Tuesday, December 10, 2024

It's not the economy (stupid)

Lots of people have been talking lately about what Harris did wrong and what Democrats did wrong. 

For the most part, they are wrong or lying. Maybe sometimes they are both. 

It is important to call this out. People who are ignorant and don't know it are not well served by that. 

Some people do profit from lying, but a lot of that gets tied up with religious reasoning. If that is truly something they care about, they are going to need to give up the hate. 

Remember that when you are telling people they are wrong, it's really for their sake. 

It may be hard to do it lovingly, and there are some people it may not be worth trying with at all, but please at least keep in mind that people are important, and they can change. They can also get worse, and no one needs that. So -- with serenity, courage, and wisdom -- let's try.

My plan is to spend some time going over the proposed reasons and refuting them.

It will take a while.

For people saying it was about inflation, yes, it is possible to have a good economy where people within that economy still face financial hardship. Part of that relates to how you measure a good economy. For the traditional indicators -- GDP, employment, stock prices -- things have been economically good under Biden.

Some prices that went high turned out to be related to price gouging. Wealth consolidation has a huge impact on housing and rents. Skyrocketing corporate profits mean that higher prices are not necessary. 

Now, you can increase taxes on the top tiers -- for individual incomes and corporate profits -- and you can raise minimum wage and legislate against price gouging and maybe even put in price controls, but that's big government. It would be very hard to pass, and the people complaining most about the economy would complain about those measures. 

Wealth consolidation and huge corporate profits are not things that Trump will fight. 

I promise you that reducing food safety measures will not find those savings passed on to the customer. It may lead to other expenses, largely related to health care and lost income. Those are also areas where Trump is unlikely to be helpful.

In addition, tariffs will be raising prices. 

While it is true that tariffs can favor using domestic producers over imports, you have to have domestic producers. COVID and various natural disasters have shown that our supply chain is not quickly adaptable. 

That is partly due to its complexity, which means that most products do not have a single point of origin anyway. 

I don't object to wanting lower prices. I would not sell out human rights to get them, but I get wanting lower prices.

We will not be getting lower prices. 

There is nothing in Trump's past performance or stated policies that gives any reason to think he will be better for the economy.

Someone would have to be remarkably uninformed to fall for that.

There has been a lot of effort put into keeping people uninformed, but that's what we're fighting. 

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