Standing in the Rose Garden and holding a red “Make America Great Again” hat, President Donald Trump announced that he had very good news for the country.
The inequality between the top 1% of wealth in this country and the bottom 50% is staggering and it’s the greatest failure IMO of this country and I think was one of main reasons DT won the election in 2016 and 2024. Unfortunately his populist rhetoric is just an illusion. The massive tax cuts for the ultra wealthy and big corporations will be his big “Ta Da!” moment and his people will cheer and wave the flag and say “see what a great leader he is?” In the end he will get richer along with Wall Street and CEOs but there will be no celebrating in the Main Streets because small businesses will be forced to close due to inflation and tariffs, farmers will go under if they don’t get a hand out from the government, and manufacturing jobs will be fewer than expected because even if they do come back to the states the automation of the machines and AI will make human labor obsolete. DT has no intention of running a country or helping make people’s lives better. He’s about performative political drama, retribution and making money for himself, his family and closest friends. That’s all he cares about and he’s very good at it.
The biggest mistake Trump voters made was believing that he would help them economically. Regardless of what he said while campaigning, he’s always only been interested in grifting for himself and his family and his wealthy supporters (and then only until they’re no longer useful to him). He has no idea how tariffs work or that the infrastructure to provide these so-called secure factory jobs has long since disappeared. And American businesses won’t magically return to US manufacturing bc it costs them “too much.” They prefer the cheap overseas labor that allows them to pad their own salaries and pay their share holders more. Returning to the golden days of American manufacturing would require a thoughtful, multi-faceted Marshall plan of our own: this isn’t it. Once again, many working people have allowed themselves to be hoodwinked. A simply google search of Trump’s record on creating jobs (he never has) and dealing with other businesses (he stiffs them and runs them into the ground) would have cleared this up. But no, 71-odd million people voted for a fantasy instead, and now we all suffer for it.
Imagine a presidential candidate running on a platform of doing lots of unconstitutional and illegal things, tanking the economy, and destroying government services. Then he wins and actually does all the unconstitutional and illegal things, tanks the economy, and destroys government services. And then imagine his supporters proudly celebrating all this by declaring "I like that he's doing everything he said he would do!" Insanity. We are truly living in the dumbest timeline.
They believed the economy was tanking under President Biden even though we had managed to keep inflation from ballooning out of control and had actually averted a recession. Now they're echoing the sentiment that "It's just going to take a little pain to get us back on the right track." It's not based on facts, it's based on feelings (and needing, desperately, for those feelings to be true.)
I will say I really wish that the Democrats could have moved the messaging to I know you are feeling the pains of inflation instead of inflation is under control. I know that they were just stating facts, but to a lot of Americans it felt as if their pain was not being heard.
When Trump is running on "Every negative feeling you have about the state of the world [and that has been stoked by right-wing media] is right, you are right, but I will fix it for you" the counterpoint to that is not to say "Things are doing okay, actually. Your feelings are wrong." People are not going to be interested in your solutions if they don't think you're actually listening to their problems.
(If you ever watched Parks & Rec, that episode with the overly-positive Chris comforting a very pregnant Ann comes to mind: stop trying to change her feelings, and just acknowledge that some things suck for her right now.)
Brilliant! Could not have said this any better. The increased revenue from tariffs will be used to justify lower taxes for Trump and his fellow billionaires.
I'm not convinced that there will be increased revenue. Small businesses that rely on imports will be forced to close due to rising costs, thus reducing demand, and many countries will simply stop exporting to the US and will find other trading partners. Tariffs disincentivize trade, so I think it's more likely that imports will crater and there will be nothing to tariff. We'll see.
Also worth pointing out that the fear generated around Social Security "running out" of money usually blames the easy (but inaccurate) target of too many Baby Boomers retiring at once, when the much larger issue is wage stagnation and widening income inequality that the funding models did not account for and have yet to correct.
Yes, why is the social security wage base limit capped at $176,100 (2025)? I don't understand why this is. The more one makes, the less they pay into SS? Seems like an easy fix to eliminate the limit or compromise and raise it substantially.
While I do understand the reasoning that the wealthier you are the less likely you are to depend on SS income after retirement, that only works if wages continue to grow proportionally for all workers, which they categorically have not. So now we're in a situation where the input into the SS trust fund is just being artificially depressed and the wealthiest folks are beating the drum that it's all a scam or "Ponzi scheme."
Very true that they won't need to rely on it, but if it's truly a safety net, I think that raising the limit at the very least would be beneficial. I think that would make more sense than raising the age to access SS or reducing benefits. The reality is though, the longer they kick this can down the road, if we are going to preserve SS, we may have to do all three of those things.
Thank you so much for naming all of this. It’s also important to say that the increasing costs of everything that haven’t kept up with average wages have made a very small number of people VERY wealthy. The fact that the mega rich have managed to convince a huge number of Americans that their struggles are because of immigrants, dei, and transgender athletes boggles the mind. The prioritization of continually increasing profits has lead to a push by publicly traded companies to always decrease costs (including labor) and increase revenue. Those increased profits line the pockets of a VERY few while keeping a boot on the neck of the people doing the work to generate those profits. It is time for ALL Americans to understand the class war that is being waged against them. It’s time to get clear about WHO is keeping them down and figure out how we can unite and use our power to resist and build a better future. DT, MAGA, and project 2025 are not it.
I found this podcast a few weeks ago (before the tariff nonsense) and found Kathryn Edwards explanations of the US economy and how to actually do things to support working families very easy to understand and refreshing. She discussed what a massive problem wage stagnation is in the US. Her clip standing up to a tax-cut-friendly congressmen is amazing, paraphrasing- ‘I’d love for us to try investing in children for 20 years and see what returns we can get. The tax cuts have had 20 years and they have not been shown to live up to their promises.’ https://moneywithkatie.com/economic-future
1. All I can hear is the Money Money song from Cabaret.
2. I know why you titled this piece what you did (it’s eye-catching and makes sense for most people!) but it personally made me flinch - I have the honor of being the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. My grandmother, who survived 4 years in a camp, is currently in the final days of her life. She’s obviously been on my mind a lot lately!
Bless her for her strength and courage. Her survival is a triumph for the human race! Blessings to you and your family for all she has given all of you. Your very existence is testament to her grit and perseverance!
I think people are being a little bit unfair to the President. Let’s not forget, before the election he promised we are all about to get insanely rich “very quickly” and all of these expenses people whine about like “child care” and “health care” and “who the hell cares” are all irrelevant now that we are taking in more tariff money. Ignore all the haters who point out contradictions in the logic. Just listen to this very nuanced explanation on how it’s all going to work:
“Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down. You know, I was somebody — we had, Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka, was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about — that, because look, child care is child care, couldn’t — you know, there’s something — you have to have it in this country. You have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers, compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to. But they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us. But they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care. We’re going to have — I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country. Because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care. But those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just — that I just told you about. We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars. And as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers will be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people. And then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people. But we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about make America great again. We have to do it because right now, we’re a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.”
Really? Because I used to think that if I could invite Trump to come into my classroom, and speak to my students--by the time he would leave, they would all feel pretty intelligent.
Ok, here's one of the big beefs I have with the President (from a stylistic point of view): he's not a great speaker. If I'm being honest, I could see myself getting mesmerized by an evil person who is extremely well spoken and charming and charismatic. The President has a certain sort of charisma (nothing can touch him, no matter what he does or says), but it is not the charisma that charms me. He's not even "plain spoken." He backtracks and covers his meanings with deniable plausibility. I could respect a curmudgeon or even someone who is painfully honest. This, I cannot respect.
Right? I cannot follow hardly anything he says. He is not coherent, nor logical, and it baffles me how his followers are understanding him, because most things make no sense to me. Most of his rhetoric sounds like insults and rambling to me.
This! I guess he's *technically* magnetic because there's a whole subset of people who love to listen to him? But I truly, truly cannot figure it out. I get why people said Kamala Harris spoke in word salad - she frequently uses flowery language and turns of phrase that aren't terribly common. But for those SAME people to say Trump speaks to the average man??? My brain shorts out when I try to thread the needle on that one.
I think it has a lot to do with cadence and tone. I don't want to call it soothing because I hear his voice and instantly my nerves are shredded, but there's something almost hypnotic about that sing-song tone. It lulls you, if you are of a mind to be lulled. It feels like the sort of voice people use to pacify children.
Are these the words trump voters were talking about when they said, “he’s doing everything he said he would do - I love it”? These words feel like solid ground to build a country and an economic policy on? Goodness gracious.
Timothy, I bow to your literary genius: “child care, health care and who the hell cares…” I’ve never seen a more succinct yet accurate synopsis of Trumpism. Bravo!
A prosperous America is one who invests in their people — the common taxpayers, not the top 1% who don’t need it. We are failing the people by investing in an illusion of prosperity and breaking down the very means by which they can build success. So much hits the average person’s bottom line as a consumer, tax payer, and as an employee. The grocery bill and itemized pay stub are proof alone. Yet, corporations are cutting back benefits, reducing their workforce, stagnating wages, to keep their investors happy and wealthier. The government doing similar cutbacks, while families are cutting back merely on a decision of what to go without to make ends meet. Now, not even to count with the social services and nonprofits they used to rely on to fill a need because that option is drying up quickly with lack of funding. Make America Great Again is an illusion.
I watched a video yesterday of the Secretary of Commerce describing the goal of bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US. (On Moshe's IG page.) He literally says the goal is to have high school level graduates working in factories, screwing in millions of tiny screws into iphones. It makes sense why the administration is removing funding from universities and putting pressure on them to remove equity opportunities for POC and women. They need more uneducated citizens to work lower paying jobs, screwing in tiny screws in factories. They're laying the foundation for a garish house covered in fake gold and none of us will want to live there.
What’s interesting is that we are investing in a dying industry. Manufacturing and trades is an area that has struggled to staff because it shows folks don’t want those jobs. In comes the need for programs under immigration to fill hard-to-fill roles. Yet, we are removing or challenging that option. We can and should promote hiring for skills to help remove barriers but education/training has to be part of the modern industry — much of which relies on knowledge work. Investment in a variety of pathways such as apprenticeship that combine education and training is a great option, but so little companies use that model for white collar jobs.
A tiny discrepancy: After listening to the whole thing a couple of times (because he was a bit rambly himself), what he was actually saying was that "automations" (robotics, I presume) will screw in the tiny screws on iPhones (as is already the case), and then there will be "millions and millions" of jobs created to repair those automations. Which isn't really much better because how often does he think those robotics break down to need "millions and millions" of workers to fix them?! (And then he started rambling about HVAC and refrigeration, which have nothing to do with robotics that screw smart phones together, so I completely lost the thread at that point.)
Your point is still dead-on. Just don't want you to end up in a discussion with someone who tries to tell you you're wrong because that's not *exactly* what he said. Because you are still exactly 💯 right!
Also, do iPhones even have screws? Because my Android does not. Literally not a sinfle visible screw! At least not on the outside. There probably are a few tiny ones on the circuit board inside. But not enough to create "millions and millions" of jobs!
You are correct. My husband is in leadership at an aircraft manufacturing facility and his company cannot find people to fill their open roles. Even roles requiring little to no experience. They are still selling planes to billionaires, and the US military, but cannot find the talent to build them so they can keep up with the demand.
This. Is this what we want for our kids? Manufacturing jobs screwing in bolts that will likely be automated at some point? Other countries are investing in education making sure that the next generations will have cutting edge skills and know how, and yet our politicians want line workers. They want to keep people poor and uneducated.
It is very interesting to discuss this with my Gran and Mom. I'm a Xennial, I guess? Born on the cusp of Gen X and Millennials. I've always connected more with the Gen X experience. We do have access to more things (technically) and have better healthcare (if we can access and afford it). But when my Gran and Mom discuss their early marriages it is an entirely different world. Better in so many regards and not as great in so many regards. I would have made the world's worst 1950s housewife. I am much better at being the one who leaves for work and comes home to dinner prepared!
my family always used to sit and talk to my grandma (born in 1918) and talk to her about the way things were - the depression, WWII - it was all so interesting to listen and learn about. More family should do the same and maybe we wouldn't' be in this mess :(
Yes! My grandma is still living. She was born in 1926 and will be 99 this year. She is still living independently, and I talk to her all the time about her life and am trying to document stories. She is #4 of 8 kids. Her older brother died in WWII and received the Purple Heart and Silver Star. They moved a lot as their family lost jobs, lost homes (fire) and lost their income (losing their whole herd of sheep in a late spring storm), so they were always moving on to start over. She worked many jobs before and after getting married. She worked in a defense plant during the war that made bullets. She worked in meat processing & packing plants. She worked at a garment manufacturer sewing. All this, along with being a farm wife, taking care of chickens and pigs, raising a garden, raising three children and teaching Sunday School. That's what she was doing in the 1950s!
Your Grandma sounds so fun! She's about 10 years older than my Gran, about my Grandaddy's age. I wish we had talked to him more. I'm glad we still get to hear her stories. About both their families and growing up. It is so different than what we experienced.
Yes, she's amazing. Your Gran sounds that way too.
We have this family Facebook group for her side of the family and my grandma is so cute! People will post old photos in this group and my grandma responds to every single one telling where it was taken and what was going on, or she'll say, I took that photo in our yard for yadda, yadda, yadda reason. She remembers everything! There are only two still living in her family, herself and her youngest sister, who is 11 years younger than her.
It is very interesting to listen to! She was a kid during WWII and my Grandfather was 10 years older, so he fought in WWII (basically a kid himself honestly). Hearing their experiences is always so interesting. She's honest about a lot. Rations were not fun, drinking powdered milk wasn't fun, living with no indoor plumbing, using an outhouse and not having air conditioning were no fun, lol! She misses some of it. But she also discusses how she was so lucky in her marriage. She knew women who were beaten (of course not where it could be seen), had to prove every penny spent at the store, had no autonomy at all. She always says if she was married to anyone but my Grandfather she would have been in trouble.
Other folks (including Bill Ackman) have also pointed out that the Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, works for Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment fund that focuses on "long bonds." It's the exact portfolio that one would want to ride out a tanking market, and perhaps the exact reason why wealthy folks like him are not as concerned about what's happening.
Similar to what happened in Russia (the system our president openly admires). Their government fell apart and systems crashed so the pieces could be purchased on the cheap, paving the way for oligarchy, corruption, and a forever leader. Spoiler alert: the ones who "got rich" were already the richest to begin with. That's the whole plan, the rich get richer AND acquire government services in the process.
Ugh what I’d give for these house prices. I always laugh in the Boy Meets World episode where Cory and Topanga are looking for a house and Topanga’s like “Cory, we can’t afford this house! It’s $80,000!!!” And I’m like omg I wish *cries
So what happens in 4 years when America is not only NOT great again (whatever that is even supposed to mean) but worse off? Will Trump supporters just continue to blame everything on Biden and Obama and the Dems who aren’t in power? Sadly, many of them will never admit that their lord and savior Donald Trump did anything wrong.
This morning, it struck me that this failing of the economy so early in Trump's presidency is perhaps by design so that he can take advantage of people's short-term memories and just insist he was handed a bad economy. In a few months' time, his supporters will just say none of this was Trump's doing.
Til my last breath, I will shout that 99% of ALL our problems have to do with corporations. They have their sticky, greedy fingers in all aspects of controlling our lives. They can spend as much money as they want lobbying for their benefit. They have all the time in the world to schmooze our politicians.
It is absolutely ridiculous that anyone would believe American manufacturing would benefit us. They left us for cheaper countries! There is absolutely zero incentive for them to come back to America and lose money paying us more.
"We can't pay you more. There's not enough money." Well, with costs so high and pay so cheap, where is it all going? Where is the money?? Just keep looking up. It's at the top and they're going to keep accumulating until it crushes us. They don't care.
And to tack on to that...will we Americans actually pay the higher prices? Do we really want to pay $75 for a t-shirt? I also fail to see how we as a nation will be able to manufacture or produce all the goods that we consume with labor shortages, and the fact that the raw materials will be tariffed anyway. I completely understand the use of tariffs in certain situations, but the President's thinking is completely bonkers.
It's so silly. "We won't pay you a fair wage, and also we're not going to reduce the cost to buy this shirt. But you should buy it anyway. Because it's American. And being American means supporting corporations that are ripping you off."
Charlie Kirk condescendingly "explained" last week that we can all completely avoid tariffs if we just "buy American." Umm, Charlie, do you think the magic factory fairy will just snap her fingers and move all the manufacturing here this week? And then all the raw materials will suddenly just be available entirely on US soil? (Trump doesn't. That's why he's suddenly so keen on "buying" Canada, Greenland, and Panama. 🤦♀️)
Yep. I keep using coffee as an example. In the US, coffee beans can only be grown in Hawaii and a tiny portion of CA. No other places in the US have a climate conducive to growing good coffee beans. Even if those locales maximized coffee bean growing as high as humanly possible, they could never grow enough beans to support the American coffee habit. (That's not even touching on b4an varieties, flavor variations, and taste preferences.) Are we all gonna just stop drinking coffee now? Or will the $7 coffee we've all been half-jokingly complaining about for years now cost $20? 😲
I believe it was highlight on the MoNews account, but someone was sharing about their work with fair trade co-op chocolate and how these tariffs were about to make their business model inoperable, driving demand away from sustainably supporting local growers and back toward cheaper chocolate harvested with slave labor.
One of the goals of Project 2025 is to end up with that exact scenario: man to work in a factory, come home to a wife and kids who are happy and sparkling, living in a house you can afford.
I don’t see how any of these actions lead to that- but that’s what I read in Dawn’s Early Light by Kevin D.
I honestly don't think that happened even back in the 50s outside of "Leave it to Beaver" and "Fayher Knows Best." I mean, I'm sure there were some families who had happy, sparkling lives, but the overall idea of "Make America Great Again" by going back to that supposedly idyllic life is based on a television fantasy that I'm pretty sure never existed in the first place.
And this is why my 3 grown children in their early 20s say they’ll never be able to afford to buy a home! Reading it all in a quick synopsis here is just WOW! And very concerning! Good thing federal minimum wage is still $7.25/hr 😩
I bought my first house at age 40 (6 years ago) and had to take some money out of my 401k for down payment. I suppose I could have just not bought a house but I wanted something more stable for my two kids.
I thought I would never be able to buy a house either. And the house I did buy is fixing to bankrupt me, though I definitely "lucked out" buying right before the pandemic.
And in the face of ALL THIS, the billionaires have successfully convinced the working class that immigrants and federal workers are responsible for these discrepancies, deflecting all the attention away from themselves.
The inequality between the top 1% of wealth in this country and the bottom 50% is staggering and it’s the greatest failure IMO of this country and I think was one of main reasons DT won the election in 2016 and 2024. Unfortunately his populist rhetoric is just an illusion. The massive tax cuts for the ultra wealthy and big corporations will be his big “Ta Da!” moment and his people will cheer and wave the flag and say “see what a great leader he is?” In the end he will get richer along with Wall Street and CEOs but there will be no celebrating in the Main Streets because small businesses will be forced to close due to inflation and tariffs, farmers will go under if they don’t get a hand out from the government, and manufacturing jobs will be fewer than expected because even if they do come back to the states the automation of the machines and AI will make human labor obsolete. DT has no intention of running a country or helping make people’s lives better. He’s about performative political drama, retribution and making money for himself, his family and closest friends. That’s all he cares about and he’s very good at it.
The biggest mistake Trump voters made was believing that he would help them economically. Regardless of what he said while campaigning, he’s always only been interested in grifting for himself and his family and his wealthy supporters (and then only until they’re no longer useful to him). He has no idea how tariffs work or that the infrastructure to provide these so-called secure factory jobs has long since disappeared. And American businesses won’t magically return to US manufacturing bc it costs them “too much.” They prefer the cheap overseas labor that allows them to pad their own salaries and pay their share holders more. Returning to the golden days of American manufacturing would require a thoughtful, multi-faceted Marshall plan of our own: this isn’t it. Once again, many working people have allowed themselves to be hoodwinked. A simply google search of Trump’s record on creating jobs (he never has) and dealing with other businesses (he stiffs them and runs them into the ground) would have cleared this up. But no, 71-odd million people voted for a fantasy instead, and now we all suffer for it.
Imagine a presidential candidate running on a platform of doing lots of unconstitutional and illegal things, tanking the economy, and destroying government services. Then he wins and actually does all the unconstitutional and illegal things, tanks the economy, and destroys government services. And then imagine his supporters proudly celebrating all this by declaring "I like that he's doing everything he said he would do!" Insanity. We are truly living in the dumbest timeline.
They believed the economy was tanking under President Biden even though we had managed to keep inflation from ballooning out of control and had actually averted a recession. Now they're echoing the sentiment that "It's just going to take a little pain to get us back on the right track." It's not based on facts, it's based on feelings (and needing, desperately, for those feelings to be true.)
I will say I really wish that the Democrats could have moved the messaging to I know you are feeling the pains of inflation instead of inflation is under control. I know that they were just stating facts, but to a lot of Americans it felt as if their pain was not being heard.
1000%!
When Trump is running on "Every negative feeling you have about the state of the world [and that has been stoked by right-wing media] is right, you are right, but I will fix it for you" the counterpoint to that is not to say "Things are doing okay, actually. Your feelings are wrong." People are not going to be interested in your solutions if they don't think you're actually listening to their problems.
(If you ever watched Parks & Rec, that episode with the overly-positive Chris comforting a very pregnant Ann comes to mind: stop trying to change her feelings, and just acknowledge that some things suck for her right now.)
👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Right. Doing what you say you’ll do is only virtuous if what you say is good.
The dumbest timeline 😂 you aren’t wrong. It’s too depressing
People need to come to the realization that the country is not a business. You can't run a country the same way you run a business.
Brilliant! Could not have said this any better. The increased revenue from tariffs will be used to justify lower taxes for Trump and his fellow billionaires.
I'm not convinced that there will be increased revenue. Small businesses that rely on imports will be forced to close due to rising costs, thus reducing demand, and many countries will simply stop exporting to the US and will find other trading partners. Tariffs disincentivize trade, so I think it's more likely that imports will crater and there will be nothing to tariff. We'll see.
Also worth pointing out that the fear generated around Social Security "running out" of money usually blames the easy (but inaccurate) target of too many Baby Boomers retiring at once, when the much larger issue is wage stagnation and widening income inequality that the funding models did not account for and have yet to correct.
Yes, why is the social security wage base limit capped at $176,100 (2025)? I don't understand why this is. The more one makes, the less they pay into SS? Seems like an easy fix to eliminate the limit or compromise and raise it substantially.
While I do understand the reasoning that the wealthier you are the less likely you are to depend on SS income after retirement, that only works if wages continue to grow proportionally for all workers, which they categorically have not. So now we're in a situation where the input into the SS trust fund is just being artificially depressed and the wealthiest folks are beating the drum that it's all a scam or "Ponzi scheme."
Very true that they won't need to rely on it, but if it's truly a safety net, I think that raising the limit at the very least would be beneficial. I think that would make more sense than raising the age to access SS or reducing benefits. The reality is though, the longer they kick this can down the road, if we are going to preserve SS, we may have to do all three of those things.
This this this!!! The lack of education around this very issue is a huge problem within the electorate.
Remove the income cap!
Thank you so much for naming all of this. It’s also important to say that the increasing costs of everything that haven’t kept up with average wages have made a very small number of people VERY wealthy. The fact that the mega rich have managed to convince a huge number of Americans that their struggles are because of immigrants, dei, and transgender athletes boggles the mind. The prioritization of continually increasing profits has lead to a push by publicly traded companies to always decrease costs (including labor) and increase revenue. Those increased profits line the pockets of a VERY few while keeping a boot on the neck of the people doing the work to generate those profits. It is time for ALL Americans to understand the class war that is being waged against them. It’s time to get clear about WHO is keeping them down and figure out how we can unite and use our power to resist and build a better future. DT, MAGA, and project 2025 are not it.
I found this podcast a few weeks ago (before the tariff nonsense) and found Kathryn Edwards explanations of the US economy and how to actually do things to support working families very easy to understand and refreshing. She discussed what a massive problem wage stagnation is in the US. Her clip standing up to a tax-cut-friendly congressmen is amazing, paraphrasing- ‘I’d love for us to try investing in children for 20 years and see what returns we can get. The tax cuts have had 20 years and they have not been shown to live up to their promises.’ https://moneywithkatie.com/economic-future
She’s keds_economist on TikTok! Love her! Her explanations of the economy are well thought out and easy to digest.
1. All I can hear is the Money Money song from Cabaret.
2. I know why you titled this piece what you did (it’s eye-catching and makes sense for most people!) but it personally made me flinch - I have the honor of being the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor. My grandmother, who survived 4 years in a camp, is currently in the final days of her life. She’s obviously been on my mind a lot lately!
Bless her for her strength and courage. Her survival is a triumph for the human race! Blessings to you and your family for all she has given all of you. Your very existence is testament to her grit and perseverance!
Hear, hear! She is 97! Been free for 80 years.
Incredible! 🩷🩷🩷
I think people are being a little bit unfair to the President. Let’s not forget, before the election he promised we are all about to get insanely rich “very quickly” and all of these expenses people whine about like “child care” and “health care” and “who the hell cares” are all irrelevant now that we are taking in more tariff money. Ignore all the haters who point out contradictions in the logic. Just listen to this very nuanced explanation on how it’s all going to work:
“Well, I would do that, and we’re sitting down. You know, I was somebody — we had, Senator Marco Rubio, and my daughter Ivanka, was so impactful on that issue. It’s a very important issue. But I think when you talk about the kind of numbers that I’m talking about — that, because look, child care is child care, couldn’t — you know, there’s something — you have to have it in this country. You have to have it. But when you talk about those numbers, compared to the kind of numbers that I’m talking about by taxing foreign nations at levels that they’re not used to. But they’ll get used to it very quickly. And it’s not going to stop them from doing business with us. But they’ll have a very substantial tax when they send product into our country. Those numbers are so much bigger than any numbers that we’re talking about, including child care, that it’s going to take care. We’re going to have — I look forward to having no deficits within a fairly short period of time, coupled with the reductions that I told you about on waste and fraud and all of the other things that are going on in our country. Because I have to stay with child care. I want to stay with child care. But those numbers are small relative to the kind of economic numbers that I’m talking about, including growth, but growth also headed up by what the plan is that I just — that I just told you about. We’re going to be taking in trillions of dollars. And as much as child care is talked about as being expensive, it’s, relatively speaking, not very expensive compared to the kind of numbers will be taking in. We’re going to make this into an incredible country that can afford to take care of its people. And then we’ll worry about the rest of the world. Let’s help other people. But we’re going to take care of our country first. This is about America first. It’s about make America great again. We have to do it because right now, we’re a failing nation. So we’ll take care of it. Thank you. Very good question. Thank you.”
Reading transcripts from his ramblings makes me feel like I’m losing IQ points.
Really? Because I used to think that if I could invite Trump to come into my classroom, and speak to my students--by the time he would leave, they would all feel pretty intelligent.
The man genuinely cannot string together a coherent thought. Forever confused how anyone can mistake this fool for a “stable genius”
Ok, here's one of the big beefs I have with the President (from a stylistic point of view): he's not a great speaker. If I'm being honest, I could see myself getting mesmerized by an evil person who is extremely well spoken and charming and charismatic. The President has a certain sort of charisma (nothing can touch him, no matter what he does or says), but it is not the charisma that charms me. He's not even "plain spoken." He backtracks and covers his meanings with deniable plausibility. I could respect a curmudgeon or even someone who is painfully honest. This, I cannot respect.
Right? I cannot follow hardly anything he says. He is not coherent, nor logical, and it baffles me how his followers are understanding him, because most things make no sense to me. Most of his rhetoric sounds like insults and rambling to me.
This! I guess he's *technically* magnetic because there's a whole subset of people who love to listen to him? But I truly, truly cannot figure it out. I get why people said Kamala Harris spoke in word salad - she frequently uses flowery language and turns of phrase that aren't terribly common. But for those SAME people to say Trump speaks to the average man??? My brain shorts out when I try to thread the needle on that one.
I think it has a lot to do with cadence and tone. I don't want to call it soothing because I hear his voice and instantly my nerves are shredded, but there's something almost hypnotic about that sing-song tone. It lulls you, if you are of a mind to be lulled. It feels like the sort of voice people use to pacify children.
Well, you did use the phrase “thread the needle,” which makes it sound like you were in on The Weave the whole time!
Thanks I hate it.
Hahaha, I actually laughed out loud reading this. We laugh to keep from crying.
I actually wonder if only allowing people to read transcripts of his speeches instead of listening to him live would impact his popularity.
That would require literacy, though.
Are these the words trump voters were talking about when they said, “he’s doing everything he said he would do - I love it”? These words feel like solid ground to build a country and an economic policy on? Goodness gracious.
Timothy, I bow to your literary genius: “child care, health care and who the hell cares…” I’ve never seen a more succinct yet accurate synopsis of Trumpism. Bravo!
....um, what?
And people say Kamala makes no sense. As if Trump does?!
Timothy -- Sarcasm will get you nowhere, sir!
😇
A prosperous America is one who invests in their people — the common taxpayers, not the top 1% who don’t need it. We are failing the people by investing in an illusion of prosperity and breaking down the very means by which they can build success. So much hits the average person’s bottom line as a consumer, tax payer, and as an employee. The grocery bill and itemized pay stub are proof alone. Yet, corporations are cutting back benefits, reducing their workforce, stagnating wages, to keep their investors happy and wealthier. The government doing similar cutbacks, while families are cutting back merely on a decision of what to go without to make ends meet. Now, not even to count with the social services and nonprofits they used to rely on to fill a need because that option is drying up quickly with lack of funding. Make America Great Again is an illusion.
I watched a video yesterday of the Secretary of Commerce describing the goal of bringing manufacturing jobs back to the US. (On Moshe's IG page.) He literally says the goal is to have high school level graduates working in factories, screwing in millions of tiny screws into iphones. It makes sense why the administration is removing funding from universities and putting pressure on them to remove equity opportunities for POC and women. They need more uneducated citizens to work lower paying jobs, screwing in tiny screws in factories. They're laying the foundation for a garish house covered in fake gold and none of us will want to live there.
What’s interesting is that we are investing in a dying industry. Manufacturing and trades is an area that has struggled to staff because it shows folks don’t want those jobs. In comes the need for programs under immigration to fill hard-to-fill roles. Yet, we are removing or challenging that option. We can and should promote hiring for skills to help remove barriers but education/training has to be part of the modern industry — much of which relies on knowledge work. Investment in a variety of pathways such as apprenticeship that combine education and training is a great option, but so little companies use that model for white collar jobs.
It definitely feels like a desperate claw backward, instead of an optimistic move forward. And when it doesn't work, who gets blamed? 🧐
Um, Democrats? Just guessing.
A tiny discrepancy: After listening to the whole thing a couple of times (because he was a bit rambly himself), what he was actually saying was that "automations" (robotics, I presume) will screw in the tiny screws on iPhones (as is already the case), and then there will be "millions and millions" of jobs created to repair those automations. Which isn't really much better because how often does he think those robotics break down to need "millions and millions" of workers to fix them?! (And then he started rambling about HVAC and refrigeration, which have nothing to do with robotics that screw smart phones together, so I completely lost the thread at that point.)
Your point is still dead-on. Just don't want you to end up in a discussion with someone who tries to tell you you're wrong because that's not *exactly* what he said. Because you are still exactly 💯 right!
Also, do iPhones even have screws? Because my Android does not. Literally not a sinfle visible screw! At least not on the outside. There probably are a few tiny ones on the circuit board inside. But not enough to create "millions and millions" of jobs!
You are correct. My husband is in leadership at an aircraft manufacturing facility and his company cannot find people to fill their open roles. Even roles requiring little to no experience. They are still selling planes to billionaires, and the US military, but cannot find the talent to build them so they can keep up with the demand.
This. Is this what we want for our kids? Manufacturing jobs screwing in bolts that will likely be automated at some point? Other countries are investing in education making sure that the next generations will have cutting edge skills and know how, and yet our politicians want line workers. They want to keep people poor and uneducated.
It is very interesting to discuss this with my Gran and Mom. I'm a Xennial, I guess? Born on the cusp of Gen X and Millennials. I've always connected more with the Gen X experience. We do have access to more things (technically) and have better healthcare (if we can access and afford it). But when my Gran and Mom discuss their early marriages it is an entirely different world. Better in so many regards and not as great in so many regards. I would have made the world's worst 1950s housewife. I am much better at being the one who leaves for work and comes home to dinner prepared!
my family always used to sit and talk to my grandma (born in 1918) and talk to her about the way things were - the depression, WWII - it was all so interesting to listen and learn about. More family should do the same and maybe we wouldn't' be in this mess :(
Yes! My grandma is still living. She was born in 1926 and will be 99 this year. She is still living independently, and I talk to her all the time about her life and am trying to document stories. She is #4 of 8 kids. Her older brother died in WWII and received the Purple Heart and Silver Star. They moved a lot as their family lost jobs, lost homes (fire) and lost their income (losing their whole herd of sheep in a late spring storm), so they were always moving on to start over. She worked many jobs before and after getting married. She worked in a defense plant during the war that made bullets. She worked in meat processing & packing plants. She worked at a garment manufacturer sewing. All this, along with being a farm wife, taking care of chickens and pigs, raising a garden, raising three children and teaching Sunday School. That's what she was doing in the 1950s!
Your Grandma sounds so fun! She's about 10 years older than my Gran, about my Grandaddy's age. I wish we had talked to him more. I'm glad we still get to hear her stories. About both their families and growing up. It is so different than what we experienced.
Yes, she's amazing. Your Gran sounds that way too.
We have this family Facebook group for her side of the family and my grandma is so cute! People will post old photos in this group and my grandma responds to every single one telling where it was taken and what was going on, or she'll say, I took that photo in our yard for yadda, yadda, yadda reason. She remembers everything! There are only two still living in her family, herself and her youngest sister, who is 11 years younger than her.
It is very interesting to listen to! She was a kid during WWII and my Grandfather was 10 years older, so he fought in WWII (basically a kid himself honestly). Hearing their experiences is always so interesting. She's honest about a lot. Rations were not fun, drinking powdered milk wasn't fun, living with no indoor plumbing, using an outhouse and not having air conditioning were no fun, lol! She misses some of it. But she also discusses how she was so lucky in her marriage. She knew women who were beaten (of course not where it could be seen), had to prove every penny spent at the store, had no autonomy at all. She always says if she was married to anyone but my Grandfather she would have been in trouble.
Fellow Xennial chiming in (born late 1978)
But Trump just said “THIS IS A GREAT TIME TO GET RICH, RICHER THAN EVER BEFORE!!!” Wonder who he was talking about.🤔
He was interviewed many years ago about how he loves the bad markets because it's the best time to buy up everything.
Other folks (including Bill Ackman) have also pointed out that the Secretary of Commerce, Howard Lutnick, works for Cantor Fitzgerald, an investment fund that focuses on "long bonds." It's the exact portfolio that one would want to ride out a tanking market, and perhaps the exact reason why wealthy folks like him are not as concerned about what's happening.
Meanwhile I looked at my 401k and wish I hadn't :(
Me too. I almost felt physical pain looking at it.
Similar to what happened in Russia (the system our president openly admires). Their government fell apart and systems crashed so the pieces could be purchased on the cheap, paving the way for oligarchy, corruption, and a forever leader. Spoiler alert: the ones who "got rich" were already the richest to begin with. That's the whole plan, the rich get richer AND acquire government services in the process.
Ugh what I’d give for these house prices. I always laugh in the Boy Meets World episode where Cory and Topanga are looking for a house and Topanga’s like “Cory, we can’t afford this house! It’s $80,000!!!” And I’m like omg I wish *cries
And boy meets world wasn't even that long ago!
So what happens in 4 years when America is not only NOT great again (whatever that is even supposed to mean) but worse off? Will Trump supporters just continue to blame everything on Biden and Obama and the Dems who aren’t in power? Sadly, many of them will never admit that their lord and savior Donald Trump did anything wrong.
This morning, it struck me that this failing of the economy so early in Trump's presidency is perhaps by design so that he can take advantage of people's short-term memories and just insist he was handed a bad economy. In a few months' time, his supporters will just say none of this was Trump's doing.
Til my last breath, I will shout that 99% of ALL our problems have to do with corporations. They have their sticky, greedy fingers in all aspects of controlling our lives. They can spend as much money as they want lobbying for their benefit. They have all the time in the world to schmooze our politicians.
It is absolutely ridiculous that anyone would believe American manufacturing would benefit us. They left us for cheaper countries! There is absolutely zero incentive for them to come back to America and lose money paying us more.
"We can't pay you more. There's not enough money." Well, with costs so high and pay so cheap, where is it all going? Where is the money?? Just keep looking up. It's at the top and they're going to keep accumulating until it crushes us. They don't care.
And to tack on to that...will we Americans actually pay the higher prices? Do we really want to pay $75 for a t-shirt? I also fail to see how we as a nation will be able to manufacture or produce all the goods that we consume with labor shortages, and the fact that the raw materials will be tariffed anyway. I completely understand the use of tariffs in certain situations, but the President's thinking is completely bonkers.
It's so silly. "We won't pay you a fair wage, and also we're not going to reduce the cost to buy this shirt. But you should buy it anyway. Because it's American. And being American means supporting corporations that are ripping you off."
Ummm yeah ok
Charlie Kirk condescendingly "explained" last week that we can all completely avoid tariffs if we just "buy American." Umm, Charlie, do you think the magic factory fairy will just snap her fingers and move all the manufacturing here this week? And then all the raw materials will suddenly just be available entirely on US soil? (Trump doesn't. That's why he's suddenly so keen on "buying" Canada, Greenland, and Panama. 🤦♀️)
Yeah and is everyone going to drastically alter their diets to buy american? Yeah, right. Most people have no idea where their food comes from.
Yep. I keep using coffee as an example. In the US, coffee beans can only be grown in Hawaii and a tiny portion of CA. No other places in the US have a climate conducive to growing good coffee beans. Even if those locales maximized coffee bean growing as high as humanly possible, they could never grow enough beans to support the American coffee habit. (That's not even touching on b4an varieties, flavor variations, and taste preferences.) Are we all gonna just stop drinking coffee now? Or will the $7 coffee we've all been half-jokingly complaining about for years now cost $20? 😲
Yep. AND CHOCOLATE! sob.
I believe it was highlight on the MoNews account, but someone was sharing about their work with fair trade co-op chocolate and how these tariffs were about to make their business model inoperable, driving demand away from sustainably supporting local growers and back toward cheaper chocolate harvested with slave labor.
One of the goals of Project 2025 is to end up with that exact scenario: man to work in a factory, come home to a wife and kids who are happy and sparkling, living in a house you can afford.
I don’t see how any of these actions lead to that- but that’s what I read in Dawn’s Early Light by Kevin D.
Roberts
I honestly don't think that happened even back in the 50s outside of "Leave it to Beaver" and "Fayher Knows Best." I mean, I'm sure there were some families who had happy, sparkling lives, but the overall idea of "Make America Great Again" by going back to that supposedly idyllic life is based on a television fantasy that I'm pretty sure never existed in the first place.
Especially if you weren't white.
And this is why my 3 grown children in their early 20s say they’ll never be able to afford to buy a home! Reading it all in a quick synopsis here is just WOW! And very concerning! Good thing federal minimum wage is still $7.25/hr 😩
I bought my first house at age 40 (6 years ago) and had to take some money out of my 401k for down payment. I suppose I could have just not bought a house but I wanted something more stable for my two kids.
I thought I would never be able to buy a house either. And the house I did buy is fixing to bankrupt me, though I definitely "lucked out" buying right before the pandemic.
And in the face of ALL THIS, the billionaires have successfully convinced the working class that immigrants and federal workers are responsible for these discrepancies, deflecting all the attention away from themselves.