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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.
I often see this style of post by progressives. The same progressive who, if they were in charge, would give trillions to their preferred groups, bankrupting the government in the process. (See: Joe Biden)
"I thought you were conservative, they say. Don’t you want to cut social security? I thought you had principles. Any real man would commit electoral suicide."
But no, handing Democrats permanent electoral victory is not conservative.
Since the 1960s, the people who receive gibs from the government have been a stable base for the Democratic Party. And now we’ve reached the point where net tax paying households are outweighed by net recipients. Mass gibs have been a part of politics since the 1960s. It's just that until now, only one party benefitted.
Which brings us back to this: My rules > your rules applied fairly > your rules applied unfairly.
Obviously this proposal is a bad idea. But if democrats win a trifecta in 2028 more money than this will be spent. It will just go to people who hate America and white people. Better to have gibs for all then gibs for everyone except me.
I'm a reaganite libertarian, so this is incompetence in understanding there are more viewpoints than just hyper left and hyper right.
Ah yes, the famous fiscal conservative Ronald Reagan.
Reagan was consistently for shrinking government spending. Congress holds the power of the purse, not the presidency, so he was not empowered to do as he wished there but it's very obvious what his preference was. That's one of the biggest takeaways from the Grace Commission, like 80% of what they found required Congress (controlled by Democrats) to work with him. They did not, because the Dems are for big govt.
That is not the case now, we can not pretend the GOP is still a small government less spending advocate given both Trump's constant grandiose claims to increase spending, and the fact that there is actually a trifecta without any action to decrease the deficit. Reagan didn't have the power but he tried. Trump has the power and keeps pushing for more spending.
The debt and deficit exploded under Reagan. In the words of the immortal Dick Cheney: "Reagan proved that deficits don't matter".
His biggest legacy is a giant increase in military spending to force the Soviets to respond, thereby collapsing their empire. And good on him for it. No doubt he'd also be in favor of the current Iran conflict, which we are doing on a shoestring budget in comparison.
But of course it's very easy to be in favor of dead conservatives who you assign any beliefs you like to. No doubt there were "conservatives" in the 1980s who claimed to have voted for Eisenhower, but now encouraged people to vote for Mondale because Reagan was "too radical".
That policy was actually started by noted arch-reactionary … Jimmy Carter. This was in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. If you look at Raegan only policies, and not ones he inherited and expanded, he’s even more fiscally irresponsible.
Yes, and Reagan benefited in a big way from taking over at the right time.
Volcker collapsed the economy by raising interest rates in 1979. This worked as intended, driving inflation from 15% down to just 3% four years later. But of course it weakened the economy too. Just in time for the 1980 Presidential election, which Reagan won easily.
The economy continued to suck until 1982. But Volcker's bitter medicine cured the patient, and by the 1984 election, the US economy was experiencing terrific growth with low inflation. Reagan wiped the floor with Mondale, taking a record 49 states.
Boomer conservatives want Trump to be like Reagan. But they can't recreate the magical conditions that allowed him to thrive. Both parties today want the other party to take the bitter medicine.
Hiking interest rates had little to do with Volcker ending inflation during stagflation as latter economists have pointed out. His actions did cause the rate of inflation to fall off at best, but his actions otherwise had little to do with it.
The cause of the stagflation in the 70’s happened due to a credit bubble bursting when the economy was at its peak, while high wage and oil price rises caused the inflation. Inflation was brought down by falling global energy and oil prices alongside a brutal recession that happened purely by accident.
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