To them, it doesn't even matter if things get "worse" for a while. Their life is already meeting every economic headwind imaginable.
Then they’ve failed to imagine how much more difficult their life will become under excessive tariffs.
It’s also eye-opening to watch so many people in my extended family and social network cheer on DOGE and tariffs right until they impact their own jobs. Lot of people out there didn’t connect the dots about how their own jobs were going to be impacted by tariffs.
Again, these workers don't have jobs. When the John Deere factory closes down in your town and moves to Mexico, tariffs sound good even if it's just to punish such companies and the abuse of their workers.
If you're unemployed and living on whatever odd jobs and government assistance you can get, tariffs won't make one bit of difference in your life. Factories may even return, and your life may improve. It's better than just accepting your situation.
Categorically false.
Tariffs raise prices for consumers. These tariffs will make it even harder for them to make ends meet.
Prices going up on everything will absolutely make a difference in their lives. Even with government assistance and very low income, they still have to buy things to live - and they'll be able to afford even less. The poorer you are, the harder this is going to hit you.
This is why inflation was such a huge issue. I fail to see how this is any different.
This time it's vaguely patriotic to pay more, I guess.
That government assistance is also being threatened (often by adding work requirements to it), and those odd jobs can also go away or become much more scarce if the economy goes over the edge.
Finally, the cost of everything will go up, which will hit those that are scraping by with odd jobs and government assistance the hardest.
I hope it doesn’t happen, but when you assert things are as bad as they can get, that just doesn’t match the situation you described. They can get worse.
Of course it will, since price inflation is going to hit the low (or no) income people the hardest.
And if the government assistance you mentioned is all cut away, it's going to be much worse.
Not that that’s going to last if actual economic headwinds hit the economy.
anectdotally, you dont see people dropping out of universities en masse because businesses are desperate for workers and willing to make it worth students while to put off or skip the education.
you see that in and out in tech/software dev, but not across industries
That's kind of like saying you believe the official government inflation numbers.
A lot of us were also in the market before the pandemic (aka before 4 years ago), so we remain in the green.
Personally, it's a win-win.
1. Based on past tariff action, the current tariffs will not be repealed by any future administration - there is plenty of harsh feelings amongst some of us Dems who were IRA adjacent to France and Germany's lobbying against the Green New Deal and calling it "protectionism".
2. This plus DOGE has caused short term pain as reflected in the NY by-elections leading to Stefanik's nomination to the UN being pulled.
3. Those of us with some sympathy for economic nationalism but don't caucus GOP have been vindicated, but have a messaging tool now as well.
4. We can finally take the UAW and ILA national leadership behind a shed and pull a metaphorical old yeller. There's no point trying to make peace with National when much of their local leadership leans GOP. Makes it easier to concentrate on AZ, NV, and GA - states where the demographic and union makeup is completely orthogonal to the UAW and ILA's cadre. Makes it easier to help the AFL-CIO as well.
5. Sullivan and Raimondo's doctrine has been vindicated. Philippines, Brazil, Colombia, Malaysia, and India have now been made much more cost competitive than China or transshipment via Vietnam or Thailand - either you reduce transshipment from China or your competitors in apparel, textiles, and electronics are subsidized. Vietnam already has sent their Dy PM to negotiate as we speak to reduce tariffs.
Europe also has no option but to diversify away from China as well. Either you fund a state selling intermediate parts to Russia in Ukraine, or start building domestic defense and industrial capabilities like that which existed before the 2000s (which they are now doing).
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Already, some of my peers from my previous life have started testing the waters for a Dem equivalent of the Tea Party. Lot of realignment coming in the next 2 election cycles.
I'd disagree with a number of their foreign policy choices, but the house doesn't really set foreign policy, and the hawkish policies I'd want will anyhow be pushed by this admin but not revoked by any incoming admin.
There's a pretty solid crop of state assembly members and outsiders who can competitively primary out a number of older generation Dems, assuming a model similar to Illinois and NY 2020 is followed.
On the other hand Trump will deliver on another, implicit promise to them, which is inflict pain and suffering on a great deal of people they dislike for whatever reason.
Not so implicit, "I will be your retribution".
And this part is very much a normal Republican position. The realisation that Americans will vote for a policy which hurts them so long as it's positioned as hurting the people they hate was key to Republican success.
"Nobody gets kicked in the head" loses in American politics if it's up against "Everybody gets kicked in the head, yes those awful people you don't like will get kicked in the head"
And when your implementation "accidentally" forgets to kick the wealthy in the head? Well the important thing is you kicked people in the head - you're not one of those scum who don't want to kick the awful people in the head.
I don't particularly like the idea of tariffs, but it is what it is.
Having to put up with policies you don't like is simply the social consequence of applying unpopular policies for four years in the other direction.
If the opposing party supports outsourcing, importing of labor, no protections for domestic industry, then they should expect retaliation from people who don't like those policies and who have the means to vote in someone who will push for whatever they view as corrective action.
This is a democracy. If one party pushes unpopular policies (unpopular to the other side), don't be surprised with the opposition pushes back.
More people making under 50K per year voted for Trump in 2024 than voted for Harris.
Your numbers are off.
And despite economic prosperity being the cornerstone of his 2024 campaign, somehow it isn't anymore. Now his supporters have pivoted to this idea that we must all live in a kind of austerity so that collectively (waves hands around) we enter a new age of American prosperity. Literally this sea change in MAGA sentiment has happened in the last six weeks. It's baffling.
Yet.
Things can always get ~~worst~~ worse.
https://theintercept.com/2016/11/09/democrats-trump-and-the-... https://archive.ph/tfd39
I guess Vincent Bevins has the money quote:
> Los Angeles Times’s Vincent Bevins, who wrote that “both Brexit and Trumpism are the very, very wrong answers to legitimate questions that urban elites have refused to ask for 30 years.” Bevins went on: “Since the 1980s the elites in rich countries have overplayed their hand, taking all the gains for themselves and just covering their ears when anyone else talks, and now they are watching in horror as voters revolt.”
Also, in the mid 20th century, the top income tax rate was 91%. Now it's 37%. Capital gains taxes were also much higher. The wealthy were taxed much more heavily during our economic boom times than now. It's not hard to think that having a more equitable distribution of wealth, not taxes, might have something to do with it.
I’d be extremely surprised if other countries meekly do what Trump wants. There are many options on the table, and change is more likely in a crisis.
Really? How do you even know that? You think another round of price hikes within the year is unimaginable, which what the economic consensus on immediate tariffs this high predicts?
The unemployment rate is 4%. The amount of liberation day tariff supporters is an order of magnitude higher than that. Pretending that things can't get worse is dangerous and stupid.
Horseshit. The most fervent Trump supporters are upper-middle class professionals who are bored with their lives. Hence the frequent boat parades for Trump. It's why the huge, expensive trucks are the ones flying the Trump flags. And practically all of them have 401ks, which means they are at least indirectly invested in stocks.
The working class is shifting to Trump because his rhetoric matches what they want to see: trade restrictions, protections on domestic labor, and the return of good/stable manufacturing jobs.
Trump is almost certainly not the best representation of the American worker, but he's winning because he, at least, tells them what they want to hear.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2024/11/14/nx-s1-5183060/why-working-cla...
Freaking what? Are they food insecure? Facing a military onslaught. Come on.
"They still have cereal and fast food and they're not getting shot so they're fine." LOL.
Because things can definitely get worse.
Absolutely.
If people don't want things to get worse, then the abuse and disenfranchisement of the American worker must end.
That's kind of where we are at this point.
You'll have been quoted on thirty different subreddits by the end of the week. This is hilariously tone deaf to the hardships many are facing.
"Things are terrible, so we have to do something!" No, you have to do something that will help. Just "doing something" isn't good enough. And if you think "things can't get any worse", yeah, they can. A lot worse.
Don't make random changes just because things are bad. You need changes that will help, which is a lot harder.
I think this is the primary reason the Democrats have been losing, clearly voters are feeling economic hardship in a big way, and ignoring it or belittling the point is what lost voters.
We can't focus on social issues when the hierarchy of needs isn't being met.
[0] https://www.heritage.org/poverty-and-inequality/report/air-c...
The Republicans won, which is an indictment on the Democrats messaging in my opinion.
I'm not even talking about the merits of which party has better ideas, or if people are voting against their own best interests. But I think the party that said they'd do "something" to make the economy better is the one that won.
Why Democrats don't hammer on retraining and education so that more people can participate in the services and information economy confuses me greatly. Manufacturing isn't coming back, at least not immediately.
That impression is partially an artifact of the information space disparity. Republicans spent a ton of time talking about social issues and the Democrats talked about lot about economic issues, but coverage of those things was wildly uneven. If you had any exposure to the Hispanic communities affected by deportations now, ask how many of the people making “I didn’t know he’d deport hard-working people like …” comments spent 2024 hearing a ton about how trans were threatening women or drag queens were grooming kids to be gay on WhatsApp/Telegram, and not coverage of the many, many times widespread deportation was promised. It’s almost a cliche to find people who thought they were voting for lower prices and are just now realizing that tariffs are taxes they pay, and that’s a function of where they get their news.
The Republicans focused on sabotaging the economy, which they now are doing. I don’t get why that’s a winning message.
Dems really need to focus on messaging that can resonate with those people. Things like vouchers for trade school to boost higher end blue collar jobs, etc.
To my parents that was an unacceptable thing, had I finished high school and not done college (or some vocational school) I'm sure they would have kicked me out of their place. So not continuing my education was never an option, I had to, because from their perspective that was the only way.
This other dude never had this, his dad worked an warehouse job at some big box store more likely, went up the chain there and made a decent living for his family. The expectation for the family was that if their kids had done the same, it would have been fine, he said his father never even finished high school, but that isn't reality anymore for most people and I don't think this has been a culturally set reality in the US.
People were very much still expecting this would continue to be a thing but its very hard for you to do that in a place where there is very little manufacture and with so much tech taking over brick and mortar stores.
The US has a ton of manufacturing, but few manufacturing jobs, because they automated a lot of the aspects of production. This was one the biggest concerns by Andrew Yang when running for president, lack of good jobs because of automation takeover.
In so much stuff involving process automation if you go about building a new factory you're going to minimize your labor costs as much as possible. The only dumb jobs that remain pay very low and/or are back breaking, and everything else is a high tech job. On top of that process efficiency means that a single factory somewhere could easily produce all the product needed to meet world demand, the most difficult part would be meeting regulations in other countries. We are past the days where you need 20+ factories building the same thing in the US for most products. You build it in one place and put it on a truck with fast and cheap shipping.
People will keep crying for a past that no longer exists while the world changes ever faster.