Trump is – once again – promising to give Americans back some of the money stolen from them by the government. By Trump himself, in this case – because it was he who imposed massive taxes on Americans who were told they were merely “tariffs” and so wouldn’t cost them any money. These tariffs – which of course are taxes applied to the manufacturers of things that are then passed along to the buyers of things – have increased the cost of new vehicles by at least as much as the paltry $2,000 checks Trump says Americans may receive sometime next year. By which time it is likely – so he hopes – everyone will have forgotten the promise and moved on to some other thing.
As they have already forgotten the $5,000 checks Trump hinted Americans would get as their refund for the money saved by Elon Musk’s DOGE operation, which everyone seems to have forgotten about, too. Or would just rather not think about anymore, for the same reason a rape victim tries to forget what happened to her.
What almost no one asks anymore is – why don’t they just stop stealing our money? Then they wouldn’t have to go through the motions of giving some of it back to us. Well, the answer to that question is one we already know.
Roman politicians bought the support of the masses by literally throwing money at them, too. Of course, the plebes – as they were known then – had been robbed to pay for it all. History never changes. Just the names and places.
Does anyone remember when Trump suggested the income tax might be abolished because tariff-taxes would make income-taxing Americans unnecessary? Why is it that few ever ask who (and it’s never us) gets to decide what is “necessary” in the first place?
Most of us probably think it is necessary that we provide for ourselves and our dependents; to pay our own bills. Few of us would willingly pay other people’s bills, which is why we are forced to pay them. Of course, we are also taught – conditioned is the more accurate word – to believe we are getting things for free, via etymological trickery. We are taught to regard “public” things – like government schools – as being free. Never mind the bill that homeowners (sic) get every year to pay for them. Even if they do not use them.
People are taught – conditioned – to believe that being forced to hand over money (i.e., strong-armed robbery) is the “price of civilization.” It is “civilized” to rob people, in other words. When it is done legally. When it is done via notices sent in the mail. These cause people to disassociate, a psychological term for the human brain’s capacity to compartmentalize unpleasant things by not thinking of them as the same thing. Or not thinking of them at all. (Another example of this is the way that, on the one hand, almost everyone is appalled in a very open way – as in people will say so, freely – about the persecution and murder of Jews by Germans during the late unpleasantness in Europe but – on the other hand – have a difficult time even acknowledging that what is being to Palestinians and Christians by Zionist Jews right now, today, in Israel, is the same thing.)
Orwell famously described this disassociated state as doublethink – and it is doubleplusgood as a technique for keeping people from thinking.
As for instance about the fact that the meagre $2,000 check they might get sometime next year doesn’t begin to cover what’s been stolen from them during the past year, alone. Never mind what will be stolen from them going forward. Yet many will be thankful for the return of some of their stolen money.
Like a Medieval serf who is grateful to the Lord who used his wife on “first night” for giving her back to him the next morning.
. . .
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MTG just resigned. Are we taking bets on how many death threats were issued against her?
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-announces-resignation-from-congress-after-president-trump-withdraws-endorsement
Damn. I really liked her. And I despise a quitter. Its incredibly hard to maintain your personal integrity in politics.
Morning, Ernie –
It’s 2 and I’m up and just caught the news about MJT. I have new respect for her. She decided to not be a part of this fraud anymore. Good on her!
Morning, RG!
Just posted some thoughts in re Greene: https://www.ericpetersautos.com/2025/11/22/why-did-she-quit/
I doubt anyone will see that $2,000 check, but I wonder if they do if it will be considered “taxable income”. Just like I have to pay taxes on my Social inSecurity income, even though I already paid taxes on that money. FedGov excels at taking with one hand what it gave with the other.
If this occurs I’ll use some of it to pay off my credit card (no where near 2K) and use the balance to buy silver bars.
Even though it’s kind of pricey at current levels, everyone should be buying silver, or gold as their savings allow. If I had to choose between a five inch stack of banded hundos (100,000$) or a 2×3 inch tube of gold eagles (80,000$) I’d choose the gold coins.
The other option for ones ‘refund’ check is the tried and true vote of no confidence, guns and ammo.
They dont stop stealing because they live. Its what they do behind the scenes while torturing raping and gloating about it in our stoopid apathetic faces.
Any questions?
Here’s a new accommodation for rejectionists and hooligans like Eric:
‘Travelers who still don’t have a REAL ID and want to fly could soon have to pay a fee to pass through airport checkpoints. On Thursday, the TSA proposed an $18 fee for travelers without a REAL ID.
‘The new rule calls for travelers who don’t have one to be able to pay that fee and use a new biometric kiosk that would allow flyers access to TSA checkpoints for 10 days. The agency says the fee will cover costs associated with the new technology that’s needed to verify a passenger’s identity.’
https://tinyurl.com/3ua2wrm3
When he was motorcycling through Africa in the 1990s, Jim Rogers used to ask armed soldiers at shakedown checkpoints, ‘Surely there is some fee we could pay to resolve this minor infraction?’ Now we have this convenient system of graft in America too! 🙂
Yea, I am not playing. The day that I am forced to give my fingerprint or a retina scan I am going to live my last days in some holler in Appalachia or on a sailboat off of Dominica . These control freaks and their squirmy games are sick. What is the point of all of this data collection? Control. Nothing else makes sense.
My greatest wish (other than world peace) is that these damn data centers and their imposing AI and creepy ass robots never make it across the finish line to antagonize the rest of us who would just like to live as normal human beings and not have to constantly watch what we say and do because some weirdo has spyware equipment on us.
Hear, hear, Raider Girl!
Amen, RG –
What’s occurring is a transition away from a society in which people are trusted unless they give a good reason not to trust them into one that presumes everyone needs to be watched and recorded and controlled – because we cannot be trusted.
Hi Eric and BaDnOn,
I think the goal is they don’t want any of us to trust anyone else. That is how one divides and conquers. Create a playing field that everyone (your spouse, your neighbor, your mom) becomes a suspect. Trust builds relationships and holds people together. People getting together is dangerous when it comes to control, because (gasp) they could talk and plan and do something about it!
Instead of loving parents let’s make babies lab grown creations. Instead of an affectionate relationship between spouses let’s create robots and sex toys that tell you what you want to hear. Instead of get togethers with friends keep your eyes on your TV to be continuously entertained by imbeciles and a narrative driven media.
True, they don’t trust us, but the most dangerous plan is two (or more) thinking people that can create one.
Conspiracy (basically Thoughtcrime) became a federal crime through legislation enacted during the Civil War, with the first broad statutes passed in 1861 and 1863.
Don’t just thank Ape Lincoln for his pioneering use of greenbacks. Thank him for making ‘conspiracy’ a derivative ‘gotcha’ crime, independent from any actual underlying offense.
And we’re doing it right now … :gasp:
‘a transition away from a society in which people are trusted’ — eric
And then they have the gall to mock us with lectures like this:
‘Sean Duffy, the secretary of transportation, began a new campaign on Wednesday that he called “The Golden Age of Travel Starts With You.”
“Are you dressing with respect?” Mr. Duffy asks in the video. “Are you keeping control of your children?”
“Let’s bring civility and manners back,” Mr. Duffy says over Sinatra’s backing trumpets. “The golden age of travel begins with you.” — NYT
https://archive.ph/eaS1S#selection-1897.0-1897.132
Civility and manners, stupid ass Repugniclown, starts with abolishing your party’s TSA. The ball is in your court, arrogant, disrespectful barbarian.
Absolutely, abolishing the TSA would make air travel tolerable again, no more shuffling in cattle chute lines while watching the clock tick toward your departure time. When I was a college student back in the 60’s you could just walk up and get on the Eastern Airlines shuttle without even buying a ticket in advance. That was the golden age of air travel, too bad current and future generations will never have that experience.
Hi Mike. Aaah, to not get fondled, groped, and body scanned for the “privilege” of flying. Wouldn’t that be nice. To simply walk through, food and drink in hand, and go right to your gate without getting harassed by some gestapo/Stasi wanna be. I remember those days, and miss them. What I find ironic, is how everyone has to dutifully throw away their water bottles and other such “dangerous” liquids…..right in the garbage next to the very scanners you are herded in to. Yes! Those bottles are soooo dangerous, they make sure you throw them away next to the very security gate check in points. The irony and stupidity of the TSA’s thinking (or not) is rich.
Hi Raider, Girl. Yikes, instead of a REAL ID they want a retina scan? Forget both! On a side note, there are a few, half-decent podcasts (that have not been banned) on YouTube that I like. Well, Screw Tube wanted me to “verify my age” via a driver’s license. Which, for some states has our social slave number. Thankfully, in this neck of the woods, we do not, but oh hell no! I e-mailed Google (G-Mail) back and told them exactly what I thought of their “age verification”. So now, if I want to access “adult material” I have to get my parents consent. Never mind both have been dead for years. If it were not so stupid, I would laugh. Never mind the end-goal of tracking us everywhere on-line on a deeper level.
Hi Shadow,
I know they have started doing this in Europe…my dreams of visiting Denmark, Greece, and France are now dead since I refuse to play.
My guess is this is what will be implemented if you want to get on a plane in the USSA, as well.
Ditto, RG –
Now that my parents are gone, I have no need to ever fly again.
Hi Eric & RG, I am soo glad I visited Europe decades ago, and when I was much younger….and back in the day when it was a lovely, enjoyable area to visit. To see the different cultures, customs, the food, etc. That is, back before the “migrants” destroyed everything, and all this garbage was in place. I do not blame you at all for not wanting to fly anywhere “across the pond”. You could not pay me to visit the UK or anywhere else in Europe in this day and age. Hell, from way up here, even a visit to Russia would be safer, and that is saying a lot, albeit, “better the devil you know”, as the saying goes. Like you, Eric, I have no need, really, to fly to the lower 48, and I sure as hell am not driving through Canada to get there, either. Which is sad, because Canada has some beautiful country side. As such, I am sure they will put the squeeze on us “undesirables/rebels” until we have to create our own economy or live out in BFE somewhere. Up here, that could be a death sentence in the Winter, but the alternative just to save one’s skin is even worse!
Hi Shadow –
That business of having to scan an ID to access online material is a deal killer for me. I’ll grow a beard and get Amish clothes at that point.
Several states have started requiring age (thus ID since you have to submit some sort of ID scan or photograph that builds facial recognition biometrics) verification for online stuff like app stores and social media.
It’s not just some far off UK problem. It’s in our front yard already. Age and ID verification just to use the Internet is coming. Plan accordingly.
https://www.orrick.com/en/Insights/2025/07/Texas-and-Louisiana-Join-Growing-Trend-of-State-Age-Verification-Laws-for-App-Stores
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_media_age_verification_laws_in_the_United_States
Good info, Anon1. Most of us on here knew biometrics were being established. As an accountant I noticed they started implementing these procedures years ago. Thankfully, I have been doing this for a couple decades so I know the old methods (phone, mail ins, etc.) without enrolling in the ID.me crap. Of course, I also realize my methods will also erode as time goes on. At that time I exit the field and find a 100 acres where my only neighbors are rabbits, deer, and bears.
There is nothing I need bad enough to whip out my DL, a fingerprint, or retina scan for.
Unless you already have the 100 acres the window is closing due to the tokenization within GENIUS act. Once they get that fully implemented (and is HAS started) transfer of property will cease without biometrics and ID, legally at least. You could still squat but how titles and mortgages and banking work will probably be different before the end of Trump’s term, if not as soon as next year. We’ll see what happens with the midterms but with MTG gone there’s going to be even less transparency in what they’re doing behind the curtains “legally” on these things. You need to be doing things NOW, although the right time to do something was 10 years ago.
Very true, Obummer –
The GENIUS act does not get nearly enough coverage. The tech bros have plans for us – and Trump is their tool.
And OF COURSE, those who have had the most loot stolen from them; the ones who make over, -I forget if it’s $75K or $100K- the minority who provide 50% of the tax “revenue” will not be getting a dime of their stolen loot back- while those who pay little or no taxes will.
Yet another redistribution of wealth scheme. But the “conservative” podcasts assure us that the Repukes are fighting communism! (Apparently, the way one fights communism is by imposing it, while spewing “conservative-sounding words).
And of course, those of us who are truly conservative, and have saved our money, are the biggest losers, as the value of what we have saved is destroyed by the inflation these “fighters of communism” create. Too bad we hadn’t been smart enough to simply live on the dole. The do-nothings get rewarded, while we slave to pay for it.
Make endless fatherless babies while sitting on the living-room pew watching the prophetess Oprah, and you too will be richly rewarded!
Should the promised “stimulus” check arrive, I sincerely hope my fellow liberty lovers do the right thing by refusing to cash the check, thereby preventing another massive wave of inflation.
I will do my part by spending it on consumable ammo and long distance hole punchers
I don’t have to worry about a check. I won’t be getting one. Of course, the fourth quarter estimated tax payment I have to send out in January should help pay for some GS-3 worker’s annual salary. 🙁
The stinky check recipients appreciate you Boxer!
Stimmy. . . Stupid autocorrect!
Despite allegedly having a degree from the prestigious Wharton School at Penn (though I suspect someone took all the tests for him), Trump is a raging economic illiterate.
Never before in its 250-year history has the US run a 7% of GDP deficit during a peacetime economic expansion. It’s taking a disastrous $2 trillion a year of borrowing just keep the economy barely afloat.
That is, we are in the tertiary stage of the unsustainable fiat currency era that began on 15 August 1971 when Richard RINO Nixon severed the dollar’s link to gold. With this discipline removed, the US fedgov could and did borrow recklessly, rampantly, remorselessly. Inflating away the real value of its crippling $38 trillion debt is now the only way out.
Traitor Trump, and all the other R-party thugs who passed the OBBB, have unveiled their true legacy: making our children the abject tax slaves of a bankrupt, dying empire, even as they open up a new US military base in Kiryat Gat, Israel, to deploy Trump’s sadistic, murderous Final Solution for the Palestinians. For this they should hang.
I disagree, what he’s doing is textbook Keynes. What he believe is bullseye with what’s basically mainstream economics. The tariffs are a political football but even there he’s channeling the Founders who wanted to fund the Federal government completely by tariffs. Yeah, sure, the problem was in their view the FedGov was tiny and Congress minted real money, so combining two divergent concepts of a small, fiscally restrained government with a fiat-fueled globalist owned money firehose is a disaster. I’m just saying he’s pointed the bus 180 degrees away from the Austrian station and is more Richard “We’re All Keynesian Now” Nixon than Nixon himself.
Yes, you could call today’s budget blowout Super Keynesianism. But there’s a distinction. Nixon started his term with a debt-to-GDP ratio of only 35%. He actually ran a budget surplus in FY 1969 — the last but two since then.
Today the deficit is stuck at 7% of GDP in an expansion, when Keynes advocated running a surplus. When recession (maybe already underway) and/or the demise of the AI Bubble strikes, the deficit will easily hit 10, 12, even 15% of GDP.
This is the tertiary, ‘deficit to destruction’ phase of end-stage Keynesianism. It’s not discretionary any more. The train doors are locked and we can’t jump off. Is it a mere coincidence that ‘Republican’ and ‘retards’ and ‘ruin’ all start with the same letter?? I ask you!
Yes, indeed. Keynes didn’t advocate limitless deficits or to the moon money printing. His principle isn’t even that unreasonable when you allow that all government spending is deficit, insofar as it can only be parasitic on productivity. Keynes wasn’t even wrong to identify economic friction that results in various inefficiency. The fundamental flaw in his prescription is that government had to solve it rather than being left to the market. Hayek and Mises of course disagreed with Keynes on this point but he still stayed to the right of Marx in terms of socialism. Perhaps his main failing was an inability (or intentionally not seeing) where his theories would lead, the unintended consequences that Austrians saw with more clarity. Ultimately individuals in a market competition for ideas and utility may not always find the good solution but it’s far more likely to happen generally than within a narrow mindseet command structure making the choices. Of course the Keynes solution was quickly adopted because it allows for selection of insiders who will implement things favorable to the right people. I seriously doubt Keynes would recognize or agree with the twisted logic he’s been used to justify the dumpster fire around us. Too big to fail? I don’t think even Keynes would have considered this possible. He was still sort of rooted in capitalism, where eventually something that shouldn’t continue to exist can and should go bankrupt.
Jim & Kyle
Appreciate the commentary that doesn’t make me feel dumber for having read it!
Well done gentlemen. 😁
No doubt checks will arrive right before the mid-term elections (pay for votes exactly like in Rome except Trump is using taxpayer/paper printing press money not his own (which truth be told mostly came from gov’t contracts/tax breaks and other political corruption)).
Trump goes to court to deny SNAP benefits and cuts medicaid, while pardoning nursing home tax cheaters (according to AI): “Individual Pardoned: Joseph Schwartz, a former nursing home executive who led Skyline Management Group. Crime: Schwartz pleaded guilty to tax fraud for failing to pay nearly $39 million in federal payroll taxes that were withheld from his employees’ paychecks between 2017 and 2018. Sentence: He was sentenced to three years in prison, a $100,000 fine, and ordered to pay $5 million in restitution to the IRS. This was a smaller amount than the total ($39 million) owed, agreed upon as part of a plea deal. Pardon’s Impact: President Trump issued a full and unconditional pardon in November 2025, just three months into Schwartz’s prison sentence. This pardon wiped out the remaining prison time and the outstanding financial obligations, meaning the $5 million restitution and the $100,000 fine were not paid in full. General Context: This is part of a pattern where many of Trump’s pardons for white-collar criminals have relieved them of substantial restitution and fine payments, totaling an estimated $1.3 billion across various cases”
“Schwartz’s release reportedly came after a concerted lobbying campaign that spent more than $900,000 to gain the Trump administration’s attention. McKnight’s could not independently confirm or quash that assertion Sunday night.
“Trump also raised eyebrows in May of this year when he pardoned Florida nursing home owner Paul Walczak, who admitted to failing to pay more than $7 million in payroll taxes. The pardon was granted about a month after Walczak’s mother reportedly paid $1 million to attend a Trump fundraiser at his Mar-a-Lago complex and Walczak himself had touted that his mother had contributed millions of dollars to Trump’s election campaign.
“Philip Esformes was another disgraced former long-term care executive freed by Trump’s pardon pen. In December 2020, shortly before his first term ended, Trump commuted Esformes’ 20-year prison sentence.
“The Justice Department had successfully prosecuted Esformes for a case it estimated as involving $1 billion in fraud, which it described as “the largest healthcare fraud scheme charged by the US Justice Department.” Esformes was found guilty in April 2019 of more than 20 charges of money laundering, paying and receiving kickbacks, bribery and obstruction of justice.
“In February of 2024, he wound up pleading guilty to one count of conspiracy to commit healthcare fraud and received a sentence of time served, ending a nearly decade-long case.
“In yet another case, in the final hours of his first term, Trump pardoned Jon Michael Harder, the former CEO of Sunwest Management, who had been convicted of defrauding assisted living community investors of millions of dollars. Harder had served five years of a 15-year sentence before his release.
“News of the Schwartz pardon did not become widely apparent until Saturday, when an advocate lawyer posted an item about it on X”
https://www.mcknights.com/news/trump-pardons-another-long-term-care-convict-frees-schwartz-architect-of-skyline-chain-collapse-39m-fraud/
These are medicare/medicaid fraudsters Trump pardoned in his first term.
https://www.patrickmalonelaw.com/pardon-spree-frees-rogues-gallery-of-health-care-crooks-who-stole-billions/
“Freezing temperatures moved Donald Trump’s second inauguration indoors, leaving tens of thousands of people with tickets out in the cold on Jan. 20. Even some governors and foreign dignitaries were exiled to overflow areas.
But at least 17 billionaires, collectively worth more than $1 trillion, claimed coveted seats in the Capitol Rotunda — a historic concentration of wealth that seemed to herald a new class of American oligarchs, there to celebrate a president known for publicly rewarding his allies and punishing his opponents.
The three richest men in the world — Musk, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos (who owns The Washington Post) and Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg — took places of honor next to Trump’s family. The world’s fifth-richest man, Louis Vuitton executive Bernard Arnault, was there with his wife and two children. Several other billionaires were seated close by, including Apple CEO Tim Cook, former Marvel owner Isaac Perlmutter and media mogul Rupert Murdoch…
“Bush’s TARP and Obama’s Great Recession stimulus package ignited a populist backlash that persists to this day, paving the way for Trump’s message that despite his wealth, he shares ordinary Americans’ fury at a rigged system. Yet under Trump, the first billionaire president, the ultra-wealthy have set up shop inside the corridors of government more openly than ever before. The president installed about a dozen billionaires in his current administration and tapped Musk, his biggest donor, to oversee massive layoffs of civil service employees. Trump’s Cabinet is the wealthiest in U.S. history, with a combined net worth of $7.5 billion, according to Forbes. That’s more than double the $3.2 billion net worth of Trump’s first Cabinet and 64 times the combined wealth held by Biden’s Cabinet.
At the same time, Trump has championed a deregulation and tax cut agenda that is bringing huge benefits to wealthy Americans. Under Musk, DOGE (which stands for Department of Government Efficiency) slashed the regulatory state that polices — and infuriates — billionaires, along with their business activities. The IRS has lost thousands of workers, which watchdogs say cripples efforts to pursue tax cheats — reversing an expansion planned by the Biden administration. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, created to ensure that financial institutions treat their customers fairly, is on its deathbed. And Trump’s main legislative achievement, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, locked in lower tax rates for corporations and allowed the children of the super-rich to inherit $15 million tax-free, while cutting Medicaid programs that benefit the poor and the elderly.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-billionaires-took-over-american-politics/ar-AA1QSmq0
h/t to Raider Girl: Ro Kanna (1st heard of him on Epstein file release and haven’t looked up) has been emailing me that treating Trump voters with respect instead of mockery over the past year has opened way for a third party. [These last two links both come from today’s drudge report.]
https://news.gallup.com/poll/696494/americans-show-consensus-democracy-related-matters.aspx
This is absolutely criminal. The level of corruption in the Trump 2.0 administration (and in Trump 1.0 as well) exceeds even the Hunter Biden open graft during the Joey Depends administration. Government by billionaires, for billionaires and the “little people” be damned. And the “right” clutch their pearls as the young vote for the likes of Mandami. What the hell did they expect?
MAGA – You were fooled again, bigly. Another trillion for the “Department of War”, anyone?
Hi AJC,
As much as I would love for this country to establish a third, fourth, even fifth party I don’t believe the Asses and Elephants will allow it. Both parties have put the fear into the American public that a vote for any other candidate is a “throw away” vote.
I read the Gallup article and I think one of the main reasons that a third party will never be successful is that assistance from government stands at 50%. Until Americans are willing to solidify around the point that governments are bloated managerial control traps whose only goal is to keep the citizen attached to its teat we will never be incentivized enough for the formation of a saner and more moderate party.
I had to chuckle though that treating those with respect (even though one may share different views) wins hearts and minds compared to ridicule. Hoping the Golden Rule is making a comeback. 😉
Adding more political parties is a loser. The game is rigged and more seats at the table can’t change that. Withdrawing your support and consent is all you can do but the time where voluntary disengagement having some worth has passed. If you try to stray, say no thanks, you get roped back in. I figured that out years ago when I tried to go off grid. I was able to buy some land but decided I didn’t want their “help” to build out. I figured if I didn’t seek hooking up to municipal water or connecting to the electrical grid then they had no right to ask me for building permits and taxes. Don’t misunderstand, I wasn’t building a mansion, just a cabin that was more like a big shed than a house, really just a substantial tiny home. Anyway, they made a video about distant friends of acquaintances. We got similar sorts of notices from our county, liens and has a summary judgment that required we hook up to the grid or we’d be evicted and potentially arrested. Once you pop on the state’s radar they never forget or leave you alone.
https://offgridsurvival.com/livingoffthegridcrime/
The Right To Be Left Alone: That should have been in the Bill of Rights. So maybe we should have had 11 instead of ten in that list. Just leave us the hell alone already!!!! What we would like to tell the Feds. Yeah….that never happens. TPTB are hell bent on controlling the rest of us. They want us Tracked, Stacked, & Whacked, as Steve Quayle would say.
For some weird reason, this reminds me of the clip in the movie “1984”, when the one guy comments happily to Winston that the chocolate rations were “going up to 25 grams next week”-after it was 30 grams the previous week. Or, much like being thrilled for that income tax refund check you are receiving (state, local, or federal): It was your money to begin with. Sadly, we have been getting ripped off of our money for so long by criminals we call government officials”, getting our own money back is akin to getting an allowance from a parent that normally beats the hell out of us for merely existing: We should all just “be grateful” for what we are getting (according to them).
I agree that the $2,000 promised check is an insult whether you receive it or not but just think how insulted you’d feel if they sent it to Ukraine or Israel instead.
If GovCo wasn’t allowed to use Fed bucks or run a deficit just imagine how much they would try to tax us.
Tariffs were intended to protect American industries at its founding. They are in the constitution as a legitimate levy on manufactured product from overseas. As such, I am in favor of them being used to revitalize industries. That said, Ron Paul is absolutely correct in stating they don’t address the core issues facing manufacturing. Regulations and taxation have been strangling industries for 50 years or longer. Trump has done absolutely zero about those except for relaxing some meaningless drinking water standards. Add that in with private equity control of the real estate market (both commercial and residential) and you have a major drag on economic activity as business struggles to pay rent and taxes.
Tariffs are way preferable to income taxes as they only apply to foreign goods. They should be judiciously applied as you don’t want to drive up the costs of materials required for US manufacturing that cannot be made stateside.
Of course, Donnie Fubar asshole wants to throw his weight around using an instrument that should be used with care.
I wouldn’t be heartbroken if the asshole was impeached tomorrow
The biggest problem with Chinese made goods is that in many cases they seem to be reasonable quality at a reasonable price. Looking at the Project Farm YouTube channel a lot of the imports work almost as good and sometimes even better than the American tools for a lot less money. Even if you buy an American sounding brand name like Milwaukee you discover that they are now a Chinese owned company and their tools are all Chinese made now.
Wasn’t it the Rodney Dangerfield movie “Back to School” that mentioned how your product would get undercut in price by a Japanese made product. It’s only gotten worse since that time.
This chart illustrates swamprat’s point — manufacturing’s share of the workforce fell from 30.2% in 1950 to 8.0% today. (Which sector grew the most? Education and Health Services, predominantly gov-funded.)
https://www.hussmanfunds.com/wp-content/uploads/research/rs251119a.png
Once the manufacturing infrastructure — the supplier network, the skilled workers — leaves, it doesn’t come back. Developers such as Trump relish turning old textile mills into condos. They don’t care where the condo buyers get their incomes.
Ditto to your comment on impeachment. Can’t happen soon enough.
The manufacturing infrastructure takes decades and centuries of virtuous struggle to build up, it can be wiped out in months or years by traitors, usurers, and thieves.
I hope and pray Trump stays his course as a wrecking ball disrupting business as usual by the rest of the corrupt edifice.
That seems like the fundamental flaw here. Our GDP is a house of cards reported with made up data. Auto companies making shit cars that no one will want to buy inevitably will end up with them closing up. It may only be 5% of the GDP on paper but car factories and the suppliers make up the majority of actual things being made.
I don’t think they can even really reflect in GDP how much of the other 95% depend on that 5%. Things like industrial suppliers who are not actually making parts but design and build the automation. All the transportation, supporting housing, food, etc. Even the disposable spending, boats they buy with UAW wages feeds a lot of people.
Basically, though, if you’re in manufacturing if don’t do it for the auto makes you do it for the military. That’s all that’s left.
There’s not much work building appliances or tools made domestically. It used to be you could pick up work making mining or timbering equipment or tooling for a furniture or clothing or electronics factory. There was diversity to the economy.
The other 95% is Walmart and Apple and Google. They do things that have some value of course but they’re too far decoupled from the real wealth generation and their capitalization is far outsized and over valued. Not to sound too Objectivist but classic economics knew that the base wealth engine required taking a natural resource and adding value to make useful material resource that a dozen companies could then use to make all the variety of things. You have to put a shovel in dirt or saw to a a trunk first, literally the seed that grows the economic tree.
It seems to me auto factories are a critical cog in the U.S. machine.
Yes. Auto manufacturing used to make 1/6th of the country’s economy.
Today, who knows?
I have been working for companies that build (assemble) things for about 40 years.
My first job was aerospace from 1986-1990. The 1980s was a rough period. Factories were closing left and right. Small manufacturing centers closed up and lost population. Much of that was due to the 81-82 recession. Following that, the closures continued. The economy was being propped up by Raygun’s defense boom. The only jobs available were in Aeropsace and defense related items. It masked the bleeding for a while.
The Peace Dividend came around 1990-91 and a bunch of people list their jobs. When I heard George Mealy Mouthed Bush talk about a “peace dividend” I said “where’s my check,” you son of a bitch, as I was being laid off left and right.
The 90’s accelerated the job losses as Clintone and the Republicrats signed trade agreement after trade agreement, trading American jobs for cheaply made shit. Although I wasn’t directly affected by the factory closures, the indirect effects were palpable. Lower wages, a glut of engineers on the market, and persistent job insecurity marked that period. It was enough to scare a bunch of college grads to learn business or gender studies.
The situation got easier as time went on for me.
For others not so much.
I still stand by the idea that tariffs properly done, will work. I think that enviornmental deregulation on all fronts would have helped as well.
It didn’t have to be this way.
The only person who had a solid understanding of the destructive effects of managed (free) trade was Pat Buchanan. It’s quite telling that the current cockroach borrowed a lot of what he stood for and then fucked it up.
Trump can go to hell.
Most big money shit bedrocking that fka economy is weaponary. Face it. Please. Its been this way for decades N word slave up b4 dawn like religiously every Monday to rush into hell to feed MIC in hopes of 401k dripping off some seared flesh fat its way sum day.
Denial is futile. Comparing this level of ignorance to “Rome” is a pathetic excuse. A pimple on Europes dick compared to an entire planet where jamie the retard trains our kids to look up every damn breath on HAL 9000 bs.
One reason is because the distribution can be “equal.” In Colorado we have the Taxpayer Bill Of Rights (TABOR) amendments. One of the big features of the law is that any overage of taxes collected must be returned. But the thing is, they don’t get too granular WRT to even distribution. So even though I might pay a whole lot more income tax based on my pay, I will get the same TABOR “refund” as everyone else. Trump’s stimmy checks work the same way, only much worse because they’ll be funded with more debt than actual tax revenues.
Texas uses the surplus at the state level to pay down property taxes in order to keep the real estate market from tanking as the school districts and local governments continue to increase their spending and issue new bonds.
This property tax “rate compression” is part of a “reform” package passed by voters in 2023 which included a constitutional amendment to tie state money to local education spending.
$85 million high school football stadiums don’t grow on trees.
Texas is a dumpster fire. I live in Houston and you can’t get around the damned place with all of the housing and commercial construction. It’s regulatory and tax code heavily favor corporations and diminish the individual. You can see it. It’s a monoculture. All the same grocery stores, restaurants, discount shopping strips, hardware stores, businesses. Everywhere. Yet, in a town of close to 10 million people, there seems to be no one who can repair a shoe or fix a car. There are no non corporate anything around.
It’s bland.
The situation with property taxes is crazy. If you own an older house, the tax is practiacally the same as the mortgage.
Texas needs wholesale tax and regulatory reform from top to bottom. I’m for driving major developers out of this state.
Man, I miss the Houston of my youth. Got my license just after Loop 610 opened. It was a huge, 5-lane concrete ribbon almost devoid of cars. We’d go riding around it at night, just for the pleasure of effortless cruising on cheap gas, watching the bright lights go by.
Dang JH,
I did “a tour” in flat line, humid as shit, Houston “81-86”..
Galveston tar balls , yoohoo chocolate drink colored beaches ..
Nien Danke…
My brother bailed after his house in SW Houston flooded in 1986. That’s the part that just can’t be fixed. But Houston was a dynamic place during the moon shot years.
My Bro Ronnie retired after 35 years in the HFD as a district Chief stationed in Clear Lake ( station 17) about a stone’s throw from the Johnson Space Center……Go Apollo!!!!
JH…
sorry to be so negative but absent oil WTF??????
The place is a literal “Bunghole” without …AIR CONDITIONING…
The city would not exist..Honest Indjin!
Channeling Ron Paul –tariffs don’t address the core issues facing American manufacturing i.e. burdensome federal regulations, excessive federal/state/local taxation, and wage demands for entry level and/or unskilled labor.
Unless you make weapons, then anything goes.
Also, complexity and uncertainty.