Trump has always treated small business owners as chumps, whether it is by not paying them for services rendered or as a respectable constituency. In his mind (so called), small business are small fish, only worthy of being preyed upon.
Few people who have not run a small business appreciate that - workers comp, liability, health/dental, property/material/stock insurance, renter's if you don't own your space, auto, etc If you're unincorporated, self-employed, both shares of medicare/ss on your own income. Malpractice was a big one for us. Even 40 yrs w zero claims. Like liability.
Owning a small business converted me from a righteous liberal to a sympathizer of old-time Republicanism. There are so many realms of governmental interference (many of them very valid for the bad actors out there) that throw obstacles in front of very hard work.
I am grateful for the former Republicans who did not blindly follow their party into the abyss. It is a loss to have their principled positions being abandoned by their barbarian leadership to serve as a reasonable counterpoint to the left.
Owning a small business in a small town made me grateful a broken water main would be fixed quickly, overjoyed when the annual budget vote passed, sad when it didn't and the cuts to our small town school system meant that families with the option to leave our 80% GOP town moved to towns able to support education. Before and into the mid '90s we'd had an influx of young couples looking for a quiet town with band concerts on the green, good schools, library, a YMCA, pre-school, a variety of teams, a Recreation Board with a budget. Defunding promoted by an early version of the Tea Party (Nader trained libertarians) showed up, senior citizens spending their winters in Florida Trailers or Condos were happy to cut back and Mailed In their votes!. We did cut back. Families left. Now we have empty storefronts, the school board imports paying students from China to populate our high school and live in supervised rentals.
Nader was very much a libertarian in his own home town. Hired a "Community Lawyer" who represented his interests and got him state grants to turn an empty bank into a Tort Museum and put a roof on an old factory he'd bought for the law office, showed up at town meetings supporting a newly formed Taxpayers Association to object to full medical benefits and better pay for teachers, smaller classes for special ed kids, the new door on the Library, a proposed parking lot near the YMCA to accommodate swim teams coming to compete with the local kids etc. Sent out letters to the "snowbirds" reminding them to vote against the budget from their trailers in Florida. It was very odd. We'd had bipartisan support from businesses and the public for our town budgets and six figure fund-raisers to expand shelters, the Y, etc before. He and the proto Tea Party were a pain in the neck.
Underfunding of religion = an undereducated population: a goal, not a folly of Republicans. Even better, as claimed by Ross Douthat (NYT, 1/18) also, a religiously informed understanding of Americanness (sic).”
What seems like minor budget choices can have long-term consequences—empty storefronts and schools relying on international students show the results clearly.
Seriously? So you support no public schools because you don't think they do a good job? Can't wait to see how well we do with an illiterate population.
Good education regardless of the wealth of the parents is a key to a progressive economy. Not private education for the rich & substandard education for the rest.
Just compare the US & Canada. The US has many areas of lower education quality because locally the education is not well funded. Canada has a system of funding lower income areas to ensure that everyone has access to good education (& health care, etc). Europe does even better than Canada.
I grew up in the Chicago suburbs in the 70s and early 80s and attended public schools all the way through high school. The schools I attended were great!!! My junior and senior year of High School were probably equivalent, if not better than, the average junior college today. In addition to rock solid core academics, we had all the extras and a solid vocational education track as well. My high school offered Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian and Latin and AP everything. Plus we had every kind of extracurricular activity you can think of and good facilities for all of them. And no, it wasn't New Trier.
There is a lot that traditional Republicans did that hurt the overall population. Trump just amplified it, and added chaos.
For example, a one-payer health system would cost much less, in public & private costs than the current US system. But traditional Republicans (mostly) opposed. To the benefit of private insurers and the unnecessay waste of competition for a complex universal service.
It is true that red tape is difficult for small businesses, but they get a favourable treatment on taxes.
Hi Erik: Amen to those sentiments. Always nice to see your comments here & there (there’s no hiding your name!). I’ve been your fan from Monterey Ma ever since your reporter days.
And I've always been a fan of yours! I'm also a renewed fan of Monterey as my oldest daughter and her new husband have just moved into their house on Brett Road!
Today is not the best day of the year to be in Monterey, but it's certainly a great place to be! :)
Ya bet! Pittsfield is/was our Berkshire County seat. Monterey is south, just east of Great Barrington. And get this topical factoid— Paul Krugman has a part time here.
Yes, and as Krugman said America under Trump and oligarchs is moving toward crony capitalism in which big businesses pay Trump for favors which small businesses can't afford.
It will be interesting to see how small business owners respond to loss of income and greater expenses. Where will they see their self interest as lying come the midterms?
Agree. So many voters who chose Trump are still not willing to accept that they made the wrong choice even as Trump repeatedly hurts them. I think it’s very hard for people to admit they were wrong even as they suffer. Even as their businesses close they may remain loyal to him. Look at the South , which has suffered slower economic growth because of their refusal to integrate , take Medicaid expansion etc yet the still vote Republican.
I remember when presidential candidate Paul Tsongas was booed at the 92’ Democratic Party convention for saying: “You can’t be pro-job and anti-business at the same time.” Small businesses contend with costly regulations that were imposed long before Trump arrived.
I know people in state government and there is a lot of streamlining of regulation that can be done and still protect the environment, health and safety. Regulations can also be used by incumbents to stifle competition.
I think Ezra Klein's book Abundance was good at pointing out over-regulation. We need one or two good environmental reviews, not ten or twenty.
I must admit, I'm terrified at the Trump administrations slashing of regulation. There's no doubt that the regulations slashed will be ones that are needed and those that are kept are done to advantage those who pay to play.
Regulations impose costs. When the costs rise too high, jobs get eliminated and productivity declines. “Protection” is not free. If Trump’s tariffs are costly and bad, then that it means regulations will be too unless they can be shown to pass a rigorous cost/benefit analysis. But the idea that all the costs will only be passed on to the owners or the rich is a myth.
if they can't comply with regulations enacted to protect the public, they should reconsider whether they should be in business at all. if they can't make a profit while following the law, then they should make room for someone who can. and, our regulations are very soft compared to other developed countries. but, you know this.
Assuming (unrealistically) there are no long run effects (good and bad) from prior administrations, can you name the specific things Democrats have done that make an economy run better? (Noting here that no one really runs an economy—it is the sum total of individual activities.)
I lean to the position that anyone who believed a word Chump said at any time after about 2017 is stupid -- since he was clearly lying every time he opened his mouth. As to the recent election, he'll "bring down prices on day 1"? Give me a break. Oh, I'd add that the stupidity shares space with the racism - they like what he's doing to immigrants and they think he's gonna make America white again. Hard to underestimate these folks.
They're still true to their local maga cults, aren't they? In interviews on local Midwest TV "news" they say it's hurting them but they just have to deal with it cause it's "necessary" cause their maga religions say so.
Much of it depends on the Democrats and/or the rise of Unaffiliated/Independents. The Democratic brand is so terrible thanks to 40 years of FOX and right wing propaganda that a lot of Republicans held their nose and voted for Trump. I've heard several say they just couldn't vote for Harris.
There is also the possibility that Republicans may start to wrest control back from MAGA. Heritage had a big walk-out of personnel who went to Mike Pence's foundation. I'm not a great fan of Republican policy, but there have been a lot of Republicans who have been loyal patriots and have stood up for democracy. It's far harder to go against your friends than your adversaries. MAGA hates the Republicans even more than the Democrats. That's where their real opposition lies.
There is no GOP left to wrest control of. The "party" is now a cabal of racists, religious zealots, xenophobes, neo-nazis, misogynists, and oligarchs with no common ideology. The instant Trump's gone, they'll be at each other with knives. If the Dems were remotely competent, and not totally owned by corporate interests, they would have crushed the GOP many elections ago. Post Citizens United, it's not clear how the US will ever recover from the current dysfunction.
The GOP is its old establishment types attempting to achieve their only real goals, lowest possible taxes and deregulation, while attempting to orchestrate sufficient culture war popularity from a new base of voters who are so far down the totem pole that they care more about triumphalist (self-congratulatory), reactionary politics than their own self-interest.
It's a segment of the establishment that would prefer to do away with (the taxes that support) social security and Medicare preaching in pretend-solidarity with "bedrock patriots" that "social welfare" is crippling to morality and the American way.
Fox “News” is the public equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater. One is not allowed to do that. Fox spews streams of lies into the general public everyday.
Trump treats all his MAGA voters who are not uber wealthy as chumps. He doesn’t even care that not challenging his party’s anti-vax insanity even though it was his Operation Warp Speed that enabled us to produce the covid vax so quickly killed a lot more of his base than it has Dems. Trump is clearly not anti-vax — he got his shots this year.
When you talk about Chump's love of "people," you can just say "person." Singular. There's one person he cares about, and that's himself. He'd sell his own kids for the right prices, much less the average MAGAt, who are just tools for him to use and discard.
Chum is the word I believe. As in, ground up small fish used to lure more small fish to their deaths. In Atlantic City, Trump was apparently called "Mr. Fifty Percent," because he'd pay small contractors a small down payment, and then some more when they finished; but never more than 50% of the total. He's say he was displeased with their work and refuse to pay the balance. He's apparently cleared nearly a billion dollars this year from his Crypto scams, harvesting chum digitally.
His history of stiffing bank loans is similar. Which is why eventually only Deustche Bank would lend to him; and only because Putin was having his oligarchs funnel money to Germany for just that purpose--to keep his FSB thrall afloat.
And let's not forget how Trump, great entrepreneur that he is, cheated small contractors during his casino days. He has been involved in over 3,500 lawsuits over three decades, most of which involve small contractors suing to get money Trump owed them for work done for Trump's businesses.
So one thing is certain. With friends like Trump, small contractors sure don't need any enemies!
Who has tRump not disappointed? Those who have bribed him, which excludes morst all MAGAts. His cultists will not abandon him. Why? He is seen as a god. Just becasue you can't see his halo and wings.
This. Defending virtually any Trump2 policies is not the smartest hill to die on.
He tanked Sinema-Lankford precisely because it *would* have gone a long way towards fixing the border.
And Trump2 *hasn't* been enforcing immigration law--not when they're illegally deporting valid Green Card holders or citizen children. We were told they would only target criminals--but instead are inflicting immense economic pain on construction, agriculture and hospitality.
Regarding GDP numbers, perhaps the best question would be: how much *higher* would they be if Trump2 hadn't engaged in tariffs, mass deportations, and DOGE idiocy? And this all before we tabulate the total federal FY2025 *deficit* for an A++++ economy.
The solution to tariffs is to stop imposing tariffs, especially on our allies.
Subsidies for "people who already have jobs" acknowledges that many jobs don't pay a living wage, therefore people need subsidies in order to afford health insurance.
Is our healthcare system a hot mess? Yes, but that is a whole different problem that Trump is not helping to solve.
Please do not forget that immigration reform was legislated with bipartisan support in 2024, and was ORDERED to be dropped by none other than Donald J Trump, so that is no longer a Democratic problem, it's a Trump and prostrate-Republicans problem.
Economic growth is primarily due to all bets being placed on AI, which may or may not be justified once the bill comes due for the massive electricity requirements those centers require.
1) Our allies were not imposing tariffs on us. The average being something like 2%. And VAT is paid by everyone; it’s not a tariff. To further “muddy” the water, the US largely exported services (research, STEM, etc) rather than goods making it easy for Trump and his ilk to falsely claim that we had unfair and unequal trade. Simply not true when including non-goods exports.
2a) 100% agree that when people have jobs and still need help, society has failed. The rich, and frankly most people, d work hard to keep taxes low. Corporate America will not pay a livable wage. So we do need to greatly increase the minimum wage at the federal level, but Americans can’t swallow what that means for our gross consumerism. We need to totally restructure the tax system to be borne by the wealthy, but Americans think that might be them someday if they win the lottery or hit it big as an influencer! Never mind they would still have oodles of money.
2b) Not really sure why you’re talking about people taking early retirement. I was unaware that this is a rampant “problem”. However, this again is a sad bag of garbage that Americans have been sold. Most Americans have totally just accepted that we should work 40+ hours, 5 days a week until 67 (though many people work many more hours, more days, and more years due to need, employer expectations, and/or constant availability due to tech advances).
3) The Bipartisan Border Bill was actually a very good looking move toward appropriate immigration reform. It was supported by both sides and would have passed had Trump not scuttled it. I highly suggest you look it up on a nonpartisan website. Most Americans don’t like what was happening prior, regardless of political affiliation. What politicians on either side say is not representative of actual people, not anymore. However, we need immigrants. People do need asylum. We also do need to know who is coming and have every right to refuse entry. There is plenty of space to do all of those things. The problem, like many things in America, policy has languished as politicians are more interested in running on issues than actually working together to address them.
4) Economic growth is more complicated than you want it to be. It is true that it hasn’t cratered as some thought, but that doesn’t make it strong. Many factors come into play. AI growth has unquestionably propped up the economy. Businesses saw the writing on the wall and stockpiled before tariffs really hit. I also think people were finishing out this year “big”. I think spending will plummet moving forward, especially as health insurance costs rise and businesses start passing on tariff costs in the new year. As the literal and less tangible costs of attacks on research and education come into play, this will further hurt our economy. As foreigners from all countries become disinclined to come here, for travel, work, school, that will hurt us. It is also highly likely that employment numbers will be revised down for the last quarter. All of this in conjunction with tariffs, handing tech over to China, dragging us backwards with finite energy sources, Trump economic policy will only continue to harm most Americans.
5) “Democratic narrative”…as if there isn’t a Republican one? This is a huge part of the problem. Instead of regurgitating “talking points”, buzzwords, and jargon, we should all be seeking out multiple and varying sources, critically thinking, and coming away with something closer to the truth than just what “our side” wants us to think. There are truly nefarious actors who need to be kicked out. After dumping the old and the trash (on both sides btw), engaging with “the other side” in a faithful and respectful manner is the only way through this.
Comparing specific items is cherry picking. There will always be spots that are higher or lower. The overall average is what matters. And it is equally important to not exclude certain types of imports/exports simply because they are not as straightforward to measure or work against the narrative being sold.
And many trained professionals would absolutely disagree with “dubious claims about GMO and food safety”. Again, you are using over simplified, divisive talking points rather than looking at what the research actually shows. It doesn’t matter what country they are from or where the research takes place. The EU, for example, is actually looking to keep their people safe which their people actually demand. They are willing to pay higher costs for more regulation and higher standards. Americans are not, and our health (and subsequent healthcare costs) suffer for it.
Tech is another area where much of the world is realizing what the evidence continues to point to…it has detrimental effects that need to be addressed through government regulations. We should never trust that companies will do what is best for us. At best, they have budgets to meet and shareholders to please. More often, they are concerned with making every penny possible to hell with the destruction left in their wake to do so. The EU is right to demand consumers be able to fix their devices, not need special inputs for each different device, expect companies to make a reasonable effort to protect minors from predatory behavior, etc. The world of today practically requires devices, sites, apps whether we want to use them or not. As such, these companies must be compelled to serve the consumer since we have no where else to turn.
I don't know what your beef is about "subsidies for people who already have jobs.” If you're talking about the health insurance subsidies, many employers do not provide health insurance as a benefit of employment. My last employer did not, and the bill for my wife and myself was over $20,000/yr. For someone making minimum wage, that would be nearly his or her entire yearly income.
In a sensible system, no one would have a cost of $20,000 for insurance. But that is the effect of the US system, which relies on difficult to regulate private insurance companies.
The total cost, public & private, is considerably less on a one payer system, like in Canada, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, etc.
The right wing resistance to a one payer system where the govt pays an important role is causing important waste.
This despite the supposed Republican stand against taxes and waste in govt.
You could have the most perfect bill and it wouldn't matter. MAGA Trump and the GOP automatically reject anything that goes against their hypocritical bigoted narrative. Immigrants (that Trump doesn't like) need to be kicked out of the country...period. Even though his and his vice-president's family are the same as the people he kicks out.
Since Obama wanted to be the great compromiser like Clinton, the GOP has refused to pass anything proposed by a Democrat. Obamacare/Romneycare was a Republican plan co-sponsored in Congress in the 1990s by Republicans like Chuck Grassley. When Obama proposed it as an (inadequate) compromise, the hypocrites in the GOP acted as if it was a Communist plot to kill grandma.
That's because the lame-stream and reich wing media allowed him to make the election about whatever fake issue Lying Don would bring up. His voters are the people who believe that fake wokeness and bathrooms are some of the biggest issues facing America. Trump's constant BS gets him billions in free media coverage every year from the big media oligopoly.
And let's not forget that in an excellent economy where egg prices were driven up by disease, those egg prices somehow became the only economic indicator they reported on. Egg prices are lower now, but somehow that does not extrapolate to a lower bill at the register.
Writing a better immigration law is the only thing that makes sense; the problem with that is the Republicans have used the racism of illegal immigration as a campaign issue for so long, they can't backtrack now - especially not now.
The map is not the territory. I.e., the "economy" very much did not grow 3.8% or 4.3%. What really happened was that GDP, a measure of the economy, grew by 3.8% and 4.3%.
Maybe it is true that often enough, when our measurement grows it means the economy also grew. But part of the reason the Biden camp got stuck in this pattern of arguing against a "vibe cession" and now Trump is repeating that same mistake is that both Republicans and Democrats forget that the map is not the territory. Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
Measurement error is a thing, for one. For another, anytime you try to do something like reduce a complex system (i.e., the world's largest economy) to a single number summary, you're by necessity making subjective choices about leveling some details and sharpening others. If this editorial guesswork is done wrong, then the number as a measurement does not reflect the economy accurately anymore, and the map is an even less faithful representation of the territory.
Trump and his minions are not only violating the current immigration law, they are violating the due process protections of the Bill of Rights. No one is dismissing reported economic growth as irrelevant, however, it is clear that the growth is not being distributed equally, and some would say, unfairly. Tariffs are a regressive tax on Americans, and reduces economic growth, all things being equal. It appears that much of the growth that occurred in 2025 is due to AI investments, especially data centers. This is likely to continue to support economic growth in 2026 and the fiscal stimulus of the OBB act will hit in 2Q 2026. However, this is likely to be accompanied by inflation well above the 2% Fed target. And the balance of payments will remain a problem as foreigners flee from US investments. [And stay away from the US because of the new really onerous requirements for tourist visas.] The wild card is monetary policy. Trump's hand picked chairman is likely to materially reduce interest rates. How will the long end of the bond market react to that?
Most of the 2nd & 3rd Q growth was in consumer spending. Most other sectors were down. The increase in consumer spending has been attributed by some economists to be consumers buying more than normal, particularly durable goods, with the expectation that the tariffs will cause significant increases in costs later. This appears to be supported by decreased spending for the 2025 holiday season. A September poll indicated 84% of consumers expect to cut back over the next six months, citing rising prices, new tariffs, and the higher cost of living. A November poll showed consumers expecting to spend 5% less than last year. The actual spending will be available in the next few weeks. It will be interesting to see if the predictions were accurate. Meanwhile, with the federal statistics now highly questionable, comparable numbers from other sources will have to suffice.
Kudos for going against the current of this Substack post with your perspective. The new regime of statisticians throws shade on the numbers but it's always good to have different and reasonable points of view.
The FRED reports show that GDP was steadily increasing through 2024 and has continued to increase at the same rate this year up through July. The FRED does not yet report figures for the rest of 2025. Trump did NOT inherit a weak economy and growth was positive through 1st quarter 2025.
First question we need to ask: is this GDP number real? Then: will it repeat in the next quarter, or merely be a one-quarter outlier? After that, we need to understand what the drivers of this number might be (tariffs, smaller trade deficit, excess spending by top income quintile) and who has not benefitted from this apparent surge in GDP (the bottom 60% of income earners, small businesses negatively affected by tariffs).
The rate of unemployment only tells you how many people are currently unemployed and nothing about the earnings of the remaining workers. Its also worth noting that the current measure of poverty (based on a 1963 measure) is, as author Michael Green has suggested, woefully inadequate to measure actual poverty. A quick look at household incomes by quintile should make clear that we have a great many American families who are struggling to afford what we consider the necessities of life, let alone the fabled middle class lifestyle.
The immigration numbers during the Biden administration were not not just a US phenomena, but world wide. By the time Biden left office, the numbers had fallen dramatically, and most immigrants who reached our borders were not granted asylum. As other have noted, a bipartisan immigration reform bill was offered near the end of Biden's term, but was rejected by Trump and the GOP have offered nothing since to address this issue. It is weak sauce to keep blaming Biden when the GOP hold both the House and Senate, and could write whatever immigration reform bill they wanted.
No, a 4.0%+ GDP number should not be dismissed out of hand, but unless we also know what is driving this number, we merely have data, but not understanding.
I assume, from your comment, you have not been a consumer of reliably accurate reporting of political and economic news. You might want to try that, you'll still have questions, but much more interesting ones, IMO
Article in WaPo today says that bankruptcies have reached a 15-year high, not seen since the Great Recession. Tariffs are one of the main reasons, along with inflation and high interest rates. Small businesses have been particularly hard-hit by tariffs and I recall a story awhile back about a small business owner with major inventory needed for Christmas sales stuck in a customs warehouse because they couldn't afford the surprise tariffs. Americans need to wise up to the fact that Dems are better for the economy and have been for a long time now.
That’s not saying much. They’re both crap. Both are defenders of a finance dominated economy. I sometimes wonder why Americans don’t elect Larry Fink and be done with it. Lie back and think of England while they’re being screwed. After all, he is Co-President of the WEF. What could go wrong for the wealthy oligarchs who de facto run the world.
“They’re both crap”. This is the kind of mindless anti intellectualism that got us in this predicament. Anyone who thinks we’d be in this position if Harris was President is being ridiculous.
If you had watched Harris from abroad, as I did, you’d be astonished at the number of “anti-intellectuals” in the world who wondered whether she and Trump were best America had. Harris was seen as having the charisma of a wet fish.
I guess we’re different in what we look for as a leader. I prefer a competent technocrat as opposed to a dancing orange clown who destroys fact checkers on a minute by minute basis, delighting the gullible rubes. Also, anyone who claims Harris had the charisma of a wet fish is just confirming how embarrassingly ill informed they are in their echo chamber. I found her dancing with her sorority and showing her own recipe for masala dosa to be delightful. However, I voted for her based on her overwhelming competence. When compared to the alternative, it wasn’t even a question. Then again, I make my choices rationally and not based on feelings.
Twice Americans voted (or chose to stay home) to elect a known fraud over a qualified, competent woman. Worse yet: Trump 2.0 openly campaigned on what he would do and then he did it.
Fooled me once, shame on you...fooled me twice: shame on me.
Full disclosure: I am an American who did not vote for Trump either time.
Charisma is overrated and a product of our sick, celebrity-obsessed culture. Trump has charisma, the charisma of a villain, a clown, a buffoon, a conman. Biden, on the other hand, had a personal warmth that was often charming, but not celebrity-grade charisma. He led a team of uniformly competent and qualified people who worked something of a miracle in the skillful recovery from the pandemic.
There's every reason to believe that it would continue under Harris, just as there's every reason to believe that Al Gore would have continued the generally good record of the Clinton years, minus the personal scandals, thus probably avoiding 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Great Recession. But a distracted and propagandized populace swallowed the hook of ridiculous lies about lowering prices and voted for the destructive sadist whose campaign would make sideshow barkers blush.
I'll take boring, competent governance over mad-dog "charisma" every time.
Manohar, thank you. In addition, so many American voters focus on their own racism and misogyny, rather than the competence and policy proposals of the candidates. But I guess it's not polite for me to point out the racist basis of others' votes. Sorry not sorry.
People vote in the Presidential election that pay no attention what so ever to current affairs unless it's entertainment based. A lot of people enjoy conspiracy theories and are open about it. Many are susceptible to lies and propaganda. Prejudice is also a factor.
It's obvious that more of these voters came out and cast their vote for Trump than those who are better informed and make rational choices.
I don't think Harris had charisma and I think she was a bad choice for 2024. The college educated are only a third of the population. More needs to be done to appeal to the uninformed. They will not let you "teach" them what is right.
Do you seriously think that popularity contests don’t play a critical role in American politics. No one else with a brain, call them intellectuals or not, would agree with you. When last did genuine competence trump popularity? All a candidate has to repeat ad nauseam is “we are the richest, most powerful country in the world” and he or she is half way to the White House.
Davy, lad, there is a circularity to your argument. You claim that Harris lost because she lacked charisma. Since this is not an undisputed fact, many thought she was charismatic (cf. her debate performance), it is incumbent on you to support your claim. If you read Paul's columns, you will notice that he does this; he backs up his statements with charts, data. surveys, etc.
However, you don't! Your argument is a snake swallowing its own tail: Harris lost because she lacks charisma and you know that she lacks charisma because she lost. Mate, you have adopted MAGA logic!
Do you seriously think that popularity contests don’t play a critical role in American politics. No one else with a brain, call them intellectuals or not, would agree with you. When last did genuine competence trump popularity? All a candidate has to repeat ad nauseam is “we are the richest, most powerful country in the world” and he or she is half way to the White House.
Boris Johnson ring anyone's bell? Seriously, David? I don't know where you're from, but since when have people from abroad had the market cornered on competent leadership? I could even go back in history to put way too fine a point on it. You're pure arrogance and then after that, pure misogynistic BS.
The best you’ve got is whataboutism? What difference does it make if other countries have or had mediocre leaders. Even scoundrels. The question surely is about addressing the shortcomings of America’s democracy, unless you think there aren’t any.
I’m curious, does the lack of charisma in any particular female politician, anywhere, automatically constitute misogyny? If so, what am I to do with my admiration for Sheinbaum in Mexico or Meloni in Italy, to name but a few. Seek exoneration?
It makes all the difference when you're throwing rocks; "People who live in glass houses..." comes to mind.
Are you arguing that because, in your opinion (not mine), Harris lacked "charisma" she was not qualified to be a "competent leader"?
Some said Jim Jones of Jonestown was chock full of charisma. Hitler, too. Mussolini had a good run. Mexico's political and economic history isn't the best, but I agree - I like Sheinbaum, too. Maybe Mexico's socio/economic status will improve because of her "charisma".
It’s not me who looks for charisma. It was a majority of the American electorate that seemed to have been dazzled by his BS spoken with oomph. That’s how it looked to me and many others. In my view Obama was the only President since blow job Bill to have combined charisma with competence in equal measure.
So you choose leaders by their charisma? If you need surgery, do you interview every surgeon in the hospital evaluating their charisma? I'm thinking you would indeed.
The leaders of both party organizations are nothing but big corporate sell-outs as big money rules their world. The GOP is nothing more than extreme right wingers who act as if anyone to the normal side of Trump is a Communist, Socialist or Liberal. The majority of Democrats in Congress are the DNC approved candidates who are center-right corporatists on economic issues and center-left on social issues, which is basically what most Republicans were before they went extreme.
But both-siderism is nothing more than a way to justify the extremism of the GOP. Neither are what they need to be, but they aren't the same. It wasn't Democratic judges who enabled Citizens United and the other garbage coming out of the Supreme Court and Congress.
So you form your political opinions based on a few influencers online who spit out soundbites and doctored images appealing the to the rage instinct. Kids these days I swear...
(That's the only possible explanation I can come up with for somebody who can't tell the difference between Trump's GOP and today's Democrats).
To be honest, I don’t know what an influencer is. What I do know is I read American, British, Australian and Chinese newspapers. I watch American channels on TV, Al Jazeera and Chinese English language television. And by the way, there are many Americans who don’t distinguish between the Republicans and the Democrats. Just saying.
Absolutely. There are many who don't know the difference between a lot of things about politics and just go by a few soundbites they hear in the media and hold completely uninformed opinions out of total ignorance.
It's just surprising to see that here in *this* blog in *this* comments section, that's all...
Stereotypes take a long time to unravel, and Dems need to get better at explaining the history of the last few Dem & Rep administrations with regards to the economy. After all, Bush I & II, Trump 1.0 & 2.0 ran the economy into the ground, while Clinton had better prosperity than Reagan, while Obama took us out of the Great Recession (if slowly)!
I was a contractor (small business!) for many years and it made me deeply skeptical of our crazy expensive medical system, which I had to endure in my years of self-employment. On the other hand, I eventually found a franchise to get my hair cut because I got tired of being subjected to fox news and other insults while paying for that service at a local small business. There’s nothing ‘holy’ about small businesses other than there’s a lot of them. I’m similarly tired of the romance with farmers who get bailed out after voting for Trump.
Every time Dems have tried to fix our healthcare system the right has lied about it (death panels for instance) and a lot of Dems who voted to improve healthcare got booted out of office and Dems lost control of Congress (Claire McCaskill and Kathy Hochul were victims). The media did little to combat the lies and sometimes aided and abetted them. That happened under both Clinton and Obama.
Today the media clearly sympathizes with Republicans who cave to Trump because of their fear of being losing their seats but they have never acknowledge that Democrats have taken knowingly taken that risk to improve people’s healthcare coverage.
From the outside, it seems one of the signature features of US health care is that it tries to do away with the concept of triage, which is something that not even doctors in Star Trek think they can do without.
As far as I'm aware, even in the most "advanced" systems, patients aren't just given anything they might need. If someone requires an ultra-expensive gene therapy but is in their eighties, it probably should be weighed against the benefit of providing life-long insulin to hundreds of people. That there might be a mechanism to ensure that money is spent efficiently and maximise overall healthcare is not evil. In reality, to have humans who are accountable for that is far superior to pretending triage doesn't exist and hiding behind AI to find reasons to reject people.
I believe the "death panels" was paying for a doctor's visit to discuss end of life choices. Nothing more. Most medical expenses occur in the last 6 months of life. A lot of people would choose hospice if they had better information. Many times the lifespan is longer in hospice than receiving "treatment".
There was a lot of money riding on killing those discussions. What shocked me was they got away with such a blatant lie and weren't slammed as liars. To me, that was a tipping point. Lies, blatant lies had no cost to them anymore.
They also lie about Canada’s single payer system, saying mobs of Canadians go to the US for healthcare.
I’ve never met anyone who did and I’m a 74 year old Canadian. Furthermore, you’d have to be wealthy to pay for it. I’m not saying no one does, just that it’s a small number.
Death panels are now be implemented for original Medicare. Original Medicare enrollees in six states will have claims reviewed by AI for utilization and being necessary, with the AI companies holding the federal contracts keeping the money saved.
You are so right, especially about our expensive and relatively ineffective medical system and being forced to endure the propaganda on Fox News.
With respect to farmers, their government subsidies this year are relatively low so they might not be feeling romantic about Trump. The subsidies only cover about half of the losses they suffered after Trump tariffs ruined the market with China they depended on to sell their products. If we consider that arrangement to be Trumpian "crony capitalism," I think only one of the cronies involved (Trump) got a decent deal. I'm no expert on this. For reliable info, see the Substack called "Art Cullen's Notebook." Mr. Cullen also is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of "The Storm Lake (Iowa) Times Pilot" which covers the plight of farmers in the Mid-West.
CJ in SF, your reply confuses me. I said nothing about Dems and the Iowa Caucuses. Your second and third points both concern the argument over farm subsidies which I did refer to. Are they politically corrupt bribes or, as Galbraith said, a rational correction to a clear free market failure? You seem to be saying both of those things and so, are coming down on both sides of the argument. Your last point is clearly true, but has nothing to do with anything in my post.
Thanks. Good points. I wasn't aware the Democrat's new primary calendar had changed in that way and I also think ethanol is not a part of good energy policy. Your idea of Trump's real motivation for the subsidies is spot-on.
According to You Tuber "From Farm to Taber", farmers are NOT working class, and supported Trump for the same reasons other business people, like the small business owners under discussion, did. There was one particular to them - Biden was beginning to crack down on abuses of the visa program they use for seasonal labor, H-2A.
I wonder how those small business owners/farmers feel now about labor being force ably removed from their fields, warehouses and construction sites. Hmm.
Government should be used to provide services that are essential services and important to be left in the hand of profit driven companies. The Rest of the developed world has come to terms with providing medical services at a fraction (1/2 or less) of the cost with a Medicare like core service. Why can't America???
I go to a franchise chain that exclusively runs sports coverage on their TVs, which is much better then Faux. (I have little interest in sports.) That likely gives away which one it is. It helps that their services are top notch. I have no idea what the politics of the local franchise owners are as no one talks about it.
Every other small business owner I've come across here runs Faux. Anyone know of a good TV remote app for Android? 😉
Another issue small business owners face is taxation. They're at a sour spot where because, given the size and sophistication of a lot of small businesses, they get hit for most of the taxes they owe. Compare that to larger corporations which can more easily take advantage of numerous tax exemptions to reduce their tax burden.
A successful single member LLC owner pays a ~15% self-employment tax, and 10%-37% based on the owner's individual income due to the pass-through nature of single member LLCs. So, if you are a successful small business owner, you pay a good bit in taxes relatively speaking (up to 50% on your owner draws) compared to CEOs at big corporations, or even their own employees.
Larger corporations can engage in more sophisticated tax loss harvesting to pay effectively 0% in taxes, and the billionaire CEOs can "buy, borrow, and die" to avoid paying taxes. That makes the taxation of small business owners *relatively* regressive.
Sure... a small business owner making +$600k can afford taxes better than a minimum wage employee, so it isn't *actually* regressive. But successful small business owners don't compare themselves to their employees, they compare themselves to Bezos and Zuckerberg, et al.
In theory small business owners should be fighting systemic factors that created this problem for them in the tax code. In that sense, they ought to be a natural fit for an "eat the rich" coalition. But in practice a lot of small business owners come to resent their relatively high taxes while identifying (correctly or incorrectly) with the wealthy upper class. This leads to them resenting the tax man (aka the government) and therefore are increasingly annoyed with Democrats and favor Republicans.
The tariffs are hurting Trump with his base so much because he's screwing over this part of his base. r/LeopardsAteMyFace is filled with small business owners (including farmers!) talking about how they are getting creamed by import dues.
This is a great comment. I own and operate a sole proprietor LLC providing professional consulting services. Last year I paid about 16.5% federal income tax on net profits, plus Social Security taxes as employer and as employee.
I can only gaze with envy upon companies like Amazon and Google who get away with routinely paying more like 4 or 5% annually — and have actually paid zero federal income taxes in some recent years. (Because they are small, struggling enterprises that need all the help they can get to survive, I guess.)
If only I had the resources to hire my own army of lobbyists to write the tax laws in D.C! But I don’t, so I do the heavy lifting for the Big Boyz. So it goes.
A lot of people would be shocked to learn the definition of “small business” and how widely it varies based upon the annual gross income, employee count, and business type as categorized by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes that the Small Business Administration (SBA) uses to define what qualifies as a "small business" for federal contracting and loan programs. As a former partner of a small business professional services company that held local, state, and federal contracts that definition can vary from an annual gross of $1M to $100M (if not higher now, my recollection dates to the 2000’s and early 2010’s). I know of companies near the top range that had politically well connected owners that routinely used them to stretch the definition of their business categories to secure large federal contracts that previously went to those at the small end of the range. But across the board, almost all of the small and big “small” business owners were anti-tax, less regulation followers of St. Ronnie, as was one of my business partners. I guess I was an outlier.
'Petite-bourgeois reactionaries' as my Marxist friend calls them. More broadly, lower middle class voters tend to have strongly reactionary traits. Perhaps due to the vulnerability of their modest socio-economic privileges they reflexively side with wealthy elites in the false belief they are on the same side. Daily Mail readers epitomise this sort of ghastly culture.
A lot of small business owners are not poor, but could easily be so. A farmer points out that farmers vote for Trump because they tend to be wealthy, but that all can change with loss of immigrant labor and tariffs preventing other countries from buying what they are selling. Also, they are counting on bail outs from Trump. Here is a farmer explaining what is going on with farmers.
Her analysis of abuses of the H-2A program,which Biden was reforming, was pretty damning. Illegal labor could leave if abused, H-2A workers can't. A lot of farmers liked that.
Yes it is damning. We know that Trump sets things up for even greater abuses, but I have been saying that slavery is alive and ongoing in the USA in many ways. We should have people fighting that.
Harsh. My point being political support is a ‘religion’. No chance of changing minds even as they are dragged off to the Debtors Prison. They blame everyone else but themselves and become more entrenched.
Same here in the UK. Small businesses and farmers have suffered (although they were more likely to have voted Brexit). Trade to and from Europe has been something many small businesses have given up on, focusing more on domestic market. Centre-right parties that radicalise to populist right become less friendly to business.
Two days ago I saw that an old friend had moved to a medium sized town in Central California. I remembered the town and saw that they still had a local newspaper and that I could see it on line. I was curious as to how the community could have changed and started reading the "local" news. The one highlight that struck me was are article about the previous year and the number of businesses that were closed or out of business. Some were chains but most seemed to be small businesses, but essential to the community such as pharmacies and hardware stores. I immediately saw this an economic threat if it is being repeated around the country. It is either more reliance on online shopping or a real contraction of the economy.
It could be both. In the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008 there was an economic contraction which left fewer local businesses. This helped Amazon capture more of the market.
Covid also helped home delivery companies out. My next door neighbor still has much of her food delivered. She's not the only one in the neighborhood to do so.
My partner and I own a successful small business. We have worked hard and invested back in our business to make it better for our members. Small businesses are part of community they live in as opposed to the real issue, The Barrons". Corporations buying up everything beneath them is the issue for Americans. I am solidly a democrat as is my partner .
The wealth gap is hideous and we pay a lot of taxes and resent the fact the people at the top (the real MAGA) have caused so much hardship as well as gaining so much power.
We try hard to pay our employees well as they are "our community". We see them everyday and realize without our employees we would not exist.
Let's talk about the issue of the greed at the top!
Please do not lump all small business owners into the pot with the disgusting right wing MAGA crowd. Suggesting small business owners are MAGA is akin to a bias that immigrants are criminals.
I am sure there are many small business owners who are MAGA and many who are not.
I think small business get the shaft [in addition to whatever the president and Congress is doing] simply because in the US large, wealthy companies can hire defense lawyers and have the political clout to get off the hook, while small business owners do not have this power. We all saw this in the 2008 banking crisis where the Treasury raced to rescue the 'system' but did nothing to help the mortgage and pension losers, and in many other well publicized debacles over the last 70 years.
I worked at EPA for a couple of decades and I met frequently with many small and very large business owners in many high dollar nationally significant CAA and Superfund enforcement actions.
Generally the small business owner was hammered, penalized far more in EPA enforcement settlements than the big polluting corporations.
The large polluters were causing far greater harm, OBVIOUSLY, but the big polluters had the lawyers, resources and significant political clout to negotiate down the penalties and remedies.
They never faced serious criminal pollution liability because the WH and DOJ shield them and blocked it.
But the small business owners never had such help and could not afford extended negotiations in civil settlement so they paid and paid which was in my view counter productive because all it really achieved was that it hurt the owner finacially, bringing him close to ruin no matter how much the penalty was discounted.
The big companies easily exploited Superfund and bankruptcy laws to avoid liability while small companies of course could not do so because they had little resources, time and lawyers, to help them. The politicians, the elected officials in states and federal government all know this, BTW.
I was a founding partner in a small business (custom design and custom manufacturing in Manhattan) for 28 years. It started with four of us, and, when I left, employed about 35. Rather than give my input on Prof. Krugman's post, I'd rather just write that Tony Bennet and Lady Gaga provide the best winter/spring relationship I've experienced. Well, I will add, that as a born, raised, and educated NYC fellow of nearly Trump's age, I knew who Trump was and is, inside and out, and, I would never have even let him in our door.
Republican doctrine, since it's all lies or wishful thinking at best, only works if they play off of Democrats who are mostly running things and holding it together. When Republicans fully get their way they destroy everything. They're imperialists, and that plays out internally as well with exploitative policies. Exploitation is a fact of life for them. Smart people play to win. Idiots and dreamers don't.
Robert Bork extolled the benefits of monopolies. Earl Butz encouraged corporate agriculture and consolidation. Haley Barbour and others led a revolution in lobbying that replaced democracy with whatever government run by money is, kleptocracy in our case. Republicans used to tell us what they were doing. Who knows if they believed it but the results are in since Reagan. We know it was all lies.
He is echoed by Jared Bernstein, who wrote "It has been a good year for most of America’s biggest companies, with surging profits and enthusiasm for artificial intelligence propelling stocks to record highs. But for many small businesses, it has been just the opposite.
At small businesses, which are unable to withstand economic headwinds as easily as their larger counterparts, years of high inflation, increasingly cautious consumers and tariffs are weighing on earnings and prompting cutbacks. Over the past six months, private firms with fewer than 50 workers have steadily shed jobs, according to payroll processor ADP, cutting 120,000 in November alone. Midsize and, especially, large firms have continued to add jobs."
I hate how this country romanticizes small businesses. Every aspect of owning/ working for one completely sucks and the owners are all hustle bro, midwits that think they’re the self-sustaining, salt-of-the-earth.
I'd disagree... I think the opportunity for folks with an entrepreneurial bend to do their own thing is part of the American dream and what makes America exceptional. The stuff you mention, as far as it being a lot of work and risk and suck, is true, but the payoff includes being your own boss, which is great. Conversely, the American dream is also the freedom to not do that if you don't want to. Which is also great.
Again, in theory, America ought to be a place where if you want to, you can sell a something and go on your own, and you don't *need* by necessity to sign up to be a cog in a machine. See: the various folks on substack going indie, for example one Dr. Krugman. We all benefit from Krugman's departure from NYT, good riddance.
In practice, small business owners get spanked by systemic factors compared to larger corporations in exactly the same way workers get spanked compared to the landed gentry and affluent, nepo-baby, investment-leisure class.
I say all that while also agreeing with you in one part -- and that's that I won't defend small business owners as a group from an accusation that any number of them are 'midwits.' Nothing about being a small business owner makes you a good person, and indeed I know from experience there are plenty of small business chuds out there mismanaging their precious fiefdoms while thinking they're one big break (any minute now!) from becoming the next Bezos or Musk.
I’m appalled at generalizations that label and lump all small business owners into one “midwit” group. I’d like to believe that sloppy thinking and generalizing were solely maga traits - but the evidence shows otherwise.
An underreported blow to small businesses was the DOGE cut on SCORE, a volunteer organization of about 10,000 volunteer small business mentors. Most, not all, are retired business people, helping people in the communities start and run their business. DOGE cut a $17m annual grant from the SBA, which paid for the IT, marketing infrastructure and a small paid staff. It has devastated SCORE and its ability to help hundreds of thousands of start ups and small businesses across the country. I wish more was written about this impact to small business.
This analysis all makes sense except one thing. Why is the Small Business Optimism Index still so high if those businesses are being hammered by tariff’s, high healthcare costs, inflation, and employment losses??? Are many of them lying, hopelessly optimistic, or they have been able to raise their prices, and hold the price increases? Or time lags on the negative effects from these factors?
I think it’s because they support his bullying personality and they don’t want to admit they made a mistake. If they could vote for him a third time they would. Nothing is worse to them than being called a liberal. Not even their pockets being drained.
As a small business owner, I can attest to this (though I have never been MAGA).
Since my company is fully remote, all employees and I were on ACA plans, and the company covered 70% of the premiums. Those costs were set to jump 100% in 2026, though we were fortunate to find a plan that covers us all (with higher deductibles and copays, of course), for just about 15% higher.
A bigger problem for us is that my company serves other small businesses and non-profits. Between DOGE cuts, the BBB, and tariffs, our customer base has evaporated. We'll struggle to survive 2026 because our customers are struggling to survive.
MAGA is nothing but a farce designed to take wealth from the middle class and give it to the 1%.
Trump has always treated small business owners as chumps, whether it is by not paying them for services rendered or as a respectable constituency. In his mind (so called), small business are small fish, only worthy of being preyed upon.
Had a small business for over 40 years. The cost of all insurance was a much bigger deal than taxes.
Few people who have not run a small business appreciate that - workers comp, liability, health/dental, property/material/stock insurance, renter's if you don't own your space, auto, etc If you're unincorporated, self-employed, both shares of medicare/ss on your own income. Malpractice was a big one for us. Even 40 yrs w zero claims. Like liability.
Owning a small business converted me from a righteous liberal to a sympathizer of old-time Republicanism. There are so many realms of governmental interference (many of them very valid for the bad actors out there) that throw obstacles in front of very hard work.
I am grateful for the former Republicans who did not blindly follow their party into the abyss. It is a loss to have their principled positions being abandoned by their barbarian leadership to serve as a reasonable counterpoint to the left.
Owning a small business in a small town made me grateful a broken water main would be fixed quickly, overjoyed when the annual budget vote passed, sad when it didn't and the cuts to our small town school system meant that families with the option to leave our 80% GOP town moved to towns able to support education. Before and into the mid '90s we'd had an influx of young couples looking for a quiet town with band concerts on the green, good schools, library, a YMCA, pre-school, a variety of teams, a Recreation Board with a budget. Defunding promoted by an early version of the Tea Party (Nader trained libertarians) showed up, senior citizens spending their winters in Florida Trailers or Condos were happy to cut back and Mailed In their votes!. We did cut back. Families left. Now we have empty storefronts, the school board imports paying students from China to populate our high school and live in supervised rentals.
Do you mean Norquist rather than Nader? Grover Norquist who made republicans sign his no tax pledge.
Nader was very much a libertarian in his own home town. Hired a "Community Lawyer" who represented his interests and got him state grants to turn an empty bank into a Tort Museum and put a roof on an old factory he'd bought for the law office, showed up at town meetings supporting a newly formed Taxpayers Association to object to full medical benefits and better pay for teachers, smaller classes for special ed kids, the new door on the Library, a proposed parking lot near the YMCA to accommodate swim teams coming to compete with the local kids etc. Sent out letters to the "snowbirds" reminding them to vote against the budget from their trailers in Florida. It was very odd. We'd had bipartisan support from businesses and the public for our town budgets and six figure fund-raisers to expand shelters, the Y, etc before. He and the proto Tea Party were a pain in the neck.
Indeed, inadequate funding of education is another folly of traditional Republicans.
Neglecting schools may save money in the short term, but the societal costs are enormous over time.
Underfunding of religion = an undereducated population: a goal, not a folly of Republicans. Even better, as claimed by Ross Douthat (NYT, 1/18) also, a religiously informed understanding of Americanness (sic).”
Indeed, inadequate funding of education is another folly of traditional Republicans.
What seems like minor budget choices can have long-term consequences—empty storefronts and schools relying on international students show the results clearly.
How efficient was public education before it was “defunded”?
Seriously? So you support no public schools because you don't think they do a good job? Can't wait to see how well we do with an illiterate population.
Good education regardless of the wealth of the parents is a key to a progressive economy. Not private education for the rich & substandard education for the rest.
Just compare the US & Canada. The US has many areas of lower education quality because locally the education is not well funded. Canada has a system of funding lower income areas to ensure that everyone has access to good education (& health care, etc). Europe does even better than Canada.
I grew up in the Chicago suburbs in the 70s and early 80s and attended public schools all the way through high school. The schools I attended were great!!! My junior and senior year of High School were probably equivalent, if not better than, the average junior college today. In addition to rock solid core academics, we had all the extras and a solid vocational education track as well. My high school offered Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian and Latin and AP everything. Plus we had every kind of extracurricular activity you can think of and good facilities for all of them. And no, it wasn't New Trier.
There is a lot that traditional Republicans did that hurt the overall population. Trump just amplified it, and added chaos.
For example, a one-payer health system would cost much less, in public & private costs than the current US system. But traditional Republicans (mostly) opposed. To the benefit of private insurers and the unnecessay waste of competition for a complex universal service.
It is true that red tape is difficult for small businesses, but they get a favourable treatment on taxes.
One-payer health care could save money and simplify the system, but entrenched opposition from traditional Republicans has kept the status quo.
Hi Erik: Amen to those sentiments. Always nice to see your comments here & there (there’s no hiding your name!). I’ve been your fan from Monterey Ma ever since your reporter days.
Hi Wayne!
And I've always been a fan of yours! I'm also a renewed fan of Monterey as my oldest daughter and her new husband have just moved into their house on Brett Road!
Today is not the best day of the year to be in Monterey, but it's certainly a great place to be! :)
There's a Monterey, MA? I'm from Mass and I never heard of it. Where's it located?
Ya bet! Pittsfield is/was our Berkshire County seat. Monterey is south, just east of Great Barrington. And get this topical factoid— Paul Krugman has a part time here.
It’s one thing to support policies in theory, but seeing the impact firsthand can shift your perspective on governance and party loyalty.
Running a small business means juggling a dozen different insurance policies and obligations that most outsiders don’t even consider.
Taxes matter, but rising insurance premiums can really squeeze small business owners.
While taxes are a known cost, it's very hard to budget for random insurance hikes.
A "clever" spam bot using a real human name. Very cute. Reported.
You're really good at spotting this
And it’s gone!
In the game of chess, pawns, the small fry, are there to be sacrificed to protect the more important pieces, in this case the corporate nobility.
Milton
Yes, and as Krugman said America under Trump and oligarchs is moving toward crony capitalism in which big businesses pay Trump for favors which small businesses can't afford.
“I never thought leopards would eat MY face,” sobs woman who voted for the Leopards Eating People’s Faces Party.
It will be interesting to see how small business owners respond to loss of income and greater expenses. Where will they see their self interest as lying come the midterms?
Agree. So many voters who chose Trump are still not willing to accept that they made the wrong choice even as Trump repeatedly hurts them. I think it’s very hard for people to admit they were wrong even as they suffer. Even as their businesses close they may remain loyal to him. Look at the South , which has suffered slower economic growth because of their refusal to integrate , take Medicaid expansion etc yet the still vote Republican.
I remember when presidential candidate Paul Tsongas was booed at the 92’ Democratic Party convention for saying: “You can’t be pro-job and anti-business at the same time.” Small businesses contend with costly regulations that were imposed long before Trump arrived.
Most of the regulations businesses (big and small) rail against are there to protect the environment and workers. Both of which need protecting.
I know people in state government and there is a lot of streamlining of regulation that can be done and still protect the environment, health and safety. Regulations can also be used by incumbents to stifle competition.
I think Ezra Klein's book Abundance was good at pointing out over-regulation. We need one or two good environmental reviews, not ten or twenty.
I must admit, I'm terrified at the Trump administrations slashing of regulation. There's no doubt that the regulations slashed will be ones that are needed and those that are kept are done to advantage those who pay to play.
Sharon ,
Politicians run on platforms to slash red tape , house the homeless and make homes more affordable. And
fail .
It’s going to take more than reducing red tape to get the supply side to overwhelm the demand side to
make America ( almost) affordable again .
Wish I had all the answers-
I read “Abundance “ as well -
a comprehensive plan is needed incorporating big business & wealthy donors- I don’t see it happening- I do see more greed happening.
Regulations impose costs. When the costs rise too high, jobs get eliminated and productivity declines. “Protection” is not free. If Trump’s tariffs are costly and bad, then that it means regulations will be too unless they can be shown to pass a rigorous cost/benefit analysis. But the idea that all the costs will only be passed on to the owners or the rich is a myth.
if they can't comply with regulations enacted to protect the public, they should reconsider whether they should be in business at all. if they can't make a profit while following the law, then they should make room for someone who can. and, our regulations are very soft compared to other developed countries. but, you know this.
Why does the economy run so much better under Democrat administrations ? They must be doing something better than the Republicans.
Assuming (unrealistically) there are no long run effects (good and bad) from prior administrations, can you name the specific things Democrats have done that make an economy run better? (Noting here that no one really runs an economy—it is the sum total of individual activities.)
You mean other than deficits and unemployment levels, among other factors ?
Maybe those who don't feel left out are more motivated to contribute ?
The cultists are staying faithful.
these people are stupid so will blame biden
Biden is long gone. Most small business owners understand clearly where the tariffs came from.
They will blame Biden because he let Trump win.
Please give it a rest.
The owners of small businesses that I've known are not stupid.
I lean to the position that anyone who believed a word Chump said at any time after about 2017 is stupid -- since he was clearly lying every time he opened his mouth. As to the recent election, he'll "bring down prices on day 1"? Give me a break. Oh, I'd add that the stupidity shares space with the racism - they like what he's doing to immigrants and they think he's gonna make America white again. Hard to underestimate these folks.
That reminds me.
After a long diatribe about the superiority of the "white" race, I said "I'm glad I'm not white".
Then was asked what I was then ?
I looked at my hand, compared to my white shirt, and said "a sort of a pinky tan".
Then I invited him to join the human race.
He stopped his inane diatribe.
Knee jerk generalizations like that tend to miss the point.
In this case, these “generalizations” are very specifically true about some individuals - especially in the Trump administration.
The original comment was not specific - it painted all with one brush.
Not necessarily. There’s a noticeable contingent of commenters at the WSJ who are or were Republicans and are against Trump.
You can even find some of them complaining about how tariffs are ruining their businesses.
They're still true to their local maga cults, aren't they? In interviews on local Midwest TV "news" they say it's hurting them but they just have to deal with it cause it's "necessary" cause their maga religions say so.
Much of it depends on the Democrats and/or the rise of Unaffiliated/Independents. The Democratic brand is so terrible thanks to 40 years of FOX and right wing propaganda that a lot of Republicans held their nose and voted for Trump. I've heard several say they just couldn't vote for Harris.
There is also the possibility that Republicans may start to wrest control back from MAGA. Heritage had a big walk-out of personnel who went to Mike Pence's foundation. I'm not a great fan of Republican policy, but there have been a lot of Republicans who have been loyal patriots and have stood up for democracy. It's far harder to go against your friends than your adversaries. MAGA hates the Republicans even more than the Democrats. That's where their real opposition lies.
There is no GOP left to wrest control of. The "party" is now a cabal of racists, religious zealots, xenophobes, neo-nazis, misogynists, and oligarchs with no common ideology. The instant Trump's gone, they'll be at each other with knives. If the Dems were remotely competent, and not totally owned by corporate interests, they would have crushed the GOP many elections ago. Post Citizens United, it's not clear how the US will ever recover from the current dysfunction.
The GOP is its old establishment types attempting to achieve their only real goals, lowest possible taxes and deregulation, while attempting to orchestrate sufficient culture war popularity from a new base of voters who are so far down the totem pole that they care more about triumphalist (self-congratulatory), reactionary politics than their own self-interest.
It's a segment of the establishment that would prefer to do away with (the taxes that support) social security and Medicare preaching in pretend-solidarity with "bedrock patriots" that "social welfare" is crippling to morality and the American way.
That's a very succinct summary of the fiasco.
Fox “News” is the public equivalent of yelling fire in a crowded theater. One is not allowed to do that. Fox spews streams of lies into the general public everyday.
Trump treats all his MAGA voters who are not uber wealthy as chumps. He doesn’t even care that not challenging his party’s anti-vax insanity even though it was his Operation Warp Speed that enabled us to produce the covid vax so quickly killed a lot more of his base than it has Dems. Trump is clearly not anti-vax — he got his shots this year.
He's an opportunist. RFK has a following that he happily co-opted.
Right! The MAHA crowd.
Of course he has a heart. He loves money and power. People, not so much.
When you talk about Chump's love of "people," you can just say "person." Singular. There's one person he cares about, and that's himself. He'd sell his own kids for the right prices, much less the average MAGAt, who are just tools for him to use and discard.
I assumed that he pardoned the insurrectionists so as to attract an even larger bunch next time.
Chum is the word I believe. As in, ground up small fish used to lure more small fish to their deaths. In Atlantic City, Trump was apparently called "Mr. Fifty Percent," because he'd pay small contractors a small down payment, and then some more when they finished; but never more than 50% of the total. He's say he was displeased with their work and refuse to pay the balance. He's apparently cleared nearly a billion dollars this year from his Crypto scams, harvesting chum digitally.
His history of stiffing bank loans is similar. Which is why eventually only Deustche Bank would lend to him; and only because Putin was having his oligarchs funnel money to Germany for just that purpose--to keep his FSB thrall afloat.
And let's not forget how Trump, great entrepreneur that he is, cheated small contractors during his casino days. He has been involved in over 3,500 lawsuits over three decades, most of which involve small contractors suing to get money Trump owed them for work done for Trump's businesses.
So one thing is certain. With friends like Trump, small contractors sure don't need any enemies!
It looks to me that Trump has the same opinion and valuation of American people as he has for small business.
100% correct, Erik Bruun.
Jon Harrison? From Dalton, class of 1981?
he may be right too.
Aren’t they proving him right by voting for him?
Who has tRump not disappointed? Those who have bribed him, which excludes morst all MAGAts. His cultists will not abandon him. Why? He is seen as a god. Just becasue you can't see his halo and wings.
Treating small business owners as chumps reflects a fundamental disregard for the backbone of the economy.
Any problems the Poujadist class incur is down to Biden, NOT to their Supreme Lord.
What happened is Trump killed the immigration reform bill before the election so he could blame Biden for the border problems.
This. Defending virtually any Trump2 policies is not the smartest hill to die on.
He tanked Sinema-Lankford precisely because it *would* have gone a long way towards fixing the border.
And Trump2 *hasn't* been enforcing immigration law--not when they're illegally deporting valid Green Card holders or citizen children. We were told they would only target criminals--but instead are inflicting immense economic pain on construction, agriculture and hospitality.
Regarding GDP numbers, perhaps the best question would be: how much *higher* would they be if Trump2 hadn't engaged in tariffs, mass deportations, and DOGE idiocy? And this all before we tabulate the total federal FY2025 *deficit* for an A++++ economy.
The solution to tariffs is to stop imposing tariffs, especially on our allies.
Subsidies for "people who already have jobs" acknowledges that many jobs don't pay a living wage, therefore people need subsidies in order to afford health insurance.
Is our healthcare system a hot mess? Yes, but that is a whole different problem that Trump is not helping to solve.
Please do not forget that immigration reform was legislated with bipartisan support in 2024, and was ORDERED to be dropped by none other than Donald J Trump, so that is no longer a Democratic problem, it's a Trump and prostrate-Republicans problem.
Economic growth is primarily due to all bets being placed on AI, which may or may not be justified once the bill comes due for the massive electricity requirements those centers require.
1) Our allies were not imposing tariffs on us. The average being something like 2%. And VAT is paid by everyone; it’s not a tariff. To further “muddy” the water, the US largely exported services (research, STEM, etc) rather than goods making it easy for Trump and his ilk to falsely claim that we had unfair and unequal trade. Simply not true when including non-goods exports.
2a) 100% agree that when people have jobs and still need help, society has failed. The rich, and frankly most people, d work hard to keep taxes low. Corporate America will not pay a livable wage. So we do need to greatly increase the minimum wage at the federal level, but Americans can’t swallow what that means for our gross consumerism. We need to totally restructure the tax system to be borne by the wealthy, but Americans think that might be them someday if they win the lottery or hit it big as an influencer! Never mind they would still have oodles of money.
2b) Not really sure why you’re talking about people taking early retirement. I was unaware that this is a rampant “problem”. However, this again is a sad bag of garbage that Americans have been sold. Most Americans have totally just accepted that we should work 40+ hours, 5 days a week until 67 (though many people work many more hours, more days, and more years due to need, employer expectations, and/or constant availability due to tech advances).
3) The Bipartisan Border Bill was actually a very good looking move toward appropriate immigration reform. It was supported by both sides and would have passed had Trump not scuttled it. I highly suggest you look it up on a nonpartisan website. Most Americans don’t like what was happening prior, regardless of political affiliation. What politicians on either side say is not representative of actual people, not anymore. However, we need immigrants. People do need asylum. We also do need to know who is coming and have every right to refuse entry. There is plenty of space to do all of those things. The problem, like many things in America, policy has languished as politicians are more interested in running on issues than actually working together to address them.
4) Economic growth is more complicated than you want it to be. It is true that it hasn’t cratered as some thought, but that doesn’t make it strong. Many factors come into play. AI growth has unquestionably propped up the economy. Businesses saw the writing on the wall and stockpiled before tariffs really hit. I also think people were finishing out this year “big”. I think spending will plummet moving forward, especially as health insurance costs rise and businesses start passing on tariff costs in the new year. As the literal and less tangible costs of attacks on research and education come into play, this will further hurt our economy. As foreigners from all countries become disinclined to come here, for travel, work, school, that will hurt us. It is also highly likely that employment numbers will be revised down for the last quarter. All of this in conjunction with tariffs, handing tech over to China, dragging us backwards with finite energy sources, Trump economic policy will only continue to harm most Americans.
5) “Democratic narrative”…as if there isn’t a Republican one? This is a huge part of the problem. Instead of regurgitating “talking points”, buzzwords, and jargon, we should all be seeking out multiple and varying sources, critically thinking, and coming away with something closer to the truth than just what “our side” wants us to think. There are truly nefarious actors who need to be kicked out. After dumping the old and the trash (on both sides btw), engaging with “the other side” in a faithful and respectful manner is the only way through this.
Comparing specific items is cherry picking. There will always be spots that are higher or lower. The overall average is what matters. And it is equally important to not exclude certain types of imports/exports simply because they are not as straightforward to measure or work against the narrative being sold.
And many trained professionals would absolutely disagree with “dubious claims about GMO and food safety”. Again, you are using over simplified, divisive talking points rather than looking at what the research actually shows. It doesn’t matter what country they are from or where the research takes place. The EU, for example, is actually looking to keep their people safe which their people actually demand. They are willing to pay higher costs for more regulation and higher standards. Americans are not, and our health (and subsequent healthcare costs) suffer for it.
Tech is another area where much of the world is realizing what the evidence continues to point to…it has detrimental effects that need to be addressed through government regulations. We should never trust that companies will do what is best for us. At best, they have budgets to meet and shareholders to please. More often, they are concerned with making every penny possible to hell with the destruction left in their wake to do so. The EU is right to demand consumers be able to fix their devices, not need special inputs for each different device, expect companies to make a reasonable effort to protect minors from predatory behavior, etc. The world of today practically requires devices, sites, apps whether we want to use them or not. As such, these companies must be compelled to serve the consumer since we have no where else to turn.
I don't know what your beef is about "subsidies for people who already have jobs.” If you're talking about the health insurance subsidies, many employers do not provide health insurance as a benefit of employment. My last employer did not, and the bill for my wife and myself was over $20,000/yr. For someone making minimum wage, that would be nearly his or her entire yearly income.
In a sensible system, no one would have a cost of $20,000 for insurance. But that is the effect of the US system, which relies on difficult to regulate private insurance companies.
The total cost, public & private, is considerably less on a one payer system, like in Canada, Europe, Japan, Taiwan, etc.
The right wing resistance to a one payer system where the govt pays an important role is causing important waste.
This despite the supposed Republican stand against taxes and waste in govt.
I never got a subsidy at all. I said that's what we had to pay out of pocket for health insurance.
https://www.lankford.senate.gov/issues/calling-out-bidens-chaos-at-the-southern-border-pushing-to-secure-the-us-from-bad-actors-around-the-world/
If you are unaware of this bill, and the huge amount of publicity that surrounded it, I have to question your nationality.
Definitely not American.
Aaron is a troll. Ignore him.
there was a bipartisan bill to do just that and the orange asshat convinced his gop minions to kill it in the senate before the election
You could have the most perfect bill and it wouldn't matter. MAGA Trump and the GOP automatically reject anything that goes against their hypocritical bigoted narrative. Immigrants (that Trump doesn't like) need to be kicked out of the country...period. Even though his and his vice-president's family are the same as the people he kicks out.
Since Obama wanted to be the great compromiser like Clinton, the GOP has refused to pass anything proposed by a Democrat. Obamacare/Romneycare was a Republican plan co-sponsored in Congress in the 1990s by Republicans like Chuck Grassley. When Obama proposed it as an (inadequate) compromise, the hypocrites in the GOP acted as if it was a Communist plot to kill grandma.
And Trump and the GOP suffered zero electoral consequences for doing so.
That's because the lame-stream and reich wing media allowed him to make the election about whatever fake issue Lying Don would bring up. His voters are the people who believe that fake wokeness and bathrooms are some of the biggest issues facing America. Trump's constant BS gets him billions in free media coverage every year from the big media oligopoly.
And let's not forget that in an excellent economy where egg prices were driven up by disease, those egg prices somehow became the only economic indicator they reported on. Egg prices are lower now, but somehow that does not extrapolate to a lower bill at the register.
Writing a better immigration law is the only thing that makes sense; the problem with that is the Republicans have used the racism of illegal immigration as a campaign issue for so long, they can't backtrack now - especially not now.
The map is not the territory. I.e., the "economy" very much did not grow 3.8% or 4.3%. What really happened was that GDP, a measure of the economy, grew by 3.8% and 4.3%.
Maybe it is true that often enough, when our measurement grows it means the economy also grew. But part of the reason the Biden camp got stuck in this pattern of arguing against a "vibe cession" and now Trump is repeating that same mistake is that both Republicans and Democrats forget that the map is not the territory. Ceci n'est pas une pipe.
Measurement error is a thing, for one. For another, anytime you try to do something like reduce a complex system (i.e., the world's largest economy) to a single number summary, you're by necessity making subjective choices about leveling some details and sharpening others. If this editorial guesswork is done wrong, then the number as a measurement does not reflect the economy accurately anymore, and the map is an even less faithful representation of the territory.
Trump and his minions are not only violating the current immigration law, they are violating the due process protections of the Bill of Rights. No one is dismissing reported economic growth as irrelevant, however, it is clear that the growth is not being distributed equally, and some would say, unfairly. Tariffs are a regressive tax on Americans, and reduces economic growth, all things being equal. It appears that much of the growth that occurred in 2025 is due to AI investments, especially data centers. This is likely to continue to support economic growth in 2026 and the fiscal stimulus of the OBB act will hit in 2Q 2026. However, this is likely to be accompanied by inflation well above the 2% Fed target. And the balance of payments will remain a problem as foreigners flee from US investments. [And stay away from the US because of the new really onerous requirements for tourist visas.] The wild card is monetary policy. Trump's hand picked chairman is likely to materially reduce interest rates. How will the long end of the bond market react to that?
seems like somebody here likes numbers (even if the numbers are phoney) over people. Never mind the lying, double speak, and con of our government.
Most of the 2nd & 3rd Q growth was in consumer spending. Most other sectors were down. The increase in consumer spending has been attributed by some economists to be consumers buying more than normal, particularly durable goods, with the expectation that the tariffs will cause significant increases in costs later. This appears to be supported by decreased spending for the 2025 holiday season. A September poll indicated 84% of consumers expect to cut back over the next six months, citing rising prices, new tariffs, and the higher cost of living. A November poll showed consumers expecting to spend 5% less than last year. The actual spending will be available in the next few weeks. It will be interesting to see if the predictions were accurate. Meanwhile, with the federal statistics now highly questionable, comparable numbers from other sources will have to suffice.
Kudos for going against the current of this Substack post with your perspective. The new regime of statisticians throws shade on the numbers but it's always good to have different and reasonable points of view.
The FRED reports show that GDP was steadily increasing through 2024 and has continued to increase at the same rate this year up through July. The FRED does not yet report figures for the rest of 2025. Trump did NOT inherit a weak economy and growth was positive through 1st quarter 2025.
Not so. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/GDP/
First question we need to ask: is this GDP number real? Then: will it repeat in the next quarter, or merely be a one-quarter outlier? After that, we need to understand what the drivers of this number might be (tariffs, smaller trade deficit, excess spending by top income quintile) and who has not benefitted from this apparent surge in GDP (the bottom 60% of income earners, small businesses negatively affected by tariffs).
The rate of unemployment only tells you how many people are currently unemployed and nothing about the earnings of the remaining workers. Its also worth noting that the current measure of poverty (based on a 1963 measure) is, as author Michael Green has suggested, woefully inadequate to measure actual poverty. A quick look at household incomes by quintile should make clear that we have a great many American families who are struggling to afford what we consider the necessities of life, let alone the fabled middle class lifestyle.
The immigration numbers during the Biden administration were not not just a US phenomena, but world wide. By the time Biden left office, the numbers had fallen dramatically, and most immigrants who reached our borders were not granted asylum. As other have noted, a bipartisan immigration reform bill was offered near the end of Biden's term, but was rejected by Trump and the GOP have offered nothing since to address this issue. It is weak sauce to keep blaming Biden when the GOP hold both the House and Senate, and could write whatever immigration reform bill they wanted.
No, a 4.0%+ GDP number should not be dismissed out of hand, but unless we also know what is driving this number, we merely have data, but not understanding.
I assume, from your comment, you have not been a consumer of reliably accurate reporting of political and economic news. You might want to try that, you'll still have questions, but much more interesting ones, IMO
Ignore him. He’s a troll.
And your sources of information are?
Article in WaPo today says that bankruptcies have reached a 15-year high, not seen since the Great Recession. Tariffs are one of the main reasons, along with inflation and high interest rates. Small businesses have been particularly hard-hit by tariffs and I recall a story awhile back about a small business owner with major inventory needed for Christmas sales stuck in a customs warehouse because they couldn't afford the surprise tariffs. Americans need to wise up to the fact that Dems are better for the economy and have been for a long time now.
That’s not saying much. They’re both crap. Both are defenders of a finance dominated economy. I sometimes wonder why Americans don’t elect Larry Fink and be done with it. Lie back and think of England while they’re being screwed. After all, he is Co-President of the WEF. What could go wrong for the wealthy oligarchs who de facto run the world.
“They’re both crap”. This is the kind of mindless anti intellectualism that got us in this predicament. Anyone who thinks we’d be in this position if Harris was President is being ridiculous.
It's arrogant pseudo intellectualism.
Right. Cynicism. Hate on both their houses. I’m the only one in the right.
If you had watched Harris from abroad, as I did, you’d be astonished at the number of “anti-intellectuals” in the world who wondered whether she and Trump were best America had. Harris was seen as having the charisma of a wet fish.
I guess we’re different in what we look for as a leader. I prefer a competent technocrat as opposed to a dancing orange clown who destroys fact checkers on a minute by minute basis, delighting the gullible rubes. Also, anyone who claims Harris had the charisma of a wet fish is just confirming how embarrassingly ill informed they are in their echo chamber. I found her dancing with her sorority and showing her own recipe for masala dosa to be delightful. However, I voted for her based on her overwhelming competence. When compared to the alternative, it wasn’t even a question. Then again, I make my choices rationally and not based on feelings.
Twice Americans voted (or chose to stay home) to elect a known fraud over a qualified, competent woman. Worse yet: Trump 2.0 openly campaigned on what he would do and then he did it.
Fooled me once, shame on you...fooled me twice: shame on me.
Full disclosure: I am an American who did not vote for Trump either time.
I’m pretty sure this comment applies to almost every American commenting on here, except for a few trolls and a few Dunning Krugers like David.
Charisma is overrated and a product of our sick, celebrity-obsessed culture. Trump has charisma, the charisma of a villain, a clown, a buffoon, a conman. Biden, on the other hand, had a personal warmth that was often charming, but not celebrity-grade charisma. He led a team of uniformly competent and qualified people who worked something of a miracle in the skillful recovery from the pandemic.
There's every reason to believe that it would continue under Harris, just as there's every reason to believe that Al Gore would have continued the generally good record of the Clinton years, minus the personal scandals, thus probably avoiding 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and the Great Recession. But a distracted and propagandized populace swallowed the hook of ridiculous lies about lowering prices and voted for the destructive sadist whose campaign would make sideshow barkers blush.
I'll take boring, competent governance over mad-dog "charisma" every time.
Manohar, thank you. In addition, so many American voters focus on their own racism and misogyny, rather than the competence and policy proposals of the candidates. But I guess it's not polite for me to point out the racist basis of others' votes. Sorry not sorry.
People vote in the Presidential election that pay no attention what so ever to current affairs unless it's entertainment based. A lot of people enjoy conspiracy theories and are open about it. Many are susceptible to lies and propaganda. Prejudice is also a factor.
It's obvious that more of these voters came out and cast their vote for Trump than those who are better informed and make rational choices.
I don't think Harris had charisma and I think she was a bad choice for 2024. The college educated are only a third of the population. More needs to be done to appeal to the uninformed. They will not let you "teach" them what is right.
This would matter if we were in high school and this were a popularity contest.
Do you seriously think that popularity contests don’t play a critical role in American politics. No one else with a brain, call them intellectuals or not, would agree with you. When last did genuine competence trump popularity? All a candidate has to repeat ad nauseam is “we are the richest, most powerful country in the world” and he or she is half way to the White House.
Davy, lad, there is a circularity to your argument. You claim that Harris lost because she lacked charisma. Since this is not an undisputed fact, many thought she was charismatic (cf. her debate performance), it is incumbent on you to support your claim. If you read Paul's columns, you will notice that he does this; he backs up his statements with charts, data. surveys, etc.
However, you don't! Your argument is a snake swallowing its own tail: Harris lost because she lacks charisma and you know that she lacks charisma because she lost. Mate, you have adopted MAGA logic!
Obama. 2012. Just quit while you’re behind.
Do you seriously think that popularity contests don’t play a critical role in American politics. No one else with a brain, call them intellectuals or not, would agree with you. When last did genuine competence trump popularity? All a candidate has to repeat ad nauseam is “we are the richest, most powerful country in the world” and he or she is half way to the White House.
Boris Johnson ring anyone's bell? Seriously, David? I don't know where you're from, but since when have people from abroad had the market cornered on competent leadership? I could even go back in history to put way too fine a point on it. You're pure arrogance and then after that, pure misogynistic BS.
The best you’ve got is whataboutism? What difference does it make if other countries have or had mediocre leaders. Even scoundrels. The question surely is about addressing the shortcomings of America’s democracy, unless you think there aren’t any.
I’m curious, does the lack of charisma in any particular female politician, anywhere, automatically constitute misogyny? If so, what am I to do with my admiration for Sheinbaum in Mexico or Meloni in Italy, to name but a few. Seek exoneration?
It makes all the difference when you're throwing rocks; "People who live in glass houses..." comes to mind.
Are you arguing that because, in your opinion (not mine), Harris lacked "charisma" she was not qualified to be a "competent leader"?
Some said Jim Jones of Jonestown was chock full of charisma. Hitler, too. Mussolini had a good run. Mexico's political and economic history isn't the best, but I agree - I like Sheinbaum, too. Maybe Mexico's socio/economic status will improve because of her "charisma".
I wouldn't try to seek exoneration were I you.
Oh! Charisma! Wow! You know what to look for in a leader!
It’s not me who looks for charisma. It was a majority of the American electorate that seemed to have been dazzled by his BS spoken with oomph. That’s how it looked to me and many others. In my view Obama was the only President since blow job Bill to have combined charisma with competence in equal measure.
So you choose leaders by their charisma? If you need surgery, do you interview every surgeon in the hospital evaluating their charisma? I'm thinking you would indeed.
Unless of course a woman had more charisma, in which case new criteria would have to be hurriedly established.
The leaders of both party organizations are nothing but big corporate sell-outs as big money rules their world. The GOP is nothing more than extreme right wingers who act as if anyone to the normal side of Trump is a Communist, Socialist or Liberal. The majority of Democrats in Congress are the DNC approved candidates who are center-right corporatists on economic issues and center-left on social issues, which is basically what most Republicans were before they went extreme.
But both-siderism is nothing more than a way to justify the extremism of the GOP. Neither are what they need to be, but they aren't the same. It wasn't Democratic judges who enabled Citizens United and the other garbage coming out of the Supreme Court and Congress.
So you form your political opinions based on a few influencers online who spit out soundbites and doctored images appealing the to the rage instinct. Kids these days I swear...
(That's the only possible explanation I can come up with for somebody who can't tell the difference between Trump's GOP and today's Democrats).
To be honest, I don’t know what an influencer is. What I do know is I read American, British, Australian and Chinese newspapers. I watch American channels on TV, Al Jazeera and Chinese English language television. And by the way, there are many Americans who don’t distinguish between the Republicans and the Democrats. Just saying.
Absolutely. There are many who don't know the difference between a lot of things about politics and just go by a few soundbites they hear in the media and hold completely uninformed opinions out of total ignorance.
It's just surprising to see that here in *this* blog in *this* comments section, that's all...
Stereotypes take a long time to unravel, and Dems need to get better at explaining the history of the last few Dem & Rep administrations with regards to the economy. After all, Bush I & II, Trump 1.0 & 2.0 ran the economy into the ground, while Clinton had better prosperity than Reagan, while Obama took us out of the Great Recession (if slowly)!
Today, a MAGA type told me that it wasn't really tariffs, it was "other things," that tariffs "haven't had a chance to work yet."
They are still snowed and still believing that tariffs will do what they have never done.
I was a contractor (small business!) for many years and it made me deeply skeptical of our crazy expensive medical system, which I had to endure in my years of self-employment. On the other hand, I eventually found a franchise to get my hair cut because I got tired of being subjected to fox news and other insults while paying for that service at a local small business. There’s nothing ‘holy’ about small businesses other than there’s a lot of them. I’m similarly tired of the romance with farmers who get bailed out after voting for Trump.
Every time Dems have tried to fix our healthcare system the right has lied about it (death panels for instance) and a lot of Dems who voted to improve healthcare got booted out of office and Dems lost control of Congress (Claire McCaskill and Kathy Hochul were victims). The media did little to combat the lies and sometimes aided and abetted them. That happened under both Clinton and Obama.
Today the media clearly sympathizes with Republicans who cave to Trump because of their fear of being losing their seats but they have never acknowledge that Democrats have taken knowingly taken that risk to improve people’s healthcare coverage.
Compare the death-panel lies to Joni Ernst’s infamous quip about how we’re all going to die so taking away Medicaid doesn’t matter.
I hope there is a special circle of hell just for Joe Lieberman.
Good point.
"Death panels", aka triage.
From the outside, it seems one of the signature features of US health care is that it tries to do away with the concept of triage, which is something that not even doctors in Star Trek think they can do without.
As far as I'm aware, even in the most "advanced" systems, patients aren't just given anything they might need. If someone requires an ultra-expensive gene therapy but is in their eighties, it probably should be weighed against the benefit of providing life-long insulin to hundreds of people. That there might be a mechanism to ensure that money is spent efficiently and maximise overall healthcare is not evil. In reality, to have humans who are accountable for that is far superior to pretending triage doesn't exist and hiding behind AI to find reasons to reject people.
I believe the "death panels" was paying for a doctor's visit to discuss end of life choices. Nothing more. Most medical expenses occur in the last 6 months of life. A lot of people would choose hospice if they had better information. Many times the lifespan is longer in hospice than receiving "treatment".
There was a lot of money riding on killing those discussions. What shocked me was they got away with such a blatant lie and weren't slammed as liars. To me, that was a tipping point. Lies, blatant lies had no cost to them anymore.
They also lie about Canada’s single payer system, saying mobs of Canadians go to the US for healthcare.
I’ve never met anyone who did and I’m a 74 year old Canadian. Furthermore, you’d have to be wealthy to pay for it. I’m not saying no one does, just that it’s a small number.
I guess they prefer insurance company death panels (unjustified denials) because they make money off of it.
Death panels are now be implemented for original Medicare. Original Medicare enrollees in six states will have claims reviewed by AI for utilization and being necessary, with the AI companies holding the federal contracts keeping the money saved.
Parts of the media are run by Trump friendlies.
Well, that's the way it was when America was "great."
Conveniently using "religions" to hide their innate unabated immorality.
You are so right, especially about our expensive and relatively ineffective medical system and being forced to endure the propaganda on Fox News.
With respect to farmers, their government subsidies this year are relatively low so they might not be feeling romantic about Trump. The subsidies only cover about half of the losses they suffered after Trump tariffs ruined the market with China they depended on to sell their products. If we consider that arrangement to be Trumpian "crony capitalism," I think only one of the cronies involved (Trump) got a decent deal. I'm no expert on this. For reliable info, see the Substack called "Art Cullen's Notebook." Mr. Cullen also is the Pulitzer Prize-winning editor of "The Storm Lake (Iowa) Times Pilot" which covers the plight of farmers in the Mid-West.
Would you prefer a watery tart handing out swords? 😉
CJ in SF, your reply confuses me. I said nothing about Dems and the Iowa Caucuses. Your second and third points both concern the argument over farm subsidies which I did refer to. Are they politically corrupt bribes or, as Galbraith said, a rational correction to a clear free market failure? You seem to be saying both of those things and so, are coming down on both sides of the argument. Your last point is clearly true, but has nothing to do with anything in my post.
Thanks. Good points. I wasn't aware the Democrat's new primary calendar had changed in that way and I also think ethanol is not a part of good energy policy. Your idea of Trump's real motivation for the subsidies is spot-on.
According to You Tuber "From Farm to Taber", farmers are NOT working class, and supported Trump for the same reasons other business people, like the small business owners under discussion, did. There was one particular to them - Biden was beginning to crack down on abuses of the visa program they use for seasonal labor, H-2A.
I wonder how those small business owners/farmers feel now about labor being force ably removed from their fields, warehouses and construction sites. Hmm.
I've heard a lot of whining, but they don't say a word about who is responsible. 🙄
Yes, Republicans are crap. Democrats are merely problematic. Problems can be solved. Crap just happens.
Government should be used to provide services that are essential services and important to be left in the hand of profit driven companies. The Rest of the developed world has come to terms with providing medical services at a fraction (1/2 or less) of the cost with a Medicare like core service. Why can't America???
Because medical care in the US is provided by profit-driven companies.
(Retired primary care physician). George Patterson, you are right. I feel the profit motive has no place in health care.
The U.S. economy runs on small business.
I go to a franchise chain that exclusively runs sports coverage on their TVs, which is much better then Faux. (I have little interest in sports.) That likely gives away which one it is. It helps that their services are top notch. I have no idea what the politics of the local franchise owners are as no one talks about it.
Every other small business owner I've come across here runs Faux. Anyone know of a good TV remote app for Android? 😉
That’s the one!! So funny
Another issue small business owners face is taxation. They're at a sour spot where because, given the size and sophistication of a lot of small businesses, they get hit for most of the taxes they owe. Compare that to larger corporations which can more easily take advantage of numerous tax exemptions to reduce their tax burden.
A successful single member LLC owner pays a ~15% self-employment tax, and 10%-37% based on the owner's individual income due to the pass-through nature of single member LLCs. So, if you are a successful small business owner, you pay a good bit in taxes relatively speaking (up to 50% on your owner draws) compared to CEOs at big corporations, or even their own employees.
Larger corporations can engage in more sophisticated tax loss harvesting to pay effectively 0% in taxes, and the billionaire CEOs can "buy, borrow, and die" to avoid paying taxes. That makes the taxation of small business owners *relatively* regressive.
Sure... a small business owner making +$600k can afford taxes better than a minimum wage employee, so it isn't *actually* regressive. But successful small business owners don't compare themselves to their employees, they compare themselves to Bezos and Zuckerberg, et al.
In theory small business owners should be fighting systemic factors that created this problem for them in the tax code. In that sense, they ought to be a natural fit for an "eat the rich" coalition. But in practice a lot of small business owners come to resent their relatively high taxes while identifying (correctly or incorrectly) with the wealthy upper class. This leads to them resenting the tax man (aka the government) and therefore are increasingly annoyed with Democrats and favor Republicans.
The tariffs are hurting Trump with his base so much because he's screwing over this part of his base. r/LeopardsAteMyFace is filled with small business owners (including farmers!) talking about how they are getting creamed by import dues.
This is a great comment. I own and operate a sole proprietor LLC providing professional consulting services. Last year I paid about 16.5% federal income tax on net profits, plus Social Security taxes as employer and as employee.
I can only gaze with envy upon companies like Amazon and Google who get away with routinely paying more like 4 or 5% annually — and have actually paid zero federal income taxes in some recent years. (Because they are small, struggling enterprises that need all the help they can get to survive, I guess.)
If only I had the resources to hire my own army of lobbyists to write the tax laws in D.C! But I don’t, so I do the heavy lifting for the Big Boyz. So it goes.
Perhaps you might try claiming that all your profits come from Ireland? That's how Apple does it.
A lot of people would be shocked to learn the definition of “small business” and how widely it varies based upon the annual gross income, employee count, and business type as categorized by North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) codes that the Small Business Administration (SBA) uses to define what qualifies as a "small business" for federal contracting and loan programs. As a former partner of a small business professional services company that held local, state, and federal contracts that definition can vary from an annual gross of $1M to $100M (if not higher now, my recollection dates to the 2000’s and early 2010’s). I know of companies near the top range that had politically well connected owners that routinely used them to stretch the definition of their business categories to secure large federal contracts that previously went to those at the small end of the range. But across the board, almost all of the small and big “small” business owners were anti-tax, less regulation followers of St. Ronnie, as was one of my business partners. I guess I was an outlier.
'Petite-bourgeois reactionaries' as my Marxist friend calls them. More broadly, lower middle class voters tend to have strongly reactionary traits. Perhaps due to the vulnerability of their modest socio-economic privileges they reflexively side with wealthy elites in the false belief they are on the same side. Daily Mail readers epitomise this sort of ghastly culture.
What's that phrase going around these days? "An upper middle class person is closer to being homeless than to being a billionaire" or something?
A lot of small business owners are not poor, but could easily be so. A farmer points out that farmers vote for Trump because they tend to be wealthy, but that all can change with loss of immigrant labor and tariffs preventing other countries from buying what they are selling. Also, they are counting on bail outs from Trump. Here is a farmer explaining what is going on with farmers.
https://youtu.be/badGHJLDpP8?si=esWBO95MyX2teyd_
Her analysis of abuses of the H-2A program,which Biden was reforming, was pretty damning. Illegal labor could leave if abused, H-2A workers can't. A lot of farmers liked that.
Yes it is damning. We know that Trump sets things up for even greater abuses, but I have been saying that slavery is alive and ongoing in the USA in many ways. We should have people fighting that.
Sarah Taber (the woman in that video) rocks. Her other videos too.
She's a serious academic with a quite impressive CV, although she doesn't parade around her PhD or otherwise makes a big deal of that.
Unfortunately, she's probably an exception in the farming community, precisely because of these credentials.
Yes, I think she makes a good point. It wasn't and isn't a surprise.
The best "cons" are true.
And despite the economic disaster of Brexit, Brexiteers and Daily Mail readers still proclaim that they ‘won back control’ - of what?
A sinking ship?
Harsh. My point being political support is a ‘religion’. No chance of changing minds even as they are dragged off to the Debtors Prison. They blame everyone else but themselves and become more entrenched.
Same here in the UK. Small businesses and farmers have suffered (although they were more likely to have voted Brexit). Trade to and from Europe has been something many small businesses have given up on, focusing more on domestic market. Centre-right parties that radicalise to populist right become less friendly to business.
Two days ago I saw that an old friend had moved to a medium sized town in Central California. I remembered the town and saw that they still had a local newspaper and that I could see it on line. I was curious as to how the community could have changed and started reading the "local" news. The one highlight that struck me was are article about the previous year and the number of businesses that were closed or out of business. Some were chains but most seemed to be small businesses, but essential to the community such as pharmacies and hardware stores. I immediately saw this an economic threat if it is being repeated around the country. It is either more reliance on online shopping or a real contraction of the economy.
It could be both. In the aftermath of the financial crisis in 2008 there was an economic contraction which left fewer local businesses. This helped Amazon capture more of the market.
Covid also helped home delivery companies out. My next door neighbor still has much of her food delivered. She's not the only one in the neighborhood to do so.
My partner and I own a successful small business. We have worked hard and invested back in our business to make it better for our members. Small businesses are part of community they live in as opposed to the real issue, The Barrons". Corporations buying up everything beneath them is the issue for Americans. I am solidly a democrat as is my partner .
The wealth gap is hideous and we pay a lot of taxes and resent the fact the people at the top (the real MAGA) have caused so much hardship as well as gaining so much power.
We try hard to pay our employees well as they are "our community". We see them everyday and realize without our employees we would not exist.
Let's talk about the issue of the greed at the top!
Please do not lump all small business owners into the pot with the disgusting right wing MAGA crowd. Suggesting small business owners are MAGA is akin to a bias that immigrants are criminals.
I am sure there are many small business owners who are MAGA and many who are not.
I think small business get the shaft [in addition to whatever the president and Congress is doing] simply because in the US large, wealthy companies can hire defense lawyers and have the political clout to get off the hook, while small business owners do not have this power. We all saw this in the 2008 banking crisis where the Treasury raced to rescue the 'system' but did nothing to help the mortgage and pension losers, and in many other well publicized debacles over the last 70 years.
I worked at EPA for a couple of decades and I met frequently with many small and very large business owners in many high dollar nationally significant CAA and Superfund enforcement actions.
Generally the small business owner was hammered, penalized far more in EPA enforcement settlements than the big polluting corporations.
The large polluters were causing far greater harm, OBVIOUSLY, but the big polluters had the lawyers, resources and significant political clout to negotiate down the penalties and remedies.
They never faced serious criminal pollution liability because the WH and DOJ shield them and blocked it.
But the small business owners never had such help and could not afford extended negotiations in civil settlement so they paid and paid which was in my view counter productive because all it really achieved was that it hurt the owner finacially, bringing him close to ruin no matter how much the penalty was discounted.
The big companies easily exploited Superfund and bankruptcy laws to avoid liability while small companies of course could not do so because they had little resources, time and lawyers, to help them. The politicians, the elected officials in states and federal government all know this, BTW.
I was a founding partner in a small business (custom design and custom manufacturing in Manhattan) for 28 years. It started with four of us, and, when I left, employed about 35. Rather than give my input on Prof. Krugman's post, I'd rather just write that Tony Bennet and Lady Gaga provide the best winter/spring relationship I've experienced. Well, I will add, that as a born, raised, and educated NYC fellow of nearly Trump's age, I knew who Trump was and is, inside and out, and, I would never have even let him in our door.
Republican doctrine, since it's all lies or wishful thinking at best, only works if they play off of Democrats who are mostly running things and holding it together. When Republicans fully get their way they destroy everything. They're imperialists, and that plays out internally as well with exploitative policies. Exploitation is a fact of life for them. Smart people play to win. Idiots and dreamers don't.
Robert Bork extolled the benefits of monopolies. Earl Butz encouraged corporate agriculture and consolidation. Haley Barbour and others led a revolution in lobbying that replaced democracy with whatever government run by money is, kleptocracy in our case. Republicans used to tell us what they were doing. Who knows if they believed it but the results are in since Reagan. We know it was all lies.
Mr Krugman you really hit the nail on the head here.
He is echoed by Jared Bernstein, who wrote "It has been a good year for most of America’s biggest companies, with surging profits and enthusiasm for artificial intelligence propelling stocks to record highs. But for many small businesses, it has been just the opposite.
At small businesses, which are unable to withstand economic headwinds as easily as their larger counterparts, years of high inflation, increasingly cautious consumers and tariffs are weighing on earnings and prompting cutbacks. Over the past six months, private firms with fewer than 50 workers have steadily shed jobs, according to payroll processor ADP, cutting 120,000 in November alone. Midsize and, especially, large firms have continued to add jobs."
I hate how this country romanticizes small businesses. Every aspect of owning/ working for one completely sucks and the owners are all hustle bro, midwits that think they’re the self-sustaining, salt-of-the-earth.
I'd disagree... I think the opportunity for folks with an entrepreneurial bend to do their own thing is part of the American dream and what makes America exceptional. The stuff you mention, as far as it being a lot of work and risk and suck, is true, but the payoff includes being your own boss, which is great. Conversely, the American dream is also the freedom to not do that if you don't want to. Which is also great.
Again, in theory, America ought to be a place where if you want to, you can sell a something and go on your own, and you don't *need* by necessity to sign up to be a cog in a machine. See: the various folks on substack going indie, for example one Dr. Krugman. We all benefit from Krugman's departure from NYT, good riddance.
In practice, small business owners get spanked by systemic factors compared to larger corporations in exactly the same way workers get spanked compared to the landed gentry and affluent, nepo-baby, investment-leisure class.
I say all that while also agreeing with you in one part -- and that's that I won't defend small business owners as a group from an accusation that any number of them are 'midwits.' Nothing about being a small business owner makes you a good person, and indeed I know from experience there are plenty of small business chuds out there mismanaging their precious fiefdoms while thinking they're one big break (any minute now!) from becoming the next Bezos or Musk.
Small businesses hire more people than large corporations. Small businesses are the backbone of the US economy.
I’m appalled at generalizations that label and lump all small business owners into one “midwit” group. I’d like to believe that sloppy thinking and generalizing were solely maga traits - but the evidence shows otherwise.
An underreported blow to small businesses was the DOGE cut on SCORE, a volunteer organization of about 10,000 volunteer small business mentors. Most, not all, are retired business people, helping people in the communities start and run their business. DOGE cut a $17m annual grant from the SBA, which paid for the IT, marketing infrastructure and a small paid staff. It has devastated SCORE and its ability to help hundreds of thousands of start ups and small businesses across the country. I wish more was written about this impact to small business.
Capitalism doesn't like small. It says be big, Get bigger and stronger. Small is weaker and more vulnerable. Small means loser. In a capitalist world.
This analysis all makes sense except one thing. Why is the Small Business Optimism Index still so high if those businesses are being hammered by tariff’s, high healthcare costs, inflation, and employment losses??? Are many of them lying, hopelessly optimistic, or they have been able to raise their prices, and hold the price increases? Or time lags on the negative effects from these factors?
I think it’s because they support his bullying personality and they don’t want to admit they made a mistake. If they could vote for him a third time they would. Nothing is worse to them than being called a liberal. Not even their pockets being drained.
LBJ said something about that once.
I think hopeless optimism is a good part of it. Plus no one likes to admit they were conned.
I think you are correct. Dead men tell no tales…
As a small business owner, I can attest to this (though I have never been MAGA).
Since my company is fully remote, all employees and I were on ACA plans, and the company covered 70% of the premiums. Those costs were set to jump 100% in 2026, though we were fortunate to find a plan that covers us all (with higher deductibles and copays, of course), for just about 15% higher.
A bigger problem for us is that my company serves other small businesses and non-profits. Between DOGE cuts, the BBB, and tariffs, our customer base has evaporated. We'll struggle to survive 2026 because our customers are struggling to survive.
MAGA is nothing but a farce designed to take wealth from the middle class and give it to the 1%.
Make Americans Grovel Again.