More Strangeness Come To Pass - I Agree With Mona Charen

 How did this happen? Did she move, or did I? No, Trump came along, threatening the Republic for which it stands.

In A Second Trump Presidency Would be Terrible for the Economy, she makes these points:

Though his supporters perceive him to be strong, he is in fact a weakling looking for approval from the thugs of the world. He will abandon Ukraine to suck up to Putin, which will end the war all right, but by a method no American should countenance—surrender. That betrayal will in turn leave other American allies naked, and the power and reputation of the United States in tatters. He cites democracy-crushing Viktor Orbán as a character witness.

Kamala Harris, by contrast, is a sane, somewhat-left-of-center Democrat who is making a bid for centrist voters by deep-sixing her Medicare for All dalliance and other 2019 bids for progressive credibility. On the matters over which presidents have the most sway, foreign policy, she is more “conservative” than Trump in that she promises unflinching support of NATO, Ukraine, and vigorous U.S. world leadership. Her bold declarations of solidarity with Ukraine and NATO at the debate offered a brutal contrast with Trump’s unwillingness even to say he wants Ukraine to win.

On matters over which she has the least scope of action, domestic policy, she is likely to be thwarted by Republicans in Congress. And this is key: She will not attempt to overrule domestic opposition by unconstitutional means.

A new Pew survey sheds further light on this crucial distinction. Not only does Harris not promise to “be a dictator on day one,” but her party would not support her if she tried. When supporters of the two candidates were asked whether it would be acceptable for their nominee to take certain actions as president, Democrats were far less likely than Republicans to countenance unethical, illegal, or unconstitutional behavior. Only 27 percent of Harris supporters said it would be acceptable for her to “order federal law enforcement officials to investigate political opponents” whereas 54 percent of Trump supporters were fine with it. Only 12 percent of Harris supporters say it would be acceptable for her to fire “federal government workers . . . who were disloyal” to her. Among Trump voters, 41 percent approved. And while 8 percent of Harris supporters approved of her granting pardons to “friends, family, or political supporters who have been convicted of a crime,” 42 percent of Trump voters signed off on it.

Are there people in this country really wanting to trade their freedom over emotional distress at the economy? We do have the best economy in the world. Why else are immigrants wanting to come here? They want the safety and security and prosperity of America, and they contribute to our prosperity. They are not coming here to pull us down. 

It’s also true—though the number of voters who believe this can meet in a closet—that presidents have little ability to bring down inflation. Together with Congress, presidents can contribute to inflation, and both Biden and Trump arguably did that. The massive COVID relief bills passed under Trump and Biden flooded the country with cash. The CARES Act under Trump which sent $1200 to each American, the additional $600 to each family passed in December 2020, and the American Rescue Plan under Biden spent trillions. One study from the St. Louis Federal Reserve estimated that fiscal stimulus could have been responsible for an increase in inflation of 2.6 percent.

But the relief packages were thoroughly bipartisan efforts, and who’s to say they were even wrong? While some of us thought the ARP was too much stimulus considering all that had already been passed, one cannot reasonably argue that providing a backstop to the economy in the face of a 100-year health emergency was an example of wasteful spending. The economic suffering the fiscal stimulus averted would almost certainly have been far worse than the two-year bout of inflation we got. There is no free lunch. There are always trade-offs. Europe, by the way, also experienced a post-pandemic burst of inflation but didn’t enjoy the same rapid recovery.

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While presidents can do little to bring down inflation, the Fed can (though presidents do have a responsibility not to pressure the Fed to lower interest rates for their own political gain—something Trump did relentlessly when he was in White House), but one thing that pretty much all economists agree upon is that presidents can goose inflation by imposing tariffs. The kind of import taxes Trump envisions, according to the Peterson Institute, would cost the average American household an additional $2600 a year, because despite the repeated claims by Trump and JD Vance, tariffs are not paid by foreign countries. Tariffs are taxes (repeat three times). They are paid by Americans, and hit low income people hardest because they spend a larger percentage of their money on basics. Tariffs would also elicit retaliation from our trading partners, which would in turn hurt our own exports and dampen economic growth.

Yep, that is a conservative saying these things, not a member of the Trotskyite Workers Party. 

Putting the market ahead of the country always seemed anti-social to me. The market is to serve the country. Those who promoted this idea - the neoliberals - seemed to me people who had fallen in love with a theory that would line their own pockets. With any luck, Harris will put the economy back to work for the country. Trump's so-called economic ideas are a fantasy.

sch 9/13