If people stopped spending hours each day scrolling through Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook feeds, media incentives would change. Journalism would become more thorough and responsible, rather than optimized for outrage and clicks. People’s attention spans would recover, making them more capable of listening to opposing views and engaging in meaningful discussion. The overall quality of public debate would improve, and political leaders would be chosen based on objective, long-term policies rather than emotional manipulation.

The reinforcement-learning algorithms that drive these feeds are fundamentally unnatural. They represent a massive, uncontrolled social experiment on humanity—one that is far too powerful for our psychological reward systems to handle.

What needs to happen is education. Education on how the attention economy works. People must learn to resist becoming social media junkies, because every hour surrendered to these platforms reinforces the very systems that distort public discourse. When we lose control over our attention, we don’t just harm ourselves—we actively worsen the societal conditions that enable manipulation, polarization, and poor political leadership.

I have never — not once — seen an LLM use it in pairs.

1. replacing parentheses —given that the em-dash in pairs for me mark more-relevant-to-the-main content than a parenthesized expression would— so I use the same spacing as `()`

2. replacing colon or just finishing the sentence with a subsentence— so the spacing goes like for a colon.

Probably unfounded grammatically and against any style guides, but this spacing makes sense to me.

Something weird is going on, on iOS I can type either but they look the same in my comment.

Edit: Only before pressing reply. Once posted they look different.

We had the same problems before social media. It's not the cause, just a symptom.

> If people stopped spending hours each day scrolling through Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook feeds, media incentives would change.

Many people willingly choose the distraction, they just don't want to bother with politics and stuff. Social Media is just today's most popular distraction at the moment. And Social Media is also useful for those who seek education. It's really more about motivation and presentation than the medium itself.

It may not be the cause, but I think it's also not quite just a symptom. To me it looks like social media has taken an existing problem and made it worse, for all the reasons the parent comment describes, and then some.

> And Social Media is also useful for those who seek education. It's really more about motivation and presentation than the medium itself.

Also true, but I'm not sure this is prevalent or impactful enough for it to avoid being a net-negative. Also don't forget about the motivation & presentation of the platforms - they also have some outcomes they can optimize for, and I think there's a strong case to be made that they're optimizing for attention theft.

The age groups who spend the most time on TikTok and Instagram are the least likely to have voted for this administration.

There were populist demagogues getting elected before social media and cell phones, too. This isn’t a modern thing.

I know everyone wants to use this moment in politics to blame their own pet peeves, but blaming social media junkies for this election just isn’t consistent.

For that we would need a new funding model for journalism. Local journalism (i.e. local newspapers, radio and TV stations) used to be financed by classifieds and ads. Classifieds are long since gone off to the Internet and ads have been replaced by Google Maps plus Facebook, so there's no monetary stream - and as a result of that, there's barely anyone left holding local politicians and companies accountable. Yes, some places have "citizen journalists" and bloggers, but these usually do not have the funds to pay for legal teams and court proceedings, so they usually only target government stuff.

Something like taxpayer-paid media is way too easily corruptible by the government, just look at Hungary for the worst possible outcome. "Mandatory contribution" systems like the BBC or Germany's public broadcasters aren't that easily corruptible, but it still happens - just watch the shitshow every few years here in Germany when the contribution needs to be raised.

It's an all-around mess.

Example: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=4230288

We haven't invented a governance structure yet that would be immune to this, although some are better than others. I'm sure the current social media algorithms are harmful as well. You can ban viral algorithms, but the hostile actors whose literal job it is to drive polarization / populism will just find other strategies to effectively deliver their message.

"Education" is nice and all, but millions of people keep smoking despite the obvious harm and decades of education, not to mention the many limitations, taxes, and bans. I mention smoking as an obviously-bad-thing that everyone knows is bad. Education succeeded, and yet, here we are, still puffing poison. But you can also look already-polarized political topics. There's been no shortage of education on those topics either, but if that worked well enough, we wouldn't be decrying populism right now.

I think there’s a missed opportunity for media to make it explicit that by giving their time and attention to these platforms, people are directly generating profit. Way too many assume their involvement has no real effect, but it does. I suspect people would be far less willing to log in if it were clear that each session generates, on average, X dollars in revenue. It’s a business model most people still haven’t fully digested.

The things that are harming me are a lot more complicated than that, but people don't have the attention span to be educated about such complex issues. It's easier than ever to spread "education" now. The fact that it doesn't stick is not some grand conspiracy – most people simply don't care.

Daniel Schmattenberger said one kpi for good society is the inverse of addiction behaviors.

Maybe a 5 why's (and beyond) on people's addictions can help get to the root cause.

It's usually structural and systemic and not a moral failing on the individual choice problem

This problem of democracy was already discussed in ancient Greece. Social media might have exacerbated it, but it's not new. Over the millennia, nobody found a valid solution, or at least one that is devoid of other problems.

Education is not the solution, as we are probably the most educated populations in history and we are all still prone to the same problem. And who decides what is the correct education? Every side has their own definition, so there you have another problem.

You're assuming that modern politics across most of the World has something to do with rational, logical thought. Russia, China, Europe, the US, the Middle East - they are all in a quagmire of irrational fractures between the public and the political classes who want power/control for benefit of themselves rather than for the benefit of that public.

It's not unique to the US, it's just that they look like they are speed running it from outside.

Facts change nothing. This report means nothing. These people still believe. The report is wrong. They are right.

The truth is whatever they want it to be, not something out of their control.

Talking with him makes _me_ worry about my own beliefs, because if these people can be so blind, maybe I am too.

Don't be so sure.

Many other Americans are pretty open-minded to new facts, even today. Unfortunately this kind is relatively geographically concentrated in urban or academic communities, and many of them are also discouraged from voting by being fully aware of how desperate and hard-to-fix the US political situation is, thus minimizing their electoral impact.

The Italian Catholics have got a handle on this with many of their relics.

Bits of various saints are in glass boxes all over Italy. Presumably they could be DNA tested?

For example

if said saint has any known living relatives (and we are certain of that), then this confirms the veracity of the relic.

if said saint has multiple relics of various body parts, we DNA test each one and examine concordance.

of course a DNA test may QC fail, not enough DNA, too low quality, etc. But if it passes then we potentially have dead to rights a confirmation or refutation of the relic. For this reason I expect the church would be quite recalcitrant to have it tested, because there is a possible outcome that the relic is revealed to be a fake

Dave Allen's great joke about the relics concerns a doubter pressing on why there were two skulls of different sizes attributed to Saint Placeholder.

The answer was straightforward enough;

this one is his skull taken from his concecrated tomb in the Abbey of Overthere,

and this was his skull from when he was a child.

https://ru-wikipedia-org.translate.goog/wiki/%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0...

For more modern miracles and relics the church does have a tight grip, and famously one pope threw a whole bag of Christ teeth in the Tiber river, but many older things have been "grandfathered".

We should ban advertisements of religions. If their gods are so powerful then they shouldn't need advertising. And if you are a believer AND god turns out to be real then banning advertising could lead to the return of Jesus. Win win.

I can't follow you here. Relics only have a meaning when you already believe them to be relics and no just random bones. How is that advertising?

Actually, maybe that's a stupid question as people absolutely do both. But there is an element of "look how great we are because we have a splinter from the holy cross in our church".

I have long believed that being religious primes people to also lose the ability to think critically in other areas of their lives.

I was talking about the impact of the current state of the world on existing relationships.

Stop contributing to the problem.

I have an uncle that I've always been fond of who recently has spouted some mind-bending support of the current administration, and it was like talking to someone who lives in another dimension. My Dad too was indoctrinated by Fox News (because he was spending a lot of time with my grandparents) and some of his political views are irreconcilable with the man I knew growing up.

???

But if you do believe hard enough, if you give it your all and exclude anything else than your believes, when you become one with it - then you can certainly increase the collision speed quite a bit! :-)

From an overall economic policy standpoint, missing facts that provide context are pretty important especially when you're trying to paint an entire side of the isle as completely brainwashed. Nobody can have a conversation when we create straw men to argue with.

Other relevant context:

- The US trade deficit just hit its lowest points since 2009 due to decreased imports and increased exports, which rose by record amounts.

https://www.reuters.com/business/us-october-trade-deficit-lo...

- US Q4 2025 GDP grew by 5.5%, outpacing China at 4.5%. For context, over the last 25 years China averages 8% per year while the US average 2.1% per year.

https://www.visualcapitalist.com/top-50-economies-real-gdp-g...

Q4 forecast https://www.atlantafed.org/cqer/research/gdpnow

- US inflation has continued to slow at 2.7% with core inflation at 2.6%, continuing the trend from the last 2 years under Biden after a huge 9.1% inflation spike in 2022.

https://usafacts.org/answers/what-is-the-current-inflation-r...

- US gas prices continued to trend downward by national average, with significant regional drops. I live in South Carolina and filled up for $2.39 / gallon a couple of days ago.

https://www.eia.gov/dnav/pet/hist/leafhandler.ashx?n=pet&s=e...

- The price of eggs have come down significantly, to their lowest rates in 4 years.

https://tradingeconomics.com/commodity/eggs-us

- And the US stock market is at all time highs right now.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/stock-market#:~:t...

There's a lot of economic doom and gloom in the comments section here that's simply not reflected in the overall economic numbers. It's not perfect, but it's trending in the right direction.

Why is this positive? And I’m not implying it’s negative either. It’s just a fact sans context on the effect of the market unless you’ve bought the current admins argument that a trade deficit means you’re getting ripped off.

> US Q4 2025 GDP grew by 5.5%, outpacing China at 4.5%. For context, over the last 25 years China averages 8% per year while the US average 2.1% per year.

I can find no mention of Q4 gdp results in your linked source, it appears to be looking at annual gdp rates over years and focusing on the US compared to China and India

> US inflation has continued to slow at 2.7% with core inflation at 2.6%, continuing the trend from the last 2 years under Biden after a huge 9.1% inflation spike in 2022.

Still above the feds target of 2% but it’s good to see it still trending down

> US gas prices continued to trend downward by national average, with significant regional drops. I live in South Carolina and filled up for $2.39 / gallon a couple of days ago.

It’s winter, prices for gas always drop in winter. Your own source shows that we’re still above pre COVID prices

> The price of eggs have come down significantly, to their lowest rates in 4 years.

I’m not sure if I’m reading your source correctly but it appears to be saying eggs are $0.45/ dozen

That seems implausibly low but I can’t find other sources to compare as every source I’m finding has conflicting information internally, and the price given doesn’t match up with the lowest prices even if I multiply it by 12 assuming I misunderstood price per dozen for price per egg

> And the US stock market is at all time highs right now.

Yea but over half of that is mag7 and only propped up by the AI bubble. It’s nice temporarily but all the context around the stock market doesn’t make it look particularly healthy atm.

The economy looks about as healthy as it did in 2024. I think a lot of people’s views on the health of the economy, whether it’s good or bad, are being more influenced by political leanings than by numbers. Fits with the zeitgeist of the era.

> Why is this positive? And I’m not implying it’s negative either. It’s just a fact sans context on the effect of the market unless you’ve bought the current admins argument that a trade deficit means you’re getting ripped off.

When would increased exports not be a good thing for any country? The tariff conversation was interesting for me in particular as more of an ideological free trade advocate because I didn't realize just how heavily other countries were applying tariffs goods from the US in some cases. The admin initially stated they were going to apply reciprocal tariff's but those numbers never fully lined up.

Anytime you can create an incentive to on-shore production, it's typically good for the country based on jobs, domestic production, supply chains following production, domestic industrial education and training, etc.

I never spent too much time thinking about it, but as a negotiation point the US is the worlds biggest importer. That does mean that cheap access to the US market is a valuable tool in those conversations.

Don’t compare apples to tennis balls.

And in regards to the trade deficit, everytime I look at it the numbers it only includes physical products and not services. We’re a heavily service based economy since producing a Facebook is several steps down the tech tree from producing screws.

So again I will ask why a trade deficit on products is bad. We’re just buying shit from less complex economies or ones where the comparative advantage of trade works out. We’re not getting ripped off.

The absence of capital controls is a political choice that people appear to believe is just a law of the world.

If there were capital controls then local manufacturing makes more sense.

It would kill the US stock market so it's unlikely to happen, but personally I don't see how unrestricted capital and restricted labour is anything but a recipe for disaster (the consequences of which we've seen in the US and Europe since the financial crisis).

Totally. The two things are actually quite different. You (US & industrialised countries) removed capital controls and the cost of transport dropped by a lot (shipping containers etc) which meant that it became more profitable to make things in much cheaper countries and so the businesses did that, and now you're/we're screwed.

Reintroduce capital controls and only trade with people with comparable labour rights and wage levels, and this problem goes away. But ultimately, this change was driven by western economic interests, not China/other countries.

That being said, China played this hand very well (from a manufacturing/export perspective) but they didn't cause this. The US & European businesses did, because they could make more money/pollute with less issues this way.

Please provide this fact also.

Because of the missing data from the shutdown, most financial people are putting the last inflation print closer to 3% which means it's continuing to rise.

Bringing up Biden is funny since that's so far in the rear view at this point. You going to also talk about how much stimulus Trump dropped into the economy during COVID? Regardless, Biden was POTUS when inflation spiked and was killed almost as fast as it went up. It was on a nice glide path back to target until Trump through a tariff grenade into the mix.

They are just so caught up in their culture war that they believe that shouldering such a burden, at least for a time, is worth it for all of the "positives" of the regime - especially the part where people they don't like are suffering.

That's why trying to argue over tariffs is useless - not because they don't believe, but because that's not their underlying motivation. In fact, they would prefer to talk about tariffs, because they have a set of well-rehearsed talking points for arguing against that.

It's better to figure out what they actually care about, as well as their motivations for why.

"Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia."

Yes, this is what we call a "post truth era", for anyone who may still think this is some fringe conspiracy.

It's sad but true. Deep down, political thinking is influenced by tribal thinking, a rigid us versus them mentality.

This is, after all, how the "divide and conquer" method gets to be so effective. A house divided amongst itself and all that.

But I think the methods by which they're being manipulated are quite alike, and ultimately forced to side with the current tribal figurehead simply because it's not the other tribe's figurehead, even if there are many, and legitimate, contentions.

When one chess player chooses to suddenly say that a pawn can move 3 spaces, and you insist on calling a ref to call out cheating, I don't think it's just "two tribes" anymore. You agreed on the rules of engagment at the beginning of the match and one side is objectively breaking them. Saying post haste that "well maybe a pawn should move 3 spaces" does not negate what you agreed upon.

That's why it's tiring to head the "but you're being manipulated" argument. Being manipulated by the very rules of your government is different from a bunch of war mongerers, billionaires, and corrupt politicians continually ignoring the rules and saying "no it's okay".

They operate under the "might is right" mentality, and by getting away with it prove in a sick and contorted way that the rules of social order aren't universal.

> Harris and Biden are heavily held in contempt by most of the Left.

To be absolutely frank, I don't consider the Democrat party as "Left" in any (traditional?) sense at all, even though it may include Left and Left-leaning elements.

(But then again I don't consider Starmer's Labour as Left either, and one could argue that Labour is more Left than the Democrats.)

The Democratic (not "Democrat", a member of that party is a Democrat, but the party is the "Democratic" Party), and calling it the "Democrat" party has its roots in Republicans deliberately misnaming the party as one of many attempts to devalue and dismiss the Democratic Party. If that's your goal, then please continue. Otherwise, it's like calling an Englishman a Limey or a Pommie just because you've heard others do so.

Otherwise, you're quite correct, in that the US Democratic Party is mostly a center-right party, with it's most progressive/left-wing elements being firmly center-left.

Harris in particular, led a weak and energy-less campaign, disappeared for 6 month after losing, didn't do or say anything about Trump's terrible start, then reappeared for her book promotion and pinned it all on progressives.

I'm not telling you to disregard whatever good policies has come out of Biden's term, I'm telling you that's the barest of bare minimums, and winning an election against an obviously retared manchild such as Trump shouldn't be that fucking hard. Yet they lost, having down nothing to counter-message his many obvious lies. This deserves scorn, nothing else.

You mean the one he postponed until months after the date Trump had already signed a deadline for?

Biden took the political hit by doing the right thing and ending the war - No prior president did that.

Not that it’s necessarily as bad everywhere, but time and time again I talk to people from various countries who say the current leader never could have been elected back when they were living there.

A lot of this, as in the case of Trump, seems like legitimate dissatisfaction that voters have which is funneled into finding alternatives to the people that are currently representing them, without deep thought about the outcomes of the policies the replacement is pushing for. In the case of Trump voters in particular people seem to very frequently be willing to overlook statements they would otherwise disagree with just because there are other statements that align with their thinking, or that seem like “change” that they are willing to support to see where it leads.

Most people I speak to in Canada, Europe and Central America seem perplexed why Americans they know do not seem more alarmed.

It's because we live in the beginnings of a dual state:

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/18/opinion/renee-good-ice-im...

Quoting the key point:

> The two components of the dual state are the normative state — the seemingly normal world that you and I inhabit, where, as Huq writes, the “ordinary legal system of rules, procedures and precedents” applies — and the prerogative state, which is marked (in Fraenkel’s words) by “unlimited arbitrariness and violence unchecked by any legal guarantees.”

> “The key here,” Huq writes, “is that this prerogative state does not immediately and completely overrun the normative state. Rather, Fraenkel argued, dictatorships create a lawless zone that runs alongside the normative state.”

> It’s the continued existence of the normative state that lulls a population to sleep. It makes you discount the warnings of others. “Surely,” you say to yourself, “things aren’t that bad. My life is pretty much what it was.”

More at https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2025/05/trump-e...

It's not unique. If anything, it's inevitable regression to the mean. Entropy rises eventually and does this

And there will be more, and soon (tomorrow -- 20-Jan-2026 -- in fact)[0]

[0] https://www.freeameri.ca/

   monaco, liechtenstein, singapore, luxembourg, ireland, macau, qatar, bermuda, norway, switzerland

One party state w/ elections: singapore, macau

direct democracy: switzerland

represented democracy: Norway, Bermuda, Ireland, Luxembourg

Multi-party representative democracy is less than half. And none of the top 3. An interesting, but uncomfortable, fact. The people are not good at picking economically rational leaders in adversarial elections.

> ...

> In 2017, Ireland's economic data became so distorted by U.S. multinational tax avoidance strategies (see leprechaun economics), also known as BEPS actions, that Ireland effectively abandoned GDP (and GNP) statistics as credible measures of its economy, and created a replacement statistic called modified gross national income (or GNI*)

Source: Wikipedia on GDP per capita, PPP

I don't think your conclusion about governance is warranted, given the important other factors you aren't accounting for in your list (also presence of large oil & gas natural resources).

You called out per capita GDP as not a great metric but you didn't seem to deny that living in Monaco on a Monegasque income (for example, or any of these other monarchies) would be a bad thing, despite their type of government.

And you called out vast oil & gas resources as essential, or scale-tipping, for the goodness of a monarchy but I'm assuming you are against the US intervention in Venezuela for the purposes of securing such resources for American interest.

Did you have other factors in mind that you did not mention?

No, I don't really care to. I feel like the two confounding factors I've given are sufficient to cast doubt in your attempted causal inference.

I'm also not interested in continuing with you since you don't actually seem interested in the truth, with things like "figuring out which side I'm on" and the absurd non-sequitur:

> but I'm assuming you are against the US intervention in Venezuela for the purposes of securing such resources for American interest.

like what the hell are you talking about.

Basically, the boring solution (democracy) gets you boring, middle-of-the-road results, while a monarchy is more likely to get you an outlier. The outlier might be at the top or the bottom of the pack, but because it's not democracy any more you don't have any say, so tough toenails if it's the wrong one.

All of it still comes down to the competency of that leadership though.

Perhaps making good economic decisions grows exponentially in difficulty with the population size, especially for “conventional” economies that do not have another cash cow.

E.g. which of these countries has any kind of youth culture to speak of?

And in the inverse Monaco is a multi-party representative (semi-)constitutional principality, so a monarchy as said.

So I don't necessarily disagree with your points, I'm mostly just adding thy these aspects of politics can and do coexist.

That said, I don't believe there's a single factor that determined the election. A flip in any of a dozen or more factors could have resulted in a different outcome.

Our elections have been so close that there are numerous single factors determining the outcomes, if that makes sense.

Not sure if that's specifically directed at me, but that's exactly what I said.

The best part about Hacker News is that you can't really know. It's a problem inherent to the kind of social space HN is trying to be; open registration, and lax control over abuse of user moderation tools.

Claiming that half the country wouldn't vote for a woman because Kamala didn't win and couldn't possibly have had any other faults as a candidate is very bot like, however.

[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2025/02/21/women-acc...

The buttons are still there, but they don't do anything.

To that end, I've actually been avoiding the downvote and flag button entirely. It's handy to close off an avenue of admin retaliation, but on a deeper level I feel like the reflexive race to downvote people you disagree with is the "game" part of gamified engagement.

Besides, if an HN user says something horrendous, I feel like other HN users deserve to know the kind of company they have on this site, instead of tone-policing it under the rug.

There is also word-based fl-gging. I don't know whether HN itself is doing it or some users.

If you read some of those explanations and still have a question that isn't answered there, I'd be happy to take a crack at it. What you shouldn't do is take commenters' claims about it un-skeptically, because sometimes (as in this case) they are false.

You also don't explain how 2 posts per 3 hours constitutes a "ban".

I don't understand your second statement.

You seem to be asking about https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46694184 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46691754. Those comments were killed by user flags. That was before we banned you.

The distinction between moderation done by users (votes, flags, etc.) and moderation done by admins (killing posts, banning accounts, etc.) is long established and well understood by the community. It's not about blaming.

But I don't trust you either, and my reasons for being reluctant to flag and downvote are genuine. This is because I've also seen moderation teams who swear up and down that they're not biased, but who later get caught out when they put their finger on the scale through action or deliberate inaction.

But there's another dimension to the unfrustworthiness, because I have also seen moderation teams who don't put their finger on the scale per se, but are so invested in their own rules that they let their community rot beneath their feet from people who have figured out how to manipulate them.

What I've said, and believe, is that of course we're biased, because it's impossible not to be and because unconscious bias is a thing, but that we at least try to mitigate the effects of it, and have a lot of practice at doing so. Are those efforts negligible? I doubt it. I think HN would be a different place if we weren't trying to do that.

The amount of crazy and not so crazy shit I hear for voting for this idiot is incredible. Though the Dems do themselves no favors either.

No, they voted for Trump because he was their guy then later made up a rational justification. We know that people generally do NOT make decisions by rationally evaluating things, their subconscious makes a decision and their conscious makes plausible rational arguments. (Yes, citation needed.)

That said, I'm not sure being a woman was worse than being from CA or black with a solid chunk of the electorate. (I'm reminded of how some of my own relatives seemed to want to avoid visiting us in CA growing up because they had such a strong notion of how "communist," "liberal," and dangerous it ostensibly was.)

In some ways this also illustrates that propaganda likely had a significant role, too, IMO.

Had the DNC allowed Bernie Sanders to win, or had Biden not picked his running mate on the basis of a Berkeley focus group where the participants were trying to out-virtue each other, we would live in a very different world.

If Biden and his administration had not been so hellbent on hiding his decline and allowed a robust primary process to start a year earlier, we'd also probably be living in a very different world. There was an extraordinary amount of hubris involved. Hell, even the amount of time between the debate and Biden stepping down (and then initially refusing to endorse Harris) took an absurdly long time. Felt like the lesson with Hillary's campaign was not learned - they expected people to vote for Harris by virtue she was not Trump. Clearly that has not been working.

Especially when it became so untenable to continue the lie that they had to implicitly admit to it along with falsely accusing everyone else of misinformation.

The reasons people vote a certain way or can't be bothered to show up at the polls are going to vary significantly across the nearly quarter billion humans making those choices.

So any attempt to "single issue" explain election results are going to be wrong, particularly in a close election like this one. (49.8% vs 48.3%, and Electoral Votes in battleground states often in the tens of thousands of voters, out of tens of millions.

But many of the issues certainly contribute to flipping voters between one candidate, another, or staying home.

So sure, totally, gender and race played a role.

The economy (and steep inflation) played a role.

Biden being an increasingly disliked incumbent, staying in the race too long, and Harris being too conservative to distance herself from him played a role.

News and propaganda played a role (and I suspect this is a big one. Remember when Trump was all like Deep State, Democrats and Epstein, let's get those files released! And then it came time to do it, and for some reason he was like... oh that's a bad idea?)

No doubt individual state politics play a role, too - an unpopular governor might give the opposing party a boost.

But yeah, if the Democratic nominee was a) nominated, and b) a white male, the odds probably would've shifted in their favor enough to flip those few battleground states.

Both parties are quite disconnected from the interests of the "ordinary people", and the "ordinary people" voting from them are often quite disconnected from the reality; instead they want someone who would approve their preconceptions, and would stick it to "them" in the endless political sports match.

Which may not be that endless: if the political climate of the US deteriorates enough, some authoritarian populist could just get elected and never leave. The current administration likes to hint at that, but they seem to inane to actually pull this off. Somebody less theatrical and more cold-blooded could, though :(

I voted for Harris, I even canvased for her, but I think its a sexist oversimplification to suggest she lost because she is a woman. She lost because her campaign was lame.

But she did offer voters lots of things if you spent 30 seconds listening to her and stepped out of the faux news and Twitter echo chambers.

And basically every last bit of it would’ve helped the average American. She just didn’t lie and claim she had a magic wand to fix price gouging her first week in office.

https://www.politifact.com/article/2024/sep/30/kamala-harris...

*And to be clear, it’s rather interesting that both Kamala and Hillary were blamed for “not having a platform” which seems to be the go-to for people who refuse to vote for a woman but can’t actually attack them on their platform. Just claim they don't have one or didn’t do a good enough job explaining it!

Democrats who believe in "realistic" political campaigns are why awful people keep winning.

Now you’re criticizing her for “giving in to political resistance” - and by that you mean not getting up on stage and just knowingly and blatantly lying to the American public by claiming she would single handedly drop the price of groceries and gasoline in her first week in office while also ending the war in Ukraine?

I think you’re both moving the goal posts and claiming that the rest of us are looking for a presidential candidate that has no moral compass. I’m good.

This is the lamest bullshit policy which almost seems calculated to alienate voters who it doesn't put to sleep.

Please don't act like democratic politicians are losing because they have a moral compass. Ridiculous.

This is part of Trumps genius and preys on many American's ignorance. Ask random people on the street if they understand the inflation rate for example. Most issues are complex and require nuance and complex fixes. Trump distills them down to simple problems when they are not, and lies with impunity that there are simple solutions. People believe him because it's too much work to believe anything else.

Similarly, AOC should visit the south, eat some grits, volunteer with some Black churches, and do a little skeet shooting with some good ole boys.

What the democrats need is an aggressive economic policy that actually will manifestly improve regular people's lives. If they cannot articulate such a thing and credibly convince the voter that they will fucking fight for it, they will never win.

No one at a gun range is changing their vote.

Both parties already know which voters change their votes depending on the situation. The data's already told strategists in both parties that the hotspots are, generally speaking, a few counties in a few states in the midwest, Pennsylvania, and more and more Arizona. So they don't really need to do more than pay lip service to any others. Because the data's already told them that the others won't change their votes in any case.

People say this but they lost by like 1% in 2024. If that had gone the other way by 1%, people would be talking about what political geniuses they are (as has happened in the past). Winning in this environment just means playing long enough that the noise goes your way eventually, and then everyone talks about what a political mastermind you are. Or if it goes against you then you're forever lost in the political wilderness. Until the next election when it eventually, randomly goes your way again.

Ideas and modeling no longer matters? What matters is that you're doing a TikTok eating a southern specialty?

Spectacles actually matter too. You need to know which one to perform and that requires certain understanding of your audience

https://news.gallup.com/poll/186248/quarter-voters-say-candi...

But I don't think that one performative step would help, it would require like decades of change on the platform of the Democratic party.

This was about all thosw isms and hierarchies we pretended dont exisr anymore.

“As we move into the endgame of the 2022 election, the Democrats face a familiar problem. America’s historical party of the working class keeps losing working-class support.”

“This year, Democrats have chosen to run a campaign focused on three things: abortion rights, gun control, and safeguarding democracy—issues with strong appeal to socially liberal, college-educated voters. But these issues have much less appeal to working-class voters.”

“They are instead focused on the economy, inflation, and crime, and they are skeptical of the Democratic Party’s performance in all three realms.”

You conveniently left out that the author (Ruy Teixeira[0]) of the piece you quoted is a senior fellow at the right-wing think tank that authored the Project 2025 roadmap.

Should we ask Stalin to critique US Cold War policies? Or maybe ask Xi Xinping to publicly assess the relative strengths and weaknesses of Taiwan's defense posture too?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruy_Teixeira

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2025/02/democra...

Quote: The February 18 focus group, in a state that saw deep Democratic erosion last year and will elect a new governor this fall, was the first stop of a new $4.5 million research project centered on working-class voters in 20 states that could hold the key to Democratic revival. American Bridge 21st Century, an independent group that spent about $100 million in 2024 trying to defeat Trump, has decided to invest now in figuring out what went wrong, how Trump’s second term is being received, and how to win back voters who used to be Democratic mainstays but now find themselves in the Republican column.

I live in coastal CA, and a healthy majority of my “working class” friends are Trump supporters.

The ones in the trades, who are relatively high earners, are all Trump supporters.

A Republican candidate could be a Muslim, a women, or trans, but that's not a good reason to vote for them. It should be about what they stand for. Voting for a Kristi Noem would be terrible, for example.

Similarly, the Democratic Party, if they're to win, should not depend on the opposition failing or on identity, but instead on solid ideas and the ability to communicate it well. Kamala wasn't that.

Only when nothing else is on the line will they say "I won't vote for a woman."

Not anymore.

Three more years to climb out of the dumpster fire though. Then, maybe?

But right now? No.

In this moment, the political reality in the US is that Democrats would have to lose. Republicans, male or female, can't really win without that help. Especially in light of MAGA.

I would have thought Wisconsin would have been a wake up call for Republicans. But it hasn't happened yet.

So far both of these parties are sleepwalking into disaster and the world outside the US will pay a portion of that cost. Which is sad.

And Democrats aren't so broadly driven by identity politics that a Republican candidate merely being a woman would attract significant Democratic defectors. She would still have to be somewhat inspiring/charismatic, fairly centrist, and probably pro-choice.

Even in the peak-"woke" Democratic primary of 2020, all the women lost to two old white men.

The main reason for that was all of the candidates throwing their support behind the non-socialist when it looked like the socialist was going to win.

The fact Biden said he wouldn't back out then suddenly did at the 11th hour made the whole thing far more bizarre and was a massive erosion of confidence in any semblance of a plan for the presidency by the Democratic Party. I ended up voting for a 3rd party because both campaigns were run so horribly to the point I couldn't even imagine either side managing a mayor's office let alone the country.

The more I think about this, the more it pisses me off.

You voted to make a contrarian statement. Now, mothers are getting shot in the face.

You made an extremely selfish choice. American deaths are on you. Fascism is on you.

Im gonna put a theory out that I havent seen here yet, a lot of people voted for Trump because they got dunked on by leftist Twitter, told they were racist/fascist/whatever for having an opinion like "communism is bad", and now comes a guy who wont back down and who legit makes them cry liberal tears. Ever been pissed off at someone with no recourse? Of course they want that kind of satisfaction.

Because if that is true, you're re-writing the rules of your "personal voter math" to fit your narrative, and if it isn't true, your "personal voter math" === your opinion, which isn't really useful.

Democrat policies polled better than Republican policies at the last election.

I did not bother canvassing or donating to the Harris campaign for this reason, for the same reason I did not help pro vaccine non profits during the pandemic trying to convince antivaxxers. You aren’t changing someone’s belief system on timelines that matter for election outcomes. Mamdani was able to win NYC because young people and women turned out in force and ranked choice voting. The electoral college overweights rural, lower education parts of the country in US voting.

Based on the above, it will be a long time before enough of the US electorate has turned over before you can run a women presidential candidate imho. 78% of farmers voted for him, and still support him, even as he destroys their way of life, for example. Progress occurs one funeral at a time (Planck).

I recommend the recently released book “The Vanishing Church: How the Hollowing Out of Moderate Congregations is Hurting Democracy, Faith, and Us” by Ryan P Burge (ISBN13 9781587436697) as a contributor to understanding this topic, as well as “Everybody Lies: Big Data, New Data, and What the Internet Can Tell Us About Who We Really Are” by Seth Stephens-Davidowitz (ISBN13 9780062390851).

It's just that if in front of you, you have a weirdo who gives some stupid "with me, everything is free, and there's no problem" line, that is provable completely bullshit, but that your population is too uneducated (or too in a cult) to understand, then this happens...

What did you want Democrat to do? Give the same lies that GOP does? then what's the endgame?

I hope I'm wrong.

The orange idiot is pretending that it is "free everything"

The election was always going to be 50/50 come election day no matter who the candidates were. The consternation about polling over the summer was especially frustrating for this reason, because 50/50 is exactly how it played out despite whatever temporary polling boosts she got. If she hadn't replaced Biden, his poor polling also would have reverted to the 50/50 by November.

People talk a lot about Trump but I think a lot of people just voted against the other option so it didn't have much to do with Trump to begin with.

Also being part of a social category doesn’t mean one will be immune to bias against this very category if it’s heavily pushed in the dominant social constructs.

Actually women able to reach top level political function in a patriarchal system will more likely do so by being doubly virulent against feminist standpoints. Look at Tatcher or Takaichi for a more recent example.

Clinton beat Trump by 15 percentage points among women voters. Trump beat Clinton by 11 percentage points among men voters.

A lot of research has been made on this subject and it should be noted that its primarily young voters that create this voting pattern.

Since these regional governments would be picked from the inside, hopefully there wouldn’t be as much of a contrarian reflex to oppose everything they do.

I don’t know CA well but I know it’s blue with very deep red pockets.

So what you actually kind of miss is a nobility that has common sense and class-consciousness of the leading class.

Graphs About Religion: The Generational Collapse of American Religion - https://www.graphsaboutreligion.com/p/the-generational-colla... - January 19th, 2026

15,000 churches could close this year amid religious shift in U.S - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46484284 - January 2026 (5 comments)

Gallup: Drop in U.S. Religiosity Among Largest in World - https://news.gallup.com/poll/697676/drop-religiosity-among-l... - November 13th, 2025

I don't agree here, but I can seen in this lens if needed.

But that's not what Trump voters miss. And that's the issue. What they want is a "return to good times", aka times where anyone else who wasn't a white male did in fact not have good times. But they don't care about the non-white non-males.

They are smart enough to not say the quiet part out loud, and even now there's signs they are trying to backtrack internally on all of this[1]. But this is always what's in their minds. I don't know what needs to be done on that end, but the positive thing we can do is hyper-energize the country to come out in droves and not let this sneak back in again (or at least, have way more guardrails for next time).

1: https://www.salon.com/2026/01/19/some-trump-voters-are-sneak...

This kind of resonates with the idea, that populations education and governing regime beget each other. When the people don't care about their freedom, they eventually loose it, if they do care a lot about it, they will eventually gain it.

Honestly, the current events (as in last 100years) make me think, that maybe monarchy was in fact the best option for some kind of population. I mean a good democracy is a lot better than an average monarchy, but monarchy is also better than a bad democracy that leads to authoritarianism. Even in the worst time of absolutism, the king had a budget, that nobility needed to vote on. So when the king said "I want a bigger palace" and the nobility says, my bridge is old and my workers are hungry, then that's it. Same with war. I mean when your nobility wants to play warlords, that sucks, but a elite that has their richness in real estate and agriculture has a lot to loose in a war. And what happens when your elite wants to play warlord regardless, can be seen in the USA currently.

In other words, they're stupid.

(You could call this depressing I suppose, but I prefer to laugh).

As someone who grew up in the south, I know many people who left the GOP over Trump. Obviously not enough people have, but there is a glimmer of hope.

That's nothing new... Don't blame me for bothsiderism but I and many others knew full well that Harris would lose after the midsummer switcheroo. Sorry, the Dem party knew it too and they wanted to lose, that's not the only evidence for it and there's no other rational conclusion.

I had some hopes that Trump's deterioration, court case results, and general insurrection of the country would do something to impact his standing. Especially if "sleepy Joe" was the standard Biden was being held to. But I learned from 2016 and knew not to dismiss the possibility.

The real downside here isn't just the fact that trump's voted didn't decrease. It's that Harris' did. A lot of people staying home arguably cost the election almost as much as those who voted.

It's "bothsiderism", learned it on this thread, haven't checked the dictionary, I guess, there's still time to vote on which spelling should go there.

"Feelings don't care about your facts." — not Ben Shapiro

No, it is surprising, as noted in the article, because basic economics suggests that suppliers will adjust pricing, and eat some of the tariff to keep their products competitive. Page 5:

This finding was initially surprising to some observers. Standard economic models suggest that the incidence of a tariff depends on the relative elasticities of supply and demand. If foreign exporters face highly elastic demand (meaning buyers can easily switch to alternatives), they might be expected to absorb part of the tariff to remain competitive.

ie what happens if global demand exceeds supply and a lot of companies have never tried to find other markets because of the inertia required to do so - but if they are pushed by tariffs they find there are alternative customers out there.

As an example - Canada appear to replaced trading food for cars with the US, to food for cars with China.

https://www.facebook.com/TechXnew/posts/canada-has-made-a-de...

> to the surprise of absolutely no-one with even the most basic grasp of how economies function.

it also assumes that there are no other alternative markets to sell to or that supplier capacity is equally elastic; the US might be a high margin market to sell to, but if you only have a fixed amount of product to sell then it makes no sense to eat the high cost of a tariff to keep selling a low margin product when you can instead sell your product at a medium margin in europe

building out more supply for a product is often capital intensive if you want to make it at an economically efficient price point in these times; efficiencies of scale are hard to overcome and a rapid shift of economic policies makes anyone uncertain about future investment so it takes a very long time for these supply chains to rebalance, if they ever do

That's a huge 'if'.

And in terms of burden - the cost hits the poor the most - but if your a billionaire funder of US political parties that's the point.

For a non-US person the most worrying aspect of this is that it also helps make the US more self-sufficient which means it's better prepared to go to war - which is not really good news.

Exactly: tariffs are taxes in another guise. They only serve to create an (artificial) price advantage of local over imported goods for as long as they're levied.

> What were you thinking? What was going through your heads? I'm genuinely curious.

I also can't fathom why the crowd (not just a HN subset) that was clamoring for tariffs thought it'd be anyone other than them shouldering the increase. Perhaps their influencers didn't spell it out for them?

Now everyone gets to pay more - and not just in the US.

Now I'm neither in the US, American nor Democrat/Republican, but as far as I understand their argument, is that they know it means higher costs for those products for them, and it'll eventually lead to companies wanting to produce things within the border, and only after that is in place, will things actually get cheaper (and better?).

So I think for these people with that perspective, the idea is: everything cheap -> tariffs to make imports expensive > People buy less imports and companies start selling within the border > Eventually things get cheap.

Again, this is just me trying to understand their perspective.

I don't believe it for a second.

Here's something that has happened before though. During the American War of Treasonous Aggression, the southern states decided to impose tariffs on the export of cotton to the UK. That caused massive hardship in the UK in the short term as it made the goods that the cotton was a raw material for impossible to sell. UK jobs were lost, UK workers starved etc.

So the local UK manufacturing companies found markets to supply them elsewhere in the world. They set up the supply lines, they reached agreements, and life went on. UK jobs were gained again, UK workers stopped starving. Life was good.

When the American War of Treasonous Aggression was over, the southern states wanted to drop their tariffs and start supplying the UK again. It didn't happen - there was no need to return to an unreliable partner when everything was set up just fine and dandy as it was, and the US cotton was essentially unsellable. US jobs were lost, US workers starved etc. The cotton industry never recovered from that.

Tariffs are a "fuck you, make me" slap in the face. Do it to people you don't like, but if you do it to people who are supposed to be "allies" (obviously not allies in the above case, but the consequences here were just as real), the consequences can be ... quite concerning for the tariffers.

The economic problem is that so long as the production cost imbalance exists, weaning off the tariffs just creates the same market forces that created the trade imbalance (and export of jobs) that created the situation in the first place.

I.e., if it inherently costs $5 to make a "widget" in Elbonia [1] and it inherently [2] costs $25 to make the identical (in every way) "widget" here [3] then while a tariff of $20/widget would make both equal in price, any reduction in the tariff will make the Elbonian made widget cheaper, and a purchaser will be incentivized to buy the Elbonian made one over the "made here" version because they, individually, save money by doing so.

So to maintain the widget making industry "here" the tariff has to be maintained. Any reduction and the cost incentives of "made in Elbonia" reappear, and the local manufacturer sees a corresponding drop in sales.

[1] Chosen only because it is not a real place.

[2] Meaning the local manufacturer cannot possibly produce one for less, due to higher costs "here" (e.g., energy costs, raw materials costs, labor costs, insurance costs, etc.)

[3] Where ever "here" is for the reader.

The headline suggests it was all passed into consumers. So why is inflation still so low? If you add 10-30% to prices (granted, of imports, not of houses, domestic food etc), you'd expect more.

If companies were eating it (which apparently they aren't) then their profitability should be down. But that doesn't seem to be the case either.

So..??? It's like that riddle with the three guys buying a pizza. Where did the money go?

Commerce Secretary, Howard Lutnick: “The model is clear: 10% tariffs or less are paid by the manufacturers, the distributors, the businesses,” he said. “The consumer doesn’t pay. The consumer doesn’t pay because the seller doesn’t want to raise prices, because if they could, they would, but they don’t want to sell less. So they eat it.”

https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/lutnick-beijing-eating-maj...

Why am I not paying substantially more year over year for the wide variety of things I purchase?

The Fed predicted it added 0.5 points to what inflation could have fallen to with the expected effects only partially visible. https://www.stlouisfed.org/on-the-economy/2025/oct/how-tarif...

Answer is they didn't: if the US buyer wanted it that badly they picked up the tab or otherwise they waited for the tariff to come down to 10% or went without. Also, very few goods in the US (probably none in the CPI representative basket of goods) are bought directly from Chinese vendors, they're bought from US retailers. Those US companies can eat the tariff cost if the exporter won't and they can't sell at a higher price. That obviously affects their margins, their sales and their hiring.

prices are up so people are buying less, it's just that simple; only a handful of companies have reported their Q4 christmas earnings but retailers' are already forecasted to be way below previous years'

Inflation was on a glide path to the 2% target until the tariffs. Now it's back to ~3% (most say the 2.7% was off b/c of the missing data).

The general economy is also slowing. Job growth has basically cratered, and mass layoffs are increasing. So people have cut spending.

The stock market has provided some cover because of the huge growth from the AI trade.

What you're describing is called "dumping", and it's a strategy China has used to varying degrees of success in other markets in order to destabilize foreign industries. It could be seen as an act of war.

Chinese labor is not actually so cheap anymore, many other developing nations are significantly less expensive. But China's secret weapon is total control and coordination across industries. They use this to subsidize target industries for the export market. You've highlighted automakers, but they also target steel, aluminum, and others. To a casual observer it almost appears as if they were targeting industries that could be readily adapted to wartime production.

The real distinction is that tariffs are conditional. Currently, firms can avoid them by changing sourcing. That makes them more behavior-shaping than revenue maximizing.

Given that the U.S. never reversed the TCJA corporate cuts from 2020-2024, tariffs are one of the few active levers currently increasing the marginal cost of offshore supply chains.

Yes it will hurt, they argued, but the long term effect will be a stronger and more independent domestic economy. And the pain is worth it for that end. There's plenty of evidence that what actually results are inferior products from domestic companies insulated from international competition, but that was the pitch.

There's also a large group in the base that voted for this who already had an ideological "buy local even if it costs more" philosophy, so to them the proposal was just to force everyone else to join their cause.

In some cases, the Trump tariffs have actually been so poorly designed that US manufacturing has been hit, because the tariffs on the raw materials and parts are higher than the tariffs on importing finished products from third countries...

The same thing as usual: people don't like how things are going, they demand change, but they're not specific, so the result is extreme, and then people demand change again, and on it goes. There's no great insight or rationale going on. People are just dumb animals in hats.

Which is comical since the US is the #2 manufacturer in the world behind China. And that makes sense given the absolute size of China. The US manufacturing output continues to increase every year. What's not increasing are the manufacturing jobs because of automation.

If there are strategic industries the US wants bolster, like microchips, there are ways to handle that through long term incentives. The CHIPS act did this, but was killed by Trump because Biden put it in place.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CHIPS_and_Science_Act

Tariffs and this act are not mutually exclusive, they can be complementary and seems both are currently in place?

US/Trump doesn't want China to have any levers that control US economy, ie. they want situation where any China decisions that can be made to be immaterial to US economy.

If you look at it from this perspective then things like Greenland also do start to make sense as it is indeed long term investment into independency (minerals, rare earth elements). It's not about military presence, they already have it through NATO, it's more about setting up industry around resources – military advantages do exist as well of course but imho that's lower on the list, it just sells better to plebs.

Horseshoe theory and all that, populists gonna populist.

Economics tell people the clear impact, but it doesn't make the news. We get fed with whatever the political influencers decide to tell us. Did the brits expect the consequence of brexit? No but that's because they deemed whatever the news said to be unreliable on this topic. Which for once happened to be true.

I'd get out more, but my tinfoil hat doesn't like the rain.

I mean there were plenty of what would be considered intelligent people that laid out the exact consequences of brexit... problem is the masses don't seem to pay attention to well mannered intelligent people.

If you were going to do that though, it would be more like a 10-20% blanket tariff on all goods. No exceptions, no special deals, and you can't use tariffs as a negotiating tool. So that's not what's going on and the current approach doesn't make any sense economically

Of course it will result in higher prices, that's the point, but also the part politicians aren't too keen to spell out

You can see the archive going to "2015 and older" here https://hts.usitc.gov/download/archive

Sorry buddy but it is you who misunderstands.

I’m adamantly against all forms of illegal immigration. There are plenty of people around the world that want to come here and are willing to wait in line. I’m perfectly fine with the intentions and methods of the current administration.

I’m in favor of doing whatever we can to increase our manufacturing base for the future. I’m perfectly fine with paying more for imported goods that I don’t actually buy anyway. Paying 95% for crap from China that I have no intention of purchasing does not impact me.

I hate all taxes and do not consider it charitable to spend other people’s money. Taxes are a necessity as we need to fund government functions. But it is those functions that should be limited. Because government is generally terrible at most of them.

> I'm adamantly against all forms of illegal immigration

And Trump did what, exactly, make something already illegal even more illegal? And now that you are ruled by a de facto fascist with the rule of law only applicable to his enemies, how is the payoff? On the upside, illegal immigration is no longer a primary concern, I guess.

> I hate all taxes [...] because government is generally terrible

Better to let everything be run by cartels instead, surely they will have your best interests at heart. There's not a single example of a functional and effective government out there, so why even try?

That’s the best part! There’s no new laws necessary. We’re simply enforcing the laws on the books and means of enforcement that we as a nation have already agreed upon!

> And now that you are ruled by a de facto fascist with the rule of law only applicable to his enemies, how is the payoff? On the upside, illegal immigration is no longer a primary concern, I guess.

I fail to see how a democratically elected President that won both the electoral college and the popular vote is a “de facto fascist”.

> Better to let everything be run by cartels instead, surely they will have your best interests at heart. There's not a single example of a functional and effective government out there, so why even try?

There’s plenty of examples of functional governments and plenty of dysfunctional ones. There’s functional programs and dysfunctional ones.

And just because something may work for a small homogenous population in close proximity of each other doesn’t mean it would work or make sense for a heterogeneous population spread across thousands of miles.

https://abcnews.go.com/US/lawyers-allege-dept-homeland-secur...

DHS denying legal council to detainees.

https://www.propublica.org/article/videos-ice-dhs-immigratio...

ICE using chokeholds in defiance of DOJ standards for use of force.

> after more than an hour, agents held down Zapata Rivera’s arms. One, who Zapata Rivera’s lawyer says wore a baseball cap reading “Ne Quis Effugiat” — Latin for “So That None Will Escape” — pressed his thumbs into the arteries on Zapata Rivera’s neck. The young man then appeared to pass out as bystanders screamed.

> The technique is known as a carotid restraint. The two carotid arteries carry 70% of the brain’s blood flow; block them, and a person can quickly lose consciousness. The tactic can cause strokes, seizures, brain damage — and death.

> In a bystander video of Zapata Rivera’s arrest, his eyes roll back in his head and he suffers an apparent seizure, convulsing so violently that his daughter, seated in his lap, shakes with him.

> In a social media post after the incident and in its statement to ProPublica, DHS did not cite a deadly threat. Instead, it referenced the charges against Zapata Rivera’s wife and suggested he had only pretended to have a medical crisis while refusing help from paramedics. “Imagine FAKING a seizure to help a criminal escape justice,” the post said.

Is this new information to you, koolba? Or do you believe this is enforcement of laws on the books?

Another commenter reacted on that already, essentially immigration is used as an excuse to form a lawless militia.

> I fail to see how a democratically elected President that won both the electoral college and the popular vote is a “de facto fascist”.

Because apparently you fail to see that how he got there has no bearing on what happens next. Being voted into power doesn't grant him the right to abuse and consolidate power. Presidential powers aren't absolute, or it wouldn't be a democracy to begin with. Don't you see the paradox?

https://scribe.rip/@carmitage/i-researched-every-attempt-to-...

> And just because something may work for a small homogenous population in close proximity of each other doesn’t mean it would work or make sense for a heterogeneous population spread across thousands of miles.

Sure, you can always invoke some American exceptionalism to sidetrack any constructive effort or discussion, but as it happens, the USA is not as unique as you think it is (not the largest, not the most populous, not the largest market by any stretch). And once you pop your head out of the sand to look around, you realise that there is never a good reason to let cartels pollute air and water, or collude on healthcare or insurance costs, or weaken safety and food regulations which are already subpar for the developed world: Wealthy Americans have deaths rates on par with poor Europeans. Your misguided ideology benefits your robber barons more than you.

https://arstechnica.com/health/2025/04/wealthy-americans-hav...

I highly doubt you are not purchasing "made in china" or "made in taiwan" products. You likely just don't know. Even your Macbook or GPU card is made in China or Taiwan as are lots of components used inside "made in US" products. Same goes for clothing and shoes, american "brands" made in China, Bangladesh, etc.

Moreover: - you don't have fully-local alternatives for everything - it takes a long time and a lot fo money to build factories for local alternatives - cost of labor is much higher in your country

The end result must be higher prices for everything on your side, and it's starting to show.

>> There are plenty of people around the world that want to come here and are willing to wait in line. I’m perfectly fine with the intentions and methods of the current administration

In the past, I was considering moving to US. I think it would be relatively easy for me (EU citizen, good IT work history). And I visited US couple of times as a visitor. But since Trump and recent ICE "methods", I am honesly scared to even visit US again near-term. I am glad I live in EU.

The point when Trump was elected was to make americans buy american and to get international companies to move their production to the U.S.

In Sweden they did something similar when they thought people were buying too much cheap stuff directly from China instead of from the middlemen paying taxes. The solution was to add a tariff on cheap goods from China specifically.

I don't enough to know if it works, but it's not a new strategy. In Trumps current politics though it's used more as a bargaining tool and not something that's supposed to stimulate the economy, is anyone even claiming it is the goal?

Tariffs make foreign imports more expensive. This dissuades people from buying them. Some of those people will instead buy equivalent American made products, now that the price difference has lessened. I consider that a good thing. There will be pain while local manufacturing ramps up (or forever, if it never does) for products that have no domestic equivalent. That sucks, but sometimes things need to suck before they improve. Paying off the national debt, for example, is something I support, even if we have to slash a lot of useful spending for awhile. I think most rational Republicans are voting for these sorts of things despite knowing they will make things temporarily worse, in the hopes of an eventual better. The left tends to never do this, for they are very attuned to the immediate suffering their plans cause. The right tends to be less sensitive to the short term suffering their plans cause; the right thinks that the alternative, a slow decline, is worth the pain to avoid. Trump has bungled the implementation of the tariffs, but I still support their use in general.

Fundamentally it makes no sense to me to support a minimum wage for your countrymen, but also support them importing massive amounts of slave made goods. You are creating rules on the supply side that the demand side does not have to follow, which only harms your own domestic businesses. Your own country's businesses have to compete against slave labor while paying living wages; for most manufacturing this is just not possible. You are incentivizing off shoring, which harms your working class, who have to compete with subminimum wage workers. Workers rights must be paired with tariffs, or every additional worker right is a demerit on his hireability against foreign workers without those rights! If you want your country to produce anything, and to have a strong working class, you either remove minimum wage, or you implement tariffs. We cannot simultaneously support strong domestic workers rights and mass importation of sweatshop goods that were made without them. It hollows out the country.

The observation was that the wage boost of a minimum wage can be undercut by importing cheap goods made with slave labor. Workers can't get hired, domestic manufacturers cannot afford to hire.

The point is not that snapping phones together is some aspirational career. The point is that a legally mandated wage floor is meaningless if domestic producers cannot hire at all because they are competing with goods made under conditions that would be illegal here.

If you support minimum wages and labor standards, you either accept trade barriers that enforce those standards at the border, or you accept offshoring as a structural feature that permanently shrinks the set of jobs available to low-skill workers. You cannot have both.

No one is arguing that people should be forced into factory work. The argument is that a living wage should be available to anyone willing to work, and that requires domestic production capacity. Whether those jobs are in manufacturing, logistics, or automated facilities is secondary. What matters is that the price system does not systematically reward labor exploitation abroad while penalizing it at home.

I'll respond with a question: why wouldn't you want a living wage available to anyone willing to work? One way to enable that might be to ramp up US manufacturing and production.

However, as evidenced by the current situation, the US economy doesn't support manufacturing all types of consumer goods that it demands.

I understand the pressure points you're arguing for but I don't think that the US society will be in a better place once those are enforced.

If everybody willing to work doesn't have access to a job that pays a living wage, isn't that a different issue? Maybe the government could have educational programs so everybody has access to getting the education needed for jobs that pay a living wage (those not offshored to China and others) but I guess that's too much socialism for the US.

"A living wage being available to anyone willing to work" is not about whether every individual takes a job. It’s about whether the labor market reliably offers full-time work that covers basic costs like housing, healthcare, and food. On that question, the data are mixed at best. Many full-time workers still rely on subsidies, and job availability varies sharply by region, skill level, health, and caregiving obligations.

Some people will always opt out of work. That has been true in every economic system. The harder question is whether the structure of the economy provides viable options for those who do want to work but lack leverage, credentials, or geographic mobility. Pointing to the former doesn’t really answer the latter.

I live in the US and don't support the tariffs but I'll give my best shot at answering.

The US is fairly poorly educated on the whole. In order for people to survive, there need to be an abundance of low skilled jobs. AI and automation is threatening to remove these jobs. What are the poorly educated going to do? Decades ago, someone could work in a factory for their whole life. Yes it was monotonous work but it would provide a living and allow someone to buy a house and life their life. I know because my grandparents came over from Europe after WWII and did this. They spoke poor English but could work in a factory and have a house and a car and live a good life. That's not the case anymore. With further automation and the pace of change increasing, it worries a lot of these types of people. If you have no education and your factory closes, there are not many other options for you.

The idea isn't to bring just one manufacturing plant for snapping phones together. It's to bring many, many plants back to provide these jobs for the poorly educated. So instead of just having one plant in your town, you have several. That means there will be competition for workers and wages will rise.

That's the idea anyway. Do I think it's possible to rollback to that time? No, I don't. But this is what people, mainly in rural areas, want to hear.

Part of the problem is that the US doesn't want to invest in education as a whole. Education would be a better long-term solution. Instead, this leads to the visa situation where the US needs to import a lot of technically skilled workers rather than developing them locally.

I can see how this stance can be justified for imports from countries who do not provide a meaningful minimum wage.

I do not see how this stance can be justified for tariffs on EU countries (where worker rights are strongly protected), especially when the basis for that tariff is to "punish" those countries for not wanting to change national borders against the will of the people inside those borders.

First, there have been huge numbers of manufacturing jobs in the U.S. that Americans simply didn’t want to do, so adding more manufacturing jobs they also don’t want to do isn’t going to help the economy. It’s the proverbial, “Americans don’t want to screw tiny screws into iPhones.” situation.

Second, for there to be any prayer of the tariffs working to boost local production (whether staffed or automated), they both cannot be capricious nor can they be applied to the goods and services necessary to acquire and deploy in service of increasing that productive capacity. If the tariffs can be waved around randomly like a threat of grounding a child, then they work only as an instrument of short-term extortion, not as a mechanism to expand an economic base. If the goods and services required for expansion are tariffed, then there’s a giant margin and time-to-ROI disincentive to make the investment as well.

Third, there is absolutely no good reason to apply tariffs to goods and services for which you have no plausible domestic substitute. There’s no point in putting tariffs on bananas and coffee in the U.S. unless what you want is to basically put the equivalent of a “sin tax” on bananas and coffee because you’re weirdly morally opposed to people eating bananas and drinking coffee or something.

Fourth, tariffs don’t ever make domestic equivalents cheaper or more affordable for consumers relative to comparable foreign imports. They just drive the price of all available options up to or near the baseline cost of goods plus the tariff. In the absolute best case scenario where everything about tariffs works out as perfectly as possible, you’re just adding margin for producers.

Trying to be globally competitive economically by using tariffs makes no sense. Trying to improve domestic economic conditions by using tariffs makes no sense. It’s a ridiculously shallow, nonsensical approach to attempting to do either of those things even when they’re used carefully and responsibly, but they were never going to be used carefully and responsibly.

The point of them was always going to be to use them as a means of paying for indulgences and dispensations.

Though perhaps that’s a preferable policy than to re-shore sweatshops and child labor to the U.S. as you’re implicitly suggesting should be done?

But what about the other side of the coin - that exports will now become more difficult, because of retaliatory tariffs? How does that help your domestic economy?

Trumps solution seems to be to try to bully other countries into accepting tariffs and not imposing tariffs on American goods. But how is this supposed to work? Quite apart from the appalling moral and fairness aspects of this strategy, trashing the economies of other countries is a bad idea, because you want other countries to be wealthy so they can buy stuff from you.

Free trade has built the modern Western world, and has already made the US the world's leading economic superpower. I can't even see what Trump is trying to achieve.

The ultimate problem with your first point---that tariffs boost domestic industry---is that the time horizon for reshoring manufacturing and domestic supply chains is longer than the expected lifetime of these tariffs. Trump is a second term president, there isn't broad consensus or even majority support for the tarrifs, and there is a great deal of opposition from business owners: all signs the tariffs are not for long. Who wants to invest in an expensive factory and workforce when the only thing guaranteeing your competitiveness is the remaining years of Trump? It's actually much worse than this, of course, because the tariffs are being used primarily as diplomatic leverage rather than economic policy, so they change frequently and unpredictably.

There are also serious downsides to the Trump tariffs that don't exist for traditional tariffs that are predictable and operate on a long time horizon. These tariffs create price shocks to domestic industry and retailers, which tend to disproportionately hurt smaller businesses and those with slimmer profit margins. They've also damaged the US's reputation with long-term partners, particularly Canada and the EU, which are now exploring competing trade deals with China and are figuring out how to extract themselves from dependence on US arms and tech companies, two major exports.

The effect of these tariffs is not going to be short-term pain for long-term gain. A great deal of US economic competitiveness comes from investments in diplomatic and military partnerships that have now been undermined. These tariffs will spur reciprocal tariffs from other nations and will accelerate the remodeling of the global economy away from US exports, trading competitive US exports for uncompetitive and commodified domestic industry.

Once again proving that economists are engaged in mere astrology.

You also frame the argument that the last administration was tariff opposed, after they issued a 10% blanket tariff on the US' largest trading partner and tariffed Canadian wood products, directly causing house prices to skyrocket during the pandemic. You will never consider those impacts, because you're engaged in a fundamentally political argument, not an economic one.

The US has 4% GDP growth and a 2.7% inflation run rate. Wage growth is exceeding inflation again. Data doesn't lie, but economists do. Routinely.

[1] https://www.msn.com/en-my/news/other/economist-warns-of-moth...

[2] https://www.cnn.com/2024/11/13/economy/inflation-trump-econo...

[3] https://www.cnbc.com/2024/06/25/nobel-prize-economists-warn-...

Could you imagine Amazon increasing their stock on hand by 30%? Maybe. Could you imagine them quadrupling their stock on hand? Seems unlikely.

Impacts should've shown up by now, most of the stockpiled goods would've been sold down.

The popular zeitgeist seems to reject the inflation numbers because of perceiving it to be higher, too.

I do agree it's probably not inventory, but the frequent changes to the policies may also be part of it too.

I can understand that most people do not actually stay with these forecasts. The story hits NBC, you are completely outraged about this forecast made by these economists, the thing never happens, NBC has moved onto next disaster coming round the corner, next outrage.

If you work in markets, you are confronted with the relentless inability of talking head economists to just say mildly rational things. It is constant, almost every year now we have this latest economic disaster by economists in the periphery of political parties...no-one pays attention to these people, they have tenure, they make money from cashing in their political contacts not through actual correct forecasts (and yes, they always say that the thing they predicted will definitely happen next year now).

Stopped clock is eventually right. But there was literally zero information in the insane claims made in Q1. If you did not see this immediately, don't pay attention to these forecasts.

Whatever happens next is irrelevant, it won't make that prediction correct.

Astrology only really fell out of fashion due to a perfect storm of a bunch of different factors. The Church defacto banned aspects of it that implied external forces driving human behavior as that would contradict free will, and that happened just about the Renaissance was kicking off and all sorts of new astronomical discoveries led to no greater precision in astrological predictions, along with a more broadly skeptical shift in society, which gradually left it relegated to where it remains to this day.

"My evenings are taken up very largely with astrology. I make horoscopic calculations in order to find a clue to the core of psychological truth." - Carl Jung to Sigmund Freud, 1911

---

It's a great example of how what is deemed proper and scientific at one point in time is still heavily influenced by things that, in the future, will be considered 'obviously' nonsense. Even in far more modern times, it wasn't long ago that lobotomization was considered an appropriate psychological treatment. No less than JFK's sister [1] was lobotomized as a 'cure' for her irritability.

[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosemary_Kennedy

If I may ask, who are the people that do these predictions? What is there methodology and how do you know it's not luck?

Although as the comparison hopefully makes clear, you worrying about tariffs is missing the point, it's more a question of basic democracy at this point. I'm also somewhat concerned about your new found lust for Lebensraum, because again, that went well last time.

I beg your pardon?!? Who the hell do you think you're talking to? Read my comment again.

I wasn't accusing you personally of supporting your governments actions, but I think you as in your country is acceptable terminology.

"""

Sturmabteilung (SA)

The SA was formed in 1921 as the paramilitary fighting organization of the NSDAP and protected party events. After 1933, under Ernst Röhm, it carried out street violence against Jews, communists, and trade unions, grew to millions of members, but was crushed in 1934 in the Röhm Putsch.

Schutzstaffel (SS)

The SS started in 1925 as Hitler's elite bodyguard under Heinrich Himmler and emancipated itself from the SA. From 1934, it took over police duties, concentration camp guarding, and from 1936, the Gestapo, directing deportations and the Holocaust.

"""

It sends a chill down my spine when I think about this comparison. I recently heard about an ICE agent who tried to drag an indigenous woman out of her car and said to her, “You're next!”

The drawings are not about the holocaust, but the fascism which has led to that point. The holocaust started nearly a decade after Hitler taking power. And I don't think anyone believes Trump or his puppet masters are seriously after an actual genocide; everything else and the victims they accept as "necessary" for their goals are the problem.

History can repeat itself, but never in the same cloths. Some details are always different.

They also voted for military conquest, they celebrated start of the war. Including or even especially so young men seeking to prove their masculinity. They were not voting to just bring better conditions for themselves. They voted to bring glory and violent victories.

They believed themselves to be strong dominant men who will bring good times to the aryan races.

For the rest, you're forgetting how humans work. Do you think the average MAGA voting is voting to destroy someone else? Or do you think they're voting to improve their lot? Voting for expansionism doesn't necessarily mean voting for world war. I'm British, it's very easy to compartmentalise invading a country, from developing a country, civilising, being a net good, etc, etc. What did the average USian think Afghanistan was going to be? Or Iraq? Do the USians who want Greenland imagine that's going to turn into WW3? Nuclear war?

The enemy are very rarely mustache twiddling baddies.

Just for some background, jews were trying to emigrate away from jermany already before fairly violent elections of 1933. It was already bad, dangerous and getting worst. It was not just a rhetoric.

> Trump sending your neighbour to a death camp

It already happened, didnt it? The oppression is smaller then 1933 ... but this particular thing happened.

> Do you think the average MAGA voting is voting to destroy someone else?

Yes. They openly talk about it. And they openly talked about it.

> Or do you think they're voting to improve their lot?

Not much. They are willing to sacrifice own lot for their ideological goals. Per their own words. Also, their voting patterns are NOT consistent with someone who vote to improvw own lot. Their pattern is consistent with someone who vote by values - and value dominating and punishing lesser people.

What I'm trying to say is that illegal immigrants just like the Jews are the 'other' the actual group doesn't necessarily overlap with the boogyman. For example trump voters having their partners deported. Yes they wanted to get rid of the illegal immigrants, but that excluded their partners. They were different. The illegal immigrants they were thinking of are the drug smuggling dog eating pedos.

It's reasonable to want to get rid of the drug smuggling pedos, and that's what they think they're doing.

You're trying to inject too much rationality into this. This is the same species that collected beanie babies, that still argue whether the earth is flat, whether 9/11 is a cover-up, whatever meme is popular this week with the kids. Cognitive dissonance is a powerful thing.

I think there were similar surprises for some people back then. Social reality is complex, as can be seen, for example, in the case of J.D. Vance's wife. Every ICE officer would surely like to drag her out of her Porsche Cayenne by her hair and press their knee into her neck. Here in Germany, the shift to the right is being driven by Alice Weidel, among others, who is in a same-sex partnership with a dark-skinned woman who was born in Sri Lanka.

For anti-Semitism in Germany before the Holocaust, I can recommend Robert Musil's novel “The Man Without Qualities.” For me, it was the most insightful look into the social background and conditions that led to the mindset of the time, which later erupted into genocide.

Incidentally, I realize that we are not yet seeing full-scale genocide in the US. But it already has the character of ethnic cleansing, doesn't it? The beginnings were similar here in Germany back then: armed troops harassing people on the streets or taking them away and imprisoning them. Desensitizing and intimidating the general public in this way creates the basis for further escalation.

I just don't think it's helpful to think of these people or their supporters as 'evil'. They are 3 dimensional people. It isn't the skinheads that are the issue, it's your neighbours, it's you.

He only started that tariff stuff when he took office.

Edit: Clearly I was not following things well enough, sorry for the wrong information.

Besides, he started the tariff nonsense in his first term - it even has its own Wikipedia page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China%E2%80%93United_States_tr...

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c209x48ndjpo

Ps: there isn't really a trade imbalance if you take services into accounts but Trump calculated them only on goods as if that makes sense

I don't think that would have resonated with his followers at all though.

This authoritarian model has proven very successful for anyone Putin and his aparatus has installed anywhere. Now it may be franchised even further.

It's depressingly funny too when you ask these people if they've ever been directly affected by said boogeyman and they'll say no, but the know someone that has. Meanwhile you can ask them things about healthcare, local government, and other matters that affect their daily life, and they'll swear the trans-immigrant-boogeyman de jour is has far more affect on their lives.

I don't want to glorify German high schools but I find it hard to believe that those school books were so wrong that 40 years later it would make sense to return to a manufacturing-oriented economy.

If tariffs are a tax on the consumer, then you probably think the tariffs are in fact good ("American's aren't taxed enough").

But I'm more curious about what makes you think Americans aren't taxed enough. Why do you say that and do you have something specific in mind?

2018+: 37%

1993 - 2000: 39.6%

1981 - 1986: between 50% and 28%

1964 - 1980: 70%

1944 - 1963: 91%

1930s: 63 - 79%

1913 (income tax created): 7%

In most, though not all states, there's also State Income Tax. NYC also has a city tax on income.

So roughly 98% of the population was surprised?

I know two people who voted for him.

Person one has voted Democrat her whole life. Has worked for the Democratic Party. Has a son who was a Democratic elected official. But she lives in Texas, and watches too much local news, and believed that murderous immigrants were pouring over the border, guns blazing, taking out innocent American citizens daily at the beach and grocery store. So she voted for him because she believed only he could stop this from happening.

Person two is a wealthy white boomer. His business already runs in America. He actually has an advanced degree in economics. He believed that the tariffs would only be used surgically by smart people to protect American business. He is not personally affected by any of the racist policies or any of the other shenanigans. So he voted for him because he liked the protectionist and tax cut policies.

He regrets his vote. I haven't spoken to her in months because she stopped talking to me when I kept show her that her "facts" were made up.

If I recall correctly, we vote for presidents, senators and the congress who have policy stances on a variety of issues. There are usually only two options, one of which stands for open borders, not enforcing laws, socialism and demonizing people who choose the other option on the ballot.

A large cohort of independents didn't vote for republicans, they voted AGAINST democrats.

I like the idea of reaching across the aisle. However the divide is no longer the gap of a few feet. It’s a different world, with different rules.

I just checked yougov, and Trump has an 88% approval rating amongst Republicans.

https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/trackers/donald-tru...

Do check, since one hopes I erred in reading the chart.

The victory of Trump is mostly the same process that gave the UK Brexit.

Just people acting based on the information they are being provided. If the other side is filled with feckless buffoons, and every source of news you have is telling you the same thing, then what else will someone do?

10 years ago

And, if you read the paper, you will find that evidence. How these work depends on initial conditions that vary and exporters will not react in a consistent way.

As a specific example, theoretical research in this area tends to make assumptions around the stationarity of margins that are obviously ludicrous in the context of reality in the US. It is quite easy to justify almost any policy with theoretical research in economics so people who have no understanding of economics will find evidence for whatever position they choose. Reality is quite different.

The limitations of the data are highlighted by the authors’ somewhat bizarre claim that “a 10 percentage point increase in tariffs leads to only a 0.39% reduction in export prices.” Yet the luxury industry, a major component of European exporters, reduced prices in 35-40% of all products in 2025 and registered a drop in operating margins from 20% in 2023 to 15% in 2025[2]. European car manufacturers also had to adjust. Porsche reported a billion euro 3Q25 loss and a 99% drop in operating profit through 2025, leading to its removal from the DAX and the CEO’s ouster.[3]

The short answer to who pays: too early to tell. Many consumers balk at price increases and reduce consumption, while many foreign exporters seem to be waiting and seeing for the Supreme Court to rule against the administration’s IEEPA claims or the midterm elections before deciding permanent price changes. But exporters are experienced navigators of multiple tariff layers, both internal and external. Many economists have noted the “value-added tax (VAT) system, a tax on final consumption, which the US administration views as similar to a tariff.”[4]

[1] https://www.spglobal.com/market-intelligence/en/solutions/pr... [2] https://www.ft.com/content/9553baf3-7cfc-40c2-b6bd-1871844af... [3] https://observer.com/2025/10/porsche-profit-drop-luxury-econ... [4] https://think.ing.com/downloads/pdf/article/reciprocal-tarif...

EU is, obviously, one of the worst offenders here. Tariffs are a great evil...there are still massive barriers to trade within the EU. Let me repeat: WITHIN the EU, a bloc of countries that share a supra-national political system. Like Wymoing putting up a barrier to trade with Iowa (which, btw, do exist in the US too...but are significantly lower than in the EU where there isn't harmonization in even basic products like financial services due to the problems with competition in so many European countries).

The discussions on trade are insane.

I'm not alone in this confusion. During oral argument, several Supreme Court justices asked repeatedly about the distinctions between quotas, tariffs, revenue-raising taxes, non-revenue taxes, etc. in IEEPA's statutory language and precedents like FEA v. Algonquin SNG, Inc., 426 U.S. 548 (1976).

The most glaring, disqualifying omission is the disregard for FX adjustments. We have not seen the CNY/USD crash yet , but that is because of MASSIVE currency intervention from China to the tune of $200B+ per month: https://x.com/Brad_Setser/status/2012021712012145030

The other wonky thing is they call $200 billion in tariff revenue "a tax" and they also call it a "deadweight loss." Are the authors not the Keynesians I thought they were? At any rate, tariff revenue is not a new tax, but merely a shift in the tax base - since it is $200B that the government does not need to collect elsewhere.

Lastly the collapse of trade volumes from Brazil and India is not a bug it's a feature. Yes supply chains are sticky. The POINT of tariffs is to force supply chain decoupling and reshoring. To "unstuck" the supply chain. Does disruption come with temporary supply shocks? Of course.

The European export growth model is not working for Europe. They are not far behind the US in doing what we are attempting. Canada cozying up to China is not what they wanted for themselves, lol. Etc.

Calling it a "deadweight loss" also doesn't seem justified by the evidence. It is extremely unclear whether there is a total economic loss because tariffs, if maintained, will have long-term economic consequences. You can point to countries where that went very badly (South American import substitution in the 50/60s, leading to economic free fall by the 80s) and ones where it went very well. It has always seemed quite unclear to me.

The stuff with Europe is also very odd because what do they think sanctions on Russia are? Not just a tariff, a blockade with no revenue raise. But the people who tell you that tariffs are a tax will tell you that sanctions have no issues.

I don't think that tariffs are good either btw. It just seems to a policy choice that is made in a context that can be either good or bad. Europe has massive barriers to trade internally (despite being in a political and economic union) that has been very expensive and harmful because it reduces competition/competitiveness. At least some of the protectionist measures of Trump and Biden are likely to work because the US is fundamentally quite competitive.

https://www.columbia.edu/~dew35/Papers/Optimal_Tariffs_Marke...

Btw, you can find papers where tariffs are paid by consumer, where they aren't, where there is no effect. The thing that is being measured is completely different to the actual tariffs. The impact, like everything in economics, depends on the context in which the tool is used. That context is typically hard to model, so we end up with a lot of shitty papers claiming that it is about the tariff when it is about the context/implementation/etc.

Second, reducing consumer prices was not the goal of the tariffs. The primary goals were to encourage companies to move manufacturing to the US and to be used as leverage in negotiating other matters with foreign leaders.

Trump and his entire administration admitted there would be short term pain, possibly a recession, but that it would be "worth it" to restructure the economy.

So the question is: how long does the pain last? And is the economy stronger when it's over (do we get over it)? It's been 9 months so far.

From my perspective the policy goals are very unclear since it seems like they're actively wielding tariffs both as a means to reorganize the economy and as a weapon to bully other countries. Mainly bullying. The intended effectiveness on our economy seems difficult to judge.

But social media changes the equation entirely. It gives us the speed of direct democracy without any of the structure or responsibility. It pushes people to judge candidates issue-by-issue, often on topics they don’t understand well, while eroding the deliberative layers a republic is supposed to have.

The problem isn’t people or education — America didn’t get this far because Americans are any smarter or dumber than anyone else. It’s the design of the systems. The founding fathers built a system that has so far lasted almost 250 years.

You cannot expect people to change — safety protocols, procedures, govenments — it’s about the systems.

Let's pray we're able to figure it out before more blood is shed.

In fact you will find that in many cases the population will even vote for unpopular measures if they are discussed and understood well ahead of the decision.

But in the end that requires a decent education of the masses, a well functioning and uncaptured media landscape and a certain amount of democratic practise, all of which are missing in big parts of the US.

Democracy is something everybody actively needs to work on, otherwise it withers. If you want to have a nice village it works best if everybody perceives themselves as an agent of creating a nice village. If you want a shit village, you best give everybody the impression it is somebody elses task.

Many people were thinking Joe Biden was looking old... Until 2 months before the election when a faceless political elite replaced him with a candidate who had repeatedly lied about Joe Biden looking old. The American public might be stupid, but they don't like being treated as though they are stupid - which is exactly what the DNC did.

See also Brexit.

Why would you (or anyone) be surprised that economically sound policies are not popular? They are not popular in the US. They are not popular in Europe. They’re not even popular on HN.

For reasons I don’t understand, almost everyone hates economics.

You don't need to be an economist to realize who is getting fucked over. I am not from the US, but a vote for Trump for many was just a vote to burn it all down, especially because the other candidate was perceived to standing for perpetuating the status-quo.

I am not saying I like Trump. In 2016 when he was running for the first time I stood behind the back then very unpopular opinion that he is a fascist and I would have loved to have been wrong about it.

Economists claim to be like physicists, neutral and just observing, but somehow the economically benefitial measures always benefit the few at the cost of the many. Now that has nothing to do with economics per se. Marx was an economist after all. It has to do with how economics are used by the political class.

David Ruelle put it best in 1991 when he summed up economics as "We don't currently have the tools to properly study this subject". 35 years later we only have slightly better tools.

Macroeconomists don’t know much at all. We can’t even create artificial economies - the agent-based simulations have dozens of parameters and our tools are bad at studying those imperfect fake economies.

I’ve looked a bit into econophysics. They seem more on the path to getting somewhere. But it’s still a long road.

I don't think it's a simple answer. A couple things that likely contributed (I'm not an expert, just my opinion): there is an EXTRAORDINARY amount of propaganda being spread, whether people realize it or not, on and off the internet that gets consumed nearly 24/7. This happens on both sides of course, but think about some of the events leading up to the election. Musk bought twitter and quite literally turned it into a multi-billion dollar propaganda machine.

The general "drain the swamp attitude" that the administration parroted during the election (and first term) represented a change from how "traditional" politicians/government do things. People value that even if they don't understand/think about how it would affect them personally. This ultimately lead to demonizing the federal work force and mass random firings (in many cases having nothing to do with merit).

Trump also represented a push towards traditional values and national identity, which for some people was more important than whatever economic plan Trump had to improve things in the country. Other than tariffs, did he even have a plan? I don't know. But many people didn't/don't seem to care.

See Brexit. As Michael Gove said, the people have had enough of experts; for a certain sort of person, not understanding things is a badge of pride, and they're more liable to trust people like Trump, who transparently do _not_ understand things, than _experts_.

https://www.census.gov/foreign-trade/balance/c0015.html

2025 deficit is not much smaller 2024 (looks within the normal year to year variance) and 2025’s deficit is still larger than 2023 and 2021.

Definitely not collapsing.

Similar to an extremely modest increase in local consumption taxes or income tax.