to deal with are bitter about it. They still voted for Trump but they can't deny the cause and effect. I think they'd still vote for Trump though. I don't understand how they manage to deal with the cognitive dissonance.
Turns out, the real “TDS” was in the morons who thought a treasonous conman would fix the country this whole time. Almost like his critics were fucking right.
> They still voted for Trump but they can't deny the cause and effect.
I'm sure fox news will give them some Olympic tier training in mental gymnastics and they'll be blaming - with certainty and conviction - brown people, democrats, trans people and/or women in no time.
> I don't understand how they manage to deal with the cognitive dissonance.
A family friend recently sent me this and it's been helpful to wrap my head around some of the naked hypocrisy:
```
The reason they aren’t more bothered by Q constantly getting things wrong, why they aren’t more bothered by the extreme inconsistencies and outright contradictions, by the claims that are just materially wrong, is because it gives them power over others who are bound by something as weak and flimsy as reality.
They claim to be against corruption while hanging their hopes on an openly corrupt man, and that naked hypocrisy is the point.
They will effortlessly carve out an exception because it makes them exceptional. They engage in wild hypocrisy as an act of domination, adhering to something demonstrably untrue out of spite, because they believe that power belongs to those with the greatest will to take it, and what greater sign of will than the ability to override truth?
Their will is a hammer that they are useing to beat reality
itself into a shape of their choosing, a simple world where reality is exactly what it looks like through their eyes, devoid of complexity, devoid of change, where they are right and their enemies are silent.
I think it's simpler. He hates the same people they hate and he's willing to ignore the constitution to bring pain to those people. As long as that's true they'll put up with the corruption.
I think you’re ascribing malice where stupidity would suffice. Raw tribal stupidity.
And of course there’s those that know exactly how wrong and awful this is, but support it out of self interest anyway (eg: Marco Rubio). That’s even worse.
Spite for others can overpower any self interest. If the person has been shaped by past experiences to rely on spiteful actions as a coping mechanism they will struggle to do anything else. The reward centers in their brain respond more to the disadvantage their actions have caused the other party rather than any advantage they create for themselves. Rebecca Kazinka's actually been doing studies on this for a few years now if you want some reading.
I'm certainly not alone in trying to make sense of it all without completely destroying my faith in averaged-out humanity.
A hypothesis: The "spite" is secondary to their insecurity and fear of not belonging to a "safe" group, in a world they assume has vicious and unavoidable hierarchies or cruelty. Having the out-group hurt (or even just baffled) occurs in service of that.
Professing and supporting stupid beliefs is "loyalty", an expensive (and therefore prominent) signal of membership. Like tattooing Dear Leader's name on one's forehead. It's less an opinion one holds and more a song they sing to fit in with the flock.
I find that focus on insecurity and loneliness and fear—versus the reward of belonging—a bit more comprehensible than spite as its own reward.
Then every founder you know has no idea how policy should be done. There’s a difference between having a pro manufacturing policy and applying tariffs and trade wars ad hoc based on how you feel slighted and giving no warning to any businesses nor having any sort of stability to your plans for any sort of appreciable time in the future. Also, the whole announced news on Friday changed it on the next week so that whoever is betting on the stock market can make some money also is not great for a pro manufacturing base. It’s all a grift and your buddies are dupes to believe in it.
Policy is about trade offs, you can disagree if they’re worth it but that isn’t what people do. They instead dig in their heels and pretend policies designed to incentivize local production don’t work because local production doesn’t exist without them. That’s the point of them, and it takes time.
Really? I know people in the hardware space for whom the tariffs have been an unmitigated disaster. They had to go through a lot to not lose their customer base outside the US. I have seen many US-people with businesses swearing about that admin, especially the smaller ones.
Uh, I'm in manufacturing in the US and EU. Can confirm the tariffs are a total disaster. It's increasingly difficult and expensive to ship raw materials and components to the US!
"Just find US suppliers."
It's not that simple. There are a lot of things that simply aren't made in the US. (The majority of tool steels, all titanium alloys, everything made of tungsten, and I could go on all day.)
Besides, dealing with the Chinese is like life on easy mode. Handshake agreements are always respected. In most cases service and support are 24/7. Importantly for QoL, they never make you fill out a dozen forms, pay for a D&B report, "let's get on a Zoom call to touch base," and all of that nonsense. American B2B firms aren't really into customer service, as a general rule, I think.
it's remarkable how much presentation can distort ppls judgment .. they'll actually admire narcissistic behaviour as long as its wrapped in a polished and presentable package (the ex PM of cananda) and yet label the less polished, ill mannered person with common sense as the narcissist ..
really ? one resigned after turning his country into a dumping ground through disastrous immigration policies .. while the other restricted immigration .. put his own citizens first .. and generally shook up a complacent West .. and you think ther are not in the same ballpark? Let me ask you, in what ballpark would you put Trump in ? up there wkth Hitler ? Stalin ? You would wouldn’t you ?
Tariffs end up being worse than taxes. They get collected, passed on to consumers, overturned by courts, and then handed to the companies that raided prices.
They are worse in other ways as well. They reduce incentive for local businesses to be competitive. They also make it harder to be competitive because access to top manufacturing equipment becomes harder. To get incompatibility similar to Galapagos effect as tariffs remain.
Argentina and Brazil should be a warning example to everyone. The paper Argentina Paradox by Taylor gives good insights into how trade barriers played a fundamental role in hurting this once very prosperous economy.
I think they proved last year that most of the tarrifs were not going to consumers. It actually worked as an excellent business tax that did not get passed on. High tariffs are leftist ideology.
Here is an article from the newyorkfed with an excerpt which isn't in line with what you are claiming. And it is quite likely that even those that didn't raise prices initially, aren't going to keep absorbing those costs forever (no such thing as free-lunch), these studies were done only 3 months into the tarriffs.
"Consistent with textbook economics, tariffs generally resulted in higher prices to customers. Indeed, roughly half of businesses reported raising prices of goods directly subject to tariffs. Interestingly, a significant share of businesses also reported raising the selling prices of their goods and services unaffected by tariffs. Many businesses indicated they increased prices to cover other rising costs such as wages and insurance, though it is possible that in some cases, businesses were taking advantage of an escalating pricing environment to increase prices. For example, something similar happened in 2018-19 as firms increased their prices on dryers when tariffs rose on washing machines from China, even though dryers were not subject to tariffs."
Liberals had forever been linked to unions and Unions are linked to making products in the United States. All of the unions have shifted to the right because they're now the ones making the tariffs. Clinton sold them out.
Ever visit Alibaba and learn that the importers are still paying $1200 for 12 washing machines and then reselling it to you with a Maytag logo on it for $1200 EACH?
Pack it in everybody! This guy thinks they worked as intended, that’s all the evidence needed! Case closed!
Ignore the way everything is more expensive. Ignore the way everything on digikey has a dedicated tariff column. Ignore the general chaos and the rest of what your lying eyes see, a hackernews throwaway account is pretty sure that the new tax on imports is unrelated to imports being more expensive.
Food and rent are not affected by tariff money. Food is grown locally in the US more than nearly any country, so people will survive if their solar inverter is $205 instead of $200 (and the asshole that imported it is paying $100 instead of $50)
Food and rent are affected by everything else getting more expensive. Fuel is used quite extensively while farming - in case you haven't ever been on a farm - and with this idiotic war with Iran fuel costs have gone up massively. Tractors and farming equipment are not just domestically produced, they make heavy use of imported parts and raw materials. Now with these tariffs, imported metals and components are more expensive.
You don't have to take my word for it though! I don't even know why you're trying to make this argument when you can just go look through a grocery store and see how much more expensive food is now than just a few years ago.
>His economic and foreign policy are dictated entirely based on who flatters him the most
Are you sure, it seems mostly based on illegal share trading. Murdering foreigners and sending soldiers to die is a lever Trump/his handlers keep pulling because they 'win' $millions every time.
I'm not sure how old you are, but shortly after Obama took office in 2009 there was quite a bit of reporting claiming that the Bush administration had been so disastrous and young people had been so thoroughly poisoned by Republican policies, that it would likely be a generation before the Republicans had the chance to win the presidency again. Remember, Bush left office in the depths of the Great Recession. Instead, it took less than 8 years for us to get MAGA.
I don't know how old you are, but the MAGA movement is an offshoot of the Tea Party movement which, although begun under Bush, became massively popular under Obama.
Sure, lots of people were not happy with Bush dragging the country into two wars, but most Republicans remained Republicans, and the angst (based on facts or otherwise) against Obama is what made the Tea Party Movement so big.
(Of course, there was the whole social media thing that became huge around the same time, but the design of social media doesn't favor one side over another...)
In the 2024 election, Trump's strongest margins appear to have been with Gen X, where he was roughly +10% over Harris, even stronger than his results among the Baby Boomers.
They didn't in the last couple. Those elections went 49% vs 51%. I don't hold out a lot of hope for the next couple. They feign surprise, but it isn't like it was a mystery as to what he was going to do. He campaigned on everything he is doing.
Which should inform the credibility of anyone declaring one issue or another would definitely motivate voters to come out and vote for whatever policy they want to say is a winner: the last two elections, despite enormous new voter activation, the split in preference followed polling trends anyway.
The great fiction of American politics at this point seems to be the belief that the non-voting population are definitely an election margin who'll definitely come and vote for you provided you support <commentators preferred policy here>.
This might stem from the simple fact that the average American is constantly getting screwed. It's just a sliding scale of how badly.
Both parties are against them, owned by oligarchs and mega donors that are actively trying to increase the wealth gap and make average Americans fight each other over the petty dilemma of the week, rather than the real fight of the whole country vs maybe a couple thousand ultra rich douchebags.
That's a part of the whole issue, isn't it? People have been trained to disregard (and disrespect) nuanced factual information un favor of political platitudes.
Many of the findings of mkultra and adjacent clandestine programs of the 20th century are about precisely how to steer the mindsets of large groups of people with psychological trauma.
They won't. I have industrial clients who are financially eating shit from all this and they have posters of Trump hanging on their office wall while extolling his antics. The workers think the same way. We're boned unless these morons wake up (they won't.)
They like the way his administration has been terrorizing brown people. Dig in with any of these ~simpletons~ undecided voters and it’s literally that simple.
They will never say that, though - you have to infer it from their behavior and what they do say. Which requires a lot of observations. Meanwhile they can quickly refute it by having a black friend.
It's all cultural. It's pretty bonkers that you can tell who someone voted for in 2024 with a high degree of accuracy just by the shape of their sunglasses lenses.
They honestly believe Trump is telling the truth, is doing the right thing by America, trying to help them. IMO, the problem is a lot of these people are well intended, and in many ways good people, but they lack critical thinking (I'm being nice here.) I certainly think they can be changed but it takes a very careful, gentile approach. No one likes being told they're wrong -- you have to let them come to that conclusion, not beat them over the head with it.
I despise this current administration. Yet, when I talk to people, I treat them with the same respect as I would my own parents -- don't matter who they are. I have had fun conversations with near toothless factory workers, literal walking stereotype caricatures of MAGA guys, who really aren't bad. They're just trying to live life and keep their lives together yet here's the world, changing all around them. Then this big mouth assures them it will be all right if you vote for him. They get worked up about things like DEI, LGBTQ, foreigners, etc. Sure it sounds stupid but it is what it is, you deal with it using tact. And here I am, born and raised NYC who was a minority at my public high school (may time the only white kid in class), dated the rainbow, and have a lot of experience with a lot of culture. I usually have a hard rock/heavy metal look so I fit in and they feel comfortable. I just tell them fun or funny stories about cultures and all variety of people I knew. These stories help to clear up misconceptions. Like literally the dentally challenged MAGA fellow I mentioned before told me on my way out that he enjoyed my stories and that he learned something new about people. That's the magic -- story telling and gentile nudging of opinions. Rome wasn't built in a day.
I'm actually hopeful in my own way, but the current political environment is being shaped by adult aged children on both sides and it just gets worse. Though they always say, it gets worse before it gets better. Keep nudging that knowledge.
I don't think it's helpful to suggest that "both sides" are equal in American politics, but I do think you have to be a least a little understanding that the democrats aren't an attractive alternative to most Americans. I'm afraid a pretty large minority of Americans have landed in the lose-lose position of "if i can't make it better, i might as well make it worse faster".
My Bangladeshi immigrant mom and her sister are complaining on Facebook that they were "good Democrats" until "Obama, AOC, and Bernie" brought their "radicalism." Democrats wave away this stuff as "performative," but people feel it viscerally and it subdivides and splits the coalition.
Most people don't vote based on policies and data. They are naturally skeptical about whether your five-point plans are actually going to have the intended effect. Instead, they vote based on their assessment of your judgment and whether you broadly share their ideas about what "good" and "bad" are.
Anyone who says Obama, of all people, was radical clearly listens to too much Fox News and conservative talk radio (which is an entirely different problem).
The only way Obama was objectively radical as a politician and president was the color of his skin.
My mom watches CNN and liked Obama as President. But my parsing of her comment—I haven’t talked to her about it, just saw it pop up when my aunt responded “me too, sister”—is that she views Obama as the patriarch so the buck stops with him to police the party messaging.
This is maybe an odd view for an American but it makes sense within a Bangladeshi social context. And democrats are the ones who chose to cultivate an electoral map based on immigrants like my mom in states like Virginia and Michigan.
Yes, this is part of why it was so stupid for Sanders to not actually join and support the party. Had he done that, it's entirely possible he could have won the support of the actual voters he needed to win the presidency.
Also, it's still insane to expect Obama to police e.g. AOC's language 10 years post-Presidency. That's just an insane expectation. Reality is many voters are crazy.
He’s the elder statesmen of the party. In my mom’s part of the world he’d still be de jure in charge of the party. Then if he wasn’t replaced by another man of similar stature, control of the party might pass to Michelle (like happened at least four times in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan).
Its not like it’s totally alien in America. After Biden’s disastrous debate in 2024, Obama was the one who swooped in to lead the party through the chaos. And if Michelle ran for the nomination, she’d probably win. If she had stepped in in 2024 she would’ve won the nomination and the election.
In US politics, that mantle holds until someone else takes the nomination. That role is Biden's. It seems really odd that a former leader other than the most recent would be in charge of the party anywhere. (Remembering here that Biden is still alive and generally capable if suffering age-related decline. Also contextualizing with the fact that the sitting president is also obviously suffering age-related decline.)
> control of the party might pass to Michelle (like happened at least four times in Bangladesh, India, and Pakistan).
Yeah, I can see how someone from one of those countries might project onto US politics things that are not commonly done here. Relevant here is Obama beating Hillary for the nomination in 2008.
> After Biden’s disastrous debate in 2024, Obama was the one who swooped in to lead the party through the chaos
I am a political sicko, and I do not remember this happening. Are you perhaps elevating the importance of a single speech Obama gave?
> Yeah, I can see how someone from one of those countries might project onto US politics things that are not commonly done here
Yes, that was my point. Someone asked me why my mom lumped Obama in with “radicals” and I tried to explain that she probably thinks it’s his job as the most senior man. Biden isn’t because he’s too old and sick. The patriarch is someone like Obama’s age. Gray haired but still vigorous.
> Someone asked me why my mom lumped Obama in with “radicals” and I tried to explain that she probably thinks it’s his job as the most senior man.
Another explanation is that she is misinformed and brainwashed by all the Facebook memes targeted towards boomers. It's not exactly a secret that Meta continues to push right wing propaganda in order to help elect conservative politicians.
No she watches CNN in a loop. But she left an unstable third world country and viscerally dislikes what’s going on with DSA, immigration, etc. That said she also hates Trump’s Queens immigrant affect, unpredictability, populism, etc. She loves Obama’s Anglo-Protestant affect and mannerisms but seems to dislike that he’s so tolerant of the DSA types.
You said she's also on Facebook, that's why I guessed.
> But she left an unstable third world country and viscerally dislikes what’s going on with DSA, immigration, etc.
What does she dislike about DSA, immigration, etc.? What does she think of the rhetoric coming from the Republican party that America doesn't need and want third world immigrants such as herself and her family? And that you should be rounded up, denaturalized, and deported back to Bangladesh (see Laura Loomer's recent comments).
> That said she also hates Trump’s Queens immigrant affect, unpredictability, populism, etc.
I guess it's a rite of passage for all American immigrants to hate on immigrants. "I got mine and I'm the 'correct' type of immigrant. Others are not."
> What does she dislike about DSA, immigration, etc.?
She thought the future would be Bangladeshis acting like British people instead of Bangladeshis acting like Bangladeshis in Britain.
> What does she think of the rhetoric coming from the Republican party that America doesn't need and want third world immigrants such as herself and her family?
She doesn’t want “Little Bangladesh” in Queens to be happening anymore than Trump does. One of the few things she agrees with him on. We came to a red state in 1989 and a county with a Republican congressman who ran unopposed most years, and everything was fine because we were trying very hard to absorb the local culture instead of changing it with our own. Nobody had a problem with Bangladeshi immigrants when it was just a handful of people who left their culture of origin at the door. Americans are extremely tolerant and accommodating people.
> She thought the future would be Bangladeshis acting like British people instead of Bangladeshis acting like Bangladeshis in Britain.
I don't quite get this. What acting like Bangladeshis or acting like British people mean? And what does it have to do with DSA?
> She doesn’t want “Little Bangladesh” in Queens to be happening anymore than Trump does. One of the few things she agrees with him on. We came to a red state in 1989 and a county with a Republican congressman who ran unopposed most years, and everything was fine because we were trying very hard to absorb the local culture instead of changing it with our own. Nobody had a problem with Bangladeshi immigrants when it was just a handful of people who left their culture of origin at the door. Americans are extremely tolerant and accommodating people.
So similar to Little Italy or Chinatown and other ethnic places? Why do you have to leave your culture of origin at the door? I thought one of the great things about America was that everyone can celebrate their culture. What local culture did you try to absorb if everyone left it at the door? Or are you specifically talking about white vs other ethnicities? Are you ashamed of your ethnicity and country where your parents immigrated from?
"We are the right kind of people, not the others" Internalized racism is such a weird thing to me.
> I don't quite get this. What acting like Bangladeshis or acting like British people mean? And what does it have to do with DSA?
There's a lot going in Pakistan / India / Bangladesh that's been shaped by the effect of British commerce, manipulation, and rule over a long period.
The Brits imposed a local civil service structure that itself became one of many forms of caste, classism and hierarchy, this one associated with British dress, language, and mannerisms.
You can see similar attitudes in the UK from the now old and historic first waves of post WWII immigrant uncles and aunts, overly formally British in dress and manners and looking down on their own descendants for pushing back on that and adopting other attitudes in dress and speech.
My mom grew up as a woman in a socialist muslim country in the 1960s. I grew up in a comfortable virginia suburb. What wisdom do I have to impart onto her, lol?
He also signed Obamacare, a bill written by Republicans, approved by Democrats and then watered down by Republicans who held a majority. All Obama did was sign it as he was legally required to.
That's the prime example of why casting Obama as a radical is ridiculous.
Having the power to ram something more partisan-palatable through and choosing to negotiate with the opposition to find a more mutually-tolerable consensus is the antithesis of radicalism.
> they vote based on their assessment of your judgment and whether you broadly share their ideas about what "good" and "bad" are.
You can't really simplify it to such a degree. I believe humans are creatures of action. We like it when things happen. Sometimes, not all the time but sometimes, our morals are downstream of that desire to "be effective". We will align ourselves, no matter the violence we have to do to our own senses, with what is useful.
Specifically, their willingness to skeptically engage with your five-point plan demands that you're actually able to execute it. If you categorically can't make anything happen, then people will cling to an explanation and a morality that can. American democracy has been at a standstill for upwards of 30 years, If the American people have to believe that all their politicians are pedophiles to get some sort of movement again. Then that's what they are going to believe.
Kind of funny that most Republicans wouldn't even consider you or your parents to be Americans while your family is concerned about "radical Democrats."
Also known as right (upper) vs left (lower). The biggest myth is that out of the two parties, the one which is left of the other must also be left on the absolute scale. It isn't - they're both right. Actual left is people like Bernie, AOC and Mamdani, who are an extreme minority of politicians.
According to polls democrats are the worse side, they are the most unpopular party maybe in history and are at an extreme low in terms of their approval rating. Trump is almost 20% more popular than the Democratic Party and they are polling below AI and ICE, they are right around the same approval rating with the American people as Iran.
And still they refuse to back down on a number of policies that have been proven to be extremely unpopular.
Part of that is because progressives also hate the Democrats for being hypocritical and/or ineffective. Doesn't mean they're going to vote for an R, though.
This is definitely a problem the dems seem unable to rectify, and for good reason. I'm very left, and i think the democrats are awful at their jobs - or good, if it benefits them right? And that's the rub, most leftists don't like the democrats because they tend to align with business interests and their own enrichment. It very much feels like "well of course we do that, everyone (with a D or R) does it!" and that's pretty deflating for people who want _better politicians_.
I want to vote for someone who sticks to their plan, who is as honest as possible, who actually cares about Americans instead of saying some catchy phrases and looking good on camera while shaking hands with lobbyists and harmful industries - it's ludicrous!
I agree with the sibling comment that the dems rank lower because their base is made of people who begrudgingly vote for them when the time comes and spend the rest of the time being frustrated that it's our best option.
Not based on the special election results the past year, and primary turnout along with gains in polling numbers of Democrats compared to their Republican counterparts. Just look at Texas, Maine, Ohio, North Carolina, Alaska, Iowa, even Kansas. Bunch of red seats in play.
Here's the problem: as bad as republicans are, democrat governments have the tendency to let most everything they did in place, and even add more as a way of playing a "bipartisan" game. The result is that democrat governments don't change the economy in any substantive way that can give a reason for people to support them.
Voters don’t go and actually look at the data themselves. They rely on pundits and the news to tell them the salient points.
The problem is that the media has essentially lost most of its usefulness as a bulwark against the most egregious excesses of crony capitalism and cozied up to it instead. It feels like the Gilded Age again, but the people are somehow more insufferable. Cramming the “light of human consciousness into the stars” apparently requires we create CSAM generating machines powered by nitrogen oxide belching gas turbines. Even the folks at non-profit news outlets like Pro Publica have leadership that refuses to understand that it is difficult to prevent AI errors at scale. Nobody reviews drafts with such detail, we make a lot of assumptions, we trust that the person/machine is not feeding us trash.
This is, of course, doesn’t even bring up the fact that a lot of people in the US now get their news—similar to folks in India via WhatsApp (that became such a problem that Meta was forced to curtail the number of forwards you could do in the app)—by passing trash, hate fueling articles around on social media.
In essence we took the grand market place of ideas, and then let it get completely owned by a few firms.
The media, where it isn’t outright compromised, is dying to survive on any revenue stream. local news outlets which are the backbone of solving actual Issues for citizen are not profitable and dying.
We have platforms, which instead incentivize for the largest viewer count, so local content is sacrificed at the altar of the zeitgeist.
Social issues are just as important to voters as the economy and attacking them for caring about this issue, one that very clearly the people have asserted their opinion on, is dumb. If dems would stop dying in the hill of unpopular social policies they’d be winning more elections.
Anyone voting on the basis of the issue is the dumb one, sorry.
It’s a manufactured controversy with only a handful of trans athletes (usually at high school level) in the entire country. It does not make the slightest difference to the lives of the vast, vast majority of voters. If you let it outweigh factors that actually affect your life then you’re a dumb voter.
It affects woman and parents of girls. It's seen as men taking things women had to struggle to get and safety issues. I can see how it would affects women in general but I agree has little affect on those men who do not watch sports and are not pro women.
No it doesn’t. It’s a new boogeyman to demonize that isn’t actually a factor in almost anyone’s lives. Not to mention that the people pushing this issue are proposing things like genital inspections to ensure the boogeyman never arrives:
Yes. Read the text of bill linked from that article. There is nothing in there that mandates "genital inspection" for the purpose of sex verification in sports. It merely provides an option of reusing existing health data that has already been collected.
But of course data reuse isn't a sufficiently controversial framing, so a "genital inspection" angle is pushed instead by the author of the article.
The initiative would require students who want to participate in girls’ sports to provide “a health examination and consent form or other statement signed by the student’s personal health care provider that verifies the student’s biological sex, relying only on one or more of the following: The student’s reproductive anatomy, genetic makeup, or normal endogenously produced testosterone levels.”
There is no fairness argument, only ignorance. For amateur sports, giving even a little bit of a shit is just pathetic. The risk of accusing cis girs/women of being trans is obviously extremely damaging. And discouraging trans folks from participating in amateur sports is also incredibly cruel.
For professional or top-tier competitive sports, virtually every sports organization has had rules in place to handle this for decades. The IOC started using testosterone levels as the barometer for fairness in 2003. The entire right-wing apparatus works by feigning ignorance, pretending nobody has ever thought about the fairness of trans folks in sports, all to infuriate easily suggestible rubes. It's beyond absurd.
You have demonstrated another method of sidestepping the fairness argument, which is to pretend it doesn't exist and claim that no-one should care anyway.
The genitals inspections are a result of trans issue. Not concerning yourself with one issue that creates the issue you dislike is shortsighted.
I agree with "seen as" vibes think of the children era being foolish but its what liberal parents are talking about. Mega followers never accepted trans in sport or life so this doesn't change viewpoints.
What are you even talking about? Trans folks didn’t suddenly pop into existence in 2014 or whatever, and force conservatives to recognize them. There’ve been trans people since the beginning of human civilization. As with so many of these culture war topics, this outrage was just pulled from nowhere one day to rile up Fox News viewers after they’d adequately calmed down about Obama’s tan suit.
Suddenly, not wanting trans folks to participate in civilization, Conservatives have gone all in on the transvestigation bullshit that includes genital inspections, accusing conventionally less feminine-looking cis women of being men, etc.
Since you supposedly care about women so much I’m sure you can tell me how many trans women were playing in college and professional sports in 2020 versus today. Go ahead. Give me numbers.
Honestly that site proves the absolute unseriousness of these objections. 1,152 athletes at all age ranges in the entire world? And we’re supposed to be deciding who we vote for based on such an embarrassingly small rounding error?
Not to mention, I don’t even understand how these are substantiated. I clicked through to the source link for some of the results cited and they’re just results tables? What does that “prove” the athlete is trans? Who vets this stuff?
That's the thing, all this noise and crying from the hateful transphobes and it's over ~1000 people out of 8,300,000,000. You know, I thought conservatives used to care about "freedom" but this shit just proves how much they hate freedom and liberty. They're terrified to just let people live their lives.
It's such a small fraction though and it completely ignores the needs of trans and non-binary athletes. They're not all going to be able to compete on the men's side.
If dems would stop dying in the hill of unpopular social policies they’d be winning more elections.
I don't disagree, fundamentally, but the voters are prioritizing minor issues that affect one in a million people over major issues that affect everyone. That's not good judgement, it's stupidity. It's why wedge issues work so well.
It's Republicans who are dying on the hill of unpopular policies. Nobody cares about men in womens sports to the point of dying from diarrhea or closing shop.
That’s the point. He wants to crash the monetary market and he has allllll the investments in digital currencies, ai, data centers, energy, computation & weapons. Why prop up a system that literally tried to kill him and will wreck havoc on his family after he’s outta office stripped of power. Dude is operating on death ground right now.
> That’s the point. He wants to crash the monetary market and he has allllll the investments in digital currencies, ai, data centers, energy, computation & weapons.
I think you’re giving him too much credit. He is just a mouthpiece for various people, he can’t make a plan and stick with it, and never has.
That minority largely votes against the current government, so presumably you're claiming that it nevertheless exercises disproportionate influence across both parties and opposing ideological groups.
What mechanism gives this particular minority such unusual political power? Why can it acquire influence that other groups competing for political power cannot?
A lot of people who voted for Trump aren't surprised by this. The didn't vote for Trump to win as much as they voted for Democrats too lose. What does it take to lose to Trump twice, and by some accounts three times?
I'd argue more largely that the right is a loose coalition of people with differing goals...whether it's conservatism, lower taxes, anti immigration, religious right, etc. I'm reminded how my econ professor would say that hardened bootleggers and hardcore Christians would pretend to be friends just long enough to vote to keep alcohol illegal.
I feel like the Dems should have an easy time in the next elections if they don't fumble it given the current state of things. On the other hand, they seem to purity test each other in ways that make such a coalition harder to attain.
Don’t bike shed. Tax and spend Trump is making your gas more expensive and allowing you Latin American burgers to out American farmers out of business.
The Republican base doesn’t give a shit about “tax and spend” either. For all their hand-wringing about deficit spending, Republican administrations have for decades been the party of excessive spending and ballooning deficits.
They’ve demonstrated over and over that their core principles don’t actually exist, and are simply maxims that they have heard often enough that they blindly parrot them back.
The weak kneed leadership will be getting replaced by the populist message of Trump but coming from the left, people like Mamdani, the DSA candidates, etc.
The people clearly want leaders who will say : we will use political tools to help the economic situation of the poor and middle class.
Everyone from Jon Ossoff to Angie Nixon has some version of this message and its resonating
Smartening up would have been the Democratic Party ejecting Swalwell because he was a known creep. Instead he was the front runner for the CA Governor until like a couple months before the election when scandal, NOT the party cleaning house, took him out.
DSA is its own party; DSA affiliated candidates only run as democrats because the US system basically all but disallows third party success. I guarantee you that DSA members would not associate themselves with neoliberal Democrats at all, given the choice.
I don't know enough about the Tea Party to confidently give my opinion, I am a bit too young to have been politically aware when they were in their heyday as far as I know.
Trump and MAGA also won elections. My point is winning with a shitty plan is not smartening up, unless your only goal is winning the current election. The Republicans committed suicide, we saw it live.
> The DSA wants to abolish the existing US democratic process.
That reads as though you’re saying they want to abolish the democratic process, but as somebody living in a country with many of the democratic processes they’re proposing, looking in on what seems like a very dysfunctional democratic process in the US, it seems to be that they want to replace it with a much better version of itself.
While many people find the Leftist route of saving the country, the right route makes more sense to me. Reduce taxes to near zero - eliminate minimum wage - it's a recipe for starting companies. The left's answer is to destroy all companies. People think a company will exist in a leftist controlled world, but they're dead wrong.
I don't think so. I'm not an expert and I'm not an American. I did read their web site, I listen to what their candidates are saying and doing. I could very well be wrong. But when they say "socialism" there are two or three options. The first is they don't understand what that word means. The second is they do understand what that word means. The third is they've redefined this word. We already had a word for what people want, it's social-democratic, not socialism. So if they called themselves social-democrats and not socialists I would support them and we wouldn't be having this discussion.
"We want a democracy powered by everyday people. The capitalist class tells us we are powerless, but together we can take back control."
What are they not saying? They are not saying things like we should raise taxes to fund social programs so we can be more like Europe. Europe is capitalist. Europe has free markets. DSA opposes capitalism. DSA wants to, in their words: "We want to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation.".
What am I not understanding? Barrack Obama wanted accessible healthcare for all, he was not DSA. That's an awesome idea for the US that Democrats rallied behind and partly failed. Show me in DSA's words, material and action, how they are really social-democrats who just want more vacation, healthcare, worker protection while still maintaining capitalist free markets - like Europe. I mean they want all that but not in that way.
I think most of us want a moderate Democrat. I hope populism dies with Trump/MAGA in the coming years. We don’t need to match them with our own distasteful populism.
CHAZ was an idealistic symptom of applying John Lennon's Imagine to a neighborhood of Seattle, and it wasn't the only city tempted by this endeavor (if only it didn't finish with an arms dealer taking leadership of the locality);
"Defund the police" was a campaign slogan at last election.
I'm looking from Europe and I'm often impressed how extreme american leftists are. If it's not socialism, it sure shares the same conclusions. And yet "The most extreme left in the US is the most extreme right wing for Europe" is a common belief.
>I'm looking from Europe and I'm often impressed how extreme american leftists are.
I am often impressed how abusive and violent US policemen are. And they have budgets rivaling the defense spending of whole countries and are armed to the teeth with military grade equipment.
The world has moved forward. There was slavery in many places.
I had a similar discussion in real life. Where we concluded it that Roe vs. Wade being overturned was the biggest step backwards. Most of the other stuff is noise but this one is a biggy that's hard to fix. It sucks for Americans (which I'm not but I was debating an American).
Nobody is saying we can't let workers decide. Most of us are workers. Most of us vote. We are deciding. The US has also made progress on workers' rights at the state level to my understanding. At the end of the day we still have to lean on the democratic process, we need to debate policies and we need to get people to think critically and think things through. This is very hard to do today given the public discourse and tribalism.
Clearly a social component can exist within a democracy, European nations are an example of this? Are there any proposals more radical than European-adjacent style social policies?
As a citizen of one of the European countries you mentioned, let me tell you: The DSA would run as a center-left party in pretty much the entire union. You have—respectfully—not a clue what socialism means, because the DSA agenda has absolutely nothing in common with communism in the first place.
I disagree. When I moved from Finland to the US, I was surprised to find how popular actual "abolish private property" style socialism was among young Americans. I hanged out with leftist people when I was a student, and I kind of knew many of the people who eventually ended up running the Left Alliance (the main left-wing party). My impression was that they had all accepted free markets as a necessary evil, rather than advocating for the socialism of their predecessors. But it looks like Finnish students have started adopting American socialist ideas in the recent years.
Bernie is probably the most well-known democratic socialist in the US, but he is not a member of DSA. By his political positions he would be either in the left wing of Finnish Social Democratic Party or in the mainstream of the Left Alliance. He would probably choose the Left Alliance, since it is more like a coalition of like-minded activists, while the party is the primary actor for the Social Democrats.
AOC, another well-known democratic socialist, would also fit in the Left Alliance. She is part of the moderate wing of DSA. But if you start looking into the ideological wing, you find plenty of actual socialists who would make Finnish mainstream leftists uncomfortable.
I would argue that the USA suffers from its bipartisan system in a lot of ways; among them the problem of two parties having to span an incredibly wide range of political positions that are often so far apart to be almost irreconcilable. I'm pretty sure you will find some people with uncomfortable positions at the fringe seams of the Left Alliance as well, they are just organised in a very different system compared to the US and do not have the momentum to rally around these positions right now.
Fringe groups tend to start new political parties in the Finnish system. There are still two communist parties left, both offshoots of the pro-Soviet minority of the original communist party. One of them even has the official status of a political party, but probably not for long, as it lost its last seats in the 2021 local elections.
Yes, they are center-left at best, and your frenzied rebuttal against regular people trying to improve their lives and the country they live in is alarming. Free public transportation..the horror.
Respectfully, you may have skimmed some material or watched a couple of minutes of MSNOW, because you wouldn't come to the conclusion that the DSA just wants free public transportation otherwise. Key aspects of the DSA's goals and the actual policy implementation actions of elected DSA-aligned politicians that are quite well aligned with the position of a person holding communist and other relatively extremist sympathies:
- state-controlled grocery stores [0]
- public ownership of the largest corporations and essential industries [1]
- abolition in full of police and prisons ("cut police budgets annually toward zero") [1]
- ending sanctions on states backing terrorist activities [1]
- permitting open, uncontrolled immigration [2]
- disregarding the existence of Israel ("democratic secular state [Palestine], from the river to the sea") [3]
- giving voting rights to noncitizens and prisoners [4]
I think what amazes me the most is that you read all of that and said “nope”.
I can’t wrap my head around why you would sacrifice your life and well being so that a small number of people can become impossibly wealthy?
I read those pages and find it absolutely fantastic. How someone could fight for the position to be a wage slave with no security against inflation, cost of living or bankruptcy or homelessness due to illness is frankly insane.
Canada has government-rune liquor stores, they're doing ok. Not exactly a "grocery store", but still PRETTY SHOCKING. UK has co-op (chains). There's Mondragon in Spain - I know it's employee-owned but that's not much different than government-owned if you really think about it.
Public-transit where I live is not free, but it is subsidized, with various recent efforts from municipal and state governments to further reduce costs for all residents.
Germany is defined as Social Democracy or a Social Market Economy. It marries free-market capitalism with social welfare policies, state regulation, and collective bargaining to ensure economic growth and social security, including robust social safety nets.
The US once had stronger unions and basic worker-oriented safety nets. This has been dismantled since the 80s, while piling on the National Debt by pilfering the treasury and "returning" the money to the (rich) end of the tax base.
There was a great quote in the original Deus Ex: "In 1945, corporations paid 50 percent of federal taxes. Now they pay about 5 percent."
In my mind the DSA is trying to shift the Overton window towards something more reasonable, that has already existed in the US. Focusing on the extremes to dismiss the DSA entirely is like throwing the baby out with the bath water.
Free public tenant is very common. The wealthy being massive sources of the problem is very common. The U.K., hardly a bastion of socialist views, has massive amounts of food banks and he only attempt to overturn democracy I’ve seen was on Jan 6th 2021.
"The Democratic Socialists of America is the largest socialist organization in the United States, with over 100,000 members and chapters in all 50 states. We believe that working people should run both the economy and society democratically to meet human needs, not to make profits for a few."
"Capitalism is a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit. We must replace it with democratic socialism, a system where ordinary people have a real voice in our workplaces, neighborhoods, and society."
"democratic socialism" is an oxymoron. socialism conflicts directly with democratic values. At the very least there is no pre-existing example of democracy and socialism working side by side. All previous socialist "experiments" were not democracies.
If 'democratic values' are everyone having an equal voice in how the systems of a country are arranged. And if those people, through a democratic process, decide that the systems of their country shouldn't support the exploitative elements of capitalism, then it would definitely be democracy in action to make that come true. Anything counter to that would be, by definition, anti-democratic.
When you say "socialism conflicts directly with democratic values" I genuinely have no idea what "democratic values" you're talking about.
Scandinavian countries you are referring to are practicing Social Democracy, they are not Democratic Socialist states.
In other words, Social Democrat != Democratic Socialist
Scandinavian model relies on competitive private enterprise to create wealth, combined with strong labor union collective bargaining, universal public services, and high consumption/income taxes that apply broadly across society.
DSA seeks to move past or dismantle the capitalist economic system, advocating for social, public, or worker ownership of the means of production.[1]
"We want to collectively own the key economic drivers that dominate our lives, such as energy production and transportation."
From the linked website. Now, that's not quite "the means of production", explicitly stated. It's just "the key economic drivers", so most of the means of production.
Maybe you ought to be a little less quick to accuse others of lying.
Those still sound like Scandinavia? Energy Production - Vattenfall in Sweden, the Norway oil fund. Transportation? Public transport is mostly publicly owned (trains go back and forth with failed privatization attempts), the road network is wholly state-owned (unlike e.g. Japan where the whole highway network is privatized and tolled)
"Democratic Socialism" is VERY different from "Social Democracy"
In socialism with supposed democracy, where the state owns the means of production and supposedly the workers supposedly have a say about everything, they actually end up with a say about nothing (at least not without greasing the right palms in the inevitably corrupt system that arises).
In Social Democracy, capitalism is the underlying system, where corporations and workers can own means of production, but it operates under sufficient regulation that the excesses and systemic failures of captialism (e.g., failure to prevent Tragedies Of The Commons, tendency towards monopoly and excess concentration of power, consistent tendency to abuse and impoverish workers, etc.), you end up with successful systems like Northern Europe.
The two are very different, and we need to hold the DSA people to the latter and not let them sneak in the former.
I reference direct statements by DSA made on their own websites that they aim to
* replace capitalism [0]
* own means of production [0]
I state the fact that Scandinavian/Nordic countries are Social Democracies (embracing capitalism) and Not Democratic Socialist countries.
You state that Social Democracy and Democratic Socialism is the same.
I ask you "tell me how Social Democrat parties of Denmark or Sweden views on capitalism same thing as DSA view" [1]
And your response is "nobody wants to replace capitalism, you're being absurd
reply" inspite of official DSA statements that i linked to in [0]
My 2 points stand:
* DSA is pretty clear about its desires to replace capitalism [0] and own means of production [0]
* Nordic countries are Social Democracies. THey embrace capitalism, not aim to replace it (as its stated on DSA's own site). Your statement is factually wrong, unless you can find it in your heart to prove me wrong.
I dont know why you felt that bringing Israel discussion about clear socialist goals of DSA will help your argument whatever that is, but try to keep focus about systematic issues with DSA, not geo-political.
They themselves literally say out loud that they want to abolish our existing institutions. If you want to debate that point, go debate the DSA candidates themselves.
You must live under a rock. A quick search will find you plenty of video of politicians talking about defunding things, cancelling Thanksgiving, abolishing ICE or the FDA or the Senate, undercutting small businesses, introducing rationing, etc, etc.
> he populist message of Trump but coming from the left, people like Mamdani, the DSA candidates, etc.
Leading but honest question: Are those candidates the same as Trump? I do not see how they share anything other than strategy and spin, and those things don't make policy.
Huh? Check out the Twitter feeds of your favorite Republican or Republican-aligned personalities. It's racial or nationalistic dog whistles all day every day.
If that is confusing to you, you are probably not ready for politics :-) Politicians act with hypocrisy or twisted plans (where the most straightforward conclusion is not necessarily the truth) all the time. Random example from yesterday: the same person who said 19 T deficit is too much before being elected, contributed to moving the deficit to above 40 T.
However, I also highly doubt Schumer would be in Epstein files. People seem stuck on the meme that being in Epstein files is the main reason why someone acts one way or another. This degenerate over-simplification has to stop.
So either they care about the safety of women and children, or they want to have some brown skinned and "weird" people to heave their hate on. I know which possibility I think is most likely...
I recommend this short piece, "The Missing Mood"[0]. It describes the concept that the motive and behavior of someone as it relates to a proposed set of actions is important. e.g. Someone proposing war might be correct, but one hopes a war hawk laments the need to go to war, vs. celebrating it and being bloodthirsty.
Fox News ideology may at times declare opinions that, in complete isolation, might seem reasonable. "Border control", "safe streets", "responsible government" etc. But they approach it from a place of exaggeration and lies, and an outright visceral anger and hatred toward migrants, trans people, etc. They ignore other activities that might be troublesome. Such as ignoring GOP sex offenses, GOP bribery in the oval office, unconstitutional actions by their executive, or needless wars that cost half a trillion dollars and weaken the US' national security.
So I agree with your parent comment, that Fox News and many of its viewers pick and choose what to say they're angry about, either out of intellectual dishonesty or, in the case of the viewer, outright ignorance or deeper thought about the whole picture of the government and society right now.
I implore you to simply talk to a few conservatives living normal lives in the real world. I am related to many and grew up in the south. I assure you, most are not nefarious.
> They ignore other activities that might be troublesome. Such as ignoring GOP sex offenses, GOP bribery in the oval office, unconstitutional actions by their executive, or needless wars that cost half a trillion dollars and weaken the US' national security
Conservatives, above all else, assume everyone in government is corrupt and terrible, hence wanting smaller government. That they can't reconcile that with their love of social security is a matter of self preservation, not malice.
Because they need SS and medicare, which is most spending at this point. The only choice in the last 40 years, that would have actually decreased spending, was Rand Paul, and he got crushed.
I do know several, including my dad, who when talking to him about life, love, poetry or movies is a nice guy, and doesn't wish harm on the people he meets.
But he lacks empathy for groups of people he's never interacted with, and ultimately, if they vote for Donald Trump or his enablers, they either believe a lot of lies told to them by media claiming to be on their side, or they aren't as good of people as they themselves think they are.
Respectfully, my quote and your rebuttal have nothing to do with each other. Nice people can be hypocrites and ignoramuses, which is what one must be to willfully support the GOP in almost any race in the country at this critical time.
edit to add some stories:
---
I'm in Texas.
My relative tried delta 8 and liked it. He doesn't drink alcohol much anymore because of headache and urinary stuff. He took a little and he laughed more, relaxed, and enjoyed some movies. My mom took it for her body aches and she said it helped with pain and made cooking dinner a little more fun.
Now they'd both be felons. I told my relative that they would be felons for having any, and that I too would be one for using this cheap, safe drug. I joked that maybe he could at least vote Dem for Texas Lt. Gov. to kick out the moronic criminal who pushed the new law.
He said "No, I'll never vote Democrat". He talks about trans people being a problem. He's never knowingly met one. He says they should be left alone, but shouldn't in sports or adopt kids.
He has no idea what kinds of laws are being created to wipe trans people from legal existence across the country, and he's fine supporting felons and criminals and people who want me to be in jail for using delta-8. When I told him about one of Trump's proven criminal acts (taking $500 million from the UAE buying stock in his cryptocurrency clearinghouse) he said he didn't believe it. When I talk about Trump's sex trafficking scandals and Epstein, he's silent. When I ask about the Iran war, he's silent.
He would rather his nephew be a felon for a safe and decade-long-legal drug than vote for a Democrat, because of lies and hatred he watches on Fox news from his middle-of-nowhere plot of land where he interacts with about five people a year for the last two decades.
I could go on about how he rants about socialism as he considers using Meals on Wheels, or how his wife got Medicare-funded palliative care for almost no money out of pocket, or any other number of things. But he, living in rural Texas, mentions Mamdani's "communism" for considering opening a few publicly-operated grocery stores in a city of 10 million people.
---
I have to re-iterate: I know many GOP people are good people. I certainly don't hold them to the same individual responsibility for the ongoing coup of the federal government for which I hold the elected politicians. Many are duped by Fox News, and many more are checked out of the daily updates of crimes committed and norms broken. But that's what's happening, and I refuse to acknowledge any merit of an argument for supporting Republicans in elections until the threat from Trumpism is eliminated, the government repaired and patched against the vulnerabilities exploited, and the Democrats screw up royally somehow again.
I really don't want people to be left with the impresion that this is Democratic Party incompetence. It is not. They are complicit in pretty much everything the Trump administration has been doing. They know what works. Just do what Obama did in 2008 and run on a populist economic platform. They don't want to do that. It's a choice, not incompetence.
If Chuck Schumer is asked about the weather, he'll first check with Netanyahu.
Just look at what Senatorial campaigns Schumer supports and doesn't. There's a lot of suspicion that Schumer (and the DSCC) is going to leave Abdul El-Sayed out to dry because he's anti-Israel, basically. Mandela Barnes got similar treatment in 2022. And yet you have blockbuster challenges like Jaime Harrison's, which spent $130M to oust Lindsey Graham. He lost by 10. Trump won by 12 so I guess he gained 2? Well done, everybody, the system works.
Oh and what did the DNC do with Jaime Harrison after he spent $130M to lose by 10? They made him the DNC Chair. The Democratic Party loves a loser. Just like Howard Dean.
The vast majority of sitting Democratic senators voted against funding for Israel this year.
The DSCC funding is a drop in the bucket of the overall funding in these races, and they have their own goals which may or may not be aligned with the party as a whole.
If your single issue is Israel funding (which it probably shouldn’t be but that is your choice), the Democratic Party and presidents did far more to reign in Israel’s behavior than republicans.
You need to realize just how performative most votes in Congress are. The Democrats, for example, will vote for all sorts of progressive policies when they know they won't pass. For example, Kamala Harris was a co-sponsor on a Medicare for All Bill. She didn't run on that in 2024. What's the difference? Well if she won in 2024, she might have to deliver on it. In 2019, Trump was in the White House so there's zero chance it would pass.
Republicans do this too. Two of the seats they're at most risk of losing are Maine and Alaska held by Susan Collins and Lisa Murkowski (respectively). They currently have 53 votes (well, 52 with Mitch McConnell MIA). That means they can pass things with 50 votes (and JD Vance's tie break) on anything that can get past or doesn't require cloture (eg approving judicial nominations, reconcilation). So, every time you have a controversial nomination or bill, you'll often find Collins and Murkowski vote no because their votes aren't needed. The leadership is insulating them from attack. But when their votes are needed, they're there (eg Collins's required vote to confirm Brett Kavanaugh).
As for the number of Democratic senators who voted against weapons for Israel, it is significant because it never would've happened 5 years ago, but it's also mostly performative because there's no way it was going to pass.
As another example, Democrats did a rare move to invoke the filibuster last year to stop ICE funding. This resulted in a government shutdown and important programs being punitively defunded (eg there was a reserve fund for food stamps that was intentionally not tapped). What happened? The Republicans needed 60 votes to force a vote. There were 52 votes. 8 Democratic senators crossed the floor to vote with Republicans. That's so weird. It's the exact number required. What a coincidence. Whatever that number was, 1, 5, 8, 12, it doesn't matter. There will most of the time be that number of exact senators requried. This, by the way, is part of the rotating villain role within the Democratic Party.
This is how calculated it was. All 8 of those who crossed the floor were either retiring or they weren't up for re-election in 2026 so the voters couldn't punish them. John Ossoff, the current liberal darling, was going to be one of the 8 but he's facing re-election this year so Chuck Schumer whipped another vote to replace him.
Another classic example was the Epstein transparency act. Trump threatened members who signed the discharge petition. Mike Johnson actually shut down the House for 7 weeks to try and get those that did to change their vote. yet when the discharge petition got 218 votes (the minimum required), suddenly the votes in the House and Senate were almost unanimous. Well, if support was almost unanimous, why not just have a vote to begin with?
Mitch McConnell can really be credited with pioneering a new era of obstruction in the Senate. He realized there was a political cost to some votes. Some things were popular and he didn't want to pass them so he'd just make sure they never made it to the floor for a vote.
So my point is that imagine the Democrats control the House, the Senate and the White House in 2029 and that same Israel funding bill came up. Will all those Senators and House representatives vote for it when it might pass and become law? Nope.
Tariffs are only regressive on the collection side. The redistribution side can be as progressive as you want, more than offsetting regressive collection if you wish.
I didn't say tariffs were necessarily regressive, my (poorly made) point was that renaming tariffs taxes doesn't really change the problem with them.
Edit- but I would be shocked if the net effect of Trump's tariffs weren't regressive.
Edit 2- " redistribution side can be as progressive as you want, more than offsetting regressive collection if you wish." That's an infinite money glitch if true. Tariffs increase input costs that effect many downstream things, in addition to their direct price effects.
Tariffs are a tax that buys you (at least) three things, all of which are difficult to quantify, and usually overlooked by economists:
1. Security. You make your own bullets. You're able to make and maintain your own military hardware. When another country cuts supply lines in their own self interest, you have options to advocate for yours, either through trade, making it yourself, or, yes, even force.
2. Economic opportunity for your children and grandchildren. And no, not just "factory jobs" as is commonly sneered, but a community of experience and expertise. An engineer that gets to interact with the products they design in that kind of environment is a better engineer. A country that gets to see and interact with the products it makes has a sense of pride and better social cohesion.
3. Social buy-in and consequences for companies. A Chinese car manufacturer doesn't give a shit if cutting costs killed your grandfather. A local company has to, because the executives and workers are all members of the community. I was in Germany during dieselgate, and the sense of disgust at the company was obvious. They felt that.
These things are, imo, important to the health of any country, but they can only really be valued in retrospect. So yeah, tariffs are a tax, but some things are worth paying for even if what's being purchased isn't necessarily obvious or easy to quantify.
Yes those are all good things. Tariffs aren't the only and almost never are the most sustainable long-term way to get them. I'm not old enough to remember the protections against japanese cars, but I know they didn't solve the problems with US auto industry, for example.
I would guess the optimal course to those ends would include some targeted tariffs. I am damn near certain that the optimal course isn't tariff-centric. Every option in a global economy (or any economy) is coupled and never limited to the first-order obvious effect.
As a very simple example that I see ignored often on here: High paying jobs are good, but increase the cost of the ouput. Consumers are also people, they benefit from lower prices. You can never turn one dial independently. There are pretty magical dials though, like education and trade. Some dials are better than other. All dials treated coarsely are worse than dials treated as the multidimensional optionalities they are.
I generally favor increasing productivity and QoL via net-positive interactions. I default to disliking fixed-pie-slicing until convinced otherwise. With all of the caveats to this position as above.
The only repeatable path to industrialization and the benefits thereof is the combination of protectionist policies -- be they tariffs or subsidies -- with a focus on exporting goods and competing in the global market. This is historically true, essentially without exception. You need both, because without global exports, protectionism makes companies lazy, and without protectionism, you risk exposing strategic national assets and supply chains to what is essentially unfair competition.
I mean, I admit that I'm not competitive with people desperate enough to work 12 hour days, 7 days a week, while the grandparents raise the kids in a 10 person household. But I'm probably capable of more sophisticated work due to my education and ability to specialize. Removing all barriers to trade essentially forces companies to offshore and train up nations that may not have your sovereign interests at heart in order to compete and provide a return for investors. It's a short term sugar hit that erodes the nation-state. This is why we strictly limit offshoring for certain strategic industries, but the truth is that all manufacturing industries are strategic to some extent, because they form part of a logistical web.
As for whether or not such a system is sustainable, it's worked for the world's manufacturing powerhouses for decades. The reason they're all falling to China now is because enough of the global supply chain has shifted there that it's now impossible to compete. Assuming those nations don't want to become services-based economies (which has been a disaster for Australia and the UK, neither of which can manufacture a tin of beans), protectionism is the only path forward. And indeed, China is utterly diligent in protecting it's own industries. This isn't fixed-pie-slicing, it's just pragmatic recognition that a government really does want to be able to fix the fighter jets when it needs to, and at some point, that means having enough industry in place to train the guy who does it. And economists, who don't really believe in or care about the problems of nation-states, probably aren't the right people to listen to when that's a concern.
I don't see how any of this works unless the rest of the world agrees to be less productive in the meantime. Apply what you want for the US to every country in the world. If your policy is the solution, then I'd assume all countries would copy it, and we'd have no one to export to. Or if they follow what I consider a more reasonable policy, they will quickly find cheaper places to buy shit, take advantage of basic things like comparative advantage vs. the protectionist (1) US, again leading to no exports.
The US is great, don't get me wrong, but the 1950-70s were based on an extremely fortunate combination of circumstances. It was almost certainly an exception rather than a norm to revert to. The resulting economy and middle class and mobility is aspirational, not easily reproducible. And I am certain not by pure protectionism. I mention this because you said repeatability, which I guess I assumed meant of this time that seems most aligned with what you want.
Edit- just re-read and you agree staying global competitiveness is important. Ok, how? I don't see any route there (in manufactured goods) without going hard on automation. I'm guessing (sorry) you basically think automation is bad because manufacturing jobs. Maybe we actually align here though?
I recommend to too many people the book "how the world got rich" https://a.co/d/0ehTVbK4. It's short, it's about what the dominant, generalized correlates with growth are. My insertion is that economic growth is good for everyone and explains without much exaggeration all good societal progress. Just as one concept from here that explains an enormous fraction of global economic dynamics, look up " catch up growth". Sorry if this comes across as you not already knowing about this, I recommend it because I personally found it such a good resource.
(1) This is me inserting a projection, I don't know for sure. I would need a lot of convincing that protectionism and isolationism makes us more competitive overall. I completely understand all of your arguments about skill and knowledge and that other good stuff I already agreed was good. What I don't agree with is that your approach leads to us being to compete in a global market, especially given domestic political reality. It seems your system relies entirely on being able to export. The one thing we do export btw is services, the thing you shit on. And again, I wish we weren't so dominantly service based. I want all the good things you want that come with manufacturing and more domestic self-reliance. I just don't think you can will into existence of a manufacturing dominant prosperous middle class 60s economy that survives global competition, which your export driven plan requires.
Edit- as another aside, I believe economics is increasingly a captured field. So I probably distrust economists on policy at least as much as you, in general. But when they all agree going back a while with data to back it, I weigh it higher. I also feel bad for economists because historically the actual policy they want isn't what makes it through, to the point the preconditions for their policy to work no longer apply. So again this is perhaps something we agree on. But this doesn't invalidate a bias toward free trade is wrong. Implementation matters. See: the parts I agreed on wrt international trade policy what feels like 20 replies ago.
Edit2 - one counter to my position is that with protectionism and manufacturing we can rely more on internal market demand more because we cover more of the market needs, like China is trying to do. Just thinking out loud trying to figure where I'm wrong. A lot of the good times were driven by internal markets. And this at first glance seems more consistent with protectionism. But you want export driven so I'm not sure.
I just remembered this essay that kind of explains some of my thoughts on how to judge economic policy http://bastiat.org/en/twisatwins.html. Not super relevant but kind of just in case you hadn't read it. Not just the broken window fallacy but the idea of diffuse benefits vs. visible downsides.
Sure, if every country did this for every technology, it wouldn't work. But in reality, they don't. Even ongoing industrialization isn't a given once it's been achieved, because the bar for what constitutes "developed" is always changing, and it takes effort to maintain. We even see deindustrialization, both historically and in the present. There will always be someone to sell to.
You're focusing on the US, when what I'm saying is historically true for essentially every nation that ever industrialized. Many of those countries are still industrial powerhouses today. The US had a great run from the 50s to the 70s, but it was the world's largest exporter by 1914 thanks to WWI, and didn't relinquish that spot until 2003. Similarly, Japan and Korea didn't have any such luck and still managed to both develop and maintain high living standards even through economic hardship, thanks to their industrial foundations. Taiwan uses its chip industry, again heavily export based, as a shield. China is following the same playbook today, first during China shock 1.0 20 years ago, and now with higher value goods. The only real exceptions to this rule are Singapore and Hong Kong, both of which exploited the fact that they were strategic waypoints in global shipping. Even then, Singapore is one of (if not the) largest oil refiners in the Asia Pacific region, and exports a tremendous quantity of refined petroleum products. Singapore isn't strictly protectionist, but it makes heavy use of cheap Asian laborers who will never, ever be citizens, and it engaged in massive skills transfers from other nations during the 80s and 90s (my own family was part of that wave). And of course, the major European powers all built themselves on the back of protectionism and exports. The erosion of that directly resulted in the crises we see today.
I have no issue with automation, and I agree that investors and business will always want to exploit cheaper economic conditions elsewhere. What I'm saying is that any government that wants to preserve living standards and maintain an industrial base needs to have the backbone to tell those interests "No". They are part of the social fabric of a country, and the backbone of it's defense. Investors will make less money, but I don't see that as a bad thing. They would actually have to allocate money more effectively within a country to turn a profit.
I'm not shitting on services, they're necessary. But services can't manufacture bullets when you need them, and countries always need them eventually. Not to mention, we live in a time when even services being offshored, so what's left? We build houses and make coffees for one another, while banks and mega corporations that are beholden to no border lord over us?
For what it's worth, I agree with you that economics is a captured discipline, and I applaud your devotion to testing your own ideas. But the stuff I'm pointing out isn't economics, it's history -- things that actually happened. In my opinion (and it is just that) any economic theory that is at odds with history is straight up garbage.
Thing is, absolutely none of what you’re saying applies to Trump’s tariffs. Because he’ll remove them two weeks from now if the right person flatters him the right way.
So there will be no build out of manufacturing capacity. You’d be a fool to spend tens of millions on that when at literally any moment the market will revert back to the norm.
This administration’s policy making is insane. I’m surprised folks are still trying to sanewash it.
I didn't say anything about politics. Whether or not industry believes this is a permanent state of affairs, or destined to end with this administration, has no bearing on whether or not tariffs can be a useful tool. My issue is with trivially wrong economic dogma.
It's not "proven." At the 10,000-foot view, the magical market theory folks implemented their ideas about free trade since Reagan. And who is happy with the result? Tariffs were a core policy of the United States from Alexander Hamilton through Lincoln to the early 20th century and, empirically, they worked pretty well!
Ok cool let's go back to then and cut the budget to match. Sounds like a decent tradeoff to me I guess. I would prefer a more incremental experiment though.
I'm not a free market fundamentalist. I also don't think we ever had a free market. Implementation details always matter. My standing policy is basically small informed perturbations around free trade, included targeted tariffs. Everything has tradeoffs. Restricting lumber from canada and fucking Americans? Not smart. Letting China openly steal from us? Asymmetric trade policies hurting the US? Also not smart.
Nobody likes free trade. Democrats can only get away with it because they are so much better on healthcare. They can cobble together a coalition of big businesses and service workers whose jobs can’t easily be shipped to China. But healthcare is carrying to whole weight of that compromise.
The trouble is that the US realized long ago that they could get free stuff by giving out imaginary paper (aka trade deficit) ad infinitum and, in turn, stopped doing much. China, on the other hand, doubled down on trying to do everything and now has the luxury of largely being able to ignore the rest of the world.
The US could theoretically start doing things again, but it is never clear how to make that happen. The people much prefer to get free stuff (who wouldn't!?). Even if you can convince them otherwise, a lot of the institutional knowledge required to do things is gone. As capital moves to where it is most economically useful, the 'free stuff' economic structure has shaped where the capital is found. To move to a 'do things' economy would require turning the capital allocation upside down. To have all the pieces fall into place to see all that align just right requires great upheaval.
Maybe tariffs really are trying to be the catalyst to convince the people that free stuff isn't the way to bring on the revolution, but even if that's the case, that's a different environment to how tariffs were used historically.
>> Add that to the list of things I thought I'd never hear a conservative say.
Rayiner is a bad-faith troll who thinks he is being clever by doing the whole “oh, I thought you wanted to raise taxes, liberal??” thing. He does not actually think taxes are good.
I love taxes! I'm grateful as an immigrant to be able to give back to the country by paying high taxes. Here is my 7 years ago saying you should raise taxes on me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20412077
"In Sweden, about 15% of people pay the highest marginal tax rate. If that was the case in the U.S., the top tax bracket would kick in above $120,000 household income. That makes total sense. These people are very well off and should be subsidizing the rest of the country."
Okay but that's not the type of tax we're talking about here. Tariffs are much more like a sales tax. And sales taxes are regressive: they take a larger percentage of income from low-income earners than from high-income earners like you. Based on what you said 7 years ago, you should be against tariffs, instead of defending them.
Sweden relies heavily on regressive consumption taxes. Moreover, the top 20% accounts for 60% of personal consumer spending. (And that’s not artificially inflated because it’s not like Jeff Bezos spends a million times more on consumer goods.)
I’ve been very consistent in favoring the Nordic tax structure, where you soak the top 40% but have low taxes on the super rich and corporations to prevent capital flight.
That tax structure is not part of the Nordic social democratic welfare system that you’re dishonestly clout chasing from, but part of a right wing / free market shift in Swedish politics from the last few decades.
So it's "dishonest" to refer to Sweden's "Nordic tax structure" because it's only from "the last few decades?" When people think of the "Nordic model, they mean the combination of free markets, high individual taxes, and robust welfare states that the Nordic countries adopted in the 1990s. Nobody is talking about whatever Sweden when I was in preschool.
That's like saying Clinton mind-controlled a bunch of Dukakis voters into suddenly wanting to cut the size of government. It's an underlying political realignment and reshuffling of voters.
There's no reshuffling of voters; that's what I find amazing. The same conservative voters who claimed "Taxation is oppression", "small government", or "no forever wars" are (or vote for) MAGA, even though Trump actions are a repudiation of their old claimed values.
You’re confusing party rhetoric with actual voter ideology. Look at the Senate map from 2006 and tell me there hasn’t been a reshuffling: www.electionresources.org/us/maps/senators.php?election=2006
U.S. elections are a dynamic equilibrium where each party is trying to get to 51%. I live in Annapolis and the WASPs with boats viscerally hate Trump. But they were a core Romney ‘12 demographic.
Genuinely interested in understanding why you need this level of precision. To me it would seem you are removing some abstraction and getting to the details. If this something common in your line of work? E.g. in your peers? If that's the case, would you mind sharing the field you're active in? Do you have a hunch why you would need this level of detail e.g. Education, culture?
Because labelling all policies as negative by association isn't an actual evaluation of the merit of the policy. If you mark all policies as bad because they must all be bad, you're almost certainly excluding good policies from future consideration. Is not the goal good policies?
Nuclear stuff. btw what's more probable - every single thing that has been done under this presidency is unambiguously negative, or it's mostly negative? It's so easy to just NOT take the most extreme stance, and almost certainly to like 10 9s more accurate. Yet I'm downvoted for it.
If the only good thing you can name is "nuclear stuff" it’s not a stretch to say it’s a complete disaster though. When people say "everything" they don’t mean "everything", it’s just easier than saying "everything except that 1 thing".
If someone were to list out all the things this admin's fucked up during this term alone we'd be here all day. Seriously; on his watch, there's been food poisoning and child imprisonment; transparent market manipulation; rolling back of various laws and policies which represented protections for workers, marginalized groups, endangered species and national parks; direct participation in the corruption of dozens if not hundreds of US federal agencies; extortion of both US states and foreign nations; threats of violence against strategic allies; waging actual wars of aggression; striking civilian infrastructure and populations during those wars of aggression; engaging in undeclared/irregular warfare; performing strikes against targets which were not clearly combatants; kidnapping a head of state; engaging in warfare and policy shakeups which are timed too perfectly to market close/market open for it to be anything other than market manipulation; engaging in IP infringement against the Nintendo corporation; pushing the morale of the crew of an aircraft carrier strike group so low that sailors were reportedly jumping overboard; engaging in chronic suppression of the press despite the first amendment right to press freedom; reducing or withdrawing the US presence from the ROC and ROK, threatening regional and arguably global stability in doing so; undermining the financial prospects of US beef farmers by federally subsidizing Argentine beef, blaming US citizens for accidents or crimes which in some cases Trump himself may have had a hand in, lying to constituents on a variety of topics (knowingly), deepening the political divides of a country that's already deeply divided, undermining the fairness of both the presidential election as well as threatening to do so to the midterms, supporting the increasing consolidation of US private media largely on the basis of friendliness to the current admin (often as expressed through donations)...
Half of these (or at least, instances of these) happened in the past week or two; most of the rest have happened in the past 2-3 months. I'm not even being exhaustive. You could
"Everything" is an understandable shorthand in this case and while technically hyperbolic it's really understood that it really means "most things that matter on a domestic and foreign policy stage."
This is such a weird hill to die on dude. People are angry and it's been an embarrassing disaster filled with fraud on the highest scale, jumping on the fact that 1 out of 500 of his policies hasn't been bad just makes you look like you've completely missed the point
I don't like false statements, fuck me right? Accurate models of reality matter. If you stick to the belief that 100% of trump presidency is negative, you will eliminate from your options the policies that were positive.
