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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.
Another round of looting the country.
Another round of justifying it by exaggerating the outgroup's policies and claiming "we're only spending in retaliation for how much spending THOSE guys did!!!"
Another round of populist-induced amnesia where everyone forgets the country was on solid financial footing a few decades ago.
Another round of everyone looking around for where the money went, while conveniently forgetting about Social Security and Medicare.
Another round of the electorate thinking the deficit is fake, and that we could trivially fix it if only we targeted [favored boogeyman] (choose one or more of foreigners, immigrants, billionaires).
It's all so tiresome.
I'm not unsympathetic, but the problem of the Fiscal Responsibility Party building up a treasure chest through being harsh and unpopular and then the Gibs Party looting it is a real issue. What's your proposed solution, beyond restricting the electorate or just accepting your role as Nasty Daddy and watching the Gibs Party eat your work every time?
We had the same problem in the UK with the old Tory party and Labour, and getting fed up with that is one reason why Reform is doing so well at the moment.
This particular treasure chest was last filled during a rather popular administration. “A rising tide” and all that. We still teach Keynesian economics in high school; the government is expected to run a surplus in good times and mitigate the bad ones with deficit spending.
That cycle has been more or less pretextual since 2008. The opposition got hijacked by a populist before they could really pull back on spending, and the next crisis hit right before an election. I suspect we can still put the toothpaste back in the tube, but it would take a level of economic optimism which hasn’t yet appeared.
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