Hitting vulnerable families from all sides, and then telling them to be less materialistic
Many consumers buy cheap things because that's what they can afford
Many elderly live exclusively from Social Security. Many younger people live from paycheck to paycheck.
Their grandkids and kids don't have "30 dolls".
When will MAGA_True_Believers © understand (duh!!!) that a billionaire has no idea how they live?
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Trump’s diatribe reminded me of Treasury Sec’y Bessent’s argument that we shouldn’t conflate buying cheap flat screen TVs with the American Dream.
It is clear that part of the administration’s goal of decoupling from China is to reduce the flow of cheap goods into America. They often talk about this flow with real disdain, arguing that we’d all be better off without it, that life has a higher purpose than cheap goods.
As I’ve written before, this is symptom of the great flip in trade policy. Under traditional, comparative-advantage trade policy, people are consumers, not workers. Trade expands supply, allows for specialization, and lowers costs, so the more the better.
Under populist trade policy, people are workers, not consumers. Any trade reduction that onshores a job is worth the bump in consumer prices. They explicitly envision making more toys here, not to mention screwing together iPhones .
Both framings are wrong; the enlightened path is the middle way, as people are both consumers and workers. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about today.
What seems so clueless about this admonition of people to get over their desire for cheap imports is that it neglects their income constraints. You are well within your rights to argue that the extent to which too many American families depend on cheap imports to make ends meet is a serious global problem, one that facilitates low pay here and even lower pay in the exporting countries.
But it’s not okay to fail to recognize that households in the bottom 40% of the U.S. are liquidity constrained, and, given their incomes—<$33k in 2023 1 —need either better pay, more income supports, or, barring those, access to less expensive goods. Anyone who’s not in a bubble knows how hard it is to get by on incomes in that range, given the costs of housing, child care, transportation, food, etc. If you don’t believe me, spend a few minutes on EPI’s Family Budget Calculator tool . Plug in the lowest cost places you can think of and you still won’t get close to the average income of the bottom 40%.
In fact, the problem low-income American families face is precisely how much prices have gone up for the necessities in the family budget, many of which are not tradeable goods (e.g., child care, housing), relative to the prices of a lot of the goods that may soon not, courtesy of the trade war, be lining the aisles of Target and Walmart.
What’s worse is that Trump and Congressional Republicans are hitting vulnerable families from two sides. One, by making their discretionary spending more costly through the tariffs, and two, by reducing their access to health coverage and nutritional support through their budget cuts, the “savings” from which are then applied to offset the cost of their tax cuts for the wealthiest.
They then have the audacity to blow off concerns about the hit to families’ living standards as people not sufficiently appreciating the any-day-now-cascading benefits of the trade war or the true nature of the American dream.
The only thing good I can say about this is that it gives the opposition party a huge target to go after. It has to be increasingly obvious to non-MAGA Trump voters that they bet on the wrong pony. Woe betide the Ds if they can’t present them with a viable alternative.
Source: Census income data on households by quintile; this is market income plus pre-tax cash transfers. The data in the figure is the average of the bottom two quintiles.
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I get it that a billionaire doesn't know what my existence is made of. It's not just understandable, it's probably inevitable. No... that doesn't surprise me. It bothers me - such glaring evidence of America's economic injustice.
OTOH, it does surprise me that a billionaire and self-styled genius deal-maker doesn't realize that as a billionaire, he very likely doesn't know how his MAGA_True_Believers© actually live. It wouldn't be hard to have some "ordinary person" preemptively edit any texts that refer to how people live.
Or maybe he just doesn't give a fuck.
Yeah... that's it. He doesn't give a fuck.
He hasn't a clue.
Neither do 99% of the people on Capitol Hill, including self appointed advocates like AOC or Katie Porter.
What got Trump elected is that he listens when they get angry.
The larger problem is that these are complex issues and the raving extremists on either end are firmly committed to ignorant, missguided views and actions that will make the problems significantly worse. We are a nation of people so bad at math we don't understand how bad at it we are.
You're seeing Trump enact the MAGA hat version of those "solutions" now. You saw Biden try to enact some of the Pink Vagina hat version of those during his term.
Again, both sets of views are firmly rooted in large quantities of emotion and terrible math. So here we are.
Spot on! Oh, how I wish more people in here would realize this and abandon both parties for a third. We could call it the "Math Party".
But as you know, third parties simply don't get elected to a governing position, and I'm not sure if America permits coalitions. In Canada this past election the NDP was nearly wiped out but it still has the ability to give the Liberals the coalition they will require. That does give the third party a little bargaining room.
Arvo..we have Federal elections today..polls close at 6pm and usually by 10pm we know if we have a new leader or not..
The biggest pain is a hung parliament which means the country goes no where for 3 years until the next election..far better when they are in the majority..
Was hoping the Libs get in but think it will still be the Labor party unfortunately...
Still the world keeps spinning and no one bats and eye lid here and tomorrow is another day...
A while back I came across a You Tube video showing people how to construct a Thanksgiving dinner from items bought at Dollar Tree, then because I had watched that one, You Tube began sending me many videos showing how to make every day and holiday meals from items purchased at dollar stores.
I assume so many such videos are made because there is an audience for them.
A LOT of Americans REQUIRE low priced goods in order to survive. Not "want" , require.
True. But... he doesn't give a fuck.
Why would he?, they are losers.
Imagine the humiliation of having a Thanksgiving dinner for your kids where the turkey is processed lunchmeat purchased at a dollar store. I dont know how much that has happened, but if it wasnt happening there wouldnt be You Tube videos about it.