A couple things:
1). I lowkey expect Coachella to have a pretty good % pretentious rich folk (Trust Fund Babies) who this ain’t gonna resonate with from an old white dude.
2). I kinda would have expected AOC instead of Bernie to maybe connect with the younger folk better? But the article says she’s trying to reach Neil Young fans? Why aren’t these roles reversed?
Maybe I have bought into the propaganda, but am willing to learn more. If we’re pouring Trillions from our National Budget into paying down the ever-growing Federal Debt, where’s the tipping point for the dollars value?
This debt has been ever-growing, by the +5 trillion pretty much every administration, and American prosperity has been on a decline (maybe not for you, but the city I’m sitting in feels it). If we’re not going to tax Billionaires (which we fucking should, by a lot) then what’s the next best thing to bring better prosperity to the American Working Class?
Finally, what do you feel is America’s primary economic concern?
I’m not a Republican, but I’ll bite.
The U.S. is kinda in a bad spot right now. Not just politically but economically as well. Our National Debt is the highest it’s ever been. While I’m 100% for taxing Billionaires and their Trillion dollars companies more, by like, a lot, the Billionaires of course don’t want that. So they’re trying to cut what they can and wheel and deal. Why support Climate Change (French EU thing, I don’t remember) acts when you can [pocket the money] use that to pay down debt? The War in Ukraine has unfortunately been drawn out too long for us to stay financially invested in it. Our allies across the sea won’t be able to help our country balance our debt when they have Ukraine to worry about as well. So they’ve decided to put pressure on every external source of revenue while cutting what they can without getting lynched.
Let’s talk about Canada and Mexico, but first, a bit of H I S T O R Y. Back in the 90s or 00s the Clinton Administration implemented NAFTA. The agreement sounded good on paper: Strength our border countries. Lifts us all up by giving all the countries jobs, more opportunity, more demand. While outsourcing our manual labor we can focus on the future: Technology! Hindsight is 20/20 though. Why not move our business to a country where we pay lower wages and will end up with higher profits for future investments (like yachts)? Why not get cheaper parts instead of paying the U.S. prices? A ton of manual labor jobs were lost, and many cities (car manufacturing cities, steel cities, etc.) simply never recovered. NAFTA stayed in place more or less until Trump Trumped it into the USMCA in 2020. That gets renegotiated in 2026 with all 3 countries either coming to an agreement or dissolving the agreement.
From all accounts, NAFTA certainly seemed harmful to the American industry at the time, but can that industry recover, and should it? Personally, I don’t think so, but they seem to think so. So, from my point of view, the reason they’re alienating allies is to extort them for money to help pay down the National Debt and hopefully grow back American industries lost over 2 decades ago.
We really need to tax the mega rich. I compiled this list of numbers after the President speech last night, it’s kinda wild:
$ 99,000 - National Median Income is less than $100 thousand.
$ 1,000,000 - 1 Million Dollars.
$ 485,000,000 - Cut Funds to International Relations and whatever.
$ 1,000,000,000 - 1 Billion Dollars. There are over 400 Billionaires in America.
$ 22,000,000,000 - Cut Funds to American Social Serivces through HHS (Human & Health Services).
$ 244,000,000,000 - Elon Musks Net Worth.
$ 1,620,000,000,000 - 1 Trillion Dollars - Meta (Facebooks) Corporate Net Worth.
$19,900,000,000,000 - The U.S. National Debt in Jan 2017 (Obama to Trump)
$27,800,000,000,000 - The U.S. National Debt in Jan 2021 (Trump to Biden)
$36,000,000,000,000 - The U.S. National Debt in Jan 2025 (Biden to Trump)
I think it’s all theater to win over all the rightwing folx that he cultivated during this tour. These are the folx that are gonna be hurt the most from this bill and are just ignorant enough to buy a Tesla out of some weird culty appreciation. Mans trying to salvage a lagging brand.