5 ms·
Anything that quotes the current administration’s words as if they are anything other than propaganda at best is an article than can be safely thrown straight i
by jama211 10mo ago
Anything that quotes the current administration’s words as if they are anything other than propaganda at best is an article than can be safely thrown straight into the trash.
- AznHisoka 10mo agoThanks, just saved me a few mins from reading this
- fooker 10mo agoWhat if it does work though? It’s really dangerous to assume your political enemies are stupid and incompetent, even when they likely are. Because if it turns out you are wrong, you can only cry wolf a few times at best. The current administration has a stated goal to reindustrialize America, and even with modest success in that it’s natural for the economy to improve.
- pavlov 10mo agoIs it? Reindustrialization basically means that you want to turn the overall American economy to be more like China and less like California. Maybe that’s good for national security (or whatever is your values-based metric), but it’s not automatically good for GDP.
- fooker 10mo agoCalifornia is not a representative slice of America. You could imagine turning a few smaller states’ economies to be more like China (from the current government subsidized agriculture business) without messing with the tech and finance industries. I don’t understand the knee jerk reaction of assuming you have to burn something down to build something.
- deleted 10mo ago[deleted]
- analognoise 10mo agoWe’re one step from harvesting organs from people in rural areas, or hunting them for sport from helicopter, and they’ll cheer as long as “their side” is the one hunting them.
- pavlov 10mo agoThe small states aren’t going to become like China because nobody abroad will want to import their products that are artificially propped up by tariff barriers. It’s going to be more like 1980s Brazil joined at the hip to California and New York. Doesn’t sound like an obvious winning recipe.
- fooker 10mo ago> Doesn’t sound like an obvious winning recipe. I agree. However, hammering the message of "this would obviously never work" is harmful. Because if it does work, half the country is never going to listen to you again, and the situation is already well on its way there.
- UncleMeat 10mo agoThis is outrageous. We can obviously call a spade a spade. The idea that we can never criticize any policy, no matter how ill conceived, because somehow it might work and then we'd have egg on our face is ridiculous. "Maybe the White House Ballroom construction project will unearth a huge deposit of gold and pay for itself so we cannot possibly talk about its cost." The claim that it is bad political strategy is also bizarre. Like, the right has been lying about policies from the dems for ages. "They are coming to force your child to transition to the other gender." Has this hindered their electoral chances? No. They have more power now than almost any time in the past fifty years.
- fooker 10mo agoOkay, get outraged. Not sure about the strawman ballroom argument but: Let me repeat, shouting "stupid Trump is horrible for the economy" from rooftops is not a great political strategy. In the case it turns out to be false, (and there is a credible chance of that - read the article) it will seem incredibly dishonest.
- nightski 10mo agoTrump can be bad for the economy and the economy can still be fine. The economy doing well doesn't mean Trump was good for the economy. At the end of the day the policies and actions that have been enacted have not been great tailwinds for the economy regardless of the outcome.
- hypeatei 10mo agoWhat legislation makes you think America is going to be re-industrialized? I'm not talking about executive orders on a whim (which appear to be illegal), but actual coherent policy that creates the foundation for businesses to invest in manufacturing plants here.
- fooker 10mo agoSeveral actually. https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/the-one-big-beautiful-bill-boosts-made-in-america-manufacturing https://www.finance.senate.gov/chairmans-news/the-one-big-be... https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/2480 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/2480 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/99 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/99 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/2411/ https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/241... https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/2652 https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/2652 Maybe examine the completeness of the sources you obtain your news from?
- hypeatei 10mo agoYour first link says they just extended provisions that already existed in the 2017 tax cuts. If those were big boosters, wouldn't we have seen a shift already in this re-industrialization effort? Two of those bills (H.R.2480 and S.99) direct the Department of Commerce to conduct studies, work with states on existing programs, and report back to Congress with the results. It sounds quite hand-wavey to me and not like we're doing anything new or exciting there. Certainly not anything that will shake up the status-quo. S.2411: SBA will match capital from private investment funds investing in US manufacturing businesses. Sounds reasonable, but there is a cap of $500M per fund, is that enough especially given the $250M minimum required to participate? It seems like a large scale effort to bring back everything would require billions with a B. It also mentions "qualifying manufacturing projects" but I can't find anything in the bill's text on what would qualify. H.R.2652: Changes some IRS tax law to provide incentives for companies re-homing their plants in the US. Sure, sounds fine. None of these address the current chaos around tariffs, which seem necessary if we're going to bring everything back. Moreover, we may have already soured a lot of relationships with other countries with these shenanigans. Who's to say that foreigners want to invest in a country that's proven we elect unqualified, unserious, and corrupt people who will sever relationships and change terms whenever we feel like it? Bringing everything back will also mean higher prices (because benefits, higher wages, etc.) and that runs counter to all the messaging we heard about "Biden's inflation" on the campaign trail. How do they plan to deal with that? Tell people that it's actually fine that they're paying more because it's made in America? Not to mention that there are other factors at play here that don't involve handing out money: the unemployment rate, human capital, and the birth rate. I personally don't believe we have enough people to work these manufacturing jobs without immigration which this admin is staunchly against[0]. 0: sorta, H-1B was kept alive because of corruption but they also deported South Korean workers for show which disrupted progress on a Hyundai plant in Georgia (just as two conflicting examples)
- lawlessone 10mo ago>The current administration has a stated goal to reindustrialize America Why not go even further into the nationalist nostalgia zone? instead of factories everyone could be working in mining, fishing and farming again...
- fooker 10mo agoMan it's not that deep. More factories -> economic boost. Whether it'll work is a different topic, but it seems silly to wish failure.
- lawlessone 10mo agoNot living there so i'm not really invested in beyond a vague hope that part works ok, and abject horror at the rest of the stuff happening there.
- jama211 10mo agoThe original topic was whether we can trust anything they say, and we absolutely can’t. No one is wishing it fails, only either predicting it could, or assuming the goals are made in bad faith.
- analognoise 10mo agoDid anyone actually buy the line about “industrializing America”? It’s pretty clearly a criminal enterprise meant to enrich the president, his family, and the already wealthy.
- fooker 10mo agoThese things are not incompatible. My point is: assume evil, not stupid. Even when it's really tempting to think your political opponents are stupid.
- jhickok 10mo agoI think there is a difference between mere us vs them political sports-fanning and having incredible skepticism towards a particular administration.
- atmavatar 10mo agoIt's not really about assuming political opponents are stupid. The current administration feels like a venture capital firm that's gotten control of the country with the intention of extracting as much value out of it as possible before jumping ship and leaving anyone not worth at least 8 figures to suffer the aftermath.
- fooker 10mo agoI get that impression too. The way our world works, that would be completely fine for the 'economy looks set to accelerate' like in this article. A good economy is not necessarily good for the general public.
- jama211 10mo agoI do assume evil not stupid, which is why I don’t believe any of their stated goals for even one second.
- jama211 10mo agoThe current administration has proven you can cry wolf or lie 19 times a day and their support barely wavers. I take their stated goals as far as I can throw them, remember when they had a stated goal to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it? lol. Don’t give them any respect they don’t deserve.
- nine_zeros 10mo ago[dead]
- crazygringo 10mo agoThe Economist is quite critical of Trump. You should realize that the quote that starts the article is basically making your point -- that what's novel here is that the propaganda seems like it might actually have some truth to it for once.
- agentifysh 10mo agoyeah i think it was just a lazy comment, Economist has a solid track record of criticizing the Trump administration.
- jama211 10mo agoNo I genuinely think that whilst they might be critical of trump it’s not enough, they’re sane washing the words of this administration as if we can _even take them at face value_ and frankly I’m sick of it.
- jama211 10mo agoThey’re no where near critical enough until they start calling a lie a lie.
- crazygringo 10mo ago...they do? Do you read the magazine? I don't know how much more critical they could be. And they're British and cover global news, it's not like they're captured by any Republican interests or anything.
- jama211 10mo agoThis article right here even sane washes their words, if you can’t see that I don’t know what to tell you.
- crazygringo 10mo agoEither you don't know what "sane washing" means, or you are missing the sophistication of the article, or you have an extreme ideological bias. The Economist does pretty objective reporting. They're about the last publication you could accuse of "sane washing". You might want to familiarize yourself with them a bit more and their Trump coverage...
- agentifysh 10mo agowhile i dont think the labor market is doing well, when they start cutting rates, overall markets across the board spring back up
- gruez 10mo agoAny comment that makes a potshot remark about the first sentence in an article, without reading the rest of the paragraph (let alone the article) can be safely thrown straight into the trash. The article lists its reasons for why they think the economy will accelerate. You might disagree with its conclusions, but it's not dependent on taking the administration's "propaganda" at face value. >His optimism has foundation. The effects of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act (BBB), a tax-cutting law enacted in July, will soon start to be felt. Americans will receive refunds that reflect retroactive tax cuts on income from 2025. They will also find that levies on monthly earnings have fallen. According to Piper Sandler, an investment bank, these “two years of tax cuts in one” are worth about $191bn.
- drivingmenuts 10mo agoI believe both of those first sentences are true.
- witte 10mo ago[dead]
- AnimalMuppet 10mo agoYou're still somewhat taking what the administration says at face value. What will be the effect of the BBB? Well, a tax cut, but also no cuts in spending, so an increase in deficits. What's the net effect of that? Is it positive or negative? My money is net positive... at first. So yeah, maybe 2026 will be good.
- vdupras 10mo agoWhy did you put "propaganda" in quotes?
- jama211 10mo agoI read the whole article, and the fact that you assumed otherwise means the rest of your comment can also be safely the thrown straight into the trash.
- seizethecheese 10mo agoYou read the first line of the article only, right? Because this quote is not framed as being particularly worthy of much weight, and the rest of the article is a quite straightforward economic analysis.
- jama211 10mo agoNo, I read the whole article. I’m allowed to have an opinion on how an article comes across with their reporting without being accused of being ignorant thank you very much.
- pavlov 10mo agoThe administration has wrecked US economic data collection, first with indiscriminate firings across the board and then a government shutdown. Labor and inflation statistics are completely unreliable for the past three months.
- websiteapi 10mo agohow come trump won again? his second term is very similar to 1st.
- cr125rider 10mo agoBecause a large number of people don’t expect people in power to blatantly lie to their face.
- jama211 10mo agoI suspect you’re not asking that in good faith.
- cr125rider 10mo agoThis reads like a fake it till you make it hope piece.
- jama211 10mo agoRight?