I love you, Paul Krugman, and I guess that your reasoning and writing are helping many people, such as myself, get through to April 5th, when our numbers can begin to show how many now understand there is a madman in the White House and what are we going to do about it?
I have been calling this a kakistocracy and I guess it fits right in that its 'policies' would be founded in delusional thinking... and I use the word 'thinking' loosely.
All forms of fascism are kakistocracies. Fascism vitally needs a dysfunctional government. That's because its propaganda is based on the populist "elites/establishment versus the people" idea, and THE danger for fascist political parties that become governing parties is that the people begin to see THEM as the elites/establishment. How to avoid that from happening? You make sure that you hire a bunch of highly unqualified people for top jobs, so that you can regularly fire them, claiming that they had become part of the corrupt elites and that you continue to fight for "the people" even when that means firing your own.
Secondly, you install a shadow government, so that the party (whose leaders lead the shadow government) and the visible government never coincide. It's the party leaders who do all the firing, never the real politicians. In this case, Trump is clearly more of a shadow president than a politician, and Musk and the Heritage Foundation and anyone visiting Mar-O-Lago on a regular basis are part of the shadow government too. THAT's where the real power lies. The shadow government obviously isn't necessarily that much more competent than those visibly running the government. But the essential factor here is FASCISM (the bundling of the power of the legislative and the courts into the power of the executive). Kakistocracy is merely an aspect of fascism.
All correct, but all sides to an argument think the same of the others. We forget that sometimes. John Kennedy was as anathema to many on the Right as Trump is to rational folk today.
The last words of the original message in the thread were "what are we going to do about it?".
The exchange you prompted is good data. It doesn't matter if you're a Trump troll or not when you reference cliches. The folks in these threads need to get ahold of themselves. You were playing them like puppets, jerking their strings, making them twitch and dance. Shameful! There's a war on, and whether or not you are a Trump troll, "reporting" you and gloating about it to get you censored while They're doing the Henny Penny is terminally ironic.
Oh and your comment was? It made me waste 2 seconds of my time and then I wasted a minute more reading the comments responding to your wasted comment and then another minute more wasting my time writing this response which is itself very insightful.
Good to have trolls. Makes for more interaction. That’s what made Twitter popular. Krugman would comment something on Twitter and there would be at least a few nasty comments from Trump supporters. That would rile up Krugman’s followers and then there would be lots of comments between the supporters and critics. But Twitter became boring after Musk bought it because only the comments of blue tick paid subscribers would show on the top. Most of the paid subscribers on Twitter are MAGA followers. And soon the interaction started dwindling and many liberal voices have left Twitter. Looks like MAGA followers have realised this and are now slowly showing up on other platforms too.
Unfortunately, it looks like code to me: not a person. Maybe Elon's child hackers. The interjections are repetitive and follow a pattern. Kind of disconcerting that folks here get distracted.
A corollary question is what to do about media who despite evidence to the contrary continue to sanewash tRumpian inanities, non sequiturs, and just plain bullshit as - you know - "policy statements", as highlighted by Dr Krugman. How is it possible, after years of shovelling tRump shit, that the usual suspects refuse to learn the harm this has caused to our society? SMFH.
The media gets paid for clicks, so to speak. They've apparently determined that reasoned analysis isn't what the readers want. Or, the ranks of journalists have been so depleted by social media capturing most advertising revenue that there aren't enough people left to do the required analysis. Either way, democracy with an "informed electorate" seems to be a quaint outdated concept.
I fear that the system has to fail before people who aren't paying attention, like the folks here are, to what is happening politically realize they have let our once-great country deteriorate into a right-wing totalitarian theocracy with trump as the dictator.
The growing civil mobilization is beginning to give me some hope we can avoid the worst and hope that more and more people will wake up and join us.
Anyone younger than around 45 in the US has never seen a government that "works" for Joe Sixpack. It's been a continuous exercise in wealth extraction by the upper few percent of the wealthy while public goods are degraded or eliminated and debt, ultimately owed to the wealthy, skyrocketed. Unfortunately, due to a very low level of knowledge of history and the effects of the likes of Fox News, there are a fair number of people who don't understand that a totalitarian theocracy is much worse than the current situation.
The Reagan Revolution arrived at the beginning of my work career and has been responsible for wage stagnation for most of the working class ever since. As much as the younger generations like to accuse the Boomers for their troubles, the Boomer's income stagnated through most, if not all, of their careers.
The bottom ninety percent would have been much better off if Reagan had never been President.
Now, trump is busy dismantling the rest of the New Deal.
His compilation of high crimes and misdemeanors injurious to the state and society is as long as a child's Christmas List.
Any civil official can be impeached, including the President and Vice President. The key factor in pursuing impeachment is the potential for harm or injury to society at large as a result of the “misconduct of public men,” regardless of motive or the ability to act with intent. Check.
Congress is between a rock (Trump) and a hard place (their constituents who hold the key to reelection) and will have to move right or left at some point.
A few might wake up one day, look down on the ground, and see a red line in the sand.
Or their mamas might ask them, "Is this how I raised you?"
A few might get religion. Real religion.
If, after a majority vote, the House approves any of the “Articles of Impeachment,” then the officials are formally “impeached.”
Next, they face trial in the Senate, which has the final say. The Senate will not approve an impeachment now, but who knows what surprises time might hold.
The process and the many court cases underway will take time and effort, throwing off some of their plans to destroy the country, if not the world.
Is he a troll? Trump is a mocker. Isn't this guy saying Trump is not a thinker? He's throwing out dual entendres look like. I've seen some serious mocking in these threads. We should more be focused on the last words of the original message in the thread: "what are we going to do about it?".
But you're asking for an impossible prediction at the moment. The DNC and current Democratic leadership is dead but is hanging around refusing to leave.
There's no one in the wings: everyone's either discredited themselves by fervently innocent belief in doomed candidates or have been - pardon the expression - "me-too'd" or at least fear it. Culturally speaking, with reference to the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, a lot of men in general would worry that they had done something in the past 35 years to stir the ire of a Karen. They'd identify with Kavanaugh and militate against Pelosi's self-defeating strategy. I'm trying to speak from the mind of the voters who elected Trump.
There's a grotesque internecine conflict within the Party between the AOC wing and the Schumer faction. The Schumer faction is delusionally pathetic but in control. Kamala was a vapid smiley-face and projected zero power. I think when the American voter sees Tim Walz they think of Elmer Fudd. If we get to the midterm and Dems are still in the hands of the dinosaurs, our goose is cooked. Hey, maybe it already is.
The only countervailing power in these cases is in the hands of the people, according to the historic precedent. But we're not in Kansas any more, Toto. There's Smartphones, Twitter (now known as "X"), Facebook, and Fox.
Very much like one of the last lines in the movie Charlie Wilson's War: "We'll see.".
Autocrats crave being taken seriously, they're are afraid of people laughing at them as their claim to authority is based on fear - students of human behavior know this. See, Chaplin, Charles and The Great Dictator.
How he consistently WINS, Club Championships, unchallenged by the members he 'competes' with, is a good analogy for Cult45, and his White House Cabinet Bible Study Group reinterpreting the Gospel.
For this physicist, this all feels very much like the ideas for perpetual motion machines that people keep sending into physics departments - always with a cover note (mis)quoting Galileo's situation; as if going against many, many years of thought and evidence somehow makes an idea more intelligent. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof, whatever the field of endeavour.
But these are also the people who pretend that climate change doesn't exist... as you say, parroting the ideas they like, even when the evidence is shown to be against them, but rubbishing the ideas they don't, even when the evidence is overwhelming.
And all of it, alas for the world, feeding into Putin's aim of destroying the US. And with the collusion of Rupert Murdoch... (as an Australian, I DO apologise for that particular monster).
Welcome to Belgium! It's a lovely day here, so I hope you get a moment outside to enjoy it.
more to the point, Jared Bernstein suggests a potential US GDP positive spin on tariffs (industry protection and/or investment enticing to avoid import taxes)
But Trump is stuck in a remedial econ student from the 1950s mindset.
He doesn't get that capex takes time EVEN IF it is deemed wise and who would build a plant in a nation that is governed by whim?
my great hope is that a critical mass of people with sufficient agency grasp that Trump was never fit for office and is now actively pushing us into discovering the duration/asset class mismatch out of sheer ignorance
Entertaining the possibility that Trump has experienced some cognitive decline isn't shallow thinking. It is a reasonable possibility. After all the mainstream media spent a great deal of time discussing whether Biden was still intellectually fit.
Doesn't everybody know that funeral directors in the USA are required to report deaths to the Social Security Administration, and this has been so for decades, whether or not the deceased has a known SSN. The death is then included in the Social Security Death Index, which used to be published but since 2014 has been accessible only to authorized users, including government and financial institutions. That's one reason why the bank account of a decedent is blocked relatively quickly, with obvious allowances for joint, RLT and POD/TOD accounts. The SSA will withdraw any undue payments from the bank account of the decedent or try to reclaim any check already mailed. It's true that in the UK the King or Queen used to send a congratulatory telegram to every pensionert on their 100th birthday and it was often then discovered that others had been cashing the pension vouchers of a perhaps long-deceased. But modern electronic payment and death reporting (there's a UK "Tell It Once" service that survivors can use to notify all government agencies and subscribing entities) have put a stop to this. In both countries the only "dead people" getting state pensions are those whose death has never been reported, perhaps because they died abroad or under suspicious circumstances, and someone is fraudulently accessing their account. It may be more frequent than aliens voting (the UK has just instituted for the first time a positive ID requirement for in-person voting, as are some U.S. states), but not much. (P.S.: Under the Ireland Act 1949, Irish citizens are not aliens. They, and some Commonwealth citizens, may vote. Perhaps Trump should allow Canadians to vote as a first step to making it the 51st state.)
It occurs to me to add (as someone who gets four state pensions (USA, UK, Québec & Switzerland) as well as a U.S. Foreign Service pension) that (I think) many countries require occasional (biennial it seems to me) “proof of life” for pensions to continue. That’s certainly true of Switzerland, Québec and, I know, France. It’s a nuisance, especially for the disabled but Québec allows a pharmacist (among others) to certify and as a Swiss-American going to the Swiss consular office is no inconvenience to me.
Andrew Grossman, yes, but move that Swiss consular office another 100 miles away and add either waiting months for an appointment or many hours standing in line. Requiring Americans to appear in person and then closing local Social Security offices is just flat out cheating. This is the same approach the republicans used for voting - require in-person voting, close down, move and confuse local voting locations. Again, it's gaming the system for their desired outcome, which is fewer people getting their entitled benefits and fewer people voting against them.
Swiss living in Switzerland, like citizens of many or most civil-law countries, have to register their “domicile” (the civil-law version, not its Anglo-American meaning) with their commune. Swiss abroad are registered with the relevant consular office. There’s no penalty for the Swiss abroad not to register, but they won’t get automatic absentee ballots or copies of the multilingual “Swiss Review” and they will have trouble renewing or replacing passports. They certainly won’t have issues with Swiss tax authorities (think: FBAR, FATCA, worldwide citizenship taxation) in either case.
Statistics on Swiss abroad are all online. There are about a million Swiss-Americans, just as there are a million Ukrainian-Americans, but only 86,000 of them hold Swiss passports. The Swiss consular officers actually travel from time to time to make their services accessible. There were, last time I looked, 80 Swiss in Hawaii. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Swiss consul in San Francisco goes there from time to time. The consular assistant in London told me they have a van with a camera that takes bio data and that travels on a schedule. I know, because it’s happened, that if your state pension (Québec or Swiss) is held up for want of certification of living status one can either get more time to respond or get paid in arrears when you do. Unlike ICE in the USA and seemingly federal agencies generally under this Administration, some bureaucrats try to be helpful when people have problems. The California DMV gave me an extra year on my driver license when I could not return to the state to renew it.
Yes France and Sweden required my mom to file new paperwork every so often. Luckily she had my sister, who speaks French, and my sister’s Swedish husband to help with that.
Variations of this idea have been floating around, but no one in MAGA world has expressed any concern about it. That tells me he was serious when he told his followers they would never have to vote again. The rest of won’t be allowed to vote, or sham elections will completely replace free and fair elections.
Andrew, you seem to be well informed on the topic. But the 20 something DOGE bros who invaded the SSA, and Musk himself, know none of this and don’t care to because the facts fight against the narrative they are selling.
So to keep the money flowing, need to kick grandpa down a mine shaft. A woman was complaining that her mother’s SS was cut off when she died - a trump voter. The ignorance of these people is stunning.
We normal Americans are not amused either. Make Canada the 51st state, but continue to deny that status to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico? That's a solution a racist MAGA would love. :-(
The reason Canada will NEVER be the 51st state is not because it would be unfair to DC or PR.
It's because we are a sovereign nation. We are Canadians! We aree proud of our country and how we have chosen to evolve as a nation. We take care of each other and we put our money, our taxes, to work for everyone.
We are a strong, stable, country that has withstood invasions from our southern neighbour, and, if necessary we will do so again.
I am grieving as I watch the self-destruction of your American democracy. I am saddened because many people in your country will suffer as a consequence of Trump's actions.
I would really appreciate if US citizens were not flippant about the threat Trump's administration poses to our safety, security, and sovereignty.
I hope you don’t think my remark was flippant, because it was not intended to be. I want Canada to be strong and free of U.S. control. I like it much better when we are friendly and support each other. Trump has apparently destroyed 158 years of international peace and cooperation.
I live in a Midwestern state with a Democratic governor and a Democratic state legislature. My county went 60 percent in favor of Harris/Walz. I didn't vote for Trump, Musk or any other vile Republican.
I am likely feeling just a teeny, tiny, bit sensitive about the issue of Canadian sovereignty at the moment. Thus, I apologize for misinterpreting your comments. We obviously all need to work together. After all, the Resistance is usually based in a neighbouring country.
Apparently, there is a default date, like 1900 or something, that is used in their ancient software when the exact birth date is not known. Employees would know this, but they probably were not even allowed to engage with this arrogant sociopath and his flying monkeys.
I was just thinking about the Wharton professors. He was a transfer to a new program that was specialized in real estate. He probably has to take all the major courses and not much else there. The program needed access to money, consulting jobs for professors, data from real world organizations, internships for students, people in the field to talk to classes, etc., all local. Trump's dad had it all. If he struggled on papers, he could get the folks doing those jobs for his dad to help with them. There were lots of ways for him to do better than he deserved.
One of the things the 3rd Reich eventually fell over (too late, and after destroying large parts of the world) was not just Hitlers insistence to micromanage things he found interesting but did not understand, but also that he did not take advice from malign but competent advisers who suggested to extract maximal economic value from fascist politics instead of just randomly killing people before their usefulness was exhausted. At this point, the major difference seems to be that Hitler was a true populist who took the idea of "Volksgemeinschaft" at least somewhat seriously, bribed his followers by redistributed the property of the exterminated, and aimed to provide affordable cars and "Kraft durch Freude" vacations. Trump in contrast seems to hate his voters as much as anybody else and has no hesitation to cause them damage. The implication that Maga-ism has managed to breed some sort of morally inferior Hitler is breathtaking.
I thought Christo fascism was the worst. Then I learned about techno fascism, the singularity, transhumanism, etc. It feels like extremist cults are taking over.
Behind Trump is a broad coalition of Nazis, national fascists, Christian fascism, national conservatism and radical conservatism. There are many types of right-wing authocracies, but no good ones. From Portugal to Romania Europe was dotted with all kinds of them in the 1930s to 1940s
Thank you for calling Adam Tooze’s piece to our attention with this post, so well-written and argued, even while traveling and pressed for time—and with that great lamppost metaphor.
“On the surface, Trump’s trade policy looks stupid and destructive. Dig deeper, and you discover that this first impression was completely valid. Trying to pretend otherwise is just misinforming readers.”
Thank you Professor; you’re no longer parsing your words: Bravo!
Personally, I think Trump may actually believe he has the panacea for all our country’s economic and social ills. Not because he actually has a PLAN, but because he’s gotten away with so much of his crap over the years, that he’s actually starting to believe his own Sh*t—show.
And coupled with his reckless, and impulsive behavior; it makes him extremely dangerous, especially since he is constantly GASLIGHTING America, with his made up nonsense that sounds good (common sense), but is actually more detrimental than anything else.
As HL Mencken once said, “Complex problems, have simple, easy to understand, WRONG answers!”
And as we’ve seen, Trump and his minions are Masters of the Spectacle, using actual issues to advance their nefarious agenda. For example, we’ve seen the administration use “Smokescreen Antisemitism” to deport Palestinians, and any dissidents that criticize this administration.
In addition, we have Smokescreen Immigration, where Trump is ignoring “due process” to sending possibly innocent people to prisons that house murderers and rapists in El Salvador. Or the “Smokescreen DEI, that’s really revenge of the Confederacy of Dunces, for taking down Confederate statues and renaming confederate military bases.
And just as recently as yesterday, we are experiencing the Smokescreen Judiciary, which is trying to intimidate, frighten, and manipulate the Judiciary into submission and compliance; creating a constitutional crisis.
Bottom line: Trump is dismantling the administration state faster than we could have ever imagined, and our only opposition resembles the Weimar Republic:
Schumer is Franz von Papen, the Chancellor of Germany in 1932, to Biden’s Paul Von Hindenburg (Germany’s president). Papen told Hindenburg to make Hitler Chancellor, because Papen believed he could bring Hitler to heel. And Hindenburg was so old and feeble, he acquiesced. And the rest is history.
Lastly, I’m not sure all this nonsense isn’t just another Smokescreen, while the Heritage Foundation, Oligarchs and Heritage’s sister networks are changing our federal government, so they and their movement will control every lever of power in this country, regardless of who is in the Executive! Just some thoughts!…:)
Trump is living in his own reality TV show. He has no contact with, or interest in, the real world. He's stinking rich, always has been, and simply doesn't care. Most of the actions taken by the administration are what one house member characterized as "performative a55holery".
As a concrete example, if the admin wanted to stop illegal aliens coming to the US, and get the ones in the US to leave, they would arrest and prosecute the CEOs of the companies that hire them. This will, of course, never happen with the GOP in charge.
Unfortunately for the US, and the world, this is not going to end well.
Speaking of very simplified formulas, here's a comparison of what happens when a government service is privatized:
Before: budget - overhead = service
After: budget - overhead - profit = less service
We have seen this with our medical care as it has become more and more privatized. We now have the most profitable medical care on the planet because profit is what got optimized. (Germany is number 2 by a factor of three).
Elon Musk was asked once why he talked so much about free speech in the U.S. but never in [insert foreign dictatorship here], and his response was "because if I did they'd ban Twitter!" They don't call liberals dictators because they think it's true. They do it because they know it's not. Any time they're around a real dictator, their noses get REAL brown.
I have recently come across a few articles by Gil Duran who has been reporting on the Network State and the ideologue Curtis Yarvin's influence on Silicon Valley. A NY Times piece yesterday quoted Duran -- an excerpt:
"These billionaires, Duran argued, 'are fully in control of Trump’s MAGA party,' but their ambitions go beyond that. 'The Republican Party is simply a host organism for the parasite of tech fascism,' Duran wrote, but 'it’s not just the Republican Party that’s lost its soul. The tech authoritarians are also moving to co-opt leaders in the Democratic Party.'"
This made a lot of sense to me. Trump is transactional, and as such reads as a chaos agent, because each condition is a unique opportunity for self-interested negotiation. Of course he's not interested in a holistic economic strategy. He made a deal with the tech bros : give me your money and I'll dismantle enough of what is hampering you so you can have a feudalistic fiefdom all to yourself. Crypto is key, because it's not tied to the dollar and traditional economic structures.
I love you, Paul Krugman, and I guess that your reasoning and writing are helping many people, such as myself, get through to April 5th, when our numbers can begin to show how many now understand there is a madman in the White House and what are we going to do about it?
I have been calling this a kakistocracy and I guess it fits right in that its 'policies' would be founded in delusional thinking... and I use the word 'thinking' loosely.
All forms of fascism are kakistocracies. Fascism vitally needs a dysfunctional government. That's because its propaganda is based on the populist "elites/establishment versus the people" idea, and THE danger for fascist political parties that become governing parties is that the people begin to see THEM as the elites/establishment. How to avoid that from happening? You make sure that you hire a bunch of highly unqualified people for top jobs, so that you can regularly fire them, claiming that they had become part of the corrupt elites and that you continue to fight for "the people" even when that means firing your own.
Secondly, you install a shadow government, so that the party (whose leaders lead the shadow government) and the visible government never coincide. It's the party leaders who do all the firing, never the real politicians. In this case, Trump is clearly more of a shadow president than a politician, and Musk and the Heritage Foundation and anyone visiting Mar-O-Lago on a regular basis are part of the shadow government too. THAT's where the real power lies. The shadow government obviously isn't necessarily that much more competent than those visibly running the government. But the essential factor here is FASCISM (the bundling of the power of the legislative and the courts into the power of the executive). Kakistocracy is merely an aspect of fascism.
All correct, but all sides to an argument think the same of the others. We forget that sometimes. John Kennedy was as anathema to many on the Right as Trump is to rational folk today.
The last words of the original message in the thread were "what are we going to do about it?".
The exchange you prompted is good data. It doesn't matter if you're a Trump troll or not when you reference cliches. The folks in these threads need to get ahold of themselves. You were playing them like puppets, jerking their strings, making them twitch and dance. Shameful! There's a war on, and whether or not you are a Trump troll, "reporting" you and gloating about it to get you censored while They're doing the Henny Penny is terminally ironic.
I appreciate that most people who post at this site are not rude or insulting.
Oh and your comment was? It made me waste 2 seconds of my time and then I wasted a minute more reading the comments responding to your wasted comment and then another minute more wasting my time writing this response which is itself very insightful.
It's a time wasting troll, report it.
Good to have trolls. Makes for more interaction. That’s what made Twitter popular. Krugman would comment something on Twitter and there would be at least a few nasty comments from Trump supporters. That would rile up Krugman’s followers and then there would be lots of comments between the supporters and critics. But Twitter became boring after Musk bought it because only the comments of blue tick paid subscribers would show on the top. Most of the paid subscribers on Twitter are MAGA followers. And soon the interaction started dwindling and many liberal voices have left Twitter. Looks like MAGA followers have realised this and are now slowly showing up on other platforms too.
Unfortunately, it looks like code to me: not a person. Maybe Elon's child hackers. The interjections are repetitive and follow a pattern. Kind of disconcerting that folks here get distracted.
Let me be rude and insulting to you, then.
Just because it's a cliche doesn't make it untrue.
More so than this
I think I hear my Mother calling me.
Good observation. Over-used term. The Henny Penny thing. The sky fell.
I liked the last words of the original message in this thread: what are we going to do about it?
Unless we ourselves invented a word or a concept, we're "parroting others" every time we use it. That's sort of what learning is about, isn't it?
I think, what a dick, is an old cliche, isn’t it?
moronic nonsense
A corollary question is what to do about media who despite evidence to the contrary continue to sanewash tRumpian inanities, non sequiturs, and just plain bullshit as - you know - "policy statements", as highlighted by Dr Krugman. How is it possible, after years of shovelling tRump shit, that the usual suspects refuse to learn the harm this has caused to our society? SMFH.
The media gets paid for clicks, so to speak. They've apparently determined that reasoned analysis isn't what the readers want. Or, the ranks of journalists have been so depleted by social media capturing most advertising revenue that there aren't enough people left to do the required analysis. Either way, democracy with an "informed electorate" seems to be a quaint outdated concept.
I fear that the system has to fail before people who aren't paying attention, like the folks here are, to what is happening politically realize they have let our once-great country deteriorate into a right-wing totalitarian theocracy with trump as the dictator.
The growing civil mobilization is beginning to give me some hope we can avoid the worst and hope that more and more people will wake up and join us.
Anyone younger than around 45 in the US has never seen a government that "works" for Joe Sixpack. It's been a continuous exercise in wealth extraction by the upper few percent of the wealthy while public goods are degraded or eliminated and debt, ultimately owed to the wealthy, skyrocketed. Unfortunately, due to a very low level of knowledge of history and the effects of the likes of Fox News, there are a fair number of people who don't understand that a totalitarian theocracy is much worse than the current situation.
The Reagan Revolution arrived at the beginning of my work career and has been responsible for wage stagnation for most of the working class ever since. As much as the younger generations like to accuse the Boomers for their troubles, the Boomer's income stagnated through most, if not all, of their careers.
The bottom ninety percent would have been much better off if Reagan had never been President.
Now, trump is busy dismantling the rest of the New Deal.
Because they aren’t very smart?
Maybe try to impeach Trump. Just need a few dissatisfied Repliblicans to launch the process.
Then Trump spends his time fighting the impeachment, so he spends less time destroying the country (internally & internationally).
Trump will probably avoid the 2/3 majority in the Senate, but it could be almost the midterm elections by the time it is finished.
The trick is getting some Republicans on board.
I like this idea.
His compilation of high crimes and misdemeanors injurious to the state and society is as long as a child's Christmas List.
Any civil official can be impeached, including the President and Vice President. The key factor in pursuing impeachment is the potential for harm or injury to society at large as a result of the “misconduct of public men,” regardless of motive or the ability to act with intent. Check.
Congress is between a rock (Trump) and a hard place (their constituents who hold the key to reelection) and will have to move right or left at some point.
A few might wake up one day, look down on the ground, and see a red line in the sand.
Or their mamas might ask them, "Is this how I raised you?"
A few might get religion. Real religion.
If, after a majority vote, the House approves any of the “Articles of Impeachment,” then the officials are formally “impeached.”
Next, they face trial in the Senate, which has the final say. The Senate will not approve an impeachment now, but who knows what surprises time might hold.
The process and the many court cases underway will take time and effort, throwing off some of their plans to destroy the country, if not the world.
From now until the midterms....
Perhaps a better metaphor is the guy who shoots an arrow first and then draws a target around the arrow.
Like the amended weather map in first term?
Says the mocker-in-chief. There’s no mystery about the lack of insight demonstrated by trolls.
Is he a troll? Trump is a mocker. Isn't this guy saying Trump is not a thinker? He's throwing out dual entendres look like. I've seen some serious mocking in these threads. We should more be focused on the last words of the original message in the thread: "what are we going to do about it?".
What ARE we going to DO about it?
We'll see. It'll take some thinking.
But you're asking for an impossible prediction at the moment. The DNC and current Democratic leadership is dead but is hanging around refusing to leave.
There's no one in the wings: everyone's either discredited themselves by fervently innocent belief in doomed candidates or have been - pardon the expression - "me-too'd" or at least fear it. Culturally speaking, with reference to the Brett Kavanaugh hearings, a lot of men in general would worry that they had done something in the past 35 years to stir the ire of a Karen. They'd identify with Kavanaugh and militate against Pelosi's self-defeating strategy. I'm trying to speak from the mind of the voters who elected Trump.
There's a grotesque internecine conflict within the Party between the AOC wing and the Schumer faction. The Schumer faction is delusionally pathetic but in control. Kamala was a vapid smiley-face and projected zero power. I think when the American voter sees Tim Walz they think of Elmer Fudd. If we get to the midterm and Dems are still in the hands of the dinosaurs, our goose is cooked. Hey, maybe it already is.
The only countervailing power in these cases is in the hands of the people, according to the historic precedent. But we're not in Kansas any more, Toto. There's Smartphones, Twitter (now known as "X"), Facebook, and Fox.
Very much like one of the last lines in the movie Charlie Wilson's War: "We'll see.".
Autocrats crave being taken seriously, they're are afraid of people laughing at them as their claim to authority is based on fear - students of human behavior know this. See, Chaplin, Charles and The Great Dictator.
... he wrote, furiously leafing through his thesaurus.
If the arrow is shot from the anus
That sounds like how Trump plays golf too;)
How he consistently WINS, Club Championships, unchallenged by the members he 'competes' with, is a good analogy for Cult45, and his White House Cabinet Bible Study Group reinterpreting the Gospel.
Makes me feel better.
Nor do facile bromides
Ignore the troll.
Isn’t that how Trump plays golf?
This is how he does it
https://www.instagram.com/adamparkhomenko/reel/DHRlDnVvFby/
Hey, where were you when I needed you? I spent some months trying to get good at archery and I never realized how easy it could have been.
Thank you Thomas. I'll be quoting this endlessly over the next years
You're an asshole. Why don't you s--t somewhere else.
Please don't feed the troll. Please ignore all trolls. Best wishes.
Mastery2 might just be code. I took it seriously, I'm new here. Maybe one of Elon's tribe of child hackers.
Excellent post, as ever, dear Prof Krugman!
For this physicist, this all feels very much like the ideas for perpetual motion machines that people keep sending into physics departments - always with a cover note (mis)quoting Galileo's situation; as if going against many, many years of thought and evidence somehow makes an idea more intelligent. Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary proof, whatever the field of endeavour.
But these are also the people who pretend that climate change doesn't exist... as you say, parroting the ideas they like, even when the evidence is shown to be against them, but rubbishing the ideas they don't, even when the evidence is overwhelming.
And all of it, alas for the world, feeding into Putin's aim of destroying the US. And with the collusion of Rupert Murdoch... (as an Australian, I DO apologise for that particular monster).
Welcome to Belgium! It's a lovely day here, so I hope you get a moment outside to enjoy it.
Australians, South Africans, Belgians, Percherons the world is filled with foreigners!
Indeed.
Trump didn't cease being an increasingly senile 78 year old cuz he won an election.
more to the point, Jared Bernstein suggests a potential US GDP positive spin on tariffs (industry protection and/or investment enticing to avoid import taxes)
https://econjared.substack.com/p/data_note-fed-wrap-up-and-ui-claims
But Trump is stuck in a remedial econ student from the 1950s mindset.
He doesn't get that capex takes time EVEN IF it is deemed wise and who would build a plant in a nation that is governed by whim?
my great hope is that a critical mass of people with sufficient agency grasp that Trump was never fit for office and is now actively pushing us into discovering the duration/asset class mismatch out of sheer ignorance
to stop him
Entertaining the possibility that Trump has experienced some cognitive decline isn't shallow thinking. It is a reasonable possibility. After all the mainstream media spent a great deal of time discussing whether Biden was still intellectually fit.
The unceasing flow of delusional drivel?
eg. the world is ripping us off, the Russian president is trustworthy, the Ukrainian president is a dictator - etc.
It's mildly unfortunate that Substack has no mechanism for Ignore-Troll.
Doesn't everybody know that funeral directors in the USA are required to report deaths to the Social Security Administration, and this has been so for decades, whether or not the deceased has a known SSN. The death is then included in the Social Security Death Index, which used to be published but since 2014 has been accessible only to authorized users, including government and financial institutions. That's one reason why the bank account of a decedent is blocked relatively quickly, with obvious allowances for joint, RLT and POD/TOD accounts. The SSA will withdraw any undue payments from the bank account of the decedent or try to reclaim any check already mailed. It's true that in the UK the King or Queen used to send a congratulatory telegram to every pensionert on their 100th birthday and it was often then discovered that others had been cashing the pension vouchers of a perhaps long-deceased. But modern electronic payment and death reporting (there's a UK "Tell It Once" service that survivors can use to notify all government agencies and subscribing entities) have put a stop to this. In both countries the only "dead people" getting state pensions are those whose death has never been reported, perhaps because they died abroad or under suspicious circumstances, and someone is fraudulently accessing their account. It may be more frequent than aliens voting (the UK has just instituted for the first time a positive ID requirement for in-person voting, as are some U.S. states), but not much. (P.S.: Under the Ireland Act 1949, Irish citizens are not aliens. They, and some Commonwealth citizens, may vote. Perhaps Trump should allow Canadians to vote as a first step to making it the 51st state.)
It occurs to me to add (as someone who gets four state pensions (USA, UK, Québec & Switzerland) as well as a U.S. Foreign Service pension) that (I think) many countries require occasional (biennial it seems to me) “proof of life” for pensions to continue. That’s certainly true of Switzerland, Québec and, I know, France. It’s a nuisance, especially for the disabled but Québec allows a pharmacist (among others) to certify and as a Swiss-American going to the Swiss consular office is no inconvenience to me.
Andrew Grossman, yes, but move that Swiss consular office another 100 miles away and add either waiting months for an appointment or many hours standing in line. Requiring Americans to appear in person and then closing local Social Security offices is just flat out cheating. This is the same approach the republicans used for voting - require in-person voting, close down, move and confuse local voting locations. Again, it's gaming the system for their desired outcome, which is fewer people getting their entitled benefits and fewer people voting against them.
Visiting a Swiss consular office is not the only way to certify to the state pension office (AVS) in Geneva that handles cases of the Swiss abroad. They are not unreasonable; I live in London and its easy for me to visit Montagu Place and it’s free too: I have a London Transport old-age travel pass. Here’s a link (it says “endorsed by your local authority, or any other officially recognized administration”) https://web.archive.org/web/20240224203106/https://www.zas.admin.ch/zas/en/home/particuliers/obligation-d-informer-pour-les-rentiers/controle-de-l-exitence-en-vie-.html
Swiss living in Switzerland, like citizens of many or most civil-law countries, have to register their “domicile” (the civil-law version, not its Anglo-American meaning) with their commune. Swiss abroad are registered with the relevant consular office. There’s no penalty for the Swiss abroad not to register, but they won’t get automatic absentee ballots or copies of the multilingual “Swiss Review” and they will have trouble renewing or replacing passports. They certainly won’t have issues with Swiss tax authorities (think: FBAR, FATCA, worldwide citizenship taxation) in either case.
Statistics on Swiss abroad are all online. There are about a million Swiss-Americans, just as there are a million Ukrainian-Americans, but only 86,000 of them hold Swiss passports. The Swiss consular officers actually travel from time to time to make their services accessible. There were, last time I looked, 80 Swiss in Hawaii. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Swiss consul in San Francisco goes there from time to time. The consular assistant in London told me they have a van with a camera that takes bio data and that travels on a schedule. I know, because it’s happened, that if your state pension (Québec or Swiss) is held up for want of certification of living status one can either get more time to respond or get paid in arrears when you do. Unlike ICE in the USA and seemingly federal agencies generally under this Administration, some bureaucrats try to be helpful when people have problems. The California DMV gave me an extra year on my driver license when I could not return to the state to renew it.
I have to report in annually, so I plan to die in January.
Yes France and Sweden required my mom to file new paperwork every so often. Luckily she had my sister, who speaks French, and my sister’s Swedish husband to help with that.
LOL Canadians voting would really screw MAGA. I'm pretty sure trump would disallow the "51st state" from voting.
Variations of this idea have been floating around, but no one in MAGA world has expressed any concern about it. That tells me he was serious when he told his followers they would never have to vote again. The rest of won’t be allowed to vote, or sham elections will completely replace free and fair elections.
Or, since he personally will never be a candidate again, he doesn't care about how well or badly MAGA does after his own departure.
Ummmm , are you forgetting that he is going to run for a third term? Or assuming (correctly, I think) that he will elect himself, thank you very much?
Andrew, you seem to be well informed on the topic. But the 20 something DOGE bros who invaded the SSA, and Musk himself, know none of this and don’t care to because the facts fight against the narrative they are selling.
So to keep the money flowing, need to kick grandpa down a mine shaft. A woman was complaining that her mother’s SS was cut off when she died - a trump voter. The ignorance of these people is stunning.
Sorry to tell you, in case you were attempting to be satirical, but most Canadians are not at all amused by 51st state comments.
We normal Americans are not amused either. Make Canada the 51st state, but continue to deny that status to the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico? That's a solution a racist MAGA would love. :-(
I like Canada just as it is...
The reason Canada will NEVER be the 51st state is not because it would be unfair to DC or PR.
It's because we are a sovereign nation. We are Canadians! We aree proud of our country and how we have chosen to evolve as a nation. We take care of each other and we put our money, our taxes, to work for everyone.
We are a strong, stable, country that has withstood invasions from our southern neighbour, and, if necessary we will do so again.
I am grieving as I watch the self-destruction of your American democracy. I am saddened because many people in your country will suffer as a consequence of Trump's actions.
I would really appreciate if US citizens were not flippant about the threat Trump's administration poses to our safety, security, and sovereignty.
I hope you don’t think my remark was flippant, because it was not intended to be. I want Canada to be strong and free of U.S. control. I like it much better when we are friendly and support each other. Trump has apparently destroyed 158 years of international peace and cooperation.
I live in a Midwestern state with a Democratic governor and a Democratic state legislature. My county went 60 percent in favor of Harris/Walz. I didn't vote for Trump, Musk or any other vile Republican.
I am likely feeling just a teeny, tiny, bit sensitive about the issue of Canadian sovereignty at the moment. Thus, I apologize for misinterpreting your comments. We obviously all need to work together. After all, the Resistance is usually based in a neighbouring country.
Apparently, there is a default date, like 1900 or something, that is used in their ancient software when the exact birth date is not known. Employees would know this, but they probably were not even allowed to engage with this arrogant sociopath and his flying monkeys.
How much do they get for saying someone has "bone spurs" so they can avoid the draft?
Fran Liebowitz issued the ultimate Trump explainer long ago. And it really does explain everything about Donald Trump perfectly:
"You don't know anyone as stupid as Donald Trump. You just don't."
That level of stupidity requires being born wealthy enough that almost everyone you ever met has had to tell you how smart you are.
Even professors at Wharton.
I was just thinking about the Wharton professors. He was a transfer to a new program that was specialized in real estate. He probably has to take all the major courses and not much else there. The program needed access to money, consulting jobs for professors, data from real world organizations, internships for students, people in the field to talk to classes, etc., all local. Trump's dad had it all. If he struggled on papers, he could get the folks doing those jobs for his dad to help with them. There were lots of ways for him to do better than he deserved.
And no doubt he relied on every one of them.
Mastery2 is a simpleton troll. Best to not engage with it.
One of the things the 3rd Reich eventually fell over (too late, and after destroying large parts of the world) was not just Hitlers insistence to micromanage things he found interesting but did not understand, but also that he did not take advice from malign but competent advisers who suggested to extract maximal economic value from fascist politics instead of just randomly killing people before their usefulness was exhausted. At this point, the major difference seems to be that Hitler was a true populist who took the idea of "Volksgemeinschaft" at least somewhat seriously, bribed his followers by redistributed the property of the exterminated, and aimed to provide affordable cars and "Kraft durch Freude" vacations. Trump in contrast seems to hate his voters as much as anybody else and has no hesitation to cause them damage. The implication that Maga-ism has managed to breed some sort of morally inferior Hitler is breathtaking.
Trumpkopf: "I love uneducated people!"
Translation: "I have nothing but contempt for the suckers who vote for me!"
I'm having trouble distinguishing between trump's stupidity, musks arrogance and project 2025 cold blooded Christo fascism. Nevermind, we're screwed
I thought Christo fascism was the worst. Then I learned about techno fascism, the singularity, transhumanism, etc. It feels like extremist cults are taking over.
https://www.newyorker.com/science/annals-of-artificial-intelligence/can-we-stop-the-singularity
Behind Trump is a broad coalition of Nazis, national fascists, Christian fascism, national conservatism and radical conservatism. There are many types of right-wing authocracies, but no good ones. From Portugal to Romania Europe was dotted with all kinds of them in the 1930s to 1940s
It's all one and the same. Wrapped together in one "Big, Beautiful" package.
I'm stickin' with Pepsi.
Putin,Xi,and Kim are cheering🥱
"Gentlemen, (he) may look like an idiot, and talk like an idiot, but don't let that fool you - he really is an idiot."
-Groucho (as Firefly), in "Duck Soup "
But he is a master manipulator of TV!
Thank you for calling Adam Tooze’s piece to our attention with this post, so well-written and argued, even while traveling and pressed for time—and with that great lamppost metaphor.
America didn't elect a President, it elected a pathology.
Enjoy your conference! Hope they let you back in. ;)
“On the surface, Trump’s trade policy looks stupid and destructive. Dig deeper, and you discover that this first impression was completely valid. Trying to pretend otherwise is just misinforming readers.”
Thank you Professor; you’re no longer parsing your words: Bravo!
Personally, I think Trump may actually believe he has the panacea for all our country’s economic and social ills. Not because he actually has a PLAN, but because he’s gotten away with so much of his crap over the years, that he’s actually starting to believe his own Sh*t—show.
And coupled with his reckless, and impulsive behavior; it makes him extremely dangerous, especially since he is constantly GASLIGHTING America, with his made up nonsense that sounds good (common sense), but is actually more detrimental than anything else.
As HL Mencken once said, “Complex problems, have simple, easy to understand, WRONG answers!”
And as we’ve seen, Trump and his minions are Masters of the Spectacle, using actual issues to advance their nefarious agenda. For example, we’ve seen the administration use “Smokescreen Antisemitism” to deport Palestinians, and any dissidents that criticize this administration.
In addition, we have Smokescreen Immigration, where Trump is ignoring “due process” to sending possibly innocent people to prisons that house murderers and rapists in El Salvador. Or the “Smokescreen DEI, that’s really revenge of the Confederacy of Dunces, for taking down Confederate statues and renaming confederate military bases.
And just as recently as yesterday, we are experiencing the Smokescreen Judiciary, which is trying to intimidate, frighten, and manipulate the Judiciary into submission and compliance; creating a constitutional crisis.
Bottom line: Trump is dismantling the administration state faster than we could have ever imagined, and our only opposition resembles the Weimar Republic:
Schumer is Franz von Papen, the Chancellor of Germany in 1932, to Biden’s Paul Von Hindenburg (Germany’s president). Papen told Hindenburg to make Hitler Chancellor, because Papen believed he could bring Hitler to heel. And Hindenburg was so old and feeble, he acquiesced. And the rest is history.
Lastly, I’m not sure all this nonsense isn’t just another Smokescreen, while the Heritage Foundation, Oligarchs and Heritage’s sister networks are changing our federal government, so they and their movement will control every lever of power in this country, regardless of who is in the Executive! Just some thoughts!…:)
King Krasnov said to his Secret Service driver: "What's wrong with these people? Don't they know everything I say is full of shit?"
He doesn't believe anything he says. It's all performative.
And you're absolutely right, it's all just another smokescreen.
Trump is living in his own reality TV show. He has no contact with, or interest in, the real world. He's stinking rich, always has been, and simply doesn't care. Most of the actions taken by the administration are what one house member characterized as "performative a55holery".
As a concrete example, if the admin wanted to stop illegal aliens coming to the US, and get the ones in the US to leave, they would arrest and prosecute the CEOs of the companies that hire them. This will, of course, never happen with the GOP in charge.
Unfortunately for the US, and the world, this is not going to end well.
Agreed…:)
Speaking of very simplified formulas, here's a comparison of what happens when a government service is privatized:
Before: budget - overhead = service
After: budget - overhead - profit = less service
We have seen this with our medical care as it has become more and more privatized. We now have the most profitable medical care on the planet because profit is what got optimized. (Germany is number 2 by a factor of three).
Budget - overhead - profit = 0
(FTFY)
And can you imagine the reaction on Fox News if a Democratic president acted like a dictator?
Honestly, I think they might die of shock.
Elon Musk was asked once why he talked so much about free speech in the U.S. but never in [insert foreign dictatorship here], and his response was "because if I did they'd ban Twitter!" They don't call liberals dictators because they think it's true. They do it because they know it's not. Any time they're around a real dictator, their noses get REAL brown.
That can't happen because today's Democratic party is all about, you know, democracy.
The GOP, at least since 1953, has had fascism running through it's veins all along.
I have recently come across a few articles by Gil Duran who has been reporting on the Network State and the ideologue Curtis Yarvin's influence on Silicon Valley. A NY Times piece yesterday quoted Duran -- an excerpt:
"These billionaires, Duran argued, 'are fully in control of Trump’s MAGA party,' but their ambitions go beyond that. 'The Republican Party is simply a host organism for the parasite of tech fascism,' Duran wrote, but 'it’s not just the Republican Party that’s lost its soul. The tech authoritarians are also moving to co-opt leaders in the Democratic Party.'"
This made a lot of sense to me. Trump is transactional, and as such reads as a chaos agent, because each condition is a unique opportunity for self-interested negotiation. Of course he's not interested in a holistic economic strategy. He made a deal with the tech bros : give me your money and I'll dismantle enough of what is hampering you so you can have a feudalistic fiefdom all to yourself. Crypto is key, because it's not tied to the dollar and traditional economic structures.
Yikes. Awful. Reminds me of the Technocracy movement.