Transcription
So, what's going on with the economy? Is Donald Trump deliberately trying to tank it? We saw the markets take a major tumble; another major tumble today. What exactly is driving this erosion of our economy, this destruction of our economy, really? And I would say it's three things.
First, the Trump Administration is doing nothing to reduce the cost of living—nothing to bring down the cost of food, or fuel, or construction, or housing, or anything. You'll remember this was supposed to be the number one priority of the Trump Administration during the campaign. Here he was on the campaign trail, talking about how he was going to bring down prices on his first day in office. Grocery prices have skyrocketed. How can a family afford that? "So when I win, I will immediately bring prices down," that's right, that was Donald Trump then, but this is Donald Trump now. Uh, now that prices are going up, "Can you guarantee American families won't pay more?" "I can't guarantee anything. I can't guarantee tomorrow." That's right, he has nothing to do with it, according to Donald Trump. But what's more, you'll remember how he was always talking about egg prices, and they were going to bring down egg prices. Well, egg prices have gone through the roof. Here's his message now about egg prices: "Shut up about egg prices." That's right, "Shut up about egg prices" is a new message.
But, of course, it's not just the fact that he hasn't focused on things that would improve the economy and bring down the cost of living for people; it's that he's doing things affirmatively that are really harming the economy. And I would say Exhibit A are these on-again, off-again tariffs. He's putting tariffs on Mexico and Canada and China one day, and then he's taking them down the next day, and then he's threatening more the next day, and then he's taking those threats away, and no one knows what to make of it. His own people don't know what to make of it. Even Maria Bartiromo doesn't know what to make of it, and she's nothing if not a shill for Donald Trump. Here she is asking about it: "But I think CEOs want to see predictability. They say, 'Look, I have to speak with shareholders, I've got to make plans for capex spending. I can't if it's 20% one day and then it's all for a month and it's 25%.' So can you give us a sense of whether or not we are going to get clarity for the business community?" "Well, I think so, but you know the tariffs could go up as time goes by, and they may go up, and you know I don't know if it's predictability. I think so." That's not clarity. No, I think I think that they say that, you know, it sounds good to say so.
The effect of the on-again, off-again tariff stuff is that no one can plan; no one knows what their business is going to look like; no one knows what they're going to have to pay for materials and supplies. If there's anything business needs for a solid economy, it's predictability—it's what they don't have with Donald Trump's tariff policy, if you can even call it that.
But there's a third reason why the economy is slumping, and it's because Elon Musk and his Doge Bros are laying off tens of thousands of people, uh, and they're canceling existing contracts and they're refusing to pay on others. And yes, that has a major impact on the economy. It's contributing to unemployment numbers; it's also adding to the uncertainty in the economy. The combination of this kind of incompetence and recklessness is wrecking the economy. But look, they don't care, because their priority is one thing: a tax cut for corporations and super-wealthy people. Uh, that's where they're coming from, because, you know, enough is never enough for them. Um, here's Michael Douglas explaining it in his terms: "The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works, greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms—greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge—has marked the upward surge of mankind, and greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teller Paper, but that other malfunctioning corpor-operation called the USA." That's right, this is the "greed is good" crowd. Um, you might have the richest man in the world in Elon Musk, but it's still not enough; he still doesn't have enough. And so, laying off people, laying off firefighters, laying off veterans, cutting healthcare to people, cutting Medicaid to fund a tax cut to make them even richer—well, he views that greed as good, but for the rest of the country, not so much. Here's the Elon Musk view of the world: "Capitalism at its finest. How much is enough, Gordon? The richest 1% of this country owns half our country's wealth—$5 trillion. One-third of that comes from hard work; two-thirds comes from an inheritance, interest on interest, accumulating to widows and idiot sons, and what I do—stock and real estate speculation. It's—you got 90% of the American public out there with little or no net worth. I create nothing. I own. We make the rules, pal. The news, war, peace, famine, upheaval, a price of a paperclip—we pick that rabbit out of the hat while everybody sits out there wondering how the hell we did it. Now you're not naive enough to think we're living in a democracy, are you, buddy? It's the free market, and you're part of it."
Well, I still believe in democracy, and I don't want some unelected billionaire making these decisions for the country, let alone wrecking the economy the way they're doing. But it's more than that; it's also the lost opportunity to do things that are really positive to help the economy. Uh, we should be focused on building more housing—building lots more housing. Uh, the reason why housing is so expensive is because we don't have enough of it, so we should be incentivizing the building of more housing that's affordable. We need more childcare. A lot of people can't enter the workforce because they can't afford childcare; they have to pay more in childcare than they earn in the workforce. That's unfair to them, but it's also terrible economics. We need to increase the supply of things; we need more healthcare practitioners, more doctors to bring down the cost of healthcare. Uh, I favor an abundance economy where we're producing more things and bringing down the cost of living for Americans. We also need to strengthen collective bargaining to make it easier for workers to negotiate for higher wages for themselves, uh, and for better healthcare with their large employers. There is a lot we can do to improve the economy and make it work for everyone. And to answer what I think is the central question in American life right now, which is: if you're working hard, can you still earn a good living? For too many millions of Americans, the answer has been no, and it's why our politics has been so turbulent; it's why our democracy has been so unstable. Because if a democracy isn't producing an economy that works for everyone, then all too many people start to look at other models, like authoritarianism and dictatorship. That is not the road we want to go down. We need an economy that works for everyone. What we don't need is an incompetent president, uh, and a greedy world's wealthiest man working together to wreck the economy for everyone else.