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Devil’s advocate: If you (the US) massively subsidize the world order through your financial markets, military defense, and foreign aid, it’s only fair that yo

Devil’s advocate: If you (the US) massively subsidize the world order through your financial markets, military defense, and foreign aid, it’s only fair that you get to take advantage of your position. Historically, the US has done this at the expense of its working class. Now there is a populist feeling that we are owed a long due “payback” for our generosity. The Bernie/AOC left believe the payback is owed by our elites, who enriched themselves by austerity and hollowing out our industrial base. The Trump/MAGA right believe the payback is owed by other countries — freeloaders that have benefited from our technology, military defense, and foreign aid while simultaneously being net exporters to the US. To the latter crowd, the kind of “bullying” behavior you describe is actually the equivalent of a gentle giant who never stood up for himself finally deciding that he won’t take any more shit. Edit: To any downvoters, please comment with where you think I’m wrong. I’m not defending any policy, just providing what I believe is an accurate representation of the populist American mindset described in the parent comment.

f33d5173 2y ago
The US has always been incredibly mercenary with their investment. If there was a way of squeezing more blood from the stone a previous president would have done it. You learned about economic policy yesterday. Now you think that picking tariffs by throwing darts can do better than seasoned economic expert trying to maximize benefit to the US. It's just laughable.
- sebmellen 2y ago
  Did I ever defend a particular industrial policy? No. You misread my comment. My comment was intended to give the GP poster insight into the mindset of Americans who revel in the “bullying” behavior they described. But one point of inquiry — how are foreign aid programs like USAID mercenary? Even if they are CIA fronts, it’s hard to argue that they are in any way economically extractive.
- cmurf 2y ago
  Supposedly they have a seasoned economic expert on staff, Stephen Miran. Is this guy a kook? It wouldn't surprise me, Trump had Laura Loomer at the White House and 1/2 an hour later three members of the National Secure Council had been fired. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-money/2025/01/06/why-stephen-miran-thinks-tariffs-can-work-00196532 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-money/2025/01/0... https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/us/politics/trump-nsc-firings-laura-loomer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/us/politics/trump-nsc-fir... A central problem with this administration is it's headed by a psychopath, who has a long track record of being an untrustworthy liar. Could he pick an economics team that can actually make hard choices that are generally better for America? It's possible. But it's also possible these are just more kooks, or corrupt people looking to grift, or people who think like Peter Thiel, that democracy is over and needs to be replaced by a monarch. My take? Impeach and remove Trump from office. Do it now. If the country wants these kinds of policies, they need to do it through the Congress. Not through a president, sane or insane.
  - walterbell 2y ago
    > Supposedly they have a seasoned economic expert on staff, Stephen Miran. Is this guy a kook? https://financialpost.com/news/stephen-miran-economist-trump-economic-advisory-team https://financialpost.com/news/stephen-miran-economist-trump... > Currently a senior strategist at Hudson Bay Capital Management LP and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York City, Miran holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University and his dissertation advisor was Martin Feldstein, an eminent American economist who chaired the CEA during the Reagan administration. > Miran.. points to Trump’s application of tariffs on China in 2018-2019, which he argues “passed with little discernible macroeconomic consequence.” He adds that during that time the U.S. dollar rose to offset the macroeconomic impact of the tariffs and resulted in significant revenue for the U.S. Treasury.. “The effective tariff rate on Chinese imports increased by 17.9 percentage points from the start of the trade war in 2018 to the maximum tariff rate in 2019,” the report said. “As the financial markets digested the news, the Chinese renminbi depreciated against the dollar over this period by 13.7 per cent, so that the after-tariff USD import price rose by 4.1 per cent.”
    - 2y ago
lunarlull 2y ago
> To the latter crowd, the kind of “bullying” behavior you describe is actually the equivalent of a gentle giant who never stood up for himself finally deciding that he won’t take any more shit. Assuming this generous interpretation is accurate, then it's a problem of ignorance of the people holding this view. Characterizing other countries as 'freeloaders' is exactly that - ignorance.
- AlecSchueler 2y ago
  Also, what about all the coups, military operations, political pressure etc etc? Was that the gentle giant?
tock 2y ago
America is the richest country in the world. That is the payback. Yet somehow the working class is screwed. People don't want to admit wealth distribution is the problem because that would make them "communists". It's an emotional response. I'm scared how far they take it.
- sebmellen 2y ago
  Right, and I think that’s largely true. Whether or not the “right wing working class” are right in their root cause analysis, the domestic situation in the US is catastrophic enough to demand explanation: “If we are the richest country on earth, why can’t I afford a house and healthcare?” Answer 1: You are being taken advantage of by wealthy elites within your country! Answer 2: The whole world has made Americans front the bill for a regime of global peace, security, and a trusted reserve currency, at the cost of you, the American worker! Depending on which answer you choose, and which camp you ally with, your worldview will differ.
  - tock 2y ago
    I know. There is no reason to believe in #2. Its an emotional response. And so you cant change it. Just like you cant use logic with a flat earther. And that's scary for the rest of the world. I just hope no wars happen.
    - sebmellen 2y ago
      There is if you believe the “globalists” are the same people from #1. It doesn’t help that there is some appreciable degree of overlap. Dona nobis pacem!
  - fspeech 2y ago
    Housing and healthcare are the two things that have little to do with trade. Housing affordability is almost entirely policy driven. In a "free" market (quoted because the definition typically doesn't take into account the necessity of a functional society to maintain property rights and values, just ask Detroit), housing affordability is entirely dependent on one's relative income and propensity to spend, i.e. you can have high absolute income (say in NYC) and still find you desired housing unaffordable. I think people intuitively understand this. Healthcare costs are more complicated but is also almost entirely a domestic issue.
mindslight 2y ago
> freeloaders that have benefited from our technology, military defense, and foreign aid while simultaneously being net exporters to the US. I'm not trying to jump on you for having captured it, but the problem is that this is wholly nonsensical - the repayment for benefiting from our technology and military defense IS the net exporting to the US (via holding our currency). That "logic" is still based on having one foot in the paradigm of the financial engineering puppetmasters where getting real physical goods is somehow a liability rather than a benefit! For sure, this enviable position has had a corrosive effect on our economy. But the inability to deal with that has been wholly down to self-inflicted policy wounds of previous decades - chiefly led by the Republican party marketing a game of fake "fiscal responsibility" whereby the government is prevented from taking deliberate action to mitigate the displacement of industry and workers, while the increased (but now centralized) wealth from offshoring (and other technological/economic gains) was merely handed over to the banksters in the form of low-interest loans that went into driving up the asset bubble.
- sebmellen 2y ago
  Best comment in the whole thread. And thank you. This is a useful and clear analysis.
mcv 2y ago
It's clearly the Bernie/AOC left who are correct here. The US forced this world order on the rest of the world, and massively benefitted from it, so the payback is not owed by the rest of the world who had this forced on them (though they benefitted too) but by the wealthy elite, who benefitted by far the most from it. Look at the number of multibillionaires the US has acquired over the past 40 years. The trillion dollar megacorps. The many millionaires in Congress. Those are the people who owe payback to the American public. But those are also the people who control the American public, control their news, and feed them misinformation.
geenkeuse 2y ago
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f33d5173 2y ago

The US has always been incredibly mercenary with their investment. If there was a way of squeezing more blood from the stone a previous president would have done it. You learned about economic policy yesterday. Now you think that picking tariffs by throwing darts can do better than seasoned economic expert trying to maximize benefit to the US. It's just laughable.

sebmellen 2y ago
Did I ever defend a particular industrial policy? No. You misread my comment. My comment was intended to give the GP poster insight into the mindset of Americans who revel in the “bullying” behavior they described. But one point of inquiry — how are foreign aid programs like USAID mercenary? Even if they are CIA fronts, it’s hard to argue that they are in any way economically extractive.
cmurf 2y ago
Supposedly they have a seasoned economic expert on staff, Stephen Miran. Is this guy a kook? It wouldn't surprise me, Trump had Laura Loomer at the White House and 1/2 an hour later three members of the National Secure Council had been fired. https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-money/2025/01/06/why-stephen-miran-thinks-tariffs-can-work-00196532 https://www.politico.com/newsletters/morning-money/2025/01/0... https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/us/politics/trump-nsc-firings-laura-loomer.html https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/04/us/politics/trump-nsc-fir... A central problem with this administration is it's headed by a psychopath, who has a long track record of being an untrustworthy liar. Could he pick an economics team that can actually make hard choices that are generally better for America? It's possible. But it's also possible these are just more kooks, or corrupt people looking to grift, or people who think like Peter Thiel, that democracy is over and needs to be replaced by a monarch. My take? Impeach and remove Trump from office. Do it now. If the country wants these kinds of policies, they need to do it through the Congress. Not through a president, sane or insane.
- walterbell 2y ago
  > Supposedly they have a seasoned economic expert on staff, Stephen Miran. Is this guy a kook? https://financialpost.com/news/stephen-miran-economist-trump-economic-advisory-team https://financialpost.com/news/stephen-miran-economist-trump... > Currently a senior strategist at Hudson Bay Capital Management LP and a fellow at the Manhattan Institute in New York City, Miran holds a PhD in economics from Harvard University and his dissertation advisor was Martin Feldstein, an eminent American economist who chaired the CEA during the Reagan administration. > Miran.. points to Trump’s application of tariffs on China in 2018-2019, which he argues “passed with little discernible macroeconomic consequence.” He adds that during that time the U.S. dollar rose to offset the macroeconomic impact of the tariffs and resulted in significant revenue for the U.S. Treasury.. “The effective tariff rate on Chinese imports increased by 17.9 percentage points from the start of the trade war in 2018 to the maximum tariff rate in 2019,” the report said. “As the financial markets digested the news, the Chinese renminbi depreciated against the dollar over this period by 13.7 per cent, so that the after-tariff USD import price rose by 4.1 per cent.”
  - 2y ago

lunarlull 2y ago

> To the latter crowd, the kind of “bullying” behavior you describe is actually the equivalent of a gentle giant who never stood up for himself finally deciding that he won’t take any more shit. Assuming this generous interpretation is accurate, then it's a problem of ignorance of the people holding this view. Characterizing other countries as 'freeloaders' is exactly that - ignorance.

AlecSchueler 2y ago
Also, what about all the coups, military operations, political pressure etc etc? Was that the gentle giant?

tock 2y ago

America is the richest country in the world. That is the payback. Yet somehow the working class is screwed. People don't want to admit wealth distribution is the problem because that would make them "communists". It's an emotional response. I'm scared how far they take it.

sebmellen 2y ago
Right, and I think that’s largely true. Whether or not the “right wing working class” are right in their root cause analysis, the domestic situation in the US is catastrophic enough to demand explanation: “If we are the richest country on earth, why can’t I afford a house and healthcare?” Answer 1: You are being taken advantage of by wealthy elites within your country! Answer 2: The whole world has made Americans front the bill for a regime of global peace, security, and a trusted reserve currency, at the cost of you, the American worker! Depending on which answer you choose, and which camp you ally with, your worldview will differ.
- tock 2y ago
  I know. There is no reason to believe in #2. Its an emotional response. And so you cant change it. Just like you cant use logic with a flat earther. And that's scary for the rest of the world. I just hope no wars happen.
  - sebmellen 2y ago
    There is if you believe the “globalists” are the same people from #1. It doesn’t help that there is some appreciable degree of overlap. Dona nobis pacem!
- fspeech 2y ago
  Housing and healthcare are the two things that have little to do with trade. Housing affordability is almost entirely policy driven. In a "free" market (quoted because the definition typically doesn't take into account the necessity of a functional society to maintain property rights and values, just ask Detroit), housing affordability is entirely dependent on one's relative income and propensity to spend, i.e. you can have high absolute income (say in NYC) and still find you desired housing unaffordable. I think people intuitively understand this. Healthcare costs are more complicated but is also almost entirely a domestic issue.

mindslight 2y ago

> freeloaders that have benefited from our technology, military defense, and foreign aid while simultaneously being net exporters to the US. I'm not trying to jump on you for having captured it, but the problem is that this is wholly nonsensical - the repayment for benefiting from our technology and military defense IS the net exporting to the US (via holding our currency). That "logic" is still based on having one foot in the paradigm of the financial engineering puppetmasters where getting real physical goods is somehow a liability rather than a benefit! For sure, this enviable position has had a corrosive effect on our economy. But the inability to deal with that has been wholly down to self-inflicted policy wounds of previous decades - chiefly led by the Republican party marketing a game of fake "fiscal responsibility" whereby the government is prevented from taking deliberate action to mitigate the displacement of industry and workers, while the increased (but now centralized) wealth from offshoring (and other technological/economic gains) was merely handed over to the banksters in the form of low-interest loans that went into driving up the asset bubble.

sebmellen 2y ago
Best comment in the whole thread. And thank you. This is a useful and clear analysis.

mcv 2y ago

It's clearly the Bernie/AOC left who are correct here. The US forced this world order on the rest of the world, and massively benefitted from it, so the payback is not owed by the rest of the world who had this forced on them (though they benefitted too) but by the wealthy elite, who benefitted by far the most from it. Look at the number of multibillionaires the US has acquired over the past 40 years. The trillion dollar megacorps. The many millionaires in Congress. Those are the people who owe payback to the American public. But those are also the people who control the American public, control their news, and feed them misinformation.

geenkeuse 2y ago

[dead]