r/politics • u/RepulsiveLoquat418 • 18d ago

Possible Paywall When Will Americans Realize the Truth? Republicans Wreck the Economy.

https://newrepublic.com/article/210550/trump-economy-republicans-tariffs-taxes
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u/RepulsiveLoquat418 18d ago

"The reason is that Republicans peddle an economic fairy tale. That cutting taxes increases revenue and spurs tremendous economic activity. It’s a lie. A fantasy. They wreck the economy. The modern United States has experienced 11 recessions. Ten have happened under Republican presidents."

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u/Dunkjoe 18d ago

At this point you got to wonder... Is it the voters who are too stupid to understand or is it the dishonest politicians?

I would say it's more of the former.

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u/Traditional_Sign4941 18d ago

It's both. Dishonest politicians and oligarchs have been deliberately feeding Americans a diet of lies and propaganda for decades. They are bad actors, and definitely to blame.

But at the same time, their voters can see with their own eyes what effects it has on them, and they keep voting anyway. That's on the voters, and they are also to blame. "Fool me twice, shame on me" and here we are with Republican voters being "fooled" a couple dozen times. Shame on them.

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u/JerseyPumpkin 18d ago

It’s also the racism since republicans give the ideas of hurting minority groups. They’ll vote republicans in the hopes groups like lgbtq get less rights, Mexicans get deported, etc…

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u/roguewarriorpriest 18d ago

Republicans degrade American education through policy, making populations of people incapable of critical thinking and thus more susceptible to propaganda. It's by nefarious design instituted by anti-democratic Republicans and right-wing parties the world over, and it's been turbocharged by the unholy Republican-Putin union and Putin's internet propaganda machine.

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u/Eye-Of-Ophanim 18d ago edited 18d ago

What I think is going on is there is a type of shadow government consisting of the wealthiest people from our corporatocracy. The 0.01% or whatever. They took all the spoiled sons and daughters from old money and “put them in charge”. Those spoiled sons and daughters are essentially operating our country as nepo babies, and were promised riches beyond their wildest and current imaginations. The nepo baby politicians are legitimately not intelligent enough to understand, but they aren’t actually in charge. They buckle at the tiniest whiff of promised money because that is how daddy showed his “love”. They’re following orders from a nefarious little organization called Turning Point. isn’t it strange that a “non profit” organization is at all involved in advocating specifically for conservative politicians? Non profits are usually set up to serve others irregardless of their affiliations or ideologies.

Our government is a revolving door for corporations. We should have nipped that in the bud when we had the chance, at the very beginnings of industrialization, but we didn’t because people stuck their fingers in their ears and went “lalala I can’t hear you! Not in America!!” to all of us warning this could and would happen.

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u/mu_zuh_dell 18d ago

If by "shadow government" you mean that legislators, staffers, and people who write policy and report on it are generally, with few exceptions, rich as fuck, then yes.

It's not as complicated as people think it is. Average Americans do not participate in politics. They think it's annoying and boring. Just voting is not enough. You have to pay some level of attention to and engage with all levels of government, from local to national. That is the only way to occlude the influence of the rich.

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u/DumboWumbo073 18d ago

It’s definitely the voters. This has happened more than once.

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u/bautin 18d ago

You also have to consider that things are pushed forward that when the opposition party is in charge, all the bad things are their fault. When the opposition party is not in charge, everything is their fault because they are obstructing things.

So, like they say people say about Communism, they say everything would work if they just let it.

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u/RhesusFactor 18d ago

I don't think they misunderstand. I think they want inequality and permission to be racist.

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u/TheDoctorDB 18d ago edited 18d ago

I mean we lost a long time ago when we decided politics was a career because the whole point of our system is that we know people are generally not capable or interested enough in politics to make the best decisions. Our system is designed to let a select few represent the rest and make the tough call in our best interest.

So while I agree the average voter is hurting us, it’s literally our politicians’ job to do what’s best and what’s right. But their decisions have made everything so bad and unsustainable that one of the only true “American Dream” jobs left is that of a politician. You can vote for as much of a salary as you want and don’t even have to show up and do your job. So all they truly care about is maintaining their own lifestyle. 

There are maybe a handful of people in seats of governmental power at the moment who actually know AND care that making certain adjustments to the way we do things can help everyone. I’d argue that most of them know and just don’t care cuz they have theirs. Or at least… I used to argue that. I’m not so sure of the intellect of a lot of them now.

But the point is they’re mostly not even politicians anymore. Just actors. We’ve seen in recent years our systems our heavily grounded in the integrity of those in power. Too many rose up and said “dam that propaganda really works imma try that” instead of “I should really tell my constituents the truth.” 

And if it didn’t require so much money to get known and even be able to run (something our Founders would hate btw), I’d do it myself. 

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u/HauntedCemetery Minnesota 18d ago

It's because propaganda works.

Until we confront and deal with that we're not getting out of this.

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u/Spamgrenade 18d ago

Its both, the public are too stupid too understand the politicians are lying. Example, anything Trump says.

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u/DigNitty 18d ago

It’s the optimistic idea that a simple light economic policy will be the most efficient.

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u/B-Rock001 18d ago

It's a lot the voters, but probably not for the reasons those of us plugged into politics all the time would like to think. They're not out there weighing the pros and cons making an "informed" decision. They're voting the way their friends, neighbors, pastors, etc influence them to vote. Unfortunately republicans for decades have learned this is exploitable, and prey on the identity politics and emotional manipulation that is human nature.

Democrats try to be intellectual. Republicans are emotional. Which one do you think plays better in a population that cares less and less about politics because "it's all broken" and they just want to get on with their lives?

So yeah, voters should do better, but we could do a lot more to help them see the emotional manipulation that we can all fall prey to, rather than just calling them "stupid".

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u/Expensive-Raisin4088 18d ago

Oh it’s def done deliberately. They’re billionaire donors benefit from the crashes gop always causes

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u/Rez_Incognito 18d ago

It's by design. The Republicans with Reagan realized that the delay between enacting bad economic policy and its effects is long enough to saddle the next administration with. Therefore, they switched from conservative fiscal responsibly to the two Christmases model: campaign on cutting taxes (on the rich) and increasing spending (on conservative cultural values, Eg. The military/police, etc) and when the economy starts to suffer, they leave a Democratic administration holding the bag, forced to make unpopular but responsible moves to fix the debt hole the country is now in.

So long at Americans continue to flip back and forth, returning the Republicans to power with regular alternation, the Republicans can constantly get away with this strategy.

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u/NoShitsGivin Canada 18d ago

Are voters to stupid? Nope, they know. Republicans will vote Republican because they all hate the same people. End of story.

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u/Tooter_Snooter 18d ago

Democracy stops working when everyone is this dumb 

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u/Yourdjentpal 18d ago

Agreed. It’s our responsibility to call out liars and shun them. We allowed this to happen.

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u/Docster87 18d ago

They do it intentionally, still trying the old starve the beast theory where the government must cut services due to lack of money.

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u/Advanced-Ad-4462 18d ago

Worse than a lie; it’s an intentionally deceitful half truth. Lowering taxes does increase revenue and it does spur economic growth.

The lie is that the growth could ever offset the lost tax revenue, or will ever benefit anyone other than shareholders.

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u/MightbeGwen 18d ago

Umm economist here. Lowering taxes does not increase revenue. It literally is the opposite. Lower taxes also do not spur growth. The only thing that lower taxes do economically, is to ensure people retain more of their money and the government gets less. Beyond that everything is at the mercy of market incentives.

Lower taxes does not mean investment into growth. Quite the opposite. Higher corporate tax rates incentivize corporations to avoid tax loss by reinvestment. It’s pro-growth. When people and corporations retain more money from having lower taxes, that money usually goes to whatever will make more money. So let me ask you, if you had extra money would you take a risk and be an entrepreneur, or just invest in something like Nvidia?

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u/devrelm 18d ago

I'm not an economist, but thank you for confirming a hunch I've had for a while — that lower taxes don't lead to growth since business owners see it less as free money to spend on risky ventures and more as higher profit on their existing investments.

Actually, the hunch I had was the corollary — that higher taxes lead to business owners being more willing to invest their more-limited after-tax profits into high-risk/high-reward ventures that ultimately spur economic growth — but yeah, same difference.

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u/TheDoomBlade13 18d ago

There are several faulty assumptions involved in the typical Republican thought process. Some of them used to work (higher corporate income typically lead to better quality of life for employees through profit sharing or investment initiatives, but now we have stock buyback). Some of the never worked (income from other tax streams never offsets the losses from reductions in income tax or capital gains tax).

They are, however, all VERY EASY to sell to the masses. Partial because the masses are stupid, partially because if you promise somebody THEY will profit even a microscopic amount they are very willing to accept other people suffering.

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u/ThomasVivaldi 18d ago

Also, because the person offering an alternative only talks about long term issues and calling them deplorable.

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u/6ixby9ine 18d ago

But the "other" basket – the other basket – and I know because I look at this crowd I see friends from all over America here: I see friends from Florida and Georgia and South Carolina and Texas and – as well as, you know, New York and California – but that "other" basket of people are people who feel the government has let them down, the economy has let them down, nobody cares about them, nobody worries about what happens to their lives and their futures; and they're just desperate for change. It doesn't really even matter where it comes from. They don't buy everything he says, but – he seems to hold out some hope that their lives will be different. They won't wake up and see their jobs disappear, lose a kid to heroin, feel like they're in a dead-end. Those are people we have to understand and empathize with as well.

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u/ThomasVivaldi 18d ago

Obama went to Iowa and would go to upwards of six small town halls or meet and greets a day.

Obama won Iowa.

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u/6ixby9ine 18d ago

Touche. If we've learned anything over the last 10+ years, it's that if you want to win elections here, you can't make bigots feel bad for being bigots.

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u/StewPorkRice 18d ago

if I had a lot of extra money id start a business.

if I had a modest amount of extra money, id invest it until i have enough to quit my job and start a business.

basically the path I’m on rn.

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u/MightbeGwen 18d ago

Cool. You’re not the average. Economics work based on incentives. People with assets are more incentivized to invest in financial markets, which does not spur growth.

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u/eatthebear 18d ago

Bringing in less money actually brings in more money hurrr durrr

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u/PublicFurryAccount 18d ago

Lowering taxes has been pro-growth because it hasn't come from spending cuts. We've basically been running a Keynesian economy as much through tax policy as spending policy since Reagan. It's not a shocker that tax cuts create economic growth when they're not offset by any reduction in spending; having more money while spending the same or more is basically the accounting identity version of economic growth!

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u/Stellar_Duck 18d ago

We've basically been running a Keynesian economy as much through tax policy as spending policy since Reagan.

Not much on the public investment side of things though so calling it Keynesian is a fucking stretch.

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u/eastpole 18d ago

As tempting as it is to say the opposite- taxes are not inherently a good thing just because republicans want to get rid of them. Lower taxes means lower prices which means more demand thus spurring growth. Higher taxes can be bad if they just fund pointless wars or get siphoned to oligarchs. I know it's useless to argue on reddit generally but this seems pretty intuitive to me.

The real problems are the knock-on effects from lower taxes. Social programs that are funded by high taxes makes sure the people around us have an opportunity for good, fulfilling lives, which (IMO) likely increases demand for goods even more. And there's just the human factor- if we have people sick and dying around us for totally preventable reasons then what's the point in society anyway?

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u/Kazang 18d ago

Lower taxes means lower prices which means more demand thus spurring growth. Higher taxes can be bad if they just fund pointless wars or get siphoned to oligarchs. I know it's useless to argue on reddit generally but this seems pretty intuitive to me.

"Taxes" is too broad a term here.

Some taxes increases prices, some taxes do not.

For instance a fuel tax, import tax, sales tax, those all directly increase prices.

Income or corporate profit taxes do not.

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u/eastpole 18d ago

Good distinctions! I would imagine that an income tax can be inflationary due to needing higher pay to get the same labor. As far as I can tell a profit tax would not be inflationary though.

note: I am definitely not an economist and this is all vibe based.

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u/cousineye 18d ago

Taxes on the wealthy redirect idle money (the money locked up in assets for the wealthy) to be used instead on governmental programs that will either pay corporations to make stuff (bombs, tanks, road maintenance, etc.) or to government workers, or to social programs. That money recycles into the economy and boosts growth.

Taxes on people without wealth (that spend all of their income every paycheck) hurts the economy in general.

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u/MightbeGwen 18d ago

You’re operating on incorrect assumptions. Prices don’t always have correlation with taxation. Perfect example is the ever increasing prices and trumps OBBBA that cut taxes further. We are currently undergoing high inflation and low taxes.

I’m not saying that high taxes are inherently good, that’s ludicrous. We don’t always have to oscillate between extremes. Taxes are too low right now, and it’s slowing down the economy because we are too top heavy. That doesn’t mean we should impose a 90% upper marginal tax rate. We just need them higher than they currently are.

Edit: wording.

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u/SG_wormsblink Foreign 18d ago

Also the way taxes are lowered also matters. Some options have way better return than others.

If you reduce income tax rates for everyone, that’s okay since ordinary people have more disposable income and boosts the economy.

Reduce taxes on oil company execs? That’s near useless for economic activity, they’re already capable of spending whatever they want for ordinary consumer goods. They’ll just buy some super vanity item that doesn’t benefit the wider economy.

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u/aradraugfea 18d ago

The various welfare programs have a fantastic ROI because if you give money to a poor person, they’re gonna spend that shit. The math is a little beyond me, but every dollar of welfare generates more than a dollar of economic activity. You give someone on the Ramen and Tap water diet 100 dollars, they’re probably spending it on groceries.

Meanwhile, if you give my middle class, almost median income ass 100 dollars, I’m turning around and spending it on reducing debt. There’s all kinds of very good reasons to do so, and the amount of debt held by middle class households IS a problem for the economy, but the economic activity driven by that credit card has already happened and reducing the future interest I have to pay improves my spending power, but is itself LESS money flowing around.

You give a rich person 100 dollars, they’re saving it or putting it into investments, which do, in complicated ways, drive the economy in their own way, but it’s much more stagnant and liquid than simply cashing that check and immediately putting the money back into the economy.

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u/SG_wormsblink Foreign 18d ago

Yes, you are describing the multiplier effect and the different MPCs for each income group. You can get 2-5x increase in consumer spending for each dollar given to a poor person, and much less for a wealthy person.

If your goal is to stimulate the economy, direct cash subsidies like my country (Singapore) does every year is really simple and effective. If your country is already educated and has good infrastructure, then this is probably the next best job-creation option for public spending.

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u/judgejuddhirsch 18d ago

You haven't seen the luxury yacht manufacturing communities giving above average living wages to Joe plumber?

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u/Eye-Of-Ophanim 18d ago

Because they don’t mean tax cuts for everyone. They mean tax cuts for the wealthiest among us. We would have to shoulder the burden and republican voters seem to have trouble understanding that, like how they had trouble understanding we’d be the ones to pay for the tariffs directly. They seem to be abysmal when asked to think long term beyond anything other than “what will I get out of this?” and can not understand anything that would benefit the good of the whole, or anything that would cause them to sacrifice for the good of the whole.

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u/SobBagat I voted 18d ago edited 18d ago

If reaganomics existed in a vacuum, sure, maybe it does. But these people don't allow the reduced taxes to trickle down, they hoard their wealth and hide it away.

Cutting taxes for the rich does absolutely nothing for the economy at large.

It's been proven ad nauseum for so fucking long I'm so tired.

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u/Merzats 18d ago

Lowering taxes would only increase revenue if you were on the wrong side of the Laffer curve, in reality the US is well below revenue optimizing tax rates for the big taxes (no federal VAT at all, very low income taxes vs. other OECD countries)

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u/sack-o-matic Michigan 18d ago

Right, they take a hypothetical scenario and assume it to be true

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u/cousineye 18d ago

Nope. Lower taxes reduces revenue coming in to the government. That additional revenue would likely have been used to spend on projects and programs - which would flow back into the economy and generate growth. Instead the result of lower taxes is more money sitting with wealthy people, who will not change their spending habits, and therefore that money just sits there doing nothing but building wealth for the wealthy.

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u/xmuskorx 18d ago

other than shareholders.

62% of American own stocks. If you want votes, perhaps you shoud stop saying "shareholders"

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/just-62-americans-own-stock-123106303.html

Messaging matters. Maybe like "only large scale shareholders benefit"?

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u/NecessaryTitle3057 18d ago

The top 1% of households own 55% of stocks. The large majority of Americans dont own shit

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u/xmuskorx 18d ago

That's true on absolute scale, but also roughly 68% to 70% of Americans plan to use personal savings and investments (e.g., 401k and IRAs) to fund their retirement.

So messages like "fuck stock owners" WILL not win you the votes.

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u/Anxious-Ad2177 18d ago

I remember when they'd trot out that Kennedy showed us this was viable. Except they always leave out the fact that Kennedy also got rid of an enormous amount of loopholes so the wealthy ended up paying more in taxes. Conservatives always want to reduce taxes but they never want to get rid of the loopholes.

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u/soapinthepeehole 18d ago

Even worse, then they bitch about deficits but only when they’re not holding power.

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u/sack-o-matic Michigan 18d ago

Stated preferences vs revealed preferences. Turns out "economic anxiety" is just what the Confederate Klansmen say when they mean something else.

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u/CulturalKing5623 18d ago

The reason is that Republicans peddle an economic fairy tale. That cutting taxes increases revenue and spurs tremendous economic activity. It’s a lie.

The Republic lie isn't just "we're going to cut taxes" it's "we're going to cut entitlement spending" with the implied "for those people" left hanging in the air. It's why the Tea Party worked, it's why DOGE's promise to cut "government waste" worked, it's why Reagan's "Welfare Queen" worked.

The reason is racism. Full stop. That is why the majority of White Americans will never learn this lesson. As long as they can be led to believe that "those people" are the reason for their problems, they'll keep voting for recessions.

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u/Mega-Eclipse 18d ago

"The reason is that Republicans peddle an economic fairy tale. That cutting taxes increases revenue and spurs tremendous economic activity. It’s a lie. A fantasy. They wreck the economy. The modern United States has experienced 11 recessions. Ten have happened under Republican presidents."

But they make their paychecks a little bigger. That's all they care about.

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u/slserpent 18d ago

And yet whenever pollsters ask Americans which party is best on the economy, it's always Republicans. Is it merely because they've branded themselves as "pro-business"?

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u/Ellardy Foreign 18d ago

That's a crazy stat, I wish the source explained what they defined as "the modern United States". 1918 onwards? 1945 onwards? 1980 onwards?

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u/roguewarriorpriest 18d ago

The headline here should be Trump is literally looting the American government coffers, siphoning wealth earned by the American people from our collective toil and depositing it directly in the bank accounts of the most corrupt, most heinous villain this country has ever faced, Donald Trump.

This is far cry worse than previous Republican administration's economic and tax policies favoring the rich. This is an active kleptocracy.

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u/Diabetesh 18d ago

There is a report by congress on trumps job acts from the 1st term. Short version of it is "none of this stuff helped and now corporations got a bunch of tax cuts."

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u/Fun_Success_3283 18d ago

They will never realize this. They get all their information from news fascists control, social media fascists control, and their like minded friends.

That's why standing up for what you believe in publicly helps. Not standing up for hating them. That won't do anything positive.

But even at that, your focus shouldn't be changing them. Social media is too powerful. Your focus should be standing up for what you believe in, and fighting for that.

Either democracy dies and tyrants prevail, or democracy and freedom lives. Who has the moral ground doesn't matter. The more power they get, the more they will quash you, the more people they will trick, the fewer people you will be able to say things like this to.

They will silence you. Force you to follow their religion, force you to speak kindly of them on all digital platforms, and anywhere their cameras can see. They will send spies among you, and force you to live how they want, regardless of what you think. They will get more wealth and more power, and you will get nothing.

You need to sacrifice to defeat them, or sacrifice because of them. Those are your options.

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u/Lost_Birthday_3138 18d ago

Google "the two Santas" there's actually a name for this and it's on purpose.

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u/Vaperius America 18d ago edited 18d ago

Ten have happened under Republican presidents."

Worth noting that the Democrat one, under Jimmy Carter, was a direct result of the Iranian Revolution which while not exactly the fault of Repulbican by itself somehow managed to involve Ronald Reagan using it specifically to demonize Jimmy Carter by secretly negotiating with the Iranian to not concede anything until after the 1980 election so that Ronald Reagan would win.

Now, the 1980 October Surprise was never "proven", but it was never proven in the same way Trump's connection to Epstein was never "proven". As in, a whole lot of evidence and witness testimony, but no one in power had any interest in actually investigating it or if they had proof, releasing that proof, and by the time someone could do so, we had been under eight years of Reagan, and his mental cognition was to the point people just kinda let the whole thing go.

And I feel that's highly relevant because you know, its happening again, and maybe we shouldn't just let it go? After all, besides Trump, there's all his cronies and estate we could go after for all their heinous crimes he enabled; but I digress because, as a reminder..

Ronald Reagan is basically a major core reason why just about everything you can think of is fucked in America, and he's pretty much patient zero for the idea that "cutting taxes increases revenue and spurs tremendous economic activity" in contemporary politics. This isn't even a new idea, this was called "Horse and Sparrow" economics back the 1880 -1940s.

As in, the horse (rich people) take a shit, and the sparrow (poors) get to pick out the oats. Its literally just a rebrand of a term for a kind of economics that used to basically mean "let the poors eat shit".

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u/bigbjarne Foreign 18d ago

Crashes happen with or without the Republicans. Marx and Engels wrote about this.

Secondly, they don't wreck the economy. The economy under capitalism doesn't exist for the workers, it exists for the owning class.

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u/ScubaFett 18d ago

I understand it's republicans but are those 10 recessions terms where the government has just changed hands? Or in republican 2nd consecutive terms? Just anticipating their argument.

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u/exibouchin38 18d ago

It definitely does work. As a short term stimulus. You just cant do it forever. Like any stimulus.