Summary
President Joe Biden touted his administration’s economic recovery efforts, citing job growth, reduced inflation, and infrastructure investments, as he prepares to hand off a strong economy to Donald Trump.
Biden criticized Trump’s proposed steep tariffs on imports, warning they could harm the economy and reintroduce inflation.
Trump plans tariffs against China, Mexico, and Canada, raising concerns about trade disruptions similar to those seen during his first term.
Economists caution that such policies could quickly reverse recent economic gains and weaken the U.S. economy.
The problem with assertions like this is that they can never be conclusively proven or disproven. Literally every single president (at least during my lifetime) has blamed their predecessor for all of the problems plaguing the country and took credit for everything that improved, while their predecessor claimed credit for laying the groundwork and blamed their predecessor for all the challenges they faced.
The fundamental issue is that the same experiment can never be conducted twice under controlled conditions, because the world doesn’t stop spinning and whatever the other guy did, he did, and we can’t turn back time in order to find out how his opponent’s choices would have played out. Sure, you can always pick and choose some factoids in order to spin a compelling “what if” scenario, but ultimately there’s simply too many variables at play in order to reach a sufficiently solid conclusion.
Say you put a clock on humanity. One depicted by the earth itself, and it’s ability to support our type of lifeform. If one president pushes that clock forward, and another tries to slow it, are they so easily comparable? When people claim they care about kids, what they really should be meaning is the future of humanity… Or else they are really taking away the liberties of those children to be able to grow up and live a life of the same quality as the generations before them.
Now categorize those presidents again as whom has attempted to use the information they had in the capacity they had for changes to benefit future generations.
We continue to debate it… but the clock has not stopped ticking.
The problem with that thought experiment is that different people have different ideas about what “slowing it down” means. One man’s poison is another man’s medicine.
There’s nothing good or bad, but thinking makes it so.
It’s not a thought experiment, it’s reality. Every world leader knows it. The oil companies know it, the coal companies know it, the car companies know it, the overseas shipping companies know it, the agricultural companies know it, the billionaires know it, and they use their money to contort media outlets and information pushed to the population for manipulation. To line their pockets in the thought that either
a. I’ll be dead, the fuck do I care
b. Maybe someone in the future can find a way to undo the deeds I did in time, but not my problem.
It’s life in multiple choice my friend, and humanity is straight fucked in their hands
(The choice is the same)
What I’m trying to tell you is that literally each and everyone of them firmly believe(s/d) that what they’re doing is the right thing and absolutely necessary for the future of the country, and that their predecessor was a liar and a crook. They wouldn’t make it halfway to the Oval Office without that conviction. You may disagree, and that’s your God given right, but I’m afraid that’s just how democracy works.