No offense meant but SS:DD. It's getting old. Hakeen is about the most speaker ever. His empty threats are comical. Schumer bent over his lectern reading more pep talks that he can barely get out is even more so. Fight the Oligarchy while flying in 1st class.
Desperation is not a good look for anyone. Once again, why aren't the Democrats working on candidates and policies? The old leadership is leading the party down a dead end road and the new youngsters are leading Democrats into oblivion.
With the Dems lawfare strategy being now ruled on by SCOTUS, all those judge shopping victories are looking hollow. When national injunctions by biased judges are shut down, that will make the Dems even more impotent.
Are there any Dems that aren't business as usual or going off the deep end saying the message was good but bad delivery? 70% of the people said the country was gong down the wrong the path. 70%. And no president running for reelection with a 66% disapproval rating has ever won reelection. As an independent, the Dems can't even give me a flicker of hope.
Do you people even know what an adult is?
Best line of the year, Shiff, from the insider trading capitol of the world, the House,
Adam Schiff Calls For Insider Trading Investigation into Trump Over Tariff Pause
I need to rephrase one question. Are there any intelligent adults in the Dem party? Independents are not as stupid as the left likes to project they are.
CBS is completely unreliable. Rasmussen, who was very good in 2024 and Democracy Institute (also dead on) have Trump at about 50/50, which is pretty astounding. It took Reagan about one year to recover from Jimmy Carter. He was underwater much of that time.
Meanwhile, and I keep sayin' it and sayin' it, the proof is NOT in the polls. It's in the voter registrations and Ds are getting crushed. I cannot find ONE state where they are even positive in the last six months. PA is 93,000 from a complete flip to red and moving at about 7,000 a month toward Rs; NC is moving even faster. Even deep red UTAH is getting slightly redder. These are ACTIONS by voters (it takes time to register or, more important, to re-register). It takes no effort to answer a stupid poll.
Lastly, the coal miners are now 100% behind Trump as are the steelworkers and autoworkers. Dems will never get them back---certainly not with Jeffries and AOC and the millionaire Bernie Sanders. Trump has clearly made this about Main Street vs. Wall Street and even Ds like Chuck Schumer, who just a few years ago was DEMANDING tariffs on China, are throwing in with the billionaires.
But, as a I keep saying, watch AI. It is completely incompatible with any of the green D agenda, and Trump is opening every avenue possible to produce more energy. Ds will lose that AI generation as well.
Speaking of tariffs, I was wondering, Larry, if you could use your very trustworthy Ph.D in economic history to answer the question I asked before, which you fell silent on last time...explain to me, in economic terms, how the U.S. achieves consistent trade surpluses with the dollar as the global reserve currency, no gold standard and high tariffs. (as Trump has said is his intended policy)
It should not be a hard question to answer if economic history is truly your forte...
They supported protectionism, and targeted tariffs combined with international political collaboration--waaaay different (and way more effective) than blanket tariffs on all goods, with no concurrent political collaboration. The latter doesn't work in a world of globalized supply chains; the former can, if done right. There is definitely a bit of hypocrisy in the rhetoric, but the policy arguments are distinct. (and the more targeted policies they advocated worked well under Biden)
But, don't pull red herrings here--I was asking Larry a question. Since he is constantly reminding us of the manner in which his doctorate in economic history lends his reasoning credibility others' lack, he should be able to answer said question. And I am very interested in the answer...
I pointed one part of this out to someone yesterday. I love the idea of abundance and restoration and growth. However, there's a huge problem with the current picture of abundance. It seems to say let's do all these things and build all this stuff for...the coastal elites and their towns. This is trying to again get around the so-called flyover country. It is trying to find a way to continue ignoring and belittling the working middle-class (not to be confused with the dependent class) We need a rebalancing of sorts across of the country and even a more measured approach to finding a balance for a masculine/feminine world. Many feel the men had too much power and so now we have way too much feminine power (in males and females) It's a big country. There's enough room for attention for everyone.
The American people now know for a fact, that all the "Free Trade" agreements and Foreign Policy implemented the past half-Century manifested much of today's American Economy. The American Middle Class were robbed blind and nobody came to their aid. The American Middle Class have been raising alarms for 60 years.
And now we have a political leader who understands that Epic Con, not only perpetrated against the Middle Class but more broadly against America's Constitutional Republic.
You see, the only way that Epic Con could work, is if a majority of American voters could be manipulated into voting for any politician touting globalist politics. Democrats went all in. Some Republicans did too. But then the majority of American voters discovered the origins of their economic woes, had nothing to do with America's Republican Form of Government or Capitalism, when the Free Market is actually allowed to function normally.
And President Donald Trump just happened to be the guy with enough balls to over-power Big-D and Washington DC's Big-Government love fest, at least enough to start working for the Middle Class.
Redstate columnist Ward Clark's article "The Human Cost of Offshoring Manufacturing" explains some of what America's Globalist Elites did to America. And if anyone thinks this is going to be fixed in a couple months, they don't have a clue about how much needs to be done to re-balance America's Constitutional Republic back to its founding roots.
Tariffs represent one tool within Executive Branch powers. Trump did say something to the effect something like this had never been done before. But consider the scope, breadth, and depth of America's economy affected by so many "unfair" bordering on treasonous, Free Trade Agreements, which sold out the American worker. Is it any wonder we now have to make so many adjustments with so many countries? Why Not Do It All at the Same Time? Peter must be paid by Paul whether Paul likes it or not. Time to suck it up. And China, and its role, cannot be appeased or dismissed. What Trump just did, seems a master stroke, addressing free trade issues across the board, nobody is discriminated against. And then pausing for a moment as so many countries now want to talk to us. I can think of no better coalition for addressing the shared problem China poses to all nations. Now they are the odd man out. Lets see if Trump can get China to the negotiating table, in good faith.
As flattering as this narrative is, it's wrong--the fact is that *most of* the people complaining about the 'decline of the working class' today were of voting age in the 1980s and onward, and they voted for this. They complain about the offshoring of manufacturing, but they voted for the Reagan program for almost three decades, the whole goal of which was to destroy the unions and their industrial base--partially by offshoring manufacturing to weaken their bargaining power and make consumer goods cheaper, partially by allowing more immigration so as to create a large pool of non-unionized labor, partially by unchaining the banks so that finance became the heart of the economy rather than industry. Indeed, the public refused to put Democrats back in power unless they adapted these principles, via Clintonian centrism. And all the way there they claimed to be voting against 'big government'.
Now the bill is coming due, and while the younger generations that didn't have the chance to vote for an alternative absolutely deserve our sympathy, the people who voted for Reaganomics all throughout the '80s, '90s and '00s, do not--and they are by and large the majority (not the entirety, but the majority) of what is now the 'populist right' that 'fights against the elites'. Sorry, but it's not 'big government' that gave these elites power--it was all those votes for 'small government conservatives' who allowed Reaganomics to colonize the economy and install those elites into the commanding heights.
Please name the "Reagan program" as all your claims seem to hinge on a specific program, that I presume had something to do with Foreign Trade, which you associate with a Republican President. However, you may have missed an important fact. And I don't blame you for missing it, as I believe most of civilization simply isn't aware of it.
First a trivia item: In 1979, Nixon assigned then Sen Biden to work on developing better relations between the US and China. The premise was that all the Anti-Communist Anti-US efforts were interfering with developing good trade relations. At that time US business saw China as a new target market.
The microchip had just been invented in 1972. I worked in manufacturing implementing MRP planning systems on IBM mini computers during the 80s. I was APICS certified in Production and Inventory Control. I lived through every economic calamity that befell the US manufacturing sector until 1997 when I switched to State Corrections.
In those days, everyone knew offshoring and exporting manufacturing to other countries was responsible for US Industrial Decline. But everyone also always noted there was "NO EVIDENCE" that US foreign policy was the culprit.
Not until a 2009 research report citing non-public Bureau of Labor Statistics data, was it determined that 40 years of TRADE policy had not only incentivized foreign countries to pull the rug out from under US manufacturing and Middle class America, but they also cited from associated financial data, a massive transfer of wealth from Middle Class America to the globalist elite elite had occurred. Of course that report was published while Americans were picking up the pieces of their lives after the US self-inflicted housing bubble burst.
So yeah, in one sense you are correct, everyone essentially voted for politicians, if they voted at all, who may have been directly or tacitly involved, but nobody knew the consequences they were inviting.
By 2008-2009 Democrats had a much better Con going, building off the previous 40 years that decimated the American middle class. They didn't care. And Republicans were the epitome of Charlie Brown after Lucy pulled the football away.
Bottom Line contrary to what you seem to imply, is that Corporate America, Washington, and Unions had to know the impact and did nothing for the American middle class.
"So yeah, in one sense you are correct, everyone essentially voted for politicians, if they voted at all, who may have been directly or tacitly involved, but nobody knew the consequences they were inviting."
Perhaps they didn't know the consequences, perhaps they did--one can only speculate. It does not take an academic degree to think through the effects of opening up trade with poorer, low-wage countries; you do not have to be a genius to see that this would incentivize capitalists to relocate manufacturing to places where people would work for less, and that this would weaken unions and wage-earners bargaining power. Nonetheless, to facilitate those consequences, and then take no responsibility for them--"It wasn't me, it was the globalists and the foreigners!"--is a rather naive and hypocritical thing to do. NAFTA was a key plank of Reagan's 1980 campaign. The intent to open up trade with those poorer countries was out in the open, and put up for a vote.
But I agree that you can't say that about those who had no say in it, and have to simply have the poison fruit of prior decisions shoved down their throat--they deserve sympathy. However, GenX'ers and their children shouldn't just be blaming 'elites'--they should also place the blame on the votes cast in favor of those elites, even if they're complaining about them now.
Resist? Status quo? The Dems have set a new status quo of spend, spend, spend and want trump to back off their wanton, wasteful spending? He was elected to do otherwise. Sometimes the donkey needs to be smacked over the head with a 2x4 to get its attention. Trump has done this and the left is throwing a tantrum. You just don't get it that the tariffs are a temporary tool to get all countries to start looking at how they are treating each over in the tariff world. And we are finding out just where China stands and it does not bode well for it in the long run. Rising prices? We didn't see that happen in the first Trump term. We may see some in this term but it will be very little over time. Patience mule, patience.
Fighting the oligarchy is certainly a good idea if only the working class believed the Democrats are sincere. But they don't. The recent switch of a section of tech oligarchs to a pro-populism position is a curious trend. That $2 trillion row at the Trump inauguration was striking and Brin was there somewhere too but it would have been tacky to put him next to Musk. So what are they doing? Fear perhaps but of what. What Trump might do, what the EU might do or what the Democrats might do? Or are they just reverting to trying to make lots of money? A sincere conversion to populism seems unlikely.
I commented yesterday that the DNC is trying to set up a shadow cabinet like in the UK. This strikes me as a good idea but I fear The Groups will dominate so you guys should try to get some representation.
None of the new oligarchy have mustaches to twirl. But Musk has emerged as a new sadistic, self-centered voice of MAGA who is capable of losing elections by inserting himself in them.
A group of opposition party leaders each with a portfolio mirroring the ruling cabinet that defines what the opposition would do if they were in power. Gives the issue specificity of an actual cabinet portfolio.
It more or less works in the UK. And clearly the Democrats are trying to be coherent. Ruy is concerned about coherent about what.. Given his laser focus on working class issues, my suggestion was intended to try to get some of his people on the cabinet rather than have it default to The Groups.
As always , astute analysis. Dems endure the same problem as Reps. Party leadership, refuses to make simple adjustments, that would lead to their ability to poach the opposition party's voters.
If Reps included in the tax cut renewals, an exclusion for incomes of $5 million dollars and up, it would greatly blunt "government by millionaires and billionaire" criticisms. All while causing only negligible, negative effects, for a few wealthy, overwhelmingly, Dem voters. That coupled with closing the carried interest tax loophole, would give Trump and Reps some street cred, for lack of better term, with Leftwing populists.
Dems likewise, would be smart to produce their own list of federal spending cuts. Biden increased spending by 47% in 4 years, without a single tax cut. Surely, there is fat somewhere. Dems shouldn't wait for an invitation. The budget is public information. Dems should offer their own cuts, to blunt DOGE appeal.
Finally, Dems should brace, for the inevitable. Trump has ended all federal welfare for Biden's migrants. Even Blue States such as NY are ending hotel programs, that sheltered thousands. At the same time, Trump has cut off much of the NGO funding, that subsidized migrant shelter, food, clothing, and healthcare.
It will take time for the actual evictions, and for the subsidies to dry up completely, but when those dollars are gone, the US could face a homeless and poverty crisis, unseen in a century. There are, roughly, 775K homeless Americans, now. If only 10% of Biden's migrants cannot afford unsubsidized shelter, they will add 1 million homeless people, to the US total. What if it is 20%? Imagine the US with 2 million more homeless people.
Shanty villages, like those hidden, outside many major German cities will spring up, seemingly overnight. Hovels, constructed of corrugated sheet metal, will not endear Dems to voters.
To avoid that fate, Dems need a plan, other than just hoping Trump will implode. Otherwise, Biden's open border, may well cost Dems a second Presidential election.
Spot on! It’s abundantly clear the Dem party needs a new, compelling message and new, moderate messengers to connect with low engagement voters and voters who thought Trump would deliver economic growth. Clearly that isn’t going to happen. I pray this happens soon for the party and this country.
You can't judge an administration on 3 months of time in office. That strategy will bury the left even worse. With 4 years for the Repubs to recover, chances are, the Dems will spend 4 years being proven as not too bright. Jut like joe's 4 uyears of going after Trump. How did that work out for the Dems.
Resists. Even if successful, the Dems will get the blame for destroying our country. SMH
To be fair, I’m mostly concerned with the near-term - 2026 mid-term elections. Take back the House and put an end to this insanity. If Dems can craft a message that sells for ‘26, they can adjust to capture a broader set of voters for ‘28 to have a chance to win back the executive branch.
Fascists control the government, but the marginal American voter did not vote for Fascism.
Liberals have had a pro-middle class agenda for decades, but it has been repeatedly thwarted by GOP obstruction (in the Senate), so no reform (aside from Obamacare) has happened, both sides get blamed, and this redounds to the benefit of the party that is "against government."
As a result frustrations have built up to the point where people are openly beginning to speak of economic populism, even Socialism. But electing Democrats and simply implementing the agenda that establishment Dems have been pushing since the W. Bush Administration would go a long way to addressing entrenched income-inequality. But this has *never* been in the interests of the GOP, either before or since the rise of Trump.
Dems may have been pro middle class at one time. However, it is hard to claim spending $6 trillion dollars needlessly, stoking the worst inflation in 40 years and unnecessarily locking down schools in Blue States, for 2 years, is pro middle earners. Ditto for inviting into the US 10 million unvetted, low skilled migrants, in need of vast tax payer support.
You need to be honest. Democrats have recognized the need for comprehensive immigration reform for at least two decades now. It is Conservatives who have constantly stood in the way of this. This is not (even) because Conservatives are fanatics on immigration who simply refuse to engage in the democratic process of compromise. It's because they know that by NOT acting, they will pay no price from the racists teeming in their base, racists who are opposed to immigration on the grounds of racism and nothing else (even in SPITE of the very clear economic rationale for increasing immigration of all kinds into the United States).
There could not have been a clearer proof this, when Trump had the trifecta last time, and he and R's did NOTHING on immigration. It's a FACT that Obama deported more people than Trump did.
So spare me the lecture on immigration. The very FIRST thing the Biden Admin. did was to try to reach a modus vivendi with the Republicans (fresh off their attempt at Insurrection) over immigration. The result? It couldn't even get out of committee. Republicans *do not care* about solving this problem, instead they want the political benefit from obstructing any policy-solution. The lax policy under Biden was *your* responsibility (especially after Dems' total capitulation with the Lankford bill). But at the least, immigration under Biden helped supply the labor and the added consumption that the country needs.
And don't get me started on your egregious hypocrisy over Covid. A bird-flu pandemic is coming, and it will (very) likely be even worse, because of the willful idiocy of Conservatives.
The immigration legislation wasn't reform. It codified Biden's numbers into law. With Gotaways and exemptions, for certain Latin America countries, the law would have resulted in a minimum of 2-3 million migrants a year, permanently, if not more. In a few more years, the law, with Biden's migrants, would have created a landless, 51rst migrant only state, with a larger population than 48 other states.
In a high cost nation, with a housing shortage, the law was insanity, which is why even Langford and McConnell refused to support it, in the end. Trump didn't kill the bill, nor was mythical racism the problem. The law failed ,due to the Math.
Nor should Dems hold their breath for "immigration reform", anytime soon. That ship has sailed. Dems ignore current law. Why would they obey new ones?
Democrats' demonstrate a selective impatience that is based more on the narrower best interests of their Party rather than the broader, best interests of the nation. They immerse themselves in a conceal and coverup mode to protect a cognitively disabled and ruinous Biden Administration and have shown no inclination to take responsibility for it.
Their future hopes will never rest with their current governing "leaders" but the new ideas and new blood the party's elders are unwilling or unable to attract.
Real deal is that Trump is winning the whole game. His people will never leave him. He hits the real issues and those issues are very simple. They are cultural and way of life. They hate the Elite and they hate the values of the elite. These values are so broad and so all encompassing, they hate the Democrat and Liberal and so-called progressive policies that stem from allowing trans women to compete against real women all the way up to the brainwashing of their children on college campuses. They want these illegal aliens out of our country and they really don’t care how it’s done. The Democrat party cannot top this. There is one caveat and that is that the Republican party, must get it shit together and stop forming a firing squad in a circle like the Democrats always do!
This is ironically and pathetically the Snow White strategy. Democrats trying to kill Trump or abuse their political and media power to make him appear less attractive while they, the Democrats, chant "Mirror, mirror on the wall... who is the fairest of all...now?"
Everybody, including Democrats, say that the Democrats are out of step and have lost step with American workers . But everyone who says this, including Ruy Teixeira don’t put forward any agenda or any platform or any suggestions whatsoever what the Democrats should be doing. So Ruy, or anyone else on here: what should we be doing?
The populist hoax is ending. Tariffs have been thoroughly discredited as a tool to prosperity. Drill, baby, drill is derided in the oil patch by the people who do the work. Rig count is down. And the performative cruelty in photo-op deportations is providing diminishing returns in terms of riling up the base. Trump is running out of steam as he flips and flops like a beached whale.
Good as far as it goes, but what you're missing here is foreign policy. The American century is over; it's only a matter of how hard the landing is going to be. The world is reassembling itself in the absence of American hegemony, and it's a critical time for the United States to find itself a place in it that preserves our security and prosperity. Trump is taking a vigorous nationalist approach (including tariffs, which are more than just economic policies), which is both popular and (in my opinion) correct in outline, if disconcerting in detail.
By contrast, the Democrats (starting with Obama) have delivered only random and incompetent opportunism which at this point has actually endangered the country. In particular, their "policies" have hollowed out our military, and their factionalism (over Ukraine and Gaza and Yemen) has destroyed what remained of our deterrence. When China takes Taiwan (any day now), I pray that we will let it pass, because if we fight that war we will lose it. The Democrats need an alternative plan, one that embraces these facts. They are very, very far from even conceiving of one, not least because those in power in the party are fundamentally very unpatriotic people who, to put it bluntly, are deeply invested in their separation from and disdain for ordinary Americans. So its a big, big lift for them. There is no time for them to get their act together. We are in this war, and Trump is the army we've got.
There just needs to be a permanent, stickied comment that mentions the missing foreign policy element whenever Ruy releases these analyses.
Hard disagree on the tariffs, though. They will just speed up the ejection of the dollar from reserve currency status, which will have too many deleterious effects to list. And if implemented in the nonsensical way we just witnessed, certainly, they'll just tear up the economy. Effective protectionism in a world of globalized supply chains looks much more like what we saw under Biden, and involves international political collaboration.
Trump has destroyed that. NATO is gone, and no country in the world will trust us for at least a half-century, and possibly more. Meanwhile, an integrated Asia is on the rise, with a Xi-Putin axis to handle any security concerns in Eastern Europe.
The trade war with China, which the U.S. will almost certainly lose, will be the coup de grace, and in all likelihood, when the history books are written a few decades from now, Trump 2.0 will be seen as the definitive turning point during which the global center of power moved from the West and a U.S.-led order, back to Asia and a Chinese-led order. And most ironically of all, the U.S.--and Trump--will have given it away willingly, somehow thinking that being subordinated to another great power was going to be in its benefit.
Interesting. I think the turning point has already passed; our inaction and internal disorder since the Iraq War has by now made it inevitable. I don't care so much about the US-led order per se, because I think, like all things, it had to come to an end. China has been a superpower for most of world history, we have to live with that. What I'm concerned about is finding a place in the midst of the new order that maintains our safety and prosperity. Probably we are going back to trading blocs, in which case the US should solidify control over the Western Hemisphere, including the Arctic flank (which Trump is doing), and hold sally ports in Europe (Britain), East Asia (Japan) and the Pacific (Australia) (which Trump is not doing).
I am more open-minded about tariffs knowing that most economists came up educationally in an environment that was incurious about the philosophical and historical background of their profession, and ignorant of its critiques. I'd like to have the media find a heterodox economist who has studied tariffs seriously and can respond in detail to the issues you're talking about, instead of the "Orange Man tariffs bad" responses that we are getting by the dozen from economists who are, frankly, part of the problem. Globalized supply chains are not inevitable in a multipolar world; indeed, the whole point of what we're doing recently (even Biden) has been to start de-globalizing at least some of them for strategic purposes. As for the general problem of national prosperity and opportunity for non-professional Americans - if not tariffs, then what? You can't beat something with nothing.
The problem for Abundance Democrats is that they believe that a net-zero carbon Ecotopia will be just like JRR Tolkien's Hobbiton in Lord of the Rings. However, ordinary Americans understand that they will end up like the peasantry in Monty Python's Holy Grail.
No offense meant but SS:DD. It's getting old. Hakeen is about the most speaker ever. His empty threats are comical. Schumer bent over his lectern reading more pep talks that he can barely get out is even more so. Fight the Oligarchy while flying in 1st class.
Desperation is not a good look for anyone. Once again, why aren't the Democrats working on candidates and policies? The old leadership is leading the party down a dead end road and the new youngsters are leading Democrats into oblivion.
With the Dems lawfare strategy being now ruled on by SCOTUS, all those judge shopping victories are looking hollow. When national injunctions by biased judges are shut down, that will make the Dems even more impotent.
Are there any Dems that aren't business as usual or going off the deep end saying the message was good but bad delivery? 70% of the people said the country was gong down the wrong the path. 70%. And no president running for reelection with a 66% disapproval rating has ever won reelection. As an independent, the Dems can't even give me a flicker of hope.
Do you people even know what an adult is?
Best line of the year, Shiff, from the insider trading capitol of the world, the House,
Adam Schiff Calls For Insider Trading Investigation into Trump Over Tariff Pause
I need to rephrase one question. Are there any intelligent adults in the Dem party? Independents are not as stupid as the left likes to project they are.
CBS is completely unreliable. Rasmussen, who was very good in 2024 and Democracy Institute (also dead on) have Trump at about 50/50, which is pretty astounding. It took Reagan about one year to recover from Jimmy Carter. He was underwater much of that time.
Meanwhile, and I keep sayin' it and sayin' it, the proof is NOT in the polls. It's in the voter registrations and Ds are getting crushed. I cannot find ONE state where they are even positive in the last six months. PA is 93,000 from a complete flip to red and moving at about 7,000 a month toward Rs; NC is moving even faster. Even deep red UTAH is getting slightly redder. These are ACTIONS by voters (it takes time to register or, more important, to re-register). It takes no effort to answer a stupid poll.
Lastly, the coal miners are now 100% behind Trump as are the steelworkers and autoworkers. Dems will never get them back---certainly not with Jeffries and AOC and the millionaire Bernie Sanders. Trump has clearly made this about Main Street vs. Wall Street and even Ds like Chuck Schumer, who just a few years ago was DEMANDING tariffs on China, are throwing in with the billionaires.
But, as a I keep saying, watch AI. It is completely incompatible with any of the green D agenda, and Trump is opening every avenue possible to produce more energy. Ds will lose that AI generation as well.
That was helpful. Thank you. I would appreciate your thoughts on the possibility of a third party in the future.
Speaking of tariffs, I was wondering, Larry, if you could use your very trustworthy Ph.D in economic history to answer the question I asked before, which you fell silent on last time...explain to me, in economic terms, how the U.S. achieves consistent trade surpluses with the dollar as the global reserve currency, no gold standard and high tariffs. (as Trump has said is his intended policy)
It should not be a hard question to answer if economic history is truly your forte...
Democrats used to support tariffs
https://amac.us/newsline/economy/democrats-get-amnesia-on-unfair-trade-deals/
They supported protectionism, and targeted tariffs combined with international political collaboration--waaaay different (and way more effective) than blanket tariffs on all goods, with no concurrent political collaboration. The latter doesn't work in a world of globalized supply chains; the former can, if done right. There is definitely a bit of hypocrisy in the rhetoric, but the policy arguments are distinct. (and the more targeted policies they advocated worked well under Biden)
But, don't pull red herrings here--I was asking Larry a question. Since he is constantly reminding us of the manner in which his doctorate in economic history lends his reasoning credibility others' lack, he should be able to answer said question. And I am very interested in the answer...
I pointed one part of this out to someone yesterday. I love the idea of abundance and restoration and growth. However, there's a huge problem with the current picture of abundance. It seems to say let's do all these things and build all this stuff for...the coastal elites and their towns. This is trying to again get around the so-called flyover country. It is trying to find a way to continue ignoring and belittling the working middle-class (not to be confused with the dependent class) We need a rebalancing of sorts across of the country and even a more measured approach to finding a balance for a masculine/feminine world. Many feel the men had too much power and so now we have way too much feminine power (in males and females) It's a big country. There's enough room for attention for everyone.
The American people now know for a fact, that all the "Free Trade" agreements and Foreign Policy implemented the past half-Century manifested much of today's American Economy. The American Middle Class were robbed blind and nobody came to their aid. The American Middle Class have been raising alarms for 60 years.
And now we have a political leader who understands that Epic Con, not only perpetrated against the Middle Class but more broadly against America's Constitutional Republic.
You see, the only way that Epic Con could work, is if a majority of American voters could be manipulated into voting for any politician touting globalist politics. Democrats went all in. Some Republicans did too. But then the majority of American voters discovered the origins of their economic woes, had nothing to do with America's Republican Form of Government or Capitalism, when the Free Market is actually allowed to function normally.
And President Donald Trump just happened to be the guy with enough balls to over-power Big-D and Washington DC's Big-Government love fest, at least enough to start working for the Middle Class.
Redstate columnist Ward Clark's article "The Human Cost of Offshoring Manufacturing" explains some of what America's Globalist Elites did to America. And if anyone thinks this is going to be fixed in a couple months, they don't have a clue about how much needs to be done to re-balance America's Constitutional Republic back to its founding roots.
Tariffs represent one tool within Executive Branch powers. Trump did say something to the effect something like this had never been done before. But consider the scope, breadth, and depth of America's economy affected by so many "unfair" bordering on treasonous, Free Trade Agreements, which sold out the American worker. Is it any wonder we now have to make so many adjustments with so many countries? Why Not Do It All at the Same Time? Peter must be paid by Paul whether Paul likes it or not. Time to suck it up. And China, and its role, cannot be appeased or dismissed. What Trump just did, seems a master stroke, addressing free trade issues across the board, nobody is discriminated against. And then pausing for a moment as so many countries now want to talk to us. I can think of no better coalition for addressing the shared problem China poses to all nations. Now they are the odd man out. Lets see if Trump can get China to the negotiating table, in good faith.
As flattering as this narrative is, it's wrong--the fact is that *most of* the people complaining about the 'decline of the working class' today were of voting age in the 1980s and onward, and they voted for this. They complain about the offshoring of manufacturing, but they voted for the Reagan program for almost three decades, the whole goal of which was to destroy the unions and their industrial base--partially by offshoring manufacturing to weaken their bargaining power and make consumer goods cheaper, partially by allowing more immigration so as to create a large pool of non-unionized labor, partially by unchaining the banks so that finance became the heart of the economy rather than industry. Indeed, the public refused to put Democrats back in power unless they adapted these principles, via Clintonian centrism. And all the way there they claimed to be voting against 'big government'.
Now the bill is coming due, and while the younger generations that didn't have the chance to vote for an alternative absolutely deserve our sympathy, the people who voted for Reaganomics all throughout the '80s, '90s and '00s, do not--and they are by and large the majority (not the entirety, but the majority) of what is now the 'populist right' that 'fights against the elites'. Sorry, but it's not 'big government' that gave these elites power--it was all those votes for 'small government conservatives' who allowed Reaganomics to colonize the economy and install those elites into the commanding heights.
Please name the "Reagan program" as all your claims seem to hinge on a specific program, that I presume had something to do with Foreign Trade, which you associate with a Republican President. However, you may have missed an important fact. And I don't blame you for missing it, as I believe most of civilization simply isn't aware of it.
First a trivia item: In 1979, Nixon assigned then Sen Biden to work on developing better relations between the US and China. The premise was that all the Anti-Communist Anti-US efforts were interfering with developing good trade relations. At that time US business saw China as a new target market.
The microchip had just been invented in 1972. I worked in manufacturing implementing MRP planning systems on IBM mini computers during the 80s. I was APICS certified in Production and Inventory Control. I lived through every economic calamity that befell the US manufacturing sector until 1997 when I switched to State Corrections.
In those days, everyone knew offshoring and exporting manufacturing to other countries was responsible for US Industrial Decline. But everyone also always noted there was "NO EVIDENCE" that US foreign policy was the culprit.
Not until a 2009 research report citing non-public Bureau of Labor Statistics data, was it determined that 40 years of TRADE policy had not only incentivized foreign countries to pull the rug out from under US manufacturing and Middle class America, but they also cited from associated financial data, a massive transfer of wealth from Middle Class America to the globalist elite elite had occurred. Of course that report was published while Americans were picking up the pieces of their lives after the US self-inflicted housing bubble burst.
So yeah, in one sense you are correct, everyone essentially voted for politicians, if they voted at all, who may have been directly or tacitly involved, but nobody knew the consequences they were inviting.
By 2008-2009 Democrats had a much better Con going, building off the previous 40 years that decimated the American middle class. They didn't care. And Republicans were the epitome of Charlie Brown after Lucy pulled the football away.
Bottom Line contrary to what you seem to imply, is that Corporate America, Washington, and Unions had to know the impact and did nothing for the American middle class.
Things have changed - NOW WE KNOW!
"So yeah, in one sense you are correct, everyone essentially voted for politicians, if they voted at all, who may have been directly or tacitly involved, but nobody knew the consequences they were inviting."
Perhaps they didn't know the consequences, perhaps they did--one can only speculate. It does not take an academic degree to think through the effects of opening up trade with poorer, low-wage countries; you do not have to be a genius to see that this would incentivize capitalists to relocate manufacturing to places where people would work for less, and that this would weaken unions and wage-earners bargaining power. Nonetheless, to facilitate those consequences, and then take no responsibility for them--"It wasn't me, it was the globalists and the foreigners!"--is a rather naive and hypocritical thing to do. NAFTA was a key plank of Reagan's 1980 campaign. The intent to open up trade with those poorer countries was out in the open, and put up for a vote.
But I agree that you can't say that about those who had no say in it, and have to simply have the poison fruit of prior decisions shoved down their throat--they deserve sympathy. However, GenX'ers and their children shouldn't just be blaming 'elites'--they should also place the blame on the votes cast in favor of those elites, even if they're complaining about them now.
Resist? Status quo? The Dems have set a new status quo of spend, spend, spend and want trump to back off their wanton, wasteful spending? He was elected to do otherwise. Sometimes the donkey needs to be smacked over the head with a 2x4 to get its attention. Trump has done this and the left is throwing a tantrum. You just don't get it that the tariffs are a temporary tool to get all countries to start looking at how they are treating each over in the tariff world. And we are finding out just where China stands and it does not bode well for it in the long run. Rising prices? We didn't see that happen in the first Trump term. We may see some in this term but it will be very little over time. Patience mule, patience.
Fighting the oligarchy is certainly a good idea if only the working class believed the Democrats are sincere. But they don't. The recent switch of a section of tech oligarchs to a pro-populism position is a curious trend. That $2 trillion row at the Trump inauguration was striking and Brin was there somewhere too but it would have been tacky to put him next to Musk. So what are they doing? Fear perhaps but of what. What Trump might do, what the EU might do or what the Democrats might do? Or are they just reverting to trying to make lots of money? A sincere conversion to populism seems unlikely.
I commented yesterday that the DNC is trying to set up a shadow cabinet like in the UK. This strikes me as a good idea but I fear The Groups will dominate so you guys should try to get some representation.
None of the new oligarchy have mustaches to twirl. But Musk has emerged as a new sadistic, self-centered voice of MAGA who is capable of losing elections by inserting himself in them.
Sincere question, what is a shadow cabinet, and what does it do?
A group of opposition party leaders each with a portfolio mirroring the ruling cabinet that defines what the opposition would do if they were in power. Gives the issue specificity of an actual cabinet portfolio.
I now understand better. But what makes anyone think that would be effective?
1) do the Dems have any way of coming up with coherent and rational set of policies?
2) who would be on the cabinet?
I can't see the benefit.
It more or less works in the UK. And clearly the Democrats are trying to be coherent. Ruy is concerned about coherent about what.. Given his laser focus on working class issues, my suggestion was intended to try to get some of his people on the cabinet rather than have it default to The Groups.
Thank you.
But trying to be like the UK?
Can't they come up with something original?
Trump was kind not to make the $2 trillion row wear dog leashes, but the message was clear without them.
As always , astute analysis. Dems endure the same problem as Reps. Party leadership, refuses to make simple adjustments, that would lead to their ability to poach the opposition party's voters.
If Reps included in the tax cut renewals, an exclusion for incomes of $5 million dollars and up, it would greatly blunt "government by millionaires and billionaire" criticisms. All while causing only negligible, negative effects, for a few wealthy, overwhelmingly, Dem voters. That coupled with closing the carried interest tax loophole, would give Trump and Reps some street cred, for lack of better term, with Leftwing populists.
Dems likewise, would be smart to produce their own list of federal spending cuts. Biden increased spending by 47% in 4 years, without a single tax cut. Surely, there is fat somewhere. Dems shouldn't wait for an invitation. The budget is public information. Dems should offer their own cuts, to blunt DOGE appeal.
Finally, Dems should brace, for the inevitable. Trump has ended all federal welfare for Biden's migrants. Even Blue States such as NY are ending hotel programs, that sheltered thousands. At the same time, Trump has cut off much of the NGO funding, that subsidized migrant shelter, food, clothing, and healthcare.
It will take time for the actual evictions, and for the subsidies to dry up completely, but when those dollars are gone, the US could face a homeless and poverty crisis, unseen in a century. There are, roughly, 775K homeless Americans, now. If only 10% of Biden's migrants cannot afford unsubsidized shelter, they will add 1 million homeless people, to the US total. What if it is 20%? Imagine the US with 2 million more homeless people.
Shanty villages, like those hidden, outside many major German cities will spring up, seemingly overnight. Hovels, constructed of corrugated sheet metal, will not endear Dems to voters.
To avoid that fate, Dems need a plan, other than just hoping Trump will implode. Otherwise, Biden's open border, may well cost Dems a second Presidential election.
Spot on! It’s abundantly clear the Dem party needs a new, compelling message and new, moderate messengers to connect with low engagement voters and voters who thought Trump would deliver economic growth. Clearly that isn’t going to happen. I pray this happens soon for the party and this country.
You can't judge an administration on 3 months of time in office. That strategy will bury the left even worse. With 4 years for the Repubs to recover, chances are, the Dems will spend 4 years being proven as not too bright. Jut like joe's 4 uyears of going after Trump. How did that work out for the Dems.
Resists. Even if successful, the Dems will get the blame for destroying our country. SMH
To be fair, I’m mostly concerned with the near-term - 2026 mid-term elections. Take back the House and put an end to this insanity. If Dems can craft a message that sells for ‘26, they can adjust to capture a broader set of voters for ‘28 to have a chance to win back the executive branch.
Fascists control the government, but the marginal American voter did not vote for Fascism.
Liberals have had a pro-middle class agenda for decades, but it has been repeatedly thwarted by GOP obstruction (in the Senate), so no reform (aside from Obamacare) has happened, both sides get blamed, and this redounds to the benefit of the party that is "against government."
As a result frustrations have built up to the point where people are openly beginning to speak of economic populism, even Socialism. But electing Democrats and simply implementing the agenda that establishment Dems have been pushing since the W. Bush Administration would go a long way to addressing entrenched income-inequality. But this has *never* been in the interests of the GOP, either before or since the rise of Trump.
Dems may have been pro middle class at one time. However, it is hard to claim spending $6 trillion dollars needlessly, stoking the worst inflation in 40 years and unnecessarily locking down schools in Blue States, for 2 years, is pro middle earners. Ditto for inviting into the US 10 million unvetted, low skilled migrants, in need of vast tax payer support.
More than Reps, have lost their way.
You need to be honest. Democrats have recognized the need for comprehensive immigration reform for at least two decades now. It is Conservatives who have constantly stood in the way of this. This is not (even) because Conservatives are fanatics on immigration who simply refuse to engage in the democratic process of compromise. It's because they know that by NOT acting, they will pay no price from the racists teeming in their base, racists who are opposed to immigration on the grounds of racism and nothing else (even in SPITE of the very clear economic rationale for increasing immigration of all kinds into the United States).
There could not have been a clearer proof this, when Trump had the trifecta last time, and he and R's did NOTHING on immigration. It's a FACT that Obama deported more people than Trump did.
So spare me the lecture on immigration. The very FIRST thing the Biden Admin. did was to try to reach a modus vivendi with the Republicans (fresh off their attempt at Insurrection) over immigration. The result? It couldn't even get out of committee. Republicans *do not care* about solving this problem, instead they want the political benefit from obstructing any policy-solution. The lax policy under Biden was *your* responsibility (especially after Dems' total capitulation with the Lankford bill). But at the least, immigration under Biden helped supply the labor and the added consumption that the country needs.
And don't get me started on your egregious hypocrisy over Covid. A bird-flu pandemic is coming, and it will (very) likely be even worse, because of the willful idiocy of Conservatives.
The immigration legislation wasn't reform. It codified Biden's numbers into law. With Gotaways and exemptions, for certain Latin America countries, the law would have resulted in a minimum of 2-3 million migrants a year, permanently, if not more. In a few more years, the law, with Biden's migrants, would have created a landless, 51rst migrant only state, with a larger population than 48 other states.
In a high cost nation, with a housing shortage, the law was insanity, which is why even Langford and McConnell refused to support it, in the end. Trump didn't kill the bill, nor was mythical racism the problem. The law failed ,due to the Math.
Nor should Dems hold their breath for "immigration reform", anytime soon. That ship has sailed. Dems ignore current law. Why would they obey new ones?
Democrats' demonstrate a selective impatience that is based more on the narrower best interests of their Party rather than the broader, best interests of the nation. They immerse themselves in a conceal and coverup mode to protect a cognitively disabled and ruinous Biden Administration and have shown no inclination to take responsibility for it.
Their future hopes will never rest with their current governing "leaders" but the new ideas and new blood the party's elders are unwilling or unable to attract.
Real deal is that Trump is winning the whole game. His people will never leave him. He hits the real issues and those issues are very simple. They are cultural and way of life. They hate the Elite and they hate the values of the elite. These values are so broad and so all encompassing, they hate the Democrat and Liberal and so-called progressive policies that stem from allowing trans women to compete against real women all the way up to the brainwashing of their children on college campuses. They want these illegal aliens out of our country and they really don’t care how it’s done. The Democrat party cannot top this. There is one caveat and that is that the Republican party, must get it shit together and stop forming a firing squad in a circle like the Democrats always do!
This is ironically and pathetically the Snow White strategy. Democrats trying to kill Trump or abuse their political and media power to make him appear less attractive while they, the Democrats, chant "Mirror, mirror on the wall... who is the fairest of all...now?"
Everybody, including Democrats, say that the Democrats are out of step and have lost step with American workers . But everyone who says this, including Ruy Teixeira don’t put forward any agenda or any platform or any suggestions whatsoever what the Democrats should be doing. So Ruy, or anyone else on here: what should we be doing?
The populist hoax is ending. Tariffs have been thoroughly discredited as a tool to prosperity. Drill, baby, drill is derided in the oil patch by the people who do the work. Rig count is down. And the performative cruelty in photo-op deportations is providing diminishing returns in terms of riling up the base. Trump is running out of steam as he flips and flops like a beached whale.
Good as far as it goes, but what you're missing here is foreign policy. The American century is over; it's only a matter of how hard the landing is going to be. The world is reassembling itself in the absence of American hegemony, and it's a critical time for the United States to find itself a place in it that preserves our security and prosperity. Trump is taking a vigorous nationalist approach (including tariffs, which are more than just economic policies), which is both popular and (in my opinion) correct in outline, if disconcerting in detail.
By contrast, the Democrats (starting with Obama) have delivered only random and incompetent opportunism which at this point has actually endangered the country. In particular, their "policies" have hollowed out our military, and their factionalism (over Ukraine and Gaza and Yemen) has destroyed what remained of our deterrence. When China takes Taiwan (any day now), I pray that we will let it pass, because if we fight that war we will lose it. The Democrats need an alternative plan, one that embraces these facts. They are very, very far from even conceiving of one, not least because those in power in the party are fundamentally very unpatriotic people who, to put it bluntly, are deeply invested in their separation from and disdain for ordinary Americans. So its a big, big lift for them. There is no time for them to get their act together. We are in this war, and Trump is the army we've got.
There just needs to be a permanent, stickied comment that mentions the missing foreign policy element whenever Ruy releases these analyses.
Hard disagree on the tariffs, though. They will just speed up the ejection of the dollar from reserve currency status, which will have too many deleterious effects to list. And if implemented in the nonsensical way we just witnessed, certainly, they'll just tear up the economy. Effective protectionism in a world of globalized supply chains looks much more like what we saw under Biden, and involves international political collaboration.
Trump has destroyed that. NATO is gone, and no country in the world will trust us for at least a half-century, and possibly more. Meanwhile, an integrated Asia is on the rise, with a Xi-Putin axis to handle any security concerns in Eastern Europe.
The trade war with China, which the U.S. will almost certainly lose, will be the coup de grace, and in all likelihood, when the history books are written a few decades from now, Trump 2.0 will be seen as the definitive turning point during which the global center of power moved from the West and a U.S.-led order, back to Asia and a Chinese-led order. And most ironically of all, the U.S.--and Trump--will have given it away willingly, somehow thinking that being subordinated to another great power was going to be in its benefit.
Interesting. I think the turning point has already passed; our inaction and internal disorder since the Iraq War has by now made it inevitable. I don't care so much about the US-led order per se, because I think, like all things, it had to come to an end. China has been a superpower for most of world history, we have to live with that. What I'm concerned about is finding a place in the midst of the new order that maintains our safety and prosperity. Probably we are going back to trading blocs, in which case the US should solidify control over the Western Hemisphere, including the Arctic flank (which Trump is doing), and hold sally ports in Europe (Britain), East Asia (Japan) and the Pacific (Australia) (which Trump is not doing).
I am more open-minded about tariffs knowing that most economists came up educationally in an environment that was incurious about the philosophical and historical background of their profession, and ignorant of its critiques. I'd like to have the media find a heterodox economist who has studied tariffs seriously and can respond in detail to the issues you're talking about, instead of the "Orange Man tariffs bad" responses that we are getting by the dozen from economists who are, frankly, part of the problem. Globalized supply chains are not inevitable in a multipolar world; indeed, the whole point of what we're doing recently (even Biden) has been to start de-globalizing at least some of them for strategic purposes. As for the general problem of national prosperity and opportunity for non-professional Americans - if not tariffs, then what? You can't beat something with nothing.
The problem for Abundance Democrats is that they believe that a net-zero carbon Ecotopia will be just like JRR Tolkien's Hobbiton in Lord of the Rings. However, ordinary Americans understand that they will end up like the peasantry in Monty Python's Holy Grail.