Agreed, IF Democrats are allowed to take back the house -- don't assume the GOP won't find ways to make that impossible -- they should do that and much more. They should investigate and impeach every single Trumpist they can, including the scum of SCOTUS. And this time, arrest subpoenaed witnesses who refuse to appear. Investigate crypto too -- that's likely how all these crooks plan to ride out the economic collapse they're engineering.
Also, incredibly smart politics. The Rs realize they are likely to face some losses in 2026. When the pain from their current action hits, they will be able to convince their credulous base that it was the Ds who did it to them. And the grift goes on...
It is callled a "surtax." In my experience this was first instituted by Nixon. Painful at the time (I was a graduate student), but efficacious as intended.
Democrats need to do more than just take back the House to accomplish a successful MAGA purge, and I question if we will achieve that. Impeachment would once again be met with Trump victimization backlash, as a 67 vote Senate majority I’d simply out of reach. The electoral map is just too stacked against Democrats in gerrymandered Red states. The most important thing Democrats must do is develop a candidate with the ability to appeal to voters across the country who will by then know their flirtation with Trumpism has brought nothing but misery…except to the very well off.
With respect, such a candidate is not possible. Several have run on either side over the last number of years and none have even come close. The primary reason being that neither party WANTS a candidate with mass appeal. Neither wants to admit that most Americans are only a little aways apart in terms of what they want - affordable housing, good education for their children, public safety, and so forth. They have a great little racket going on of blaming the other side for all the evils in the world, and doing absolutely nothing about any of it except to fund raise off it. There's lots we could do that would be popular with both Dems and Reps, but we won't do any of it because its not popular with the oligarchs.
Please get a clue - it's the Repugs who who are drowning the working class for the benefit ot the top 10% in income - especially those in the top 2-3%.
Actually it is the top 0.5%. The cutoff income for the top 10% is about $150k. The cutoff for the top 3% is about $650k. For wealth, these same cutoffs are a little under a million and something like $13 million. I don't know about you, but I don't consider someone making less $200k and with less than a million dollars in the bank wealthy. In big cities, that's barely out of middle class. Our problem is extreme inequality at the very top. It skews our politics, our economy, indeed our social cohesion. Check out this video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
This if from well over a decade ago and things are significantly worse now. Point me to a single piece of legislation passed by Democrats that addressed this massive wealth inequality. Yes you have a few Elizabeth Warrens out there, but she's an example from my above post of someone who could never possibly get a nomination. Sorry, but we are being gamed by both parties.
David, that hopelessness serves only to cement the oligarchs’ dominance. Biden was never my preferred antidote to Trump 45, nor Harris to Trump 47, but what will come out of the OBBBA will be so flagrantly wrong and destructive it will make even Red state voters react. Their response to fabricated affronts like the invasion of criminals crossing the border or the “terrible Biden economy” was to elect a GOP Trifecta. What will they do when their hospitals close and their families lose coverage and the hard jobs once done by immigrants are the only ones available to them, and no SNAP food assistance is forthcoming?
It isn't hopelessness. It is hopeFULness that Democrats (and maybe even some Republicans) can be woken up to demand better from our political leaders. Schumer, Pelosi, Clinton (both of them), even Obama - all are part of the problem. Look at the ACA - it was basically nothing more than a big wet kiss to the insurance racket. Hell, it was the Republican plan. I honestly feel that at that moment in history we could have done better - something like including a Medicare OPTION for all. At the very minimum we could have made it a requirement that only non-profit insurers administer medicare and ACA eligible plans. For that matter, we should be giving preference to non-profits for most government contracts, or at least imposing severe restrictions on charge-backs for cost overruns. In summary, there are many possible changes Dems could champion. Sometimes they campaign on them, but they never actually do them. Oh, and how will Republican voters react? They will blame Democrats because they live in an information bubble and will be told it is Dems fault.
It will not increase the income of most people when you add in the dollar value of services lost. And how do you value spending an extra hour on the phone to a government agency because of staffing reductions?
The increase is a phantom - 3 year deduction increase for old people like me BFD, and a short term increase in SALT (wow - I'll be dead in 2030) . Have you looked at the bits that create a tsunami of paperwork to receive benefits? Qualify for Medicaid coverage when the hospital sends you to a SNF after surgery? Is your mom ready to drop $30K for a month of care in her spend-down? How about the working poor facing annual renewal for ACA subsidies instead of the present auto-renewal? We can go from 35% of health care dollars spent on administration to 50%! Good for us. The only one happy is the corporate monopoly paid by providers and states to manage the load.
RE: onerous paperwork to keep Medicaid and SNAP benefits
One way of throwing a wrench into their plan is for younger, healthier retirees and community groups to join forces and assist Medicaid recipients in filling out the extra paperwork. The supposed “savings” in Medicaid depends on people giving up on filing the extra paperwork. Volunteers helping people keep up on the paperwork would benefit Medicaid recipients, their communities, and help thwart this reverse Robin Hood bill.
Excellent chart and explanation. Zooming out and looking at our current state of fiscal affairs, what strikes me is the enormous recent accumulation of wealth at the tippy top, at the expense of everything and everybody else. Aside from the human suffering imposed by this inequality, it is an inherently unstable condition that must end one day. The end won't be pretty. Read the poem "Ozymandias"
It will also damage their future incomes for most people. It’s not just about tax savings. Tariffs will impose many burdens and put people out of work.
This is not true in reality. The government is borrowing money, then handing it out saying, here's some free money. All that free stuff, and tax decreases, are borrowed money. The citizens don't see it, but they still owe it back. Deficit spending allows the politicians to buy votes with money taken from the voters own pockets. This is more or less why democracies fail.
Call it the GW Bush Global War on Terror tax. It sounds kind of patriotic, and the premise is accurate. Bush's debt financed wars, with interest, are about $6Trillion of the current debt. Once this is paid off, move on to the "Trickle down is Pissed On" tax, where another $15trillion or so, from the failure of past tax cuts to pay for themselves, is recovered. Follow this with a "Panama Papers" tax, to recover the tax losses from money hidden in offshore bank accounts. This will put the US back into a fiscal surplus.
NO! They should cut the red state pork to bring down the deficit. If they miss this spending, they will increase their own low state taxes and fund the spending on their own.
Is it possible that running up the debt is seen as a positive feature of the bill by Republicans, since it will help them to achieve their fantasy of destroying the federal government or at least eliminating the last vestiges of the New Deal?
I can't imagine they have put that much thought into it. They appear to be only marching to the beat Trump sets for them, no thought involved. Lemmings.
Governments are “normaly run by serious people, who don’t try to govern on the basis of crackpot economic doctrines…” But Republicans bought into Uncle Miltie’s trickle-down fantasies a long time ago, and Reagan made them Republican gospel, despite zero evidence of positive economic effects. How responsible is that?
the Project 2025 people have indeed given much thought to it, and that is expressly one of their objectives. And that agenda is being implemented while the press focuses on Trump's latest lunacy or lie.
Not lemmings. Lemmings don’t know why. Republican do: they do what Trump says because they fear of losing their seats. They’re far worse than lemmings.
True for the minions, but not for the big brains at the think tanks. Going back to the Old Deal is exactly the point. The New Deal was an aberration…an extended road bump on the highway to economic dominion by the privileged class. Unfortunately climate change will make their moment of victory brief, as extreme weather events make uninhabitable large areas, causing havoc too vast to sustain.
Krasnov can put up a "Mission Accomplished " sign as he has completes his assigned task of destroying the USA. Historians will acknowledge it as the greatest intelligence operation in history. It is a modern day Trojan Horse used to destroy us from within. Well done Vlad!
It's funny to think that the Trojan Horse was probably really obvious to like, 48% of the people in Troy, but the other 52% spent the rest of history acting like it was a HUGE SURPRISE that NOBODY could have seen coming!
No Federalist in 1980 would have signed onto these actions, and I don't think even Grover would approve them. They are clearly the act of a traitor intent on the destruction of our country. We need to call this what it is, absorb it, accept it, so we can take action. We need to treat these people as the domestic enemies they are. They are not doing what's best for we the people or the republic. They are the Visigoths and the Vandals of the modern age, supported by a foreign power. And perhaps we deserve it, because this is what we did to Argentina in 1976, leading to the death of 30,000 "left wing activists" (essentially, the people who were most vocal in opposing the fascist takeover.) And no, I don't believe they really won the election. That might be fringe right now, but I am questioning everything at this point.
Yeah, we should question everything. Too many liberals don't want to. There is not really much evidence to speak of that the election was stolen, but there is also literally zero investigative journalism being done on it, aside from partisan hobbyists who will never be taken seriously by the traditional press, even if they were to produce compelling evidence.
Every accusation is a confession, and Trump has sure done a LOT of accusing about stealing elections. And there were multiple cryptic comments from Trump and Musk prior to election day that expressed an almost smirking certainty, one that seemed distinct from usual Republican bombast.
And there's no way to make it not sound a little "tinfoil," but... they controlled the fucking satellites!
So, whatever it is we DO know, I think it's wildly inappropriate to reach a definitive conclusion that they did not cheat, and it is maddening to me that liberals (and the would-be muckrackers) insist on doing that, to show how serious and fair-minded they are. (And then they complain about their LEADERS not fighting.)
I wonder, sometimes, if Trump's preposterous fraud claims in 2016 and 2020 were designed to get liberals to take a stance not just that they did not cheat, but that cheating in elections was impossible. Which gave MAGA basically full license to cheat as hard as they could physically manage, as we had spent eight years telling everyone it could never happen, and changing that assessment would be unconvincing to people.
To touch on a personal hobby horse - I am less ambiguous on my assessment of the Butler shooting. It was completely implausible in how it unfolded, but the likely reality of it is so unthinkable that people were willing to swallow the official story - which, to refresh everybody, was "man with literally no documented political opinions stands on roof, in plain sight, with a rifle scope, 400 feet from the President, for two minutes, and then gets a shot off."
I REALLY hope that eventually we learn more about the election, the Butler shooting and the events of Biden's forced exit from the race - which we do not know the whole story about, and which had clear secondary motives to the age question - policy-based motives - that were never examined. (If you disagree with me on the Biden thing, that's fine; most people do.) But I'm not hopeful.
The only ones in Troy whose opinions counted were Priam and his Court. If Odysseus’ ploy fooled them, that was good enough, and thus their downfall.
Monty Python never made their Iliad movie “Elton of Troy” spoofing this, with Graham Chapman trying to warn a disbelieving Michael Palin as Priam, and courtiers Cleese and Idle mocking him hilariously.
Thanks for this link! I’m going to borrow this book from the library. I’ve often wondered why Republicans have tied themselves so thoroughly to tax cuts as the solution for everything.
I recall that Reagan bragged to the press that he had run the deficit up so high that the Democrats would never be able to implement social improvement programs again.
They run up the deficit and the government no longer has means to operate. The sick assholes talked about drowning the government in a bathtub of red ink like a little baby.
I agree that they have an overarching plan -it is just tricky piecing it all together. So, what happens when the govt collapses? Certainly, they can cancel elections...what else?
Heather Cox Richardson made a live recording on Facebook about 3-4 weeks ago I think. She talked about how some of the tech bros, particularly Musk likes the ideas of Curtis Yarvin. Technocracy/ private nation states owned by tech bros. And then there are the ideas of the Heritage Foundation and JD Vance, theocracy. I believe P Thiel is a fan of both concepts. If you’re interested in watching the episode, let me know. It was great info. I’ll see if I can find it.
Well.. I would like to watch it but I don't want to watch it. I don't watch horror films and this probably qualifies as one. But yes, please if you have the name of the film that would be helpful.
When the federal government no longer has the capacity for new borrowing, which is our current trajectory, that will force spending cuts. You can tell this is the strategy because if they really cared about making the government fiscally sustainable over the long term, they might once in a while mention increasing revenue.
So.. an extreme form of govt. austerity. Dog eat dog..but they have more ability to beat back the rest of us. Or is there something they will do to pacify the masses at least a little bit?
He is, but only when a Democrat is in the White House. His number one priority was, is, and always will be fat tax cuts for fat cats, and the utter destruction of federal government.
Erasing the New Deal and Great Society programs has been a fixation of the extreme right for decades, and always with the justification that these programs were responsible for burdening the nation with debt. Of course, they always conveniently omit the fact that successive GOP administrations have exploded the debt by cutting taxes for the rich and financing massive expansions in government spending, all financed with tax free debt instruments owned by those very same rich folks. For the latter, it’s a win/win. For the rest of us, not so much.
Republicans are federally dependent. They are addicted to the spending they say they hate, and they are addicted to the federal tax cuts that they love. The net result is more debt (which they say they hate). It’s lunacy!
Never underestimate the power of ignorance and greed. Maybe there are a few Machiavellian operators who are rubbing their hands with glee looking forward to unseen opportunities...but cowardice and stupidity account for most of it.
Unfortunately, I think you are spot on when it comes to Republicans motivated to destroy the Federal Government. Such chaos is welcome to them now until we all have to pay the price later.
They're talking about giving 160 billion to Homan and Noem for their revenge fantasy. It's not clear what they need to avenge, but their band of deputized wanna be cops would be bigger than the marine corps.
“Right now we are running big budget deficits even though we aren’t fighting a war, facing high unemployment, or dealing with a pandemic. We should be taking action to bring those deficits down. Instead, Republicans have rammed through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which will add trillions to the deficit even as it causes mass misery. Money aside, the way Congress was bullied into passing that bill and the lies used to sell it show that we are no longer a serious country run by serious people.”
Thank you Professor. What makes this bill even worse is the fact that there is no economic benefit from the spending. Biden spent large sums to get us out of a recession due to COVID, and because interest rates increased, doubling our cost to service of the debt $1.1 trillion in 2024 (double from 2019).
And most of the bills Biden passed had economic benefits. The CHIP’s Act invested hundreds of billions to bring a key manufacturing sector back to America. The Infrastructure Bill improved our highways and bridges. Both adding hundreds of thousands of jobs. Additionally, Biden added protections to improve healthcare and reduce the cost of prescription drugs.
Moreover, what the economic benefit in this Big Beautiful Bill? Absolutely nothing, except to reward the richest 1% and corporations. Additionally, we’ve seen this movie before. The 2017 tax cut produced two quarters of economic gain, before going back to the economy we had; sugar high economics! We’re adding trillions to the deficit and debt, with no economic benefit; the bond markets are going to punish us if this bill is passed; regardless of whether the Fed lowers the Fed Funds Rate or not!
Bottom line, the cost of goods and services are increasing. Consumers are being hit two fold with tariffs and a weak dollar, and the unemployment rate for high school and college graduates is at a rate not seen since 2012; after the Great Recession. Not to mention, the immigration issue is going to increase food prices as well.
Lastly, if our economy continues on those trajectory, then we are in for some very dark economic conditions. IMHO…:)
Agreed! Already starting to see the home equity loans ads ... consolidate your debt ... tax relief ... and hearing from some realtors that their markets have gone suddenly soft.
Told uncle last night that I've started to watch a few vacant corners in the community where people put boats, cars and RVs out for sale ... the lots fill up, clear sign here that people can no longer afford the toys.
“Right now we are running big budget deficits even though we aren’t fighting a war, facing high unemployment, or dealing with a pandemic. We should be taking action to bring those deficits down.”
Isn’t that the other, less discussed side of Keynes: Govt should spend/borrow when the economy needs help and tax enough when it’s doing well to keep debt in control!
Yes, but Trump isn’t doing this. He’s spending on tax cuts, not investments that spur economic growth. He’s just wasting money and placing the burden on the middle class and working poor.
And in our case, we had a decent economic growth, until Trump decided to upend our entire system. He’s doing to America what he did to his businesses; bankrupting us!….:)
Actually, because they're all psychopaths, after killing off everyone else, they'll turn on each other, over who can ultimately dominate and rule. And then the last of them, standing, up on top of some hilltop, pumping his fist in the air and shouting "I win! I'm the last man standing!" moments before croaking, thus completing human extinction.
I think that the bill greatly increases the risk of the US having a Liz Truss moment (a severe financial crisis). It may be useful to game play what happens when there is decreased demand for T bills: both the short- and long-term consequences. It is possible that one consequence could be an economic crisis and recession as interest rates on T bills rise. The problem for the US is that the debt (thanks to the gop) will soon approach $40 trillion. The US currently pays about $800 billion/year in interest. Rising interest rates will drive up that cost. There will be economic, political and social consequences when the financial crisis occurs.
Thank you. I have long been an admirer of your posts which are worthy of the witty handle. If the crisis is mismanaged, then yes, it is possible that economic collapse could occur. Unfortunately the cabinet and institutions seem to be devoid of competence. The US is well on its way to banana republic status as the rule of law disappears, the emergence of black sites even within the US, the judicial activists now in a majority on the Supremes, terrible income inequality, etc. And all it took was 40 years of Reagan and Thatcher’s policies to bear their bitter fruit.
Thank you for the compliment. The appearance of incompetence might be intentional. They're doing this deliberately. Their goal is to destroy democracy. To that end, they're scary competent.
With a hue of Racism. That's most important. Reganomics and Thacherism sans Racism would've made America ungovernable but it would not have produced total collapse, which we are staring at right now.
Some may think I'm playing devil's advocate on racism, but how does it explain away SCOTUS justice Clarence Thomas? That we need certain people who aren't filthy rich to do their bidding? Such as the professional class of legal/financial types that are in the top 10%?
You mean $40 trillion in debt, correct? Unless I’m missing something, annual interest payments of $800 billion on $40 billion dollars would make the worst pay day loan agreement look positively charitable.
I don't think there will be much of a sugar high in this one. Much of the tax cuts are really allowing the 2017 cuts to continue. Most of us didn't notice a great savings in the 2017 tax cut.
Agreed, but it sent the markets up for two consecutive quarters, and increased growth over 3%. However, this bill is a complete disaster.
There is literally no economic benefit in this bill. No building bridges and roads. No incentives to bring manufacturing back to America, creating jobs. Coupled with his tariffs and a weak dollar, this bill is the last nail in the coffin before they take us off of life support.
And to think of it, we had a robust economy and excellent growth forecasted for this year; yet, here we are!!!!!!
One issue that doesn’t get enough attention in this bill is the funding for detention camps along the lines of the soviet gulags. If the GOP starts locking up the opposition they will have their wet dream of one party rule.
So did DonnyJon. The Nazis set up the worst of their extermination camps in conquered territory, not in Germany. DonnyJon made deals with other countries to imprison the people he sends them.
Except of course, that with climate chaos already upon us, that is HIGHLY unlikely. But hey, the good news is through the gutting of NOAA and so now without fair warnings, we’ll be blissfully ignorant of pending and/or current weather calamities. And now with a decimated FEMA too, what could possibly go wrong? The best possible outcome is that buyer’s remorse will finally settle in upon the fools who voted against their own best interests & the ship, battered and bruised, rights itself in the next election (if there is one).
Right, assuming there is one - and assuming it's not tampered to always give the GOP landslide "victories". I'm not religious, but I pray it's not too late to course correct.
I hope and pray you are correct, Joan. I am awaiting the next election if it is honest, the Republicans should be trounced. I hope, hope and hope. I call, write my representatives frequently. Email etc. Went to a packed no King's day demonstration. Our local police seemed supportive! And cool, well trained, behaved, etc. That was an endorphin boost.
I actually would prefer a rough hurricane season. It would be ‘pain for gain’. The *gain* part would be shocking those who pay little attention to politics so as to wake them up to what’s happened.
The sooner the better so we can try and keep from going down this rabbit hole any further.
I am a blue dot in my community. Lots of Trumpers around. I seriously wonder if they could would associate their pain with the people they voted for. Their survival would have to be a stake to make the jump to blaming those responsible and not some made up bogeyman. I live in Florida , and the state is much less prepared for disasters than in the past. Your theory make get tested soon.
I lived in Florida for nearly 35 years—Tampa Bay area. I watched the forecasting get SO MUCH better over the years. The accuracy of a two-day forecast in 1980 was achieved five days out by 2010. Now it’s going to go backwards.
I've noticed a decrease in accuracy. I used to use the report on the phone app, but then started going to the National Weather Service which was much better. I've recently seen a decrease in specific accuracy. Now its like the phone app. This is more or less the forecast. It smooths things out and seems like wishful thinking.
Learn basic weather from your local library. It's not hard. At least you'll be able to read the sky and know what's likely coming your way in the next day or two.
Hypothetical - the next hurricane knocks out access to Faux Newspeak. Now your MAGA neighbors have to get their information from more credible sources and they're suddenly exposed to the truth.
Will it be enough to compel them to spit out the Kool-Aid? Who knows, but I guess we'll find out.
I've lived in New Jersey since 1984. When we elect a Democrat as governor, everything bad gets blamed on him or her. When we elect a Republican, everything bad gets blamed on the last Democratic governor.
One weather expert has said that the number of hurricanes per year is unlikely to increase, but the severity of the storms will get greater. Last year, the speed with which the 'canes intensified nearly doubled over that of a few years ago.
Sandy wasn't a superstorm. It wasn't even a hurricane the day before it came ashore (that's why there were no real warnings sent out). The reason it was such a big deal was the fact that it hit in exactly the place where it could do the most damage. If it had come in near Atlantic City, we probably wouldn't be talking about it any more, but putting twelve to fifteen foot storm surge into New York harbor was a bit much.
Actually, it was a hurricane until it reached NY. And we were given >plenty< of warnings about it. It became a superstorm after it merged with a nor'easter and grew to over 1000 miles across. It was gigantic. And BTW, a storm needn't be a full blown hurricane to be devastating. The storm surge was "only" 3 feet, but it was still devastating, knocking out power for weeks and closing numerous subway stations for months.
I was living in the Bronx at the time, and when I walked around the next day, I was blown away by how many trees were knocked down.
No doubt it would have been much worse if it was something like Agnes - hitting New York at Category 3.
Trump is dead serious, but he is playing by different rules. Fascinating what you said about Putin creating a new oligarchy who were indebted to him. Seems like this bill will create scores of wealthy people who will feel a sense of fealty to Trump, while oppressing the powerless who are useless to him. Seems pretty damn serious to me.
The under $50K a year voted for Trump in droves. MAGA is using populist words and playing by the old GOP playbook, plus and extra dose of recklessness. Like McConnel said, "They'll get over it."
Perhaps. MAGA will say, "See...we told you Obamacare was not good. Look what's happened."
That’s really the biggest thing I remember about the eras of Democrat control, all the daily screaming, “How are THEY going to pay for that????” Meanwhile, almost silently, the deficit went down and the economy improved.
These are truly insane times of depressing disinformation.
You're looking at it from the wrong angle. If you look at it from the perspective that the goal is to destroy this country, then suddenly, they appear scary competent, which, IMHO, makes it even more horrific. We are indeed in trouble.
I'm not sure I really understand your phrase "scary competent." I see the program in Project 2025 as a bunch of unworkable schemes that ordinarily would not pass muster--they've been rejected multiple times over the years. But this time they have the gangster Trump in their thrall and can rely on his threats and intimidation to force affirmative votes on their schemes in Congress. In other words, their success at this point is based on a fortuitous convergence of forces which might not have emerged at any other time.
That's very true. But once they got their "mango messiah", they worked at lightening speed destroying whatever there was to destroy. Their plan and execution worked perfectly - from >their< perspective.
Alas, look at interest rates today vs. 2008-2012…much easier to borrow when interest rates were near the zero bound. Further, the economy is already doing well (better before Jan 20 than now, however) and then we get demand and institutional destruction.
The problem is made worse by so many that do not see the warning signs and think because it is the US, it cannot happen here…just like Sinclair Lewis wrote on Fascism, “It Can’t Happen Here.” The economic history of panics has been long forgotten and we would do well to refresh our memories of those days. It may be where we are heading.
Funny story, if you read the books telling the tale of LTCM they say that the mangers thought Russian debt was safe, the high interest was basically an arbitrage, because they apparently believed “nuclear powers don’t default”. Then Russia defaulted, bankrupted the fund and nearly bankrupted several investment banks.
Watching the dollar slide and wondering how much fixed income needs to move from the US abroad before anyone here gets a clue we are no longer the monetary safe have due to this chaotic administration.
More than 700 rural U.S. hospitals are at risk of closure due to financial problems, with more than half of those hospitals at immediate risk of closure.
"Elon Musk’s DOGE failed to find significant amounts of waste, fraud and abuse, but it did degrade the functioning of the federal government and demoralize hundreds of thousands of civil servants."
For Medicare and Medicaid, they did not look at pharmacies, doctors and providers who over bill and run up their patients chart with every test under the sun.
This was announced just a few days ago and should be getting more attention. It’s clearly not ordinary Americans that Republicans like to showcase who were behind this massive fraud. Dr. Oz announced it but almost certainly wasthe Biden DOJ who did most of the work given how long these kinds of investigations take.
“More than 300 charged in $14.6 billion health care fraud schemes takedown, Justice Department says”
Professor Krugman delivers another well-reasoned note. But he also touched on immigration.
The Trump Administration has given some sectors a soft pass on whom they hire, especially agriculture and service areas. While that’s the stereotypical immigrant worker, in my neighborhood there’s a crew of almost exclusively Spanish-speaking workers who are installing a fiber optic network for home use. Yesterday, they were digging holes by hand when the weather was in the 90s—both temperature and humidity. They are among the hardest working people I’ve encountered in a half-century of working.
Use/share this spreadsheet as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Reach out to those in your own state, as well as those in others. Use your voice and make some “good trouble” ❤️🩹🤍💙
It has been proven, beyond any doubt, that Americans have extremely short memory, and history, unfortunately repeats itself. I know what i note in my comment is anathema for politicians, who claim the average American voter is smart. Contrary, the average American voter is an idiot who has their priorities all messed up. Why would anyone with common sense vote against their best interest? Unfortunately the average American voter does not do due diligence to educate themselves about who they by will cast their vote for. As a result, the repugnant liar Republicans manage to fool these idiots into voting for them all the while lying to them with a straight face. The net result is the Republicans take control of the government, White House and Congress, they promptly proceed to screw the economy by passing tax cuts for their millionaire and billionaire donors, at the expense of all of us, not only the morons that voted for these crooks, and after the Republicans have screwed everybody, the American voter votes in Democrats to fix the crap the Repugnants have created. Go back to the days of Ronald Reagan the middle class destroyer.
I agree with your assessment that "the average American voter is an idiot who has their priorities all messed up." I think the latter part of that sentence contains the answer to your question about why Republican voters vote against their own *economic* self interest. Republican voters have their priorities all messed up.
Republican voters may claim that their #1 concern is the economy, but I think the reality is far different. Their #1 concern 24/7/365 -are social issues like abortion, and in the past 5-10 years, whatever the hell else they choose to define as "woke" on any given day. Republican middle class voters have consistantly cast their votes for certain politicians regardless of whether their economic policies will hurt them, or are outright nonsense, for more than 40 years. If they cared about economics, George H.W. Bush's correct assessment of Reagan's economic policy as "voodoo economics" would have seriously damaged Reagan. Instead, Bush was a mere speed bump on Reagan's way to the Republican nomination and ultimately the White House.
Republicans aren't "fooling" their voters as much as Republican voters simply don't care. They voted for Republicans to oppose all manner of civil rights legislation and eventually get Roe v. Wade overturned. They continue to do it to oppose civil rights for people they hate, get a national abortion ban, and in a hysterical attempt to reverse demographics because their brains can't handle an eventual non-white majority...even if it happens after they're dead.
I agree that the Republican voting public was obsessed with Roe vs Wade, which incidentally did not forced any of them to resort to abortions, but gave the US residence a choice they did not have before. But think about it, someone as ill-informed, as these idiots, does not understand the difference because they lack common sense.
The problem is a lot of people think not-Republican means loony Socialism which for them means all those people they don't like 'getting' too much. They will happily take their own SSec allowances but all those other people who vote for not-Republicans should not get the same benefits ....because... well they just don't like them so that's why !
These people that associate Democrats with looney socialism need to educate themselves as to chat is Capitalism, Socialism, Communism. The vast majority of them confuse and conflate Socialism and Communism, without thinking that Publicly funded Police and Fire fighting are social programs. Talking about being stupid!
Well, with effectively only two parties to choose between on a national level in the US, the "others" must be in the party one doesn't vote for. The choice is only between blue or red - not black, green, yellow, pink, white or dotted.
If Americans would have the choice between all of the political flavors, i.e. a party for each direction within politics (social democrats, socialists, communists, liberals, libertarians, conservatives etc.), it would be easier to cast a vote for exactly the political ideology an individual adheres to.
You’re right about the fact there are are only two parties to chose from. The closest we came to having a third party was when Ross Perot ran and took votes from the elder bush allowing Bill Clinton to win. Democrats, unfortunately, have demonstrated over the years that they cannot deliver a unified message that will defeat the lying Republicans. Much of the blame should go to the DNC and the “independents” who are either as confused politically as anyone, or just plain hypocrites.
"The first thing we know is that in 2024, if you reran the election with only people who reported watching the news more than once a month, then Kamala Harris would have won in a landslide." - G. Elliott Morris
When the Democrats take back the House, they should create a special tax to pay down the deficit and name it something like The GOP Deficit Tax.
Agreed, IF Democrats are allowed to take back the house -- don't assume the GOP won't find ways to make that impossible -- they should do that and much more. They should investigate and impeach every single Trumpist they can, including the scum of SCOTUS. And this time, arrest subpoenaed witnesses who refuse to appear. Investigate crypto too -- that's likely how all these crooks plan to ride out the economic collapse they're engineering.
Also pertaining to the 2026 elections, he Medicaid cuts that passed today don't take effect until December 2026 a month AFTER the election.
Noted ... this is the definition of "chicken shit."
Also, incredibly smart politics. The Rs realize they are likely to face some losses in 2026. When the pain from their current action hits, they will be able to convince their credulous base that it was the Ds who did it to them. And the grift goes on...
Please stop with the adverts in a thread unrelated to the product that you are hawking.
Very deliberate.
So crafty of them!
The 26 bi
Will at best restore the likes of
The present dear minority leader
The kind of chap that can live on cat food
Yes a do list leader but not at the expense of long run party rectification
The postt 1980
hee haw party is a roost for
Bull geese
Ready to feed on corporate scratch
It is callled a "surtax." In my experience this was first instituted by Nixon. Painful at the time (I was a graduate student), but efficacious as intended.
When King Donald begins knighting his most loyal sycophants we can call the ensuing corrective a “Sirtax”.
Hoist them on their own petards. Or the nearest long, sharp object,
PLEASE REPORT THIS BOT. I CAN’T. REPORT BUTTON FAILS ON IPHONE.
Done.
Please stop with the adverts in a thread unrelated to the product that you are hawking.
Well, Milk of Magnesia is an effective laxative.
so ae prunes and many other pleasant tasting fruits.
Ohhh, man, gimme a break. I'm trying to be positive here.
Democrats need to do more than just take back the House to accomplish a successful MAGA purge, and I question if we will achieve that. Impeachment would once again be met with Trump victimization backlash, as a 67 vote Senate majority I’d simply out of reach. The electoral map is just too stacked against Democrats in gerrymandered Red states. The most important thing Democrats must do is develop a candidate with the ability to appeal to voters across the country who will by then know their flirtation with Trumpism has brought nothing but misery…except to the very well off.
With respect, such a candidate is not possible. Several have run on either side over the last number of years and none have even come close. The primary reason being that neither party WANTS a candidate with mass appeal. Neither wants to admit that most Americans are only a little aways apart in terms of what they want - affordable housing, good education for their children, public safety, and so forth. They have a great little racket going on of blaming the other side for all the evils in the world, and doing absolutely nothing about any of it except to fund raise off it. There's lots we could do that would be popular with both Dems and Reps, but we won't do any of it because its not popular with the oligarchs.
Please get a clue - it's the Repugs who who are drowning the working class for the benefit ot the top 10% in income - especially those in the top 2-3%.
Actually it is the top 0.5%. The cutoff income for the top 10% is about $150k. The cutoff for the top 3% is about $650k. For wealth, these same cutoffs are a little under a million and something like $13 million. I don't know about you, but I don't consider someone making less $200k and with less than a million dollars in the bank wealthy. In big cities, that's barely out of middle class. Our problem is extreme inequality at the very top. It skews our politics, our economy, indeed our social cohesion. Check out this video... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QPKKQnijnsM
This if from well over a decade ago and things are significantly worse now. Point me to a single piece of legislation passed by Democrats that addressed this massive wealth inequality. Yes you have a few Elizabeth Warrens out there, but she's an example from my above post of someone who could never possibly get a nomination. Sorry, but we are being gamed by both parties.
David, that hopelessness serves only to cement the oligarchs’ dominance. Biden was never my preferred antidote to Trump 45, nor Harris to Trump 47, but what will come out of the OBBBA will be so flagrantly wrong and destructive it will make even Red state voters react. Their response to fabricated affronts like the invasion of criminals crossing the border or the “terrible Biden economy” was to elect a GOP Trifecta. What will they do when their hospitals close and their families lose coverage and the hard jobs once done by immigrants are the only ones available to them, and no SNAP food assistance is forthcoming?
It isn't hopelessness. It is hopeFULness that Democrats (and maybe even some Republicans) can be woken up to demand better from our political leaders. Schumer, Pelosi, Clinton (both of them), even Obama - all are part of the problem. Look at the ACA - it was basically nothing more than a big wet kiss to the insurance racket. Hell, it was the Republican plan. I honestly feel that at that moment in history we could have done better - something like including a Medicare OPTION for all. At the very minimum we could have made it a requirement that only non-profit insurers administer medicare and ACA eligible plans. For that matter, we should be giving preference to non-profits for most government contracts, or at least imposing severe restrictions on charge-backs for cost overruns. In summary, there are many possible changes Dems could champion. Sometimes they campaign on them, but they never actually do them. Oh, and how will Republican voters react? They will blame Democrats because they live in an information bubble and will be told it is Dems fault.
Most of that was tried, but couldn't pass the Senate. Lieberman squashed the 'public option' in PPACA.
Politics is the art of the possible.
PPACA didn't fix the leaky boat, but DID pull many ppl out of the frigid waters into that boat.
Dems have been trying to fix health insurance since at least 1948.
I wholeheartedly endorse this idea.
A key fact:
OBBB reduces the income of 30% of people, but increases the income of 60%.
So, 60% will be happy. And no matter how unhappy the 30% are, each person still only gets one vote.
That's the power of vote-buying through policy.
This chart is taken from a recent issue of The Economist.
https://i.imgur.com/nlqtqxl.png
It will not increase the income of most people when you add in the dollar value of services lost. And how do you value spending an extra hour on the phone to a government agency because of staffing reductions?
The increase is a phantom - 3 year deduction increase for old people like me BFD, and a short term increase in SALT (wow - I'll be dead in 2030) . Have you looked at the bits that create a tsunami of paperwork to receive benefits? Qualify for Medicaid coverage when the hospital sends you to a SNF after surgery? Is your mom ready to drop $30K for a month of care in her spend-down? How about the working poor facing annual renewal for ACA subsidies instead of the present auto-renewal? We can go from 35% of health care dollars spent on administration to 50%! Good for us. The only one happy is the corporate monopoly paid by providers and states to manage the load.
RE: onerous paperwork to keep Medicaid and SNAP benefits
One way of throwing a wrench into their plan is for younger, healthier retirees and community groups to join forces and assist Medicaid recipients in filling out the extra paperwork. The supposed “savings” in Medicaid depends on people giving up on filing the extra paperwork. Volunteers helping people keep up on the paperwork would benefit Medicaid recipients, their communities, and help thwart this reverse Robin Hood bill.
Just BTW, on the "We can go from 35% of health care dollars spent on administration to 50%! "
the for-profit health insurance companies make their 5% profit on that waste as well as the $$ spent on actual health care.
Every time the total cost goes up, they get a premium increase, and their profits go up.
(Most MCD and MCR is run by private insurance companies. MCR "MACs" https://www.cms.gov/medicare/coding-billing/medicare-administrative-contractors-macs/whats-mac )
Excellent chart and explanation. Zooming out and looking at our current state of fiscal affairs, what strikes me is the enormous recent accumulation of wealth at the tippy top, at the expense of everything and everybody else. Aside from the human suffering imposed by this inequality, it is an inherently unstable condition that must end one day. The end won't be pretty. Read the poem "Ozymandias"
It will also damage their future incomes for most people. It’s not just about tax savings. Tariffs will impose many burdens and put people out of work.
This is not true in reality. The government is borrowing money, then handing it out saying, here's some free money. All that free stuff, and tax decreases, are borrowed money. The citizens don't see it, but they still owe it back. Deficit spending allows the politicians to buy votes with money taken from the voters own pockets. This is more or less why democracies fail.
But the benefits go to the folks at the very top, who own the US government and have for a long time.
https://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27074746
Thanks!
" ... and name it something like The GOP Deficit Tax."
The Big Beautiful GOP Deficit Tax?
But they won't because DACO. There is only one political party, the Incumbent Party
Call it the GW Bush Global War on Terror tax. It sounds kind of patriotic, and the premise is accurate. Bush's debt financed wars, with interest, are about $6Trillion of the current debt. Once this is paid off, move on to the "Trickle down is Pissed On" tax, where another $15trillion or so, from the failure of past tax cuts to pay for themselves, is recovered. Follow this with a "Panama Papers" tax, to recover the tax losses from money hidden in offshore bank accounts. This will put the US back into a fiscal surplus.
NO! They should cut the red state pork to bring down the deficit. If they miss this spending, they will increase their own low state taxes and fund the spending on their own.
Zero point to that. It just draws money out of the private sector to be effectively destroyed.
The Dems just need to adjust policies to do the most good. The deficit and debt are largely irrelevant with the right policies.
Good idea!
Call it the Fiscal Actual Responsibility Tax (FART)
Alas Trump will veto anything they try to do
DEMs must identify a few stand out leaders.
They already do that. Then they make sure that none of them go anywhere in the DNC, or politics.
In case anybody's wondering, I've reported the damned spam bot - yet again.
BF Skinner would recommend ignoring it. I don't know, but we should check in with Harland Dorrinson.
There’s a new one further up. As usual, the report button on my iPhone is useless.
You prompted me to go on a hunt for it. I found it and reported it.
Me, too. To the point that Substack won't process it any more.
It just takes them a while. It's gone now (three hours after Winston reported it).
Is it possible that running up the debt is seen as a positive feature of the bill by Republicans, since it will help them to achieve their fantasy of destroying the federal government or at least eliminating the last vestiges of the New Deal?
I can't imagine they have put that much thought into it. They appear to be only marching to the beat Trump sets for them, no thought involved. Lemmings.
It seems that way, but beware, they've been pushing exactly this agenda for decades. They know perfectly damned well what they're doing.
Governments are “normaly run by serious people, who don’t try to govern on the basis of crackpot economic doctrines…” But Republicans bought into Uncle Miltie’s trickle-down fantasies a long time ago, and Reagan made them Republican gospel, despite zero evidence of positive economic effects. How responsible is that?
Federalist society has been working on it for 40 years.
The Heritage Foundation has been as well
Longer than that. There's a compelling argument that it started in the Nixon years.
We definitely have a sanity crisis. Our Nation is being run by extremely tribal, delusional, greedy people. Mores the pity.
...AKA - political sociopaths
Which are no different than any other brand of sociopaths.
Maybe we just need a Sanity Clause…. But no one believes in that!!
the Project 2025 people have indeed given much thought to it, and that is expressly one of their objectives. And that agenda is being implemented while the press focuses on Trump's latest lunacy or lie.
This contemptible bill has Project 25's stench all over it.
Not lemmings. Lemmings don’t know why. Republican do: they do what Trump says because they fear of losing their seats. They’re far worse than lemmings.
True for the minions, but not for the big brains at the think tanks. Going back to the Old Deal is exactly the point. The New Deal was an aberration…an extended road bump on the highway to economic dominion by the privileged class. Unfortunately climate change will make their moment of victory brief, as extreme weather events make uninhabitable large areas, causing havoc too vast to sustain.
One can always hope that they'll go down with the rest of us.
Krasnov can put up a "Mission Accomplished " sign as he has completes his assigned task of destroying the USA. Historians will acknowledge it as the greatest intelligence operation in history. It is a modern day Trojan Horse used to destroy us from within. Well done Vlad!
It's funny to think that the Trojan Horse was probably really obvious to like, 48% of the people in Troy, but the other 52% spent the rest of history acting like it was a HUGE SURPRISE that NOBODY could have seen coming!
No Federalist in 1980 would have signed onto these actions, and I don't think even Grover would approve them. They are clearly the act of a traitor intent on the destruction of our country. We need to call this what it is, absorb it, accept it, so we can take action. We need to treat these people as the domestic enemies they are. They are not doing what's best for we the people or the republic. They are the Visigoths and the Vandals of the modern age, supported by a foreign power. And perhaps we deserve it, because this is what we did to Argentina in 1976, leading to the death of 30,000 "left wing activists" (essentially, the people who were most vocal in opposing the fascist takeover.) And no, I don't believe they really won the election. That might be fringe right now, but I am questioning everything at this point.
Yeah, we should question everything. Too many liberals don't want to. There is not really much evidence to speak of that the election was stolen, but there is also literally zero investigative journalism being done on it, aside from partisan hobbyists who will never be taken seriously by the traditional press, even if they were to produce compelling evidence.
Every accusation is a confession, and Trump has sure done a LOT of accusing about stealing elections. And there were multiple cryptic comments from Trump and Musk prior to election day that expressed an almost smirking certainty, one that seemed distinct from usual Republican bombast.
And there's no way to make it not sound a little "tinfoil," but... they controlled the fucking satellites!
So, whatever it is we DO know, I think it's wildly inappropriate to reach a definitive conclusion that they did not cheat, and it is maddening to me that liberals (and the would-be muckrackers) insist on doing that, to show how serious and fair-minded they are. (And then they complain about their LEADERS not fighting.)
I wonder, sometimes, if Trump's preposterous fraud claims in 2016 and 2020 were designed to get liberals to take a stance not just that they did not cheat, but that cheating in elections was impossible. Which gave MAGA basically full license to cheat as hard as they could physically manage, as we had spent eight years telling everyone it could never happen, and changing that assessment would be unconvincing to people.
To touch on a personal hobby horse - I am less ambiguous on my assessment of the Butler shooting. It was completely implausible in how it unfolded, but the likely reality of it is so unthinkable that people were willing to swallow the official story - which, to refresh everybody, was "man with literally no documented political opinions stands on roof, in plain sight, with a rifle scope, 400 feet from the President, for two minutes, and then gets a shot off."
I REALLY hope that eventually we learn more about the election, the Butler shooting and the events of Biden's forced exit from the race - which we do not know the whole story about, and which had clear secondary motives to the age question - policy-based motives - that were never examined. (If you disagree with me on the Biden thing, that's fine; most people do.) But I'm not hopeful.
You way overestimate Grover’s humane instincts. He has none.
The only ones in Troy whose opinions counted were Priam and his Court. If Odysseus’ ploy fooled them, that was good enough, and thus their downfall.
Monty Python never made their Iliad movie “Elton of Troy” spoofing this, with Graham Chapman trying to warn a disbelieving Michael Palin as Priam, and courtiers Cleese and Idle mocking him hilariously.
It’s called the ‘starve the beast’ strategy. It’s a thing.
https://www.ipr.northwestern.edu/news/2019/prasad-starving-the-beast.html
Thanks for this link! I’m going to borrow this book from the library. I’ve often wondered why Republicans have tied themselves so thoroughly to tax cuts as the solution for everything.
I recall that Reagan bragged to the press that he had run the deficit up so high that the Democrats would never be able to implement social improvement programs again.
The tax cuts are way larger than all the other cuts put together (NYT had figures),
Grover Norquist approves.
He does? Why? I thought he was a deficit hawk?
They run up the deficit and the government no longer has means to operate. The sick assholes talked about drowning the government in a bathtub of red ink like a little baby.
I agree that they have an overarching plan -it is just tricky piecing it all together. So, what happens when the govt collapses? Certainly, they can cancel elections...what else?
Heather Cox Richardson made a live recording on Facebook about 3-4 weeks ago I think. She talked about how some of the tech bros, particularly Musk likes the ideas of Curtis Yarvin. Technocracy/ private nation states owned by tech bros. And then there are the ideas of the Heritage Foundation and JD Vance, theocracy. I believe P Thiel is a fan of both concepts. If you’re interested in watching the episode, let me know. It was great info. I’ll see if I can find it.
Well.. I would like to watch it but I don't want to watch it. I don't watch horror films and this probably qualifies as one. But yes, please if you have the name of the film that would be helpful.
Heather has her own channel on youtube.
https://youtube.com/@heathercoxrichardson?si=KpJfyY1sTNjBMRyF
Search for :
"Who on Earth is Curtis Yarvin"
https://youtu.be/S0vb92zoVyI?si=MC2-ulfYs971YwWe
When the federal government no longer has the capacity for new borrowing, which is our current trajectory, that will force spending cuts. You can tell this is the strategy because if they really cared about making the government fiscally sustainable over the long term, they might once in a while mention increasing revenue.
So.. an extreme form of govt. austerity. Dog eat dog..but they have more ability to beat back the rest of us. Or is there something they will do to pacify the masses at least a little bit?
Feudalism.
You beat me:-)
He is, but only when a Democrat is in the White House. His number one priority was, is, and always will be fat tax cuts for fat cats, and the utter destruction of federal government.
If you can't push the baby down in the bathtub add more water till the baby can't float and drowns in debt.
He wanted to starve the government until it could be drowned in the bathtub. We're close to that now.
Erasing the New Deal and Great Society programs has been a fixation of the extreme right for decades, and always with the justification that these programs were responsible for burdening the nation with debt. Of course, they always conveniently omit the fact that successive GOP administrations have exploded the debt by cutting taxes for the rich and financing massive expansions in government spending, all financed with tax free debt instruments owned by those very same rich folks. For the latter, it’s a win/win. For the rest of us, not so much.
Or, at least, forcing Democrats, when they are in office, to spend time and money cleaning up after the mess the elephant made.
Republicans are federally dependent. They are addicted to the spending they say they hate, and they are addicted to the federal tax cuts that they love. The net result is more debt (which they say they hate). It’s lunacy!
They plan to TINA -- "There is no alternative" -- like their guide and lodestar Mrs. Thatcher -- their way back to Hoover.
Never underestimate the power of ignorance and greed. Maybe there are a few Machiavellian operators who are rubbing their hands with glee looking forward to unseen opportunities...but cowardice and stupidity account for most of it.
I've read Machiavelli. He got a bad rap.
the starve the beast strategy is back (or more accurately never left)
Unfortunately, I think you are spot on when it comes to Republicans motivated to destroy the Federal Government. Such chaos is welcome to them now until we all have to pay the price later.
Yes
Yep and a campaign issue should there be elections.
Yes! I read her letters every day on Substack, but I haven’t seen her “Politics Chat” videos on here.
Try YouTube.
Oh, for sure.
FCC
They're talking about giving 160 billion to Homan and Noem for their revenge fantasy. It's not clear what they need to avenge, but their band of deputized wanna be cops would be bigger than the marine corps.
There's nothing good about this bill.
“Right now we are running big budget deficits even though we aren’t fighting a war, facing high unemployment, or dealing with a pandemic. We should be taking action to bring those deficits down. Instead, Republicans have rammed through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which will add trillions to the deficit even as it causes mass misery. Money aside, the way Congress was bullied into passing that bill and the lies used to sell it show that we are no longer a serious country run by serious people.”
Thank you Professor. What makes this bill even worse is the fact that there is no economic benefit from the spending. Biden spent large sums to get us out of a recession due to COVID, and because interest rates increased, doubling our cost to service of the debt $1.1 trillion in 2024 (double from 2019).
And most of the bills Biden passed had economic benefits. The CHIP’s Act invested hundreds of billions to bring a key manufacturing sector back to America. The Infrastructure Bill improved our highways and bridges. Both adding hundreds of thousands of jobs. Additionally, Biden added protections to improve healthcare and reduce the cost of prescription drugs.
Moreover, what the economic benefit in this Big Beautiful Bill? Absolutely nothing, except to reward the richest 1% and corporations. Additionally, we’ve seen this movie before. The 2017 tax cut produced two quarters of economic gain, before going back to the economy we had; sugar high economics! We’re adding trillions to the deficit and debt, with no economic benefit; the bond markets are going to punish us if this bill is passed; regardless of whether the Fed lowers the Fed Funds Rate or not!
Bottom line, the cost of goods and services are increasing. Consumers are being hit two fold with tariffs and a weak dollar, and the unemployment rate for high school and college graduates is at a rate not seen since 2012; after the Great Recession. Not to mention, the immigration issue is going to increase food prices as well.
Lastly, if our economy continues on those trajectory, then we are in for some very dark economic conditions. IMHO…:)
Agreed! Already starting to see the home equity loans ads ... consolidate your debt ... tax relief ... and hearing from some realtors that their markets have gone suddenly soft.
Told uncle last night that I've started to watch a few vacant corners in the community where people put boats, cars and RVs out for sale ... the lots fill up, clear sign here that people can no longer afford the toys.
Interesting. We’re also starting to see concerns about the accuracy of the forthcoming Trump-era economic data.
Reams of "alternative facts".
“Right now we are running big budget deficits even though we aren’t fighting a war, facing high unemployment, or dealing with a pandemic. We should be taking action to bring those deficits down.”
Isn’t that the other, less discussed side of Keynes: Govt should spend/borrow when the economy needs help and tax enough when it’s doing well to keep debt in control!
Yes, but Trump isn’t doing this. He’s spending on tax cuts, not investments that spur economic growth. He’s just wasting money and placing the burden on the middle class and working poor.
And in our case, we had a decent economic growth, until Trump decided to upend our entire system. He’s doing to America what he did to his businesses; bankrupting us!….:)
That’s exactly my point. This is a time we should be raising not lowering taxes. Sorry I didn’t make that clearer.
Exactly! Sorry, I misunderstood the question…:)
Not just the working poor, those who can't work are getting screwed the most of all. Seniors, the disabled. Tossed to the wolves.
Just like late 30s Germany.
That seems to be their model.
They think that Social Darwinism is great until it comes for them.
And it will. They just don't know it yet.
Actually, because they're all psychopaths, after killing off everyone else, they'll turn on each other, over who can ultimately dominate and rule. And then the last of them, standing, up on top of some hilltop, pumping his fist in the air and shouting "I win! I'm the last man standing!" moments before croaking, thus completing human extinction.
All very likely, but not very satisfying to any of the little guys remaining who have already been ruined.
That is the reason I believe our dollar is dropping. Investors believe there's a high chance that he will default on our US debts.
That's the part about serious people
Of course, that's the whole idea. Break the economy, break the government. Divide and conquer. Then plunder and pillage the spoils.
I think that the bill greatly increases the risk of the US having a Liz Truss moment (a severe financial crisis). It may be useful to game play what happens when there is decreased demand for T bills: both the short- and long-term consequences. It is possible that one consequence could be an economic crisis and recession as interest rates on T bills rise. The problem for the US is that the debt (thanks to the gop) will soon approach $40 trillion. The US currently pays about $800 billion/year in interest. Rising interest rates will drive up that cost. There will be economic, political and social consequences when the financial crisis occurs.
Not just crisis - collapse. They're aiming to convert us into a banana republic.
Thank you. I have long been an admirer of your posts which are worthy of the witty handle. If the crisis is mismanaged, then yes, it is possible that economic collapse could occur. Unfortunately the cabinet and institutions seem to be devoid of competence. The US is well on its way to banana republic status as the rule of law disappears, the emergence of black sites even within the US, the judicial activists now in a majority on the Supremes, terrible income inequality, etc. And all it took was 40 years of Reagan and Thatcher’s policies to bear their bitter fruit.
Thank you for the compliment. The appearance of incompetence might be intentional. They're doing this deliberately. Their goal is to destroy democracy. To that end, they're scary competent.
With a hue of Racism. That's most important. Reganomics and Thacherism sans Racism would've made America ungovernable but it would not have produced total collapse, which we are staring at right now.
Some may think I'm playing devil's advocate on racism, but how does it explain away SCOTUS justice Clarence Thomas? That we need certain people who aren't filthy rich to do their bidding? Such as the professional class of legal/financial types that are in the top 10%?
You mean $40 trillion in debt, correct? Unless I’m missing something, annual interest payments of $800 billion on $40 billion dollars would make the worst pay day loan agreement look positively charitable.
Thanks — I meant trillion. I’ve corrected it now
$3.3 Trillion !!! - I'd say that undercuts years of Republican posturing and pretending to care about the national debt.
I don't think there will be much of a sugar high in this one. Much of the tax cuts are really allowing the 2017 cuts to continue. Most of us didn't notice a great savings in the 2017 tax cut.
Agreed, but it sent the markets up for two consecutive quarters, and increased growth over 3%. However, this bill is a complete disaster.
There is literally no economic benefit in this bill. No building bridges and roads. No incentives to bring manufacturing back to America, creating jobs. Coupled with his tariffs and a weak dollar, this bill is the last nail in the coffin before they take us off of life support.
And to think of it, we had a robust economy and excellent growth forecasted for this year; yet, here we are!!!!!!
One issue that doesn’t get enough attention in this bill is the funding for detention camps along the lines of the soviet gulags. If the GOP starts locking up the opposition they will have their wet dream of one party rule.
..and our tax dollars are paying private companies to run these gulags.
Talk about what the GOP loves to call "moral hazard." 🙄
And merchandising about extermination camps. Never nazis do this.
They tried to keep it secret.
So did DonnyJon. The Nazis set up the worst of their extermination camps in conquered territory, not in Germany. DonnyJon made deals with other countries to imprison the people he sends them.
And all the funding being redirected from worthiness causes ... hopefully this hurricane season will not be as bad as the last.
Except of course, that with climate chaos already upon us, that is HIGHLY unlikely. But hey, the good news is through the gutting of NOAA and so now without fair warnings, we’ll be blissfully ignorant of pending and/or current weather calamities. And now with a decimated FEMA too, what could possibly go wrong? The best possible outcome is that buyer’s remorse will finally settle in upon the fools who voted against their own best interests & the ship, battered and bruised, rights itself in the next election (if there is one).
Right, assuming there is one - and assuming it's not tampered to always give the GOP landslide "victories". I'm not religious, but I pray it's not too late to course correct.
I hope and pray you are correct, Joan. I am awaiting the next election if it is honest, the Republicans should be trounced. I hope, hope and hope. I call, write my representatives frequently. Email etc. Went to a packed no King's day demonstration. Our local police seemed supportive! And cool, well trained, behaved, etc. That was an endorphin boost.
I actually would prefer a rough hurricane season. It would be ‘pain for gain’. The *gain* part would be shocking those who pay little attention to politics so as to wake them up to what’s happened.
The sooner the better so we can try and keep from going down this rabbit hole any further.
I am a blue dot in my community. Lots of Trumpers around. I seriously wonder if they could would associate their pain with the people they voted for. Their survival would have to be a stake to make the jump to blaming those responsible and not some made up bogeyman. I live in Florida , and the state is much less prepared for disasters than in the past. Your theory make get tested soon.
I lived in Florida for nearly 35 years—Tampa Bay area. I watched the forecasting get SO MUCH better over the years. The accuracy of a two-day forecast in 1980 was achieved five days out by 2010. Now it’s going to go backwards.
From here on out, warning cones will be drawn with sharpie's.
I've noticed a decrease in accuracy. I used to use the report on the phone app, but then started going to the National Weather Service which was much better. I've recently seen a decrease in specific accuracy. Now its like the phone app. This is more or less the forecast. It smooths things out and seems like wishful thinking.
Try wunderground.com.
Learn basic weather from your local library. It's not hard. At least you'll be able to read the sky and know what's likely coming your way in the next day or two.
“Their survival would have to be a stake to make the jump to blaming those responsible”
Covid proved they won’t ever take responsibility. So many of them were still in denial as they were hooked up to ECMO machines before they died.
Hypothetical - the next hurricane knocks out access to Faux Newspeak. Now your MAGA neighbors have to get their information from more credible sources and they're suddenly exposed to the truth.
Will it be enough to compel them to spit out the Kool-Aid? Who knows, but I guess we'll find out.
I've lived in New Jersey since 1984. When we elect a Democrat as governor, everything bad gets blamed on him or her. When we elect a Republican, everything bad gets blamed on the last Democratic governor.
I'm in the same situation in SW MO.
They'll probably blame "the libs" - because Faux Newspeak told them to.
Yes, but hope is not a good plan in these kinds of things. Hope for the best but plan for otherwise.
Taking global warming into account, it'll very likely grow continuously worse with each new season.
One weather expert has said that the number of hurricanes per year is unlikely to increase, but the severity of the storms will get greater. Last year, the speed with which the 'canes intensified nearly doubled over that of a few years ago.
Yes, they're getting stronger, faster. And when can we expect the next "Superstorm Sandy"? It seems inevitable.
Sandy wasn't a superstorm. It wasn't even a hurricane the day before it came ashore (that's why there were no real warnings sent out). The reason it was such a big deal was the fact that it hit in exactly the place where it could do the most damage. If it had come in near Atlantic City, we probably wouldn't be talking about it any more, but putting twelve to fifteen foot storm surge into New York harbor was a bit much.
Actually, it was a hurricane until it reached NY. And we were given >plenty< of warnings about it. It became a superstorm after it merged with a nor'easter and grew to over 1000 miles across. It was gigantic. And BTW, a storm needn't be a full blown hurricane to be devastating. The storm surge was "only" 3 feet, but it was still devastating, knocking out power for weeks and closing numerous subway stations for months.
I was living in the Bronx at the time, and when I walked around the next day, I was blown away by how many trees were knocked down.
No doubt it would have been much worse if it was something like Agnes - hitting New York at Category 3.
Trump is dead serious, but he is playing by different rules. Fascinating what you said about Putin creating a new oligarchy who were indebted to him. Seems like this bill will create scores of wealthy people who will feel a sense of fealty to Trump, while oppressing the powerless who are useless to him. Seems pretty damn serious to me.
Yeah, it's definitely no joke.
The under $50K a year voted for Trump in droves. MAGA is using populist words and playing by the old GOP playbook, plus and extra dose of recklessness. Like McConnel said, "They'll get over it."
Perhaps. MAGA will say, "See...we told you Obamacare was not good. Look what's happened."
Will the lies fly? Who knows.
That's exactly the plan.
Ever see the movie Elysium?
That’s really the biggest thing I remember about the eras of Democrat control, all the daily screaming, “How are THEY going to pay for that????” Meanwhile, almost silently, the deficit went down and the economy improved.
These are truly insane times of depressing disinformation.
Oh how right you are Mr. Krugman. The incompetence of tRump and his corrupt minions is vast and horrific and we are in trouble!!!
You're looking at it from the wrong angle. If you look at it from the perspective that the goal is to destroy this country, then suddenly, they appear scary competent, which, IMHO, makes it even more horrific. We are indeed in trouble.
I'm not sure I really understand your phrase "scary competent." I see the program in Project 2025 as a bunch of unworkable schemes that ordinarily would not pass muster--they've been rejected multiple times over the years. But this time they have the gangster Trump in their thrall and can rely on his threats and intimidation to force affirmative votes on their schemes in Congress. In other words, their success at this point is based on a fortuitous convergence of forces which might not have emerged at any other time.
That's very true. But once they got their "mango messiah", they worked at lightening speed destroying whatever there was to destroy. Their plan and execution worked perfectly - from >their< perspective.
Alas, look at interest rates today vs. 2008-2012…much easier to borrow when interest rates were near the zero bound. Further, the economy is already doing well (better before Jan 20 than now, however) and then we get demand and institutional destruction.
The problem is made worse by so many that do not see the warning signs and think because it is the US, it cannot happen here…just like Sinclair Lewis wrote on Fascism, “It Can’t Happen Here.” The economic history of panics has been long forgotten and we would do well to refresh our memories of those days. It may be where we are heading.
Funny story, if you read the books telling the tale of LTCM they say that the mangers thought Russian debt was safe, the high interest was basically an arbitrage, because they apparently believed “nuclear powers don’t default”. Then Russia defaulted, bankrupted the fund and nearly bankrupted several investment banks.
The US is in fact a nuclear power, just saying …
Watching the dollar slide and wondering how much fixed income needs to move from the US abroad before anyone here gets a clue we are no longer the monetary safe have due to this chaotic administration.
Right, the escape from dollar is very slow, so Americans can't notice it and counterattack
How do you get your fixed income abroad if you're just an average person?
Maybe buy European annuities?
Main employers in rural areas and source for healthcare and good jobs!
https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/finance/703-hospitals-at-risk-of-closure-state-by-state/
703 hospitals at risk of closure, state by state
More than 700 rural U.S. hospitals are at risk of closure due to financial problems, with more than half of those hospitals at immediate risk of closure.
Molly Gamble
Monday, August 5th, 2024
If you click on that link, you see only a big sign up form that cannot be closed. But I believe you.
"Elon Musk’s DOGE failed to find significant amounts of waste, fraud and abuse, but it did degrade the functioning of the federal government and demoralize hundreds of thousands of civil servants."
For Medicare and Medicaid, they did not look at pharmacies, doctors and providers who over bill and run up their patients chart with every test under the sun.
This was announced just a few days ago and should be getting more attention. It’s clearly not ordinary Americans that Republicans like to showcase who were behind this massive fraud. Dr. Oz announced it but almost certainly wasthe Biden DOJ who did most of the work given how long these kinds of investigations take.
“More than 300 charged in $14.6 billion health care fraud schemes takedown, Justice Department says”
https://apnews.com/article/justice-department-health-care-fraud-schemes-6a3e11dc1827dfd20ec8ea04b7c7ce9a
Of course not. That should have brought up too many Republicans like deSantis.
All Musk was fire people.
Professor Krugman delivers another well-reasoned note. But he also touched on immigration.
The Trump Administration has given some sectors a soft pass on whom they hire, especially agriculture and service areas. While that’s the stereotypical immigrant worker, in my neighborhood there’s a crew of almost exclusively Spanish-speaking workers who are installing a fiber optic network for home use. Yesterday, they were digging holes by hand when the weather was in the 90s—both temperature and humidity. They are among the hardest working people I’ve encountered in a half-century of working.
And Trump wants to send them all “home”.
Call. Write. Email. Protest. Unrelentingly.
Use/share this spreadsheet as a resource to call/email/write members of Congress, the Cabinet and news organizations. Reach out to those in your own state, as well as those in others. Use your voice and make some “good trouble” ❤️🩹🤍💙
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/13lYafj0P-6owAJcH-5_xcpcRvMUZI7rkBPW-Ma9e7hw/edit?usp=drivesdk
It has been proven, beyond any doubt, that Americans have extremely short memory, and history, unfortunately repeats itself. I know what i note in my comment is anathema for politicians, who claim the average American voter is smart. Contrary, the average American voter is an idiot who has their priorities all messed up. Why would anyone with common sense vote against their best interest? Unfortunately the average American voter does not do due diligence to educate themselves about who they by will cast their vote for. As a result, the repugnant liar Republicans manage to fool these idiots into voting for them all the while lying to them with a straight face. The net result is the Republicans take control of the government, White House and Congress, they promptly proceed to screw the economy by passing tax cuts for their millionaire and billionaire donors, at the expense of all of us, not only the morons that voted for these crooks, and after the Republicans have screwed everybody, the American voter votes in Democrats to fix the crap the Repugnants have created. Go back to the days of Ronald Reagan the middle class destroyer.
I agree with your assessment that "the average American voter is an idiot who has their priorities all messed up." I think the latter part of that sentence contains the answer to your question about why Republican voters vote against their own *economic* self interest. Republican voters have their priorities all messed up.
Republican voters may claim that their #1 concern is the economy, but I think the reality is far different. Their #1 concern 24/7/365 -are social issues like abortion, and in the past 5-10 years, whatever the hell else they choose to define as "woke" on any given day. Republican middle class voters have consistantly cast their votes for certain politicians regardless of whether their economic policies will hurt them, or are outright nonsense, for more than 40 years. If they cared about economics, George H.W. Bush's correct assessment of Reagan's economic policy as "voodoo economics" would have seriously damaged Reagan. Instead, Bush was a mere speed bump on Reagan's way to the Republican nomination and ultimately the White House.
Republicans aren't "fooling" their voters as much as Republican voters simply don't care. They voted for Republicans to oppose all manner of civil rights legislation and eventually get Roe v. Wade overturned. They continue to do it to oppose civil rights for people they hate, get a national abortion ban, and in a hysterical attempt to reverse demographics because their brains can't handle an eventual non-white majority...even if it happens after they're dead.
Propaganda works.
I agree that the Republican voting public was obsessed with Roe vs Wade, which incidentally did not forced any of them to resort to abortions, but gave the US residence a choice they did not have before. But think about it, someone as ill-informed, as these idiots, does not understand the difference because they lack common sense.
The problem is a lot of people think not-Republican means loony Socialism which for them means all those people they don't like 'getting' too much. They will happily take their own SSec allowances but all those other people who vote for not-Republicans should not get the same benefits ....because... well they just don't like them so that's why !
These people that associate Democrats with looney socialism need to educate themselves as to chat is Capitalism, Socialism, Communism. The vast majority of them confuse and conflate Socialism and Communism, without thinking that Publicly funded Police and Fire fighting are social programs. Talking about being stupid!
Well, with effectively only two parties to choose between on a national level in the US, the "others" must be in the party one doesn't vote for. The choice is only between blue or red - not black, green, yellow, pink, white or dotted.
If Americans would have the choice between all of the political flavors, i.e. a party for each direction within politics (social democrats, socialists, communists, liberals, libertarians, conservatives etc.), it would be easier to cast a vote for exactly the political ideology an individual adheres to.
You’re right about the fact there are are only two parties to chose from. The closest we came to having a third party was when Ross Perot ran and took votes from the elder bush allowing Bill Clinton to win. Democrats, unfortunately, have demonstrated over the years that they cannot deliver a unified message that will defeat the lying Republicans. Much of the blame should go to the DNC and the “independents” who are either as confused politically as anyone, or just plain hypocrites.
To wit:
"The first thing we know is that in 2024, if you reran the election with only people who reported watching the news more than once a month, then Kamala Harris would have won in a landslide." - G. Elliott Morris
https://open.substack.com/pub/paulkrugman/p/will-the-midterms-be-a-blowout?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=2rctb
True enough but that info and $5 now will buy you a cup of coffee.
Republicans are rogue, serving the rich rather than "The People".
They deliberately rammed through this thievery early on so you will all forget after many months until before elections.
Now I understand political violence better but still disapprove, but, it is likely now, by design for martial law.
Trump is a nightmare.