5 ms·

Here is a more nuanced take imho: * After decades of reckless spending and lax economic management the US is going broke in a number of ways. In particular dea

Here is a more nuanced take imho: * After decades of reckless spending and lax economic management the US is going broke in a number of ways. In particular dealing with the national debt before and after Covid are very different beasts * Coupled with similar problems in other countries and gradual global demographic decline, the global future looks like a zero sum game * In its relations with other states, America has tended to leave a lot of money on the table since the Cold War era, in order to curry political favor, which it can no longer afford to do * Republicans speak and campaign more openly about this than Democrats even though they both agree on the fundamental ideas I just outlined * This is why Republicans are currently ascendant with the electorate and Democrats are seeing some of their worst numbers ever in favorability polls * It is eminently reasonable to not prefer zero sum geopolitical games because they tend to cause poverty and war, but we've boxed ourselves into this future through decades of poor decisions

tempestn 2y ago
I don't agree with your conclusions, but I feel you're arguing in good faith and therefore don't deserve down votes. I'm not sure America actually has left a lot of money on the table. I see America having benefitted a lot from the post cold war world order (as indeed have most of its allies), and my take is that the kind of extraction of value that Trump has been attempting is at very best only beneficial in the short term. But again, I appreciate when people with different viewpoints can discuss them civilly, so I gave you an upvote.
- Propelloni 2y ago
  Me too.
- zmgsabst 2y ago
  American working and middle classes have been devastated over the course of forty years by bad trade deals. They’re the constituency that supports Trump. Numbers like GDP or total wealth will be highly misleading — and it’s unsurprising that the opinion of the petite bourgeoisie (who primarily make up HN) differ from those groups.
  - macintux 2y ago
    Why isn't the answer wealth redistribution instead of tearing down the world order, tearing down the government, and hoping something positive miraculously comes out of it someday down the road?
    - zmgsabst 2y ago
      Presumably because they view the US as best for their classes when it was easier to do business and less beholden to international affairs while simultaneously not believing that empowering the government in such a manner will benefit them. When the party advocating wealth redistribution also calls them “deplorables” and flagrantly provides worse services (eg, NC disaster vs CA disaster) that seems like a reasonable belief.
      - sanp 2y ago
        Do you have evidence for NC disaster services being worse than CA disaster services (as provided by the Federal government)?
  - jensensbutton 2y ago
    What you're describing is an American domestic policy issue. There's no dispute that America has become incredibly more rich and powerful over the past 40 years. The fact that that money is increasingly funneled to fewer and fewer people (as a percent of the population) is something that can be changed locally, without changing our foreign policy stance. It's not a surprise that the "devastation" of the middle class coincides with the continued reduction of tax rates on the entities collecting all that money. The America that MAGA seems to think was great was one of higher taxes and more social programs.
    - zmgsabst 2y ago
      No, they’re coupled issues — eg, open markets forces domestic labor to compete unfairly. The manner in which those people accrued wealth is deeply related to the issue, by subverting the working and middle classes domestically. I understand that many of the petite bourgeoisie believe that destruction of those classes via internationalism is a means to usher in communist policy — but that’s opposed wholesale by the American working and middle classes.
- safety1st 2y ago
  Thank you! Yes I was, and I'm of the view that our greatest strength as a democratic society is our ability to discuss opposing views civilly. I spend a lot of time overseas in societies where this ability is not present and Americans really, really underestimate how bad things can get when you lose it. So "leaving money on the table" is admittedly very vague, using it here I'm principally referring to two things: 1) For many decades we've had a trade posture and foreign policy regime which emphasized moving production offshore. This generated a lot of corporate profits and some consumer benefits but was absolutely decimating for working class incomes and job prospects. We "left money on the table" here in the sense that money which would have been generated in the US and paid wages in the US tended to end up mostly in the hands of wealthy people in poor countries (and to some degree in the hands of their middle classes). 2) The other way we left money on the table was by opening up our markets to countries which didn't reciprocate in kind -- we reduced our tariffs on them, and they didn't reduce their tariffs on us. This again encouraged the flow of production, jobs, capital etc. out of the US and again hit the most vulnerable economic classes hardest. The net result of this is that we have a lot of money in the US in a record few number of hands -- when you add corporate consolidation & monopolization to the mix you have a pretty complete picture of why a lot of people in this country are struggling. So did we benefit from these policies, yeah, we did in certain ways that accrued particularly toward the top of our economic pyramid, but it seems that the bottom of it has had just about enough of this and is getting loud about it at the ballot box.
  - rainsford 2y ago
    Those are valid problems, but siding with Russia against Ukraine and attempting to extort natural resource wealth from the latter doesn't address any of those issues. I understand and to a large extent agree with the domestic discontent about who has benefited and who has been hurt by decades of American trade policies, although I think much of that complaining ignores the real benefits it brought to American consumers in the form of cheaper and more available goods. But addressing those issues doesn't require flushing American foreign policy and diplomacy down the garbage disposal and in fact doing so is likely counter-productive.
  - GoblinSlayer 2y ago
smgit 2y ago
I don't think this is the future or anyone is boxed in. Trump & Co are by no measure the sharpest tools in the shed. In Trumps own words they have been up against some really inept people, who have all lost credibility. Therefore the counter-reaction, which is building, will come, and it won't look like what Trump & Co are used to dealing with in the past. I think that's what interesting about where the story goes next. Whose is going to lead? What are they going to stand for? How are they going to organize? Its an opportunity for the best in America to shine.
fifilura 2y ago
Cooperation is never a zero sum game compared to non-cooperation. That is pretty much the definition of it. And for example free trade is a flavour of it.
- belorn 2y ago
  Free trade as implemented in the past seems to have been the opposite of democratic cooperation. Non-elected appointees making free trade agreements behind locked doors, which effect ignore the citizens interest and makes industry regulation irrelevant. It was free trade that enshrined current copyright laws world wide with 90 years after the authors death, which few people in the world voted for. Free trade only reflect cooperation if done transparently, chosen by the people, and which does not bypass industry regulation that people voted on. If that is not possible then the trade agreement need to reflect the different national views on things like minimum wage, environmental issues, safety standard, animal well fare, justice system, trade marks, and so on.
  - safety1st 2y ago
    Further to this point, what people call "free trade" is in many cases actually not free at all. A good example of this is the bilateral relationship with Thailand, they put tons of tariffs on US imports, and the US puts very few tariffs on Thailand. Why? The rationale for this is ostensibly that the US would like to have more political influence in Southeast Asia, or hasn't totally internalized that the Cold War is over, or something. (It also so happens that Thailand places very low tariffs on Chinese goods - and their government has been currying political favor with Beijing for a long time - they are happy to enjoy unrestricted access to US markets and seem quite confident that the status quo will endure so if we are trying to buy political influence with them, we seemingly have been so toothless that it isn't even working!) The US has deals like this all over the planet where it gives other countries unrestricted access to its markets, in return for what is not clear. A lot of these deals contributed to the movement of US manufacturing to places like Thailand, which hit the US working class in the wallet very directly. Sure there are also good deals that we should preserve as-is but it doesn't seem unreasonable at all to me that some of these be subjected to scrutiny and revision.
youngtaff 2y ago
> After decades of reckless spending and lax economic management the US is going broke in a number of ways. In particular dealing with the national debt before and after Covid are very different beasts Most of the reckless spending is by Republicans via unfunded tax which grows the deficit Then when they’re in opposition they suddenly become deficit hawks Republicans don’t mind the debt pile growing providing it’s the rich getting the money, they object when it’s ordinary people’s lives who are being made better
NoLinkToMe 2y ago
The US has never been richer, adjusted for inflation, both in aggregate and per person. [0] The idea that there have been decades of reckless spending and the US is going broke I think is not at all a nuanced take. Anecdotes about the inflation of prices of eggs (which is 0.05% of US economy) don't change the overall facts that are material. I will grant you that debt servicing needs immediate attention. Blowing up 100 years of foreign policy has nothing to do with that, however. The number of NATO members spending 2% or more on defense went from 3 to 23 in the past 10 years. Their spending almost doubled in the past 10 years, while the US only grew 15% (actually shrunk in PPP terms). [1] The US has been successfully pressuring NATO allies to pick up the bill, without having to call Ukraine a dictator and cede Ukraine to Russia without US security guarantees, and promote politics of appeasement that will lead to China taking Taiwan which is the only material place that produces the future's most important geopolitical asset: chips. The US looking to reduce debt also isn't compatible with raising tariffs on everyone including allies, reducing taxes and warding off cheap immigrant labour, it's the opposite. Trump seems to have 25% good ideas, 75% bad ideas, and 90% poor execution that causes a lot of collateral damage. Penny wise pound foolish comes to mind a lot when I look at his policy choices. [0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat... [1] https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/6/pdf/240617-def-exp-2024-en.pdf https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/6/pd...
- johnnyanmac 2y ago
  Averages hide extremes. In this case it hides how much poorer the poor got and richer the rich got. America is not "rich" in a way that benefits the middle class.
  - DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
    And to address that gap between the rich and poor, Trump is ... firing middle-class government employees, cutting taxes (which primarily favors the rich), and toying with cutting social programs?
  - NoLinkToMe 2y ago
arp242 2y ago
If Republicans would be oh-so concerned about the US "going broke" they wouldn't be pushing through trillions in tax cuts. And much of this meeting with Zelensky had nothing to do with the budget (or at least the bits I've seen). It's just Trump being upset Zelensky isn't bending over backwards to praise Trump and being obsessed with shown to look "better" than other presidents (which is why he goes off on a tangent about Biden and Obama, disconnected from what Zelensky actually said).

tempestn 2y ago

I don't agree with your conclusions, but I feel you're arguing in good faith and therefore don't deserve down votes. I'm not sure America actually has left a lot of money on the table. I see America having benefitted a lot from the post cold war world order (as indeed have most of its allies), and my take is that the kind of extraction of value that Trump has been attempting is at very best only beneficial in the short term. But again, I appreciate when people with different viewpoints can discuss them civilly, so I gave you an upvote.

Propelloni 2y ago
Me too.
zmgsabst 2y ago
American working and middle classes have been devastated over the course of forty years by bad trade deals. They’re the constituency that supports Trump. Numbers like GDP or total wealth will be highly misleading — and it’s unsurprising that the opinion of the petite bourgeoisie (who primarily make up HN) differ from those groups.
- macintux 2y ago
  Why isn't the answer wealth redistribution instead of tearing down the world order, tearing down the government, and hoping something positive miraculously comes out of it someday down the road?
  - zmgsabst 2y ago
    Presumably because they view the US as best for their classes when it was easier to do business and less beholden to international affairs while simultaneously not believing that empowering the government in such a manner will benefit them. When the party advocating wealth redistribution also calls them “deplorables” and flagrantly provides worse services (eg, NC disaster vs CA disaster) that seems like a reasonable belief.
    - sanp 2y ago
      Do you have evidence for NC disaster services being worse than CA disaster services (as provided by the Federal government)?
- jensensbutton 2y ago
  What you're describing is an American domestic policy issue. There's no dispute that America has become incredibly more rich and powerful over the past 40 years. The fact that that money is increasingly funneled to fewer and fewer people (as a percent of the population) is something that can be changed locally, without changing our foreign policy stance. It's not a surprise that the "devastation" of the middle class coincides with the continued reduction of tax rates on the entities collecting all that money. The America that MAGA seems to think was great was one of higher taxes and more social programs.
  - zmgsabst 2y ago
    No, they’re coupled issues — eg, open markets forces domestic labor to compete unfairly. The manner in which those people accrued wealth is deeply related to the issue, by subverting the working and middle classes domestically. I understand that many of the petite bourgeoisie believe that destruction of those classes via internationalism is a means to usher in communist policy — but that’s opposed wholesale by the American working and middle classes.
safety1st 2y ago
Thank you! Yes I was, and I'm of the view that our greatest strength as a democratic society is our ability to discuss opposing views civilly. I spend a lot of time overseas in societies where this ability is not present and Americans really, really underestimate how bad things can get when you lose it. So "leaving money on the table" is admittedly very vague, using it here I'm principally referring to two things: 1) For many decades we've had a trade posture and foreign policy regime which emphasized moving production offshore. This generated a lot of corporate profits and some consumer benefits but was absolutely decimating for working class incomes and job prospects. We "left money on the table" here in the sense that money which would have been generated in the US and paid wages in the US tended to end up mostly in the hands of wealthy people in poor countries (and to some degree in the hands of their middle classes). 2) The other way we left money on the table was by opening up our markets to countries which didn't reciprocate in kind -- we reduced our tariffs on them, and they didn't reduce their tariffs on us. This again encouraged the flow of production, jobs, capital etc. out of the US and again hit the most vulnerable economic classes hardest. The net result of this is that we have a lot of money in the US in a record few number of hands -- when you add corporate consolidation & monopolization to the mix you have a pretty complete picture of why a lot of people in this country are struggling. So did we benefit from these policies, yeah, we did in certain ways that accrued particularly toward the top of our economic pyramid, but it seems that the bottom of it has had just about enough of this and is getting loud about it at the ballot box.
- rainsford 2y ago
  Those are valid problems, but siding with Russia against Ukraine and attempting to extort natural resource wealth from the latter doesn't address any of those issues. I understand and to a large extent agree with the domestic discontent about who has benefited and who has been hurt by decades of American trade policies, although I think much of that complaining ignores the real benefits it brought to American consumers in the form of cheaper and more available goods. But addressing those issues doesn't require flushing American foreign policy and diplomacy down the garbage disposal and in fact doing so is likely counter-productive.
- GoblinSlayer 2y ago

smgit 2y ago

I don't think this is the future or anyone is boxed in. Trump & Co are by no measure the sharpest tools in the shed. In Trumps own words they have been up against some really inept people, who have all lost credibility. Therefore the counter-reaction, which is building, will come, and it won't look like what Trump & Co are used to dealing with in the past. I think that's what interesting about where the story goes next. Whose is going to lead? What are they going to stand for? How are they going to organize? Its an opportunity for the best in America to shine.

fifilura 2y ago

Cooperation is never a zero sum game compared to non-cooperation. That is pretty much the definition of it. And for example free trade is a flavour of it.

belorn 2y ago
Free trade as implemented in the past seems to have been the opposite of democratic cooperation. Non-elected appointees making free trade agreements behind locked doors, which effect ignore the citizens interest and makes industry regulation irrelevant. It was free trade that enshrined current copyright laws world wide with 90 years after the authors death, which few people in the world voted for. Free trade only reflect cooperation if done transparently, chosen by the people, and which does not bypass industry regulation that people voted on. If that is not possible then the trade agreement need to reflect the different national views on things like minimum wage, environmental issues, safety standard, animal well fare, justice system, trade marks, and so on.
- safety1st 2y ago
  Further to this point, what people call "free trade" is in many cases actually not free at all. A good example of this is the bilateral relationship with Thailand, they put tons of tariffs on US imports, and the US puts very few tariffs on Thailand. Why? The rationale for this is ostensibly that the US would like to have more political influence in Southeast Asia, or hasn't totally internalized that the Cold War is over, or something. (It also so happens that Thailand places very low tariffs on Chinese goods - and their government has been currying political favor with Beijing for a long time - they are happy to enjoy unrestricted access to US markets and seem quite confident that the status quo will endure so if we are trying to buy political influence with them, we seemingly have been so toothless that it isn't even working!) The US has deals like this all over the planet where it gives other countries unrestricted access to its markets, in return for what is not clear. A lot of these deals contributed to the movement of US manufacturing to places like Thailand, which hit the US working class in the wallet very directly. Sure there are also good deals that we should preserve as-is but it doesn't seem unreasonable at all to me that some of these be subjected to scrutiny and revision.

youngtaff 2y ago

> After decades of reckless spending and lax economic management the US is going broke in a number of ways. In particular dealing with the national debt before and after Covid are very different beasts Most of the reckless spending is by Republicans via unfunded tax which grows the deficit Then when they’re in opposition they suddenly become deficit hawks Republicans don’t mind the debt pile growing providing it’s the rich getting the money, they object when it’s ordinary people’s lives who are being made better

NoLinkToMe 2y ago

The US has never been richer, adjusted for inflation, both in aggregate and per person. [0] The idea that there have been decades of reckless spending and the US is going broke I think is not at all a nuanced take. Anecdotes about the inflation of prices of eggs (which is 0.05% of US economy) don't change the overall facts that are material. I will grant you that debt servicing needs immediate attention. Blowing up 100 years of foreign policy has nothing to do with that, however. The number of NATO members spending 2% or more on defense went from 3 to 23 in the past 10 years. Their spending almost doubled in the past 10 years, while the US only grew 15% (actually shrunk in PPP terms). [1] The US has been successfully pressuring NATO allies to pick up the bill, without having to call Ukraine a dictator and cede Ukraine to Russia without US security guarantees, and promote politics of appeasement that will lead to China taking Taiwan which is the only material place that produces the future's most important geopolitical asset: chips. The US looking to reduce debt also isn't compatible with raising tariffs on everyone including allies, reducing taxes and warding off cheap immigrant labour, it's the opposite. Trump seems to have 25% good ideas, 75% bad ideas, and 90% poor execution that causes a lot of collateral damage. Penny wise pound foolish comes to mind a lot when I look at his policy choices. [0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locations=US https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.PP.CD?locat... [1] https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/6/pdf/240617-def-exp-2024-en.pdf https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2024/6/pd...

johnnyanmac 2y ago
Averages hide extremes. In this case it hides how much poorer the poor got and richer the rich got. America is not "rich" in a way that benefits the middle class.
- DiogenesKynikos 2y ago
  And to address that gap between the rich and poor, Trump is ... firing middle-class government employees, cutting taxes (which primarily favors the rich), and toying with cutting social programs?
- NoLinkToMe 2y ago

arp242 2y ago

If Republicans would be oh-so concerned about the US "going broke" they wouldn't be pushing through trillions in tax cuts. And much of this meeting with Zelensky had nothing to do with the budget (or at least the bits I've seen). It's just Trump being upset Zelensky isn't bending over backwards to praise Trump and being obsessed with shown to look "better" than other presidents (which is why he goes off on a tangent about Biden and Obama, disconnected from what Zelensky actually said).