Transcription
I just told you there's going to be an election, and I just told you that the Democrats, I'm sorry, the Republicans are so concerned about winning it that they're trying to rig the entire system.
There are also huge problems coming up for the Republican party, and by the way, for the American nation. The first of those is, uh, the tariffs. The tariffs started to kick in, I believe it was at midnight last night. I'm completely screwed up timewise. August 7th. I don't even know what today is. So, so, I'm sorry. Sorry, I can't help with that one. But they're just kicking in.
And one of the things that, if you read the economic papers, the, you know, the papers that focus on the economy, um, what you will see is that a number of producers have not been passing the tariffs on to their consumers in the hopes that Trump was going to pull them back. So, you know, they didn't want to cut into their market share, um, if they were never going to happen because, remember, they kept being on and off and on and off, and that's how Trump got nicknamed Taco. Trump always chickens out, and they expected that he would do it again. It appears that he is not going to do it again. He's put those tariffs on now, and there they are.
Um, that's not, that's not entirely true. There's one set he's held off on. I can't remember which it is, but they are saying, "We're going to have to pass those tariffs on now to our consumers." So, prices are going to go up right at the same time that employment is going way down.
And that's, um, you know, it's, it's funny because, um, a lot of, I'm not an economist. I study economic history, which is a very different thing. I know the economic theories, but one of the things that economists do in real time, in a way that historians rarely do in real time, real time, is try and sort of read the tea leaves about what's happening in the economy.
So, one of the things that has jumped out now, and I think is fascinating, and you can follow Carl, um, Quintonia, I suspect is how you pronounce his name, on social media. He's very good about finding the tea leaves, not necessarily telling you what they're about, but finding them. And I find them fascinating. There are a number of other people as well. One of my favorite economists, economic writers, who's actually on maternity leave, so she's gone to ground for a while.
But, um, but one of the things they're looking at, for example, is when people eat at McDonald's. And you're thinking, "What on earth does that have to do with the economy?" Well, when people stop eating breakfast at McDonald's, it means that they are not eating on their way to work. And that's a big sign that people are, that unemployment is rising. And guess what? This is one of the things that has just come out. People are, that's the, the weakest, um, uh, mealtime at at McDonald's right now is people are not going for breakfast.
Um, that's one of the tea leaves, but there are more than that, of course. We're seeing unemployment tick up. We're seeing, um, lots of layoffs. We're seeing lots of firings. We're seeing, um, very few, um, housing, uh, uh, commercial, uh, building starts, and you can see it in different places on the, um, on the stock market.
So, one of the things that we've got coming up through August, and then really hitting in September when people are no longer on vacation, and are, and, and by the way, I don't mean that you and I are all taking vacations, but traditionally August is kind of a slow month in America because, you know, somebody on your team's left, and because they're away for a week or whatever, two weeks, and so generally you don't see, see huge governmental changes in August. August, because people aren't paying a lot of attention. They flip back to paying attention in September. So September is really when those big questions, um, start to be, people start to pay attention to them. And then October is when they reckon with them.
So the administration has to deal with the fact these tariffs are taking a bite. At the same time, you're seeing unemployment. At the same time that you are also seeing, uh, health insurers asking states for extreme increases in, uh, their premiums because of the way the budget reconciliation bill was written. They took away the support for, um, for sort of, uh, the working poor to be able to buy, uh, healthcare on the, uh, Affordable Care Act exchanges.
And what that meant is, when they took that away, and it's going to go, they'll have it until December 31st, but on January 1st, it's going to go away. And when it goes away, all those insurers are going to lose those people, and especially the people who are healthier. So that's going to leave in the risk pool sicker people, and they want to increase their premiums because of that. And the premium increases they're looking for are really quite large.
So that's going to hit people. You know, they're going to start to see that they're going to be asked to, to, uh, pay more for health insurance at the same time that people are losing their jobs, and at the same time that prices are getting higher. All of that is happening this fall, and that's not going to fly. That is not going to be a good thing.
We've also got the closure of hospitals because of the cuts to Medicaid. And we've got the fact that, and I, I used, I said this when they were talking about it, if you got rid of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, you know, the Republicans kept talking about how this is all about, you know, getting rid of waste, fraud, and abuse, and people were, you know, fraudulently using SNAP.
Um, just, just don't even start me on where actual fraud takes place in the US government. It's not the people on SNAP. I'll stop there because I don't have a lot of time today. But SNAP certainly helps the people who are assisted by it. But it is also one of the key ways that supermarkets, especially supermarkets or markets, I shouldn't say supermarkets, markets in rural areas stay afloat. Farmers markets, um, uh, small grocers, uh, rural, uh, grocery stores, and so on have been using that money to stay afloat.
That is, when people who use SNAP come to there, they are able to, to use that money and stay afloat. If they lose that, you're going to start to see the closure of super of markets as well. I mean, these, these are major ways in which the economy is going to take a hit. And, and you can see this, you can see the panic starting to set in in, uh, Republicans who recognize that they're, they're, they're really a bad brand.