Señor Doggo on Farcaster

Daniel Marans pfp

I think the answer to Joe's question is that lots of people chafe at both kinds of pain -- disruption caused by tariffs and higher taxes -- provided their partisan lens allows for it. But maybe we would all be more open to sacrifice for long-term goals if we had a common sense of nationhood and trust in our leaders -- both very remote right now.

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Señor Doggo pfp

What the fuck does "diminishing the purchasing power of the rich" mean?

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shazow pfp

I assume printing more money and allocating it to the not-rich through whatever means.

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Daniel Marans pfp

He's talking about higher taxes. The claim he's making is that Trump loyalists appear to buy the line that higher prices are worth it to allegedly save U.S. manufacturing, but those some people would cry bloody murder if politicians raised taxes on the wealthy for the sake of some long-term cause.

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Señor Doggo pfp

I find it supremely ironic that the folks who spend all their time complaining how the rich find loopholes to *legally* evade taxes and off-shore their money (albeit less legally), are the same ones advocating for *increasing* the complexity of tax law as if there exists no level of tax burden that wouldn't make them just leave Conversely, tariffs are pretty nice because they mostly affect corporations (who are run by "the rich") in the long term, and will bolster domestic wages for the working class (aka "the not rich") after the short-term pain of price increases makes it's way through the market and consumer spending habits

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Daniel Marans pfp

A lot of “ifs” in there but I take your point.

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Señor Doggo pfp

Heavy tariffs haven't been tried in over a century, but worked well last time (catapulted the US into our greatest era), and it is absolutely true that complicated tax code is useful for tax loopholes, and more taxes just get avoided where tariffs cannot be

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shazow pfp

I think almost anyone would be onboard with "simpler more effective taxes that uplift the least wealthy" if that's all it is. My personal contention with tariffs: 1. Without more welfare, they don't uplift the least wealthy. Most things get more expensive and people in positions of power are more able to set the terms, so it could make inequality worse. 2. Hostility toward trading partners, a lot of wars in the past started with trade wars. The premise of "globalization" was that interdependence makes it more difficult to start wars, there is a high cost to disentangling (which we will be now paying). 3. Once all the externalities of tariffs are patched up, I'm not sure they are actually simpler or more effective. Disclaimer: I'm Canadian, so apply salt to my perspective.

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Señor Doggo pfp

2 is the big one, globalization is basically a huge prisoner's dilemma, and if one important party defects (China doesn't allow foreign competition in its markets easily/cheaply), then it impacts all the entire balance of all other parties Globalization has made things like TVs cheaper, but in the mean time we have lost a competitive edge in manufacturing that ensures the world stage stays balanced (US won WW2 primarily through manufacturing capability) The "least rich" haven't fared well either, since 1970s their relative buying power has diluted to almost nothing, we were at our greatest average wealth as a nation post-WW2 when the entire nation went to work building lots of stuff in our factories to sell around the world

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shazow pfp

Yup, definitely agree that we need to do better either way. I hope we don't end up doing worse instead.

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Señor Doggo pfp

My whole thing is that the status quo is pretty bad, and Biden's admin made the worst inflation growth in decades through trying the same broken strategy Maybe Trump's not the right guy to do it or the strategy is wrong but clearly we need to do *something* different, and we need to do it big and do it fast (I don't think anyone would disagree that Trump is doing it big and fast)

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shazow pfp

It's funny because Trudeau and many other leaders were blamed for the same thing. Turns out the forces we're fighting are more global than local. The way I think about it: 1. Between globalization, COVID, supply shortages, and whatever mess we had before, we got huge economic winds pushing around every nation on the planet. Some handle it better than others but the trend is similar globally. 2. We're not optimizing for the right metrics. GDP growth is not representative of our health, our values, thriving, environment, etc. Maybe it was a decent proxy for a while, but we should consider that it has diverged. I get the appeal of just trying to do something, anything, different. As much as I dislike Trump as a leader, that was the bull case I was holding on to (maybe just a drastic shift in direction will pay off). Right now it feels to me like the administration's direction is actively shrinking the metaphorical pie and trying to come out with the biggest slice.

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