Watch now (138 mins) | Left and right populism almost came together many times to oppose globalization. Now that Trump's "reciprocal tariffs" are here, minds have changed. Why? Also "The Pedestrian," by Ray Bradbury
I was just telling an old friend of mine, who’s deep into a Trump-driven rage, that I still remember when the far left hated free trade. Instead of considering how such a change came about, he responded that the anti-WTO push of the 90’s was genuine, while the Trump administration’s policies are just cynical and stupid. Nothing to see here!
There is no argument one can make in these situations, and I’m beginning to wonder if there’s any way to reach people who are this dug in.
Exactly. The globalist elites, which aligns the interests of banking, market manipulators and their enforcers (military, intelligence, police, judicial, etc.), are in control. Their most favored tactic is social disruption. The vast majority of people are busied by arguing over social differences while the globalists pick their pockets.
You’re a historical idiot. Anyone who knows anything about antisemitism should know that ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ is an old antisemitic slur and nthat ‘globalist elite’ is an updated version of that.
I see you’ve still got that grocery bag over your head. I think we can assume you are incapable of removing it by yourself so here’s a tip - one that all of us will be eternally grateful for if you follow.
Not often enough, is this mentioned. The word Jewish should be removed for the purpose of re-assigning ideas and people into categories that have meaning, if at all.
I'd like to see the FBI do some ACTUAL Investigating, do 4 am raids on the media oligarchs (and their underlings), take their emails/texts going back years and get to the bottom of this conspiracy. Yes. There. I said it. Conspiracy. They'd actually be doing some good there. Get some people to roll on their higher ups, etc.
I’ve never heard of anybody even try to find a solution for competing with slave labor overseas, and criminal labor brought into the country by democrats.
Tariffs are simple, elegant, and solve most of the issues involved. Now if we can put a 10000000000000% tariff on karens we’ll all be instantly better off
Bullshit. The islands are under the administration of Australia so it’s not actually possible to incorporate there anyway. Do continue to pretend Trump has a brain though.
“I think there has been a lot of very bad faith criticism and intentional pretend confusion for the sake of fomenting a narrative among people who should know a lot better,” he said. “One example of this is whatever random island that only has penguins on it that people are upset about. Like, ‘Oh, like why do they have a tariff rate for this island with these penguins on it?’
“The answer is because US trade policy is done through a very formal mechanism called the harmonized tariff schedule, which defines the exact set of territory for which you have to have tariff rates and the exact set of products for which you have to have tariff rates. And it's a very granular set of territories and it does have random islands and so forth as entries on the list. And so if you're going to then announce what the tariffs are by territory, you're gonna have something for the islands on the list, right?”
Comparatively speaking, it seems Karen is still ahead of, and building an impressive lead, in the race with Trump for the "idiotic and stupid" title. Way to go Karen!
You know, I really think the American government should NOT be trolling anyone. Government policy should be serious and boring; bullying and mistreating a segment of the population for luls is bad policy. Further, there is exactly zero evidence that anyone in the administration knew anything about Heard and McDonald islands other than from a list of internet addresses.
Seriously, the absolute worst thing about Trumpers is your insistence on defending EVER single idiotic thing he does. Remember ‘Real Men Wear Diapers?’ All the way back to his mocking a disabled reporter and bragging about his dick size in the Republican primary debates in 2016? “Eating the cats?” What sorcery does he use on you to make you defend him no matter how indefensible his actions?
Oh bullshit. I’m not going to learn anything from stupid people and Trump and his supporters are all stupid people.
As for trolling, will you be okay if Democrats start trolling policies? Trolling is nothing more than bullying. Trolls don’t advocate for policy; they want to make their opponents scared or angry or both. It’s designed for nothing but to get a reaction. Government absolutely should never do that.
Look the fuck around you, we're all being trolled and lied to by everyone. You're sadly mistaken if you think one side or the other has your back. But you do you, and I'll sit over here watching you get the vapors while clutching your pearls over shit you can't control.
Grow up. Your attitude is annoying in a 13-year-old and blindingly stupid in anyone old enough to vote. “They’re all lying” is the dumbest kind of cynicism.
I don’t expect anyone I vote for to be my friend. I vote for the person who says they will pursue the policies that are important to me — women’s reproductive freedom and protection of the environment — and if they don’t do that when in office, I vote for someone else the next time. Also, I will never vote for anyone but a Democrat or a Republican because no one from a 3rd party is ever going to win an election in this country.
You would believe drinking cyanide is healthy if Trump told you to drink it. You are a mindless zombie who replaced your own brains with Trump’s orders.
Bullshit. Quit reading cranks and losers. Wolf is just a nutcase. Bhattacharya is an economist with a medical background whose medical research has been conclusively and repeatedly refuted.
No precaution was necessary. Have you looked at the CDC statistics? Of all the people who died of Covid, all but about five or 6% I had an average of four comorbidities on their death certificates. Essentially no healthy people died of Covid. No one with a brain takes an experimental drug to reduce the symptoms of a flu or a cold. (You know these drugs did not prevent infection or transmission.) You were totally duped. Your hatred of Trump blinded you. If Fauci told you to drink cyanide, you would - because you kind of already did. Good luck.
Yeah, that must be why there are so many of us complaining about Trump's obsession with Israel, his bombing of Yemen, & his plans for Canada & Greenland.
Actually, there is quite a bit of independent thinking going on amongst Trump voters. We are not all cultists, and we are not all bursting with adoration over everything he does.
A lot of us are pretty ticked off, if you want the truth.
You voted for him. You have ZERO moral authority to complain about Trump doing EXACTLY WHAT HE PROMISED. He announced that he was going to do every single horrible thing ànd you supported him anyway. You are a liar and a fool.
You’re only beginning to wonder this? If you’ve been listening to this show for a while it’s one of the recurring theme. In fact it was even today’s short story theme. People asleep and comfy in dystopia cannot be woken up by fellow travelers appealing to them with argument. I have given up trying to appeal to very intelligent people. Now we just let this play out and see who wakes up.
Well, I suppose I thought people might come around. My views have changed…a lot! But then again, it was experience that did the changing, not conversation.
That is true, though sometimes the demeanor of those on one side or the other can affect my attitude on various topics.
When an unhinged, shrieking mob is telling me that Elon is a Nazi, I tend to back away slowly, rather than asking for another Molotov cocktail to toss onto the fire.
Isn’t that true in almost every case of the human experience? I can’t see what you see so when you try to explain to me what you see, I can’t render it until I step back. So I tend to still see whatever you’re explaining through my lense because by god it’s my entire reality.
We truly live in the most fascinating times. So for me I will continue to watch the grand reality TV show play out and appreciate what I can learn of myself and my fellow humans along the way. It truly is a fascinating time to be alive.
I find it so hard to give those people their due opportunity to speak their mind, when it's blatantly obvious that many, if not most, are calling for, wishing for, hoping for the failure of their country under Trump. I'm sorry, but I call those people traitors. They would rather see their country fail, rather than succeed under Trump - TRAITORS!
The "far left" hated capitalism and globalized "free trade" was just its latest evolutionary stage back then.
The anti-WTO push was "genuine". It was anti-capitalist, anti-corporate dominance of politics and government, and anti-mainstream political parties and the faux-democracy of liberal electoralism.
The so-called populist right aka MAGA is none of those things and anyone who believes that Elon and Jeff and Mark have "ordinary Americans" in their hearts as they back Trump needs a brain transplant.
Because you can't actually reason with ideologues. The inanities of woke and the inanities of MAGA are perfect complements.
When people are correct you shouldn’t change their opinions. Trump is an evil idiot and opposing every single thing he does is the ONLY moral or intelligent response.
If you feel an imperative to fight everything Trump does, doesn’t that make you highly manipulable? How do you know he’s not doing something cause he wants you to do the opposite?
How is sealing the southern border evil or stupid?
How many third world immigrants do you believe we can absorb, while entire American families are living in their cars, and we're losing tens of thousands to fentanyl overdoses every year?
We need to fix America, before attempting to help the rest of the world, and the best thing we could do for the rest of the world is to stop mucking around in other nations.
Southern border: Texas depends on trade with Mexico. We were, once upon a time, proud of having the largest undefended borders in human history. Sealing the border destroys that trade for exactly zero benefit.
We can absorb many millions of immigrants. Only bigots care about this because you’re a fucking racist who worries a great deal about white people.
We benefitted enormously from being the world’s nicest empire and morons like you intend to trash 90 years of peace and prosperity because you’re very stupid.
I think we need to stop equating the stock market value with the health of the economy.
GDP is misleading as well because it includes trillions in government deficit spending- what I call "borrowed prosperity." Wall Street wanted to expand the ability to do business overseas so that firms could see never ending increases in year over year profits. Corporate leaders who are paid in stock and stock options get richer and richer and US workers lose their jobs to people overseas (or imported labor that would work for less). The Dow was around 10,000 in 2000. It is around 40000 today. Wall Street accomplished its mission. Oh, the debt was $3-4 trillion in 2000, and we had a budget surplus. The debt is $35 trillion plus today and the deficit is $2 trillion annually. Fewer than 20,000 people a year were dying of overdoses, more than 100,000 people are dying a year today. Maybe we should look at how low inflation and unemployment are and how good wage growth is doing for the lower quintiles to determine the health of the economy?
BUT, what are your positions on abortion, trans and gay rights, religion, etc.? These are the burning issues that drive politics (LOL). It's unfortunate that sensical economic positions, such as yours, are overshadowed by the high volume (both in number of references and decibel levels) of manufactured concerns.
I was laughing at the doomsday predictions of the business community. Trump was killing the market. No, the market was taking immense profits, not losses. The stock market is still fine, it’s the country that is in trouble. Your evaluation is spot on.
I forget who it was that said something to the effect of that the position of the stock market at any given time is little more than a barometer of rich peoples' feelings.
Yes, I guess what sparked my comment was I was fully expecting to hear how the economy was being tanked by the tariffs because the stock market is down. Microsoft Bing actually equates the economy with the stock market. If you want to get your 10 points for using Bing to search on the health of the economy, better ask it for stock market info because you won't get your points asking about unemployment or even GDP. Nothing has actually changed to the economy in 2 days. The job numbers were good. The inflation numbers were not horrible. The tariffs might ruin the party for Wall Street but they might do some good for normal Americans. The stock market was at 38,900 exactly one year ago and was at times lower in the last year. It was at 37,466 at the beginning of last year. What awesome positive thing happened between now and three days ago that justified the almost 7500-point runup? I used to say it was "legalized gambling" back before every Tonto, Dick, and Liz Warren had a casino. I actually do have money in the market. I like to invest in stocks the produce profits in the form of dividends where I, as an owner, get to share in the profits rather than wait for a runup in the price of the stock (with or without buybacks) so that the execs can cash in their options.
Really excellent comment in my opinion. Thanks for sharing. Somehow the good sense that most of us believe needs to overwhelm the bad sense that few believe.
GDP is meaningless when it includes non-productive income like rent, investment income and real estate. The financialization of the economy was the beginning of our doom.
I’m reminded of the chart after Trump was elected the first time. Dropped 1200 points. The buying opportunity for the next 6 months. Took off like a rocket.
Just this week I took my back copies of County Highway to our local library and the librarian was very happy to get them. She was aware of the publication but didn't think she could justify it in her budget. Better to get re-read by the locals than used to wrap fish. Keep up the great work you guys.
I watched s short video from China, in which the lady showing the reporter around deliberately jaywalked, then held up her phone to show that the jaywalking fine had already been deducted from her bank. When she arrived at her place of employment, the AI commented on her lack of joy, according to its reading of her facial expressions. This stuff is terrifying, and I don't care how much "efficiency" it provides, the price is way too high.
It's some Black Mirror horror, the Chinese Big Brother tech. I know of a family that were sent back to China, and they did everything they could to get their daughter back to America. She is pretty oblivious, but she saw that if you do not perform at the nth level in the best schools, you will be sent to die as part of the factory sludge that makes the world's cheap products. I suspect that as a late teen, her family saw that she was not bright enough to make it, and did everything to get her to the USA on a student visa.
Hey Matt, unless and until we recognize that we Americans don't have the monopoly of brains and smarts we are digging out our own demise. The Chinese and lots of other countries have lots of smart people around. I have been in the technology space for 30+ years. What they have achieved is simply extraordinary... Your uniformed assessment about their capabilities and culture is astonishingly so jingoistic and detached from reality. "They want to be like us"... Come on Matt. I think Friedman is mostly wrong most of the time but I don't let that assessment cloud my judgement. I think you should push back very hard on his theories but don't let reality and your surprisingly jingoistic tendencies and China phobia cloud your own judgement-- Particularly, if you have no idea about the underlying tech factors involved. BTW, I am a super fan of your writing. I am also a sponsor.
You should listen again. I did not hear Taibbi cast aspersions on Chinese people’s smarts. He cast aspersions on their tyrannical government and some of their tech successes originating from IP theft or infringement. And Friedman is an insufferable pompous elite windbag and tyrant suck up, with zero long term accuracy in his poorly prosed prognostications!
In 2024, China had the highest number of patent applications with 70,160, while the United States had 59,260. Let's stop crying wolf. We need to focus on our capabilities and compete harder. Blaming the "other" for our own problems is not the answer. Let's face it, China is also a technological superpower. Let's acknowledge that and compete harder. Zero-sum thinking is no longer an option. The excuse that China is ahead because of IP theft is no longer credible and detached from reality. "They want to be like us. " . Please, note China's civilization has been around for thousand plus years ... they do not want to be like us. They want to be like them: Chinese.
-Do you dispute that the CCP stole massive amounts of IP from US companies? If so, please let's see your evidence.
- Do you dispute that since the 1970's, China's wealth accrual has come largely from the US Market?
-Do you dispute that The US prevented Japan from conquering China, that the CCP would not exist today, but for US Assistance, and our military defeat of Japan through both our blood and our treasure?
China is an ancient, great civilization. As such, they are keenly aware of history, including relatively recent history.
Militarily, Japan absolutely WOULD HAVE defeated both the nationalist and communist forces. I think that is beyond dispute. China would have become like Vichy France.
Stop with the straw men, CCP Hugo, please. Matt said “props to them” about China’s success and the Tomorrowland that fat feck Friedman bloviates about. And Matt and Walter are quite clear about who is to blame for America’s sad struggles — it ain’t China, it’s our own rotten stinking globalist elites. And also please address the lack of fundamental freedoms in China, the treatment of everyone of their persecuted, from factory workers doing 7 day 15 hour shifts and facing suicide nets if they try to end it, to the Uyghurs… nobody disputed that China is a tech superpower, so it is acknowledged. And I agree, Chinese do not “want to be like us”, another straw man you stand up. Why?
The problem is that Matt and Walter know absolutely nothing about China. It’s sad to listen to for a fan of the show (having lived in China for the last 20 years).
What a sweeping statement, “know nothing about China”! Unlike you, having worked there the last 20 years. Please argue to the points that they made about China to which you disagree, and stop the credentialist generalizations.
Listening to (especially) Walter on China was like listening to a Chinese who’ve never been to the US and loudly argues, that he wouldn’t want to visit on account of all all US inner cities being war-zones and Asian-looking people being certain to be mugged and robbed. That is obviously an absurd lack of proportionality, even if you can recognize that the idea didn’t come from nothing.
Just like in 2025 it is absurd to talk about the terrible smog in China’s largest cities (it used to be true), not to mention indicating that there is anything slave-like about work conditions, much less at Huawei in Shanghai! To mention just a few absurdities from the show among too many flat out ugly untruths and taints to mention.
Either way, I agree with the anti-credentialism and will not try to use my years here to say I am a “China expert”, just like there are obviously many areas where I am preferential to ideas from the West or how society works in my native Denmark.
But people as intelligent as Matt an Walter - and the listeners/readers who frequently add to my enjoyment of Racket - should really consider why they buy every warped negative narrative about China hook, line and sinker, from the very same MSM sources and “deep state” actors they are otherwise pretty well vaccinated against placing undue trust in (on matters closer to their own life, expertise or lived experience).
Friedman is a hilarious cliche, and I have belly-laughed through Matt dissecting his prose over the years. BUT - he is very much right that many people need to get over here and see for themselves. It’s what my job has been telling European businesses for the past many years. People tend to leave for home with their preconceptions pretty well scrambled.
It's worldwide. Not a fan, but mcGregor here in Ireland is getting similar. Says he is running for president. 4 weeks later he in court in a civil trial for rape.
I was overjoyed to hear this. I would have suggested him suing her anyway just to try and get that ruling over-turned - or at least remind everyone what lying SoS our politicians are!
"We are the United States of Amnesia" - Gore Vidal -- Ah, the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle — a moment of rare clarity in an age otherwise consumed by the gluttonous appetites of corporate power. The streets, once the province of idealistic chatter, erupted in the righteous indignation of those who saw their livelihoods evaporate under the glossy promises of globalization. In response to their demands for fair trade, workers' rights, and an end to the endless march of corporate tyranny, they were met with the full force of Clinton’s "goon squads"—riot police as loyal to the capitalists as any feudal knight was to his lord.
It was, of course, no accident that those in power, draped in the fashionable rhetoric of progress, could only respond with the blunt instruments of suppression. The administration, ever faithful to its Wall Street patrons, stood ready to crush any challenge to the sacred dogma of free trade. The protesters, those brave enough to voice the unspeakable truth—that the emperor wears no clothes—were rendered into mere disturbances, their grievances dismissed with the ease of a king swatting at flies.
Seattle became a microcosm of the great American paradox: a democracy where dissent is tolerated, provided it does not stray too far from the narrow confines of acceptable opinion—a democracy, as it were, in the service of commerce, not the common good. The spectacle of rubber bullets and tear gas in the name of "globalization" stood as an unforgiving reminder that in the brave new world of the 90s, power wasn’t just corrupt—it was untouchable, insular, and willing to kill for its comfort. And as always, the little man was left to shoulder the consequence
I love all of the literary references used by Walter and Matt. They have prompted me to read many books and stories that I had neglected to read, and their discussions about them show the relevance of literature beautifully.
I'm good with Tariffs...but...not as a substitute for the morbidly wealthy in this country paying taxes commensurate with their wealth.
We haven't had a national debt over 125% of GDP since 1944, when we increased the top tax rate to confiscatory levels (IE over 90%).
This cannot continue.
We're over 125% Debt/GDP today. We need new tax brackets for the over-$10, 25, 50, 100 million+ crowd. AND YES...Cut the SHIT out of government spending too..
Hilarious that some can't seem to wrap their head around BOTH cutting spending AND taxing the Oligarchs, hedge funds, Fortune 500, etc..
Agreed. As Vivek Chibber has noted, the last time Trump imposed tariffs, the wealthy used the extra money for stock buybacks, not for reindustrializing the US. Trump has no intention of actually making the wealthy do anything because right-wing populism is oxymoronic. It is harnessing nationalist outrage in the interests of the elite (i.e., fascism).
Interesting how these two geniuses, Walt & Matt, can't seem to go there with taxing the rich. It might put a wrinkle in their fairy tale that Trump is some working class hero.
Yes, not the punishment part but constructed properly would bring in more revenue than the current system at much less cost. That should be the goal, forget the punishment part. Look at the bright side, Trump’s tariffs have cost the rich billions in net worth. I’n addition huge tariffs on imports will hit luxury goods and tax the people who buy yachts and 500k cars even more.
Lol. I edited my comment above, and replaced "harmful" with "costly" to emphasize that the point is to get revenue from the people who have the wealth, not punishment.
I haven't looked deeply at the flat tax argument, but given the massive wealth disparity in this country, it seems to me that a flat tax rate that would solve the debt under these current conditions would have to be something like 40%, which would be a gut-punch to people making less than $200 k, but only a slap on the wrist for the Oligarchs.
The high taxes on the rich will only raise revenue if the tax code is completely changed. At the highest levels the rich pay less because they can hide some and invest more in tax free bonds. Municipal bonds pay enough to be profitable. All that does is put more debt on cities and states that will have to be repaid. A fair tax or flat tax would be a great alternative.
The idea of taxes is raising revenue for the necessary running of government not punishing those who make money off bad law. The estate tax is horrendous for property owners.
The obscenely wealthy have most all of the wealth.
They were at this party for the past 50 years.
They need to pay for the party.
I don't see a flat tax achieving that. Do you?
And there is no better place to start than with Billion+ dollar estates, which the inheritors absolutely DID NOT EARN. Of all the places we SHOULD be looking to tax, it would be there.
In a perfect, libertarian, utopian world, I would agree with you 100%
But read the Constition.
The government confiscates wealth.
It is DEFINITIONALLY WHAT THEY DO.
And they've rung up huge debts, which clearly and obviously enriched the wealthiest among us beyond belief. Big party they've had over the past 50-60 years (my entire lifetime) was super fun for the, but now, the party must be paid for, just like we had to pay for WWII and the New Deal.
So the people who HOLD the wealth...who were AT the PARTY need to pay the wealth. Pay for the party.
And much of that debt is OWED TO THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!
I don't shed a tear about Bill Gate's kids taking a major haircut on their unearned billions. Not the Waltons, Not the Rockerfellers, Not the Vanderbilts...NONE OF THEM. Not a fucking tear will I shed as I sit here in my $30,000 shack in the woods with no water/plumbing.
If you have a better idea for solving the national debt, I'm all ears. It ain't going come from Tariffs. Cutting government spending to ZERO won't pay off that debt. Only taxes will.
I fight against the colleges. fight against the Department of Education, both of whom have profited immensely from an unconstitutional, hyper-inflationary loan scam that has conquered and enslaved the states in debt...all FOR THEIR PROFIT.
One of the worst hurt states is North Carolina, btw,, The Department of Education takes more INTEREST/PROFIT out of North Carolina, annually, than their top 5 Exports COMBINED.
You want an EO to cancel student loan debt. Cuz teaching kids they can borrow lots of money and welch on their loans is a great idea. You seem to be some sort of righteous zealot in your mind. Oh those poor kids, taking out hundreds of thousands in loans, too stupid to think about having to pay back.
Borrow money. Pay it back. Or better yet, don’t borrow the money for worthless degrees. Learn a trade.
1. The FIRST thing I fight for is the return of standard, constitutionally enshrined bankruptcy rights to the loans. The Department of Education should have to play by the same rules as every other lender, for every other loan.
2. The taxpayers GOT their money back from the borrowers. The $1.8 Trillion outstanding is almost all PROFIT FOR THE DEPT OF EDUCATION, which they want to use to fund Obamacare, among other things.
3. The lending system is now failed. Catastrophically. Whether you (or I) like it or not, THE LOANS WILL BE CANCELLED. Get used to that fact. It's GOING to happen.
You fight for the colleges. You fight for the Department of Education. Ur no conservative. You should quit claiming to be one.
This is not the appropriate forum for this discussion. If you have a real identity, and don't need to hide behind an anonymouse cover, then by all means let's continue this important debate, publicly, in a more appropriate forum.
I’m sure you know we tax personal Income, not Wealth. People worth billions do not have w-2s each year saying their personal income was billions. Their money is tied up in businesses.
Anyway, would you like to see Elon’s business taxes for 2024? I hear his tab was in the mutli-billions on his many successful businesses. When is enough enough?
Until every fraudulent penny is squeezed out of our government’s budget, I don’t want anyone paying more taxes. The discoveries of waste are astounding. People should go to jail for this, but of course, no one will. Government employees get away will all kinds of fraud, squandering our tax dollars and lining their pockets.
But we never cut spending. We always raise taxes. We always vilify the rich, who, by the way, employ and pay millions of workers. And those evil DOGE billionaires are working for free, exposing the millions getting SS and medicaid fraudulently. Just one of many examples.
Is Elon delivering a product and/or service to the government, like, oh, rescuing astronauts or putting satellites in space so rural people can get internet? $42 billion was allocated to rural internet by Biden, and ZERO people got it. Elon shot up some Starlink satellites and voila! I suppose you think if the rich paid more taxes so DC could have spent $100 billion on rural internet, they would have been successful. Ha!
After WW II?! As in, after the war and FDR’s blow out spending? That was 80 years ago. Ancient history. Since then the government has done nothing but grow and become a wasteful leviathan. Why would anyone ask a single taxpayer to pay more until the government proves it has cut the fraud. This would be like giving another credit card to a spendthrift who promises, promises, this time he will be good. Only suckers do that.
More nonsense. Our current debt began exploding in 1980 when we began cutting taxes on the wealthy/corporations AND spending like drunken sailors...
Do you dispute that? Lol. I hope not because you can't.
Ur fighting for the obscenely wealthy, who've already bankrupted this country, while shrieking bloody murder about the national debt- which FUELED THEIR EMPIRES speaks for itself. Ur a parasite.
Just considering your point. I lived in Seattle during the halcyon years. Liberal place run well. A hotbed of entrepreneurship.
Bezos was selling used books online from his garage. Gates was trying to sell windows. ‘Any of us thought the should be Pella windows. Costco had one store. Nordstrom had 4 and were talking about expanding. There were many other companies that were doing the startup thing, sone successful, more total losers. None of those companies had rich parents who gave them the money to build their businesses. Forgot Starbucks, same story. They made it because they came up with products that people wanted to buy and then they sold the companies to shareholders. The rest is history. The creators made money hand over fist. That was what made them wildly wealthy. Much of that wealth is still in the market, not in the pocket. These companies made thousands of employees rich and they started new companies. That’s why the top executives of these companies are worth so much.
Right, and envious Alan thinks they deserve to be punished. He calls himself a conservative but he sounds like a Marxist to me. From each according to his abilities…into the government coffers of waste, fraud and abuse.
It’s hard to take seriously posters who start a comment with LOL.
Were FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon Marxists?
Or were they just fighting for the preservation and financial solvency of the United States in the common sense manner one would expect after blowing up the national debt?
Please. Ur pathetic. The hysterical marxist labeling thing jumped the shark a few years ago. That dog don't hunt with me, the people mentioned above, or almost anyone anymore. You embarrass yourself throwing it around.
I grew up in Tacoma, just down the road during exactly the same years.
And I can point you to any number of people who fed Gate's fortune with their replaced, lost, well paying secretarial, clerking jobs.
I can point you to thousands of small businesses in that area that no longer exist because they were feeding Bezos' and the Walmart Empire. Those disrupters killed far more jobs than they created.
Have a glance at the Tacoma Mall parking lot the next time you're driving south. It's empty. Half the stores are closed.
You probably didn't notice since all that wealth transferred to Seattle, Redmond, Issaquah, and surrounding areas, which boomed like no others. But that bonanza didn't quite make it down to Tacoma, much less further way in the state and around the country.
And putting all that aside: Fuck those people! They were at the party. We need to pay our national debt worse than at the end of World War II. They have most all the money, so they need to pay most all of the debt.
That logic is quite impossible to foil, no matter how heroic a narrative you might want to wrap around those disrupting nerds who did nothing but write code, not to mention their descendants, who didn't do ANYTHING besides be born. SMH
Strange, you are using a product of that same group of people to make your point. I admit, I bought books from the funky website and shopped at Costco and had a Gateway Computer with Windows 1 or something. I quit the Malls when the kids took over. The Malls killed the neighborhood store. Life goes on.
This isn't about me. Or you. Progress happens. That was never my primary point in the first place.
The national debt is at nationally threatening levels, as is wealth disparity...the likes of which we've never seen. We are poised for 1929 on steroids...We had essentially no national debt in 1929. Today, we're swimming in it.
The party must be paid for. If you were at the party, you need to pay for the party. This is not hard.
What worked in 1944 (cutting spending, raising taxes on the wealthiest) is the most rational, risk-free, well-known, common sense solution we have
If you have another way to get our national debt in order, I'm all ears.
Interesting story by Walter about the people at an Obama fundraiser bidding on defunct mortgages. How anyone can look at Obama fondly I just don’t understand. The slickest of all politicians. A true wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Damn you, Walter, for making me agree with anything Thomas Friedman writes. You, Walter, "need to get out more". Your tropes about polluted Chinese cities, Chinese inability to innovate on their own, etc., ad nauseum are seriously out of date.
I personally think their banter is good. Matt can take care of himself, as can Walter. They are obviously good buddies: at least it looks that way to me. This is not supposed to be cocktail chatter.
It's fine. I think Matt purposefully lets Walter take the lead on ATW. Matt has the written side of Racket News to put his own unfiltered reporting and analysis forward at will, and he does.
Agree 100 %, if these tariffs and/or modification of said tariffs produce a better life for those who have suffered from our leaders poor trade policies I would not be bothered by a 10% loss in the stock market. Tired of Canadian and European friends criticizing us for not having their social programs…wonder why?
Not to mention Europe post WWII, Japan...Heck even China would be speaking Japanese today were it not for our Lend Lease aid during the war (which they never repaid).
And Russia would be speaking German too, come to think of it...again, for loans that they never repaid.
Except the cost, thus far, has been 20% and will be worse if Trump doesn’t declare victory soon, and rescind the tariffs….and the stock market is just the canary in the coal mine….everyone is going to be hurt with these tariffs, and some will lose everything as a result, not just 20% (or wherever the market ends up). The professed benefits of these tariffs will never be seen. The economy will tank and we’ll (people and businesses) be worrying about paying our bills rather than making capital investments in a country with an idiot at the helm.
Oh so negative! We’ve had a slow drift toward economic collapse for years ….however everyone with 401k’s have been happy. My wealthy neighbors see nothing wrong with business as usual. The harm to the everyday working man/woman and future generations is like a slow growing virus…let’s allow the new administration a chance to implement their policies. We all may have to suffer a little to right the ship….and stop watching, reading the doom and gloom news.
If there was any coherence to what they were doing, I would be happy to suffer some pain, however, their strategy makes little sense. They seem to think that there are people sitting around in middle America waiting for jobs sewing shoes together, which shoes will be sold to the Vietnamese for 1/3 of the average annual wage of a Vietnamese worker (assuming that worker has employment anymore). Even if I grant that manufacturing jobs will be coming back to the U.S. as a result (which I don't believe is going to happen in any material amount), (i) no company will be able to build the necessary manufacturing facility within a year or two (by which time, we will be in a world of shit), (ii) no one will be able to afford whatever product is produced if it is being produced by a $50/hr worker (all in cost), and (iii) it is likely that anyone that relocates manufacturing to the US will do so only if they can avoid paying $50/hr workers, and instead use robots. This whole scheme is going to go down in history as the biggest self-inflicted economic wound since the Great Depression. While I watch the news, I have common sense. The impacts of these policies seem as obvious as whether a boy can become a girl. I don't need talking heads to help me form my opinions on this one.
Seems like the liberal drift to globalism, and the tax and spend liberals have won the thoughts of the intelligencia. Since Clinton we have exported jobs and spent our wealth on countries that have better health and welfare since they rely on us for safety. How sad that we have wasted our treasure on the ungrateful Europeans and others that never would support us in the misery that’s created from poor policies to aid China and bankrupt us.
And “temporary” inflation doubling prices, a debt load from interest only equaling the defense budget doesn’t bother you because it was soft pedaled by MSM?
Thanks for your opinion. We can find economists on both sides of this issue. My opinion is based on the Presidents ability to negotiate over time to get better trade deals. I have a rabbit foot for good luck🙂
I was just telling an old friend of mine, who’s deep into a Trump-driven rage, that I still remember when the far left hated free trade. Instead of considering how such a change came about, he responded that the anti-WTO push of the 90’s was genuine, while the Trump administration’s policies are just cynical and stupid. Nothing to see here!
There is no argument one can make in these situations, and I’m beginning to wonder if there’s any way to reach people who are this dug in.
Perfect example of how people who agree on the important stuff can be driven to hate each other by the culture war stuff.
Thanks Mainstream Media!!
Exactly. The globalist elites, which aligns the interests of banking, market manipulators and their enforcers (military, intelligence, police, judicial, etc.), are in control. Their most favored tactic is social disruption. The vast majority of people are busied by arguing over social differences while the globalists pick their pockets.
It's so f-cking obvious. That 90% of the people don't recognize it for what it is is baffling to me. Sigh.
I think people are waking up to it though...at least I hope so.
🤞
Just say ‘Jews.’ We all know what ‘globalist elites’ means so you no longer need to conceal your meaning.
Your comment says WAY more about you than me.
I wasn't thinking that. Truly. I was not.
Why did you interject that?
All that does is freezes, changes, and derails this conversation.
You’re a historical idiot. Anyone who knows anything about antisemitism should know that ‘rootless cosmopolitan’ is an old antisemitic slur and nthat ‘globalist elite’ is an updated version of that.
Nonsense.
You should stop telling people what they mean when they say stuff.
I see you’ve still got that grocery bag over your head. I think we can assume you are incapable of removing it by yourself so here’s a tip - one that all of us will be eternally grateful for if you follow.
The bag is paper. Take a bath.
I don't consider "globalist elites" to mean "Jews."
I don't know how many of those running the WEF or the EU are Jewish, nor do I care.
The oligarchs -- on both sides of the political aisle --are not all Jewish.
This isn't a Jew thing; this is an "us against them" thing.
Israel's undue influence over our government is a whole other issue.
Not often enough, is this mentioned. The word Jewish should be removed for the purpose of re-assigning ideas and people into categories that have meaning, if at all.
There is a world outside your own head. Visit it occasionally.
Yuck. How's that lightbulb coming along by the way?
KAREN
I really need to find my copy of Protocols Elders Zion. It is around here somewhere. That book feels correct.
And they like that too because then you’re not watching them steal your generational wealth from your children.
This substack has good insights into the tactics of resistance/social disruption, a la Gene Sharpe
https://open.substack.com/pub/marisaurgo/p/understanding-resistance-part-1-breaking?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=50k8e
YES
So very yes. I think the culture war issues just need to be met with "I don't care until we fix the economy and crime"
By design...
I'd like to see the FBI do some ACTUAL Investigating, do 4 am raids on the media oligarchs (and their underlings), take their emails/texts going back years and get to the bottom of this conspiracy. Yes. There. I said it. Conspiracy. They'd actually be doing some good there. Get some people to roll on their higher ups, etc.
That's the report I need to read.
Totally and completely.
I was initially skeptical of tariffs, but now that I understand more about them, I believe that reciprocal tariffs are a good idea.
I’ve never heard of anybody even try to find a solution for competing with slave labor overseas, and criminal labor brought into the country by democrats.
Tariffs are simple, elegant, and solve most of the issues involved. Now if we can put a 10000000000000% tariff on karens we’ll all be instantly better off
Those penguins on the Heard and McDonald islands sure had it coming.
Tariffs can be useful. Trump’s tariffs are idiotic and stupid.
It's so no one can incorporate there to avoid tariffs. Take your crayons and go color in the corner.
Bullshit. The islands are under the administration of Australia so it’s not actually possible to incorporate there anyway. Do continue to pretend Trump has a brain though.
In response to the “Penguins on an Island” trope.
“I think there has been a lot of very bad faith criticism and intentional pretend confusion for the sake of fomenting a narrative among people who should know a lot better,” he said. “One example of this is whatever random island that only has penguins on it that people are upset about. Like, ‘Oh, like why do they have a tariff rate for this island with these penguins on it?’
“The answer is because US trade policy is done through a very formal mechanism called the harmonized tariff schedule, which defines the exact set of territory for which you have to have tariff rates and the exact set of products for which you have to have tariff rates. And it's a very granular set of territories and it does have random islands and so forth as entries on the list. And so if you're going to then announce what the tariffs are by territory, you're gonna have something for the islands on the list, right?”
Oren Cass
https://www.public.news/p/oren-cass-its-a-catastrophe-that
If you knew anything which you don’t, you’d know that Ireland is crushing it via american corporations. Garbage bag.
Crushing it? Pretty sure there GDP is about the same as Tennessee, and the average income of their workers is probably less.
Who exactly in Ireland is "crushing it"?
Comparatively speaking, it seems Karen is still ahead of, and building an impressive lead, in the race with Trump for the "idiotic and stupid" title. Way to go Karen!
You make little sense with that. Once again, try to keep up.
He's trolling people like you. And it worked, lol.
You know, I really think the American government should NOT be trolling anyone. Government policy should be serious and boring; bullying and mistreating a segment of the population for luls is bad policy. Further, there is exactly zero evidence that anyone in the administration knew anything about Heard and McDonald islands other than from a list of internet addresses.
Seriously, the absolute worst thing about Trumpers is your insistence on defending EVER single idiotic thing he does. Remember ‘Real Men Wear Diapers?’ All the way back to his mocking a disabled reporter and bragging about his dick size in the Republican primary debates in 2016? “Eating the cats?” What sorcery does he use on you to make you defend him no matter how indefensible his actions?
Trolling is necessary given the pathetic state of journalism. The trolling gets ratings, earned press coverage, and a worsened intellectual response.
You're not learning anything; you're angry. You're not arguing or thinking; you're offended.
Calm down, forget the penguins, (which is genuinely funny), and think about trade.
Oh bullshit. I’m not going to learn anything from stupid people and Trump and his supporters are all stupid people.
As for trolling, will you be okay if Democrats start trolling policies? Trolling is nothing more than bullying. Trolls don’t advocate for policy; they want to make their opponents scared or angry or both. It’s designed for nothing but to get a reaction. Government absolutely should never do that.
Look the fuck around you, we're all being trolled and lied to by everyone. You're sadly mistaken if you think one side or the other has your back. But you do you, and I'll sit over here watching you get the vapors while clutching your pearls over shit you can't control.
Grow up. Your attitude is annoying in a 13-year-old and blindingly stupid in anyone old enough to vote. “They’re all lying” is the dumbest kind of cynicism.
I don’t expect anyone I vote for to be my friend. I vote for the person who says they will pursue the policies that are important to me — women’s reproductive freedom and protection of the environment — and if they don’t do that when in office, I vote for someone else the next time. Also, I will never vote for anyone but a Democrat or a Republican because no one from a 3rd party is ever going to win an election in this country.
You would believe drinking cyanide is healthy if Trump told you to drink it. You are a mindless zombie who replaced your own brains with Trump’s orders.
Says the person who has had every Covid booster for the last 5 years. Lol
Yes, and? I don’t understand why taking sensible precautions against a dangerous illness is bad?
Seriously, you never noticed any negative news about those shots?
For the sake of your own health, please check out some of the writings of Naomi Wolf, or Jay Battacharya, among many others.
The Covid shot is NOT a "sensible precaution" against anything.
Bullshit. Quit reading cranks and losers. Wolf is just a nutcase. Bhattacharya is an economist with a medical background whose medical research has been conclusively and repeatedly refuted.
No precaution was necessary. Have you looked at the CDC statistics? Of all the people who died of Covid, all but about five or 6% I had an average of four comorbidities on their death certificates. Essentially no healthy people died of Covid. No one with a brain takes an experimental drug to reduce the symptoms of a flu or a cold. (You know these drugs did not prevent infection or transmission.) You were totally duped. Your hatred of Trump blinded you. If Fauci told you to drink cyanide, you would - because you kind of already did. Good luck.
Yeah, that must be why there are so many of us complaining about Trump's obsession with Israel, his bombing of Yemen, & his plans for Canada & Greenland.
Actually, there is quite a bit of independent thinking going on amongst Trump voters. We are not all cultists, and we are not all bursting with adoration over everything he does.
A lot of us are pretty ticked off, if you want the truth.
You’ve never uttered one single word of complaint against Trump and you’ver certainly never DONE anything to oppose him. Quit lying
I have consistently blasted Trump on censorship issues (deporting people over Israel protests), and on his unquestioning, endless support of Israel.
I have written to the White House several times over these and other issues.
I actually took part in 2 reopen rallies here in Phoenix during Trump’s first term, as well.
You voted for him. You have ZERO moral authority to complain about Trump doing EXACTLY WHAT HE PROMISED. He announced that he was going to do every single horrible thing ànd you supported him anyway. You are a liar and a fool.
You’re only beginning to wonder this? If you’ve been listening to this show for a while it’s one of the recurring theme. In fact it was even today’s short story theme. People asleep and comfy in dystopia cannot be woken up by fellow travelers appealing to them with argument. I have given up trying to appeal to very intelligent people. Now we just let this play out and see who wakes up.
Well, I suppose I thought people might come around. My views have changed…a lot! But then again, it was experience that did the changing, not conversation.
That is true, though sometimes the demeanor of those on one side or the other can affect my attitude on various topics.
When an unhinged, shrieking mob is telling me that Elon is a Nazi, I tend to back away slowly, rather than asking for another Molotov cocktail to toss onto the fire.
Isn’t that true in almost every case of the human experience? I can’t see what you see so when you try to explain to me what you see, I can’t render it until I step back. So I tend to still see whatever you’re explaining through my lense because by god it’s my entire reality.
We truly live in the most fascinating times. So for me I will continue to watch the grand reality TV show play out and appreciate what I can learn of myself and my fellow humans along the way. It truly is a fascinating time to be alive.
I find it so hard to give those people their due opportunity to speak their mind, when it's blatantly obvious that many, if not most, are calling for, wishing for, hoping for the failure of their country under Trump. I'm sorry, but I call those people traitors. They would rather see their country fail, rather than succeed under Trump - TRAITORS!
Are they even aware of how pathetic and hateful they sound and look 👀?
I don’t think there is. I voted for a result. Fall in love with a result, not the candidate.
Totally convinced it’s best for me to step aside quickly as they come racing by, their eyes glowing red
nope, waste of time. they just needs be defeated.
You don't think you're the one dug in if you can't hear an argument about the difference between the two?
The "far left" hated capitalism and globalized "free trade" was just its latest evolutionary stage back then.
The anti-WTO push was "genuine". It was anti-capitalist, anti-corporate dominance of politics and government, and anti-mainstream political parties and the faux-democracy of liberal electoralism.
The so-called populist right aka MAGA is none of those things and anyone who believes that Elon and Jeff and Mark have "ordinary Americans" in their hearts as they back Trump needs a brain transplant.
Because you can't actually reason with ideologues. The inanities of woke and the inanities of MAGA are perfect complements.
Nope.
When people are correct you shouldn’t change their opinions. Trump is an evil idiot and opposing every single thing he does is the ONLY moral or intelligent response.
If you feel an imperative to fight everything Trump does, doesn’t that make you highly manipulable? How do you know he’s not doing something cause he wants you to do the opposite?
Everything Trump does is both evil and stupid.
How is sealing the southern border evil or stupid?
How many third world immigrants do you believe we can absorb, while entire American families are living in their cars, and we're losing tens of thousands to fentanyl overdoses every year?
We need to fix America, before attempting to help the rest of the world, and the best thing we could do for the rest of the world is to stop mucking around in other nations.
Southern border: Texas depends on trade with Mexico. We were, once upon a time, proud of having the largest undefended borders in human history. Sealing the border destroys that trade for exactly zero benefit.
We can absorb many millions of immigrants. Only bigots care about this because you’re a fucking racist who worries a great deal about white people.
We benefitted enormously from being the world’s nicest empire and morons like you intend to trash 90 years of peace and prosperity because you’re very stupid.
Bwahahahahahahahaha!
Whatever.
That's not intelligent; when Trump does something sensible, like closing the southern border, he should be praised, not opposed.
When, on the other hand, Trump insists on bombing Yemen on behalf of Israel, he should be loudly opposed.
Hyperbolic
I think we need to stop equating the stock market value with the health of the economy.
GDP is misleading as well because it includes trillions in government deficit spending- what I call "borrowed prosperity." Wall Street wanted to expand the ability to do business overseas so that firms could see never ending increases in year over year profits. Corporate leaders who are paid in stock and stock options get richer and richer and US workers lose their jobs to people overseas (or imported labor that would work for less). The Dow was around 10,000 in 2000. It is around 40000 today. Wall Street accomplished its mission. Oh, the debt was $3-4 trillion in 2000, and we had a budget surplus. The debt is $35 trillion plus today and the deficit is $2 trillion annually. Fewer than 20,000 people a year were dying of overdoses, more than 100,000 people are dying a year today. Maybe we should look at how low inflation and unemployment are and how good wage growth is doing for the lower quintiles to determine the health of the economy?
BUT, what are your positions on abortion, trans and gay rights, religion, etc.? These are the burning issues that drive politics (LOL). It's unfortunate that sensical economic positions, such as yours, are overshadowed by the high volume (both in number of references and decibel levels) of manufactured concerns.
Totally agree.
I was laughing at the doomsday predictions of the business community. Trump was killing the market. No, the market was taking immense profits, not losses. The stock market is still fine, it’s the country that is in trouble. Your evaluation is spot on.
The stock market can equate to how the working class is doing...
...wait for it...
...wait for it...
....if we privatize social security in the index funds.
Otherwise it'll always be meaningless w.r.t. the bottom 70-80%
Outside of seeing the stock market down and thinking the CEO is going to demand price offsets by laying people off, of course
We can stop the thieves from stealing our money by giving them all our money!
I forget who it was that said something to the effect of that the position of the stock market at any given time is little more than a barometer of rich peoples' feelings.
Agree. Attempting to analyze the movements of the stock market and equate it to anything meaning is a fools game. It’s like betting on whores.
Yes, I guess what sparked my comment was I was fully expecting to hear how the economy was being tanked by the tariffs because the stock market is down. Microsoft Bing actually equates the economy with the stock market. If you want to get your 10 points for using Bing to search on the health of the economy, better ask it for stock market info because you won't get your points asking about unemployment or even GDP. Nothing has actually changed to the economy in 2 days. The job numbers were good. The inflation numbers were not horrible. The tariffs might ruin the party for Wall Street but they might do some good for normal Americans. The stock market was at 38,900 exactly one year ago and was at times lower in the last year. It was at 37,466 at the beginning of last year. What awesome positive thing happened between now and three days ago that justified the almost 7500-point runup? I used to say it was "legalized gambling" back before every Tonto, Dick, and Liz Warren had a casino. I actually do have money in the market. I like to invest in stocks the produce profits in the form of dividends where I, as an owner, get to share in the profits rather than wait for a runup in the price of the stock (with or without buybacks) so that the execs can cash in their options.
I’m doing the Jim Cramer contra trade. Got the market covered.
Monday should be a banner day - contra Cramer!
Really excellent comment in my opinion. Thanks for sharing. Somehow the good sense that most of us believe needs to overwhelm the bad sense that few believe.
GDP is meaningless when it includes non-productive income like rent, investment income and real estate. The financialization of the economy was the beginning of our doom.
@ktrip
I'm stealing that whole comment, thanks!
I’m reminded of the chart after Trump was elected the first time. Dropped 1200 points. The buying opportunity for the next 6 months. Took off like a rocket.
Just this week I took my back copies of County Highway to our local library and the librarian was very happy to get them. She was aware of the publication but didn't think she could justify it in her budget. Better to get re-read by the locals than used to wrap fish. Keep up the great work you guys.
Great idea!
Enjoyed the discussion on Friedman's article.
That facial recognition software is creepy!
I watched s short video from China, in which the lady showing the reporter around deliberately jaywalked, then held up her phone to show that the jaywalking fine had already been deducted from her bank. When she arrived at her place of employment, the AI commented on her lack of joy, according to its reading of her facial expressions. This stuff is terrifying, and I don't care how much "efficiency" it provides, the price is way too high.
It's some Black Mirror horror, the Chinese Big Brother tech. I know of a family that were sent back to China, and they did everything they could to get their daughter back to America. She is pretty oblivious, but she saw that if you do not perform at the nth level in the best schools, you will be sent to die as part of the factory sludge that makes the world's cheap products. I suspect that as a late teen, her family saw that she was not bright enough to make it, and did everything to get her to the USA on a student visa.
Lack of joy? "A gram is better than a damn!" Mandatory SOMA for you, consumer. Also automatically deducted from your account, surely.
What if you don't have enough in your account to cover your various fines, demerits and prescriptions?
Ralph Nader was and IS RIGHT about damned near everything.
He was the first guy to be cancelled.
His warnings about Plutocracy were spot on. Fuck the Learjet Liberals for trying to ruin him.
He didn't change. The Demorats did.
Demon-crats.
Hey Matt, unless and until we recognize that we Americans don't have the monopoly of brains and smarts we are digging out our own demise. The Chinese and lots of other countries have lots of smart people around. I have been in the technology space for 30+ years. What they have achieved is simply extraordinary... Your uniformed assessment about their capabilities and culture is astonishingly so jingoistic and detached from reality. "They want to be like us"... Come on Matt. I think Friedman is mostly wrong most of the time but I don't let that assessment cloud my judgement. I think you should push back very hard on his theories but don't let reality and your surprisingly jingoistic tendencies and China phobia cloud your own judgement-- Particularly, if you have no idea about the underlying tech factors involved. BTW, I am a super fan of your writing. I am also a sponsor.
You should listen again. I did not hear Taibbi cast aspersions on Chinese people’s smarts. He cast aspersions on their tyrannical government and some of their tech successes originating from IP theft or infringement. And Friedman is an insufferable pompous elite windbag and tyrant suck up, with zero long term accuracy in his poorly prosed prognostications!
In 2024, China had the highest number of patent applications with 70,160, while the United States had 59,260. Let's stop crying wolf. We need to focus on our capabilities and compete harder. Blaming the "other" for our own problems is not the answer. Let's face it, China is also a technological superpower. Let's acknowledge that and compete harder. Zero-sum thinking is no longer an option. The excuse that China is ahead because of IP theft is no longer credible and detached from reality. "They want to be like us. " . Please, note China's civilization has been around for thousand plus years ... they do not want to be like us. They want to be like them: Chinese.
This reads like propaganda.
-Do you dispute that the CCP stole massive amounts of IP from US companies? If so, please let's see your evidence.
- Do you dispute that since the 1970's, China's wealth accrual has come largely from the US Market?
-Do you dispute that The US prevented Japan from conquering China, that the CCP would not exist today, but for US Assistance, and our military defeat of Japan through both our blood and our treasure?
China is an ancient, great civilization. As such, they are keenly aware of history, including relatively recent history.
Where is the gratitude?
- China did steal a ton of IP but that doesnt negate the fact that they have very strong home grown innovation now.
- China's wealth has come from the greed of US corporations exporting jobs and factories to china.
- Japan couldnt have conqured china, it would be like a snake eating an elephant.
Ur not answering most of my questions.
Militarily, Japan absolutely WOULD HAVE defeated both the nationalist and communist forces. I think that is beyond dispute. China would have become like Vichy France.
Stop with the straw men, CCP Hugo, please. Matt said “props to them” about China’s success and the Tomorrowland that fat feck Friedman bloviates about. And Matt and Walter are quite clear about who is to blame for America’s sad struggles — it ain’t China, it’s our own rotten stinking globalist elites. And also please address the lack of fundamental freedoms in China, the treatment of everyone of their persecuted, from factory workers doing 7 day 15 hour shifts and facing suicide nets if they try to end it, to the Uyghurs… nobody disputed that China is a tech superpower, so it is acknowledged. And I agree, Chinese do not “want to be like us”, another straw man you stand up. Why?
The problem is that Matt and Walter know absolutely nothing about China. It’s sad to listen to for a fan of the show (having lived in China for the last 20 years).
What a sweeping statement, “know nothing about China”! Unlike you, having worked there the last 20 years. Please argue to the points that they made about China to which you disagree, and stop the credentialist generalizations.
Listening to (especially) Walter on China was like listening to a Chinese who’ve never been to the US and loudly argues, that he wouldn’t want to visit on account of all all US inner cities being war-zones and Asian-looking people being certain to be mugged and robbed. That is obviously an absurd lack of proportionality, even if you can recognize that the idea didn’t come from nothing.
Just like in 2025 it is absurd to talk about the terrible smog in China’s largest cities (it used to be true), not to mention indicating that there is anything slave-like about work conditions, much less at Huawei in Shanghai! To mention just a few absurdities from the show among too many flat out ugly untruths and taints to mention.
Either way, I agree with the anti-credentialism and will not try to use my years here to say I am a “China expert”, just like there are obviously many areas where I am preferential to ideas from the West or how society works in my native Denmark.
But people as intelligent as Matt an Walter - and the listeners/readers who frequently add to my enjoyment of Racket - should really consider why they buy every warped negative narrative about China hook, line and sinker, from the very same MSM sources and “deep state” actors they are otherwise pretty well vaccinated against placing undue trust in (on matters closer to their own life, expertise or lived experience).
Friedman is a hilarious cliche, and I have belly-laughed through Matt dissecting his prose over the years. BUT - he is very much right that many people need to get over here and see for themselves. It’s what my job has been telling European businesses for the past many years. People tend to leave for home with their preconceptions pretty well scrambled.
Very well said!
You completely missed his point.
Whose point? If you are referring to CCP Hugo, he’s arguing with some straw men he stands up here, rather than what Taibbi and Korn say.
https://www.zerohedge.com/political/matt-taibbi-files-10-million-libel-suit-against-dem-rep-accusing-him-serial-sexual?utm_source=daily_newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=4404
Oh SNAP!!
Matt fights back!!
GOOD!!!!!
This use of sex to destroy and distract by these types of women has to stop.
Right? The pattern (going well beyond just sex) is unmistakable. Once you see it, you can't unsee it...
It's worldwide. Not a fan, but mcGregor here in Ireland is getting similar. Says he is running for president. 4 weeks later he in court in a civil trial for rape.
And then the english actor podcaster political guy. "Him too".
That headline dropped today.
smh
Russell Brand?
Yeah. I saw that.
I read all the charges against Russell Brand last year when this stuff first surfaced, & it looks like a bunch of hogwash.
Plus, 25 years ago? Come on.
And it happens at all levels.
Good luck to "them"! Taibbi is untouchable, in the reputational sense, to those who matter.
YES!
I was overjoyed to hear this. I would have suggested him suing her anyway just to try and get that ruling over-turned - or at least remind everyone what lying SoS our politicians are!
It is getting ridiculous . Look at Russel Brand in the UK and Mc Gregor in Ireland as well.
Apparently getting laid in your youth is now a chargeable offense.
I hope not...😉
lol right?!
"We are the United States of Amnesia" - Gore Vidal -- Ah, the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle — a moment of rare clarity in an age otherwise consumed by the gluttonous appetites of corporate power. The streets, once the province of idealistic chatter, erupted in the righteous indignation of those who saw their livelihoods evaporate under the glossy promises of globalization. In response to their demands for fair trade, workers' rights, and an end to the endless march of corporate tyranny, they were met with the full force of Clinton’s "goon squads"—riot police as loyal to the capitalists as any feudal knight was to his lord.
It was, of course, no accident that those in power, draped in the fashionable rhetoric of progress, could only respond with the blunt instruments of suppression. The administration, ever faithful to its Wall Street patrons, stood ready to crush any challenge to the sacred dogma of free trade. The protesters, those brave enough to voice the unspeakable truth—that the emperor wears no clothes—were rendered into mere disturbances, their grievances dismissed with the ease of a king swatting at flies.
Seattle became a microcosm of the great American paradox: a democracy where dissent is tolerated, provided it does not stray too far from the narrow confines of acceptable opinion—a democracy, as it were, in the service of commerce, not the common good. The spectacle of rubber bullets and tear gas in the name of "globalization" stood as an unforgiving reminder that in the brave new world of the 90s, power wasn’t just corrupt—it was untouchable, insular, and willing to kill for its comfort. And as always, the little man was left to shoulder the consequence
I love all of the literary references used by Walter and Matt. They have prompted me to read many books and stories that I had neglected to read, and their discussions about them show the relevance of literature beautifully.
And it makes me look at reality in a new way, too.
It's really different.
I'm good with Tariffs...but...not as a substitute for the morbidly wealthy in this country paying taxes commensurate with their wealth.
We haven't had a national debt over 125% of GDP since 1944, when we increased the top tax rate to confiscatory levels (IE over 90%).
This cannot continue.
We're over 125% Debt/GDP today. We need new tax brackets for the over-$10, 25, 50, 100 million+ crowd. AND YES...Cut the SHIT out of government spending too..
Hilarious that some can't seem to wrap their head around BOTH cutting spending AND taxing the Oligarchs, hedge funds, Fortune 500, etc..
SMH
Agreed. As Vivek Chibber has noted, the last time Trump imposed tariffs, the wealthy used the extra money for stock buybacks, not for reindustrializing the US. Trump has no intention of actually making the wealthy do anything because right-wing populism is oxymoronic. It is harnessing nationalist outrage in the interests of the elite (i.e., fascism).
I hope you're wrong, but the evidence screams that ur right.
We'll see where our national debt is in two years...that will be a key metric to watch.
Interesting how these two geniuses, Walt & Matt, can't seem to go there with taxing the rich. It might put a wrinkle in their fairy tale that Trump is some working class hero.
Fair point. And I'm not even talking about $10 M-in-assets rich. I'm talking obscenely wealthy.
I'd have kind of thought we'd hear more about that here.
Steve Bannon has been there for months.
https://thehill.com/business/5051716-steve-bannon-tax-increase-wealthy/
Yes, not the punishment part but constructed properly would bring in more revenue than the current system at much less cost. That should be the goal, forget the punishment part. Look at the bright side, Trump’s tariffs have cost the rich billions in net worth. I’n addition huge tariffs on imports will hit luxury goods and tax the people who buy yachts and 500k cars even more.
Lol. I edited my comment above, and replaced "harmful" with "costly" to emphasize that the point is to get revenue from the people who have the wealth, not punishment.
I haven't looked deeply at the flat tax argument, but given the massive wealth disparity in this country, it seems to me that a flat tax rate that would solve the debt under these current conditions would have to be something like 40%, which would be a gut-punch to people making less than $200 k, but only a slap on the wrist for the Oligarchs.
That isn't the way to go.
The high taxes on the rich will only raise revenue if the tax code is completely changed. At the highest levels the rich pay less because they can hide some and invest more in tax free bonds. Municipal bonds pay enough to be profitable. All that does is put more debt on cities and states that will have to be repaid. A fair tax or flat tax would be a great alternative.
I don't see a flat tax as being particularly costly to the obscenely wealthy.
I'd like to see a well thought out wealth tax, the return of a strong estate tax for very large estates, and the removal of the SS Cap....
Or, frankly, a transaction tax on large investment transactions.
All of these should be enacted with strong law that mandates paying down the debt rather than being used for new stupid spending.
The idea of taxes is raising revenue for the necessary running of government not punishing those who make money off bad law. The estate tax is horrendous for property owners.
The obscenely wealthy have most all of the wealth.
They were at this party for the past 50 years.
They need to pay for the party.
I don't see a flat tax achieving that. Do you?
And there is no better place to start than with Billion+ dollar estates, which the inheritors absolutely DID NOT EARN. Of all the places we SHOULD be looking to tax, it would be there.
That is none of our business.
We have no right to let our wasteful, war pig government confiscate the wealth of anyone simply because he dies.
Wealth is not finite.
(I say all this as a poor person, by the way.)
In a perfect, libertarian, utopian world, I would agree with you 100%
But read the Constition.
The government confiscates wealth.
It is DEFINITIONALLY WHAT THEY DO.
And they've rung up huge debts, which clearly and obviously enriched the wealthiest among us beyond belief. Big party they've had over the past 50-60 years (my entire lifetime) was super fun for the, but now, the party must be paid for, just like we had to pay for WWII and the New Deal.
So the people who HOLD the wealth...who were AT the PARTY need to pay the wealth. Pay for the party.
And much of that debt is OWED TO THEM IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!
I don't shed a tear about Bill Gate's kids taking a major haircut on their unearned billions. Not the Waltons, Not the Rockerfellers, Not the Vanderbilts...NONE OF THEM. Not a fucking tear will I shed as I sit here in my $30,000 shack in the woods with no water/plumbing.
Steve Bannon agrees, btw:
https://thehill.com/business/5051716-steve-bannon-tax-increase-wealthy/
If you have a better idea for solving the national debt, I'm all ears. It ain't going come from Tariffs. Cutting government spending to ZERO won't pay off that debt. Only taxes will.
So.
You are motivated by envy that others have more than you. You feel entitled to take what they earned. We will never agree.
Your business appears to be student debt forgiveness. Screwing the lenders—tax payers—is OK with you.
Bye
Please show me where you were protesting the PPP loan giveaway. Did you pay YOUR PPP loan back?
Student loan borrowers HAVE repaid their loans, btw. PPP loan borrowers repaid NOTHING!!
You should learn about the student loan scam before rushing to fight for it, and the Dept of Education and colleges getting obscenely wealthy from it.
Donald Trump knows all about this loan scam. So do many conservatives.
Hear it from Tucker Carlson and the Trump appointee who RAN the federal student loan program.
bit.ly/hearitfromtucker
And turn in that conservative card. You've lost that.
ps. Horseshit to your last comment also.
I fight against the colleges. fight against the Department of Education, both of whom have profited immensely from an unconstitutional, hyper-inflationary loan scam that has conquered and enslaved the states in debt...all FOR THEIR PROFIT.
One of the worst hurt states is North Carolina, btw,, The Department of Education takes more INTEREST/PROFIT out of North Carolina, annually, than their top 5 Exports COMBINED.
https://studentloanjustice.org/uploads/1/3/7/6/137629719/north-carolina-pig-foir-website-1-1_orig.jpeg3
The Department of Education (AKA The Taxpayers) have gotten all their money back from the borrowers. They are fleecing the country.
I fight against them. You fight against me.
Who's the ACTUAL conservative in this conversation?
You should turn in ur conservative card.
You want an EO to cancel student loan debt. Cuz teaching kids they can borrow lots of money and welch on their loans is a great idea. You seem to be some sort of righteous zealot in your mind. Oh those poor kids, taking out hundreds of thousands in loans, too stupid to think about having to pay back.
Borrow money. Pay it back. Or better yet, don’t borrow the money for worthless degrees. Learn a trade.
1. The FIRST thing I fight for is the return of standard, constitutionally enshrined bankruptcy rights to the loans. The Department of Education should have to play by the same rules as every other lender, for every other loan.
2. The taxpayers GOT their money back from the borrowers. The $1.8 Trillion outstanding is almost all PROFIT FOR THE DEPT OF EDUCATION, which they want to use to fund Obamacare, among other things.
3. The lending system is now failed. Catastrophically. Whether you (or I) like it or not, THE LOANS WILL BE CANCELLED. Get used to that fact. It's GOING to happen.
You fight for the colleges. You fight for the Department of Education. Ur no conservative. You should quit claiming to be one.
This is not the appropriate forum for this discussion. If you have a real identity, and don't need to hide behind an anonymouse cover, then by all means let's continue this important debate, publicly, in a more appropriate forum.
Horseshit. As all greed-driven sycophants for the Plutocrats are wont to do, you are mistaking disgust for envy.
You sociopathy has blinded you.
Hear it from Steve Bannon who truly IS a conservative.
https://thehill.com/business/5051716-steve-bannon-tax-increase-wealthy/
I’m sure you know we tax personal Income, not Wealth. People worth billions do not have w-2s each year saying their personal income was billions. Their money is tied up in businesses.
Anyway, would you like to see Elon’s business taxes for 2024? I hear his tab was in the mutli-billions on his many successful businesses. When is enough enough?
Until every fraudulent penny is squeezed out of our government’s budget, I don’t want anyone paying more taxes. The discoveries of waste are astounding. People should go to jail for this, but of course, no one will. Government employees get away will all kinds of fraud, squandering our tax dollars and lining their pockets.
Did I say "income tax"?
And it's disingenuous to say "cut spending first", then we can talk about tax.
That's a bullshit argument based on the false premise that we can't do both at the same time..
When is enough enough? When the national debt is back to rational levels, like it was in 1980.
And kissing Elon Musk's ass is also not impressive. He built his empire on taxpayer subsidies.
Steve Bannon agrees, btw.
But we never cut spending. We always raise taxes. We always vilify the rich, who, by the way, employ and pay millions of workers. And those evil DOGE billionaires are working for free, exposing the millions getting SS and medicaid fraudulently. Just one of many examples.
Is Elon delivering a product and/or service to the government, like, oh, rescuing astronauts or putting satellites in space so rural people can get internet? $42 billion was allocated to rural internet by Biden, and ZERO people got it. Elon shot up some Starlink satellites and voila! I suppose you think if the rich paid more taxes so DC could have spent $100 billion on rural internet, they would have been successful. Ha!
Nonsense. After WWII, we cut spending hugely AND raised taxes. Both. At the same time. How did that work out?
Pretending it's a binary choice is stupid and unhelpful.
And attempting to mis-characterize me as a democrat is also childish and insulting.
After WW II?! As in, after the war and FDR’s blow out spending? That was 80 years ago. Ancient history. Since then the government has done nothing but grow and become a wasteful leviathan. Why would anyone ask a single taxpayer to pay more until the government proves it has cut the fraud. This would be like giving another credit card to a spendthrift who promises, promises, this time he will be good. Only suckers do that.
More nonsense. Our current debt began exploding in 1980 when we began cutting taxes on the wealthy/corporations AND spending like drunken sailors...
Do you dispute that? Lol. I hope not because you can't.
Ur fighting for the obscenely wealthy, who've already bankrupted this country, while shrieking bloody murder about the national debt- which FUELED THEIR EMPIRES speaks for itself. Ur a parasite.
And History Repeats.
I don't disagree in theory but wouldn't these people just leave to somewhere they wouldn't be taxed as heavily?
Exactly
Just considering your point. I lived in Seattle during the halcyon years. Liberal place run well. A hotbed of entrepreneurship.
Bezos was selling used books online from his garage. Gates was trying to sell windows. ‘Any of us thought the should be Pella windows. Costco had one store. Nordstrom had 4 and were talking about expanding. There were many other companies that were doing the startup thing, sone successful, more total losers. None of those companies had rich parents who gave them the money to build their businesses. Forgot Starbucks, same story. They made it because they came up with products that people wanted to buy and then they sold the companies to shareholders. The rest is history. The creators made money hand over fist. That was what made them wildly wealthy. Much of that wealth is still in the market, not in the pocket. These companies made thousands of employees rich and they started new companies. That’s why the top executives of these companies are worth so much.
Right, and envious Alan thinks they deserve to be punished. He calls himself a conservative but he sounds like a Marxist to me. From each according to his abilities…into the government coffers of waste, fraud and abuse.
It’s hard to take seriously posters who start a comment with LOL.
Lol. There she goes again, conflating disgust with envy. LOL.
Let me ask you:
Is Steve Bannon a Marxist?
https://thehill.com/business/5051716-steve-bannon-tax-increase-wealthy/
Were FDR, Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon Marxists?
Or were they just fighting for the preservation and financial solvency of the United States in the common sense manner one would expect after blowing up the national debt?
Please. Ur pathetic. The hysterical marxist labeling thing jumped the shark a few years ago. That dog don't hunt with me, the people mentioned above, or almost anyone anymore. You embarrass yourself throwing it around.
I can see why you don't use a real name here.
I grew up in Tacoma, just down the road during exactly the same years.
And I can point you to any number of people who fed Gate's fortune with their replaced, lost, well paying secretarial, clerking jobs.
I can point you to thousands of small businesses in that area that no longer exist because they were feeding Bezos' and the Walmart Empire. Those disrupters killed far more jobs than they created.
Have a glance at the Tacoma Mall parking lot the next time you're driving south. It's empty. Half the stores are closed.
You probably didn't notice since all that wealth transferred to Seattle, Redmond, Issaquah, and surrounding areas, which boomed like no others. But that bonanza didn't quite make it down to Tacoma, much less further way in the state and around the country.
And putting all that aside: Fuck those people! They were at the party. We need to pay our national debt worse than at the end of World War II. They have most all the money, so they need to pay most all of the debt.
That logic is quite impossible to foil, no matter how heroic a narrative you might want to wrap around those disrupting nerds who did nothing but write code, not to mention their descendants, who didn't do ANYTHING besides be born. SMH
Strange, you are using a product of that same group of people to make your point. I admit, I bought books from the funky website and shopped at Costco and had a Gateway Computer with Windows 1 or something. I quit the Malls when the kids took over. The Malls killed the neighborhood store. Life goes on.
This isn't about me. Or you. Progress happens. That was never my primary point in the first place.
The national debt is at nationally threatening levels, as is wealth disparity...the likes of which we've never seen. We are poised for 1929 on steroids...We had essentially no national debt in 1929. Today, we're swimming in it.
The party must be paid for. If you were at the party, you need to pay for the party. This is not hard.
What worked in 1944 (cutting spending, raising taxes on the wealthiest) is the most rational, risk-free, well-known, common sense solution we have
If you have another way to get our national debt in order, I'm all ears.
The Financial mafia bought the Clinton family and used their left wing standing to take down the middle class!
Exactly.
The Limousine Liberas have captured the Democratic Party....They have a death grip on it today.
Learjet Liberals.
LOVE THAT.
Stealing it.
You should trademark that!!!
Can't take credit for that; I heard/read it someplace else.
Interesting story by Walter about the people at an Obama fundraiser bidding on defunct mortgages. How anyone can look at Obama fondly I just don’t understand. The slickest of all politicians. A true wolf in sheep’s clothing.
Wasn’t Valerie Jarrett big in Chicago real estate?
Damn you, Walter, for making me agree with anything Thomas Friedman writes. You, Walter, "need to get out more". Your tropes about polluted Chinese cities, Chinese inability to innovate on their own, etc., ad nauseum are seriously out of date.
But he knows a guy in whatever town you reference. He is the kind of turd normal people avoid at a party
We ought to make a drinking game about America This Week:
Every time Walter interrupts Matt, take a drink.
Every time Walter interrupts Matt, ignores his point, and takes the conversation in a completely different direction, take 2 drinks.
I don't know about anyone else but I'd be blind in less than an hour...😂
I personally think their banter is good. Matt can take care of himself, as can Walter. They are obviously good buddies: at least it looks that way to me. This is not supposed to be cocktail chatter.
You are so on point about Walter. He’s so obnoxious.
I wouldn’t say obnoxious…I like what he has to say, but I also want to hear from Matt.
I would probably have a great time talking to Walter; he obviously has a lot of ideas running around in his head and is eager to get them out.
It's fine. I think Matt purposefully lets Walter take the lead on ATW. Matt has the written side of Racket News to put his own unfiltered reporting and analysis forward at will, and he does.
Agree 100 %, if these tariffs and/or modification of said tariffs produce a better life for those who have suffered from our leaders poor trade policies I would not be bothered by a 10% loss in the stock market. Tired of Canadian and European friends criticizing us for not having their social programs…wonder why?
Maybe because they funded their cushy lifestyle while we paid for their defense?
Not to mention Europe post WWII, Japan...Heck even China would be speaking Japanese today were it not for our Lend Lease aid during the war (which they never repaid).
And Russia would be speaking German too, come to think of it...again, for loans that they never repaid.
Except the cost, thus far, has been 20% and will be worse if Trump doesn’t declare victory soon, and rescind the tariffs….and the stock market is just the canary in the coal mine….everyone is going to be hurt with these tariffs, and some will lose everything as a result, not just 20% (or wherever the market ends up). The professed benefits of these tariffs will never be seen. The economy will tank and we’ll (people and businesses) be worrying about paying our bills rather than making capital investments in a country with an idiot at the helm.
Oh so negative! We’ve had a slow drift toward economic collapse for years ….however everyone with 401k’s have been happy. My wealthy neighbors see nothing wrong with business as usual. The harm to the everyday working man/woman and future generations is like a slow growing virus…let’s allow the new administration a chance to implement their policies. We all may have to suffer a little to right the ship….and stop watching, reading the doom and gloom news.
If there was any coherence to what they were doing, I would be happy to suffer some pain, however, their strategy makes little sense. They seem to think that there are people sitting around in middle America waiting for jobs sewing shoes together, which shoes will be sold to the Vietnamese for 1/3 of the average annual wage of a Vietnamese worker (assuming that worker has employment anymore). Even if I grant that manufacturing jobs will be coming back to the U.S. as a result (which I don't believe is going to happen in any material amount), (i) no company will be able to build the necessary manufacturing facility within a year or two (by which time, we will be in a world of shit), (ii) no one will be able to afford whatever product is produced if it is being produced by a $50/hr worker (all in cost), and (iii) it is likely that anyone that relocates manufacturing to the US will do so only if they can avoid paying $50/hr workers, and instead use robots. This whole scheme is going to go down in history as the biggest self-inflicted economic wound since the Great Depression. While I watch the news, I have common sense. The impacts of these policies seem as obvious as whether a boy can become a girl. I don't need talking heads to help me form my opinions on this one.
Seems like the liberal drift to globalism, and the tax and spend liberals have won the thoughts of the intelligencia. Since Clinton we have exported jobs and spent our wealth on countries that have better health and welfare since they rely on us for safety. How sad that we have wasted our treasure on the ungrateful Europeans and others that never would support us in the misery that’s created from poor policies to aid China and bankrupt us.
I'm sympathetic to your sentiments, but this is not the way to effectively rearrange the world order.
And “temporary” inflation doubling prices, a debt load from interest only equaling the defense budget doesn’t bother you because it was soft pedaled by MSM?
Thanks for your opinion. We can find economists on both sides of this issue. My opinion is based on the Presidents ability to negotiate over time to get better trade deals. I have a rabbit foot for good luck🙂
Warren Buffett's (recently expired) #2 (Charlie Munger) was envious and jealous of China's authoritarian country/economy.
I'm sure most of Wall Street is.
They would love to preside over a nation of slaves.
Being the whores that Wall Street represents
It’s where the Capitalist’s Paradise and the Worker’s Paradise converge.
ROTFL on the second bit.