I’m more worried about China’s debt, especially the things we don’t know we don’t know about it or how deep it goes. But I think the wheels will stay on until after the next election, at least I’m fairly sure they will.
Especially since the timing of the recession could give the presidency back to the GOP in 2024. In the same way that Obama’s economy is giving Trump benefit right now, Trump’s economy could sink a Democratic president during 2021-2024.
Not just China’s debt, but the huge structural flaws all through their economy. China’s central planning has created huge imbalances. Their one-child policy has created large demographic problems. Their attempts to plan education and employment has led to millions of unemployable people and empty planned cities.
China’s growth has been driven by the fact that they had huge amounts of low hanging fruit and a huge undeveloped population. Couple that with massive technology theft and the creation of a few ‘capitalist’ zones that became wildly successful.
But the rapid development came with a lot of central planning and control, and that is now going to cause problems. China is also finding it harder to steal technology, and the need to loosen state control over speech and information in a technological society is giving their authoritarians fits.
I think China is going to be like the Soviet Union - an economy much weaker than suspected because so many in the west want to believe that state planning is somehow more efficient than the ‘chaotic’ market. There were still serious western economists and politicians touting the Soviet economy a year or two before it collapsed and we found out how much less of it there actually was.
Not that China will ‘collapse’, or even stop growing, but a new normal of 1-3% growth instead of 6% is entirely possible. Or war if China attempts to replace endogenous growth with military expansion and threats.
Maybe the Dems should be campaigning on that: “hey guys, just so you know, the economy is going to get really bad when I win, so don’t blame me for it, it’s President Trump’s fault”
I would *really *like to see Trump not be re-elected, but not at the expense of a severe economic downturn. Easy question.
The longer Trump is in the office, the greater the odds and the greater severity of a recession. A recession leading to his loss would be unfortunate for the country, but less fortunate than the one which would surely follow and we’d be able to start correcting it earlier.
I had thought that Trump would have hurt the economy by now but the economy was far stronger already than I realized. If anything, Trump’s policies have, in the short run, made companies more profitable, which is not terribly surprising because that’s what Republicans usually focus on. Dems push for more employment stability at the expense of growth and profits, and Republicans usually push for more profitability and dividends at the expense of the long-term health of the economy. I am beginning to think - worry - that the economy will continue to carry Trump into next year. If that happens, then it’s probably not a question of whether Trump wins, but by how much. I suspect - again, worry - that we might be setting up for a massive financial disaster in a 2nd Trump term.
We’ve come a long ways from the economic predictions made immediately following President Trump’s election, haven’t we?
Is it really already time to start predicting disaster for his 2nd term?
If there is a global recession, it won’t be because of Trump. The deficits America is running, and the total debt, will make it worse, but Presidents all run deficits (except for Clinton’s last term, which benefited from a dot-com boom, a massive cut in military spending, and a Republican Congress that wouldn’t let him spend as much as he wanted).
The current slowdown likely has a lot more to do with the stimulative effects from the low interest rates and big spending coming to an end, leaving the world with the headache of massive debt that needs to be paid down. In addition, world instability is growing due to Russian and Chinese behavior, Brexit, Trump’s tariffs, immigration problems in the EU and US, and the general chaos being caused by a global social media explosion is not going to help.
It’s way too simplistic to say that Trump will be the cause of a global recession. Some of his policies would certainly help contribute to it, though. But then, if a Democrat gets elected and implements even 10% of the Green New Deal, it will be much worse than anything Trump has done.
- The OP didn’t ask about a global recession.
- While I haven’t looked at the specifics of the deal, I assume that they are stupid. Whether they are stupider than Trump, I have no idea, but I assume that they would be run through the same prettification machine that has kept things like Trump’s China War from being a complete disaster. At the end of the day, the Deep State has a lot of freedom to ignore and reinterpret in favor of basic sanity - whether they’re actually supposed to have that freedom or not.
Personally, I would guess that the prettified version of the Green Deal would turn out better than Trump’s economics, but I’d rather have the choice of smart rather than stupid left or stupid right.
It is. Velocity has a bad habit of poorly-formulated poll questions with badly excluded middles. I wind up never voting in any of them because of the extreme black-and-white splitting on which they’re based.
I totally agree. It would sure be nice if we weren’t always faced with choices that involve lesser evils or trading one stupidity for another, but my fear is that this is the new normal - at least until it causes enough pain that people on both sides return to reality.
I would much rather have a decade long world wide depression than see that orange fool spend another 4 years trying to destroy democracy. If the economy is so great (and it is, for the 1%) and this idiot is only polling at 40%, then he will not be able to steal another election no matter how much better it got.
Indeed we have, HD. Indeed we have. I won’t dodge that I’ve made some specific calls that didn’t quite materialize. It’s hard to predict weather.
But it’s easier to predict the climate. I look at the big picture and see similarities in the policies. At this point, some things are proposals, not policies. But if things continue on their current trajectory, I think a downturn is inevitable.
It’s of course possible for Trump to be defeated in 2020 even with a good economy. But that wouldn’t be a meaningful poll question; the vast majority of Dopers would vote for a poll option that said “Would you prefer that the economy remain strong ***and ***Trump be defeated in 2020?” It had to be a choice between two fairly-equally-tough options.
I don’t understand. Is the question essentially, would you be ok with millions of people out of work (not you of course, you’re too smart for that, *other * people) if out got Trump out of office?
Yes. Because an economic recession in 2019-2020 would almost certainly lead to Trump losing reelection. If the economy remains hot, on the other hand, he might be reelected. I am polling/asking whether Dopers would consider a recession to be an acceptable tradeoff in return for near-certainty that Trump loses to a (D) after one term.
Conversely, would Trump being president for a 2nd term be too steep a price to pay, even if it came about because of a thriving economy?
**BobLibDem’s **answer was the sort of answer I was inquiring about:
Isn’t there a risk that a world wide depression would encourage more authoritarianism both at home and abroad?
I’d say it will involve a rapid expansion of nuclear power, as well as solar and wind and making housing and transportation and manufacturing more energy-efficient.
Maybe the places I hang out in online besides here aren’t representative, but the people I come across who are serious about global warming and know their stuff - they’re all on board with more nuclear power. Take this guy, for instance.
Can’t speak for Bernie Sanders, who makes mules look conciliatory by comparison, but I don’t see Elizabeth Warren having any problem with more nuclear power. Why do you think she would, unless you’re buying into what right-wing media are saying about her? And Beto basically is another Obama type, not bringing a rigid ideology to the game.
And in Trump’s case, we’ve got 27 months of track record here. Obviously there are a lot of avenues to pursue to expand the use of non-fossil-fuel power and use less of it as well. Nuclear is obviously the one that Republicans are most on board with. And what have they done, or even tried to do, to push nuclear power in the past 27 months? Zilch. Nada.
Oogabooga! Inflation!! 
Pardon me if I don’t quake in fear. 