Most of my retirement money is tied up in stock in the employee-owned grocery store I work for. I’m cautiously optimistic that it’ll remain stable because our company historically tends to do well during recessions, but I don’t envy a lot of people right now.
What has been the Post’s policy on accepting political ads?
Unrelated, but I figure this thread has the audience I’m trying to reach…
Have any Washington Post subscribers been experiencing an intermittent blacking out of the screen? It goes away when I swipe down. At first I thought there was a problem with my subscription, but it’s paid up through September.
It only occurs on my phone; never on my laptop.
If it’s supposed to be a ‘clever’ comment on ‘Democracy dies in darkness’, it may be the straw that makes me not renew.
As discussed above, short positions and/or jockeying around to try to take advantage of the chaos any way they can see to do. (I wouldn’t presume to be able to guess.)
I was heartened by the posting, though. The fact that they felt confident enough to nearly-openly refer to Trump’s lawlessness, and with disdain, yet, could be a good sign. I’m guessing the big-money people are talking to each other behind the scenes and in a way that would NOT please Donald.
One can only hope …
Authoritarians don’t necessarily care about stock markets, especially this one.
I think Wall Street was giddy about Trump 2.0 because of the promised deregulation, particularly where M&A activity is concerned. Deregulation and tax cuts are within reach, but Trump hasn’t shown signs he’s the M&A cheerleader some thought he would be. They also didn’t believe he was quite this serious about tearing up the world trade order the way he’s trying to now. The signs were there, though: he isn’t particularly fond of Wall Street except for any contributions to his campaign. He wants to end neoliberal economics as we know it.
He’s off to a darn good start.
With good reason: they know they need to deliver the upside (what they think is the upside) of their economic model, which is more domestic production, supply, jobs, savings, trade surplus, etc. They know a lot of six-figure-earning households with master’s or professional degree-holders are going to be making noise about their retirement funds tanking. They have to have something to show for it, and what they’re hoping is that more high school grads (especially males) can skip college and go to work at a factory.
Personally I think DOGE cuts are going to wreck Donald’s version of “Morning in America.” Not only the job losses themselves, which are substantial, but the loss of function from those losses - regulatory oversight being a big one.
I dropped my subscription to the post, and haven’t used their app in a while. But i sometimes get that behavior in chrome, especially when loading memory-intensive pages.
That’s what I’ve done with a lot of things from EBay, especially old newspapers, one of which is a Washington Post from 40 years ago, in far better times (headline of that 1/20/85 Sunday Post that I have in my collection was the then-upcoming second inauguration of Ronald Reagan, to come the next day, 1/21); paper is tattered and badly foxed on the left side of the first part, but is otherwise in pretty good condition.
To be honest, I’ve done a lot of shopping around for deals on what might be good ones to me, and two variables come to my mind above all others-- one, does the listing show everything that is available (does it have plenty of photos, a good description, et al.), and two, does it have a reasonable price for the time it was originally published? If either of those two variables are not satisfactorily answered, no sale.
Additionally they certainly weren’t hoping he’d get the USA embroiled in foreign wars—which he seems quite willing to do if his intimidation/extortion efforts fall short of handing him Canada, Greenland, and Panama. (Exception: defense contractors would be fine with foreign wars. But practically no one else .)
As you know, a second coming of 1950s-era economic reality is not feasible on any kind of scale in the present environment. Any factories anyone is likely to be willing to bankroll will be run by AI and robotics, not by high-school dropouts (or even grads).
And in the environment Trumpites are rushing to create–global recession/stagflation and possible armed conflict–US manufacturing is even less likely to thrive, robots or not.
The sheer stupidity is stunning. How business titans aren’t currently creating a massive pay-off fund to get Trump’s Cabinet to invoke the 25th Amendment, I can’t fathom.*
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*of course it’s possible that they are, but that we just haven’t seen any signs of it.
Well I think the idea is that he wants more production and more supply domestically, however that’s done. But I think he also believes* that he can get more young men to get into the trades and manufacturing, and maybe putting to bed the end of the notion that we have to borrow tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars in student financial aid in hopes of getting a middle-class salary for the next 20-30 years.
Trump/MAGA is trying to destroy the global economic order that, on the surface, seems to benefit the United States. It does in terms of giving the U.S. nation-state a lot of political power. I’m not sure it’s so great for working class households, though. Record productivity gains but mostly stagnant relative real wages, which encourages a runaway cycle of deficits → expanding money supply → asset purchases (including from foreign investors who put their surpluses to use) → inflation & declining US savings. What Trump/MAGA is doing isn’t actually all that crazy; it just looks crazy because we’ve grown used to neoliberalism over the last 40-50 years. In terms of implementation? Yeah, it’s batshit.
But what it really is, is a much more chaotic and messier version of what Democrats should have been pushing for much sooner, IMO. If Democrats want to regain their political footing, especially in terms of regaining the trust of working class Americans, they’re going to have to at least begrudgingly embrace some of what Trump is doing. Drop some of the woke. Promote more working class policies. Biden did some good, but I think that in a lot of people’s minds, it’s Trump who started it 8 years ago. He’s the “OG” when it comes to getting tough with China and pushing for reshoring.
*I don’t think Trump knows exactly what he believes in terms of policy specifics, but he farts out thoughts and he has people around him who attempt to put it into text.
No, it’s batshit in its intent too, which has nothing whatsoever to do with “neoliberalism” and everything to do with “implementing a corrupt fascist autocracy that benefits the wealthiest and hurts everyone else, with the support of Russia who know how damaging this will be to Western democracy”. You are ascribing way too much good intent to the economic policies involved here.
The first sentence is meaningless - “woke” is an imaginary bugaboo made up by the right to push back against them being held accountable for their overt bigotry and to stir up irrational resentment against minorities. The phrase “drop the woke” in practice means “stop defending people against discrimination”.
The second would be meaningful if it weren’t for the fact that the Democrats do promote working class policies. It’s just that the Republicans drown them out with hysterical fearmongering.
The same Trump who expanded his family businesses in China and bragged about bringing jobs to China while doing significant damage to the US manufacturing sector during his last administration?
I don’t necessarily think there’s good intent, only intent. Tariffs are more than just strictly economics; they’re statecraft, too. They are leverage that enables the administration to achieve things, and by that I mean transitioning away from global trade that really forces the US into twin deficits that are unsustainable and into smaller multilateral trading relationships that serve US interests.
There are other reasons to support bringing production back here. Relying less on fragile, complex supply chains for starters. The pandemic and the post-pandemic showed us how vulnerable we are to having supply chains all over the world. We need more of our military production here. We need more healthcare supplies produced here.
Global trade won’t disappear even in a world that’s more protectionist, but we really should get away from this idea that neoliberalism was good for Americans. It was good for people who held American assets. For those without, it’s a soul-destroying race to the bottom.
And the administration is gonna make sure the people doing that production get paid a living wage, right?
…Right?
No, I don’t think this will necessarily be a jobs program the way it’s being touted. The ‘gains’ will not be uniform. There will still be the drive to maximize efficiency, but for some things where there’s a potential need/shortage or simply a national priority (shipbuilding, energy, etc.) there could be some decent-paying jobs coming from that.
I know it sounds like I’m MAGA-curious. I’m really not. I think there’s an argument to be made for some of what the administration is doing, even if the implementation is chaotic. It would have been smarter to have had a more gradual and selective tariff policy - say 1-2% tariff increases each month for the next 12, 18, 24 months, to cap out at 25%. Markets and trading partners (more importantly, political allies) could have had time to adjust.
You definitely are.
This is at least MAGA-curious.
What the administration is doing has no defense for anyone who isn’t part of the MAGA faithful. Not just implementation; the intention is indefensible.
Trump’s excuse for Canadian tariffs is that he’s trying to stop the fentanyl flowing into the US from Canada, even though he has it backwards. And his dismantling of government programs has nothing to do with saving money.
It’s like watching someone throw gasoline onto a housefire while claiming he wants to smother the fire, and you nodding along that the idea of using gasoline has potential if only he was doing a better job of tossing it onto the flames.
I never said anything about his dismantling of the civil service. Unlike most people here, I’m a federal contractor. I am actually among those who’s being forced to walk the plank, so I actually have some skin in the game. I don’t oppose RIFs if done for the right reasons, but it goes without saying that he and Musk are destroying the civil service for self-serving purposes.
That has nothing to do with trade policy. You need to keep these two things completely separate. I’ll say it again: I don’t agree with the implementation. It’s chaotic and there are more than economic consequences; there are political/diplomatic consequences. I mean, Canada as the 51st state? He’s trolling. Agreed.
But one can acknowledge all of MAGA’s evils while simultaneously arguing that the bottom 50% of this country is done with the neoliberal economic status quo, and they can’t be blamed for it, and one party positioned itself better to capitalize on that anger. Sorry, but when state after state after state goes from competitive to MAGA red, you have to ask, as a party, what the fuck is going on? You have to have the humility to accept the answers.
Inflation. Period. And Trump’s making it so much worse.
And you’re grossly overexaggerating. There weren’t that many “competitive” states and they didn’t go MAGA red.
You’re spreading right wing bullshit and people aren’t buying it pal.
“Neoliberal”?