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5,000 for every American citizen? Might sound farfetched, but the president just proposed it https://apnews.com/article/trump-dividend-5k-5000-check-republicans-cc80644e3168acd31c892129fb849436
First of all this is obviously retarded, there's no ability to mince words here, it would be about 1.3 trillion dollars almost doubling the annual federal deficit, causing massive inflation, and generally fucking the economy. Second of all, it's obviously not happening just like the DOGE dividend and tariff dividends and all the other free money constantly promised. We all know it, there's no need to pretend that this isn't just constant lying.
Rather I'm more interested in what this suggests, here's some thoughts.
Trump is really worried about the midterms to the point he's trying to outright suggest bribing voters. This concern makes sense given the Dems have a 50% chance of a complete sweep. Trump arrived, disappointed Americans, and his legacy is already ending.
As I spoke earlier about the plan to pay parents to stay at home, it's another highlight of how modern "conservativism" just doesn't give a shit about money anymore. The entire concept of fiscal responsibility is just a joke now. If we take the president seriously (which I would hope we could given the prestige of the office but obviously we can not), it's one of the most destructive singular policies someone could possibly suggest.
Likewise, there's not even an attempt to hide the corruption anymore. I can not even imagine how much more blatant he could get that this is attempted bribery. People can play the whataboutism game of former admins if they want, but at least those had the shame to hide it behind closed doors a bit.
The magical tariffs continue to do everything. Trump has promised so much with tariff revenue (a number I can't even cite him on since like many of his claims, it fluctuates widely). CATO has an excellent list of everything they're claimed to fund. It's not just fiscal responsibility that is a joke, the entire idea of government funding has become one.
And this isn't occuring in isolation, it's another sign of the GOP transformation into a populism powered welfare socialist party. Fiscal responsibility is a joke, redistribution from the rich to the poor in bribes is based, trade is evil and companies should be owned by the government.
And what political coalition now exists to point out the obvious and say this isn't smart? The stereotypical conservative response before was "how will we pay for that?" in regards to big sending. The response now is crickets. Negative polarization has gone so far that the DSA, a group that literally calls themselves socialist are now the most free trade voting bloc, so will we reverse polarize ourselves into a small government balanced budget "socialist" president at some point?
But most importantly, what does this say about politics now where promising $1.35 trillion in direct payments to voters is presented as the conservative campaign message. How much further into the slop can we possibly descend, and how we can ever pull ourselves out of it? Maybe the Dems can just promise 5,001 dollars or something.
Patronage in general is the dominant strategy in a democracy. I think Latin America is an instructive example: they way the 19th century oligarchy, and later right wing movements, got popular support was via patronage. It could take the form of anything between local Don Gonzales getting you a loan to el Partido Conservador in Colombia handing out government posts based on loyalty to Vargas in Brazil making the state the patron and protector of the urban worker. Even in the US, you had patronage in the form of machines like Tammany Hall and in forms like “write your congressman and his staff can help solve your problem.”
While libertarianism and economic liberalism is a political current even in culturally clientelist Latin America, having “vote for me and if you want recompense that’s communist” be the default right wing position is very anomalous since it just isn’t competitive politically.
The choice is in between left-wing or right-wing clientelism; libertarians can somewhat limit the whoring, but they can’t stop it.
EDIT: To add a bit of nuance, pro-market politics in the age of mass politics aren’t totally doomed the fail. The Neo-liberal turn in the 1980s and 1990s globally was a very real success. At the same time, I honestly can’t think of any society after the advent of mass politics that one could describe as “libertarian” that didn’t include patronage, welfare, or industrial policy.
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