The Disastrous Effect of US Trade Policy on the US Middle Class

I agree with David Sacks here. To see the disastrous effects of US trade policy on the US middle class, take a road trip through America's many decimated town and small cities.

BTW, a lot of the people who worked these middle class jobs were men. How are men doing in education and the job market now that many of these jobs no longer exist? Steve Stewart-Williams tells us in his article, "The Other Half: Six gender gaps we rarely talk about" Here are his conclusions:

  • Young Women Now Often Out-Earn Young Men

  • Boys Are Falling Behind at School

  • Fewer Men Are Finishing College

  • More Men Die on the Job

  • Men’s Health Gets Less Funding

  • Men Are More Likely to Take Their Own Lives

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Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent Discusses Trump’s Tariffs and the U.S. Economy

There's a big difference between longer form interviews and the 20 second hit jobs you see on legacy media. In this interview, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent discusses Trump's tariff plan. He makes two main points. This is an effort to bring back the middle class. Second, his main concern is that the US no longer manufactures physical things and this constitutes a major security risk. I agree with both of these points. I don't claim to know all of the risks and benefits of jacking up tariffs, but I do know that the countries who are most complaining are the ones who have been nailing the US with tariffs for years. Bessent also discusses the effect of tariffs on the US stock market, making the argument that the market is lagging in reaction to far more than the tariffs. Further, in recent times, the fact that the market has generally been rising has not reflected the true state of the US economy, especially on Main Street. I also agree with Batya Ungar-Sargon, who has made a strong case that the biggest divide today in the US is between the long-suffering middle class and the wealthier elites, who have become the main concern of Democrats.

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Thomas Sowell Quotes

Excellent collection of quotes by economist Thomas Sowell:

Here are a few of my favorites:

"Intellect is not wisdom”

“When you want to help people, you tell them the truth. When you want to help yourself, you tell them what they want to hear.”

"The truth is often not complicated. What gets complex is evading the truth.”

"The problem is that Johnny doesn't know what thinking is. He confuses it with feeling”

“The great escape of our times is escape from personal responsibility for the consequences of one’s own behavior.”

“When people get used to preferential treatment, equal treatment seems like discrimination.”

"There's now a world in which the success of others is a grievance, rather than an example"

“Since this is an era of 'fairness' & 'social justice... what is your 'fair share' of what someone else has worked for?”

"One of the most important reasons for studying history is that virtually every stupid idea that is in vogue today has been tried before and proved disastrous before, time and again.” 

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RFK, Jr. Comments on Davos

GLENN BECK: “Where do you stand on the WEF, the World Economic Forum?”

ROBERT KENNEDY JR: “It is like we shouldn’t be paying any attention. It’s a billionaire’s boys club that’s arranging the world to shift wealth upward and to clamp down totalitarian controls on everybody else. And now, they got the capacity to do it. They got all these countries running around doing what they tell them to do. It’s astonishing to me that these people go to Davos in their private jets, and they’re able to tell these world leaders how to govern us in ways that eradicate our constitutional and civil rights and constantly shifting wealth upward.”

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The Damage Done by Democrat Elites to Fly-Over States and Cities

Chris Hedges:

I rage against this demonization of the working class because it’s a very dangerous cop-out. The Democrats had this term to essentially enact the kind of New Deal reforms that might’ve been able to save what’s left of our very anemic democracy. And they didn’t. And why didn’t they? Because figures like Biden, Pelosi, and Schumer would not have political power but for their corporate backers. I mean, nobody wants Biden. Nobody wanted Biden in the primaries. It took the Democratic establishment to force everyone else out. The guy’s not even sentient. But they don’t want to lose their positions of privilege and power, and they’re really willing to take the country down because if they pushed for these kinds of reforms, then Goldman Sachs and Raytheon - and let’s not forget the Israeli lobby - wouldn’t fund them. They are creatures of this system, so that’s the problem. They will blame people who don’t rush out and vote for them. The liberal East Coast establishment, the college educated, the quote-unquote “knowledge industry,” they have no contact with these people at all. And that isn’t to excuse some of their opinions. . .

Reagan started it, but Clinton was the Democratic impetus for this, where they talked in that “I feel your pain” language of liberalism but thrust a knife in the back of the working class. So are there irredeemable racists and bigots? Of course there are. But to write off the entire working class like that and essentially blame them for their own, I think, very legitimate rage has been a way for the Democratic Party and the liberal establishment to wash their hands of culpability.

. . . They packed the equipment up and shipped it to Monterey, Mexico. And the plants, they’re just empty lots now, but they’re massive and they’re surrounded by cyclone fencing, weed-choked lots, a kind of painful reminder of the jobs they used to have. What happens in Anderson? Well, it’s completely predictable: opioid crisis, diseases of despair, massive numbers of suicides, and so on.

You can find the full interview of Chris Hedge's (by Matt Taibbi) at Racket News.

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