Trump and his enablers continue to remake the United States from a democratic republic into a one-party mirror of Joseph Stalin’s Soviet Union.
Acting on fallacies which he promotes as genius, Trump continues cratering the economy. Economists are warning everyone that Trump’s ideas are misguided and that dire consequences are coming. The Hill reports on one in an article, Trump has resurrected one of economics’ oldest fallacies, in a recent issue, the ‘Broken Window Fallacy’. Frédéric Bastiat formulated the Broken Window Fallacy in the 1800s. Scott Burns and Caleb Fuller explain.
Suppose a vandal hurls a rock through a shopkeeper’s window. The shopkeeper is dismayed—this cruel stroke of luck will cost him $1,000. But a local wise guy consoles him, saying, “Actually, there’s a silver lining in this dark cloud!” The broken pane, he explains, creates a job for the local glazier. Perhaps he’ll use those hard-earned shekels to buy shoes from the local cobbler, and so on. Society is ultimately made richer from the shopkeeper’s misfortune — all thanks to the domino effect of spending triggered by two seconds of petty mischief.
It’s a nice story — but as Bastiat illustrates, it’s wildly incomplete. Had the window not been shattered, the shopkeeper could’ve spent his $1,000 on something else he valued. Perhaps he would have bought a new suit, creating income for a local tailor. Or maybe he would have bought some meat, ale, and bread for a party, creating income for the local butcher, brewer, and baker.
The fatal flaw in the wise guy’s analysis, Bastiat concludes, is confining his theory to “that which is seen” — the income earned by the glazier, the cobbler, etc. In so doing, he ignores “that which is unseen” — everything else the shopkeeper could have bought, had his window not been smashed.
That example summarizes Trump and MAGA thinking. Notoriously short-sighted, they refuse to embrace facts or history and set to rewrite both. Not satisfied with destroying the government and its effectiveness by blindly cutting federal personnel and services, he’s eagerly trashing systems the United States methodically developed through centuries to harness data and give us insights into nature.
As part of this, another FAFO tale has emerged. CEO Sachin Shivaram of Wisconsin Aluminum Foundry, wrote a WaPo OP-ED. In it, he explained how Trump’s trade war has already hurt his workers. Many of them were Trump supporters. Raw Story covered the piece: ‘Batten down the hatches’: CEO warns Trump tariff ‘tsunami’ about to wreck economy In his piece, Sachin Shivaram noted that the tariffs are having a negative impact.
The fee that largely determines the cost of buying aluminum in North America has tripled in the past six months, and the company’s nonaluminum inputs have increased by 7 percent in the last month, and the foundry has had no choice but to raise their prices and lay off some workers.
Sachin Shivaram continues:
“What is not debatable is that our order rate is down 35 percent to 40 percent since the start of the year,” he wrote. “At other companies, too, demand is crumbling. In such a situation, companies have a fiduciary duty to bring costs down, and the one surefire way to do that is layoffs. At our company, we’ve had little choice but to lay workers off at all of our plants. Shareholders aren’t suffering — not yet — because the impact is being absorbed first by the very people Trump’s policies are meant to help.”
The education system that helped the United States grow and succeed as a world power is being deliberately and systematically dismantled. He has no substitute in mind, just as he had no substitute in mind all those times when he promised a new healthcare program to replace ACA. Notice that he’s quietly quit saying anything about that.
Trump used to pretend that Democrats and their demonic behavior was documented in the Epstein File. Throughout his campaign to be elected, he kept promising to release that file. Now he claims that file was created by Democrats. Desiring nothing to do with releasing it because of the photos, accusations, and testimony against him existing outside of the file, he’s trying to make the Epstein matter go away.
Ignoring the Constitution’s checks and balances, and the power of the purse given to Congress, he’s again played Congress, refusing to release legally legislated funds, daring them to take him to court again. The general belief is it will be taken to court and will end up before the Roberts Supreme Court. There, if the past is a predictor of what’s to come, Roberts and his right-wing justices, will give Trump another victory, dealing greater damage to our nation and system of government.
As a self-professed ‘man of peace’, Trump has activated national guard units to patrol cities where no patrols are needed, upping the nation’s divisions, increasing tensions, and further polarizing politics. He does this without regard to his promise to lower the deficit. It costs millions to deploy these troops and distracts from real issues. The troops are not needed there because facts and statistics show that crime is down in those cities. Instead, it is Red States and Red Cities, led by Republicans, who are showing the most violent crime.
Is it ironic that Trump and the Red State MAGALand inhabitants are rebuilding a Red State nation that is so similar to the old communist Soviet Union which was featured in so many Republican ‘red scare’ tactics?
In short, Trump is remaking the nation in his graven, greedy, ignorant image. As bad as that is, he’s delusional, irrational, and detached from reality. The gestalt creature which will emerge from this insult to truth, history, facts, and logic, will forever stain the nation’s Founders’ history and intentions.
