Comment by 9rx
11 days ago
> I think 90% of the whole political debate about the economy is misplaced nostalgia combined with problematic local wealth inequality
When Trump said that new manufacturing facilities would be fast-tracked to being able to build their own on-site power plants because the grid is "at risk of bombing", I've come to think that the whole political debate is really about: What the hell are we going to do if WWIII happens?
Manufacturing capability and capacity is an incredibly precious resource if you find yourself in a large scale war, and there is growing concern (realistic or not) that America has given it away/lost it. It makes no difference in peaceful times, but there is growing belief that the era of peace is coming to an end.
In fact, if you take a higher level view of what is going on, like the wanting to annex Canada and Greenland, it seems the entire motivation for it all is preparing for the possibility of war with Russia (and China).
> When Trump said that new manufacturing facilities would be fast-tracked to being able to build their own on-site power plants because the grid is "at risk of bombing", I've come to think that the whole political debate is really about: What the hell are we going to do if WWIII happens?
I'm not buying that whole argument. At all. Because this looks too much like a "lets find favorable talking points for the middling plans we already put in motion"-exercise.
Can you honestly argue that current economic policy and decisionmaking was mainly driven by strategic military interests and planning, as opposed to Trump being a big fan of tariffs as a concept?
Because I don't think you can. And I think we don't need more than a glance at the liberation day proposals to identify this; if the aim was to war-proof US supply chains, then you would expect a big focus on military relevance of tariffed goods, coupled with long term investments into defense-relevant local industry and a glut of defense-spending in general.
Instead we got blanket tariffs that were so ill-conceived, they mostly had to be rolled back/suspended the next day, and generally pretty much no apparent guiding focus or much thought at all.
Concerning possible war: Russia is not a credible military opponent to the US and is not gonna be one within decades, either. Their land army basically got stopped by a country a fifth of their size on mainly donated (and frequently old) western equipment, and the Russian Navy embarassed itself even worse.
China is a somewhat credible opponent, but what would they even go to war over that would actually affect the US? Panama? They might be more serious about taking Taiwan back, but I honestly doubt that the US would involve itself in that business too much anyway; considering how the whole support for the Ukraine, whose territorial integrity it formally agreed on to protect, amounted to some military hand-me-downs and a bit of intel sharing (no longer even that from what I know?), I would NOT hold my breath waiting for US carriers in a Taiwan invasion...
>the whole support for the Ukraine, whose territorial integrity it formally agreed on to protect, amounted to some military hand-me-downs and a bit of intel sharing (no longer even that from what I know?)
Let's not forget that Trump and his clown show are now attempting to bully Ukraine into paying the full, inflated to the max, US government contractor price for the new versions of those hand-me-downs. Partly because that was how the accounting was done - very often, $X of "military aid to Ukraine" = $X spent on a new weapon for US military to replace the decades old weapon to be sent to Ukraine.
> Can you honestly argue that current economic policy and decisionmaking was mainly driven by strategic military interests and planning, as opposed to Trump being a big fan of tariffs as a concept?
Well, like we established in a discussion here yesterday, argument only takes place if you don't know. It is the mind's way to explore and learn. So, yes, obviously I could as I don't have enough information to know for sure. If I did, there would be nothing argue about, now would there? I'd already know everything there is to know. It would be a pointless endeavour.
But I don't think an argument is what you are actually looking for. It seems you're simply looking for someone to do free work for you. As great as that may sound to you, there is no reason for anyone else to cater to that. For the sake of good faith, I'll spare you anything more that would be serving to me.
They gave you plenty of things to rebut or discuss, but instead of doing any of that you got hung up on a rhetorical device that is used to imply poor or empty argumentation which, frankly, seems to be on point.
well, if the first step to prepare for WWIII is threatening to annex nearest allies with their own sovereignty (Canada), I'd say it's a very very bad preparation. Secondly, imposing tariff for raw materials and tools while you don't have all the groundwork domestically to do the manufacturing, is also a very very bad preparation. If this is the best US can get, I'm disappointed.