The largest tax hike in US history

Emily Singer of Daily Kos reported that because of the tariffs affecting trade with almost every country people are already losing their jobs. Stellantis NV, which makes the Ram trucks, announced they were temporarily laying off 900 people over five facilities. The tariffs were cited as the reason. That happened about the time Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick announced on CBS News that because of the tariffs employment would start “leaping.” Stock markets didn’t believe him and fell even further today. Yesterday Sens. Chuck Grassley and Maria Cantwell introduced a bill that would require the president to notify Congress before imposing tariffs. Then Congress would have 60 days to approve or deny them. Passing the Senate might be possible. Passing the House would be difficult. Then the nasty guy would veto it. We have the situation that Congress ceded power to the Executive and to get it back Congress needs approval from that Executive. Of course, he’s not going to give up power. Kos of Kos noted a problem in the nasty guy’s merch business – nearly all of it comes from China. And finding American manufacturers is a problem. For example, an American flag made in the US would cost a supplier about $45 and to cover his expenses and get a bit of profit he would have to sell it for $55 or $60, which would have few takers. The flag made in China cost about $5. He can make a profit selling it for $15 to $20. Kos also noted is the big lesson from elections around the world last year is that people hate inflation. It is what kept Kamala Harris from getting elected. And here come tariffs that make everything more expensive. The working people won’t be able to afford much, even getting one of those new minimum wage jobs of a factory moving back to America. All that means is voters are turning angry – and they’ll choose food over nasty guy merch. In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a tweet by Greg Sargent:

As far as I can determine, Trump's supposed legal authority to impose these incredibly sweeping and destructive tariffs rests largely on the idea that trade deficits constitute a national emergency. How on earth is this remotely legitimate?

It isn’t legitimate. But the people who can stop him aren’t stopping him. From Politico (author not given):

I’ve asked multiple corporate executives in recent weeks whether companies are likely to start investing in manufacturing in the United States in response to Trump’s policies, and the message has basically been: That’s an unanswerable question right now. Because making those decisions requires understanding the relative costs of doing it versus not doing it, and Trump is far too unpredictable to allow for that kind of calculation.

Crowsa Luxemburg quoted a tweet by vfxgordon:

Also note that the tariffs are not broken down by country, they’re broken down by top level internet domain. It’s why islands that are populated entirely by penguins (the .hm domain) and why the Diego Garcia military base on BIOT (.io) are listed, also why Reunion (.re) and Gibraltar (.gi) are listed separately from France & the UK. They 100% used an LLM to generate this list and didn’t catch the mistake because they’re all dumb as rocks.

Heard and McDonald Island have an internet domain even though no one lives there? Huh. Luxemburg added:

They’ve just asked chatgpt to spit out a spreadsheet haven’t they.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme showing a big explosion labeled, “Trump launches unprovoked global trade war: Destroys U.S. economy.” Watching it are a group of men in red hats saying, “F---ing Hillary!” “Deep state!” “They’re trying to make Trump look bad!!” “It’s fake!” “Thanks Brandon!” D Lavoie posted a headline from CNN Business:

Americans will pay $6 trillion for Trump’s tariffs – the largest tax hike in US history.

Further down exlrrp posted a meme from Occupy Democrats, “Come on guys, stay calm! I’m sure the guy who went bankrupt six times and ran a fraudulent university knows what he’s doing.” There are also a lot of cartoons featuring penguins in honor of the residents of Heard and McDonald Island, who were slapped with tariffs. In another pundit roundup Dworkin quoted Sargent again. The nasty guy was in a call with auto CEOs and threatened them against raising prices after the tariffs go into effect. Isn’t that an admission his arguments for tariffs is bogus? Down in the comments are memes in honor of Transgender Day of Visibility. One is by Liberal Jane. It shows a lunch counter waitress saying, “Sweetheart, LGBTQIA+ people’s existence is not up for debate.”

The most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error

I finished the March/April issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact. I read the six issues I get in a year, but usually don’t blog about them because it would be hard for me to say much about the two dozen stories and articles and hard for anyone else to get a copy by the time I’ve read it. However, in this issue I thought the editorial made some points worth sharing. It is online, though the link shows that it will be online only until the next issue is published, which may be in a week. The editorial is “Seeking Scientific Common Ground, Even On Guns” by Richard A. Lovett. The debate on guns seems to cycle at every mass shooting, with nothing changing. How can we break the cycle? One way is to look at the points (usually small) on which both sides can agree. And to do that we need data-driven research. The Centers for Disease Control had been restricted from doing this sort of research (and under the nasty guy will be restricted again). But academic researchers could and did (though that may also be banned now). One study in California compared the addresses of gun purchasers with addresses of shooting incidents. That showed people in households with guns were 2.33 times more likely to die from gun violence and the victim was typically the wife or domestic partner of the gun owner. RAND released research in 2023 showed evidence of consequences of three types of gun laws. Restricting a child’s access to parents’ guns reduces the chance of the child being shot by the gun. A stand-your-ground law increases gun violence because the law gives permission to shoot when one feels threatened, even though one could flee. Concealed carry laws increase gun violence, but in an unexpected way. When one has permission to carry a gun and wants to go to a place that forbids guns they leave the gun in the car. And they forget to lock the car. And the gun is stolen. Gun thefts rise when concealed carry laws go into effect. Maurizio Porfiri of New York University’s Tandon School of Engineering found that gun sales go up after a mass shooting because of a fear of new laws that might restrict gun purchases. His team also found there is one group of people who commit mass shootings for the fame. To get that fame they go for unusual settings and they innovate. The antidote is minimize use of the shooter’s name and reveal as little of the attack as possible. Yeah, media and the public don’t like that idea. They want the juicy details. With research we know more about how to prevent deaths buy gun. In a right to carry state that might include reminders to lock your car when you leave your gun in it. The big news today is the nasty guy’s “Liberation Day” – the imposition of tariffs on close to every country in the world, then what happened in response. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported on the actual announcement. The speech was “rambling” and included “debunked conspiracy theories.” It again showed he doesn’t understand the effects of tariffs or much about economics. One country notably missing from the list is Russia. And he again complained the 2020 election was stolen. As near as anyone can figure the reason why it is “liberation day” is that it marks the liberation of dollars from American and world wallets and retirement accounts as prices go up and stocks go down. I saw a lot of cartoons showing exactly that. TheCriticalMind of the Kos community gives the history of income taxes and tariffs, and what the nasty guy got wrong. In the early years of the US the federal government was funded by tariffs. An income tax was first considered in 1812 and enacted 1861-1872. In 1906 President Teddy Roosevelt called for inheritance and income taxes. President William Howard Taft called for them again in 1909. The 16th Amendment authorizing income taxes was ratified in 1913. The Great Depression began when the financial markets collapsed in October 1929. The Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act in 1930 made the depression worse. President Franklin Roosevelt saved the nation (by canceling Smoot-Hawley – the article isn’t clear). And the economy recovered going into WWII. Parts of the nasty guy’s speech is repeated. I’ll leave it by saying the nasty guy got the year of the 16th Amendment right. Nothing else. Emily Singer of Kos reported that four Republican senators – Murkowski, Collins, McConnell, and Paul joined Democrats in voting for a resolution that terminates the national “emergency” that the nasty guy is using to justify the tariffs. That “emergency” is the false claim of fentanyl coming from Canada. This resolution is in response to the 25% tariffs on Canadian imports, so doesn’t include the worldwide tariffs imposed yesterday. The Republican controlled House is unlikely to consider the resolution, and if it did the number of Republicans who might vote for it is unknown. Also, the nasty guy verbally attacked the Republican senators that voted for it. Dartagnan of the Kos community discussed the article by the editors of the Economist condemning the tariffs. From the Economist:

It’s hard to know which is more unsettling: that the leader of the free world could spout complete drivel about its most successful and admired economy. Or the fact that on April 2nd, spurred on by his delusions, Donald Trump announced the biggest break in America’s trade policy in over a century—and committed the most profound, harmful and unnecessary economic error in the modern era. ... Almost everything Mr Trump said this week—on history, economics and the technicalities of trade—was utterly deluded. His reading of history is upside down. He has long glorified the high-tariff, low-income-tax era of the late-19th century. In fact, the best scholarship shows that tariffs impeded the economy back then. He has now added the bizarre claim that lifting tariffs caused the Depression of the 1930s and that the Smoot-Hawley tariffs were too late to rescue the situation. The reality is that tariffs made the Depression much worse, just as they will harm all economies today. It was the painstaking rounds of trade talks in the subsequent 80 years that lowered tariffs and helped increase prosperity.

Dartagnan wrote that many feel these tariffs will be temporary. As the stock market crashes (and it made an excellent start at that today) cooler heads will prevail. But the nasty guy made sure this time around his administration is full of of loyalists, selected for the purpose of not telling him his ideas are catastrophic. The Economist counsels other nations to build up their trade by seeking saner trading partners and be cautious in their retaliation which would cause the nasty guy to double down. They’ll do it anyway to please their people. Dartagnan noted the nasty guy said that other countries will cave to his demands and open factories in the US. That’s preposterous – Vietnam and Indonesia have no interest in moving their manufacturing base here. He concluded:

There is no favorable outcome for Americans with these tariffs. None. It’s all bad, a wholly pointless, self-inflicted wound, apparently all premised on the irrational whims of someone whose own horrendous business record should have prohibited him from ever leading this country in the first place, let alone implementing its economic policies.

Willis reported on some world leaders condemning the tariffs. He concluded:

The entire world, including Americans, has given a thumbs down to Trump’s tariff tirade. Only Trump, his inner circle, and most of his Republican allies seem to think this will all work out.

After writing yesterday that the intent of DOGE is to make the US government unable to function so that government functions would have to be turned over to private companies, these tariffs got me thinking. Will crashing the economy in the US and around the world help corporate takeover? It will definitely have one effect: Rich people like the nasty guy and Musk live to oppress the lower classes so their lives look better. And crashing the economy will definitely oppress the lower classes. In a pundit roundup for Kos Chitown Kev quoted several pundits discussing the tariffs. I’ll summarize the points made by Josh Marshall of Talking Points Memo. His first point: Presidents have power over tariffs only because Congress delegated it and only during emergencies. Congress can take that power back. The Republican Congress could end this tonight, so it is on every one of them. Marshall’s second point: The huge stock market drop after the tariffs were announced both makes sense – this will be a big shock to the economy – and is weird – the nasty guy had talked about the coming tariffs for weeks and had been quite specific about them. “This suggests the equities markets are still in the grip of quite a bit of magical thinking, especially about Donald Trump.” Sebastian Strangio of The Diplomat explained how the per country tariffs were calculated. The nasty guy said they were “reciprocal,” a word he used a lot. But the tariff rates are not based on the tariffs other countries have placed on US products.

As numerous observers have already noted, the tariffs that the administration claims have been imposed on U.S. goods correspond to the nations’ current trade surplus with the United States, expressed as a percentage of these nations’ total exports to the U.S. ... (The White House later appeared to confirm this.) The fact that the administration has passed this off as a “tariff” rate, and then used this as the basis for the imposition of so-called reciprocal tariffs on other nations – in most cases the latter seems to have been calculated simply by halving the former – is a sign of spectacular mendacity and incompetence. As Mike Bird of The Economist noted on X, the fraudulent way that the tariffs were calculated is “almost a worse signal than the tariffs themselves.”

Kate Lyons and Nick Evershed of the Guardian:

Heard Island and McDonald Islands, which form an external territory of Australia, are among the remotest places on earth, accessible only via a two-week boat voyage from Perth on Australia’s west coast. They are completely uninhabited, with the last visit from people believed to be nearly 10 years ago. Nevertheless, Heard and McDonald islands featured in a list released by the White House of “countries” that would have new trade tariffs imposed.

Those islands take so long to get to because they are near Antarctica. While there are no humans, there are lots of penguins. Parish Dave and Louise Matsakis of WIRED reported that the Manufacturing Extension Partnership (MEP) was created by Congress to help small American manufacturers to grow. On Tuesday the nasty guy told Congress he’s withholding funding for some MEP centers.

The Democratic congressional aides and heads of MEP centers in multiple states believe that abandoning support for the program runs counter to Trump’s long-standing goals of boosting domestic manufacturing and winning the ongoing trade war with China.

Don Moynihan of the “Can We Still Govern” Substack discussed Musk and his heavy investment in the Wisconsin Supreme Court race. The quote concludes:

The stakes could not be higher. If Musk won, his combination of unlimited money and social media dominance would appear unbeatable. But his loss signals that money and messaging cannot dominate the deep and growing sense of dissatisfaction with the direction of the country, and with Musk in particular.

Down in the comments are lots of cartoons about the tariffs and Musk’s loss in Wisconsin. Also: Leia BlueSkywalker posted a meme: “I don’t want Canada or Greenland. I want PBS, Social Security, and the Smithsonian.” A meme posted by exlrrp quoted President Ronald Reagan from 1988. “When Congress passed the Smoot-Hawley tariff in 1930, we were told that it would protect America from foreign competition and save jobs in this country – the same line we hear today. The actual result was the Great Depression.” Way down in the comments is a cartoon posted by paulpro. It shows two buttons, one labeled “Trans people are too weak to be in the military.” The other is labeled “Trans people are too strong to compete in sports.” A transphobe is in a sweat over which button to push.

Which shall rule—wealth or man?

My Sunday movie was Fortune Feimster, Crushing It. I quite enjoyed the first Fortune Feimster comedy video I saw a few weeks ago and this was like a sequel. It was also as much fun. The first story was about the honeymoon she took with her wife Jax to the Maldives. Only on the plane – a 24 hour trip – did Fortune find out being gay in the Maldives is illegal. The trip there included an overnight in Qatar, where being gay is also illegal. She was afraid of gay booby traps the whole time. It was not a romantic honeymoon. Again, there were stories of dealing with her mother. Some were when Fortune was a teen. After her parents divorced her mother started treating Fortune as her husband – even though there were older brothers. Other stories were about dealing with a now elderly mother. And to my delight she talked about being a teen in the church bell choir! Sigh, not the most flattering of stories. My phone has been added to an emergency alert system. It is now 0-3. The first alert I got was a couple weeks ago. The alert said that strong thunderstorms were heading my way and would hit in several hours. By the time the storm reached me it had died out and I think we didn’t even get a sprinkle. The second alert was 6 am Monday morning. It said there was a possible explosion, though unconfirmed. It gave an address, but not a city (and there are a lot of cities in the Detroit Metro area). The alarm sound woke me up. Then my phone chirped about once a minute demanding I read the message. I eventually got out of bed to get it to shut up. Going back to sleep wasn’t easy. I checked the local news this morning. Yes, there had been a fire at that address. Whether there was also an explosion is unknown. If I needed to be concerned about an explosion why did the alert come two hours after the fire started? Yeah, I’m glad it didn’t wake me at 4 am. The fire was about ten miles away. Why did I need to be concerned at all? The third alert is one that didn’t get sent. Sunday afternoon a line of thunderstorms did sweep across the area. It was strong enough my city’s civil defense sirens went off. The news this morning included how many homes had lost power. So why no alert? Who issued these alerts and under whose authority is not mentioned in the messages. As soon as I touch “OK” they disappear. How did I get on this alert system? I’ve had the phone about 22 months before the first alert. How might I get off? I think I would do better on my own city’s system, if I’m on any system at all. Now here on Wednesday evening a thunderstorm is passing through. No alert. So maybe the score should be 0-4. Big news out of the US Senate is the 25 hour speech given by Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ). He started at 7 pm on Monday and yielded the floor after 8 pm on Tuesday. Oliver Willis of Daily Kos reported on the speech as of Tuesday morning.

Throughout his marathon speech, the senator has taken aim at key Trump policies and actions, particularly the systematic attack on multiple government agencies under the guise of Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency. Trump has signed off on DOGE-led purges of thousands of government employees (some purges of which judges have ruled unconstitutional), closures of federal agencies, and intrusions of sensitive government systems at agencies like the IRS and Social Security Administration. “What kind of man is in our White House that makes fun of the disabled, who lies so much that the fact-checkers lose count, that minimizes the pain and the suffering?” Booker asked.

Alix Breeden of Kos reported this afternoon, and explains a bit more. Yes, this sets a record. The previous longest speech was by Strom Thurmond in 1957, fighting against civil rights. Breeden reported on the response from Democrats, which was strong praise, and on the response from the public.

According to The New York Times, more than 14,000 people called Booker’s office from the time he began his speech Monday until he yielded the floor. He reached young voters on TikTok, amassing more than 350 million “likes” on videos of his speech posted to his profile. On YouTube, his videos have more than 140,000 views. And across social media, the left is praising Booker for lighting a fire under the Democratic Party.

In a pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted Christian Paz of Vox:

Into his second day of a marathon address on the Senate floor, Booker is engaging in almost, but not quite, a filibuster — an old congressional tradition. Filibusters are marathon addresses used as a procedural tool. They take advantage of the Senate’s rules that allow for unlimited debate or speaking by a senator unless there have been special limits put in place. Senators recognized by the presiding officer can speak indefinitely, “usually cannot be forced to cede the floor, or even be interrupted”…but “must remain standing and must speak more or less continuously,” according to the Congressional Research Service. But Booker’s address isn’t a filibuster — there’s no legislation that he’s trying to hold up. Instead, it’s a form of political theater and protest against the Trump administration. And it comes at a time when overwhelming shares of his party’s membership think their elected leaders aren’t putting up a tough enough fight to resist Donald Trump’s agenda. About two-thirds of Democratic voters would prefer their leaders “stick to their positions even if this means not getting things done in Washington” a March NBC News poll found.

Down in the comments was a lot of praise for Booker. And a rebuke to calling the speech “performative” or political theater. And exlrrp posted a meme, created by The Resistance before the speech ended.

If Senator Cory Booker can stand up and speak out against the fascist regime for over 22+ hours and still going strong, every single Democrat needs to do the same. One after another. We must disrupt business as usual. Our democracy is on fire. This is a national emergency. No more compromises with the fascists. They do not care about the US Constitution, or judges or the rule of law. RESIST. DISRUPT. DO NOT COMPROMISE.

Last Saturday, before yesterday’s Supreme Court election in Wisconsin, Ben Wikler, chair of the Democratic Party of Wisconsin, wrote a guest post for Kos. Wikler began with a quote by Justice Edward Ryan, chief justice of the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 1873.

The enterprises of the country are aggregating vast corporate combinations of unexampled capital, boldly marching, not for economic conquests only, but for political power. The question will arise, and arise in your day, though perhaps not fully in mine: Which shall rule—wealth or man; which shall lead—money or intellect; who shall fill public stations—educated and patriotic free men, or the feudal serfs of corporate capital?

Wikler brought that quote up to date.

Are we feudal serfs of the richest man in the world, Elon Musk? Or are we free?

Wikler wrote that because Musk spent likely more than $25 million to get the Republican backed candidate, Brad Schimel, elected. Musk came to Wisconsin several times. In the most recent trip he offered two $1 million checks to two selected voters. Yeah, offering money to get someone to vote is election bribery and is a felony. The Wisconsin AG has files suit. An Associated Press article posted on Kos reported that Susan Crawford, the Democratic-backed candidate, won the seat on the Wisconsin Supreme Court. This preserves the liberal majority and prompts a big sigh of relief from liberals.

The contest was the most expensive court race on record in the U.S., with spending nearing $99 million, according to a tally by the Brennan Center for Justice. That broke the previous record of $51 million record, for the state’s Supreme Court race in 2023. All of the spending and attention on the race led to high early voting turnout, with numbers more than 50% higher than the state’s Supreme Court race two years ago.

Two years ago the Wisconsin Supreme Court was flipped from a conservative to liberal majority. Emily Singer of Kos has details on how good this win is for Democrats – and how much of a rebuke it is for Musk and the nasty guy. Crawford won by 10 percentage points. All 72 counties had higher Democratic percents than in November. Crawford won ten counties that the nasty guy had won. Oh, yeah. There were to special elections in Florida to fill vacancies in the US House. They were vacant because Matt Gaetz resigned and Mike Waltz became National Security Advisor (though seems to know nothing about security). Both districts are strongly Republican and in both the Republican candidate won, though by a smaller percentage than in November. Walter Einenkel of Kos reported:

The Trump administration announced on Monday that it will be reviewing nearly $9 billion in “multiyear grant commitments” to Harvard University and its affiliates. “Harvard’s failure to protect students on campus from anti-Semitic discrimination - all while promoting divisive ideologies over free inquiry - has put its reputation in serious jeopardy. Harvard can right these wrongs and restore itself to a campus dedicated to academic excellence and truth-seeking, where all students feel safe on its campus,” Education Secretary Linda McMahon said in the statement. ... Under the guise of ending antisemitism, the Trump administration has targeted 10 universities for similar federal investigations, including Columbia University. The attacks have led higher education institutions to pledge to remove protections for marginalized groups while cracking down on speech and activism on campus.

A Martinez of NPR spoke to Jason Stanley, a philosophy professor, who is in the process of leaving Yale University, where he’s been since 2013, for the University of Toronto. Stanley is Jewish and an expert on fascism, including writing the book Erasing History: How Fascists Rewrite the Past to Control the Future. The page for this segment is a combination of news article and shortened interview transcript. Alas, I think they left out an important point or two. Stanley is moving to protect himself and his family. That fear was prompted by Columbia University (with other universities targeted) agreeing to rework student protest policies to get back $400 million in federal research funding. From the news article:

Though the administration says they are pulling funding from universities to protect students from antisemitism, Stanley says the administration is using Jewish people as an "excuse to take down democracy."

In the interview Stanley said:

But you can't win a war unless you recognize it's a war. This way they're going to pick us off one by one. And history is watching here. Our institutions will be written about. They're being attacked for this entirely fake reason that's furthermore fomenting antisemitism in the United States. It's going to create mass popular anger against Jewish people. So, if universities want to fight anti-Semitism, they need to stand up and say, 'No, we are not threats to American Jews. You are threatening American Jews.'

If I remember right, that anger is because people will see these institutions losing money because of Jewish people. Also, Stanley said instead of allowing the nasty guy to pick them off, one by one, they need to start working together to present a strong and united voice. Stanley said of the University of Toronto:

I have the privilege and good fortune to get a job there. And they have a long term plan of creating a center that will be a refuge for politicians, journalists and professors from democratically backsliding or authoritarian countries like the United States or Russia. And my job will be to work with these people to jointly strategize about how to return our countries to democracy.

Last Friday Singer reported the vice nasty and his wife went to Greenland. They went to a military base quite a ways north and a good distance from actual cities. He was there long enough to give a combative speech, then flew home. In that speech he claimed Denmark, of which Greenland is an autonomous territory, “hasn’t done a good job by the people of Greenland.” So the US just has to take it over. Earlier that day the nasty guy explained, in his rambling way, why he wants Greenland. One phrase: “If you look at the waterways, you have Chinese and Russian ships all over the place.” Kos of Kos offered a rebuttal to the nasty guy and vice nasty.

“Denmark hasn’t done a good job at keeping Greenland safe,” Vance said, which was patently absurd on its face. Has anyone invaded Greenland in decades? Of course not. And the American military presence on the island, part of an array of early-warning radars against a Russian nuclear attack, is the reason why.

Denmark, a member of NATO, has allowed the US presence in Greenland. So yeah, Denmark is keeping it safe. The vice nasty said Denmark hasn’t done enough military spending to keep Greenland safe “from a lot of very aggressive incursions from Russia, China and other nations…” What “aggressive incursions” by Russia and China? Put another way, looking at the nasty guy’s worship of Putin and what’s going on in Ukraine, Greenland should not expect the US to protect it from Russia. Kos included a map of Greenland showing the major cities and the military base. They’re not at all close.

Ultimately, as a NATO ally, Denmark has been open to allowing a greater American military presence in Greenland. There appears to be nothing stopping the NATO alliance, or the United States individually, from building up a presence in Greenland.

Easy to figure out this isn’t about defending Greenland. It’s about the nasty guy appropriating its mineral wealth, now unlocked because of climate change. Since Denmark has universal health care, free college, and low income inequality, is rated the second safest country in the world, and the seventh highest economic freedom score, Kos (and I) like the idea of Greenland annexing the US. disamson of the Kos wrote a variation of what I’ve written a few times. I probably wrote about this when discussing articles on Gaslit Nation. disamson took it from an article posted on Quora.

They don't want to take over the government, they want to destroy that ability of anyone to govern. Traditionally, government was the locus of power in a society. Whether it be right wing or left wing, the most significant power was exerted through government action. That is no longer the case. The real goal of people like Musk & Thiel is corporate feudalism.

I went to that article on Quora. It was written by Feifei Wang, who lives in Seattle. Here are some of the important ideas. A dictator needs a strong central government because that’s how they exert their power. Chaos is bad for maintaining centralized control. But the nasty guy and Musk are not building a central government, even though they have loyalists in the important posts. This looks more like destruction. But a weak government doesn’t help the nasty guy or Musk. The government is a source of enormous wealth for billionaires through the military-industrial complex, subsidies, and regulatory loopholes. A strong central government is the source of their power and money, yet they’re destroying it. So what’s the real goal?

Project 2025 is a “controlled demolition” of the US federal government. Instead of building a competent dictatorship, Trump and Musk (and people from the Heritage Foundation) are gutting federal institutions so they simply cease to function. If you replace career civil servants, scientists, and legal experts with unqualified loyalists, these institutions will be unable to function properly—even if someone competent takes office in the next election. This is not about reforming or restructuring the government for a dictator. It is about rendering it permanently ineffective. ... But what if there are better income sources? What if, instead of gaming the system, they became the system? What if, instead of bending the rules, they make the rules? ... If the government is weak and ineffective, essential services (education, health care, energy, law enforcement, military) will become private industries controlled by the wealthy. When everything is privatized, we effectively live in a plutocracy where corporations run everything, and ordinary people have no democratic protections.

Even if a Democrat were elected president in 2028 they would see the only way to govern is to rely on the private sector. And nationalizing basic government functions would be labeled communism. The nasty guy doesn’t want a functioning government because only a government can hold him accountable. Musk and billionaire tech bros don’t want a functioning government because they want a deregulated playground, one without antitrust laws, labor protections, environmental restrictions, or safety regulations. They become the new ruling class. This is worse than an authoritarian regime like China because they still fill potholes and check food safety. In response to this article Kelvin Bauldry commented:

The Republicans have been running up debt for decades because it makes government look “broken” and starves future governments of the resources needed to fix things let alone adopt new policies like universal health care. Fits right into a plan like what you described.

And Chris Jankowski replied to Bauldry:

You’re right Kelvin, and if you check the record, every single time this has happened, the economy tanks and we vote in a Democrat to fix it. We are a deeply stupid nation...