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I can understand that some say nothing against Trump because of loyalty. But allowing tariffs destroying economy? That is borderline to treason against the USA. Most likely they are not competent and don't even understand that.
Is the economy that central to the American nation? I understand that market freedom has been an important component of our political strength, but at the same time, this feels like preparing for the last Cold War right as we are in the midst of a new one.
I think nothing is more important than economy. People talk about different values and in that sense we need more than economy, for example, democracy and pure air (ecology). But economy is a central thing that allows the country to thrive because everything is based on it. It is just that historically the growth was non-existent (0.01% per year) therefore not many past thinkers have mentioned it in the list of good values. We need to add this to the constitution of every country that achieving growth is very important.
I dunno, I think both left and right have been directionally-correct in that the economy is not the end-all-be-all of civilization. Plenty of societies in the past didn't give as much consideration to economic growth, yes, but they seemingly didn't really need it.
The way you wrote this post, I genuinely cannot tell if you are being sincere, because, at risk of mod intervention, it sounds like an alien value. If anything, I think it's the opposite: there are other values that allow us to have economic power, they are what lead to an economy and not strictly the other way around.
We are at this point, and you are concerned, because some of the very values that enable the economy are themselves weakened and endangered.
I think that both left and right makes the same mistake by not valuing economy enough.
Obviously, all people in the past depended on economy 100%. When it was on a subsistence level and they run out of game to hunt, they had to change to agriculture. When crops failed, a lot of people died from famine etc.
Only relatively recently in the history we have something more in our lives than just food to survive. But some of the values that ensure growth are not intuitive, for example, free trade. No wonder people have difficulty getting their heads around.
When Latvia got independence from the USSR, its nationalistic government didn't think clearly about economy, their idea was that we are finally free from the Soviet occupiers we should concentrate on agriculture and close all factories because they pollute. That shows this primeval thinking of economy only as a food source. In a way it is right, we would die without food. But they were unable to grasp the idea that economy is something bigger than that and people got very unhappy when they couldn't get stuff other than food. Food is to survive, what makes life worth living are other things that is not food.
Yes, but some might argue that numbers on a graph are not what makes life worth living.
I think using the example of a formerly-communist country is misleading, and that there is a minimum level of prosperity in absolute terms, not relative, wherein people can be satisfied. Did Latvians suffer in the post-Soviet scenario you described, or were they still happy despite a lack of industrial capacity?
GDP by definition is an abstract measure of the country and not of an individual. It makes no sense to go back and say “hey, this one person is poor despite rising GDP”. Maybe some people are not able to see the big picture and will get stuck on individual examples?
Latvians suffered tremendously in the first years of the post-Soviet period. We never experienced famine, all the services were still working and everybody got basic healthcare and social needs covered. But income, or rather inflation made everyone very poor and limited of what we could buy. And the fact that goods finally were freely available in shops but no money to buy them probably was like psychological torture. Depression, alcoholism, suicides increased, life expectancy decreased.
Eventually the economy grew, people started earning more money, Latvia joined the EU which accelerated growth even more, some industries were restarted, yet many people emigrated to western countries for work because they wanted even higher income now instead of waiting 20-30 years until Latvia catches up with the west.
Okay, then, that's something else, and that seems to explain a lot if you actually are from Latvia. As an American, I am way more amenable to arguments that we are suffering from success, and to some extent, our nation likely barely suffered the kind of privation experienced by Eastern Europe.
The US had the Great Depression. I think post-Soviet dip was even deeper than that but clearly Americans have experienced something similar. It is just that people who experienced it are no longer alive, so you don't think that it was a big deal.
I really hope that Trump doesn't cause something similar to great depression. But you should listen to those who warn about that possibility and work hard to prevent it. It is a serious matter.
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