Month: January 2024

What a Trump Election Means

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The most important campaign message has to be a concise picture of what a Trump election will mean to peoples’ lives.  Inability to do this was a great failure of the Clinton campaign.  Even though the signs were clear, people were shocked by what really happened. The big women’s march early in Trump’s term was filled with people who suddenly awakened—too late—to what was going on.  I remember an OpEd piece somewhere on the subject:  “What have you got to lose?—Quite a lot as it turns out.”  We have to get to people this time.

This can’t be complicated if it’s going to be successful, so a maximum of four points for any audience.  For businessmen the priorities may be different than for students.  So for this piece I’m not going to try to cut the list .  Here’s one list of points to consider.

  • Women will lose control of their bodies

We’ve seen what Trump’s Supreme Court has done with abortion.  That’s what Trump did last time and the perpetrators want more:  a federal law outlawing abort in ALL states and strict prohibitions on availability of contraception.

  • Climate change will be become catastrophic. 

We already see accelerating consequences.  Trump will not only block US action but by strengthening the Russian-Saudi opposition he can effectively undermine all progress worldwide.  We only have a limited window to begin taking action.

  • The US will become isolated and weakened internationally

Trump has already said that NATO is dead.  Europe will belong to Putin and a vastly more powerful and emboldened Russia.  The US will be isolated in a hostile world dominated by Russia and China. Allies will be unable to trust any long-term US commitments.

  • Public services of all kinds will be cut

Another big business tax cut will mean public services of all kinds including education will suffer.  Weakening of Social Security, Medicare, and Obamacare with no substitutes.

  • The economy will become even more skewed to the very rich

Trump supports big current businesses, such as his own.  His Supreme Court has ruled for business over workers on every issue.  His tax plan was a huge giveaway to big companies and rich people—the primary effect was stock buybacks not investment or jobs or wages.  Despite the rhetoric he did not bring back manufacturing.

  • The US will face enormous risks at any strategic challenge

Trump faced one strategic problem—Covid—and only play-acted at being a leader.  He did nothing to help keep people alive, even with the promise of a coming vaccine.  That inaction is only one side of the problem.  As many of his associates have noted, he has an all-consuming fixation on not appearing weak.  That combined with impulsiveness and belief in his own genius means there are no limits to what he may be trapped into doing. Trump’s supporters want to believe he gets his way with threats, but threats without action are quickly hollow.

  • Government will be all over peoples’ lives

Trump has said that he will weaponize the Justice Department and even the military to control dissent.  No one should believe they will escape this.  The huge camps he talks about for illegal aliens show what he is willing to do to anyone who gets in his way.  Trump is easily slighted and vengeful.  Once he’s in power he’s no one’s friend.

  • Divisiveness will be worse not better

Trump makes no bones about caring only about “his” people. Even within his own party we’ve seen the most unproductive Congress ever.

  • We will lose democracy and it will matter

People may complain about how much say they have now, but that doesn’t compare with what is planned for Trump part 2.    Once the election is over there will be no further legal means to resist anything.  Dictatorships are bad for everyone—there is no way to fight corruption, protect oneself, or correct big mistakes. 

An Important Obvious Point that gets Missed

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It is customary in discussing Biden’s economic policies to acknowledge that the last stimulus package was a mistake. A well-intentioned act perhaps but a mistake nonetheless. (Republicans of course say that all the stimulus packages that kept the country running were a Great Big Democratic Disaster–complete nonsense but a different story.)

Is that true? Well, it is certainly true that the stimulus package stimulated the economy. However it is also true that there were other factors that contributed to inflation: the unanticipated shortage of chips that affected not just electrical equipment but even the production of cars, and also the bottlenecks that developed in shipping and other forms of product transportation worldwide. These affected inflation categories such as the price of used cars for example that drove up the consumer price index. There was also profit taking by large companies in food processing, for example, that were able to manipulate pricing in markets they controlled.

So there is no question that significant parts of the inflation were not due to the stimulus. What was a result of the stimulus however was that people had more money to spend. This is usually discounted entirely by saying that “but it didn’t keep pace with inflation”. That line of argument is false, because a good chunk of the inflation was going to happen regardless of the stimulus.

Biden’s position was that with the end of Covid the US was moving into a period of extreme economic uncertainty, and in such a situation one should err on the side of keeping people as close to whole as possible. That is precisely what happened. The main result of the stimulus package was that people had more money to spend to deal with a lot of unanticipated inflation that had nothing to do with the stimulus itself.

Despite all of the tons of nonsense that have been printed, Biden’s stimulus package was correct policy both in view of what was known at the time and in view of what actually happened.