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Sorry it took me so long to reply, I started writing one last night but I was being lazy and writing it in the website and brave refreshed and I lost it.
You know it's not going to happen though no matter who is in charge though so why would you want him to try it if he's just going to fuck it up? I can tell you my reasoning - I don't know if tariffs would work, they seem crazy to me but so does printing infinite money and that's the only other option I ever see offered! To be fair, this isn't my wheelhouse, maybe in economist circles everyone knows a way to fix it that isn't either tariff negotiations or 'hum loudly enough that you are distracted from the topic', but in the msm I only hear about how crazy and destructive Trump is, and no alternatives except shit like 'do a vat instead' and other solutions that amount to maintain the status quo.
I assumed the doge cuts were meant to be performative, meant to be bread and circuses in preparation for hard times. Because we aren't fixing the economy without hard times. But now he's rolled back the tariffs, which given how Trump operates likely means an internal pillar of support collapsed. And yet even still, the amount of effort his opposition had to deploy to disable him is insane! So I return to the hill I always die on - I think Trump plays up his buffoonery so people underestimate him, but maybe he is just a dummy. Whatever he is, his opposition aren't any better, they are just better at hiding their fuck ups. Either way it looks like we aren't getting the economy fixed without a proper disaster.
Your comment is excessively fatalistic. Countries undo their bad decisions all the time. Massive peacetime deficits were not a normal occurrence in this country for the first couple hundred years of its existence. Whether the US will cut its current deficits is up to the electorate. I'm not particularly hopeful about the prospect given that the current electorate is full of populist idiots that would punish politicians for making the correct long-term decisions vis-a-vis deficit reduction, but it's certainly theoretically achievable. Tariffs are not the way to get there, as the amount of money raised would be comparatively tiny relative to the damage done.
The US isn't printing "infinite money", as that would have resulted in hyperinflation (inflation of high single digits or low double digits doesn't count as hyperinflation).
Lmao yep I agree one hundred percent. Except for the populist modifier, that's just your nail. Unless 95% of the country are populists now. Or are you suggesting that the democrats (who think populists are evil) would cut ss Medicare or welfare were they in power?
You call me excessively fatalistic, but I think you are being naive. Trump is a symptom, not the cause of our leaders' incompetence. (After all if the universities could fix the economy, why didn't they when Biden was in charge?) I am actually not completely blackpilled by that realisation however, because there is a silver lining to learning that our elite human capital are just idiot narcissists - it means you can let go of the idea that there could be a society of people who don't punish politicians for making the correct long-term decisions. Due to the confluence of unintended second order effects, perverse incentives and incompetence, our society is fucking atrocious at producing people who won't punish politicians for making the correct long term decisions, but it's even worse at producing politicians who will make the correct long term decisions.
Leftists have their own version of populism which is mostly focused on billionaire-bashing. The left hasn't been particularly interested in balancing the budget since Clinton, and he was basically forced to do that by a Republican Congress.
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