Adriacus Peratuun said:
ATL Bear said:
Adriacus Peratuun said:
ATL Bear said:
Adriacus Peratuun said:
ATL Bear said:
Adriacus Peratuun said:
ATL Bear said:
Adriacus Peratuun said:
ATL Bear said:
I thought your "one-trick pony" comment was a joke at first until I realized just
Your attempt to backhandedly insult by aligning me to Obama or Bush ignores the reality of my actual position being a Milton Friedman/Rand Paul economic conservative/libertarian. Something obviously at odds with this neo-socialist national populism we're pivoting toward. You're no longer debating policy, you're issuing a tribal ultimatum. Populism won, so every policy idea that doesn't involve a chainsaw must be ignored. That's not governance. That's destruction without direction.
Populism isn't a strategy. It's a mood. And moods don't solve structural problems. They win headlines, sure. They flip some elections. But winning an election doesn't automatically make your ideas workable, it just gives you the burden of proving they are. And history (recent and distant) hasn't reflected well on these approaches. So far, the chainsaw approach you're celebrating has delivered higher inflation, fractured alliances, erratic trade policy, and economic volatility with no measurable plan to translate grievance into durable prosperity.
If "sloppy, ugly change" is the new bar for economic policy, then congratulations, we've lowered the standard to vibes and slogans.
You think you're cutting out dead weight. What you're actually doing is gutting systems that underpin our currency dominance, trade leverage, capital markets, and alliance network. All because you want to spite a theory you never took the time to understand. I really don't think you understand what this "reshaping" means at a practical level for America.
And no, this isn't "Orange Man Bad." It's "Show Me the Policy." If you can't articulate how tariffs, deglobalization, and punitive economic tactics actually scale, reduce inequality, or strengthen our economy without jacking up costs on the very people you say you represent, then all you've got is an aesthetic of rebellion. That's not revolution, it's just a rebrand of failure.
I'm not defending the status quo. I'm giving specific solutions and arguing for competence over chaos and outcomes over applause lines. You don't like how things have been run? Fair. So show me what works better, and make sure it survives contact with math, markets, and the modern world.
You are all over the place.
Identifying your politics with the Son of Dr. No (Ron Paul) [the only Republican in Congress to vote against Reagan's budget]. Paul also demanded withdrawal from the UN & NATO but you espouse the value of multilateral organizations (a position neither Paul would agree on but which Obama & both Bush Ps would support).
You ask for the policy endgame but already adamantly oppose it. How can you oppose it when you claim to not know it?
Is default disagreement (BTW a very Ron Paul approach) the norm?
And you continue to jump to the same weird conclusion…..that tariffs are the goal instead of the tool.
The goal is Fair Trade. Fair Free Trade is best. But Fair is more important than Free.
Personally, I don't care if Trump drags Trudeau into a back room and bludgeons him with a bowling pin if it results in Fair Trade. Tariffs are the 2x4 that Trump is using to get the donkey's attention. It clearly is working.
The entire world is discussing trade parameters. If the tariffs are equally effective in forcing new trade arrangements more favorable to the USA [i think it is likely], how can you argue with the methodology?
You still haven't agreed on how the incorrect party [end of Summer] apologizes.
You're struggling to comprehend. I'm not saying tariffs are the goal, I'm saying the goals aren't achievable through tariffs. These tariffs aren't intended to create freer trade, or level the playing field (fair trade), they're intended to force companies to change where they operate by being excessively punitive. If the result is lower tariffs in host countries, great, but it still requires us to be competitive against their domestic enterprises or other trade avenues to offset the trade imbalance. But again, not even that is the intention.
And if my responses seem all over it's because your arguments are all over the place with false dichotomies, historical revisionism, political framing, an occasional dash of economics, and some pot shots (it's fine, I'm a big boy).
Feel free to set some guidelines as to what timelines and metrics we are benchmarking against. As far as apologies, I'll happily send $1000 to whatever you'd like as mine. If you have to apologize I'll just take the words as sufficient, especially if there's a recession. I'd prefer everyone keep their bucks.
And you are struggling to understand. Your "minor adjustments to business practices and procedures to build an economy that works for everyone" [done with scalpel level precision] is whistling past the graveyard. A half century rut won't be escaped absent a massive adjustment. The tipping point has been reached in the populace to demand that massive change. Denying that fact is like try to pull a 747 out of a 30,000 foot nosedive at 500 feet above ground level. We passed the point of comfortable adjustments. We are at the point of uncomfortable fundamental change. New Economy and Old Economy are not easy bedfellows. One need only look to the EU policy wrangling that lead to Brexit. But it isn't some unachievable goal. See Japan and Taiwan. We face a far tougher task but simply throwing our hands in the air and saying nothing can change if it causes discomfort for the folks currently most comfortable is wrongheaded. The out of work coal miner and factory worker don't care if you have to take a 4 year lease on your new Range Rover instead of a 3 year lease. They don't care if you only take 6 vacations in 2025. They don't want platitudes or some pittance. They want their lives back. And they have many disaffected friends who feel similarly for one reason or another.
You keep looping to business metrics, benchmarks, and similar. You can't [no one can] spreadsheet and policy & procedure the way to success. You are assuming a numbers solution. I am arguing that the upcoming change is more fundamental. It is societal alignment level. The disaffected massively outnumber the country club crowd. The promise of a new modernized economy that saves the day has been sold to those people repeatedly. They no longer buy the rhetoric. And it is rhetoric. Even Japan and Taiwan have substantial old economy links.
You are the Bahktiar government in January 1979. The Social Democrats & Mensheviks in February 1917.
You are talking policy when the situation requires dire action.
You ignore the obvious.
Do note that you think a donation equals an apology. It doesn't.
How about the person who is wrong on 8/31/2025 admits their error on a thread on this board?
If we are mired in depression or still fighting a tariff war on that date I will gladly admit error.
If this round of adjustments is substantially in the rearview mirror and the market blip is rolled past will you do the same?
And then he went full Super Fly TNT meltdown.
Are you actually serious with this reply? You're talking like we're in the middle of some 1930s breadline collapse. Like the U.S. economy has been in freefall and people have been scraping for survival for 30 years. Have you actually spent time with people living through real, systemic poverty? Or visited countries where upward mobility is a fantasy, where capital access is non-existent, and where economic opportunity is limited to political connections or inheritance?
Let's get grounded for a second.
You talk about people "getting their lives back." From what and from when exactly? A factory job in 1983? The exact moment when everything was perfect and frozen in time? There is no golden age and whatever moment you're trying to return to came with fewer choices, fewer rights, and far less mobility than what exists now.
Japan and Taiwan? I'm glad you brought them up.because both modernized with strategic industrial policy, smart public/private coordination, and global trade engagement, not tariffs and tribalism. They invested in the future, they didn't declare war on the present.
Is the current system perfect? Of course not. But even with those flaws, there is no country on Earth with a greater capacity for someone to change their circumstances, to learn, invest, move, reinvent, or recover than the United States. That's not nationalism. That's just economic reality.
But here's what really gets me. You seem to think that a certain kind of job, in a certain kind of town, at a certain wage, is not just desirable, but somehow owed. And that if the market doesn't provide it, then everyone else needs to be taxed, tariffed, and punished until we warp the entire economy around that fantasy. What kind of populism is that exactly? Because it's not pro worker or pro U.S.
There's a difference between advocating for better opportunity, and demanding that we break the system because it didn't preserve the exact world someone expected. That's not justice. That's resentment. It's ironic, but your own revolutionary vision sounds an awful lot like a collectivist uprising. Tear down the elites, punish the system, rally the disaffected with promises of rebirth through disruption. Are you sure you're not just rediscovering Marxism with better branding?
As far as the bet, let's agree that in 6 months we'll revisit the data. If we see higher inflation, a persistent trade deficit, flat manufacturing job growth, and retaliatory measures all while capital continues to hesitate we can agree that's not realignment. That's economic self-harm. I'll own it if the opposite happens. And of course the loser posts their apology. Did you actually think that needed to be clarified??
The hard part is Trump is so erratic he's just as likely to see the tanking and pull back the tariffs, change course and I guess we're left with a draw? One thing's for certain, he'll claim victory regardless.
You can bathe in your righteous indignation as much as you like.
Clearly you have never been in a country undergoing upheaval [economic or otherwise].
In the last 50 years alone: Iran, Nicaragua, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Venezuela, El Salvador, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Chile, etc. Go back a little further and you get Singapore in 1965.
Ultimately any system that doesn't work for the masses will fail.
Reworking a system is often good……see Singapore, see El Salvador.
The people will gladly tell you that they do have a right to eat, a right to provide for their families, a right to a home and shelter, a right to safety, a right not to have their jobs shipped overseas. Anyone supporting a system that is failing a huge chunk of the populace on those basic needs is basically in self-denial.
You are making similar arguments to the ones that the Peronistas made last year in Argentina………fundamental change will destroy everything. The risk is too high. The Peronistas were wrong, so are you.
The USA has to rebalance trade. High risk is justified. But you are clearly overstating the risk.
Fortunately, the results will play out very publicly and who is right/wrong will be readily apparent.
No further rehashing of the same arguments needed. I will check back on 8/31. Enjoy your week.
Appreciate the passion, but if the best we're left with is "Singapore and El Salvador reworked things, so we should too," then we're not in the same conversation. The difference between constructive reform and ideological demolition matters, and you've been advocating the latter.
You've made a lot of references to upheaval as if that gives credibility to trading stability for chaos. You talk about it like it's a rallying cry. What you don't know is that I've actually seen what true systemic collapse looks like up close, and in places where life isn't about trade balances or cultural discontent, but survival. Where institutions collapsed, security vanished, and futures and lives were lost. And I can tell you we're not there. Not even remotely close.
That doesn't mean we don't have real problems. But the idea that America is some kind of economic hellscape in need of revolutionary correction is an insult to perspective, and to the people around the world who'd give anything to have even our baseline challenges.
We don't need to romanticize collapse. We need to appreciate what works, fix what doesn't, and stop pretending that frustration is the same thing as failure.
But you're right about one thing. Reality has a scoreboard. We'll see what the numbers say on 8/31.
