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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.
A sentiment I'm seeing in this thread is essentially that Democrats propose policies that, when you hold them up to the light just right, are indistinguishable from mere gibs, so why shouldn't Trump do the same thing? I agree with the many posters here that democracy has increasingly shifted into a "to the victor goes the spoils" mindset, where politicians are incentivized to promise their constituents as much material benefit as possible if elected. However, it's my recollection that most Democrat gibs are at least presented under the pretense that they solve a problem or have a social benefit. Even reparations for the descendants of slaves, which are arguably the most diffuse and nebulous use of government funds, have been justified many times over with varying publications, media efforts, etc. We can discuss the veracity of these claims, but they're at least granted an air of historical importance and societal justification. Trump, in contrast, is simply saying "vote for me and you'll get money," without even gesturing at some social purpose. Simple quid pro quo. I don't see how this can be anything but concerning.
The notion that all social programs are just "gibs" is pretty silly. Like you can dislike Medicare or think there's a lot of waste in the program, but it's fundamentally very different than just mailing people a check.
Money is fungible, so the fundamentality of the difference is definitely overstated here.
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