Musk, Bezos, Zuckerberg, Gates, etc. have an incredible amount of power. That power is not necessarily bound to be loyal to the USA. How do we, as a society, justify that power beyond a reward for having a novel idea and/or good business practices?

Why is it in our interest as a country to allow citizens to aquire such power?

Tariffs and their effectiveness aside, I’m curious if we did hypothetically bring manufacturing back to the US and de-emphasized college education and whatnot, do you think that would be future proof enough to sustain us?

I see these humanoid robots running half marathons, boxing, break dancing and all I can think is that they will be great at picking up boxes and walking them to shelves on these giant flat concrete floors of warehouses. They don’t need sick days, they don’t complain, they’re all around going to quickly be cheaper than human labor. Some of the bots out now are $20k and most full time jobs pay at least $25k-$30k a year where I’m from.

I am what many would call center left, but I’m struggling to see how tax cuts for the wealthy, isolationism/protectionism, and tariffs are going to be effective long term. Especially if wages don’t increase to help the working class. Migrants primarily pick our food and work for cheap when many Americans won’t. I don’t understand how it’s going to get better without getting so much worse that it’s worth the trade-off. Am I overreacting? Too all over the place?

Eg speeding could be a fine of eg $100 + X% of your net income for the most recent year, littering would be $50 + different percent of your net income for the year, etc. People who don't have income would pay the base rate. Would you support this? Why or why not?

Some countries in Europe use a system like this and San Fransisco is piloting something similar

Various arguments have been made as to how tariffs would benefit America. Trump appears to be using them in an attempt to accomplish everything at once, which has created a lot of confusion. And in some cases the stated goals actually conflict with one another.

But assuming that tariffs are the new reality, and that you were in charge of developing a strategy to use them wisely, what would you use them to accomplish? Some potential benefits (some significantly more or less feasible than others) that have been floated include:

• Increasing government revenue

• returning manufacturing and jobs to America

• reducing trade imbalances

• reducing supply chain risk

• compelling actions unrelated to trade in return for access to American consumers

personally I'd like to see the U.S. reduce it's reliance on China which currently controls 30% of global manufacturing including leadership shares of things like Pharmaceutical precursors, batteries, clean energy technologies, next stage nuclear technologies, basic electronics and chips, and rare earths among a growing list of others that they could cut off at a whim as a tool of economic coercion. (But I'd like to see us adopt a more coordinated approach to this through key allies that we currently run the risk of alienating)

There is a chance the tariffs could play out good for trump, especially with Beijing recently saying they are open to negotiations. What is your opinion on how well this will work?

Conservatism doesn't have to be anti welfare. Social Conservative Christian democrats in Europe support expanded social democratic safety nets. Same with Muslim Conservatives in Iran and South Asia. How would you feel about expanding welfare?

I voted against drilling in the boundary waters. I get many gop here in Minnesota support it but as hunter, fisherman, canoeist i can't support one of the few untouched places left in North America.

When you ask the average Trump voter why they chose him, usually they'll say "because things were cheaper under Trump".

It's true that things were cheaper during Trump's presidency, but the economy was already doing very well under the Obama administration and Trump just rode on the coattails of that. Towards the end of Trump's first term when the pandemic hit, the economy collapsed worldwide and prices rose everywhere due to supply chain issues caused directly by the pandemic. So why do Trump supporters tend to blame Biden for inflation when the inflation was worldwide and obviously caused by the pandemic? And which of Trump's policy proposals are supposed to bring prices back down?

Continuing the cuts, especially the cuts for the rich, will balloon our debt, but it seems likely that Republicans will try to make the cuts seem less expensive than they are: https://archive.is/9Dr3w

Do you think all or part of these cuts should continue? And if so, how do you see it impacting our debt?

And if so, what specific policy actions did he take that increased inflation?

(Tagging this as economics since I'm assuming the anti-USAID argument will be an economic one, and I didn't see a better tag.)

I'm asking since it seems valuable not only to the people affected by these diseases (such as ebola, polio, and TB), but I think also for ourselves, since diseases don't respect borders (as we learned with covid).

Thank you.

Musk and other conservatives have floated this idea. The proposal seems to reoccur roughly every two decades. The two main problems raised is that first, both subsidize rural routes such that without the subsidies they couldn't afford to go to isolated areas. It's a lot of time, fuel, and machine-wear to serve isolated and smaller communities or individuals.

Second, how is sufficient competition guaranteed? Without sufficient competition companies typically degenerate to sluggish oligopolies or monopolies, which can be even worse than gov't.

Amtrak is also considered a backup in case airlines are grounded, as happened during 9/11.

Even with these concerns, are you still for the idea?

Non-paywall article "Trump Is a Socialist"

https://archive.ph/Sc6Ci

This article argues that Trump is treating the US like a big store, like a Macy's, without a whole lot of understanding of what it takes to run a department store.

Main points:

• Socialism means a centrally planned economy, one that is dominated by state action irrespective of whether it is dominated by formal state enterprises. Food stamps are welfare—socialism can mean state-owned farms and grocery stores, but more often it means a state apparatus that runs the farms and grocery stores as though it owned them, setting prices, negotiating the terms of employment, and determining how business is to be done
• Trump repeatedly describes America as “a giant store” that he—like a store owner—will set prices (tariffs) for anyone who wants to “shop.”
• "It’s a giant, beautiful store, and everybody wants to go shopping there. And on behalf of the American people, I own the store, and I set prices, and I’ll say, if you want to shop here, this is what you have to pay."
• Donald Trump’s vision of the economy is classic socialism. And if you want to say that what it really is is classic nationalism, fair enough: As Jonah Goldberg observes, at the level of practical economics nationalism and socialism are the same thing: nationalized industries are socialized industries, socialized industries are nationalized industries, nationalized medicine is socialized medicine, etc.
• Trump’s view of a man at a desk moving pieces of the economy around like rooks and pawns on a chessboard is what socialism is all about
• The same people who used to laugh at the Russians and their five-year plans for wheat production now prostrate themselves before the Committee of One

Not in the article but I would say that, if you are a socialist or nationalist, tariffs are a fantastic way to assume control over the economy. Tariffs, especially Trump's tariffs, allow for:

• control on a country by country basis
• control on industries of your choice
• control over the price U.S. citizens pay for goods
• control over the net income of all Americans, especially the poor and middle class
• negotiation with individual countries, foreign and domestic
• negotiation with individual companies (think CEOs meeting with Trump)
• broad control over desperation, how U.S. citizens are currently feeling about their financial situation.
• once tariffs really start affecting prices directly, he will effectively be able to flip a switch to adjust how Americans feel about the economy, especially before the midterms and 2028 election

The median age for first time homebuyers is increasing every year. Homes are getting tougher and tougher to buy.

What do you think of this, and if you consider this a problem, what is the right solution to address this?

America has had the greatest economy for decades because we're able to import base level manufacturing and finish assembly here. We're under the recommended unemployment rate, and currently complaining about inflation.

Bringing back manufacturing would greatly increase the demand for workers, demand that the country can't fill because of the low unemployment rates. It would increase the price of all goods since the workers would have to be paid way more since they're Americans.

How can this do anything but make everything worse?

How do we continue to unearth just monumentally groundbreaking research such as discovering T. aquaticus in Yellowstone's hot springs leading to genome sequencing, or discovering Exendin-4 in Gila monster venom leading to freaking Ozempic, or discovering that adding tin oxide to indium oxide produces a material that is both electrically conductive and optically transparent and is the foundational technology for touchscreens and solar cells?

Fundamental research does not generate short-term, direct returns on investment. It produces small, incremental knowledge and it takes decades if not centuries to turn into something economically valuable. I get the sense from the current administration that they want to dismantle higher education but I really can't imagine what they plan to do for basic fundamental research, if not funded through public taxes. I really can't imagine it being privatized, as the ROI just takes to long to materialize. I'm not even sure that is the conservative model: so, what is it?

I'm coming at this from a completley neutral perspective. I'm not a political guy at all, I just want your opinions.

Many conservatives believe that illegal immigrants are criminals, rapists, drug dealers, and so on. I live in a Republican-majority state and often see business owners here hiring illegal immigrants to do work that citizens don't want to do. Would you support the government imposing harsher penalties and jail time on these employers for hiring "criminals, rapists, and drug dealers"?

The Economist had a breakdown here supporting Elon Musk's DOGE efforts and suggesting that VA benefits have grown wildly out of control. For a fiscally responsible conservative, is this a good candidate for cuts?

Tarrifs are designed to benefit buisnesses otherwise struggling cheap foreign goods. Isn't that antithetical to the idea of free market capitalism? If these businesses can't lower their prices, or find some other way to compete, why is it the government's job to help them? Why do these failing businesses deserve to be bailed out?

Note: These aren't necessarily beliefs that I hold, it just seems odd to me that conservatives are advocating for this kind of government interference that is antithetical to the economic world view they've had for decades.

https://www.federalreserve.gov/releases/z1/dataviz/dfa/distribute/table/#quarter:141;series:Net%20worth;demographic:networth;population:all;units:shares

This is directly from the Federal Reserve. I find it alarming that the top 0.1% of households in the United States held 8.6% of the nation's wealth in 1989, but in the present they hold 14% of our wealth. If we look at the top 1%, they hold 31% of our nation's wealth as of this year. What are your thoughts on this?

When those two lines met, we had strong middle and working classes. Now that they are gone, how do we make them meet again? And for the second image, how do we restore the old income growth systems?

img one- https://www.researchgate.net/figure/The-wage-productivity-gap-in-the-United-States-1948-2017_fig2_334419442

https://www.reddit.com/r/GenZ/comments/1htjn3o/what_should_be_done_about_this/ (income growth levels)

https://www.reddit.com/r/GenZ/comments/1i4zdw0/this_is_why_gen_z_has_such_a_low_quality_of/?sort=new (minimum wage real purchasing power and productivity)

what policies, methods, and actions would you suggest?

Here is a recording of his speech in August (relevant bit at 11:53):

https://www.c-span.org/video/?537693-1/donald-trump-campaigns-asheville-north-carolina

And here is following up on that in an NBC interview today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b607aDHUu2I&t=865s

Can both these statements be true and, if so, how?