So, trump is trying to lean into mccarthyism in attacking his political enemies. He mostly seems to be talking about "wokeism" here, but still, given the economic angle, I'd like to take Trump down a peg on this one.
Why do I feel the need to do this? Because the right attacks everyone on the left and acts like their ideas are so destructive to the economy. I myself have flirted with moderate forms of market socialism before, but I really dont find them to be compelling enough to make a major aspect of my own ideology.
Still, my ideas could be attacked as a strawman of "Bidenomics" as many right wing people see them, you know, giving people checks where people dont have to work any more and how that creates a labor shortage and inflation. Was a huge cudgel against biden and why i felt the need to defend the guy. My ideas are far closer to that strawman than Biden's were. But yeah, given what we're getting out of trump now, it incenses me that he even is trying this.
Donald Trump makes "sleepy Joe" look like an economic genius. As I said, most of the time, presidents do very little in impacting the macroeconomic situation directly. You need to be a special kind of stupid and incompetent to F up the economy. And Trump IS that stupid. Let's be real. The dude's tariffs are destroying our economy. They're causing MASSIVE inflation in goods coming out of china, and he is still raising the prices of stuff at minimum 10% coming out of anywhere else. Like I got a retro handheld for $212 back in november. The same kind of handheld now costs like $550 under Trump's 145% tariffs. His response? Well maybe you can buy 2 dolls instead of 30. Just consume less, bro.
Ya know, if I gave everyone a UBI, and no one wanted to work, and we had 145% inflation in like a MONTH, people would HATE me. Even I would be like wtf, because I would be stepping on the brakes of my ideas way before we got to that point.
Like, I admit, if my ideas were implemented in the form I would probably ideally want, maybe some people wouldnt wanna work, and we would have some inflation as a result. Wages would go up. Costs would too. Wage price spiral. It's the worst case scenario and one I've developed tons of mitigations to avoid. Like, I could avoid all that simply by implementing my ideas slowly to avoid shocks. Implement a UBI of $3k a year, observe, $6k a year, observe, and then cut it short if it causes to much inflation. Arguably, even if my $16k UBI is too much, something in the $8-12k range would still be EASILY doable. I would simply cap at the highest point.
If I let it go all the way, I could simply use the federal reserve to destroy surplus jobs via raising interest rates. It might lead to less growth, or even a recession if it's too strict, but yeah. THat's an option too.
Either way, I would be more likely to compromise my own vision and ideas to focus on what's practical in order to keep economic stability. You would only see my ideas wreck the macroeconomic situation if I really just didnt care about their consquences and was so inflexible I refused to budge on the amounts.
Even if I did implement my ideas, I doubt $16k a year UBI would even incite the kind of labor response necessary to cause a 2021 or 2025 wave of inflation. Really. Most data suggests the labor response would be small. I dont forsee a massive negative labor response from my ideas, and design them to balance my actual ideas of freedom from work with the actual practicality of such an idea.
As such, you can't even BEGIN to criticize me given how bad Donald is doing on the economy. Again, you need to be a special kind of stupid or otherwise ideologically inflexible to cause the massive damage Trump is currently doing to the economy. Really. Even my own ideas, as controversial as they are in american politics, have way more thought of the possible downsides to them than what trump is doing RIGHT NOW.
If you wanna worry about anyone destroying this country, worry about trump. Worry about his rank authoritarianism, him being a threat to the constitution, his violations of the rule of law and due process, and his sheer economic incompetence that is single handedly destroying our place as the head of the global economy. Trump is what you get if you combined Herbert Hoover with Adolf Hitler. I'm not kidding. That's how I sum up this guy's presidency. He has no room to talk crap about anyone else.
No comments:
Post a Comment