Adam Davidson, who hosts NPR’s Planet Money and is a business/economics writer for the New Yorker, and who is not normally prone to hyperbole, said the following in predicting the impact of Trump’s election on the economy:
“My expectation is that for the rest of our lives, the United States will be a poorer country than it was; that the entire world will be poorer than it would have been; and we have a real and true risk of a fundamental destruction of the very building blocks of our way of life.”
I am quite honestly afraid for my children’s future.
Trump will cause terrible damage to the world economy by being the biggest domino in the protectionism line, and he could wreck Allied unity and, with it, Western security.
If you want to sugarcoat this by all means fool yourself, but this in 1928 again. There is no positive outcome.
I will admit that I commit the sin parties in power always accuse parties out of power of doing: rooting for bad news, so our guys will have something to use to bludgeon incumbents with. But that’s ordinary level bad news. The kind of thing you and Davidson are talking about, I could not possibly root for–not even if it would make Trump’s name Mudd. So I earnestly hope it’s not that bad, but I fear it might be.
And how ironic that so many of Trump’s voters think the economy now is bad when it’s not, and may soon find out how good they didn’t realize they had it.
Well, if this were the equivalent of 1928, then just around the presidential election corner would be a sea change in both the presidency and Congress that would dramatically (but slowly) turn the country around, even with a recalcitrant Supreme Court trying to block this and that.
But, a lot of suffering to be had until then. Since there are vastly more Senate Democrats defending their seats than Republicans in 2018, any real change in both houses isn’t likely to occur until 2020 any way.
If Trump doesn’t fulfill his basic promises and make America great again and/or Congressional Republicans can’t come up with a new non-obstruction agenda that produces results, things will be ripe in 2020 for some of the change that Trump voters clamored for this election.
I think with these protests that are beginning, Trump is receiving karmic payback for his years as a leader of the birther movement. They could dog him throughout his four years, and we could be seeing the '60s making a big comeback.
I’m deeply terrified and depressed. I keep trying to comfort myself by imagining that things won’t be that bad, or that Trump will be a figurehead and leave the actual governing to professionals who, while wrong about everything, are at least not skull fucking insane. But I can’t keep it up for long. This is a catastrophe in every way. We’ll be lucky if we get out of it with only a major recession.
On a personal note, my 28-year-old brother in law is mentally disabled. He manages to keep himself afloat with a combination of three part time jobs, and music gigs when he can get them. He gets health insurance through the exchange. The ACA will probably be repealed in January 2017. He’s fucked. Which means my wife and I are fucked too since we’ll need to cover his financial short falls.
Yep, that Trump, always looking out for the little guy.
I still can’t believe he won, and I wouldn’t even guess as to what will happen next.
But what kills me is that I’ve said for years on these boards that sexism and racism had been solved in this country. We were just working out the details.
The turnout information makes me think it’s not quite as bad as it seemed. Trump got a million fewer votes than Romney did, even though the population of the U.S. grew by ten million between 2012 and 2016. So Republicans just did what they always do: fall in line, and vote like metronomes for their candidates (whether it’s a presidential year or a more “boring” midterm election), except with a little less enthusiasm than in 2012. But about ten percent of Democrats showed that they don’t just check out in midterms: they also can’t be bothered to vote in a presidential year, either, if the nominee isn’t inspiring enough. Which sucks, but doesn’t necessarily show that they are racist or sexist.
1928 would be a romp in the park compared to what I’m afraid of, which is 1876 and the end of Reconstruction. We have gone backwards before. The damage done in 1928 began to be fixed in 1932. It took nearly a century to fix what we broke in 1876.
For how long? He’s going to have all of the worst people pulling the levers. Iran-Contra will be back. The invasion of Iraq will be back. John Bolton isn’t on Trump’s foreign policy team because he expects Trump to be anti-interventionist.
You missed;
[ul]
Withdrawal from NATO
Withdrawal from the Far East
Atlantic Fleet sailing to Murmansk to be interned; Pacific Fleet to Vladivostok
The New Department of Deportations.
The overruling of US v Wang Kim Ark
[/ul]
You’re being far too narrow and nationalist in your thinking. What started in the late 20s wasn’t fixed for decades, and led to the deaths of a hundred million people, at least. The Great Depression was only the beginning of the catastrophe.
What we’re seeing is the fall of dominoes that will lead to a very, very ugly period in not just American, but world history. It’s not just Trump; look around and you’ll see the black and red symbols going up everywhere. Fascism is back in vogue, and war will not be far behind.
You know, its not totally kosher to say it, but ultimately what has led to everything which has maintained peace in Europe for 70 plus years has been Uncle Sam being smack in the middle with his big stick. Otherwise, the Euros would reliably get back to their once a generation blood lettings (just look at the mess they made in the Balkans and the Caucasus).
If Trump withdraws from NATO and Europe, wow. Putin is going to be deep inside Germany a month later.
And the biggest stick in the arsenal is the one marked NATO.
Anyone who thinks being unpredictable is a good thing when it comes to international security is… and here I am using the technical term… stupid. Predictability is what kept the two sides in line during the Cold War. You step across this line, it’s war. We step across that line, it’s war. The existence of tripwires kept the peace.
Being lackadaisical about whether we’re going to defend Poland or not is an excellent invitation to have Russia invade Poland, followed by the West responding angrily when Russia didn’t expect us to, blood pours, someone panics, and then the missiles fly.
A rather obvious recent example of unpredictability resulting in war was the Gulf War, when Saddam Hussein misunderstood U.S. intentions around protecting Kuwait and decided to invade. Had it been crystal clear the U.S. would never stand for it, that wouldn’t have happened.
Fortunately, Iraq didn’t have a bunch of ICBMs. Russia does.
Not going to happen. Though there is a strong anti-globalization sentiment which has been predicted since the 1990s at the very least as a coming thing. What matters is how to mitigate the localized disruptions caused by globalization. There are good and bad solutions. I am worried that Trump seems to be a protectionist.
It appears that Trump received less votes that Romney or McCain so I don’t really thing it was a matter of blind hatred bringing out the vote for the Republicans. It is just that the Democrats seem to really suck at getting out their vote on a consistent basis.
