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That's what you get when you elect an unqualified, uneducated, unsophisticated pathological narcissist real estate agent to be your president. How the American people can sit idly by while one unhinged buffoon single-handedly destroys their economy and sends the global economy down the toilet is unfathomable to me as an outsider, watching this chaos from 10000 km away. But now it's personal. My retirement funds are tanking and the Australian dollar is rapidly falling against foreign currencies, affecting my up-coming trip to Japan and China. It's by no means the end of the world for me - I'll survive.  But many are now facing a dreary retirement after working all those years. For fucks sake, what further proof do magats need that Trump couldn't give a shit about them?    

You never know, Peter. Maybe she was.

To Fucknaway & EmmettK just a gentle nudge to reflect: When you cast that ballot, was it for the cost of living to come down “on day one”… or for inflation to keep sliding like it already was? Was it for the “rule of law,” or for a president who now pardons violent rioters he once claimed he wouldn’t?   As your retirement accounts spiral—worse than during COVID—thanks to Trump-triggered tariffs every economist warned against, and with new car prices set to jump $3,000–$5,000, do you feel this is what you signed up for?   Dotard promised economic greatness. Instead, we got a self-inflicted recession. He promised law and order. Instead, he rewards lawlessness. And while the nation struggles, what’s Trump doing? Not meeting with economists. Not proposing solutions. He's golfing.  

Thank you for a fascinating investigation of the real issues. In the late 1980s I read what was then a new book by the Yale University economist Paul Kennedy. "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers : Economic Change and Military Conflict from 1500 To 2000" looked in detail at which countries had been "great" powers during that time and the reasons why they ceased being "great". Kennedy's essential premise was that as any country becomes larger and larger, particularly through colonialism and military might, it has invariably found the cost of that military might becomes too great for the country to afford through taxation of its people and those in its overseas colonies. Military overstretch is the term he uses. As other countries have developed their own military strength, so then has it become necessary for the "great" power to continue to invest more and more of its tax revenues in new and more modern military equipment. "Great" is not a given. It is a term relative to what other countries are doing or are capable of doing. Only if the overall tax revenues increase can the country continue at the top of the international tree, as it were. With the USA having reduced its relative tax revenues over the years by not taxing the rich at the levels paid by ordinary folk and yet at the same time devoting more and more funds to increasing the size, capability and international reach of its armed forces, Kennedy concludes that its term as a great power must inevitably wane. The fact is that the USA's national debt has increased massively since 1960. Only during President Clinton's Presidency did it fall significantly, particularly during the last four years of his term in office when the USA's GDP was actually in surplus. In those years the deficit to GDP ratio also fell to under zero. Instead of building on that, one of George Bush II's first actions was to give away - mostly to the already rich - all the savings under Clinton. Trump 1's final year in office showed a more than tripling of the debt and a similar increase in the debt to GDP ratio (although in fairness it has to be pointed out that this was the first year of covid).  In the fiscal year 2024 (i.e. the year ending September 30), the US government spent $1.18 trillion more than it received in revenues. The country's national debt then stood at $35.46 trillion, or 125% of GDP. That amounts to $271,577 of debt for every tax payer and that debt has to be serviced through issuing government bonds. (The figures just quoted are from the US Monthly Treasury Statements). In October 2024, Maya MacGuineas, president of the [non-profit group] Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget, said that is equal to borrowing about $5 billion a day . . . We’re borrowing nearly double the amount we borrowed annually before the pandemic, and this is projected to grow indefinitely,” she said. “This is no way to run a country. In fact, the way we have been running the country is we don’t pass budgets; we don’t pay for new policies; we don’t address our major entitlement programs, which are facing insolvency; and we tolerate the two major presidential candidates competing over who can promise to give away more.” Kennedy's book has some flaws, but not many. For example, he failed to predict the end of the USSR, as did most economists of the day, but does outline the huge problems it faced. In general, though, his analyses are spot on! If the USA is effectively to reduce its National Debt, its existing military outreach has to be addressed. Were that to happen, it would be a much greater shock to the world than any number of tariffs. In our part of the world alone, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan would just be some of the countries to become massively concerned! It really would be a great service if Kennedy could update his book to cope with modern day realities.

This.