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California is not a representative slice of America.

You could imagine turning a few smaller states’ economies to be more like China (from the current government subsidized agriculture business) without messing with the tech and finance industries.

I don’t understand the knee jerk reaction of assuming you have to burn something down to build something.



The small states aren’t going to become like China because nobody abroad will want to import their products that are artificially propped up by tariff barriers. It’s going to be more like 1980s Brazil joined at the hip to California and New York. Doesn’t sound like an obvious winning recipe.


> Doesn’t sound like an obvious winning recipe.

I agree.

However, hammering the message of "this would obviously never work" is harmful.

Because if it does work, half the country is never going to listen to you again, and the situation is already well on its way there.


This is outrageous. We can obviously call a spade a spade. The idea that we can never criticize any policy, no matter how ill conceived, because somehow it might work and then we'd have egg on our face is ridiculous. "Maybe the White House Ballroom construction project will unearth a huge deposit of gold and pay for itself so we cannot possibly talk about its cost."

The claim that it is bad political strategy is also bizarre. Like, the right has been lying about policies from the dems for ages. "They are coming to force your child to transition to the other gender." Has this hindered their electoral chances? No. They have more power now than almost any time in the past fifty years.


Okay, get outraged. Not sure about the strawman ballroom argument but:

Let me repeat, shouting "stupid Trump is horrible for the economy" from rooftops is not a great political strategy.

In the case it turns out to be false, (and there is a credible chance of that - read the article) it will seem incredibly dishonest.


Trump can be bad for the economy and the economy can still be fine. The economy doing well doesn't mean Trump was good for the economy. At the end of the day the policies and actions that have been enacted have not been great tailwinds for the economy regardless of the outcome.


We’re one step from harvesting organs from people in rural areas, or hunting them for sport from helicopter, and they’ll cheer as long as “their side” is the one hunting them.


Some people genuinely believe Portland is a warzone.

Your idea of 'rural areas' is not far off from that.


Wake me up when an industrial revolution brings wealth back to impoverished states. I expect I’ll be asleep for some time…




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