7 ms·

The good news is that these economic problems are entirely the result of bad policies and can be reversed. If we were to also raise broad based taxes, it would

The good news is that these economic problems are entirely the result of bad policies and can be reversed. If we were to also raise broad based taxes, it would allow the Fed to cut interest rates, stoking long term investment, loosen up the housing market (which would allow more people to move), lower the Federal deficit, and improve the trade balance (as if that actually mattered).

thatguy0900 1y ago
The bad news is that we're only one year into the 4 years of bad policy(if we're lucky) and the policy itself will probably continue to get worse
- baron816 1y ago
  Indeed. We’re not fixing it anytime soon.
- nxm 1y ago
  We survived with 30% inflation ok key goods during the Biden years due to endless spending, we’ll survive this one too. You’re welcome to short the market though if you feel strongly otherwise
  - deleted 1y ago
    [deleted]
  - JamesBarney 1y ago
    "key goods" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement.
    - mindslight 1y ago
      "Biden years" is doing even more work. The suicide cultists generally ignore the trillions in helicopter money that was dumped into the economy under Trump's "watch", right when we were also dealing with supply shortages. It took a few years for the economy to start moving and that new money to go from asset prices into consumer prices, right in time for short memories to blame JOEBIDEN.
      - hyperman1 1y ago
        In most countries, every leader is both praised and blamed for the decisions of his or her predecessor.
      - lovich 1y ago
        Well obviously it was Bidens fault for not dealing with the initial Covid outbreak in 2019
  - yoyohello13 1y ago
    Luckily, fiscally responsible Trump is coming in to stop all this deficit spending... oh wait.
    - Nevermark 1y ago
      I was going to make a glib comment that Trump is plugging the "deficit spending" of billionaire's having to pay taxes. But given Trump policies in toto, I am having trouble coming up with what a winner looks like here. Big oil I suppose. But that's a damn narrow demographic if everything else is hurting. And overall economic malaise won't juice oil demand. If anyone can characterize the class of economic winners ... ?
      - ericey 1y ago
        The winners won't be a class but a certain privileged country
      - deleted 1y ago
        [deleted]
- avgDev 1y ago
  If democrats retake congress some things will change. Congress can stop the tariffs. If democrats don't retake congress we are cooked. This means people are okay with whatever is happening.
  - kamarg 1y ago
    > This means people are okay with whatever is happening Or it means the game has been rigged which is exactly the point of all the gerrymandering going on right now. Tons of people are not okay with what is happening but their power to replace their government representative has been or is currently being effectively stolen from them.
bobbylarrybobby 1y ago
The effect of a bad policy doesn't necessarily end when the policy does. The economy has inertia so some effects, such as inflation, are self-reinforcing and need active undoing even when the policy is relaxed.
- baron816 1y ago
  Correct. We’re not reversing things anytime soon, and the longer things stay like this, the more damage will be done.
  - rsynnott 1y ago
    At least on the US tariffs thing, congress can put Trump back in his box and revert to normalcy any time it wants to; the threat of stagflation might make it do that. The previous stagflation incident was more driven by outside forces.
    - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
      > on the US tariffs thing, congress can put Trump back in his box and revert to normalcy any time it wants to We’ve already lost export market share. China, Russia and India have already begun building a trade bloc. FDI has already been trashed. We’re already in for a world of hurt. And personally, I’m eager to ensure it lands disproportionately on his voters and donors.
      - CamperBob2 1y ago
        And personally, I’m eager to ensure it lands disproportionately on his voters and donors. That would certainly be nice, but we're all in the boat together. There is no safe haven when idiots are in charge. But you see, dogs and cats were being eaten, and the other lady cackled too much...
      - cs702 1y ago
        > We’re already in for a world of hurt. I fear you're right, but hope you're not. Yes, this is wishful thinking on my part. I don't want to wish ill on anyone.
Arainach 1y ago
It's much easier to destroy than build, and some things once destroyed can't be rebuilt. Trump's inconsistent tariff and policy flip flopping means no one trusts the US to behave rationally and predictably. The fact that the US population elected him a second time means that the US as a whole can't be trusted to behave like rational adults. Decades or centuries of reputation has been thrown away. That can't be changed just by a new face saying "sorry we want to take it back".
- ta1243 1y ago
  If a new face can reverse policy on a dime, then that reversal can be reversed a couple of years later. It's amazing how few people seem to understand this. Countries are oil tankers, they take years to turn even a little - and that's a good thing. In 2000 the world broadly knew what was going to happen, Gore and BushII would implement pretty much the same policies. Same thing in 2008 when it was McCain and Obama. Sure you get some minor tweaks to policies which don't really affect much in aggregate. Even in 2016 Trump was unable to make massive changes, because the state is built to prevent that from happening. The US does not elect a monarch. Things take forever by design, and it's really frustrating when you want it, but it also means one person or one administration can't make a major impact, it takes a generation of pushing the overton window in the direction. Once you break that, you have a jetski zipping around, then you can't rely on stability, it becomes riskier to invest than investing in a country with a dictator.
  - peterfirefly 1y ago
    > The US does not elect a monarch. It is a constitutional monarchy with an elected, time-limited king. Monarchies generally have (and had) lots of checks on the king's power. Not necessarily the kinds of checks we would like, of course. The rights of the nobility were well-protected, the rights of landless commoners were not.
    - Tadpole9181 1y ago
      No, it's really not. The Executive does not have these powers in the constitution. They made it up and assigned it to themselves by loosely interpreting things how they wanted. Executive orders are memos, not laws. The President has no power for legislation or budget or tariffing. We're supposed to require legislative review of any emergency actions, like using the military.
ChuckMcM 1y ago
And then we have Japan, which has spent 30+ years in the economic doldrums. What I'm saying is that these types of systems have "inertia" and can be exceptionally long lived in their 'bad' state, regardless of the policies used to try to get them out of that state.
- gscott 1y ago
  No they enjoyed 30 years of stable prices and relative happiness. Government pushes a fiction prices must rise so everyone works harder.
  - simianparrot 1y ago
    Some people can’t comprehend that the graph can’t go up infinitely
    - mschuster91 1y ago
      It can, if one's definition of "infinity" is "during my lifetime". That's how we get Boomers going on rampant climate change denialism.
      - ChuckMcM 1y ago
        I understand this set of comments is a digression but there is an interesting subtlety here. There is a structural connection between economic activity (in particular 'innovation') and wealth inequality. Economies that are 'stable' and 'unchanging' become stratified and people living in those economies find themselves getting slotted into 'classes' from which they cannot change. Since I tend to be interested in systems, especially emergent ones, this is something I find interesting but recognize that the world generally considers economists more boring than accountants :-). When one discusses the 'graph going up' or 'growth' is that prices? GDP? Employment? Opportunity? I've been in conversations where several different definitions of 'growth' were being used that got confusing because there wasn't an agreement on what the y axis was measuring.
      - 1y ago
SilverElfin 1y ago
> The good news is that these economic problems are entirely the result of bad policies and can be reversed. I think one danger for western countries is having governments that just move from one bad policy of one kind to a bad policy from the other end of the political spectrum. Look at what’s happened recently with resignations at the highest levels of government in multiple countries. And in America, if Trump gets replaced by someone who is put forth as a reaction to him, are they going to really do any good? Even if they had great policies, they’d be in danger of being undone a few years later. There isn’t the same guarantee of consistent forward progress that a country of China seems to be enjoying.
- yks 1y ago
  There will be no "reaction" to Trump, because all such policies would be struck down by the SCOTUS. This version of America is the one we're going to live in for a while.
ck2 1y ago
It would require admitting policies were wrong And obeying the Constitution And a lot of other things that are never going to happen It will take a decade to dig out of this hole And then there will be 11 million people "disappeared" from labor market They are on a crime-spree, you don't do this much damage without malice Look at what they are doing to the WhiteHouse Oval Office, Rose Garden, ballroom, look at the BILLION dollars stolen from nuclear missile maintenance for a personal jumbo jet, etc. etc.
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
jshen 1y ago
I don't believe it's entirely the result of bad policies, but you also left if vague. Which bad policies are entirely causing this in your opinion?
- _aavaa_ 1y ago
  For starters we have cancelling and ripping up clean energy projects, introducing serious uncertainty about tarrifs, increasing unease for any immigrant (and even non-white citizens).
  - jshen 1y ago
    Those are bad things. It doesn't mean there aren't other contributors to our economic challenges.
    - mikestew 1y ago
      So where’s your list of these “other contributors“? People answered your question, and your response was “wrong, try again.”
      - jshen 1y ago
        Debt cycles would be one example that's not a policy decision. https://youtu.be/SoKr0QVCLPA?si=kKcXNetb-kAPr1S8 https://youtu.be/SoKr0QVCLPA?si=kKcXNetb-kAPr1S8 Edit: having said that, "these economic problems are ENTIRELY the result of bad policies". That's a very bold claim, which warrants some strong evidence. No one has provided any strong evidence that it's ENTIRELY from bad policies.
        mikestew 1y ago
        Re: your EDIT - fair enough, thanks for the additional information.
  - frugalmail 1y ago
    Courtesy of AI Avg monthly "clean energy" jobs so far: - 2023: ~3.38M - 2024: ~3.45M - 2025: ~3.42M Any impact to the economy due to "green job project cancellations" wouldn't have surfaced yet. Uncertainty about tariffs: it was already on the books to earn $2.3T (conventional) / $1.5T (dynamic) over the next 10yrs, and inflation is far more under control than it was last year despite the tariffs. Of course legal challenges have disrupted it now. This is also completely ignoring the massive investment foreign countries/companies are making on US Soil to employ US employees.
ac29 1y ago
> If we were to also raise broad based taxes Tariffs affect households unevenly [0], but I think it would be fair to characterize them as broad based taxes. [0] Some good info here: https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-september-4-2025 https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-septemb...
- danans 1y ago
  > I think it would be fair to characterize them as broad based taxes Tariffs are broad based regressive taxes, falling predominantly on the lower deciles of the income distribution. The OP seems to be proposing broad based progressive taxes. However the place to start first, politically speaking, is raising taxes the 10th decile.
  - groby_b 1y ago
    Yeah, but that also contains the core customer segment for buying representatives, so probably not. We'd like to protect that market.
kjkjadksj 1y ago
Zoning is the bigger issue than interest rates with the housing market. Most hand over fist growth happened in our cities when there were higher interest rates but also plenty of zoned capacity. Zoned capacity is barely ahead of present population in cities with exorbitant housing prices today.

thatguy0900 1y ago

The bad news is that we're only one year into the 4 years of bad policy(if we're lucky) and the policy itself will probably continue to get worse

baron816 1y ago
Indeed. We’re not fixing it anytime soon.
nxm 1y ago
We survived with 30% inflation ok key goods during the Biden years due to endless spending, we’ll survive this one too. You’re welcome to short the market though if you feel strongly otherwise
- deleted 1y ago
  [deleted]
- JamesBarney 1y ago
  "key goods" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in that statement.
  - mindslight 1y ago
    "Biden years" is doing even more work. The suicide cultists generally ignore the trillions in helicopter money that was dumped into the economy under Trump's "watch", right when we were also dealing with supply shortages. It took a few years for the economy to start moving and that new money to go from asset prices into consumer prices, right in time for short memories to blame JOEBIDEN.
    - hyperman1 1y ago
      In most countries, every leader is both praised and blamed for the decisions of his or her predecessor.
    - lovich 1y ago
      Well obviously it was Bidens fault for not dealing with the initial Covid outbreak in 2019
- yoyohello13 1y ago
  Luckily, fiscally responsible Trump is coming in to stop all this deficit spending... oh wait.
  - Nevermark 1y ago
    I was going to make a glib comment that Trump is plugging the "deficit spending" of billionaire's having to pay taxes. But given Trump policies in toto, I am having trouble coming up with what a winner looks like here. Big oil I suppose. But that's a damn narrow demographic if everything else is hurting. And overall economic malaise won't juice oil demand. If anyone can characterize the class of economic winners ... ?
    - ericey 1y ago
      The winners won't be a class but a certain privileged country
    - deleted 1y ago
      [deleted]
avgDev 1y ago
If democrats retake congress some things will change. Congress can stop the tariffs. If democrats don't retake congress we are cooked. This means people are okay with whatever is happening.
- kamarg 1y ago
  > This means people are okay with whatever is happening Or it means the game has been rigged which is exactly the point of all the gerrymandering going on right now. Tons of people are not okay with what is happening but their power to replace their government representative has been or is currently being effectively stolen from them.

bobbylarrybobby 1y ago

The effect of a bad policy doesn't necessarily end when the policy does. The economy has inertia so some effects, such as inflation, are self-reinforcing and need active undoing even when the policy is relaxed.

baron816 1y ago
Correct. We’re not reversing things anytime soon, and the longer things stay like this, the more damage will be done.
- rsynnott 1y ago
  At least on the US tariffs thing, congress can put Trump back in his box and revert to normalcy any time it wants to; the threat of stagflation might make it do that. The previous stagflation incident was more driven by outside forces.
  - JumpCrisscross 1y ago
    > on the US tariffs thing, congress can put Trump back in his box and revert to normalcy any time it wants to We’ve already lost export market share. China, Russia and India have already begun building a trade bloc. FDI has already been trashed. We’re already in for a world of hurt. And personally, I’m eager to ensure it lands disproportionately on his voters and donors.
    - CamperBob2 1y ago
      And personally, I’m eager to ensure it lands disproportionately on his voters and donors. That would certainly be nice, but we're all in the boat together. There is no safe haven when idiots are in charge. But you see, dogs and cats were being eaten, and the other lady cackled too much...
    - cs702 1y ago
      > We’re already in for a world of hurt. I fear you're right, but hope you're not. Yes, this is wishful thinking on my part. I don't want to wish ill on anyone.

Arainach 1y ago

It's much easier to destroy than build, and some things once destroyed can't be rebuilt. Trump's inconsistent tariff and policy flip flopping means no one trusts the US to behave rationally and predictably. The fact that the US population elected him a second time means that the US as a whole can't be trusted to behave like rational adults. Decades or centuries of reputation has been thrown away. That can't be changed just by a new face saying "sorry we want to take it back".

ta1243 1y ago
If a new face can reverse policy on a dime, then that reversal can be reversed a couple of years later. It's amazing how few people seem to understand this. Countries are oil tankers, they take years to turn even a little - and that's a good thing. In 2000 the world broadly knew what was going to happen, Gore and BushII would implement pretty much the same policies. Same thing in 2008 when it was McCain and Obama. Sure you get some minor tweaks to policies which don't really affect much in aggregate. Even in 2016 Trump was unable to make massive changes, because the state is built to prevent that from happening. The US does not elect a monarch. Things take forever by design, and it's really frustrating when you want it, but it also means one person or one administration can't make a major impact, it takes a generation of pushing the overton window in the direction. Once you break that, you have a jetski zipping around, then you can't rely on stability, it becomes riskier to invest than investing in a country with a dictator.
- peterfirefly 1y ago
  > The US does not elect a monarch. It is a constitutional monarchy with an elected, time-limited king. Monarchies generally have (and had) lots of checks on the king's power. Not necessarily the kinds of checks we would like, of course. The rights of the nobility were well-protected, the rights of landless commoners were not.
  - Tadpole9181 1y ago
    No, it's really not. The Executive does not have these powers in the constitution. They made it up and assigned it to themselves by loosely interpreting things how they wanted. Executive orders are memos, not laws. The President has no power for legislation or budget or tariffing. We're supposed to require legislative review of any emergency actions, like using the military.

ChuckMcM 1y ago

And then we have Japan, which has spent 30+ years in the economic doldrums. What I'm saying is that these types of systems have "inertia" and can be exceptionally long lived in their 'bad' state, regardless of the policies used to try to get them out of that state.

gscott 1y ago
No they enjoyed 30 years of stable prices and relative happiness. Government pushes a fiction prices must rise so everyone works harder.
- simianparrot 1y ago
  Some people can’t comprehend that the graph can’t go up infinitely
  - mschuster91 1y ago
    It can, if one's definition of "infinity" is "during my lifetime". That's how we get Boomers going on rampant climate change denialism.
    - ChuckMcM 1y ago
      I understand this set of comments is a digression but there is an interesting subtlety here. There is a structural connection between economic activity (in particular 'innovation') and wealth inequality. Economies that are 'stable' and 'unchanging' become stratified and people living in those economies find themselves getting slotted into 'classes' from which they cannot change. Since I tend to be interested in systems, especially emergent ones, this is something I find interesting but recognize that the world generally considers economists more boring than accountants :-). When one discusses the 'graph going up' or 'growth' is that prices? GDP? Employment? Opportunity? I've been in conversations where several different definitions of 'growth' were being used that got confusing because there wasn't an agreement on what the y axis was measuring.
    - 1y ago

SilverElfin 1y ago

> The good news is that these economic problems are entirely the result of bad policies and can be reversed. I think one danger for western countries is having governments that just move from one bad policy of one kind to a bad policy from the other end of the political spectrum. Look at what’s happened recently with resignations at the highest levels of government in multiple countries. And in America, if Trump gets replaced by someone who is put forth as a reaction to him, are they going to really do any good? Even if they had great policies, they’d be in danger of being undone a few years later. There isn’t the same guarantee of consistent forward progress that a country of China seems to be enjoying.

yks 1y ago
There will be no "reaction" to Trump, because all such policies would be struck down by the SCOTUS. This version of America is the one we're going to live in for a while.

ck2 1y ago

It would require admitting policies were wrong And obeying the Constitution And a lot of other things that are never going to happen It will take a decade to dig out of this hole And then there will be 11 million people "disappeared" from labor market They are on a crime-spree, you don't do this much damage without malice Look at what they are doing to the WhiteHouse Oval Office, Rose Garden, ballroom, look at the BILLION dollars stolen from nuclear missile maintenance for a personal jumbo jet, etc. etc.

deleted 1y ago
[deleted]

jshen 1y ago

I don't believe it's entirely the result of bad policies, but you also left if vague. Which bad policies are entirely causing this in your opinion?

_aavaa_ 1y ago
For starters we have cancelling and ripping up clean energy projects, introducing serious uncertainty about tarrifs, increasing unease for any immigrant (and even non-white citizens).
- jshen 1y ago
  Those are bad things. It doesn't mean there aren't other contributors to our economic challenges.
  - mikestew 1y ago
    So where’s your list of these “other contributors“? People answered your question, and your response was “wrong, try again.”
    - jshen 1y ago
      Debt cycles would be one example that's not a policy decision. https://youtu.be/SoKr0QVCLPA?si=kKcXNetb-kAPr1S8 https://youtu.be/SoKr0QVCLPA?si=kKcXNetb-kAPr1S8 Edit: having said that, "these economic problems are ENTIRELY the result of bad policies". That's a very bold claim, which warrants some strong evidence. No one has provided any strong evidence that it's ENTIRELY from bad policies.
      - mikestew 1y ago
        Re: your EDIT - fair enough, thanks for the additional information.
- frugalmail 1y ago
  Courtesy of AI Avg monthly "clean energy" jobs so far: - 2023: ~3.38M - 2024: ~3.45M - 2025: ~3.42M Any impact to the economy due to "green job project cancellations" wouldn't have surfaced yet. Uncertainty about tariffs: it was already on the books to earn $2.3T (conventional) / $1.5T (dynamic) over the next 10yrs, and inflation is far more under control than it was last year despite the tariffs. Of course legal challenges have disrupted it now. This is also completely ignoring the massive investment foreign countries/companies are making on US Soil to employ US employees.

ac29 1y ago

> If we were to also raise broad based taxes Tariffs affect households unevenly [0], but I think it would be fair to characterize them as broad based taxes. [0] Some good info here: https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-september-4-2025 https://budgetlab.yale.edu/research/state-us-tariffs-septemb...

danans 1y ago
> I think it would be fair to characterize them as broad based taxes Tariffs are broad based regressive taxes, falling predominantly on the lower deciles of the income distribution. The OP seems to be proposing broad based progressive taxes. However the place to start first, politically speaking, is raising taxes the 10th decile.
- groby_b 1y ago
  Yeah, but that also contains the core customer segment for buying representatives, so probably not. We'd like to protect that market.

kjkjadksj 1y ago

Zoning is the bigger issue than interest rates with the housing market. Most hand over fist growth happened in our cities when there were higher interest rates but also plenty of zoned capacity. Zoned capacity is barely ahead of present population in cities with exorbitant housing prices today.