Do you feel like the winds of change are blowing today too?
POSTED BY: 6ixStringJack
UPDATED: Sunday, September 6, 2026 16:05
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MAGA is Bad for Business
And business owners were deluded to believe otherwise
By Paul Krugman | Mar 31, 2025
https://paulkrugman.substack.com/p/autocracy-is-bad-for-business
Source: Axios
One odd feature of U.S. politics is that business people, especially small business owners, always seems to believe that they will do better under Republicans, even though history shows that business does better under Democrats. Small business owners supported Trump in the last election, despite ample evidence that he would be very bad for business.
And now they’re getting a rude awakening.
Let’s talk for a second about price controls.
A few weeks ago Viktor Orban, Hungary’s de facto dictator and a darling of the MAGA set, announced that he was imposing profit-margin caps — basically price controls — on groceries. I intended to write something about that as a warning that something similar might happen in the United States, that business people were fools if they assumed that Donald Trump was on their side.
Unfortunately, I never got around to writing that post. So I missed my chance to be prophetic, because it has already happened: Trump reportedly told auto executives sometime in March not to raise prices in response to tariffs. He denies that he said it, but the reporting looks solid. His headline-making assertion that he “couldn’t care less” about rising car prices seems to have been about imported autos, not domestic production.
The reason I expected Trump to follow in Orban’s footsteps is that Trump, like Orban, clearly doesn’t have any fixed principles other than power and self-aggrandizement. Under Trump, policy won’t reflect any consistent ideology. It will, instead, change with his perception of personal advantage, his temper tantrums, his whims and his malignant narcisissim. If he doesn’t like rising prices, he’ll try to stop inflation through bullying.
In short, MAGA will be very bad for business.
Most immediately, it seems as if Trump doesn’t care that his tariffs will raise business costs in addition to raising prices for consumers. We’ll get a better sense of how much costs will rise after “Liberation Day,” the big announcement of new tariffs planned for Wednesday. (War is peace, freedom is slavery, tariffs are tax cuts.) But it’s the increase has already begun.
Indeed, thanks to tariffs already in effect the U.S. economy is already getting unscrewed, with manufacturers having a hard time keeping their stuff together.
You see, steep tariffs on steel and aluminum were the opening salvo in Trump’s trade war, and they are being applied not just to the metals themselves but to anything made from the metals, including screws, nuts and bolts. And foreign producers are not absorbing the tariffs; they are sharply raising prices.
This was, of course, predictable and predicted. Tariffs don’t just make foreign goods more expensive to consumers. In a world where many of the goods we import are productive inputs like screws — or auto parts — tariffs directly raise the cost of manufacturing in the United States. Yet Trump’s threats against automakers suggests that he thinks he can control inflation through intimidation.
The direct effect of tariff-driven rising costs is, however, just the beginning of the ways Trumpism will be bad for business.
In the past I’ve been skeptical about claims that uncertainty is a big factor in the economy. During the Obama years vague appeals to “uncertainty” often seemed, in practice, to be invoked as a fancy way of saying “policies I don’t like,” and was used as an excuse for ignoring that fiscal austerity forced by congressional Republicans held the economy back. But in the 10 weeks since Trump was inaugurated, percei
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Quote:I have known since Nixon was President that Republican Presidents are bad for business. I have also known since I went into business that other businessmen who believe Republican Presidents are good for business aren't doing a good job running a business. I have profited mightily at their expense since Trumptards are fundamentally incompetent. They deserve their misfortunes.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Doods ...
U.S. economic performance by presidential party
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_presidentia
l_party#Recessions
Ten of the eleven U.S. recessions between 1953 and 2020 began under Republican presidents.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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April Fools' Day is coming one day late this year! Trump will play the Fool.
Trump says reciprocal tariffs will ‘start with all countries,’ rejects narrower launch
By Kevin Breuninger | Mon, Mar 31, 2025 10:00 AM EDT
https://www.cnbc.com/2025/03/31/trump-tariffs-reciprocal-april-2.html
President Donald Trump said that his “reciprocal tariffs” plan will target all other countries when they are unveiled Wednesday, injecting more uncertainty into the much-hyped trade policy just days before its rollout.
“You’d start with all countries,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One late Sunday. “So let’s see what happens. There are many countries.”
There is “not a cut off,” he added.
Trump explicitly pushed back on the possibility that the new tariffs would only target the top 10 or 15 trading partners that have their own import duties on U.S. goods.
“Who told you 10 or 15 countries?” Trump asked a reporter. “You didn’t hear it from me.”
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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Quote:I find Trump extremely amusing. And his followers are even funnier:
Originally posted by 6ixStringJack:
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
Trump to roll out new tariffs that he promises will "free" the US from foreign goods
Edited By Bridget Brown and Bernard Mcghee | 1:26 PM CDT, March 31, 2025
https://apnews.com/live/donald-trump-news-updates-3-31-2025
Trump said Sunday that “I’m not joking” about trying to serve a third term, the clearest indication he is considering ways to breach a constitutional barrier against continuing to lead the country after his second term ends at the beginning of 2029. But can he really do it?
President Donald Trump says Wednesday will be “Liberation Day” — when he plans to roll out a set of tariffs that he promises will free the United States from foreign goods.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
Originally posted by second:Quote:I have known since Nixon was President that Republican Presidents are bad for business. I have also known since I went into business that other businessmen who believe Republican Presidents are good for business aren't doing a good job running a business. I have profited mightily at their expense since Trumptards are fundamentally incompetent. They deserve their misfortunes.
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
Doods ...
U.S. economic performance by presidential party
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._economic_performance_by_presidentia
l_party#Recessions
Ten of the eleven U.S. recessions between 1953 and 2020 began under Republican presidents.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
The article looks at
Job creation
GDP growth
Unemployment rates
Income growth and inequality
Inflation**
Federal budget deficits
Stock market returns*
Corporate profits*
Recessions
* These don't reflect economic health.
**
Quote:
Blinder and Watson found that since 1945 the average inflation rate was higher under Republican presidents than under Democrats, although inflation tended to rise under Democrats but fall under Republicans.
First of all, I distrust their measurement of economic health. GDP, for example. It includes "the value of all goods and services produced in the USA" but then includes non-productive values like the rental-equivalent value of home ownership, government outlays, inflated costs [of medical care, for example] which represents excess profit.
Also, since inflation figures are always jiggered to look lower than they really are, GDP is under-corrected for inflation, and tends to go up with inflation.
So GDP doesn't really reflect whether an economy is robustly producing anything, and inflation figures are also suspect.
Looking at job creation, we can discount Roosevelt (no longer typical of DNC aims) and Biden (jobs created all went to illegal aliens).
Unemployment is greatly affected by exogenous factors such as Covid, oil shocks, and the Federal Reserve.
Quote:
"The Democratic edge stems mainly from more benign oil shocks, superior total factor productivity (TFP) performance, a more favorable international environment, and perhaps more optimistic consumer expectations about the near-term future."[1] Unemployment is largely influenced by the economic policies from the Federal Reserve, which has as a main objective to balance the trade off between maintaining low and stable inflation vs maximizing employment.[15]
INTEREST RATES, under control of The [private bank consortium] Federal Reserve, affects other indicators as well.
The indicator that means the most to Americans, IMHO, is income equality. But most of the indicators that the article looks at are suspect, for one reason or another, and/or out of the control of the Federal government.
I DO want to point out Trump's persistent union-busting, which I find dangerous for working Americans.
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"It may be dangerous to be America's enemy, but to be America's friend is fatal."- Henry Kissinger
AMERICANS SUPPORT AMERICA
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Quote:Germany is feeling very distrustful of Trump and any economic statistic that his government might publish, such as how much gold is stored at the Federal Reserve:
Originally posted by SIGNYM:
First of all, I distrust their measurement of economic health. GDP, for example. It includes "the value of all goods and services produced in the USA" but then includes non-productive values like the rental-equivalent value of home ownership, government outlays, inflated costs [of medical care, for example] which represents excess profit.
Where’s the gold? Germany’s conservatives sound the alarm over reserves in the US
By Carlo Martuscelli | March 31, 2025 4:39 am CET
https://www.politico.eu/article/gold-germany-conservatives-sound-alarm
-over-reserves-usa/
Can the United States be trusted with Germany’s gold?
Its leader is trying to cripple the Germany’s most important industry. His Vice-President thinks Germany is a pathetic freeloader. The man who has their ear is throwing what look a lot like Nazi salutes and openly interfering in Germany’s elections to support a far-right party that its own intelligence service thinks is a threat to the constitution.
No wonder, then, that some politicians in Germany are worried that what was for decades seen as one of the world’s most reliable storehouses might not be so secure after all.
Germany holds the world’s second-largest gold reserves, and keeps 37 percent of them — some 1,236 metric tons, worth €113 billion — in the vaults of the New York Federal Reserve. Those holdings of precious metal guarantee that, should the need ever arise, the Bundesbank has access to something it can change into U.S. dollars (or any other hard currency).
The very idea that they might not be safe would have been considered ridiculous from 1945 ... until a couple of weeks ago. The unthinkable is suddenly very thinkable given evidence of U.S. President Donald Trump’s willingness to push the limits of his powers and assert presidential primacy over the judicial system.
In the past, the idea that gold stored in official vaults may not be safe has generally been the preserve of cranks and conspiracy theorists. However, it has been revived, ironically, by none other than the billionaire and éminence grise of the Trump administration, Elon Musk, who has called for an inspection of the U.S.’s own gold reserves.
In 2013, a noisy campaign driven by right-wing populists — which resonated enough with the broader population to embarrass then-Chancellor Angela Merkel — led to the Bundesbank repatriating all of the gold it had previously stored in the Bank of France’s vaults.
Today, over half of the Bundesbank’s reserves are stored on its premises in Frankfurt. Outside the U.S., the remaining 13 percent is held at the Bank of England.
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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On America’s Declining Life Expectancy, do you feel like the winds of change are blowing? Nope. Trump has other priorities. Like a third term. Like Greenland. Like a tax cut for billionaires. Like every country on Earth owes tariffs to America. Really, about tariffs Trump thinks every country has cheated America and he is going to make them pay, starting April 2, the day after April Fools' Day.
1) John Green @johngreen tweets
The United States will soon drop out of the Top 50 nations in terms of life expectancy.
Every country above us has a public option for health insurance of a publicly funded healthcare system. Not some. Not most. Every single one.
'Live free and die?' The sad state of U.S. life expectancy
https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/03/25/1164819944/live-f
ree-and-die-the-sad-state-of-u-s-life-expectancy
2) A Republican says don’t blame Republicans in Congress:
Debunking Bad Arguments on America’s Declining Life Expectancy
By Bobby Miller | September 9, 2022 10:20 AM
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/debunking-bad-arguments-on-ameri
cas-declining-life-expectancy/
Life expectancy in the United States has sadly dropped once again, and progressives aren’t squandering the opportunity to turn what should be a solemn reminder of the consequences of poor public policy and individual choices into a political win. Leading online liberal, novelist, and content creator John Green was quick to point out that all the countries above us in the life-expectancy index have some form of socialized medicine. This is a profoundly disingenuous and callous way of making a case for universal health care.
3) U.S. Senator Bernie Sanders says blame those in Congress who won’t accept blame:
The U.S. Ranks Dead Last In Life Expectancy Compared To Other Developed Countries
March 21, 2025 at 12:27PM
https://www.facebook.com/senatorsanders/posts/the-united-states-of-ame
rica-is-the-only-major-country-on-earth-that-does-not-gu/1234697911359017/
The Joss Whedon script for Serenity, where Wash lives, is Serenity-190pages.pdf at https://www.mediafire.com/two
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Quote:
The very idea that they [German gold bouillon] might not be safe [in the USA] would have been considered ridiculous from 1945 ... until a couple of weeks ago.
OMG, the utter bullshit that you post.
Even I, as uninvolved in the gold trade as I am, remember Germany's various drives to repatriate its gold. It waxes and wanes depending on political and financial concerns.
The simplest fact check would have revealed that.
Quote:
In January 2013, Deutsche Bundesbank, the German central bank, announced plans to repatriate 300 tons of its 1,500 tonne reserve from the U.S., and 374 tons from France by 2020, in order to store (1,695.3 tons) of its official gold reserves in Frankfurt.[4][5][6]
The gold stored in the U.S. was acquired by West Germany during a period of trade surpluses with the U.S. before 1970. The gold was never repatriated to Germany due to fear of invasion by the Soviet Union.[7] In 2013, five tons were repatriated due to logistical difficulties. However, 120 tons in 2014 (35 tons from Paris, 85 tons from New York);[8][9] a further 210 tons in 2015 (110.5 tons from Paris and 99.5 tons from New York);[10] and finally 200 tons in 2016, were repatriated.[11][12]
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_repatriation
Yanno, you discredit LEGITIMATE criticisms of Trump with all the bullshit and lies that you post, son.
******
Here is a legitimate criticism
Quote:
The collateral damage of Trump's Yemen blunder
... Apparently they were hoping to score a decapitation strike, as Israel had done in Lebanon, killing Hassan Nasrallah and a number of other senior Hamas officials. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed that the U.S. executed precision strikes in Yemen and hit all of the targets they intended to hit. That may well be true, but it remains uncertain whether those targets were of any military value or not.
Trust us, we’re experts!
We should ignore whatever the official Washington has to say about it: government and military authorities always try to project an image of a tight ship organization that conducts rigorous, accurate monitoring with extensive human and technological intelligence assets on the ground and in the air... When they identify a target, for sure they'll kill the baddies and effectively limit 'collateral damage.' We can rest assured that it's all surgical stuff that eliminates evil doers while sparing the innocents. But as a rule, the reality of war is very different from the sanitized versions contrived to secure the acquiescence from the public which pays for all the fireworks.
Some ten days ago, former UN weapons inspector Scott Ritter gave us a first hand account (at about 22 min. mark) about the way target selection actually works. He said that during the first Iraq war, he was "heavily involved" with targeting of Iraqi Scud missiles, their production capacity, their command and control and their operational activity, to try and interdict their launches. He also became intimately familiar with Central Command (CENTCOM) operations, explaining that "there's a lot of speculation that goes into identifying targets." In the early 2000s, Ritter became a weapons inspector, so he had the unique opportunity to visit "every place we attacked" in Iraq. Here's what he found:
"We misidentified the vast majority of targets we bombed; we claimed that we did more destruction on them than we did and often times we hit things that had nothing to do with what we thought we were doing and when it came to mobile relocatable targets we blew up more Bedouin tents, more trucks, more buses, more fuel tankers, more private vehicles than we did Scuds. We didn't hit a single scud launcher in the entire war despite diverting thousands of combat sorties dedicated to that task. But we did kill thousands of innocent Iraqis and hundreds of innocent Jordanian truck drivers. We slaughtered Bedouin families because we mistook Bedouin tents filled with sheep ... We did this over and oveNOTIFY: Y | REPLY | REPLY WITH QUOTE | PERMALINK | TOP | HOME
Second cannot articulate one single way that his life is worse today than it was in November of 2024.
Not one.
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"I don't find this stuff amusing anymore." ~Paul Simon
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