Paul Krugman writes that, if there is an axiom that applies in Trumpworld, it's this: Take whatever Trump says and expect the opposite to happen. Three months ago, Donald signed onto a new NAFTA. Yesterday, he reimposed tariffs on Canadian aluminum. By now, such behaviour should surprise no one. But the consequences of that behaviour are catastrophic:
On Friday, we’ll get an official employment report for July. But a variety of private indicators, like the monthly report from the data-processing firm ADP, already suggest that the rapid employment gains of May and June were a dead-cat bounce and that job growth has at best slowed to a crawl.
ADP’s number was at least positive — some other indicators suggest that employment is actually falling. But even if the small reported job gains were right, at this rate we won’t be back to precoronavirus employment until … 2027.
Trump takes joy in inflicting pain; and this pain is going to last a long time. But, what is worse, his Republican enablers are going to make things truly tragic:
I’m not sure how many people realize just how much deeper the coronavirus recession of 2020 could have been. Obviously, it was terrible: Employment plunged, and real G.D.P. fell by around 10 percent. Almost all of that, however, reflected the direct effects of the pandemic, which forced much of the economy into lockdown.
What didn’t happen was a major second round of job losses driven by plunging consumer demand. Millions of workers lost their regular incomes; without federal aid, they would have been forced to slash spending, causing millions more to lose their jobs. Luckily Congress stepped up to the plate with special aid to the unemployed, which sustained consumer spending and kept the nonquarantined parts of the economy afloat.
Now that aid has expired. Democrats offered a plan months ago to maintain benefits, but Republicans can’t even agree among themselves on a counteroffer. Even if an agreement is hammered out — and there’s no sign that this is imminent — it will be weeks before the money is flowing again.
The suffering among cut-off families will be immense, but there will also be broad damage to the economy as a whole. How big will this damage be? I’ve been doing the math, and it’s terrifying.
Unlike affluent Americans, the mostly low-wage workers whose benefits have just been terminated can’t blunt the impact by drawing on savings or borrowing against assets. So their spending will fall by a lot. Evidence on the initial effects of emergency aid suggests that the end of benefits will push overall consumer spending — the main driver of the economy — down by more than 4 percent.
Furthermore, evidence from austerity policies a decade ago suggests a substantial “multiplier” effect, as spending cuts lead to falling incomes, leading to further spending cuts.
Put it all together and the expiration of emergency aid could produce a 4 percent to 5 percent fall in G.D.P. But wait, there’s more. States and cities are in dire straits and are already planning harsh spending cuts; but Republicans refuse to provide aid, with Trump insisting, falsely, that local fiscal crises have nothing to do with Covid-19.
The conclusion is inescapable. Donald is a dork. After all, the man pronounces "Yosemite," YO-SEM-IIIT. And, clearly, dorkiness is a virus. Certainly, the Republicans have no herd immunity.
Image: The HyperTexts
6 comments:
Trump is mad. Any doubt was erased yesterday in his latest attack on Biden.
Biden, Trump said, would “Take away your guns, destroy your second amendment. No religion, no anything, hurt the Bible, hurt God. He’s against God, he’s against guns, he’s against energy, our kind of energy.”
Biden is out to hurt God. A lifelong devout Roman Catholic, Biden is "against God." Said the man who can't identify a single favourite passage from the Bible he claims to embrace.
Many have commented on Trump's apparent mental decline over the course of this year but Trump gave it the "full Monty" yesterday.
It's painfully obvious that Trump has gone off the deep end, Mound. And so, apparently, have a lot of Americans.
I just ran into a reference to an interesting book Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire: A 500-Year History
I have been trying to grasp why the US is so nutty and this book may give a hint.
From the Publisher's blurb at Amazon
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • “The single most important explanation, and the fullest explanation, of how Donald Trump became president of the United States . . . nothing less than the most important book that I have read this year.”—Lawrence O’Donnell How did we get here? In this sweeping, eloquent history of America, Kurt Andersen shows that what’s happening in our country today—this post-factual, “fake news” moment we’re all living through—is not something new, but rather the ultimate expression of our national character. America was founded by wishful dreamers, magical thinkers, and true believers, by hucksters and their suckers. Fantasy is deeply embedded in our DNA. Over the course of five centuries—from the Salem witch trials to Scientology to the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, from P. T. Barnum to Hollywood and the anything-goes, wild-and-crazy sixties, from conspiracy theories to our fetish for guns and obsession with extraterrestrials—our love of the fantastic has made America exceptional in a way that we've never fully acknowledged. From the start, our ultra-individualism was attached to epic dreams and epic fantasies—every citizen was free to believe absolutely anything, or to pretend to be absolutely anybody. With the gleeful erudition and tell-it-like-it-is ferocity of a Christopher Hitchens, Andersen explores whether the great American experiment in liberty has gone off the rails. Fantasyland could not appear at a more perfect moment. If you want to understand Donald Trump and the culture of twenty-first-century America, if you want to know how the lines between reality and illusion have become dangerously blurred, you must read this book.NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE“This is a blockbuster of a book. Take a deep breath and dive in.”—Tom Brokaw “[An] absorbing, must-read polemic . . . a provocative new study of America’s cultural history.”—Newsday “Compelling and totally unnerving.”—The Village Voice“A frighteningly convincing and sometimes uproarious picture of a country in steep, perhaps terminal decline that would have the founding fathers weeping into their beards.”—The Guardian “This is an important book—the indispensable book—for understanding America in the age of Trump.”—Walter Isaacson, #1 New York Times bestselling author of Leonardo da Vinci
I haven't read the book. But I am familiar with Anderson -- who really does understand his country, jrk. Trump could only become president of a country that is more attached to fantasy than reality.
For countries like ours and the USA who superficially share a lot of the same culture we are much, much more different than I ever realized and my mother was American.
It took a combination of Trump and Covid-19 to really drive the differences home.
My family comes from Canada, jrk. But several of my cousins are American citizens. Over the years, the gulf between us has become wider and wider.
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