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That's true. And they don't care.
People have been making this argument as if it's convincing since the beginning of globalization. We know the poor always suffer more. But they're also not stupid, so using that fact to extort them into annihilation is not going to work.
No amount of "you're voting against your interest" is going to convince Joe Schmoe that losing his jobs to foreigners at home or abroad is a good thing because his eggs and car payments are marginally cheaper.
PMCs need to take a hard look at themselves and understand that it is they who want cheaper goods at the expense of their compatriots, not their compatriots who stupidly want to hurt themselves, because they're stupid.
Was the price of goods not one of the most important issues in the 2024 election? Proles voted overwhelmingly in favor of lower prices.
They absolutely are stupid. Proles are the people who walk into Best Buy and drop $900 on a brand new laptop with a Celeron and 720p screen, split into 96 monthly payments with 10% interest from Affirm. Proles buy a $70,000 truck that gets 15 mpg and then complain about gas prices. Proles see lower prices as the solution to all their problems, because they can't imagine not consuming every dollar they earn on stupid crap. And the lower prices are, the more crap they can consume. They are attempting to vote in their own interests, they just don't understand what their interests are.
No, we don't. I want to protect the environment, even if it raises prices. I want $10/gallon gas. As a PMC, I'm willing to pay more because the amount I consume now is already well within my budget.
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Imma have to stop you right there. Wasn’t unemployment at record lows until recently? Who’s lost their jobs and remained unemployed?
The rate has been back to 2008 levels and trending up since 2022 when it made a low after the Covid spike.
But broad rates are useless to measure what we're talking about here, since they take into account everyone and not just the endemic lower class population. Not to mention how cooked something like an Unemployment metric is and how people tend to fall out of the long term category.
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Unemployment, real median (and lower quintile) wages, AND inflation were all good in Trump's first term pre-COVID. This tariff policy is going to wreck all of that, and Joe Schmoe will be convinced that he definitely doesn't want more of THAT.
Trump won a second term because the economy did well in his first one — but the opposition spent so much mana crying wolf on his fairly reasonable and normie-Republican first term that they’re unable to stage effective opposition when the wolf comes as a wolf.
Yes, and they're still doing it, making fun of the default tariff on uninhabited islands instead of attacking the big tariffs on major trading partners.
Trump announced tariffs on Canada and Mexico in his first week or two. Everyone complained about tariffs on our major trading partners, Trump supporters just don't give a fuck. People here were unironically saying alienating our allies and destroying the post-WW2 coalition was a good thing.
At this point, what's left to do but either wait for congressional republicans to start panicking about their political futures or wait for the midterms? It doesn't matter what the media or twitter accounts focus on, Trump supporters know what they want and they're going to get it.
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Or they don't believe it. This is also my struggle with accelerationists on the left : I get the idea, I just doubt that they actually have internalized how bad things can get, and how long they can stay awful.
Even bad times for Americans are better than a lot of places. And, as the most powerful country, Americans have reason to think that if they simply got rid of the suckers and losers the whole thing could just pick up again.
If the Democrats came to them with a total surrender on immigration in exchange for ending this tariff game, do you think they'd take it?
You know what I'm not sure, but it's mostly down to the fact this scenario has happened before and the Dems reneged on their promises.
That said social nationalism of the Danish variety has worked very well politically. So if someone from the left proposed something like this adapted to more small business oriented American sensibilities, I think that would prove tremendously popular, actuallly.
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